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Published: February 6th 2017
Dansey's Pass
This was a beautifully quiet, gravel road and the sun even came out for a while!Hello folks and thanks for checking in with us. Ken would like to make the following observation: 'Mark Twain once famously said, "The coldest winter I ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco." Clearly, he'd never travelled to New Zealand's South Island. But we don't want to get off on a rant so soon.' Now back to me...It's been quite a long time since we updated our blog, as internet access has been a little sporadic, but here's a quick overview of our last few weeks. The weather has featured pretty prominently, not in a good way, so riding has been very challenging and we've had a few too many soggy camping nights. On the plus side, we've learned some amusing Kiwi expressions for describing the bad weather: 'turning to custard'; 'it's gone a little bit sour'; 'weather bomb' (as in, 'there's a weather bomb coming in tonight', - that one made us pretty nervous); and our favourite, when politely asking a hardy sheep farmer about the pending conditions: 'Aww...it's gonna be shit... and then more shit!'. And indeed, it was. In fact, when we checked the forecast a few days ago, it called for rain, drizzle, showers, and downpours
all within the same day! Where else would rain be described four different ways in a single day's forecast? In short, the weather here has been pretty rough, but it's still been a great trip overall, and we always manage to dry ourselves out, eventually.
So, from Otematata where our last blog was written, we fought through headwinds, rain and cold (sometimes all three at once), climbing over Dansey's pass to Ranfurly and hopping onto the Otago rail trail. The headwinds were brutal as we made our way through Alexandra (stopping to visit Anna and daughter Emily, family friends from the UK), Cromwell and Wanaka, and then over the Cardrona pass to Queenstown. Ken took a nasty tumble over the handlebars going down the pass, but luckily he bounces well, so walked away with just a few bruises.
From Queenstown we took a 100-year-old steamship (twin Scotch, coal-fired firetube boilers, powering reciprocating engines, so Ken points out) to Walter Peak station and rode the 'Around the Mountain Trail' through an enormous sheep ranch. The trail would have been beautiful in good weather, but this was at the time of a 'weather bomb' further north, which gave us persistent rain
Fi and Anne
This was near Wanaka, with our Swiss friend Anne, whom we introduced to single track riding on a heavily laden bike - we think she enjoyed it! and very cold nighttime temperatures. Our bedraggled little campsite at Mavora Lakes saw us holed up in our tent at 4pm, bombarded by sandflies to such an extent that we couldn't open up the flysheet for more than 2 seconds without another brigade of these bloodsuckers getting into the tent. And the rain was still bucketing the following morning as we miserably packed up and rode off towards Te Anau with numb toes and fingers. To make things even more miserable, our propane for the cooking stove had run out halfway through making dinner so we had no hot dinner the night before and nothing for breakfast that morning. Ah well, that's what cycle touring is all about...some good days, but many more miserable ones!
From Te Anau we carried on along the Southern Scenic Route to Tuatapere and then Invercargill, the most southerly city in NZ, making sure to avoid camping in the rain at all costs. Despite the weather challenges, we were pretty chuffed to have ridden all the way there from Auckland. Time was running out by that point though, since we fly out of Auckland on the 15th Feb, so we had to make our way
Boiling eggs at the pier in Queenstown
Only the seagull seemed to take any notice. back to the north of South Island (with a lovely side trip to the Otago peninsula near Dunedin) by a combination of buses and a rental car. Renting a car promised to be a cheaper alternative to taking more buses, and this proved to be the case until we mistakenly put diesel into the petrol tank. We had just been congratulating ourselves on choosing the car over bus strategy, when the engine coughed a couple of times, the car twitched and jerked, and we came to a complete stop 100 yards later. This was several miles from the gas station we'd just left, and nowhere near any towns. A good job that Ken is a decent runner I thought, as he trotted off down the road in the direction we'd just come from. After a long run for Ken, and a long wait for me, we managed to find a mobile car mechanic to rescue us. It turns out that getting a mechanic to come out and pump the bad fuel out of your car, then refill it with the correct fuel, is a pretty costly business. About $400 to be exact. Ken was in a really great mood for
Steamship TSS Earnslaw
This was the ship that took us across Lake Wakatipu from Queenstown to Walter Peak station. the remaining four hours of our drive to Nelson! But all's well that ends well, and we arrived in Nelson in time to spend a few more hours with my mum and dad, before riding to Picton to catch the ferry back to North Island.
For the last few days we've enjoyed mostly hot, sunny weather as we followed the beautiful Whanganui river north, through the villages of Jerusalem (where we slept in a beautiful old convent), Pipiriki, Raetihi and Erua. We also took advantage of our proximity to Tongariro national park to hike the famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing - a 19km trek through stunning volcanic landscapes, from which our calf muscles are still recovering! We have just 8 days left in NZ now, and will ride back to the hostel we first stayed in near Auckland, where our cardboard bike boxes are hopefully awaiting us. Thanks for following us and we'll add another blog when we're back in the U.S., assuming that the UK didn't get added to Trump's travel ban list while we've been away!
~ Fi and Ken
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Felipe & Hoe
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Jeez, sounds like some rough weather - u guys r hard-core! Think we've barely seen a drop since we left u. When we did Tongariro it was in waist high snow and our digital camera frozen solid. Still looks like an amazing trip (considering you normally remember the highs more than the lows). Maybe u need to come and dry out in Central America....?