March 2010
It feels like we looked at hundreds of buses. We certainly looked at hundreds of on-line ads. In reality, though, we looked at three buses. And one American motorhome. Two of them were local and we drove over 1800km during Easter to view the other two.
There was a 12m bus with a slideout. Beautifully spacious, rather tired looking and, well, just BIG. We couldn't even picture ourselves driving it down the road and got the shakes at the thought of some of our New Zealand roads. This helped us decide that in this case bigger wasn't really better.
The American motorhome had been substantially refurbished when it arrived in New Zealand. The owners had got rid of that over-upholstered, over-decorated look most of these vehicles have, and made sure it was well fitted out for living off the grid. But this was BIG too. It just took up so much damned space. And once again was rather tired and a lot of money for something distinctly secondhand.
We looked at a new conversion, professionally done. Laid out with plenty of thought, well appointed and very comfortable. But somehow not quite right. This took us a while to put our collective finger on - the build just wasn't robust enough. When you're going to live in something permanently, it needs to be able to take the knocks. There's a big difference between that and building for a weekender.
And then we looked at what we called The Whangarei Bus. This one almost stole our hearts. I guess you'd call it a 'home build', but that label just doesn't do it justice. The guy was a boatbuilder and a real craftsman. Beautiful cabinetry, plenty of storage and all the gadgets we desired. But again something wasn't right. This time it was a very poky lounge. And the stove was right next to the white upholstered lounge with no splash guard. I had visions of my homemade pasta sauce splashed all over that in the first week. I may be a good cook, but no-one ever accused me of being a tidy one.
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