Is it me or do Kiwi's hate us?

It wasn't an unfair question to ask given some of the 'hospitality' that New Zealanders have offered us of late. Having the largest van ever made has proved difficult recently, with the worst problem so far being finding somewhere to park the beast. Firstly you need somewhere that has no time restrictions, which is hard to come by in large towns (ie the hell hole that is, Christchurch), and secondly you need adequate space to fit in, preferably with a large 'run up' (a technical term we have adopted). Try finding those in a large city. We arrived in Christchurch, ok so it wasn't quite a hell hole, and struggled to find anywhere to stop, so we found a 'Pak N Save' supermarket with a 90 minute parking time as long as you're shopping. Perfect. So we stayed there once on the first day, again on the second, and thought there would be no bother on the third, even though we didn't actually go in the shop this time, but didn't think anyone would notice. You can imagine our suprise when we are in our van about the leave the car park with ignition on, and we get a knock on the window from some guy who was 'about to make our day', apparently. There was a tow truck on the way to get rid of our precious beast. A quick call to kindly cancel said truck and I asked the idiot to just imagine we had left a minute earlier, but apparently that would result in a large fine going straight to our rental company and on to my credit card. We had no choice but to pay the man a slightly smaller tow truck cancellation fee. I hate Christchurch, and the trolley boy from Pak N Save who shopped us in, and the fact that it cost us $80 to park for an hour.

You can only imagine how annoying it was to be so careful with your money and then lose a massive chunk of it over something so trivial. Even worse though is when you turn up in a town that doesn't seem to allow campervans ANYWHERE! Every turn we took in Hamner Springs there were 'no campervan' signs, so finding somewhere to stay the night was going to be tough. We waited until the dead of night and moved to a road, pretty much the only one in town that didn't have a mass of 'I hate campervan' signs, and thought we would sleep easy given that we would move at 8am so not to bother anyone. What's the worst they are going to do? Bang on the door?

They banged on the door. They banged on the bloody door at 6.50am shouting that it was 'illegal to park in the street'. Now I'm not sure of the accuracy of the statement that the incredibly shrill lady, who was most definitely a member of the 'I hate campervans' society, proclaimed to us, but we were in no mood to have a chat. So we got up, drove off, and found yet another Kiwi that hates us.