Day 3: Hari Hari to Franz Josef Glacier. Mellow ride and a glacier

Day three started with two breakfasts. One at the restaurant of eggs, toast, hash browns, and "bacon" or really just slightly more cured ham. Bacon as we I now it is called streaky bacon. Isn't that a cute name. we followed that with Birchers yogurt again.  
We probably didn't need that many calories, since we had only 62 km to go today,but it was cool and rainy during breakfast, so we figured we should fuel up.
We made it all of 1 km before our first stop to see some aviation history; more of the guy who made the first transTasman flight.

 As we pulled out onto the road after our brief stop,  the rain came.  It was a soft but steady rain for about an hour, but we had rain gear and I was prepared for cold rain, and this wasnt cold, so I was just fine.  Soon enough, the skies cleared 

and by lunch at Whataroa, we were warming and drying our toes and clothes in the sunshine.

The scenery today was lovely. Lots of lush forest, a couple of big lakes, 

an occasional ocean view, and many cows and small farms interspersed along the way.

With only 62 km to travel today, we were able to check into the Chateau Franz backpacker at 2:30. Its funky decor was just to my liking, as was the fact that we had a suite with two double beds in their own bedrooms and a shared living room, kitchen, and bathroom.

Our suite mate turned out to be from a nice woman from Boulder, Colorado who had just come from a stint in Antarctica.

Drew figured we would just hang out and chill for the afternoon, but he didn't realize his geologist wife had never been to see a glacier.  Sure, I had seen them while hiking in Glacier National Park, but I had never been up close.  Here we were a 5km drive and a 1.5 hour hike away From the Franz Josef, and he wanted to sit in the hot tub with a beer? Nonsense. Take those panniers off the bike and put on your walking shoes, Drew.  we are going to see a glacier!

I have to say, it was very beautiful.  The hike through the rain forest and the waterfalls coming in from both sides of the valley from hanging valleys was almost as cool as getting up 100 m from the blue ice face.  I took a hundred pictures.

It was after 5 by the time we started back. Drew was ready for a beer.  But a couple more pictures to show the fabulous meltwater stream.

A couple of those and we were off to the hot tub.   The hot tub looked a little on the scary side. Lord only knows how many unclean backpackers had been in there, but we were cold, tired, and sore, so we plunged in anyway.  Stay tuned for news of scary rashes.
Dinner of pasta and pesto in the suite chatting with our suite mate ended the day.

 I have neglected to tell about various prices for things.  We are thinking now in New Zealand dollars which, is about $0.82 USD to $1 NZD. Our tent spot at the Drifting Sands Backpacker hostel on night 1 in the beach town of Hokitika was $30 plus $8 for Internet. On night 2, the very small room with no kitchen and a bathroom that we would have had to to share with 20 other cheapskates if the hostel had been full was $50 but the internet was free. Day 3's lodging at the funky backpacker semi-private place was $65. Pretty cheap accommodations after you do the conversion to USD.  Hotels we are told are more like $120.  
Food is a little bit more expensive.  Full dinner at a middle of the road restaurant is in the $25-$30 range. Coffee and baked goods run about $4 each. But those are essentials, so who is counting.  Beer, I don't even know, because you can't put a price on beer.  I think a six pack of good beer in the supermarket is $16 or about the same as in Utah in USD because of the sin tax. 

Day 2: Hokitika to Hari Hari. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

Our first night on the road was spent at the lovely and comfortable Drifting Sands backpacker, i.e. hostel. Our sleeping pads, however, we're not lovely and comfortable.  In my quest to carry only the lightest load, I opted to not bring my nice self-inflating sleeping pad and instead bought special for this trip the slimmest excuse for a sleeping pad available at Recreation Outlet, a $6 foam pad that is exactly 1/2 thick.  Drew brought a foam pad he received free with some purchase years ago, which was not much thicker than mine. Needless to say, we didn't have the best nights sleep and were both up at 6:30. That's how you got such an informative blog post yesterday. But between the blogging, eating Birchers yogurt (a wonderful mush of Greek yogurt, fruit, and muesli that we mixed up the night before), sipping long whites (like a latte but no foam) and eating the fabulous cheese scones, a cinnamon roll made with scone batter, and another of their meat pies,

Stopping at the iSite to make reservations for the next two nights stay, and snapping photos at the beach,

Stopping to stock up on groceries at the last good store until Queenstown,

It was 12:30 before we got rolling.  No matter, at least we missed the light rain shower.  


We learned a valuable lesson about the strength of the sun yesterday.  Check out the funky sunburn on my wrists and forehead.

The business
Riding on Day 2 was more casual. The road was flatter, the winds were calmer, and the traffic, while not friendly, was less frightening. The title of this post comes from the scenery.  It changed from open farmland to lush rain forest and back to a mix of wet farmland fighting off the rainforest.

We stopped to rest and eat a snack at the old gold mining town of Ross.

And at the Bushmans center for a Pepsi.

Before reaching our destination of Hari Hari 5 hours after starting.  Ride time 3:21, 73.3 km, average speed 22 km/hr. our average speed today was actually higher than yesterday's ride down from high elevation. Cool. We are studs.
Our lodging, the Hari Hari Moter Inn, was a pub, which is a restaurant and bar attached to a hotel.  While they offered regular rooms with an on suite bath, we opted for the cheaper "backpacker" option with a shared bathroom. The room was a little cozy

And the amenities were a bit run down.

 But the shower was hot and the beer was cold.

So we enjoyed our dinner of a hamburger and Huge Bowl of fries for Drew and a whitebait Sammy for me. Whitebait is the specialty in this region. It is a little spelt-like fish. They fried it up in egg and put it between two slices of bread. I wasn't overly impressed, and had a side of yummy roasted veggies to give my body some nutrition.

We had a look see around the town, er, street.

And learned a little aviation history (since the geology-heavy portion of the trip is coming up) about a famous transTasman flight gone bad in 1931.

Before retiring to our room at 8 pm to read and blog. 5minutes on the soft beds and the next thing we knew the sun was coming up! Guess we needed that sleep.
Today we press on to Franz Joseph Glacier: 62 km.

New Zealand bike tour - days 0 and 1: The adventure begins.

 We made it and we are on our way around Enzed, or as we would say "en zee", or just NZ.
DAY 0
getting there
The flights were uneventful, and down right pleasant if you ask me.  Air New Zealand runs a good show.  we left our house around 2m on Sunday, and arrived NZ at about 10 am on Tuesday because of the various time changes and date line.  However, the body-clock time is only 4 hours earlier in NZ than Utah, so the jet lag isn,t too bad.

 getting the bikes, Christchurch, and a real home stay!
We picked  up the bikes and rode around Christchurch for a bit, picking up important items like water bottles and bug spray. Chch has and excellent bike trails, complete with sensors like we have for cars at stop lights in the US and stop lights with little bikes on them. But the times we had to ride on the streets were harrowing.  It is left hand traffic here - so difficult to get used to.
We had to stop often and get our bearings. One place we stopped was this nifty "pop up mall". they love their coffee here.

That was just after a bit of geo-voyeurism surveying the damage from so many recent earthquakes.

One site we did not expect to see was an Occupy protest, but here it was in downtown Christchurch.

My cousin hooked up us with the contact of an old friend of his from North Dakota who now lives with his family in Christchurch. Justin and his wife Debbie took us into their home and fed and entertained us like they were running a top notch B&B!! They said it is the Kiwi way, but to us, it was an extraordinary act if kindness and generosity.  The food was awesome and getting to know them and their three fun kids was infinitely better than pedaling around Chch looking for a reasonably priced hotel. It was so nice!

Day 1: to the top and back down.

The next morning we pedaled early to the train station.

To catch the TranzAlpine train up to Arthur's Pass at the top of the Southern Alps, the mnt range that runs the length of the South Island.  Yes, I know this a self-supported bike tour. We were supporting our need to ease into things. The train traveled across the Canterbury Plains to catch our first good view of the Southern Alps.

 The scenery on the train ride was awesome!  We went through 15 tunnels. The train has a couple of observation decks. We would not find these decks in America; all it would take is one little kid sticking his hand out at the wrong time as we went into a tunnel and the Transzalpine would be out of business.  They were not kidding when they said keep your hands and head inside the train.  And everyone did. (Every time I travel my conviction that many Americans are lazy, self-absorbed, and much too eager to blame someone else for their problems or their stupidity is reinforced. Sad but true.)
But the fun ride and beautiful scenery took me back to the present.

Let the pedaling begin!
But we came here to bike tour, and it was time to start.

we pedaled a few hundred meters to a cafe for lunch first. :-)
Keas are these big parrots that apparently will rip a backpack into shreads if left unattended.

Of course, we did not leave our meat pie unattended.

 Why not start at the top of the mountain!? At 924 meters (about 3000 feet for us Americans) Arthur's pass is not as high as our mountains back in Utah, but high enough to get great scenery and steep grades.

Those signs behind Drew say 16%! And percent isn't different than in America.

The ride down to the west from Arthur's Pass was a rush! I was worried my cantilever breaks were not going to be able to stop me and my 60 pound bike. There was this one really cool part of the road where we went. Under a stream.

The river valley was really impressive, from a sedimentologists point of view.  That puppy can carry some load.

Pedaling is overrated.
The road eventually leveled out to rolling hills, which we were not prepared for.  In planning, we thought we could make it easily the 97 km (55mi)  to our destination seaside town of Hokitika, being that it was all downhill and we are Cyclists. By the time we stopped for a coke at Jackson's at 31 km, we were already tired!  Time to work together against the headwind.  We got into a pattern of trading turns at the front and slowly ticked of the miles.  We averaged about 19 km/hr on the flats, so that's not too bad for our first day on loaded bikes.  Visions of hamburgers and local beer at a seaside restaurant kept us going.

We did stop a few times, once to fix a flat

And once to explore this awesome cave walk.

 It was sooooo cool, but we were really really tired by this time and so we pushed on. Some other cyclists has tipped us off to a slight shortcut, but what we really liked about it was the lack of traffic on smooth road through beautiful farming county.

Finally, our tired legs and sore bottoms made it to our destination.  Rolling into Hokitika, the first place that was on my list as potential lodging said no vacancy. Uh oh.  The second place was too expensive for what you got, but the third place was just right.  There was one tent spot left at the Dirifting Sands hostel. We were home for the night.

 Soft grass, the ocean a few hundred feet away, hot clean shower, and super friendly German travelers to rehash the day with.
We walked into town (tired of that saddle!) for a huge guilt free fish and chips for me and pasta for Drew.  Ride time on Day 1 was 4 hrs 25 minutes. Travel time more like 6 hr. That made for a few kinked necks and sore butts, but overall we are in good shape so far. Nice work on Day 1!

On our way

And so we being our big adventure. As I write, we sit in the lounge at LAX watching some big game of American football but dreaming of the southern hemisphere, smooth highways, glorious glaciers, and bicycles. For the next two weeks we will be Touring around New Zealand's South Island, self-supported, without any reservations or significant plans.  We have never done this kind of thing before, and let me tell you, I am excited. Hopefully we will be able to post awesome pictures on this blog as we go. Otherwise, allocating 1/15th of our self-imposed gear weight limit to the iPad will not have been a good choice.

Wish us luck.
Lucy

Test post using Blogsy

 We are trying out a new app for blogging called Blogsy. 

 

 This is an excuse to post pictures of my cute husband and cats.