Yesterday morning Rett got to talking with a friendly American woman, Andrea, at the campground bathroom. With her husband David, they had also traveled on their bicycles through New Zealand…42 years ago! Not only were they out blazing these trails decades ahead of us, they’re still out here doing things we hope to be able… Read more…

For three weeks since we hit the West Coast at Greymouth, we’ve been roughly following Tour Aotearoa route, the primary north-south cycling route down the length of the country. But a few days before that, we had heard our campground neighbors in Hanmer Springs watching “The Fellowship of the Ring” one night, and they showed… Read more…

New Zealand’s Southern Alps are a bit counterintuitive. We left sea-level Haast on the West Coast two rides ago and completed a major climb over the ~1950 ft. Haast Pass, after which we flowed downward to Makarora. The next ride to Wanaka was relatively flat, implying that we essentially made it “on top of” the… Read more…

On the West Coast it was tough to find two good-weather days back-to-back for riding in. But now that we’ve crossed at least a bit of the of rain-producing mountain range, we have four clear days to make some miles in. In the now-clear skies around Makarora, it was a bit of a surprise to… Read more…

We stayed in Haast under a roof for two nights because the 3rd round of heavy rain in just over a week was scheduled to crash down on the West Coast on our second night. Unlike the previous one-to-three day events, this one would blast through in just a few hours, but with the ability… Read more…

With a short-ish day today, we didn’t set an alarm, and took our time getting up and out of the tent. But that wasn’t enough to avoid the sandflies! Since our skin was again well-covered for the 45F morning, they had a minimal chance of actually biting us (thankfully they don’t seem to go too… Read more…