Ocean Turkeys and Sore Bums

An apology to our reader...sorry for the delay in organising this post, it has been several weeks since our last blog and these are our modest adventures....

Since we last blogged we have spent a few days in Dunedin in NZ and then moved on to our final destinations in NZ which included Queenstown. From there we drove over 700 miles back to Blenheim/Picton to get the ferry back to Wellington on the North Island. From their we went to New Plymouth, where we stayed a couple of nights and from there we drove to Devonport on the outskirts of Aukland to await our flight to Los Angeles.USA. We are composing this blog in San Diego but more about the USA leg of our trip later.

Dunedin

Had a few days of bad weather here but on the couple of goodish days we tackled  two demanding rides. Dunedin has a bit of a Celtic flavour (eg lots of references to Robbie Burns) and we are reminded of Scottish cities particulary as the weather was a bit overcast and grey. It is an extremely hilly little coastal city - boasting the steepest street in the world and just riding around the city we found quite demanding. Some of the drivers in Dunedin felt like the most hostile and inconsiderate in NZ.

In the introduction to Our Lonely Planet guide to cycling in NZ the author  highlights the Otaga/Dunedin penninsular ride as his pick of all the rides covered in the book. So we did that one.  We were not dissapointed. The road was a total of 70km of excursion - out and back - along the coast mainly by the sea. It took us to two bird sanctuaries, one for rare blue eyed penguins and the second for Royal Southern Albatrosses. We came to the conclusion that NZers have kidnapped all rare penguins on their coasts and are holding them ransom and that the penquins have developed Hearst syndrome. We found it impossible to see penguins in the wild and each sanctuary costs $40 dollars or more to get a squint of a penguin - $40 buys a lot of sardines so we would expect the penguins to be thriving...probably explains why they are reluctant to organise a break out. Caroline particular dischuffed about 'bogus' penguins, coming to the conclusion that they might not really exist as they are so difficult to find/see. The price and time constraints meant that we opted to see the Albatrosses. These are mightily impressive specimens and we were unprepared for their size. They have wing spans of up to 3.5m and weigh anything up to 2 stones - veritable ocean turkeys. We learned a lot about the birds but rather than put all the details here we can spiel them to anyone interested when we get home.

The return ride home was marred by a break to Marks chain, but we were better prepared following our Kaikoura incident and it only cost us 20 minutes.

The other ride that we tackled was a 11 hour monster which Caroline hated almost from its start.....lots of the NZers that we spoke to about our cycling ambitions urged us to try the Otago rail trail which runs an 160km from Clyde (west) to a place called Middlemarch (east), telling us that it was a dream to ride. On paper it is an attractive proposition because it takes riders on an auto free route through some stunning countryside which used to be for steam trains. We decided to drive 80km to Middlemarch from Dunedin with the bikes and then get a bus from Middlemarch to Clyde and cycle back from there to the car etc. Mark went to buy the tickets for the bus portion of the trip at the tourist office. In making polite conversation the tourist oppo asked about the purpose of our bus trip and then our plans for the trail. He asked how many days we would take to ride it and where were we staying along the way. He took a sip of his coffee at that point. When we explained that we were going to do it in a day he managed in one movement to look Mark up and down and choke on his coffee. Caroline now looked worried.  The tourist oppo explained that most people took 3 days to do the trail and that once you are on it places to stop and refresh etc are sometimes 30 and 40km apart. Mark did the maths and reckoned that a speed of 15km for 11 hours of cycling would complete the trip - no problem as long as we set off early enough and had appropriate bike lighting, clothing and supplies and spares. Carolines doubts grew.

The next day saw us get up and drive to Middlemarch without a problem and we arrived to catch the chartered minibus to Clyde. There were not many people on the bus and only a couple of werewolves...seriously when we again explained our plans the bus went silent and Caroline went grey...the bus driver kindly managed the verbal equivalent of taking Mark aside to advise him that trying the full trail in one day was not a good idea. His key point being that its a long way! It was becoming apparant at this stage that no one we had talked to had actually cycled for any distance on the trail. We did however err on the side of divorce and caution and cut the distance by 40km and were dropped off before Clyde by the trail in the middle of nowhere, the minibus tore off on two wheels in a black haze of exhaust fumes and burning rubber with the driver giving himself the sign of the cross. The driver had found a really good map of the trail which included a proper altitude profile for us - which we had been unable to get and it showed that over the first 80km of the trailo it rose to about 700m which is a lot of steady uphill and explained why notices on the trail advised riders that the average speed of cyclists is 10-15km per hour. By shortening the first section of the ride we got rid of 40km of distance and climbing. The other point that commentators fail to mention is the very poor quality of the ride surface, its either like riding over cobbles or through sand. Dentists should sponsor this route.The under tyre conditions are what Caroline hated most - 40km of steady climbing over really unstable surfaces is not fun particularly if you are feeling some time pressure. Anyways to cut a long story short we completed the ride at about 9.30.pm after setting off at about 11am. It was a significant achievement for us but not much fun. There were no injuries but two very sore bums and lots of aching joints and muscles.

From Dunedin we drove to Queenstown - a spectacular drive.We really liked Queenstown.