THE VAN

THE VAN

So, when it came to planning our travel section of our year abroad, there were a few options:

1) Greyhound bus, hostels, flights

- This would be the easiest method of travel, the most comfortable, but also by far the most expensive. $35-40 a night for a few months at hostels, several hundred dollars for Greyhound passes and a few hundred more for flights would leave us severely out of pocket. And with nothing back at the end.

2) Rent a van.

- This is another expensive option, but take out a lot of the cost of accomodation. This is also very reliable as all mechanical problems are covered by the rental companies. However, we would still have to spend several hundred dollars each for this option and, again, get nothing back at the end.

3) Buy a van.

 This has the greatest outright cost but, assuming we look after it (and we have it in the mechanics as I type), should be a viable re-sell after we are done with it, giving us a bit of money to go back to the UK with. So we bought a van!

After much scouring of the internets, Charlotte came across a Ford Econovan, 1998, 2.0L Petrol for $4000. Complete with bed, curtains, gas cooker, gas, kitchen unit, shower, sink, underbed storage, fridge, water containers and various other bits and bobs. As Charlotte was working, I got sent down to Brisbane to have a look at it.

Probably not a good idea to let me buy expensive things alone. But hey, I chose to buy it and got the price down to $3700. So we picked it up on our Gold Coast trip and brought it up to the Sunny Coast.

Now Charlotte, who likes to make everything pretty, needed to make the van homely. So one quick trip to Ikea later, we had some fabrics. Charlotte used her homemaking skills (plus one staple gun) to produce some excellent curtains and a ceiling display above the bed!