Two More Days & A Mess of Photos

Yesterday, I believe it was Sunday, I had my longest day yet. I biked from the lovely little hostel where I was staying in Tairua with the backyard view of the ocean South clear off of the Coromandel Peninsula. The first half, being on the peninsula, was lovely, though it had a few climbs. (I'm getting my climbing legs, after a week or so now, so I'm around to the sort of masochistic satisfaction with climbing I have on my road bike--unless it's really steep, which is just stupid.) I stopped in Waihi to see the big, gaping gold mine pit they have in the middle of town and to have a late lunch. (I'd already had an early one; it turns out that when you bike all day, you need a lot of fuel.) After that, though, I had 60 km to go on a pretty busy highway. Well, New Zealand busy, which meant two lanes but with a good deal of traffic. I didn't feel unsafe, but I had to pay too much attention to traffic to really enjoy myself. Off of the peninsula, the landscape shifted from coastal mountains to rolling farmland. Still pretty, but not quite gorgeous. The last 5 km or so were pretty much on a highway coming into Tauranga, a pretty sizeable city, but with wide shoulders and the expectation that bikes might be there.

Today, I left Tauranga and had a ride up the central plateau to Rotorua. The plateau was higher than any of the passes I've been over so far, but was a gradual enough gain that I didn't mind it at all. There was a fun dip through a gorge in the middle, with a fast downhill between two rock walls, then, after crossing a wide stream, a short but steep uphill. After that, there was nearly 10 km of downhill for which I didn't have to pedal once. That was wonderful. Rotorua itself sits on Lake Rotorua, a body of water directly on top of a volcanic cone. Hot springs bubble up all around.

Rotorua is a cultural center of the Maori, or at least has become so; I'm not sure. You can see a traditional Maori show and dinner, or hangi, here, but I decided that spending the money wasn't quite in my budget. Also, I had terribly mixed feelings about the cultural tourism, but I'm not sure how that would have shaken out if I'd actually taken in the show. Instead, I made a tour of the city's various hot springs, even taking a dip. Like all sulfurous sources, this town smells vaguely of eggs and farts, but you get used to it.

I've read a lot about how aggressive NZ drivers can be in my guidebooks, but I haven't seen it so far. They seem to me to be more like Vermont drivers dealing with a bike--they'll give you enough space to make sure they don't hit you, but not really slow down at all. Still, no one has menaced or crowded me at all. (Well, except for the logging truck on the dirt road up near Port Jackson, but that road wasn't wide enough for him not to crowd me. [Yikes]) If an accident occurs because of me, it's more likely it would be someone swinging into the opposite lane to give me plenty of space right before a blind turn and hitting an oncoming car. They don't seem to care about seeing who's coming down here as much as I would. Still, I've yet to really feel unsafe, which is nice. (I've had no trouble acclimating to biking on the left, but I still have to think about which way to look when I cross the street.

As you may have noticed, I've totally shifted to metric distances in my head. This is because that's all there is down here, and I don't have any way to keep track on my own. I made the conscious decision not to have a bike computer which would tell me my speed and sitance covered, because I would pay more attention to it than it deserved, and eschewed a watch for similar reasons. I travel a certain distance each day, and get to where I'm going when I do.

All right, now for a mess of photos. This is not all I've taken; if you want more feel free to pop over to my photostream.


This is my faithful steed, fully packed. I've since straightened up the top of the back rack and put a few of those things into the panniers, so it's a little less jumbled, but that's the basic gist. I don't know what it weighs; I don't want to know what it weighs.


This is a pretty good depiction of what the gravel road from Colville up to Port Jackson was. Unrelentingly gorgeous, mostly hugging the coast with occasional jaunts a little inland in the forests of the Coromandel Mountains. Totally worth rattling three bolts off of the bike...


This is the view from the pass between the West and East coasts of the Coromandel peninsula, just East of Coromandel Town. It was a bear of a way to start the day, but the view was great and the descent afterwards was amazing.


This is Cathedral Cove, just a bit East of Whitianga. The tides have progressively hollowed it out of the rock promontory. I had to bike up a ridiculous hill to get to it, but it was totally worth it.


This is the old, empty pumphouse at the Waihi gold mine. It's just the shell now, all stone, conrete and steel beams. It's gorgeous.


In the process of their gold mining, Waihi has progressively (I assume) dug this hole in the middle of their city. You could put a lot of stuff in there before you filled it... Note the trucks down in it.


By and large, the roadsigns are pretty much what you'd expect here. In the Bay of Plenty region, though, the ones advising safety seem to want safe drivers to put helmets on their cars. (At least, my best guess is that those are helmets...) My other favorites are the one asking you to merge traffic like a zipper and the railroad one, which is a simple and perfect outline of a choo-choo train.


This is the pool at the middle of the Kuirau Park in Rotorua. It was as warm as the steam suggests.

So that's it for now. More photos as I take them and find computers willing to let me upload them.

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.

Miranda Hot Springs to Whitianga

Edit: For some reason, the first map seems to work, but the second doesn't. I can't really explain why, as I did the same thing for both, but to check out what I did that didn't make the second map, just scroll north on the first.

On Wednesday, I got up, packed up my things from the Hot Springs resort where I was staying, and made my way on along the coast of the Firth of Thames. I stopped in Thames for a cup of coffee and some supplies, and then pushed on up the coast. If Tuesday was pretty, Wednesday only got better. The road hugged the coast, with the surf hitting rocky beaches beside or below it. I was worried that Route 25 would be heavy with traffic, as my guidebook warned it might, but it wasn't bad at all. I got to the town of Coromandel, for which the peninsula was named, and found my lodge for the night. I'm going to try the map thing again, though apparently Google let me down last time. If this doesn't work, I'm going to have to figure somethign else out. (It works in preview while I'm writing it; if it doesn't work later, sorry, I guess.)

On Thursday I headed further North up the coast. The Touristy loop goes East from Coromandel, but I went up to Colville, and then on up to Port Jackson, at the Northern tip of the peninsula. The second half of the ride, above Colville, was gravel roads. That was great fun for most of the day, but the long hill at the end nearly did me in, and I was robbed of my fun during the descent down to the Department of Conservation campsites at the point because the road was so washboarded that I couldn't safely go fast at all. Not only that, but it was such a harsh ride that I rattled three bolts off of my bike, setting my rear rack and then front left rack partially connected and swinging. Luckily (by design, most likely) the bolts to the water bottle cages are the same size, so I just cannibalized them and had to stow my water bottles elsewhere until I got back to Coromandel and its hardware store. I stayed the night up at Port Jackson, which had a lovely sand beach facing the Pacific, with only the Great Barrier Island above it. I wish I had brought more food; if I had had enough for an extra day with me, I would have stayed there and lounged around. The route is here (again, if it works).

As it was, the next day I reversed track and headed back to Coromandel. The ride was just as wonderful the other direction, though climbing the big hill was a poor way to start the day. (Are you noticing the trend that I hate big hills? That's not quite true; I hate steep, big hills, but it's a recurring theme on my bike...) Because it's only 65 km or so from Coromandel to Port Jackson, I was back in Coromandel by the early afternoon, but chose to take it easy that day because my knee was a little cranky. (I messed with my pedal cleat position, if you care, and things seem better today.) No map of this day, because it's just Thursday's reversed.

Today, I started by heading east from Coromandel. This had the advantage of being paved, but the disadvantage of starting with 3.5 km of steep hill. I made it, but it was a rude way to get started. I've currently made it down to Whitianga, but am going to push on further. I'll let you know later just how far I make it. So far, if the West coast of the peninsula was all wind-swept rocky beaches, the East seems to be sunny, sandy ones. Both beautiful, just in different ways. I guess I can see why this is the touristy portion, though.

The first real day.

So today I left Auckland and got down to the business of bicycle touring. I went out for my last breakfast for a while as a dude who doesn't cook for himself (I got french toast, and they layered the bananas and bacon in the stack with the toast. Fine work, Auckland!) and then packed up my personal effects and hopped the commuter train down to Papakura so as to not have to deal with the city traffic on a fully-loaded bike. (All told, my rig weighs somewhere in the 70-80 pound range. I haven't weighed it; I'm not sure I want to.) After a quick stop at a supermarket for some food, I clipped into my pedals and went.

I biked from Papakura up to Clevedon, and then around the coast down to Miranda Hot Springs, all told a distance of 73 km according to Google. I had planned to push on to Thames, but my backside and the option of a place to stay that included hot springs access made me reconsider. If I did things right, you should be able to see the route here.

The ride was along what's called the seabird coast, and for good reason. The first third to half was through rolling country that looked like they had crossbred the Finger Lakes Region and Colorado, say, but with plant life from Hawaii. (This is a terribly flawed analogy, but we're limited to my frame of reference, I'm afraid.) After a hard climb, I descended to the coast, which gave me a view accross the bay to the Coromandel peninsula, where I'm headed next. There were indeed a lot of seabirds, and the ride was terribly beautiful the whole way. It didn't hurt that it was a lovely day today, some clouds but mostly sunny. I did learn, however, that hard climbs on a fully-loaded bike are not my idea of fun.

I'd love to go on more, but I'm afraid my time on this machine is about to run out, so I'll go soak my bones in the hot pool instead. Until next time.

Tubes In the Sky

Why is it that all airports feel identical? I guess there's no real incentive to make them truly unique, given how the present form fills the logistical needs well enough and their liminal nature makes sure that only workers spend much time in them. Still, they seem to all be the same sort of anodyne atmosphere that's calm without being peaceful.

I took the bus down to Logan airport the morning of the 20th. When I said in the previous post that my bike was boxed, that was a lie. I had a box from the local bike store that a bike frame had come in, but it was too small for a real one with handlebars and wheels and a seat. According to Qantas's website, I could get a bike box with no trouble at the airport, so I took that at face value.

Silly me. I was flying American for the first leg, because they're the Qantas affiliate, and when I got there I was informed by the baggage counter lady that they no longer had bike boxes "because of the economy", and she suggested I take a taxi to one of the nearby sporting goods/bike stores and spend the $200-300 it would take to get a plastic bike shipping box. The problems with this plan were a) my budget could take that hit, but not gracefully, and b) I don't see how I would take such a thing with me upon arrival. Instead, I talked to a check-in woman, who suggested I try another airline. I lugged all of my stuff to the next terminal over, and after a panicked 45 minutes in line at United, easily got the box I needed. I reversed my steps, now carrying a flat but huge box in addition to the bike and large duffel, taped the box together and put the bike in it.

All told, I spent about 20 hours in the air, with an additional 6 or 7 hours in airports. The Boston-LA flight was on a plane that wasn't really big enough, but the LA-Auckland leg was on a massive 747 that was way more comfortable. (Can we make it a law that all big planes should be silver, not white? They look way cooler that way.) Thanks to the magic of the International Date Line, my February 21 was only about 10 hours long, and spent entirely at 35,000 feet. Sorry December 21, but you've lost your crown this year. I've now passed through customs and biosecurity(!), where it turns out they won't x-ray your bike if it doesn't fit through their machine. I'm not smuggling anything, but maybe I should have been... I'm now at the hostel in Auckland where I'm staying tonight before setting off tomorrow, trying to gauge just how jet-lagged I may or may not be. Time to head out for lunch and the supplies I couldn't take on the plane.

Off We Go

All my panniers are packed, my bike is boxed, and I'm set to go. Tomorrow morning I catch the Dartmouth Coach to Logan, from whence I fly to Los Angeles and then to Auckland. I leave Boston at 5:00 tomorrow night, and, thanks to the international date line, arrive in New Zealand at 9:30 Monday morning. Total travel time: I'd rather not do the math.

Upon disembarking in Auckland, I'm spending a day in that fair city at its finest hostel, and then setting out for points East. The plan is to head down the Eastern coast of the North Island via the East Cape, which is supposed to be gorgeous. Upon arrival in Wellington, the Southernmost city on the North Island, I'll meet up with my brother Alex, and we will spend some time touring the more rural and mountainous South Island.

I'll have a camera to document my travels, though I'll cop to being a man given to not taking as many photos as he really should, and I'll update things here as often as I'm able. I'll guess that'll be roughly weekly, but time will tell. All told, I'll be in New Zealand until May 3rd, which should allow me plenty of time to get my fill of its charms. I hope to avoid sheep attack and highwaymen, but only time will tell!