queenstown turnaround
or, the one where we bought a campervan!
As they say, the days are long and the years (in our case, weeks) are short. I genuinely can’t believe it’s been almost three weeks since we left Picton. Suddenly, the length of our trip has doubled since our last post, and spring is coming quickly for our friends in the Northern Hemisphere while chillier air begins to blow in under the Southern Stars.
Under the weather down under
After our four-day Mt. Cook/Wanaka rental car relocation road trip, we had planned to spend a few days in Queenstown to feel it out and decide if we wanted to get jobs in the area. However, on the last day in Wanaka, we discovered that Chris hadn’t just been having hot/cold flashes in the tent due to the chill of the nearby glaciers. We had COVID. Luckily for public health, though certainly not for Chris, he had already spent most of his infectious period in a tent and then a private cabin. We stuck out the last few days in a master-planned development outside of Queenstown that truly felt like a colony on Mars.
While we sat in what felt like an isolation room (think white walls, sparse personal touches, everything eerily new), we began to plan our next steps.
It had quickly become clear since arriving on the South Island that both getting around and living without a car would prove difficult and expensive. High demand in a more touristy area also meant sparse options for WWOOFing gigs. And the third member of our crew was back to the States at the end of the week, satisfied with his travels and ready for his next step!
Anti Van-Life Van-Life Club
All of these factors coalesced into our decision to buy a campervan! After the usual trial and error of Facebook Marketplace, we bought “Goldie” from a departing traveler who had clearly put a lot of love into making the van comfortable and cozy. Embracing the Kiwi DIY spirit, we were excited to buy a van that we could customize, but already met our basic needs and wants. It’s kind of wild to think the first car I have ever purchased is this 2004 minivan that has a kitchen and a toilet installed, but so far I am really enjoying the ride!
I was initially reluctant and found the idea of “van-life” to be a bit over-sold by unrealistic influencer content. I had rented a tiny room in Denver and found it impossible to stay organized without adequate storage. I’m also passionate about biking and public transit, and had remained committed to my car-free lifestyle despite the challenges of doing so in Denver. It felt a bit wrong to immediately give that up upon moving to New Zealand.
However, life truly has been much easier with Goldie! It’s been so helpful having a place for long-term storage of camping gear and winter clothes (and a break from unsolicited advice from strangers about how much we packed). It’s so nice having the security of a cozy place to sleep any night of the week. And it feels good to be mobile! Parts of the country were sort of crossed-off my mental map, because it would just be too hard to get there. While I wish alternative options were more readily available, our van has already given us so much freedom and flexibility.
Around the same time we bought the van, I started reading Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger. In a haunting chapter, she discusses how the idea of “personal branding” went from barely a whisper back in the 90s to an omnipresent social reality that is inextricably linked to our self-perception. Describing today’s youth, she writes, “they have nonetheless grown up with an acute consciousness of having an externalized double – a digital double, an idealized identity that is partitioned from their ‘real’ selves and that serves as a role they must perform for the benefit of others if they are to succeed . . . almost all feel duty bound to participate in creating their own digital doubles on social media.” She posits that the pressure to maintain this image limits the ways we can and should evolve over time.
Perceiving ourselves through a third-person lens is not exclusively a product of social media. “I am who I think you think I am” came long before we began documenting (read: performing) so much of our lives on the Internet. Nevertheless, it has made this feeling of negotiating our identities in public feel ever-present, with higher social consequences if we deviate from what is expected. While there are plenty of other reasons to be concerned about social media, I find this insight the most personally troubling.
As I’ve discussed in several of these blog posts, I experienced a huge break last year between my values in theory and the often miserable way I was practicing them in real life. One of my goals for this year was to live my values less rigidly in service of my wellbeing. A barrier to this has, admittedly, been feeling like it deviates from the perception I have of myself, and the one I want to project to others. Going from “rain-or-shine cyclist” and “public transit aficionado” to “van-lifer” was not a part of the idealized identity I imagined for myself! I’m still learning how to give myself permission to adapt to my circumstances, let how I live my values evolve over time, and not to see individual responsibility via some kind of forced asceticism as more important than fighting for larger structural changes that will truly impact the issues that matter to me. And not every decision I make has to be held up to a mirror of whether it aligns with some fixed “self” I have previously defined — I am refusing to limit my development as a person with this way of thinking.
Queenstown Slowdown
After buying the campervan, we still had about a week to spend in Queenstown, doing something akin to what Anne Helen Petersen describes as the “absorption vacation.” It felt weird to not try to “make the most” of the trip while in the adventure capital of the world. But long term travel demands different rhythms, and after five very full weeks of volunteering then travelling then volunteering then travelling, we needed a slowdown. And we got it! We played at least one game of disc golf every day on the most gorgeous course we have ever seen. We played Monopoly more times in one week that we had in over a decade.
I remember so vividly staying at a hostel on a solo trip to Ecuador in 2018 and observing how a lot of the other guests just hung around all day. As a bushy-tailed 22-year old making the most of my eight days of leave from work, I remember thinking they were doing it all wrong. But taking in every viewpoint and meal and experience feels amazing for a week or two, especially when it’s a break from your normal life. Being in a state of endless consumption for longer than that becomes not only unsustainable, but also less enjoyable. Enjoying a hike hits different when “hike” is not your primary purpose. Views are more special when you aren’t driving to a new one every few hours.
Overall, I think we’ve planned the trip really well so that we aren’t burning ourselves out on tourism! Our unexpectedly long rest time in Queenstown was much needed and showed us we are still perfecting the rhythms of long-term travel.
While we loved the beauty of Queenstown and see why people decide to make it their base, we weren’t sure we wanted to be in a place so intensely focused on tourists. We had thoroughly taken advantage of our time in the mountains living in Colorado, and craved being back by the ocean. We decided to do our first road trip in our new campervan, this time up the West Coast, known for famous glaciers and truly stunning coastline.
Our destination was the Nelson-Tasman region at the “top of the South,” which we’ve been wanting to check out for weeks. We’ve had a bit of a chaotic start to our time here, but are doing well (mostly thanks to having this van as a plan B) and figuring out the next steps. More on this soon!