It Began With a Van

While we were on posting in Port Vila, we decided to fulfill two of our greatest dreams: Romain - exploring New Zealand, me - a road-trip in a kombi van. 

So in November 2011 we set off for three weeks to the land of the Long White Cloud.  

We flew in to Auckland.  Davina, our friend from Vanuatu from whom we had adopted our beloved Bella, was living there and studying naturopathy.  She was our hostess with the mostess for our first couple of days in New Zealand.  Showing us the sights and delights.  For some reason I don't have a single photo from our time in Auckland. 


Here's a photo of Auckland from the interweb that makes it look pretty.

 

From Auckland, we took a flight to Queenstown.  We had hooked up with a dude there who had a passion for Kombi vans and kept a nifty little fleet of them for wannabe road-trippers like us.  

For our adventure, we chose a gorgeous buttercup coloured 1978 Westphalia Kombi van.  We named it Ni-Van, after the inhabitants of Vanuatu (ni-Vanuatu, often shortened to ni-Van).  

This was during our phase of naming our cars.  In Vanuatu we had Salmon Rusty, a dilapidated but super sturdy Toyota ute with so much character and charm.  Later we would buy a VW Golf in France and drive it to Kosovo to use as our car there.  It had a really low clearance, so Romain came up with the great name Schnitzel Von Crumm (because of its 'very low tum').  That was another brilliant little car that took us on many glorious road trips, frequently through Macedonia and on to beautiful Greece.

Anyway, back to Ni-Van.  We picked him up and I nominated Romain as driver!  After a tenuous turn around a Queenstown supermarket car-park, Romain had mastered the art of kombi van manoeuvering, and we were off! 


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