Category: #TourAotearoa
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To Bluff! A chapter finished…
Starting on January 15, 57 days ago, we took a bus from Auckland to Kaitaia and cycled to Ahipara, where we would start this adventure. For these 2,700km (1,680 miles) climbing about 30,000 meters (97,000 feet), we’ve been aiming ourselves to Bluff. Along the way, we’ve seen many sides of NZ, much of it that…
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Mossburn to Invercargill: almost to the bottom!
We are on the last push to the end. We did our second consecutive day of over 100 km, which we had never done before. Some of it is that we are generally going downhill from Mossburn to Bluff (Invercargill is about 20 miles from Bluff), and also that we are so close that we…
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Queenstown, and beyond
We stayed 3 nights in Queenstown, meeting up with our friend Jay from Boulder, getting some off-bike time and generally begin tourists. Queenstown is the center of the outdoor universe of NZ, and its most touristic, busy and expensive city to visit. It’s set in an almost otherworldly beautiful location, on the edge of a…
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Wanaka to Queenstown: more amazing views
Yesterday, we had perfect weather for our ride into Wanaka, which meant sunny skies, warm temperatures and clear. Today, as we rode into Queenstown from Wanaka, perfect weather was overcast, cool temperatures and a nice tailwind! The route to Queenstown goes over the Crown Range summit, the highest point on the TA at 3,530 feet…
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A+ kind of day
When we woke up in Makaroa, it was 38 degrees outside (3C) but we were warm in the cabin that Chris had thoughtfully booked! The people who were camping all reported being cold, which was not surprising since most people biking are prepared for summer type temperatures. We packed up and left, the road shaded…
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Haast Pass: Beautiful but hard
While we were having a beer in Haast, we met up with a guy we met from Auckland who is doing the actual TA ride. We’ve met increasing numbers of them as we get closer to the bottom of South Island, as they left the top of North Island about a month after us. People…
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Haast, finally….and in the sun!
We woke this morning to clear skies and thousands of sand flies visible just outside the tent. It was nice to know that they were outside! We had coffee and breakfast, said goodbye to Smokey who was on his way to fish, and then walked down to the dock. The tent was drying over a…
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Views of clouds and rain
Others have told us that the views are fabulous heading south from Fox Glacier, and we had high hopes. The weather forecast yesterday predicted sunny and clear weather all day today, but we woke to clouds covering the skies, and headed out with hopes for clearing weather during the day. The earliest part of the…
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Seeing Fox Glacier!
The route from the town of Franz Josef to Fox Glacier is only about 15 miles, with 3 big hills in between. We lazed around in the morning, and then went to the West Coast Wildlife Center, where rare and endangered Kiwis are hatched as part of a multi-pronged recovery program effort that seems to…
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Hokitika to Franz Josef
Everyone said we would enjoy Hokitika and we did…it’s a low key seaside town with some nice restaurants and bars, and the motel we stayed in was spotless, spacious and modern. “Hoki” even has a bike shop. We had dinner one night from items bought at the supermarket, and then had dinner the second night…