There are many nostalgic moments in a parents life that come from teaching your kids skills. For example, when your baby gives you it's first smile, when you hear your baby utter its first word, or as you let go of the seat on a bike and see your baby ride of into the distance. These moments are cherished, and the assumption is that your baby has been taught a skill that they'll never forget. This story is about a boy who forgot, and when someone forgets that advice that a parent offers i.e. "bikes and railway lines don't mix", life has a funny albeit harsh way of reminding you. The scars I now carry will be used as a graphic deterrent warning my future generations about how not to be a biking klutz.
Thursday 4th February 2010
Alice:
We didn’t have to leave the Hokitika campsite until 11am and we only had about 45km to go to Greymouth so we packed up quite slowly and got on our way. Gareth had mentioned “taking it easy” which I was pleased about but it turned out that our personal versions of “taking it easy” differ slightly. Mine would mean that we pedalled at a leisurely rate of about 20km an hour but it transpires that Gareth understands it to mean maintaining a pace of 28km per hour for the first 25km. We eventually stopped for our first muesli break and had a few words about that!
After recovering we set off again but only made it to about 10km away from Greymouth. We came down a slight hill and noticed a bridge in front of us that the road curved into. On our left was a rail track that went straight into the bridge merging with the road. We were free wheeling towards it at about 20km p/h and Gareth was trying to work out what was going on while I had just noticed a large, yellow sign depicting a stick man getting his bicycle wheel caught in a railway track and toppling off and was just thinking we’d better stop when suddenly we hit the floor pretty hard and skidded into the metal barrier at the side of the road.
The first part of my body to hit the ground was my left knee and luckily it is the knee I wear my support bandage on so that saved my skin getting chewed up but Gareth went down hard on the whole left side of his body and got pretty deep cuts on his elbow and grazes everywhere else. I must have come off the bike and rolled over because I got grazes all over my stomach and right hip. I also took a chunk of skin out of my hand which, Gareth was quick to point out, wouldn’t have happened had I been wearing the cycling gloves I refuse to wear because of tan lines. That’s the price you pay for being vain.
There was a cyclist behind us who told us that we’d got the tandem over the lines but then straightened up to go over the bridge and the trailer wheel had got caught causing us to fall off. He helped us get the bike away from the road and fixed the front mud guard that has come off and some other people stopped in a car and started handing us bandages from their first aid kit. Gareth’s elbow was bleeding pretty heavily and he was dabbing blood everywhere so the woman (Bev) was insisting he go to A&E. We hadn’t really registered how debilitated we were at that point and Gareth kept telling her that it was ok we’d cycle to A&E because we needed to bring the bike with us but then he went all white and had to sit down where upon she flagged down a passing truck and me and the bike got in with Kevin the truck driver and Gareth got in with Max and Bev.
It wasn’t until then that the adrenaline wore off and I started to feel the pain in my knee and it started to sieze up. We arrived at A&E and Max and Kevin kindly unloaded the bike and parked it up for us while we went to get registered. It didn’t take long for a nurse to come and assess what needed doing for us then 10 minutes later we were in beds next to each other being cleaned up by Heather the nurse who was very nice. Gareth got six glue stitches in his elbow and we both got special patches on our grazes that stuck on for 10 days. A doctor called Peter turned up and assessed Gareth’s cuts and wobbled my knee around before discharging us and we hobbled off to a near by campsite where we decided to stay in a cabin for the night as we couldn’t put the tent up. If you don't like the sight of blood i'd not look at these next images.
Gareth filling out his forms
Gravel and skin don't work well together!
G getting patched up
My tarmac burns
Fat knee
All in all we were feeling pretty bashed up and sorry for ourselves and were wondering what we’d do now seen as I couldn’t even bend my knee let alone pedal a bike! We already had a bus booked the next day to take us to Nelson so we decided to catch that as planned and decide what we’d do then.
5th Feb
On this aching morning we hobbled down to the I-site to catch the bus. While dismantling the bike to fit on the bus, a women told us that she had just been talking about us to a friend, and that we had made it into the local paper, which was quite surreal. We would have tried to buy the paper but our bus turned up. The driver wasn’t as flexible as others have been and refused to drop us off near the campsite we wanted to go to in Tahunanui beach (which he was going past anyway!) so we had to disembark in a place called Richmond where the I-site was just across the road from a campsite. We reassembled the bike at the side of the road and booked into a cabin again still not knowing what to do, we settled in for the night.
Waiting for the bus in Greymouth
The bus stopped to let us look at some blow holes, I couldn't walk round in time so Gareth took these pictures to show me what i'd missed
Pancake rocks
He got so carried away taking pictures he was late for the bus and had to run...
Back on the bus
6th Feb
Today we decided to go into town and inquire in a few bike shops whether they would want to buy the tandem and trailer off us. We’d decided that we didn’t have enough time or money to wait for my knee to heal so we could finish cycling we’d wanted to do. We had wanted to cycle up into the Abel Tasman National Park which everyone had told us was beautiful and had planned to do some Kayaking for my birthday but the car hire companies were taking the piss and if we’d caught a bus we’d have just been dropped off in the middle of no where with me not being able to walk anywhere and not being able to Kayak either because of Gareth’s elbow! So we decided to cut our losses to move on to Asia.
What we didn’t know however was that it was Waitangi day, a national holiday in NZ and all the bike shops were closed. So we went to the local Cash and trade and asked there, they said to bring the tandem in. We were a bit dubious, as we didn’t think they’d give us a good deal but we went back to the site and cleaned it up anyway then pushed it back into town.
Cleaning the bike
Bye bye bike
The guy in the cash and trade looked it over and asked us what we’d want for it. We said we wanted $600 thinking that if we aimed high we’d eventually get $500 out of him and be happy with that. He umm’d and ahh’d a bit and looked in his computer then eventually said, “OK I can do you $700”. We were a bit taken a back but quickly agreed and got out of there as fast as we could puzzling our little minds about the way New Zealanders do business.
As we no longer had anything to put our luggage in our first purchase with our wad of cash was a wheely suitcase and the second was 2 pints of beer! We bought a celebratory dinner and went back to the campsite now bikeless and still feeling pretty stiff and sore.
Our little cabin
7th/8th Feb
Hobbling around the place is starting to get a bit tiresome, it takes ages to walk anywhere but we have no other means of transport and Gareth can’t carry things with his left arm so we’re a bit of a mess. Never the less we set off into town with all our luggage to catch the bus to Tahuna beach where the campiste had wi-fi which we needed to plan our route back to Auckland. The bus was a big red double decker with all the London Transport stickers still on it, we didn’t even realise it was a novelty Sunday bus until half way through the trip when we saw the poster.
We asked the bus driver to tell us where to get off but he forgot and we ended up in Nelson, he kindly offered to drive us back though so we eventually made it to the elusive Tahuna beach campsite that we’d been trying to get to for the last few days! It wasn’t the best campiste we’d stayed in but it did have the internet so we spent the next few days trying not to move too much so our appendages could heal and booking buses, ferries and planes.
Pretty much spent the whole time in Nelson like this
9th – 13th Feb
We got up pretty early to start the first leg of our trip. We caught the 8.30am bus into Nelson where we transferred to a shuttle bus that took us to Picton to catch the ferry. After a Subway lunch we boarded and 3 and a half hours later ended up back in Wellington.
Bus from Nelson to Picton
Back at the Inter Islander ferry terminal
We hadn’t yet got anywhere to stay for the night and it was 5 o clock and there was some sort of big rugby tournament on so we thought we’d better get on with finding somewhere. We sat in Esquires and went on last minute and ended up booking a serviced apartment for about a quarter of the price you’d normally pay. We lugged the bags up to the Terrace and found it and it was wonderful. It had a fully equipped kitchen, comfy arm chairs, sky TV and our very own bathroom which is something we haven’t had since the last time we were in Wellington! My knee was hurting from all the walking we’d been doing so Gareth went to the supemarket and got the ingredients for a chicken curry and we were happy as Larry’s.
We’d have loved to have stay longer but we’d booked a bus up to Lake Taupo so the next day we headed down to the bus station to catch that. Gareth was delighted to find a plug at the back of the bus which meant he could have computer access for the whole 6 hours but it also meant we had to sit at the back of the bus next to the toilet for the entire journey, which I wasn’t thrilled about. We struck a deal though to save me from not only having to sit next to the toilet the whole way but having to watch Gareth play warcraft as well and that was that we’d watch a film so we ended up watching Australia which bought back memories. We also drove back along quite a few roads we’d cycled down which made us miss the bike.
We arrived in Taupo late and had to walk quite a long way to the campsite with our bags which really tired us out and took forever. The cabin was really nice though and we’d stopped at Pak’n Save on the way to get dinner so once we were there we could just relax. We’d tried to find a campsite that had the IAC internet we’d subscribed to but there were none close to town so we’d just gone for the cheapest one we could find.
Our little cabin
Gareth in his element
The next day we went out to explore Taupo as best we could, we had a look at the lake and snuck into the YHA to use their IAC connection to book accommodation in Rotorua then rested back in the cabin with a tuna salad and a bottle of wine.
Lake Taupo
We didn’t have to leave too early for the Rotorua bus and once we arrived we were able to catch a local bus out to the campsite we’d booked. Unfortunately we still had to walk down one road and one of the wheels on the suitcase Gareth was pulling broke so he had to carry it and it was very very heavy. We couldn’t really explore Rotorua as we’d have liked because we couldn’t pay for the expensive tours and couldn’t get to the mud pits by ourselves but there were hot pools in the campiste and the steam just rises from the ground in the parks so we got to see some geo thermal activity anyway! On the whole Taupo and Rotorua were both very busy and expensive tourist traps and a bit disappointing after the smaller more remote places we’d stayed in that were far more beautiful.
On our second day in Rotorua an old maori guy at the campsite noticed I was limping around and asked me what had happened. He then knelt down and held his hands round my knee, not touching it just hovering round it. Every now and then he’d do an action as if swatting flies away, I thought that’s what he was doing at first and kept looking for the flies but then realised he was shaking the badness away. This went on for a minute or so before I tentatively asked him what he was doing. He said it was healing he’d been able to do since he was a teenager. After another minute or so he stood up and said he was quietly confident that my knee would now heal in double quick time! I hobbled back to the cabin to tell Gareth who is very dubious about that sort of thing and seen as we’ll never know how long it would have taken to get better we’ll never know whether or not it worked. I was desperate to find him again so he could do Gareth’s elbow as I’d have loved to see the look on Gareth’s face but we never saw him again after that.
14th/15th/16th Feb
Our bus to Auckland wasn’t until 15.00 so our valentines day morning was spent in the local YHA posting our last blog and looking at accommodation in Singapore.
About an hour before the bus arrived we went down to the bus stop and I waited there while Gareth went to the supermarket to get lunch and dinner. He came back with a valentines bar of chocolate for me which was very nice and we got on the bus. It was quite a long journey, we didn’t arrive in Auckland until 19.00 but thankfully we got dropped off at the sky tower and not at the harbour which is where we thought we’d be dropped off so it was a much shorter walk to our hotel than we’d anticipated. We booked a serviced apartment on last minute again and it wasn’t quite as nice as the one in Wellington but was still luxurious compared to the tent! We ended up nipping out to buy some grog and having a lovely meal in with some very expensive pink bubbly on our comfy couch.
The next day we just hung around in Auckland and enjoyed our apartment. Whether it was just time or whether that old Maori guy really did have healing powers we’ll never know but since Rotorua I’d been able to walk relatively normally on my knee although stairs were still a challenge and bending or kneeling out of the question. We also booked accommocation in Singapore, which was an absolute nightmare! A few back packer hostels had been recommended but none had great reviews and the one that had the best reviews only had 2 toilets for everyone staying there, call us snobby but we weren’t that skint just yet! There were also a range of 1 star hotels but most of them were in the red light district and again, not good reviews on line. In the end we realised that it wouldn’t cost too much more to go for a decent hotel and have a comfy clean stay.
mmm ice cream
Struggling with lastminute.com
So now for our last full day in New Zealand! We’d decided to get out of the centre and closer to the airport for our last night as we’d have to get up at 4am as it was so we checked out of the hotel and went to catch the bus out to Avondale to pick up our stuff from storage.
Remember this!?
Once re united we had to catch two buses out to Mangere, one of which turned out to be the same bus we caught to be re united with out tent all those months ago! We found our hotel, which wasn’t anything fancy but would do just fine and prepared ourselves for our departure (that means I spent about and hour packing while Gareth played warcraft).
To make up for not helping me pack he then let me make soup and pancakes for dinner and we got an early night ready for our big day of travel.
See you in Asia, blog off.
