(Friday Flashback) How We Survived Camping In A Broken Tent For 3 Months In New Zealand

We were more than eager to leave Sweden for our first RTW trip in 2008, so as soon as we thought we had enough money to survive for a while we packed our bags and left.

We didn’t really know what to expect, but figured that time would tell. And pretty soon, it did.

If I would have known before we left what lay before us I’m not sure I would have left so soon. The trip was amazing, but the thought of traveling for 3 months in a broken tent doesn’t sound very appealing.

Well, I’m glad I didn’t know, because it was a crazy experience that I learned a lot from and I wouldn’t have changed one bit of it – although I may not have felt that way back then…

We realized how 6,000 US dollars each to last us around the world for 8 months wasn’t quite as much as we initially thought, and NZ also turned out to be a bit more expensive than we were expecting.

We refused to have come all this way escaping a slavery job in Sweden, only to continue to the next in New Zealand. We swore we would make this work no matter what.

So we were dedicated to find the cheapest way to travel around New Zealand, which for us turned out to be by bus and a 2-man tent.

I had never gone camping in my life, and neither of us knew anything about tents or the camp life. Since our minds were just installed on finding the best deal, we found a tent called ‘Frank’. The name and the price tag made it an easy decision, Frank would be our home for the next few months.

When we went to buy the tent, the salesman first looked very puzzled, and then he broke out in a laugh. He said that this tent was so bad they usually gave it away for free when buying another tent and was used for the kids as a playhouse.

He also said that the staff crew had made a deal; if anyone managed to SELL the tent, he would have to buy everyone in the staff a beer – that’s how lousy the tent was. And that’s – obviously, how good our judgement was…

The best thing traveling around a country with a tent is that it’s cheap, you won’t have to bother about hostel manners, and you’re always assured to get a ‘private’.

What was not so fun was to pack up and down our house every single day – not to mention carrying 7 kilos of metal bars and fabric around everywhere, to wake up shaking in the cold, and to evacuate from it whenever it over flooded in the rain.

Backpacking around with a tent showed us a whole new side of New Zealand. We were able to stay in places we wouldn’t have been able to do before, and we were forced to spend most of our days outside.

But what was the most important lesson was learning how to live so close to your partner 24/7. We had to create some alone-time from each other while sharing a space of 2 x 2 x 1,5 m.

The most important things we did to be able to survive without killing each other and tearing down the already broken tent, was to look at it all from a perspective. Laughing at yourself is the best cure to everything. Laughing at your situation, and finding every little positive thing about what you’re doing.

Look at the possibilities and ignore the bad sides, even if it might be difficult sometimes… MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED: