adonnay

Hi.

I plan to rent a campervan for 2 people in New Zealand for mid January to travel around the country for 3 weeks.
Any one has any good recommendation as regards the rental companies? What are the good and reliablñe ones?

Thanks a lot
Alejandro

stormbird

Hi A,

Well, NZ has a LOT of campervan companies. I would suggest you go to this website for a look see.

http://www.anzcro.com.au/

They also publish a very comprehensive travel brochure each year that features accommodation, tours, trains, cars, ferries, walks - your local agent may have one.

I really loved to use this company when I was a travel agent - they were always very, very helpful. They also covered the full range of vehicles from new to slightly not new thereby being able to cater to most budgets.

One thing to be aware of in NZ when hiring vehicles is that a number of the companies will swipe your credit card (for security deposit) but actually your funds will be frozen on the card. Some deposits are up to $5000 and a lot of people don't have that kind of credit on their cards.

Bushranger

As stormbird indicates, the range is huge for diverse budgets and http://www.wickedcampers.com.au/ is somewhere near the bottom and in basically being a mini cargo van with a mattress and storage/eskies etc.

Up near the top end of the range you have the likes of KEA, Britz and Maui Campers.
I was looking for KEA nz but cannot find them readily though you can do a search of availabilities with http://www.motorhomebookers.com/au/n...ces.htm?ad=193 and I'd do it quick as January/February is going to be peak time over there.

If you have the option [rental availability] you ought to enquire of costing for one on north island and another for the south island to save on ferry crossing cost, and you'll also want to book ahead for that if you do have to take a camper across, but wait until you're in NZ and if you can get yourself up in very early hours for the earlier crossings, you could possibly get away with just booking a couple of days ahead but nothing in life is guaranteed.
www.interislander.co.nz and
www.bluebridge.co.nz

You'll also probably find that doing a loop tour to return to point of hire is going to be cheaper on a per day basis and could offset ferry cost and also possibly hire per day costs of two separate hires.

There's plenty of good sites with NZ info, some with travel planners - www.travelplanner.co.nz being one and hold control down to click on distance and then click link next page and it brings up a distance/time between major centres map.

Take care on NZ roads as they are nothing like US interstaters or motorways, a bit narrow in places with lots of blind bends and one way bridges in some places - you'll see signs and a white line across the road will mean you have to give way.

Awaroa

Using a search comparison site such as
www.nzrentalcarhire.com
can save you a lot of time and hassle in the long run.

crellston

we rented from Adventure Vans for 2 months and found them to be excellent. The rate we got was very competetitive and, being a family business the customer service was excellent. I would definitely us them again.
http://www.adventurevans.co.nz/