Touring NZ with a crazy campervan
Campervans Gone Wild
Looking for a different kind of journey? Strap yourself in for the trip of a lifetime, down under in New Zealand. Campervans Gone Wild will transport you, absorb you, make you laugh and maybe cry. Spectacular scenery, adorable people, the power of nature, and the oracle-like wisdom of Ivan - if you can't get to New Zealand yourself, this book will make you feel you've been there.
About the Book
Once you've met Ivan, travelogues will never be the same again
New Zealand wraps alpine to subtropical climates, unique fauna and flora, glaciers, endless sandy beaches, lakes, volcanoes, and 65,000-year-old human heritage into a tapestry of tourist sites so small you could fit it onto a coffee table. While landscapes in some countries awe visitors with their vastness, you need a supersonic jet to see them all. In New Zealand, you can appreciate the multi-faceted evolution of this tapestry from the saddle of a bike - or in my case, from the bum-burning plastic of Ivan's driving seat.
Looking back at those halcyon pre-computer days when people used to talk to each other, I remember being in Norway and using a real telephone with a wire attached, and a fax machine that spat out real paper, to reserve a campervan in New Zealand for a four-week tour. With admirable naivety, I imagined a spotless, fully-functional van would be waiting to welcome me to Auckland. Campervans Gone Wild recounts my adventures facing the challenges of reality.
The characters in my novel are for the most part fictitious and are not intended to represent the many wonderful people I met while travelling. Also, as you may have realised, Ivan is a campervan - and while I'm sure he could read my mind, I'm afraid to say he couldn't actually talk.
Ivan has many more adventures he'd like to share with you, so if you've read the book and he made you smile, do please leave a review. He really is bursting at the seams of his engine block with stories to tell you, and your review could just be the one to help him realise his wishes.
“I had begun to realize that my companionship with the fridge had been more rewarding than with humans I had encountered.”— Tony Hawks, Round Ireland with a Fridge (Ed. So my companionship with Ivan is *almost* normal)
“Don’t worry about the world ending today, it’s already tomorrow in New Zealand.”— Charles M. Schulz [modified]
About the Author
The seeds of inspiration
“You’ll need to get a proper job,” my parents told me as I neared the end of my education. But within a year of securing this “proper” job, I’d quit and was travelling the world. What I learnt quickly was that a career needs passion, and mine lay in seeing wild, unspoilt places, and in meeting people of every race.
My journey has taken me from the UK and the mountains of Norway to the deserts of Morocco, and from the jungles of Thailand to the forests of Canada and Brazil. But it was the antipodes that won my heart: first New Zealand, and now Australia.
This passion for travel is a passion for knowledge. It feeds my desire to write and provides a bottomless well of experiences to share with you, the reader. I hope my novel brings a smile to your face in these difficult times.
— JP Caughey
“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”— Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
“I’d tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.”— Phil Knight, Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
Ready for the adventure?
Pick up your copy of Campervans Gone Wild today and join Ivan on the wildest campervan trip New Zealand has ever seen.