Van Life Reflections

We’re hoping to leave Aotearoa New Zealand for the UK within the next month or so, and a big part of that is preparing Cyril for sale. To be honest, I think we’re also preparing ourselves for it too – I have no doubt that saying goodbye to Cyril will be at least a little emotional. I read recently that it’s human nature to assign human characteristics in inanimate objects and we’ve been guilty of that ourselves with Cyril. Cyril became part of our family – he gave us the freedom that we lost being locked down in India, and being both our transport and our house, he returned some of the wanderlust that had been withheld as we were confined to the Kochi Marina for month after uncertain month. And it feels that Cyril has given us not only adventure, but also protection from what has been a bit of a crazy year or two. In the numb weeks after mum died earlier this year, I explained to a friend that Helen was looking after me well by “doing all the driving and most of the talking”. But it feels that Cyril was looking after both of us too.

Cyril living it up at the posh Chateau Hotel

Coming out of MIQ (NZ Managed Isolation and Quarantine), we expected to be living and travelling in Cyril for 9 to 12 months, so we went about making improvements for comfort and convenience. First up were solar and battery upgrades – enough to allow us to live off grid indefinitely. Well, for up to five or six cloudy days in a row at least! We also made a ton of upgrades including storage areas, hooks for drying wet gear, new curtains and even recycling bins tucked behind the seats – all making life in a compact space just that little more comfortable. When winter rolled around, we invested in an electric blanket – I think it’s pretty cool that we can run this off our solar-powered batteries.

Living tiny is not for everyone. It’s easy to get used to the big houses that have become the aspiration for many. It’s strange to think that not so many years ago we ourselves were living in a huge house in Dubai, complete with live-in maid and swimming pool. Downsizing to Cyril was for sure made easier from our living on our little sailing yacht Aroha – we were already disciplined in putting things away and getting out of each other’s way when cooking or showering. Tasks like working on our computers becomes far more challenging though. Our little table is cleverly designed so that it can swing around into many positions, but wherever you have it for computer work, it blocks the access from our “lounge” to our “kitchen”. It’s not helped by the fact that I’m currently using a hand-me-down computer – I’m grateful that a generous friend gave it to us – but the fifteen minute battery life adds a necessary umbilical between it and the power inverter.

Life in a small space encourages you to be more aware of the resources you consume. We have tanks that need filling (fresh water, diesel, and LPG) and emptying (grey water and… yuck, black water), as well as limited space for rubbish and recycling. The speed of filling and emptying is directly linked to your consumption, so it’s more obvious, more in your face.

We do have some guilt hanging over us from still driving an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle in this day and age. When I sold my Pajero about two years ago in Dubai, I vowed that that would be the last ICE vehicle I would own, so we feel like we’ve gone backwards a little. When we were looking for Cyril, we did see an EV (electric vehicle) camper for sale, but with a very high price delivering only a very low range, we didn’t pursue it further. I now wish we’d looked into a bit more, maybe worked out some sort of partnership with the rental company that was selling a couple off. But as I type this, Helen sits opposite, researching the feasibility of buying an EV car when we touch down in the UK. It’s clear that EVs are the way of the (near) future and we’re excited about experiencing this first hand ourselves. Watch this space…

A while ago, a camper-vanning good friend asked me about how much power Cyril has. He asked if we could zoom up hills. I was speechless – which happens only very occasionally – and I realised it was because I didn’t know how to answer. In our campervanning world, we’ve never had the need to zoom anywhere. Our schedule is normally so open and devoid of deadlines that we’ve never had to rush anywhere in the past year. Ironically about a week after that conversation we did find ourselves rushing – to the daily opening of a hydropower dam, creating spectacular rapids down a normally dry creek bed. As it happened, we got the time wrong and ended up being an hour late. Or maybe we were actually twenty-three hours early for the next show!?

Cyril’s got quite a few miles on him and for the most part we’re content to move pretty gently. I rarely get over 90km/h and have become accustomed to checking the rear-view mirror often for people who want to go faster. NZ roads aren’t big, but generally well designed. Most hills have a Slow Vehicle Lane, which we’ve renamed “Vehicle of Determination” lanes.

Living in Cyril hasn’t been all gin and roses. I realised a while ago that I was only posting sunny photos in my blogs. Maybe I’d take more representative photos if I’d bought the waterproof Samsung instead of my cheap one! But there is a human nature in that we share good news rather than the challenges. Consecutive days of rainy weather – as happens frequently on the We(s)t Coast – can get a bit wearing though.

My biggest complaint is having to make up the bed each evening – converting our “living room” into our “bedroom”. As I type I recognise it’s a bit of a first world problem and considering that that daily inconvenience saves us from having to drive a vehicle longer or higher than we prefer, it’s worth it for us.

Every five or six days we empty and fill Cyril’s tanks. It’s not the most pleasant job, but we’ve got a pretty good system where I do the “dirty jobs” of emptying the grey and black water tanks and Helen the “clean jobs” of filling our drinking water tanks.

For the most part we’ve enjoyed the outdoors, something like an extension of our living space. Winter was a little tough – not so much from the cold as you’d expect, but from the short daylight hours. A habit from Aroha we carried to Cyril was allowing our day’s rhythm to be set by the rising and setting of the sun. But we caught ourselves a few times eating dinner so early, maybe watching a film, and then realising that as we were getting ready for bed that it was only 8pm!

In summing this up I looked up my blog “Introducing Cyril” from about a year ago. Writing after just three weeks on the road, it’s funny looking back at our early experiences and expectations and seeing that most of them were right. The one that stands out though is our expectation that we’d be travelling around Aotearoa New Zealand for six months. More than a year on, I can’t help but smirk at my optimism.

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