JUCY Rentals
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Fun trip, great motor, beware when renting in winter!
If you're considering hiring a Condo camper in winter (South Island) and you love the idea of freedom camping then take into account that the 'heating' consists of a (slighty grungy) fan heater that requires you to be hooked up to mains: aka mostly boring & more expensive campsites than DOC sites or freedom camping. Managed to get some freedom camping in by using hot-water bottles but not always sufficient when waking up in -3 degrees so we alternated with campsites, spending more $$ than originally planned. Plans to light fires were mostly sabotaged by the weather or the growing ban on open fires in many areas. Of course you can get creative and use the cooker to warm it up a bit but that is not officially recommended for good reasons! Also, storage in the Condo is minimal and we only managed it with all our winter gear by using the upper bunk as storage as we were only 2 travelling. 4 with baggage would have been a daily drama shovelling things around. And in winter weather you need the space inside more than in summer. The condo was old and tiny and on pick-up I figured you get what you pay for BUT we had friends with us who had hired a different camper - not Jucy - for less $$ and they had a super-deluxe camper with sat nav, bluetooth, diesel heating, shower, hot water and PLENTY of storage and space inside to manoeuvre, it was clean, shiny,new and comfortable. We spent a week on the road together so we had plenty of time to compare our Jucy to their luxury (but cheaper) monster. We loved our Jucy on the road, being smaller and more flexible and more grungy (character!) and waving to the the other Jucy family travellers on the road. Not having sat nav, hot water or shower was not an issue for us but we did spend a lot of time in our friends camper on cold freedom-camp nights for space, comfort & warmth! So it would have been nice if we were the ones paying less for our camper! Had an issue with having to replace the battery on the first night and luckily we were at a paid campsite but all was very well dealt with by Jucy. The other camper needed less diesel than our Jucy (petrol) so also another cost consideration. The only disadvantage of our friends' camper was that there were 3 roads in NZ they were not allowed to drive on, one of them being the Crown Range Road, which was a shame as we had to drive round the long way to Wanaka and missed out on 1st night dinner at Cardrona Pub which is a must-do-see hobbit-type-pub for big people if you're in the neighbourhood! (we went there for lunch from the other way the next day). I have experience with travelling in NZ since 1988 and have rented quite happily from Jucy before (cars) but this was the first time with a camper for road-trip with my 15 yr old daughter. All in all we had an amazing trip - who doesn't in NZ! - and the Jucy Condo wasn't a bad experience, but think about your priorities, creature-comforts & total costs if doing a winter trip.