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Our Great New Zealand South Island Bike Tourby Pamela Blalock with (most) photos by John Bayley
I hadn't really thought much about the timing with Easter. But Easter is a big deal holiday here, with both Good Friday and Easter Monday as public holidays. It also is the start of a two week school break. Like Labor Day in the States, it seems to signify the end of summer, and weather is still pretty nice, so lots of kiwis take time off and travel. There are also several big events on at Easter as well, including a massive Air Show in Wanaka, so booking accommodation ahead of time around Easter turns out to be a good idea. All that said, we never had to sleep in a ditch, but did spend one night in a skating shed, and another in the worst backpackers I've ever seen. But more on that later. As mentioned above, we did walk the Routeburn and Milford Tracks. We also took a cruise on the Doubtful Sound and walked on the Franz Josef Glacier.
The road west out of town was amazingly quiet. The climb up Spooners Saddle with 4 loaded panniers was a good one, but not too bad. The climb up the Hope Saddle was accompanied by a soundtrack of native bellbirds, and very little traffic. We had initially hoped to make it all the way to Murchison, but given our late start, we decided it was about time we checked out the bikepackers in Glenhope. We had passed by it several times (Christchurch to Nelson and Nelson to Christchurch, among others), but just hadn't had to chance to check it out. It worked out quite well, as it was close to 7pm when we arrived. We found another cycle-tourist camping out, and had a great time exchanging stories and tips. We also had a great time browsing through the selection of old cycling magazines, and John really enjoyed checking out the selection of old vinyl records ! It was well worth the incredibly steep climb up the driveway.
While looking around town and the visitors centre, I noticed several mentions of the town of Blackball, including an attractive looking and likely quiet sealed road paralleling the main road. So we decided to go check out the little town, and we were so glad we did. Here we found Formerly the Blackball Hilton, where we enjoyed a lunch with locally made Blackball Salami, as well as the company of a very friendly cat, named John. We were encouraged to check out the art gallery upstairs, as well as the accommodation We decided this would be a must-stop place on our return journey. We dragged ourselves away from the lovely bar on St. Patrick's Day, and pressed on to Lake Moana. There I asked about accommodation up the road. I knew it would be too far to go all the way to Arthur's Pass, but hoped to get a bit farther down the road. Luckily I found someone who knew of cottages about 20 km away in Jacksons. The Mountain View Cottages were great, lovely and quiet with grand views.
After our long stop at Death's Corner and lunch in town, we went to the Info Centre to try and locate accommodation a bit down the road for the night. There were several places listed 40 to 50km down the road (a good distance), but none had any space. We found a place just 12 km down the road, so it would make for a very short day, albeit with plenty of climbing.
After hours of quiet roads, it was a shock to the system to get back on a main road, with high speed traffic, especially clawing our way up out of the gorge, but we did have a nice helpful tailwind, most of the time. We headed into Methven to call it a day, and had an absolutely screaming tailwind propel us all the way into town. Here we found a lovely YHA hostel, run by a cat lover, who brought out lots of her cat magazines for us to scan through drooling over pictures of cute felines. She pegged us for cat people when I immediately made friends with one of her three adorable kitties. Methven is a ski town, the closest to the Mt. Hutt Ski area. If there is any doubt, visit it in the summer, when they have rolled up the sidewalks and the place is like a ghost town! The next day, we headed off to Geraldine, home of the world's largest sweater. Geraldine was a sprawling metropolis in comparison. It actually is quite a nice town, with several cafes and bakeries. We stopped for lunch and had a very nice chat with a local cyclist, who made a few recommendations for route out of town. We noticed lots of uniformed school kids milling about, and it wasn't until our new friend pointed out that it was a Saturday that we thought it odd. But it was later as we noticed vanload after vanload of schoolkids driving by that we realised they weren't all from Geraldine. Every once in a while a van pulling a trailer full of rowing boats would pass as well. At some point we realise some big event for school kids was happening up the road. We stopped at another cafe, and picked up a newspaper to discover that 4000 school kids were descending on Twizel for a week of National Rowing championships. We had been planning to stay in Twizel the next night, and figured it might be a good idea to check on accommodation I phoned and found a place on the first try. If only it had been so easy in Fairlee. We pulled into the Holiday Park hoping to get a cabin, and found the place fully booked out. They also told us everything in town was full with two weddings, a golf tournament, a land rover convention and a mountain bike race. They phoned around trying to find something for us, without luck. They offered us use of a skating shed, with a couple of cots, and duvets. We took it!
The next morning we bumped into another touring cyclist in the kitchen of the holiday park. He was from Tasmania and was bike touring the south island and tramping as well. We saw him several times over the next day or so, but I'm ashamed we never made proper introductions, so we always referred to him as Tas-Man. We had booked a place in Twizel, but as I looked more carefully at the map, and distances, I realised Omarama might make a better choice. We had stayed at a great little farm hostel there last year, so I phoned to see if they had space. No problem, so we booked in there. We left Fairlee with a pretty good headwind. The ride to Lake Tekapo was one of the most memorable of the trip - a gradual climb, with a gale blowing in our faces! We were thrilled to finally coming to the top of the climb (many kms after the Burke Pass sign), and see the lovely green waters of Lake Tekapo in front of us. We were also seeing a few raindrops as well, so we descended quickly at found a coffee shop without delay. We bumped into the American couple again. They had been talking about taking a scenic flight around Aoraki Mt. Cook. The clouds were breaking up a bit, but it didn't look like the best day for the flight.
We caught up with Tas-Man and rode along together for a few kms. We got to a spot, where we should have had a magnificent view of Aoraki Mt. Cook, but only saw clouds. I think Tas-Man stopped to appreciate the clouds. We met up again later in Twizel, where John and I stopped for lunch and coffee and a chat with a couple of touring cyclists from Canada. We continued to enjoy a great tailwind all the way to the town of Omarama, where we stopped to pay homage to the great Merino sheep statue. Our farm hostel was another 12 km south of town, and somehow the lay of the land gave us a fierce headwind to battle all the way to the backpackers. We eventually made it and had quite the evening. The stars at this place are pretty impressive. We did have the company of a determined mouse though, who in the wee hours of the morning insisted he claw his way through a wall. John tried for a while to intimidate him, but no luck. Earplugs did the trick for me.
Enough of this biking stuff. Jump straight to the |
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