Yesterday morning at four am, Melissa crawled back into bed next to me in our snug little camper van, patted my leg, and said, without a whisper of panic, “There is urine all over the floor of the shower.  Don’t worry, we’ll fix it later.”  She rolled over and nodded off as if she had said something like, “It’s still early, Honey; don’t get up yet. I’ll fix eggs later.”  The rest of the night I dreamed I had to go to the bathroom.

Camper Vans are like technology.  They are great until they are not.  Ours is a Mercedes, “certified self-contained,” 2.8 meters high and 7.2 meters long, twenty-first century version of the old VW van that, according to the very hip, borderline irreverent young man who gave us the key, feels, after a few days, “just like being in a Holiday Inn.”  I know he meant that to be an optimistic assessment, but I haven’t stayed in a Holiday Inn since they removed those “magic fingers” vibrating beds.    

We’ve lived out of our Camper Van for just over a week now.  While we did get a full briefing from the aforementioned young man on the operation of its many moving parts – including the proper use and cleaning of the highly touted self-contained toilet – I confess I became somewhat dazed and confused in the first two minutes of the briefing when I realized I would be driving this behemoth on narrow, winding mountain roads.  Even that realization didn’t pitch me over the edge, though.  It was the moment I climbed into what I instinctively understood to be the driver’s seat to get a feel for things and realized the steering wheel had been moved to the right side of the van.  The young Kiwi made no verbal comment.  He smiled and tapped his finger on a huge sticker on the bottom left of the windshield that read, “KEEP LEFT!”

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I’ll have you know, however, that I have successfully navigated our ship from Queenstown, through Glenorchy, back through Queenstown to Lake Wanaka, over the glorious Haast Pass, up the west coast highway passing the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, all the way north to a beautiful little beach area in a town called Hokitika, and across spectacular Arthur’s Pass into Christchurch – all without any serious incident.  The multiple yelps from Melissa when the rear wheels on the left side drifted a bit close to the guardrail don’t count.  It’s better than drifting right into oncoming traffic.  And, the time I drove over the freshly painted white lines, again on the far left, earning an exasperated arms-in-the-air expletive from the road worker, was really a minor incident at best.       

On the day Melissa gave me the news about our no longer fully self-contained toilet, we were parked at Fox Glacier, a small, rustic town halfway up the western coast nestled into the mountains beneath Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman.  I spent the better part of that glorious, not-a-cloud-in-the-sky morning learning more about the operations of a self-contained toilet than I ever wanted or hoped to know.  All the while, helicopters shuttled tourists up over the “Western Alps” for spectacular views.  As one delightful Kiwi couple told us later, “we have had the most magnificent summer.” Cloudless days are apparently rare.  As for me, I had a great view from the dump station at the camper park as I fiddled with valves that are the last line of defense between a camper van that feels like a Holiday Inn and one that feels like a PortaPotty.

Necessity is truly the mother of invention.  I fixed the problem.  Later that day on a beautiful hike around Lake Mathieson, Melissa said, “I wasn’t worried.  I knew you would fix it.” I felt flattered and somewhat manipulated at the same time.

Camper vanning is a world unto itself, with its own rhythms and sense of time.  Each day begins and ends at a camper van park, backing the beast into the designated space between other similar beasts, plugging in, turning on the grill, and cooking dinner with an entirely new set of camper mates. Everyone shares. Everyone (almost) is good-natured, and every camper park is different.

At Lake Wanaka, we looked up at brown-covered mountains over which rolled in the most amazing weather. Below us was the shimmering lake. At the glaciers, we stared at the glowing white peaks of Mt. Tasman and Mt. Cook.  At Hokitika, we walked on an endless beach virtually devoid of any human-made things, stuck our feet, for the first time, in the Tasman Sea, and watched a mesmerizing sunset.  At night, we saw thousands of stars glittering among the Milky Way galaxy, including the magnificent Southern Cross, this hemisphere’s version of our Big Dipper.

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We have a general idea of the route we plan to take, but no idea of how long we will stay in any one place. The camper van is due back in Queenstown on March 17.  Until then, the world is literally our oyster.  Today, we left the beach at Hokatika and drove over a truly spectacular pass, the kind of drive where you involuntarily exclaim “wow” every time you come around a bend. The way up was green with waterfalls and glacial streams. The way down was something I have never seen before – huge vistas of brown grass-covered mountains, above which towered the arid, moon-like peaks of the Western Alps.

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We stopped twice, at the top of the pass to walk to a waterfall, and in the river valley on the far side of the pass, thinking we would stretch our legs.  To our surprise, we ended up spelunking.  Seriously.  In addition to many hiking trails, this particular stop hosted a limestone cave carved by the clear, cold waters flowing into the valley from the Alps. The cave stretches about 700 meters from one opening to the next.  The signs cautioned intrepid hikers to hike upstream, to wear sturdy shoes, and to take one headlamp per person.  It also warned that we would be wading through cold water, sometimes waist deep.

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A good thing about camper vans is that they contain everything you own, at least everything you own on your vacation. We quickly changed into caving clothes, whatever that is, grabbed our headlamps and plunged in. Ten steps in, Melissa discovered that the battery in her headlamp was dead.  We soldiered on.  For the first plodding, step by step, handhold by handhold twenty minutes, the fantastic and eerie smooth limestone walls, cold rushing water, and mysterious rumbling noises reverberating underground distracted us from any concern. After thirty minutes, we both fell silent concentrating on our footing, not daring to say the one thing we both were thinking: “Did we take a wrong turn?”  The water rushed louder, a good sign, since the final exit from the cave involved climbing up and over a small waterfall.  It became an exercise in faith, hanging on to the belief that around the next bend we would see daylight. I give a huge shout out to Melissa. This was way the hell out of her comfort zone. 

Later that day, we parked in Christchurch, an urban camper van site that reminds me of being on Buford highway in Atlanta, not the most glamorous place on the planet.  If we are honest, we are both looking forward to the comfort and luxury of a hotel room soon.  But whenever we allow ourselves to wander down that path, we consider the fact that our day started on the Tasman Sea, crossed over the Alps, plunged into a cave and skidded to a stop in Christchurch.

We’ll make coffee in the morning, eat some cereal, tell ourselves we need to do laundry at the next stop, and see what unfolds.  Whatever happens, we know that at the end of the day we can look forward to snuggling down together in our little camper van that feels just like a Holiday Inn.