Day 7: Haast to Makarora. Waterfalls, rainy day, better tendons, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Today promised to be a hard day on the bike.  Our goal was the tiny town of Makarora, 78 km SE of Haast, but up in the mountains.  After our usual breakfast of Bircher's yogurt at the backpacker, we went for our customary Espresso and said goodbye to another biker we had been crossing paths with.  The first 10 km were beautiful. Clouds threatened,

 but we believed the nasty weather was north of us. We were riding up the Haast River valley, which was absolutely gorgeous.  

 

The geologic hazards were everywhere! There were three places the road had been recently taken out by landslides, warning signs for rock fall everywhere, evidence of recent debris flows, and I can only imagine what the flooding could be like.  

 

 

 The rains last night made the waterfalls extra spectacular.

 

 

We must have seen 30 waterfalls today.

 

 

 

Speaking of rain, it did. Not a pouring rain, but steady, for 3 hours.  

 

At first, I didn't care. My tendon was feeling much better, I was riding with my honey on Valentines Day in a beautiful country. What's a little rain?  

 

But when we couldnt even stop for lunch because the sand flies were biting Drew too bad, my gloves soaked through, and the road turned upward, I started to get a little cranky. I needed a sign to cheer me up. Here it was.

 

We had to tackle Haast Pass.  At only 564 meters, it wasn't any bigger or necessarily steeper than climbs in Utah, but with loaded touring bikes and wet rain, it wasn't fun either.  But we made it!

We are in Hobbit country. This is where the Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed.  Drew was certain he could hear them in the shire.

Over the pass, the vegetation changed quite a bit.  It was still more lush than our mountains back home, but the ferns tapered off, and there were some open areas suitable for grazing. This was the first sheep we had seen in a couple of days.  

The last 18 km to ride to our stop for the night seemed extra long, which made our ultra cute and cozy A-frame backpacker cabin for $75 (no bathroom or kitchen - that would cost us $125) the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

78 km today in 3:21 ride time (-about 4.5 hrs total time) is a respectable day. We earned our real dinner consisting of fish and vegetables for me and chicken schnitzel and fries for Drew, plus we were just in time for happy hour!

 So we had a jolly time chatting it up with 4 Kiwis who were motor biking around the island.  They had ridden in one day what it took us 5.5 days to ride!  Fine chaps they were. Now if I could only remember the jokes they told us.

 

Day 6: Lake Paringa to Haast township

 We had some good sleep in peaceful Lake Paringa lodge and woke to a gorgeous morning.

After a breakfast of pb&j on squished bread, salami and cheese, and instant coffee, followed by 800 mg of ibuprofen and a quick icing session on the tendons, we were off.

The weather was absolutely perfect today.  This region gets 6 to 8 meters (that's like 14 to 20 feet) of rain per year, so the fact that we had partly cloudy skies and blissfully moderate temperatures was a special bonus.

The ride today was pretty flat. For me, sitting in behind Diesel Drew with a light load, it was a cakewalk.  We passed many small beautiful streams, a nice lake, about half way, after a substantial climb, we came to popular Knight's Point.  

From there it was a pretty easy cruise into Haast, right before which we stopped to get our last up-close encounter with the Tasman Sea.  Somehow, I had missed the other opportunities to touch the water, so I figured I better do it here.  It was cold and we saw a dolphin!

The Haast river was pretty impressive. A huge braided stream.  Seeing this at flood stage would be awesome.

Haast is a place of maybe 300 people or so.

  There are a few hotels, but we stayed a the Wilderness Backpacker, a clean, spacious hostel run by a character named Ollie for $65.

$65 worth of beer, groceries and ibuprofen at the store next door and real laundry done in a machine and we were set for the night.
After dinner of boiled pasta from a bag we sat in the atrium and played Jenga as we listened to the rain. Nice.

Day 5 Fox Glacier to Lake Paringa: limping along.

 day 5 started out very bad. When I woke, I made it about 20 steps before the pain in my right Achilles flared its mean head.  As we were packing, Drew kept eyeing me, trying to figure out if we could start the day or if we should just call it off and chill in Fox for a day.  I kept a brave face, but honestly, i was gave myself a 50% chance of even starting.  Something told me the wise thing to do would be to hang out and play games all day - no walking or cycling allowed. Tendonitis treatment includes ice and stretching, but the only way to actually heal is non-use.  But i really wanted to keep us moving, so I suited up for the road. The weather was almost drizzle-y, and I had a very hard time getting going, even after a large long white coffee with the nice couple from Iowa and a chap from the Isle of Man, all bike touring as well.

Drew was my mule today. He carried everything heavy.  All I had to carry was my clothes, the tent, and my sleeping bag. He had all the food, bike gear, guidebooks, and misc junk.  Easily a shift of 10 pounds off me, in an effort to just get me to the next overnight.  Even so, as we headed out of town, with a fresh tube of muscle menthol cream and 800 mg of ibuprofen, I was pedaling at a snail's pace.
The scenery was mostly forest, but once in a while we would pop out to the ocean, and that has cool. Here is Bruce Bay.

Luckily for us, the weather actually improved throughout the day, and by pedaling only the very minimal amount with big Drew blocking the wind 100% of the way, by 25 km I was feeling ok to keep going.  At one point, I even imagined we could make it all the way to Haast, following our original plan.  However, by about 50 km, the sharp pain was back, so we pulled into the Salmon farm and cafe to find some ice and eat the freshest salmon I have ever had.  I lovely couple from Iowa that we met in Fox had suggested a salmon, red onion, and cream cheese panini, so I was eager to try it.

As we waited for our food and watched the salmon swim below the deck,

, Drew's sunglasses went overboard!

Oh no! You  can't cycle without sunglasses.  The staff was so helpful in getting them back.

Our lunch came and the panini was the bomb. Couple the yummy food with a flat white and ice on the tendon and I was good to go.  Back out on the road, though, another 60 km was not feasible, so we opted for Lake Paringa Lodge, a small, ultra quiet fishing lodge on the shore of tranquil Lake Paringa run by a nice gentleman named Ken.

With many hours to kill, we rented kayaks.

Apparently, pulling me all the way from Fox to Paringa carrying a good part of the load was too much for Drew, so he opted to turn back after 20 minutes, but I continued on, unencumbered by my bad foot all the way around the big lake.  I was out for a good 2.5 hours, checking out the clear but  brown water.  I am guessing that because the lake is surrounded by lush, thick, semi-tropical forest and it rains here something like 6 meters a year, the lake water is full of tannins, which makes it brown.

Whatever the case, I was fascinated by areas where fresh water entered the lake.  The rivers here are super clear.  I found one rather large inlet and was able to paddle up it quite a ways, dodging downed trees and small rapids.

Strangely, there were not many signs of life.  Few water birds, not many fish jumping, not that many aquatic plants, and the weird brown clear water all gave me an erie feeling.  The vegetation on the banks was plenty lush, though, and I could hear lots of birds.

There was no restaurant at this place, so we subsisted on our leftover salami, cheese, pb&j, and a chocolate muffin we had bought at the salmon farm.  The community kitchen had two jars of Vegemite in the fridge, so of course I had to try it.  Now, I have a very easy to please palate, especially after biking, but Vegemite is not for the masses.  It is really just salty yeast.  Who ever thought that would be good to eat? It was gross, and it takes a lot for me to call food gross.

Another first today was to see a dead New Zealand possum on the side of the road.  I didn't get a picture for you though. Possums here are a big problem. NZ has no native land mammals except a few bats.  Somewhere along the line, possums were introduced.  Now they are a major pest. So major, in fact, the government aerial drops poison to kill them.  It is a big debate weather or not this is a good idea.

The accommodations were very spacious, clean and very comfortable.  If we had to be waylaid somewhere, this was a relaxing place to be.

With ibuprofen, an ice pack from the owner, and more stretching, I was hoping tomorrow would be a better day on the bike.

Day 4: Franz Josef to Fox. Short ride, not easy, walk on a glacier, and a kink in the plan.

I have scheduled this post to publish the day after I wrote it, since I just published yesterdaay's post.
Day 4
 First thing: great coffee at the hip coffee shop.  Then we made our eggs that we bought last night poached,since we had no oil. put enough cheese on eggs and they taste good even without salt or pepper! A big helping of Birchers yogurt and we would have been good to ride 60K, but  Today we only had to ride 23 km over three decent sized hills.  

The weather was great. Warm and very humid, and no rain. Yay.  We passed by this recent landslide, which I thought was pretty cool.

The only problem with the ride today was my Achilles tendons.  On day 0, when we first got the bikes, I had the feeling  that my seat was up a bit too high, but I was too lazy to adjust it.  Sure enough, by the middle of the ride on day 1, my left Achilles was feeling a little sore.  I lowered my seat for day 2, but by the end of day 2, both heels were hurting.  I lowered my seat agin on day 3, but it still got worse.  during today's ride, I felt serious pain, despite being on a regimen of ibuprofen and riding less these last couple of days.  I figured an afternoon off the bike would help, but today was our half day glacier tour, where we got to go on the ice! No way was I missing that.  Despite being a seriously cool experience, it was overshadowed by a dull pain in both tendons and occasional sharp pain in my right tendon. To the point of limping and then hobbling and then even a few tears.  I am very worried about the next few days.

But that's my ache and pain.  What I really want to post about is the amazing glacier stuff we saw today.
But first, we checked into our backpacker for the night, the Ivory Towers for $73.

And then a real meal. It took a long time to get the food, but we had a nice lunch of steak sandwich and chicken burger, plus beer, since I was feeling low and we were on vacation.

Then we were off to the glacier. I am not going to write too many facts, because 1. I can't remember them and 2 you can wikipedia that, but I did find it remarkable that the top of the Fox glacier receives 11m of precipitation, which translates to 40 to 50 m of snow each year.  This huge amount is why there is a glacier in a lush forest only 20 km from the ocean.  

Our guide, Bia, told us that This glacier moves about 1 m a day, which we witnessed as numerous rockfalls around us as we walked on the glacier.

So here are a few more cool pictures from the glacier.  Despite my painful tendons and worry about tomorrow, I still had a great time.

After the excursion, we needed some beers and to put some ice on the tendon to lift my spirits.

It was a pretty evening and we could see more of the mountains than before because the clouds were lifting.

After that, it was cup-o-noodles and peanut butter on toast for dinner at the backpacker.

Tendons permitting, we will be traveling south tomorrow, which involves some camping and most likely fewer Internet hotspots.