Anyone taken their van to New Zealand on holiday?

[WelshGas]

Australia Launches Campaign to Address High COVID-19 Numbers

www.voanews.com

 

[Wildcamper]

What is this rant about NZ being a police state got to do with potentially taking a van to NZ. Confused!!

 

[66tim99]

Australia Launches Campaign to Address High COVID-19 Numbers

www.voanews.com

https://www.ft.com/content/91c8b10f-7e76-4686-8d53-35b2af0c1a2e
Whilst the global scientific community were developing a vaccine, our great governor, who is never shy to take credit for the work of others, hadn't even read its advice, was continuously shaking hands with covid patients, and was lucky to survive. He has to take some responsibility for the UK death rate.
Australia has a problem to solve, but it has contemporary medical knowledge to ensure its PMs will never have as much blood on their hands. Looks like their death rate has taken a turn south this month, and the UK's a turn upwards. As you say, no-one's out of the woods.

 

[WelshGas]

https://www.ft.com/content/91c8b10f-7e76-4686-8d53-35b2af0c1a2e
Whilst the global scientific community were developing a vaccine, our great governor, who is never shy to take credit for the work of others, hadn't even read its advice, was continuously shaking hands with covid patients, and was lucky to survive. He has to take some responsibility for the UK death rate.
Australia has a problem to solve, but it has contemporary medical knowledge to ensure its PMs will never have as much blood on their hands. Looks like their death rate has taken a turn south this month, and the UK's a turn upwards. As you say, no-one's out of the woods.
View attachment 95353

Like I said, Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 

[Ozzy Pete]

NZ is not exactly a major transport hub and with a population density far less than the UK not surprising.
If you're going to go down that pathway of comparing apples and pears then China comes out on top . NZ is not out of the woods yet, nor is Australia and China. Time will tell.

Pretty obvious that you would disagree but then you always do. It’s quite possible that millions died in China but we will never know. Hundreds died in New Zealand. 180,000 in the UK. Smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer and the 180 doesn’t burn gallons of oil.
Try and get your facts right for once.

 

[WelshGas]

Pretty obvious that you would disagree but then you always do. It’s quite possible that millions died in China but we will never know. Hundreds died in New Zealand. 180,000 in the UK. Smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer and the 180 doesn’t burn gallons of oil.
Try and get your facts right for once.

I'm afraid as usual you distort the facts to suit your own simplistic views. And please don't attribute such simplistic statements to me.
There are at least 10 causes of Lung cancer, ranging from smoking to genetic causes as I have stated before. Obviously you didn't read or understand the links I gave.
With regards to the 180, there are 2 causes that affect some 180s.
CFCA engines built between 2010/11 had a manufacturing flaw, recognised by VW the details of which are in the VW TPI i published on the website. Obviously you haven't read it.
Some 180s, post 2011MY have had high oil consumption. Some attribute this to a breakdown of the EGR cooler but there is No Grade A evidence to support this allegation. As regards your statement my 180 is now on 114,000 miles and uses NO oil between oil changes which are done annually between 15,000/20,000 miles.

Similarly mortality figures should be compared like with like taking account of population numbers, population density, household generation mix, and whether society favours homes for the elderly and disabled or looking after such within the family. All, probably a bit beyond your simplistic take on the subject.

 

[major]

We are going to New Zealand for 5 weeks in November/December and were thinking of hiring a van out there. Seems to be fairly expensive to hire anything that‘s fairly new (£3-4k for 5 weeks). I looked into taking our own lovely California - which would come with the advantages of having all of our own stuff in there already, and the shipping costs for a return trip were about £3k. (Takes about 40 days each way though).

Has anyone tried this previously, and are there other costs to consider? (Obviously I’m not looking to import and sell, so would like to avoid VAT and other similar duties). Any experiences to share?

Did you ship over in the end? I’m interested in shipping to NZ and then on to Aus for a few months. Be good to hear your experiences.

 

[Wildcamper]

Did you ship over in the end? I’m interested in shipping to NZ and then on to Aus for a few months. Be good to hear your experiences.

I did look into this a couple of year ago. Apart from the shipping costs look out for the vehicle import black outs. NZ in particular do not, or did not, allow imports (temporary or otherwise) at particular times of the year due to some bug being active in Europe that they do not want in NZ. I was informed about this by the shipping agent at the time. Suggest you check or they might not allow your vehicle to be offloaded when it arrives in NZ.

 

[GraemeSmith]

No I didn't take it in the end for two reasons. The costs were mounting, so we are now doing a mixture of hotels/AirBnB in the North Island and hiring a van from Maui Rentals while we are in the South Island.

After looking at shipping costs there and back, and a few other costs like insurance, customs etc I reached the conclusion that there's a break-even point of taking your own van which is around 5-6 weeks versus a high-end hire. If you could live with a cheaper hire like Britz or Mighty then the break even point would be longer.

Costs were getting to around £7k including the shipping and all sorts of other costs and complications and not including the various disadvantages and damage risks etc. Maui Rentals work out at about £275/day for 10 days hire of a 2 Berth 1 year old Mercedes based van in November for info.

So on one hand, we'll miss our van, on the other, it's good to be fully self-contained.

Which brings me to my second reason, which is that after reaching a conclusion on this, we sold the California and are moving onto a Westfalia Sven Hedin instead!

 

[major]

Thanks for the reply, know mine is late. Hope your Westfalia has arrived / is scratching that itch.
May I ask who you looked in to for shipping? I’m getting some worse values / timescales and need to properly sort this in the next 2 months!
I’ll be down under for some months, so it’s still making sense (expensive still it is) to me to ship my van. Especially with all the baked beans I can smuggle there in its draws!

 

[Wildcamper]

Thanks for the reply, know mine is late. Hope your Westfalia has arrived / is scratching that itch.
May I ask who you looked in to for shipping? I’m getting some worse values / timescales and need to properly sort this in the next 2 months!
I’ll be down under for some months, so it’s still making sense (expensive still it is) to me to ship my van. Especially with all the baked beans I can smuggle there in its draws!

Have you tried Sea Bridge? I see that recently quarantine rule and restrictions on used vehicle imports from Europe have become significantly more onerous.

 

[cliffhanger01]

Thanks for that. As far as I can see this applies to what we call wild camping to prevent campers abusing the wilderness. We always go to camp sites and use facilities there, so I’m not sure it applies, but will research further.

Yes, you only need a SC Cert for what is called 'freedom camping" (hundreds of NZ wide local council managed campervan parking areas) You don't need one for motorcamps and DOC camps. Cliff

 

[major]

Yes, you only need a SC Cert for what is called 'freedom camping" (hundreds of NZ wide local council managed campervan parking areas) You don't need one for motorcamps and DOC camps. Cliff

The SC for one person is just the addition of a hose for the waste and a loo, far as I can see (have to sleep upstairs)
Wastewater needs an upgrade when you have 2 people?

 

[HugoFar]

NZ Self Containment Certificate requirements are changing soon and will require a plumbed in toilet which basically rules out the California being able to SC Certified. Sorry not sure of exact date of rule change but it's limiting for all NZ Cali owners who wish to camp in Self Containment areas. As someone
said above, there's still loads of camping available around NZ in campgrounds and DOC camping areas that don't require SC Cert.

 

[GraemeSmith]

Thanks for the reply, know mine is late. Hope your Westfalia has arrived / is scratching that itch.
May I ask who you looked in to for shipping? I’m getting some worse values / timescales and need to properly sort this in the next 2 months!
I’ll be down under for some months, so it’s still making sense (expensive still it is) to me to ship my van. Especially with all the baked beans I can smuggle there in its draws!

I can see that many others in my thread have given good reasons in balance of hiring or sorting something locally! However, The details you were asking for:

You can get a shipping quote quite quickly from www.shipcars.co.uk

Once you have this, you’ll also need to sort our import arrival fees. phil@gtlogistics.co.nz was really helpful.

These are the ones I looked into, but I’m sure there are others. Good luck, let us know how it goes.

(P.S. to everyone else. We are here in NZ already, staying in accommodation in the N Island and then hiring from Maui in the S Island next week. It’s amazing already, come on over)

 

[cliffhanger01]

NZ Self Containment Certificate requirements are changing soon and will require a plumbed in toilet which basically rules out the California being able to SC Certified. Sorry not sure of exact date of rule change but it's limiting for all NZ Cali owners who wish to camp in Self Containment areas. As someone
said above, there's still loads of camping available around NZ in campgrounds and DOC camping areas that don't require SC Cert.

The NZSC details are not yet settled. It may end up less onerous than that, and what is decided may not be applied for quite some time.