Hello from the southernmost capital city in the world, Wellington New Zealand! Sarah and I arrived in Wellington today via bus. We cycled to Wanganui and then took a bus into Wellington since our guide book, Peddler’s Paradise, said the road going into Wellington is the most dangerous road in all of New Zealand for cycling. We are also staying at a hostel in Wellington since there is no place in the city that you can put up a tent. Luxury! On the bus ride here, we used Isa and Terry’s tried and true Zip Tie Method to halve our baggage count.

On our ride down to Wanganui from National Park was very pleasant. More quiet roads and green hills filled with peacefully grazing lambs. We did however have our first experience riding in the rain. We started out from National Park in the morning and were feeling a little depressed because we couldn’t see any of the views that we were told were beautiful and we knew we weren’t going to be able to avoid getting wet. As soon as Sarah got a little ahead of me on the road, she almost disappeared into the mist.

We rode for about 30kms in the rain and I realized that my heavy bike is not easy to stop on a wet road. On our first real descent, I got a little panicky when I applied the brakes and … nothing happened. I didn’t slow down. I tried a little more force and … still nothing. I pulled with all my might and finally felt like my bike was no longer gaining speed. With all the weight on my bike, it is like a runaway freight train on downhills. I used to get up to close to 50mph on descents on my race bike in Seattle, but anything above 50kph gets scary on this fully loaded touring bike. I think we will be going through a lot of brake pads on this trip.

Luckily, things dried up in the afternoon and we stopped at a country store in Kakatahi and found that the store owner was an American who had been living in New Zealand for five years. We chatted with her for a while and the most interesting thing we learned is that Americans actually travel to New Zealand because of the Lord of the Rings movies and when they arrive THEY GO SEARCHING FOR HOBBITS. We shit you not. Here is her description of her conversations with those people when they show up at her store.

“So, where exactly do the Hobbits live around here?”
“Ummm…that was a movie. Hobbits don’t actually exist.”
“I don’t know. They looked pretty real to us. You haven’t seen any around here?”
“…No…”

The tourists then proceed to wander farmer’s fields looking for Hobbits and have been known to dig up rabbit holes and destroy property while doing so. Can you believe that?! We are not sure if we can or not but the woman was pretty adamant that she was telling the truth. Do you think Hobbits live in these hills?

After a morning of rain and and afternoon of scorching sun, we were tired and hot so we camped for the night and cooled off in the Wanganui river. It was cold, clear, and refreshing after a long day of cycling. The cold water invigorated my beard. It really drives Sarah wild when my beard is fluffed. My moustache still refuses to grow though.

We are going to spend the 13th in Wellington and then take a ferry to the South Island on the 14th. In two weeks on the North Island, we saw a lot of beautiful farming country. We missed a lot of things we want to see like the Bay of Islands, Coromandel, Rotorua, Taupo, and Napier but we decided two weeks was a good amount of time to budget so we can see most of the South Island and we may be able to see some of those things on our way back too. It definitely feels strange to be traveling South to colder weather, but I guess that makes sense when the sun passes through the northern half of the sky!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 13th, 2007 at 4:25 am and is filed under New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.