Buying a camper and camper life

What is worth waiting for....! We found and bought a campervan. In retrospect, we were really lucky because the camper was the cheapest of all the ones we looked at and was also in the best condition. The model of our choice is a Mazda Bongo from 2009 with approximately 174,000 km. It has to be said that almost only Japanese car brands drive around here and these can therefore be repaired quickly and cheaply in New Zealand.

Since some people are probably interested, here is some more information about the costs: We bought the camper for 10,000 NZD (5,600€) and immediately had to change 2 tires and the front brake (pads & discs) and a major service (oil change, etc.). let it be done. Then we bought bed linen and a new mattress, plastic boxes to store our stuff, camping chairs and table, cutlery and cooking utensils and a camping toilet. In total we ended up with 12,000 NZD (6,500€).

The camping toilet is mandatory here in NZ if you own a self-contained vehicle, which we do. The advantage of self-contained vehicles is that you can park and camp in many parking spaces for free. Nobody actually uses the camping toilet anyway because there are public toilets everywhere that are really neat and clean.

With the camper we then took the ferry directly to Janina & Jonas on the South Island. Janina's sister is Hildi's mother's godchild. Jonas has been living in NZ for 5/6 years and Janina emigrated a year ago. The two of them then helped us get the camper into shape. We first cleaned everything and then added some threaded rivets inside so we could hang curtains and a net (for storage). Otherwise we did a few other little things, but overall we didn't have to change much to the camper.

We've been sleeping in the camper for over a week now and really well. There is enough space to accommodate everything and the bed is also quite large and comfortable. The camper itself can also be driven well and reliably. With a bit of luck, we'll get a power station (larger power bank) and a foldable solar panel sold quite cheaply by a friend of Jonas's. Then we can buy a mini fridge/cooler.