UKC

Planning on visiting New Zealand for a couple of months next year.

Does anyone have any advice or recommendations for hiring a campervan over there for two people on a budget?

Also, does anyone know where we can buy bouldering mats over there to save us taking our own over?

Cheers!

In reply to craig1983:


New gear is really expensive in New Zealand.

In reply to craig1983:

May be worth buying and selling on at the end of your trip. A few months van hire will probably be a couple of thousand.

and yeah very expensive gear out there.

In reply to Roadrunner2:

Yeah we were planning on selling any gear on before we left...thought it would end up being cheaper than hiring for that length of time.

In reply to craig1983:
As mentioned, camper van rental is pretty pricy over there. It would probably be worth buying and selling as there is a pretty big market of people doing just that. We just rented a tiny little car and camped, that was expensive enough.

Definitely take your bouldering mat with you. You could even sell it when you leave, and make a tidy profit

In reply to craig1983:

Yeah if you are spending a few months over in NZ its a lot cheaper to buy a van (or subaru legacy like everyone else) rather than rent and sell it on when you leave for a similar price. also in terms of gear its really expensive (normally 30% extra) over here and there is a huge lack of range. the main mats you can buy here are BD and elderid mats for around $400+ NZD (approx £200) i just bought an organic mat and it was far cheaper to get it shipped over to NZ than to buy another mat in NZ. Also in terms of climbing in the south island there are not a huge amount of bouldering venues. castle hill is the big one and then there are a few smaller places like elephant rocks near timaru and the jardines in queenstown. At castle hill you can just rent mats at the hostel and cafe nearby in springfield for about $15 a day.

If you really were insistant that you wanted to buy a mat here the places online are - torpedo7, bivouac outdoor and on NZs version of ebay called trademe you can fing TOTA mats