Begin or end your adventure in Christchurch

You’ll often find airfares to New Zealand are the same price whether you fly into or out of Auckland or Christchurch. This makes Christchurch and Auckland the obvious best places for beginning or ending your journey.

We’ll meet you at Christchurch Airport with your chosen campervan. We like to use the Countdown supermarket parking area at the airport to complete our handover as there’s plenty of space to park and take our time over the introduction to your chosen campervan.

Where to stay in and around Christchurch

There’s plenty to see in and around Christchurch and we prefer to use holiday parks with facilities if we’re spending time in the city:

Christchurch Top 10 Holiday Park. Our pick of places to stay in Christchurch as it’s very central, big and extremely well set up. It’s often very busy but still somehow seems to be quiet enough at night time. I love their drive-through check-in and have yet to find a better check-in process anywhere! Bathrooms are super clean and very nice to use.

Amber Kiwi Holiday Park. Smaller than the Top 10 and a little more compact in the layout but we’ve found it to be a more friendly sort of place.

Things to do in Christchurch

If you like the more strenuous sort of stuff like mountain biking or tearing through the air on a zipline then you’ll LOVE Christchurch Adventure Park. I reckon it’s one of the best mountain bike parks in the country. With or without a bike though, on a fine day, the trip up the hill on the chairlift gives you a very hard-to-beat view of Christchurch, the Canterbury Plains and over to Lyttleton Harbour.

Lyttleton is a very pleasant little surprise, a nice drive and well worth a visit – especially on a market day. The township (more of a village) is on the edge of a port and oozing with character. Quirky cafes, a craft brewery and some cool little shops. Just park the campervan in one of the surrounding roads and wander into the main street. Drive a little further around the harbour and explore Governor’s Bay or even further to historic Akaroa for some French influence. If Lyttleton is as far as you want to go then we suggest taking the recently reopened highway over the hills to Sumner and back into the city that way – great views along the way!

Being a City “on the mend” the Christchurch inner city area certainly deserves some love but whatever your motivation it is quite frankly a very cool city to spend time in. As cities go Christchurch is viable in a campervan and if you don’t mind walking a block or two you’ll generally find a parking space that works even in a 7-metre campervan. We like to head to the Riverside area where we’ve enjoyed some excellent dining, cafes and bars.