Picton to Nelson (Saxton Island)

It was a beautiful morning and having rested the past week we were finally fully recovered. The day started with a bit of confusing as we couldn't find exactly which road lead along the coast to Nelson. However we eventually found it and started the first climb of the day, our legs felt so strong and kept us moving at the fastest hill speed we've ever had it was great resting them up!

Picton and the sounds was stunning, it really is a wonderful strip of mother natures finest creations and hosts crystal clear waters, branching mountains that rise out from the depths of the sea and a rang of colours that really capture your attention. To put it bluntly it made the whole of the north Island seem pretty bland and raped by dairy and farming industries. In fact its going to stuck having to ride the north Island back to Auckland after having experienced the South! Even places like East cape and the Corromandel in retrospect come across as being really plain and completely lacking any native vegetation! I personally think if your from the north and haven't been south yet, you should just come visit the south to appreciate how much the North Islands environment is screwed! Note our photos don't really do it justice.

Once at the end of the sounds we continued past Havelock and continued inland. Our next stop took place just before the Pelorus bridge at a little turn off into a park area. Pelorus was a beautiful example of a scenic reserve and was host to huge mature native trees. Seeing as it was a hot day we decided to take a swim in the ice cold clear waters..

After our swim we continued onwards and within an hour we reached the first real uphill of the day, this continued for 20 km with a total vertical climb of 600 metres. It's actually kind of funny because we didn't even notice for alot of the climb that we were heading uphill! So we keep trying to keep out flat land speed on the slope!! It didn't take long until we became super exhausted and out of energy, literally we had no food left in our muscles and they refused to move. Good thing we packed pure sugar to get ATP back into our muscles as quickly as possible and a few table spoons instantly did the trick :)

The downhill to this mountain was probably the best tarmac road I've even ridden down! not only was it super steep but the view was incredible, huge hills were on either side of us and native trees clang thickly to there rugged grounds, best of all a huge gorge lay to our left, I imagined it being cut during the ice age from a massive glacier as it made its way down towards the ocean. Its great boosting down big hills that have steep drops to the side because if you cut the road from your vision it feels as if your flying!

Anyhow that hill re-boosted our spirits and the remainder of the journey was done with ease. I should note that Nelson is a very bicycle friendly city and has set up its bike lanes in a very good fashion (Good work Nelson)

Now all we knew was that we where suppose to be staying with our mate Geoff on a random Island off the coast of Nelson. I being me and knowing him I decide to contact him the day prior and we both thought it'd take two days to get to Nelson because of all the hills. However we made it in one and were struggling to contact him!

It was reaching 8 pm and being the south Island it was starting to get cold as we weren't yet use to the colder temperatures. We had been sitting outside the local New world super market for roughly 3 hours at this point and people were starting to give us some pretty funny looks..... Hahah actually they were probably doing that because we thought it would be funny to tuck our shirts into our wharehouse track pants while walking around with our helmets on and giving people weird looks. The things we do when we get bored :p  Anyhow Geoff wasn't getting back to me so I when't on couchsurfer and posted up a request, some of you might have also seen my facebook post on being homeless aswell. It worked great within 10 minutes we had two people offering us a couch. However at the same time Geoff finally looked at his phone and managed to borrow a mates car to pick us up.

So anyway we rock up to this little village just on the edge of Nelson, it was sought of like a waterfront community. Anyhow Geoff's boat ends up being this epic little two seat row boat which somehow all three of us fit onto. Unfortunately our  bikes wouldn't fit so we ended up walking up a random driveway and living them in someone's garage, I figured Geoff knew them but when I asked who's house it was he said "ahhh just these guys place, I had a chat with them once" Hahah gotta love how trusting we were!!

Of course it was dark by the time we jumped into the small row boat and the water raised right up to its edge of it, any bit of weight in the wrong place and we would have tipped so we focused on keeping good balance (Sounds intense but it really wasn't) Hahah it felt good to be back on the water!!

It was close to the strike of 9 o'Clock when we had finally made it to the island.

Wellington!! and Wellington to Picton

As soon as we arrived into wellington, no time was wasted. Ryan had a beer for Kurt and I as we entered into there stunningly spot less town house : ).

We sat and watched the cricket on there room mate Johnny's brand new TV "and for some odd reason he didn't allow anyone to remove the see-through plastic that covered it??" While watching it I kinda got a little confused as the cricket was happening about 1-2 km away... "Ryan it kinda puzzles me why we didn't just walk down and watch the cricket down on the field ??" But then I reliesed for cricket to even seem remotely interesing they have to add amazing 3d animations of where the ball could have gone in stunning graphic's, this really boosts ones attention span. "is cricket that borring that we have to watch it on tv at home!" Ah hahaahah!!! Love you guys though :)

Anyway we had to hit a Pack 'n Save to make a feed. Got some booze and came back. ended up playing a bunch of video games. Dean arrived conveniently as dinner was made. Apparently its quite hard driving a car ?? Dean expressed how tired he was from driving 10 hours to get to wellington. "10 hours!! 3 weeks cycling, how hard is it too drive, I can't wait to not have to bike!!" After those shenanigans we hit up some dudes 21st "I believe his name was Simon ?? "

Responsible drinking

Dean spinning his yarns

The boys in a Taxi

Whooo!! party time, this 21st was hilarious and there we were only knowing ryan and his roommates. Duurring this party someone thought it would be a good idea to do keg stands?? Dean did the honors, then Ryan, Kurt and My self. Keg stands were a good idea, I mean why not be upside down and drink a whole bunch of booze.... The keg stand wasn't even the funny part though.. the funny part was having muppets come up yelling somewhere a long the lines of "YEAH!! KEG STANDS!! I WANNA DO A KEG STAND!!" We kinda looked at them and said "Yeah!! ok the only thing you have to do is not kick over the table" As if they even heard a word that we said.
from the sober to the pissed off there face party animals, the Barrier boys were the only ones to do an actual handstand on the keg, and not kick the table which had every other party members drink on it. Through the whole night we had this muppets kicking over the table with a horrible horizontal handstand were the "keg stands personal helper, aka the barrier boys" had to hold them as they attempted to drink back more beer!! Whoo!!! I did find it funny watching all of this madness, and I enjoyed it quite thoroughly. The fun ranged from a passed out English dude face down in the dirt, too the table kickers, to in depth rugby league convos. what a hilarious night.
we wrapped up the night with some BK I believe, before walking back to Ryan's.

Ryan's Keg stand

The next day was St Patrick's DAY!! ok most people seemed pretty owned in the morning. but Ryan and Becks "Ryan's Lady" decided it would be a good idea to start up with a cast of wine "I give you props bro but man there was no way I was gonna get on that in the morning" so we got on the Icream buzz instead : ) finishing a 2 litre cookies and cream before noon. Now it didn't end there, they thought it would be an even better idea to get four bottles of scrumpy cider. Too bad most of it actually end up on the floor due to beck's awesome coordination :)
This day consisted of a couple more drinks and video games, as the rain was coming.

Scrumpy that made it into a cup

Beck's being casually comered out

 For the next couple days the rain just came down!! little thunder here and there. Video games on :)
We pretty much just chilled on their couch for the remained of the week, doing a vast mixture of video games drawing and reading.

When the rain finally stop I needed to get my bike fixed again, so we went into the bike barn. Here I talk to a guy named Pat who I asked if he could teach me how to fix a spoke and with a good deal of his time we fixed my wheel "If you ever are in wellington and need to fix your bike give Bikebarn a call at 04-387-3900 and ask for Pat" he hooked me up with some extra spoke nipples for free and didn't charge me anything... This dude was fully the man!!!. After getting it all fixed we head to Pack 'n Save and stocked up.

Our stay at the boys place was awesome "thanks so much too Ryan, Becks, Sam, Adrian and johnny cheers guys" Anyway we needed to get on the boat so we headed off.
It was a beautiful morning, basically a blue bird, the sun was shining with a light crisp breeze "Ryan just finish his assignment that same morning ;)" anyway we said goodbye to everyone and headed off.

While waiting at the Inter islander we sat out on a bench in the sun.

Soon after we met this German dude Lucus who was a pretty out of it guy, he ended up joining our journey across the straight.. While waiting at the inter Island we almost missed our boat because we walked along the wrong track and we were waiting in the vehicle loading zone. ah hahaha although this happened we had to be escorted onto the boat which was pretty sweet to feel special :)

while on the boat we saw a whole school of dolphin. which was neat. It finally felt like we were traveling now, although pretty exhausted due to playing video games the night before "assassins creed III is a whole bunch of fun" so we ended up passing out. We woke before coming into the "sounds" what a beautiful greeting. so green a luscious, beautiful blue water to towering mountain tops in a channel taking us into Picton. 

When we arrived into Picton, it was a little town with a marvelous inlet to the ocean, protected from all winds and towering mountain tops.
After hanging out down by the water front with our new Allie Lucus, sharing a beer or two, we finally parted ways.
Now we had to find the Warwicks place, apparently its right next to the police station?? what a good location for Jason and Dean "a quick walk home ay" :p
Anyhow we were walking up the road and we saw a figger in the distance... and we know we're in the right place :) "ah haha ok so what really happened was Cole was looking out one of the windows in the house and I was like ah ha thats Dean guess we found it. :) it wasn't dean it was cole, but anyhow we haven't seen this guy for a whole bunch of years." (for anyone who doesn't know, these guys are like family although we might not talk for years and haven't seen each other in ages. We grew up with Ryan, Cole, Dean and well Jason was older but we still hung out. So if we say Barrier boys it just means people who are family but not related and who we have grown up with and know since we were born.) Now that that's all cleared up Cole came out and we had a mad catch up
Soon after Jason and Dean got back and we did a little reminiscing.

We had a delicious feed of fish that they had caught, some kingfish in the mitts.
Too bad we could stay longer as the weather was moving in and we had to hustle to nelson.

Featherston to Wellington

We got up nice and early and scavenged what we had left of food to form a make shift breakfast. Once the tummies were full we were ready to head off. The way we had planned the trip was to have the last day consist of only the Rimutaka and a remaining 40 km into Wellington city seeing as the mountain was 690 metres high, which made it the biggest hill so far!

Now for the last few days we were so frustrated at ridding long boring straights that we couldn't even listen to our music without getting annoyed. However with a huge mountain ahead of us we switched the music back on and began to climb. It was an epic pace that we maintained and cars cheered us on as we made our way to the summit which help motivate us further. This hill was a perfect example of a rugged NZ mountain pass, being cut straight from the mountain over looking a huge gorge. We were lucky that it happened to be a Saturday as not a single truck passed by, it could have been a little hairy if they were around as there was barely enough room for two campervans to pass side by side.

We were both amazed at how easy we made it to the top, not a single break was taken and yet we managed to stay in 2nd or 3rd gear the whole way up!

Once at the top we took a moment to absorb the fact that this was the highest we had been so far on this journey and moments later we decided that we should add a tree into the equation as were still not high enough.

Before heading down the hill we noticed an incomplete drawing of a flower so we completed it before heading onwards.

About 10 km after the hill we started to feel really drained, our muscle had actually ran out of energy! So we pulled over and searched our bags for food. There was one can of super gnarly, some old bread and a can of baked beans. It was a struggle to get down as it tasted pretty bad but we got through it! Haha we also noticed after we were full that the bread was fully covered in soggy mould, somehow we were to hungry to have noticed!

With the tummies full we continued into Wellington. It was good to see that Wellington had a well set up bike lane along the high way between upper and lower hut. It was a shame however that everyone using it was a spandex warrior ridding a $4000 dollar bike at the speed of a toddler with training wheels. We even overheard one of them complaining about having a sore butt because he had just ridden from work in upperhut!!! Come on mate that's like 20 km try going 100 km a day on a $200 bike.

So anyway we ended up getting pretty lost, as our mate Ryan lived in Hataitai and we had no idea there was a tunnel going through the mountain. We had a few attempts at trying to find a way over the hill before we ask this guy Liam who was ridding a BMX where to go.

We made it to Ryans and found out our mate Dean was heading down to Welly as well! It was good to catch up with a few of the Barrier boys again.

Woodville to Featherston

We when't from Woodville to Featherston through Masterton and it was a pretty lame day, just hot, long straight roads and dry farmlands. I wouldn't recommend ridding it!

Hawkes Bay to Woodville

After a few days rest it was finally time to leave, as the weather would be turning bad in 3 days and we wanted to reach Wellington before it hit.

The first leg of the journey was a hard one, as our muscles were stuck in a deep sleep. Even the little hills posed a challenge. It could have been due to the hot sun beating down on us or perhaps we hadn't fully recovered. Anyhow we continued onwards and eventually warmed up to our normally cruising speed.

About two hours in we came to a herd of cows blocking the road and the way forward, it was a typical Kiwi situation were the farmer being lazy decided to stop for lunch half way in between moving the cows from paddock A to paddock B. As we approached closer one of the cows spotted us and started to get a bit spooked, then within seconds he turned away from us and began running. Now seeing as we're huge scary creatures this then triggered all the other cows to start running as well. This ended up working out good for us as the road was no longer blocked and a few minutes later we had herded the cows down into the other paddock and were back on our way.

The roads between Havelock north and Featherston were probably some of the most boring roads in New Zealand, as the whole way it was just flat farm land after flat farm land. However some of the mountain ranges to the side of the road were pretty nice to look at but it still drained our souls tediously peddling the long straights.

Before we had left that morning we hydrated up skulling back 2 litres of water each! Now it was about 1pm and we had stop to watch this stunt pilot flip about in his little plane. Next I decided to walk over to a fence to take a leak!! HAhah and to may surprise it actually ended up being an electric fence!! a bloody powerful one as well.... Good thing I was tired because after that I had a huge adrenaline rush and well yeah I'm pretty sure you can guess how much it hurts to have current flow from your genitals down to the ground........

Seeing as it was a really hot day, when we got to Dannevirke we couldn't not buy some softserves, even though I hate to support fast food, the soft serves were pretty good! Now on the way out these young gutter rats (young kids with no manners) were talking so much shit and trying way to hard to be cool, personally I think there's few things worst that one could do to there image then dress up as Justin Bieber and ride around on a scooter.It does take skill to do back flips and tricks on one of those batty  things but I just can't face polluting our page with gayness!! Sorry kids but I can't put your scooter videos up. One of the kids was pretty cool though and made scootering look pretty skill full!

So the day started to get pretty late and we were really starting to feel it!

Yet we still carried on and made it to woodville, There we located a local campsite that costed $10 which was alright as it had a shower.

Hawkes Bay

A few hours after arriving in Hawkes Bay, instead of resting our wary bodies and minds, Sune and Anton gave us the option of doing the local Havlock north mountain bike trail. There was no way we were about to turn down the opportunity to trade in our slow bulky bikes for some nice speedy mountain ones, regardless of biking close to 80 km that day.

The day was just reaching evening with about 2 hours of light left, when we finally headed out. The track started out in a small little park and quickly climbed, wrapping around the rugged mountain side. We were fairly impressed that the two siblings managed to keep up with ease and within 20 minutes we  had reached the top.

Now to quickly go off topic, when we left the Wiehahn's house and were heading towards Wellington, we ended up leaving behind our camera!!  Haha but seeing as we forgot to bring it on the mountain bike track, Sune and Anton re-rode the track and documented it. So all the following photo's we credit to them :) Thanks guys! Hahah and mean bail Sune!!

I can't be bothered going into detail about the track seeing as we still have around 1000 km of the journey to write out. However I'll state that the track was similar to Snow Boarding back country, pure downhill acceleration over rough bumpy terrain, with a mix of jumps, tight bermed turns and sand. It was really good being able to soak up some adrenaline as a by product of ridding a bike (as opposed to being bored out of ones mind peddling for 8 hours straight) I highly recommend people check it out!

The remainder of our time in Havelock north was spent eating, playing music, being shown some areas of the bay, eating some more, and having a good catch up with friends.

Cheers everyone in Hawkes bay for having us :)

Oh and by the way we found Havelock south just outside of Picton on the South Island, I always wondered why it had the north part!!! 

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.