Campervan travel’s great, but you know what the downside is? Trying to get to sleep when you’ve got three-to-five others all tossing and turning and snoring and getting up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night! There’s simply no privacy, which can get tiring after two weeks cooped up together. A friend of mine, however, recently came up with a solution; one so simple it’s a wonder there aren’t more people doing it.

She and her partner have just returned from a South Island campervan trip with their three kids. She said it was the most relaxing family campervan trip she’s ever done. Why? They hired two campervans. Instead of one cumbersome six-berth, they had two nifty two-to-three-berths, one driven by each parent. At night, the kids all slept in one campervan, and the adults slept in the other one.

This meant that they had two toilets, two showers, two televisions and double the living space. They had two dining tables, two outdoor tables, heaps of storage space and – most importantly – blissful nights were had by all!

Also, despite the fact that having two campervans meant that she and her partner were unable to share the driving, she found the driving less tiring overall. Driving a two-to-three-berth is far less stressful than driving a six-berth, especially on the South Island’s narrow, windy roads. Finding places to park is much easier as well.

They freedom camped for their entire trip, so that saved them a lot of money due to not having to stay at any commercial campgrounds. ¹ The kids loved being able to sprawl across their very own campervan, relaxing and watching television, and the adults loved being able to… umm… have a lot of alone time. There were fewer family arguments and everyone felt a lot more liberated than on other family campervan trips.

I know travelling like this would have been a lifesaver on my own childhood campervan trips. I remember lying there in the stifling darkness, my parents – especially my mother – snoring fit to burst for hours on end. My little sister tossed and turned and kicked me in the side, and every time someone moved, the entire campervan would judder and creak. I could feel myself going slowly insane. If only my parents and their apocalyptic snoring had been shut away in a separate campervan, those trips would have been perfect.

I would have been a lot less grumpy from lack of sleep, anyway.

 

¹ They were able to freedom camp for their entire trip because they were in Wendekreisen’s ‘Freedom’ model campervans.