Category: New Zealand
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Napier to Wellington
“They’s all meat sheep now,” says Will. He’s a pot bellied bloke with a stubbly face, and is wearing a t-shirt with a screaming, flaming, ghastly ghost skull on it. Spooky! We’re sitting at the Wimbledon Tavern, an old little…
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Wairoa to Napier
“You looking at the bird?” There’s a little black bird hopping around the grass. “He’s called B-fah. You see? B for bird!” T starts cracking up at his own joke. He’s an older Maori guy, thin and wiry, fluorescent camo…
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Rotorua to Gisborne
It’s raining in Rotorua. Which is just fine, because we’re happy and dry in a house. “You guys could probably jump on a trip today,” says our friend Dicky. The raft trips are quick, only 30 minutes or something down…
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Colville to Rotorua
I’m way behind on this as usual, but we’re taking a few days off before our last couple weeks of riding, so I’m going to try to get caught up. Back in December: From Colville at the top of the…
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Auckland to Coromandal
The road is one of those impossibly steep ones, the kind where you’d shift a car into first gear to try to creep down, but it’s still too steep so the by the time you’re at the bottom the brake…
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To Christchurch
“Now, we enter the Plains of Despair!” I say. We’ve left the mountains and are have to cross about a hundred miles of very flat farm country before Christchurch. “I really wish you would stop calling it the Plains of…
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Dunedin to Mt. Cook
We ride into Dunedin on a sunny afternoon, then a cold rain moves in. We pay to camp at a hostel, which is a nice option sometimes— sleep in the yard instead of in a smelly, snore filled dorm, hang…
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Southland
Milford, Doubtful Sound and Fiordland were out— we came to a pretty easy consensus on that. The last couple weeks in high and dry Otago had been so nice. No sandflies, fewer camper vans, almost no tour buses. And going…
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Otago
We’re having some beers with a group of Kiwi guys and their Australian friend at the campground in Wanaka. “Well, I’m sorry to tell you this,” says one of the guys. People are never sorry when they say that. “But,…
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West Coast
The cards fly past Colleen’s head, she ducks. “Ooh, sorry bru. Been trying that one seven years, still can’t get her right,” says our new friend. He’s smelly, dreads, shoeless but wearing a shirt that has a picture of a…
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