You Don’t Need To Sell Drugs To Enjoy Living In A Van

Ed note: Inspired by Rambo’s latest book, my wife and I decided to take a New Zealand road trip of our own. P.S. Big Little Campers didn’t pay for this piece, but they did let us ride for free.

Let’s talk about the unicorn surf trip. 

It’s you and your best friends, floating around on a boat somewhere, absorbing cancerous beams like a masochistic X-ray tech who can’t be fucked to hide around the corner. Afternoon beers disappear like morals in Monopoly, and your nightly feed is secured by rod and reel. There’s not a single thought of work or other real-life obligations, and perhaps an exotic massage is involved upon docking. User’s choice. 

You’ll probably have two or three of these trips in your lifetime, if you’re lucky. For the most fortunate among us, maybe a handful. But for those surfers who’ve found themselves in long-term relationships or a job with non-terminal responsibilities, we’re forced to find alternative surf ventures that tick all of life’s proverbial boxes. 

You want to get good waves, but you don’t want your partner to resent you. You want to evoke a sense of adventure and remoteness, but you still need to answer an email or two. You don’t want to spend a fortune, but you need a decent place to sleep each night. 

May I present to you the premier option for mid-20s to mid-30s surfers, who have a two-week vacation window and partners who don’t mind the beach, but would love to do other things too — it’s *checks rear-view mirror for shadow of former self* camper-vanning around New Zealand!

I know, I know — living out of a van carries a certain connotation with it. And like most stereotypes, this one exists for a very good reason. 

When you’re traveling around in a van, people will ask you if you want and/or have drugs. Finding places to bathe/relieve yourself is a constant struggle. Having sex feels oddly exhibitionist, as you’re always parked in public spaces. Your meticulously-packed gear manages to spread and grow throughout the trip. And despite all these things, it is incredibly fucking fun. 

The convenience and mobility of van-living are unparalleled. The economy of space inspires a sense of efficiency in everything you do. And nothing compares to waking up, peeling back your blackout curtains, and seeing pumping surf right out front the car park. 

Frankly, I don’t think you can properly do New Zealand in just nine days — but the best chance you’ll have is in a camper van. Thanks to a hot tip from Rambo, we got in touch with Jon and Lizi at Big Little Campers (both of whom surf, so they understand the creature comforts required for this type of journey). They outfitted us with the ideal two-person road vessel, and still we hardly scratched the surface of the North Island. 

If your partner is anything like mine, they like to have clear plans and agendas of what will happen over the course of a given trip. And if you’re anything like me, that is absolutely petrifying because your life is dictated by the whims of the ocean. 

The beauty of van-living is that spontaneity is integral to the entire experience. 

When you arrive in Auckland, you’re fairly centralized to the North Island’s main attractions. It’s about an hour to the nearest point on the west coast (Piha), two hours to the bi-coastal surf hubs (Raglan and Mount Maunganui), and six hours to the island’s northern or southern tips. 

By eliminating the need to seek accommodation each night, the island becomes a choose-your-own-adventure book.

Forecast shows waves on the east coast? Head there first. Raglan’s on the cook, and you want to get sprayed in the face by one of Billy Stairmand’s 14 inverted snap variations? Hang west instead. Or, in the best possible scenario, the waves are shit on both coasts upon your arrival, so you go straight to a hike, hot spring, or restaurant of your partner’s choosing. 

Pro tip: the more passionately you partake in your partner’s preferred activities, the happier they’ll be to support yours. So the more effort you put in, the more water time you’ll get when the waves do turn on. And if you do that early on in the trip, you set the precedent that your partner feels compelled to uphold. 

This brings us to our nine-day North Island travel itinerary, provided by ChatGPT. 

ChatGPT Prompt: My wife and I are going to travel around New Zealand’s North Island for nine days in a camper van. We need to start and finish our trip in Auckland. In that time, we want to see/do as much as possible, without driving more than three hours each day. Some of the activities we enjoy are: surfing, hiking, caving, and eating. And we want to be in Gisborne on Friday and Saturday for surfing. 

With this info, ChatGPT was able to develop a nine-day travel itinerary with plans for each morning, day, and night, including top restaurants and free campsites for every location we’d be visiting. It incorporated all our different interests, including a host outdoor activities, a two-day stop in Gizzy for waves (where we fucking scored), and directions to some of the island’s lesser-grammed gems. 

While we didn’t follow this prompt to a T, I’d say we hit about 70% of the options it provided, and were not disappointed by a single one of them. We ended up doing a broad loop of the island, starting on the east coast before making our way south, then west, then back north again.

Highlights from our trip, in chronological order, include: 

• Climbing Mount Maunganui (and imagining the waves we might one day surf on the special island to the north)
• Jetski ride to a private hot spring in Rotorua (courtesy of all-star Kiwi lensman and Shaun Manners’ EAST guide Rambo Estrada)
• The luge track in Rotorua (so much fun, the perfect amount of dangerous, would be completely illegal in the US)
• Driving ’The Gorge’ from Rotorua to Gisborne (and stopping along the way for a remote river dip)
• Getting blown out of beach break tubes in Gisborne (thanks, Maz)
• Inner-tubing through the Waitomo glow worm caves (absolute must-do, Karens would hate this)
• Cooking/sleeping/living out of the most immaculately engineered van on the island (and best of all, it’s not a giant hideous green/orange thing that screams “I’m a clueless blow-in” every time you pull into a new zone). 

As we were having so much fun exploring the island’s internal organs, in conjunction with a poor west coast forecast (blame @raglansurfreport), we never made it to a large portion of the North Island’s premier surf zones — not Taranaki, not any of the whispered northern peninsula gems, not even Raglan. 

Bummer? Maybe. Good excuse to return? Absolutely. 

PS: I’d recommend March through May for the best combo of weather, waves, and (lack of) crowd.

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