A Southerly Jaunt

So, last I left things I was down in Kaikoura, having just had a wet, rainy day. Well, to be frank, things kind of stayed that way. I biked from Kaikoura down to Christchurch, which was two lovely days, and then met up with Alex there. We stayed a night there, which seems like a lovely city and got me the pizza I had been itching for for weeks now (1/2 smoked chicken and spicy apricot sauce, 1/2 tex-mex chicken, if you're curious) and then took the bus from Christchurch down to Queenstown.

The bus ride gave me a taste of the varying climates of the Southern Alps. They're called the Alps, but they didn't really look like it. North/East of them it's rolling grassy hills and wine country. As you get into them, it looks more like Colorado than Europe, with grass- and scrub-covered mountains by you and more jagged peaks in the middle distance. This carries on down to Queenstown and the lovely lakes around it. We biked north of there, over the Haast Pass, and then up the West coast of the island. Starting a little South of the Haast Pass, things get more lush than the Alps around Queenstown, more mountains filled with subtropical bush. I'm told the West Coast is show-stoppingly gorgeous; the Haast Pass certainly was, but for the nearly week we pedaled up the Coast, until we got well above the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers and all of the places that are said to be truly spectacular, the weather was too interested in dumping rain on us for any appreciation of the scenery we couldn't see through the grey. Still, what we saw was nice, and it was a good ride when we weren't like drowned rats.

The human kindness moment of my trip so far was a point where, halfway through the one day where it was really, truly torrential rain, maybe 60 km through a 120 km day, we stopped for lunch. We pulled into a Department of Conservation campsite, assuming it would have a roofed picnic table, because they almost always do. This one didn't. Riding in 50 degree pouring rain is fine, because you keep yourself warm pedaling. The second you stop, however, you realize just how wet you are and just how cold you are. Alex was in the bathroom and I was hunched under the tiny roof of an info board, contemplating how to have a dryish lunch, when an Irish gentleman popped out of his campervan and invited the pair of us in for a nice, warm cuppa. He and his wife (who had a wonderfully full accent only helped by loose dentures) were spending three weeks touring and were well and happy to help us out, which was exactly what we needed. We had a warm, nice ten minutes, and they went their way and we ate lunch under the awning in front of the toilet doors, which wasn't as bad as that makes it sound.

After we got up towards Greymouth, things improved. The weather turned nicer, first cloudy but not raining, and then out and out sunny. In Greymouth, we stayed with an old Lanakila friend, Jade Blackman. It was a perfect break from touring: we rolling into town at about 4:00 (I think), showered, had pizza and a few beers, watched him coach the women's regional developmental hockey team (He's the regional development director for what we call field hockey but here is a coed and a bit more serious sport.) and then spent the rest of the evening putting back a few more beers, playing cards, and generally shooting the shit. It was lovely to catch up with Jade, who is one of those people you want to have around more than they can be, and it broke up the touring. It was great to cruise up the coast on a sunny day the next day, but the pause really helped us recharge.

After we left the coast in Westport, we turned back East towards Picton and the ferry back to the North Island. We had a day-plus of very gradual uphill, but then a day and a half of similarly gradual downhill with a tailwind, which makes you feel like you're a very fast rider indeed. We stopped to do some wine tasting in the Marlbrough region which made me pretty sure I need to spend more time with white wines, which I have largely ignored hitherto, and then caught the ferry yesterday. We spent the night in Wellington, and today Alex and I made our ways (separately) to Auckland. I took the all-day train ride through the mountains and central plateau and tomorrow will ride north to tour the Northlands for about two weeks before I leave; he caught a late flight and tomorrow flies back to the States. I looked at the gradient maps of the terrain I'll be covering, and was disappointed at how small the hills were. How far I've come since I got here...

Today etc.

So I ended up riding down to Tairua today, with a stop off at Cathedral Cove and the Hot Springs Beach. Well, sort of. I saw Cathedral Cove, where the tide had opened up a tunnel with a somewhat vaulted ceiling on a beach, and it was gorgeous, but I wasn't there when the tide was right for Hot Springs Beach. As I had to go over and down a sizeable pass to get to Tairua, I'm not sure I'll double back tomorrow. Rather than describing another route, some observations so far.

-There is a lot of roadkill in this country. There's no large predator running around, either because they never made it to New Zealand or because they were hunted to extinction, so maybe a large population of critters is responsible, or maybe they're dumber about cars here, or I don't know what. Anyway, a lot of small to mid-sized animals are flattened around these parts.

-Kiwis, or at least drivers on Kiwi roads, seem to be more cavalier about tossing empty bottles out their windows. The roadsides are littered with them. (I suppose that, biking around, I do spend more time than most taking in the roadsides, not just the views.)

-A liter and a half of soda here costs around $2.50. A can costs $2-3, and a 20-ounce bottle will run you $3-4. Is this deposits? I don't get what's going on. I'm sure there's an at least semi-sensible reason, but it's opaque to me.

-I've run into four other bicycle tourists so far: 1) A german man, on his second day out, biking around on a hot day in tights rolled up to his knees and a blue dress shirt unbuttoned halfway. His gear was fine otherwise, so I chalked it up to savoir faire, rather than ignorance, but dang. 2) A Japanese gentleman, who was about halfway through a week of touring here, then going to Australia. His English was pretty halting, so that was most of our conversation. He was, however, wearing aqua booties, or whatever you call them, which was great. 3) A frenchman who had been touring New Zealand for ten weeks already, with two more to go. He seemed to feel the need to give me advice about everywhere, though, to be fair, a lot of the advice was quite helpful. 4) A Belgian man who was touring wineries, and who advised me to tell them that I couldn't buy anything, but was reviewing their wines for my website. That's what he was legitimately doing, and apparently those are the magic words to sample everything. I'm not sure, however, that my wine knowledge/vocabulary is up to snuff. Best of luck to all of them, of course, but especially the Japanese gentleman, because those water shoes were fantastic.

-Do you know about cyclists' tan lines? Serious cyclists get some pretty hilarious tan lines, and after five days I'm already on the way. My head is pretty normally tanned, though I do have a bit of a raccoon thing going on from my glasses. The truly hilarious bit, though, is that I'm tanned from where my sleeves end to where my gloves start, from say 2/3 of the way up my bicep down to my wrist, and also from mid thigh where my shorts stop down to above my ankle where my sock starts. I'd show you pictures, but I've yet to be able to upload anything.