Birthday blog

Gareth:

Hello. Some people already have glimpsed the future of our blog through e-mails, text messages and phone calls, and seem rather excited to read about a certain incident, I can’t tell you too much because others might not know, and may enjoy the surprise. However, before we get to the specifics we have to update you with several more routine days and a birthday, I forget whose it is, but I’m pretty sure it’s someone’s I should have remembered. Here’s Alice to talk about the daily details.

26^th / 27^th January

Alice:

After a nice relaxing day in Wanaka we hopped back on the bike and headed for Makarora, our last stop before crossing the Southern Alps.  It was a lovely sunny day and the views were amazing as the road threads between Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka for about 30km.  We stopped for lunch at the lake Hawea lookout and had just finished our jam sandwiches when a couple arrived and asked if we minded them sharing our picnic bench (there was only one bench there).  We said we didn’t, obviously and they sat down where upon we started chatting to them and before long realised that Gareth actually knew the girl as she (Chrissi) was a good friend of his house mates at Uni.  She hadn’t recognised him because he was hidden behind a disguise the beard ang shaggy hair, and he hadn’t recognised her because, well, because it’s Gareth and he doesn’t have a good memory for faces and names and such mundane things as that.

Lake Hawea

Me not putting my arm round Chrissi because of the cycle sweat

Don't mind getting Gareth smelly though

Anyway we had a good chat to them and reminisced about Gareth and his Uni housemates David, Andrew, Will and Rich’s antics on various occasions before pedalling the rest of the way to Makarora and staying there for the night.  My favourite part of the conversation was when Chrissi’s boyfriend asked “So were you guys at David’s engagement party?” and Gareth responded “Yeh… we were the ones wearing women’s’ clothes”.

At the other end of Lake Wanaka

When we woke up the sky looked a bit dark which worried me a bit but it needn’t have because the rain never arrived.  After 20km of cycling we’d made it to the top of the Haast pass (600m), which, at one point had seemed like a huge challenge for us but after our adventure over the Crown range (1100m) it wasn’t too bad.  At the start of the descent we felt a bit cheated as it seemed pretty flatty instead of downy but after a while it got steeper and we flew down through the gates of Haast bridge to Pleasant flats.  The descent was made a bit hairy by the strategic placing of cattle grids the whole way down.  Haast not suitable for cattle tourism obviously!

Gareth sun creaming up, you can never be too careful!

The rest of the road to Haast township was rolling and a bit tough in the heat, plus the only rest places were besieged by sand flies.  But make it to Haast we did and we pitched our tent at the lodge there and had chips and cider for dinner.

Lunch break at Roaring Billy

Arrival in Haast

 Thursday 28^th / 29^th / 30th

Another rest day to do laundry and avoid the grumpy campsite owner!  Most campsites say that check out is 10am but don’t really mind as long as you’re gone by 11ish.  This guy went on a rampage at 10.30 demanding to know if we were staying or not and threatening people who hadn’t left yet with eviction or fine!  Needles to say we didn’t take to him. 

Instead of hanging around the campsite we went down to the local café and posted our last couple of blogs.  We made a huge sausagey saucy concoction for dinner, enough to last for the next day too as we’d planned to stay in a place called Jacob’s River, which didn’t have any shops.  Haast is only a small town and there wasn’t much else to do but it was a nice sunny day full of eating and relaxing.

Posting blogs

The next morning when we woke up we felt pretty good so discussed trying to make it all the way to Fox glacier.  But first we had to tackle the three steep 200m hills in 8 km of the Knights point range.  We did that and it was pretty hard in the heat then on the way down we got a puncture, which we had to stop and repair, it wasn’t looking good!  But we pedalled on and had plenty of stops for food and water and a long time later made it to Fox Glacier with a top distance of 128km!  We had to have a cup of coffee and 4 biscuits each to get enough energy to pitch the tent and walk to the kitchen for dinner, luckily we had the food from last night so we didn’t have to cook!

Second puncture on the south island!

It was a really nice campsite at Fox and we also bumped into our friends Ray and Emma who we’d met in Te Anau and had a good chat to them, they gave us chocolate chip pancakes which was a nice treat!

one of my favourite campsites so far

The next day the tiredness caught up with us in earnest so we stayed in the campsite for the morning before heading off to look at the glacier.  I found the 1 hour walk to the lookout really hard because I didn’t have any energy but it was a beautiful walk and seeing our first glacier was worth the effort!  Then we trudged back to camp for more food and an evening in with Simon Cowell and his American Idol moving picture show.

Oh dear, tired me

Sunday 31^st

The Fox campsite was far more relaxed than the one at Haast so we didn’t hurry off in the morning as we only had to cycle 25km to Franz Joseph.  We left at about 11 and started climbing straight away to the top of the first 200m hill then sped all the way down to 0m again and had to start all over again on the next one!  The last hill was a little smaller and we finally arrived in Franz Jospeh to be greeted by an obnoxious guy leaning out of a black 4WD shouting “Get off the road you ducking fopes”.  Seen as this was the first bit of abuse we’d had in three months we cheerfully dismissed him as an ignorant, angry minority.

Franz is much busier than Fox, has a bit more of a Queenstwon vibe!  The first campsite we tried didn’t have IAC (the wireless internet company we’d signed up to) so we pedalled just out of town to a very nice Top 10 and set up camp there to eagerly await the dawning of my birthday while eating cake and chocolate and drinking beer that Gareth had bought me as a pre birthday treat.

Monday 1^st February 2010 – otherwise known as Alice’s 26^th birthday

Yay birthday day!  Today is also Roz’s birthday, naturally, so Happy Birthday Ro, I know you had a nice time because I spoke to you but here is your birthday mention and as a special treat we took some of yours and Josh's DNA and put it through a DNA spectrumaliser, reticulated the splines and were quite shocked with the results!  I don't know why you haven't produced these beautiful children already!  Move over Shilo Jolie Pitt and Suri Cruise, here are Roshy and Joz smlar!

The deal on birthday day was that Gareth had to pay more attention to me than to the computer, which he did with only a few complaints!  We spent the morning doing laundry and chatting to family on skype then headed off on the bike to look at Franz Jospeh glacier.  We didn’t get quite as good a view but it was our own fault because we couldn’t be bothered to do the whole walk out to it due to the immense heat but we did see it and it was very pretty, but not as pretty as your kids Roz!

We cycled back to camp with a little shop stop and got ready for our meal out courtesy of Malcom and Marilyn’s birthday money gift, thanks guys.  We went to a restaurant called the Landing in town, which was very popular and had been recommended to us as a place that served generous portions!  We told them we had a Top 10 membership card and they gave us our first drinks free, which was a bonus.  I ordered the venison hot pot and Gareth ordered the lamb shank, the food came really quickly and the portions were enormous!  We tucked in and were pleased to discover that the food was delicious and there was plenty of it. 

We’d just about finished when I notice a dark lump of something on my plate that looked like a clod of soil, I tasted it and it tasted like soil as well so I sent the waitress to the kitchen to see if she could discover what it was.  She came back a while later to tell me it was mushroom (hmmm) and I asked her if I could finish my food but it had been thrown away.  I must have looked suitably despondent about that because she went to the kitchen again and came back with another serving which me and Gareth happily tucked into! 

We had been cheered up enough to ask for the dessert menu and another drink and ended up a few minutes later with a large apple crumble and a ridiculous slab of chocolate cake, I don’t think we’ve ever been so happy – look at our happy faces!

After demolishing that we asked for the bill and I thought I’d better show my Top 10 card to prove we’d qualified for the discounted drinks where upon they promptly discounted the other two drinks we’d ordered which weren’t even part of the promotion.  So we left full of lovely food (and a bit of soil) having paid $81 for a meal that should have cost $111, thanks The Landing.

2nd / 3rd Feb

Over the next three days we had to make our way to Greymouth because we’d booked a bus from there to take us to Nelson.  We’d decided this was the best course of action because we are running short of time and money and although the rest of the west coast is very pretty, there were things we wanted to see more like the Abel Tasman National Park, Lake Taupo and Rotorua.  So on the 2^nd we set off on a very very hot day to a place called HariHari.  It was an ok ride apart from Mt Hercules, a 200m hill just before Harihari that was very twisty and windy. 

Just before we got to Harihari we noticed a little sign that said “Liquorice Ritz B&B cyclists welcome”.  We stopped and went in to have a look as we knew there were only tent spots at the motel in the town and no camp kitchen.  We pedalled up an overgrown tree lined drive way and arrived in front of a quaint little house with all its doors and windows open and the radio playing.  We liked it immediately with its home made jams on the side and lovely flower filled garden.  After wandering around for a bit I found the owner, Lorna, pruning in the back.  We had a little chat to here and agreed to stay in her little bunk house outside for $20 each a knight.  After pedalling into town and being disgusted at the prices in the only local shop ($5 for a tin of beans!) we decided to eat emergency pasta snacks for dinner and headed back to Lorna’s.

She was amazing and made us some delicious mashed potato with cheese (I’ve been having cheese withdrawal symptoms) then regaled us with very entertaining stories about her life and family.  It was a true home away from home and we slept in a nice comfy bed which equals happy Alice and Gareth.

We were a bit sad to leave Lorna the next day as we’d had such a nice time at her house but we said our goodbye’s and pedalled off.  We had talked about cycling all the way to Greymouth but it was 110km away and it was another hot day.  We got 40km to Ross and decided to have a relaxing lunch and give up on the Greymouth plan.  I sent Gareth into the shop for lunch and he came out with a nice big ice cream and a tin of pineapple (?) which was very nice but not quite lunch so I went back in for some sandwhiches.

Oh and we got another puncture...

After our lovely but odd lunch we pedalled the last 25km to Hokitika and set up camp there.  Little did we know that this would be our last night camping in New Zealand and one of the last times we rode the bike, packed up the trailer and wore our cycling shorts!  All this down to….the incident.

Roz this is what a Lamingtons looks like, this is a raspberry one!

Read more in the next blog!