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Published: February 19th 2017
Kia Ora! Our last couple of weeks in NZ were really wonderful, with better weather for the most part, and great riding on quiet country roads in remote areas of North Island's west coast. From Taumaranui we took the Forgotten World highway through the Tangarakau gorge, passing through misty landscapes of dense and lush foliage, before we turned northwest towards the coast. It was a little drizzly on the first day, which actually added a sense of other worldness to the ride, but as we reached the coast at Mokau the skies cleared and the Tasman Sea was a vibrant blue next to the dark volcanic sands of the west coast.
Ken had plotted out a fantastic route on gravel roads, meandering through very hilly and pretty farmland with far more sheep than anywhere else we'd been in NZ! This brought us back down to the coast, where we discovered the delightful little settlement of Marokopa - one of our favourite places on the whole trip. We were able to stay in a lovely (and cheap) cabin, just a few hundred metres from the beach, where we went for an evening stroll before dinner. The village only has 35 permanent residents
Ken watching cows!
Whenever we rode past a field of male cows, they would start running alongside us - not out of fear, apparently, but curiosity.and if NZ immigration rules weren't so stringent we may well have ended up buying the beautiful (and very affordable!) cottage we saw for sale right by the beach!
It was tough to ride away from Marokopa, but we only had a few more days left before our flight, so pushed on to the popular surfing town of Raglan, where we camped by the beach and enjoyed the company of Mikael, a jovial Slovakian baker, for the evening.
From Raglan it was just another couple of days riding back to the hostel in Pukekawa, just south of Auckland, where happily our bike boxes were still intact. It was only fitting that our last 40km of riding were in the rain, making all our gear nice and wet for Ken to pack up for our flight back to LA!!
So now we're back in the States and about to start riding again in Arizona...quite a contrast to NZ, though it has actually been raining here in the desert too, so we feel somewhat at home! New Zealand was a fantastic experience and we've found ourselves missing it quite a bit. For anyone interested in statistics (probably just us!), we rode 2,570
miles total and did over 140,000 feet of vertical ascent...it's a hilly country!
Thanks to all the warm and generous Kiwis we met, and the lovely cycling friends we made along the way. And thanks to you for following our adventures! We'll put up another blog to let you know how we get on in Arizona, and we plan on being back home in Colorado by April 1st.
Ken and Fi
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