hello travellers,
we have great plans:will travel to Australia and Asia for a few months with our children of 3,5 years and 1,5 years old! In Australia we plan to rent a campervan or KEA Volkswagen 2/4 berth flip top from 1/9/07 for 4 weeks. If we arrange the KEA Volkswagen 2/4 berth flip top with an organization in Belgium, it costs 62 euro/day including basic insurance. Maybe it's a bit small for the 4 of us, but a real 4 B camper is double of this price. Is it better to arrange a camper in Sydney, once we arrived?
Has anyone experience with small children in a camper? Any advice to get them to sleep easily? It's the first time we travel this way, so any advice is welcome!!!
Ilse
chrisenilse
1
bude
Have you checked if the Kea flip top will have enough seats? all your kids need to be in car seats or seat belts and I think that vehicle has only 4 seats.
I have rented a Kea - and other types of campervans - for short trips and I thought the Kea was in the best condition - but also the most expensive. 62 euros seems quite a discounted price but depends on what time of year. You can check the Kea Australian website for their rates.
Haven't taken kids in a campervan but the big problem when travelling with kids in Australia is the long distances between places. Very boring for them unless they are placid types that just fall asleep when the car starts moving.
The kids will probably love the campervan - very cosy space and its great not having to pack and unpack but I would be inclined to have the campervan only for short trips (one week or so) and then spend some time in between staying in self-contained accommodation or hostels. You can get family rooms in hostels very cheaply. Its not that expensive to fly between major places and just rent an ordinary car for travelling
around from there.
Re getting them to sleep - just make sure they have lost of exercise outside during the day so they are totally exhausted when you put them to bed!
2
anonymous
What bude said. The caravan is the way to go. I suppose this is a little much for your needs. However, kid's love it ...and it is comfortable.
3
boxbeach
I was never a believer in those portable DVD players that plug into your cars 12V supply, but what an item made in heaven they are to parents. Load up the player on those boring long drives, let them have lots of breaks as suggested above, and hopefully they wont kill each other between movies...
Cheers, Andy...
4
living
We've traveled by campervan in Australia for 7 weeks one time and 4 months another time. I don't know what you mean by campervan, because the campervan we had (a Toyota Hiace) was only good for two people. There were only two seats in the front, none in the back and only one big double bed. Impossible with kids. We did meet up with friends who had rented what I would call an RV. You would have enough seats for the kids in that if you make the bed up each day, but the bench seats are right at the back of the vehicle and it would be hard to supervise them all the way back there ...and a really boring place to sit too.
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