Gisborne to Hawke's Bay

With our bikes all fixed up and our bodies recovered we were finally ready to leave the Thompsons beautiful home in Gisborne and begin riding to Hawke's Bay.

Leaving Gisborne

Unlike the previous trips we decided to pack a little extra food so that we wouldn't have to rely on the stores along the way and therefore we could slow the flow from of our emptying bank accounts! We added to our diets Peanut butter, Corned beef, (donated) Fruit loaf, Baked beans, Porridge and as always we still had Tuna fish, Milk powder and glucose.

After about 10 min of ridding up the main road of Gisborne my tyre decided to explode, now normally I wouldn't have been to annoyed but seeing as we just fixed a whole bunch of other problems it did sort of get at me. Plus the most annoying and probably silly thing was that I didn't have a bike pump that worked for my tyres instead the guy's in Auckland gave me two pumps that only worked on Wolfy's bike!!!! So although it only took a few minutes to replace the tube I still had to walk to the nearest service station to inflate it.... Hahaha and being a bit of a Muppet I walked instead of using Wolfy's bike.

Now the first leg after leaving Gisborne was hard work due to a very strong southerly head wind, so instead of averaging 20 km/h on the flats we were only doing about 10 km/hour.

 Luckily for us it wasn't long before we started at what looked like a small hill and this of course eliminated the wind drag..... Now this small hill actually ended up being the Wharerata's and it took a few hours to climb,  it was definitely a bit of a grind the whole way up and stood at an altitude of 500 meters above above the sea, making it our highest hill thus far.

View from the Wharerata's

View from the Wharerata's

It started to become dark around 6 pm and it was getting pretty cold, so we decided to start looking for a place to camp. Still on the down hill section of the Wharerata's, we spotted a hidden clearing off to the left, it looked like it was used to park large vehicles used for construction. This was the first time camping on clay and yes it was a fair bit harder then grass!

That night was a cold, wet night and the rain came down at a surprising rate. Now we had purchased some water proofing spay back in Tauranga that apparently "makes rain just run straight off of any fabric." However in the morning the tent was still damp and water droplets hang to the fabrics surface, we were not satisfied customers :(

Because of the temperatures slowly dropping everyday, we began sleeping in track pants and long sleeve shirts. This also worked out quite well in the mornings as it's normally very chilly until around 11 am at which point the black roads become frying pans and we switch out into board shorts and T shirts.

It was epic to get up in the morning, pack the gear onto the bikes and then enjoy a 15 km downhill into Morere, a town known for its thermal pools... Unfortunately we were more keen on moving km's then sitting and relaxing in warm water! So we continued onwards.

Our first stop was taken just past Nuhaka. It was a shame we couldn't be bothered biking across to Mahia beach, but we just couldn't justify biking a 32 km return trip to look at surf that we couldn't have surfed without boards.

The day was getting hot, so when we arrived in Wairoa we stopped off at a dairy to get 2 litres of cold milk, it was pretty funny as well because there was a sign that said Wairoa free WiFi and yet we couldn't find the signal anywhere???? However that was all right because we really only just left Gisborne the other day.

Just upon leaving Wairoa, we realised we had forgot to fill up our camel packs and there was abit of miscommunication as I had about a litre of water left and I thought wolf was only drinking my water because his was buried pack deep in his panniers.... However is he was actually out!!!! Now normally this wouldn't have been to bad, except that between Wairoa and Raupunga is about 35 km of hills, meaning at least 2 hours in blazing hot sun, before reaching a house..... This was probably hands down the hardest part of our journey, it was even worse then ridding in the pouring rain! 2 hours without water, ridding uphill on one of the hottest days so far. At one point we spotted a red Powerade drink with a few drops left in it and we were about to share its contents, except the smell of it just seemed so wrong, a mix of melted plastic and artificial sweeteners. Then there were the little muddy puddles of water along the roadside, but again our logic said no, as strange insects paddled about within the water.

When we finally spotted a house, we parked our bikes, knocked on the door and asked this very nice old lady for some water, she pointed us in the direction of the water tap. The funny thing was that it only took about 300 mls of water to make us go from feeling down to feeling extremely good, it's strange how when you're deprived of something as simple as water, how much your mind forgets about every other stress and only cares about hydrating! Anyhow we thanked the lady and continued on until we reached the Mohaka viaduct where we stopped for a break.

It started to reach about 5 pm and we still had about 50 km before Lake Tutira where we were planning on camping, and on top of the time constraint wolfy had broken another two spokes on his newly replaced rim, he was also having issues with his front crank bearings and most of the remaining distance was made up of hills. However we managed to arrive in Tutira just as the last of the light disappeared.

The next morning was a beauty, with only blue sky to be seen, not to mention the location of the camp site sat right between two amazing lakes, unfortunately although the water appeared extremely clean and it was possible to see the more then 3 meters down, signs covered the area labelled with a parasite that caused itchy rashes.... No thank you!!!

Anyway we continued onwards and within 20 mins we reached the last hill of the journey, it was called the devil's elbow and except for having huge logging trucks flying past at crazy speeds and us having the smallest shoulder lane we've seen so far, the hill itself wasn't that bad to climb, it was long yes, but not steep. However again we ran out of water!! Luckily at the top was an amazing royal gayla apple tree and it held our thirst back for a while!

At the bottom of the huge hill we then had our first real detour to go see a waterfall. Now for safety reasons, we ended up pushing our bikes along a 40 min uphill bush track all the way to this waterfall, instead of leaving them in the parking lot, this was a huge effort and was very frustrating.

Kurt looking at waterfall

Wolf looking at waterfall

Once at the main waterfall we were pretty disappointed, as there was no swimming hole and the view was mediocre. However there was another fall that ended up being so sweet, having not only a waterfall, but a little rock-climb and a swimming hole!!!! Plus the water was coooold, which is exactly how we wanted it after ridding those big hills!!!!

       
After leaving the Te Ana falls we stop off at a marae to re-fill our water bladders. The rest of the trip until Napier was basically just straight flat roads. At one point along the way this guy pulled out from a house behind us on his bicycle and boosted in front of us, now we just kept our normal speed and after a while we started to catch the guy again. It was funny as he began looking over his shoulder and trying to ride harder each time we started catching him, it was pretty amusing seeing this guy trying to race us after we had just come 50 km over some very big hills and had made close to 250 km in two days, it was even funnier when we passed him staying at the same comfortable speed we always ride at :)

Once in Napier we stopped off at a Countdown and bought 2 litres of milk, 4 litres of simply squeezed juice and some bacon toppers. We managed to down everything except for 2 litres of the orange juice, yip needed a bit of tummy time so we sat in this nice garden park area and waited until we could move again.

The remainder of the trip was then spent on the I-way which is a high way for bicycles, it was probably one of the nicest routes we've taken and it would be cool to see it implemented in more towns around the country.

It was around 4 pm when we finally arrived at the Wiehahn's beautiful home in Havlock north, 250 km from Giborne, two and a half days later.

Conquering the East Cape

Leaving Tauranga on our 7th day. it was a hot and sticky day, not to mention our asses were hurting like heck. anyway we check on riding a ways. stopping at a Pack 'n' Save to get 2 litres of milk and half a dozen of eggs, plus some fruit. any how we downed the eggs and milk and started back up moving along quite smoothly. till we got to a little rest place.

Wolf and Kurt 2013

Louis and Kurt 2012 Same spot

We finished our protein and milk powder shake and kept going till we got to Ohope, now there was a camp site that we were gonna stay at, so we stopped there and it looked ok..... But I was not in the mood to socialise with people, and the people there didn't seem very interesting :) ah hahah actually they just looked weird and seemed weird so we just got outta there :)
The rain didn't stay around and we kept riding hitting some nice hills and seeing some beautiful scenery. We stopped at one point on one of the hills to take some pictures and a video.
When we did continue we hit more rain, so we stopped and waited for it to pass.

Continuing on untill we got to this little place outside of Ohope. it was just off the road by about 50 metres and we had a stealth azz place to stick up our tent. Which was perfect. That night we got to use our Blow up Pool beds!! :) "sweet" they worked really well for most of the night.

In the morning of day 8 we got up "thank God" 

We packed up our tent and deflated our air beds "that took the longest time to do" we then started riding. It was a pretty cool and chilly morning. "one of those mornings where you get the cold sweats, Not the nicest feeling"

We continued till Ohiwa where we stopped at a little park that had a couple benches so we could sit and drink our breakfast which consisted of powdered milk, water and the last of our protein powder that our older brother Louis so generously gave us.

After finishing we left and moved onto Opotiki! stopping at a New world food store to get 2 litres of sliver top milk 6 eggs and two packets of grain wave chips.  We munched back the milk and eggs and the packets of chips before cycling along to an information building where we finally pick up our first map. Here we also met these German folks who told us of a freedom camp site before Te Kaha which would be our next destination. The German folk also said there were some hills, which was a kind thing to tell us :) 

So we continued and started getting exhausted every now and again but we just kept pushing along.

It started getting hotter and hotter throughout the day and at the peak temperature we reached our first decent hill of the day......and of course something had to go wrong... Thereofre my rear de-railer decided to fall off  "Great, just what I Want"  so we had to stop and walk back down the road searching for my parts that were scattered along the road. The rage started to kick in but the most annoying thing was that there was nothing we could do so we just had to put it all back together and hope for the best.

After it was all working again we started to climb the hill, next thing you know was another spoke Pings while riding "Another Spoke broke" and there was nothing we could do about that either so we just continued. Not to mention my mood "as you could imagine" was getting a bit of a work out as well as my legs. 

We just kept riding hitting a bit of rain and stopping at a little beach.

Now we came across this peach tree on the side of the road which we stopped at, and I mean the peaches on this tree where unreal!! so unreal that I've never tasted a peaches like these peaches ;) 

So I walked up to the owners door knocked on it and asked the kind fellow if we could grab some. He was sweet about it and said go for it. Before leaving I had to go thank him again just because the peaches were going be our dinner, so we thanked him and headed off once again.

Now we made it to Te Kaha, which was weird because we were looking for a freedom camp site that was supposed to be before Te Kaha?? Now Kurt and I were really confused, so we stopped on the side of the road. I tried to find reception to call joey but couldn't find any, which was frustrating.

We then found out that we had already biked about 25 kms passed the freedom camping spot "Just Great" . So instead of turning around we continued biking for another 20 odd kms until Kurt spotted out this great location to set up camp. It was sick so we stopped, scouted the spot before moving in. It was perfect. the view was amazing and it was right by the beach so we could take a bath and clean up the sweat of our skin.

We set up our tent on a bit of long grass so that it would still be comfortable without our blow up beds :)

We also saw what we believed was White Island letting of a whole bunch of smoke and this continued throughout the evening. After the long day we got back from our swim and decided to eat a peach, brush our teeth and hit the hay.

Day 9 4th of March: It was a pretty wet morning and our tent had drifted a ways down the bank and was sort of on its side with us in it.

It had rained during the night, luckily Kurt trash bagged the uke and laptop to keep it dry. We tried to wait for the sun to come out, so that our gear would be dry, except after about 20 minutes the sun still hadn't come out so we packed up our gear and continued riding. 

We started to ride, and got the beach where the movie "Boy" was filmed, which was interesting and neat.

We continued till we got the a bus stop. and hid inside to avoid a little bit of rain. 

The sun still hadn't come up and it was hitting around 10 o'clock "lucky we didn't wait for it"

Next stop was Waihau Bay where we bought 2 litres of milk and a Moro bar. We chowed it back on a little dock that extended out over the water. We also read on the wall of the shop there that a marlin had sunk a boat while a fisher men was trying to reel him in!! "good on you marlin" 

After finishing the milk and our chocolate bar we headed off once again. Hitting hills more often than not. Passing the same police officers who started getting stoked on our progress :) We stopped ridding for a bit at a little spot where we threw some rocks for about 5 minutes before getting back on the road.

We got to hicks bay where we met this older couple who owned an old school maybe 1940s car with a little basket on the back who had been passing us all day. Then continued  to a little look out place at the top of this hill which didn't really have a look out. But a tourist did end up following me to get out and I ended up taking us on a bit of a bush crash :) ah hahah pretty funny :)

We bombed the hill and got to a little stream under a bridge because we were so drained that we had to cool down. We sat in the water and it was so good. We then dried out some of our gear before continuing.

We then biked to a little store where we couldn't even get water because the whole town was low.

As we got into Te Araroa we then had a feed of milk and some chips were tasty!! we took a nice little rest there and talked to some other bikers who for some reason I don't remember anything about them apart from them being a bit full of  themselves.. Guess they weren't very interesting for me to pay attention to :) "my bad"

after talking to them well after Kurt talked to them we climbed our last hill for the day and found a sweet hide out camp spot.

We set up our tent, had a bit of a feed and slept till morning. During the night it started to rain, and it didn't stop.

10th day 5th of march or maybe it was the 6th ?? I can't remember either way it was pretty wet in the morning waking up. The spot which we had thought to have been a good place to put our tent was actually really hard and on a pretty step slope.

Any how we packed up our gear, water proofing the valuables and heading off into the rain. it kept raining and rained all day. We stop at this RSA club after conquering these large mountains and bought a D.B Burger and chips, once finished we then started out again, we past Ruatouria but ended up having to stop because the rain was to insane.

Cycling started to become horrible as my back tire just kept on rubbing the whole way and the rain just wouldn't give up.

We got to where Louis and Kurt camped the year before when they were walking around the east cape.

There was some epic Black berries. so we had a mad munch back on those before starting back up again. 

(This berry video gets pretty boring half way in but we're pretty crazy at the start of it!!!)

After it passed we continued and rode till we hit a little town which we got some watery milk and some expensive chips. oh we also bought a can of rice pudding. We hadn't really realised that we were actually at a huge altitude for most of the day and as we left that town we had a pretty large downhill that we appreciated.

The rain at this point finally stopped and the sun started to come out as we entered into Tokomaru Bay. It was hot so we took off our jackets and put them in our bags. There was a big hill ahead of us and being exhausted at this point we told each other that we should just do it and be done with it, find a place to set up our tent and have a feed.

After doing the hill we ended up "as usual" biking another 20-30kms until we got to our spot. Exhausted we pushed our bikes down through this thick grass patch and under a tree. However we spotted a better place to put our tent down so we grabbed what we needed, left our bikes and put up our damp tent.

During the night we were woken by a flash light Beaming into our tent. I woke up, feeling pretty frightened, I nudged Kurt to see if he was awake. He had also woken up from it. We both started kinda freaking out. I started getting concerned about the bikes. so we both silently exited the tent,  the figure had at this point moved up the bank. we both decided to walk in the dark over to our bikes. The stars where so bright but not bright enough. we would judge where we would place our feet by using the darkest patches on the ground as references. Although at some points we ended up standing on thorns and prickles. In the end we made to our bikes. 

Kurt asked me if I had closed the tent which I didn't and we started to worry if they were going to try check out our tent... and if so we could lose all our important gear by leaving it there.

The light then started to head our way.

We both don't know what to do and are a bit stunned.

Kurt then yells out the the man in front of us and says "good afternoon"

the man replys seeming to be stunned by us as much as us by him. He lets us know that we are okay staying there and that it’s no problem. 

after he left I thought to myself and told Kurt that I think I remembered him from earlier on in the day??

Anyhow we looked for the flash light and after finding it headed back to our tent, this time being able to see the thorns and prickles that we had tramp all over..

After the scare we fell back asleep.

11th day March 6th: last day of the East cape. We woke up it was a pretty cold morning very crisp and frost covered the grass and trees.. The sun was out and it was beautiful!!

We pack up our tent and headed out, making our way into Tolaga Bay. The sun was out and hot with no rain in the distance. when we got into the town we had a pie and 1 litre of milk. Then we headed off to a very long historic Wharf.

We talked with this old fellow who claimed to have raced on our exact same model of bike. Picking out the names of the bikes and giving us a little talk about the good old days. "by the way the man was 70 and claimed to have raced on our exact bikes when he was a young man... young man meaning 25. that means our bikes are over 50 years old" 

We then headed off to Gisborne!! What a day ahead of us. The old fellow told us there where two small hills?? there ended up being about half a dozen hills.. 

As the sun got higher, it sure got hotter. We were getting closer but not as close as we wished we were "or at least for me".

In Pouawa we took a little brake and read a sign on freedom camping.. after reading it and being pretty stoked on it we noticed a big "CLOSED" sticker to our left. Oh well not like we need to camp there anyway.

Continued on to Makorori where we stopped at a nice look out.. 

Our legs are now feeling it. after 4 days straight doing 100km+ and to finish off our last day on 60kms we made our way struggling into Gisborne.

I started getting short fused and my bike started screwing up and with that frustration I started getting pissed at Kurt because he couldn't remember where Beths mom's house was. 

I got over my frustration, and we eventually made it to our destination.

March 7th - 8th

Thanks to Liz Thomson we have been able to rest and eat for the past couple days. also Kurt got his bike fitted with two new tires after the last two just barley made it into Gisborne.

Although my bike is still in the shop with a cracked rear axle, one snapped front de-railer and some broken spokes. it’s gonna cost me "after a huge bargaining deal that I had to persuade the owner with" it will cost me $135 to get a new rear wheel, and front de-railer. Guess it’s the best deal I can get. let’s just hope it gets in tomorrow so we can head out as soon as possible. 

Foods made for champions

It seems one of the questions people always ask is "what food do you guys eat"? and "how can you afford to continue buying food for the remainder of the journey with little to no money"??? Well to answer this question we buy normally only two foods plus fruit and veggies, one costs around $4 for 100 grams of protein and the other $3 for 70 grams of protein so that's 85 grams each at a cost of $3.50 a piece..... Now what are these super foods one might ask????? Here's a video on how to prepare and consume......... :)