My van is camper than your van...
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
So, as many of you have probably seen, we have mostly been spending the last 6 weeks living in and driving camper vans (although as this post has once again taken me a while to write, this is slightly out of date- I am in fact in a hotel in Bangkok, waiting to catch a flight to Chiang Mai, but let's gloss over that...). And the net result is this: I. Love. Campers. I mean really love them.If I was a Transformer, I'd want the vehicle I turned into to be a hi-top Toyota Hiace camper. Seriously. I mean, what's not to like? You sleep where you want, your home is the open road, nothing's tying you down.... What right thinking person wouldn't want their house to be able to drive around? Although that being said, I think we were quite ready for some non-mobile, building-based accommodation by the end. And showers.
The appraisal of our camper van experience really needs to be split into two parts, to reflect our TWO, count them TWO, separate camper van hire episodes. So here goes.
CAMPER VAN 1- Livin' the Rock n' Roll dream We really didn't know what to expect when we bowled up at the Wicked Campers office in Cairns to collect our first ever camper van, but our expectations weren't high. A particular cause for concern was that we had seen a lot of Wicked vans on our travels already, which had made us a bit nervous. To give you the idea, basically Wicked Campers are a bargain basement camper van hire company whose USP is that they decorate their vans with all sorts of "crazy" paint jobs and mottos. This wouldn't be that bad, if it weren't for the fact that most of the mottos look like they were written by a sex-obsessed 14 year old boy with a questionable sense of humour (e.g. "If breasts didn't have nipples, they'd be pointless"- and that's one of the better ones).
So why, you may ask, were we putting ourselves in the position of possibly driving around a van with a large spray painting of a phallus or whatever on it for a month? And the answer, predictably, is that most unedifying one: "because they're really cheap". In the end, we did pretty well, as you can see from this pic:
They gave us a 4WD Mitsubishi Delica for the price of one of their standard crappy vans, and the paint job merely meant that people were under the impression that we were massive Motley Crue fans, which whilst not entirely accurate is not as bad as many of the alternatives. For those of you who are already bored of my waffling, here is the key info about our time in the van in the form of a databurst:
Number of nights: 25
Kilometres covered: 4,568
Number of times the automatic gearbox overdrive gear actually kicked in: 2
Litres of diesel used: roughly ten billion
Number of trips to a garage to get the useless piece of junk fixed: 4
Number of national parks visited or passed through: 31
Dead marsupials seen on the road: lost count
Best bits: Far North Queensland, New England (in New South Wales), Nambucca Heads, most of the frankly brilliant meals we managed to concoct using only one pan and a singe gas burner, watching a platypus swimming about at dawn with a cup of coffee (I had the coffee, not the platypus).
Worst bits: watching the fuel gauge plunge time and time again, the section of road between Mackay and Rockhampton on Queensland (which has replaced the M4 between Reading and Bristol as "most boring driving in the world"), a couple of decidedly hot nights trying to sleep in what is essentially a big metal box.
CAMPER VAN 2: Tassie come home
We actually booked the camper for driving round Tasmania before we decided to spend 4 weeks in one on the East Coast, so it wasn't a result of our new-found love of camper vans. Just a happy coincidence. This little baby was a bit more upmarket: a Toyota Hiace, built for comfort, not for speed:
The revolutionary thing about it was that you could actually sit in it quite comfortably of an evening round the table, which was fortunate as it Turns out that Tassie's weather is a trifle more "changeable" that that on the East Coast. (I.e. it hammered down for a couple of days, and we hid in the van eating our dinner of an evening). The short summary of our time in Tassie is this: it was amazing. If you like stunning scenery, wildlife, walking and delicious artisan foods (and I really like all those things), then Tassie is brilliant.
Our typical day plan was something like this: wake up in camper van in beautiful national park, have breakfast of cereal and lush fresh berries handpicked from a fruit farm the day before and local leatherwood honey (which might be the nicest thing I've ever put in my body), drive for a couple of hours past amazing scenery (deserted beaches, sea cliffs, wilderness forests, etc), arrive at another awesome national park, have a lunch involving unbelievable artisan cheese bought a few days before from organic dairy, go for a walk for 3 hours, come back, have a beer, cook delicious dinner involving local smoked fish/chorizo/more cheese, go to bed. Repeat until incredibly contented (and probably a bit fat).
Here's a comparison data burst (is my use of the term "data burst" starting to annoy anyone else yet? I'll probably stop):
Number of nights: 13
Kilometres covered: 2,000 (which is good going, as it's not that big an island really)
Number of times I forgot how to use a manual transmission and ended up stalling the van in the first few days: 'Bout five
Grams of honey consumed: 500
Best bits: Bruny Island (amazing island off the south coast, with stunning landscape and beaches,awesome wildlife and loads of delicious food- probably the most beautiful place I've ever been). Bay of Fires (another beautiful stretch of coastline in the North East).
Worst bits: The climate is a bit too much like Wales (i.e. it rains a lot); there's a LOT of roadkill; I didn't have time to eat any more leatherwood honey (but that's not really Tassie's fault)
Anyhoo, the conclusion is that if anyone is considering travelling in Aus (and the same may well apply to New Zealand or Canada), then I heartily recommend camp(er)ing it up. It's the wombat's knees.
The appraisal of our camper van experience really needs to be split into two parts, to reflect our TWO, count them TWO, separate camper van hire episodes. So here goes.
CAMPER VAN 1- Livin' the Rock n' Roll dream We really didn't know what to expect when we bowled up at the Wicked Campers office in Cairns to collect our first ever camper van, but our expectations weren't high. A particular cause for concern was that we had seen a lot of Wicked vans on our travels already, which had made us a bit nervous. To give you the idea, basically Wicked Campers are a bargain basement camper van hire company whose USP is that they decorate their vans with all sorts of "crazy" paint jobs and mottos. This wouldn't be that bad, if it weren't for the fact that most of the mottos look like they were written by a sex-obsessed 14 year old boy with a questionable sense of humour (e.g. "If breasts didn't have nipples, they'd be pointless"- and that's one of the better ones).
So why, you may ask, were we putting ourselves in the position of possibly driving around a van with a large spray painting of a phallus or whatever on it for a month? And the answer, predictably, is that most unedifying one: "because they're really cheap". In the end, we did pretty well, as you can see from this pic:
They gave us a 4WD Mitsubishi Delica for the price of one of their standard crappy vans, and the paint job merely meant that people were under the impression that we were massive Motley Crue fans, which whilst not entirely accurate is not as bad as many of the alternatives. For those of you who are already bored of my waffling, here is the key info about our time in the van in the form of a databurst: Number of nights: 25
Kilometres covered: 4,568
Number of times the automatic gearbox overdrive gear actually kicked in: 2
Litres of diesel used: roughly ten billion
Number of trips to a garage to get the useless piece of junk fixed: 4
Number of national parks visited or passed through: 31
Dead marsupials seen on the road: lost count
Best bits: Far North Queensland, New England (in New South Wales), Nambucca Heads, most of the frankly brilliant meals we managed to concoct using only one pan and a singe gas burner, watching a platypus swimming about at dawn with a cup of coffee (I had the coffee, not the platypus).
Worst bits: watching the fuel gauge plunge time and time again, the section of road between Mackay and Rockhampton on Queensland (which has replaced the M4 between Reading and Bristol as "most boring driving in the world"), a couple of decidedly hot nights trying to sleep in what is essentially a big metal box.
CAMPER VAN 2: Tassie come home
We actually booked the camper for driving round Tasmania before we decided to spend 4 weeks in one on the East Coast, so it wasn't a result of our new-found love of camper vans. Just a happy coincidence. This little baby was a bit more upmarket: a Toyota Hiace, built for comfort, not for speed:
The revolutionary thing about it was that you could actually sit in it quite comfortably of an evening round the table, which was fortunate as it Turns out that Tassie's weather is a trifle more "changeable" that that on the East Coast. (I.e. it hammered down for a couple of days, and we hid in the van eating our dinner of an evening). The short summary of our time in Tassie is this: it was amazing. If you like stunning scenery, wildlife, walking and delicious artisan foods (and I really like all those things), then Tassie is brilliant.Our typical day plan was something like this: wake up in camper van in beautiful national park, have breakfast of cereal and lush fresh berries handpicked from a fruit farm the day before and local leatherwood honey (which might be the nicest thing I've ever put in my body), drive for a couple of hours past amazing scenery (deserted beaches, sea cliffs, wilderness forests, etc), arrive at another awesome national park, have a lunch involving unbelievable artisan cheese bought a few days before from organic dairy, go for a walk for 3 hours, come back, have a beer, cook delicious dinner involving local smoked fish/chorizo/more cheese, go to bed. Repeat until incredibly contented (and probably a bit fat).
Here's a comparison data burst (is my use of the term "data burst" starting to annoy anyone else yet? I'll probably stop):
Number of nights: 13
Kilometres covered: 2,000 (which is good going, as it's not that big an island really)
Number of times I forgot how to use a manual transmission and ended up stalling the van in the first few days: 'Bout five
Grams of honey consumed: 500
Best bits: Bruny Island (amazing island off the south coast, with stunning landscape and beaches,awesome wildlife and loads of delicious food- probably the most beautiful place I've ever been). Bay of Fires (another beautiful stretch of coastline in the North East).
Worst bits: The climate is a bit too much like Wales (i.e. it rains a lot); there's a LOT of roadkill; I didn't have time to eat any more leatherwood honey (but that's not really Tassie's fault)
Anyhoo, the conclusion is that if anyone is considering travelling in Aus (and the same may well apply to New Zealand or Canada), then I heartily recommend camp(er)ing it up. It's the wombat's knees.
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