Category: Bike Tour

Our strategy of circling the Coromandel Peninsula via short rides gave us time to do a hike before we left town this morning (it also helped to leave from our upgraded camper stay vs. packing up our would-have-been-wet tent!) Paku Hill is an oddly-close mirror to Tauranga’s Mount Maunganui, some 50 miles away down this…

With the rain cleared out, we were back on the move again after a week in Whangamata. But now that we were entering a period of “fine” weather (an official NZ term), we also didn’t need to rush our way around the Coromandel Peninsula, and small but relatively-frequent towns will allow us to keep the…

Day 3 The owners of our accommodation run SurfSUP, the only operator that guides people to Whenuakura Island, more-descriptively known as “Donut Island”. This is a small round dome of an island three-quarters of a mile offshore, but it has a secret. On the side hidden from shore, there is a sea-cave sliced into its…

“Neil, wake up, something has been going at your bike.” It’s 12:30am, and I’m somewhat surprised that my critter-sensitivity has allowed me to sleep through activity that Rett detected, especially since I should have been primed: 7 hours earlier I had caught a glimpse of a rat’s tail slithering down my rear wheel as Rett…

Tenting it was a “risk” since there was supposed to be rain in the morning (a bike touring couple who looked more-hardcore than us had taken one of the rooms at the holiday park), but the hope was that it would be done by the time we woke. The “rain” was done, but an annoying…