Tired. Aching. Blistered. Throbbing.

That’s the only way to describe our feet after our tramping escapade in Abel Tasman the last two days. “We want to go to Bark Bay”, we told the DoC officer with nary a thought to the distance we would have to hike or the fact that we had been cycling so much over the past three weeks that we barely remembered how to walk anymore. But, we sealed our fate when we purchased our pass for the Bark Bay Hut on Saturday night and cycled up to Marahau the night before our journey. The ride from Motueka to Marahau was beautiful, winding along the coast, crossing bluffs, and catching glimpses of the Tasman Bay. We stopped for a picnic lunch at Kaiteriteri, “the most beautiful beach in NZ.”

We camped just outside the park at a place called Old MacDonald’s farm. We had heard rumors about this area of New Zealand and they were true. This place was “dress optional.”

We woke up early on Saturday morning, excited to start our tramping, and the scenery was beautiful. So beautiful that we didn’t notice until the end that we had walked 21km and that our feet were in rough shape.

Here are some of the highlights. Our camera doesn’t do justice to the color of the water.

We went to bed in the bunks in the hut and woke up the next morning, not looking forward to our hike back. Our feet were blistered and tender and our legs were sore in places we must never use when cycling. After the first hour, we knew we had a long day of walking ahead of us. About four hours in, Sarah reached the blame state of grief. “Why did you think we could walk this far in two days?! Did you check the map beforehand?” I laughed at the time, but a short while later I was the one in the pit of despair.

Here I am, soul destroyed by the trail. I told Sarah to leave me at this point. Spending a night in the bush sounded more appealing than walking out.

After six hours, we made it out alive. Walking back to our camp, we wondered if we would walk this slowly at age 90. After a couple of ibuprofen, a lot of water, and some spaghetti, we collapsed in the tent. Today we are resting in Motueka, enjoying their “bowl lattes” and resting for next week’s cycle down the west coast.

Fun Fact:

The giant Haast eagle used to roam New Zealand’s skies. It was the world’s largest eagle with a wing span of 3 meters. Sadly, it is now extinct.

All is well on the South Island. Our ferry ride across the Cook Strait was smooth, so we were happy about that. We heard from one Kiwi that the seas in the strait can reach 30 feet (another tall tale?) so we were happy neither of us got seasick. We arrived in Picton on the afternoon of the 14th and rode a short way on Queen Charlotte Drive along the Marlborough Sound to a DoC campsite on Aussie Bay. As we were cycling on the shore, we were amazed at how much this region of New Zealand looks like Puget Sound in the United States. Forested hills along the coast with blue-green water and mussels everywhere. Queen Charlotte Drive was a great road for cycling. Narrow, winding, and hilly with beautiful views. We really prefer these types of roads for cycling because the cars on the road are much more cautious and pass us with much more room.

After Sarah tested the water (warm!), we were just setting up our tent when we were greeted by one of the friendliest 14 year olds we have ever met, Sam from Auckland. We instantly struck up a conversation about the differences between New Zealand and the United States and Sam laughed every time he heard us mangle one of the Maori names of the towns and cities around here. After talking for a while, Sam’s dad came over and asked us if we would like some of the fresh blue cod they caught on a fishing expedition the day before in the sound. We of course said yes and when they brought the fish over we were amazed at how good it was. Just boiled and served with a little salt, butter, and pepper and it melted in your mouth. Sarah was craving the fish and talking about it days later, saying it was the best fish she ever had! After dinner, we were invited over to the family’s campervan for tea. Our first tea in New Zealand! Yum. We have been so amazed by the friendliness of the Kiwis all over New Zealand. Meeting and talking to them has really been one of the highlights of our trip so far.

We have since been making our way along SH6 moving along the coast from East to West along the top of the South Island. Now that we are in New Zealand, Sarah has been re-reading Isa and Terry’s journal entries and she is always jealous of the coffee and cakes they ate so often, so she finally convinced me that we should do the same.

We also crossed our first two official saddles of the trip. Rai Saddle at 247m and Whangamoa Saddle at 347m. Rai Saddle went well, but Whangamoa was undergoing some construction and was covered with fresh tar and rocks. (Most of the roads in New Zealand are chip seal.) We lined up with the cars and attempted to navigate the gravel, but were instantly slowed when the sticky rocks became lodged between our tires and fenders and made it impossible to turn our wheels. Sarah got off her bike and started pushing it up in the grassy shoulder. I tried to continue on a little further and eventually got a rock wedged so tight in my front fender that it broke the fender off the support! I was then forced to carry my heavy bike several hundred meters up the road!

After a short break to catch our breath and to temporarily re-attach my fender with some electrical tape we made it to the top safe and sound and descended into the town of Nelson. After a visit to the town’s impressive iSite, we decided to visit one of the local breweries, Bays Brewery. After a quick tour, we bought a six-pack of various bottles and enjoyed them back at our camp site. One thing we have been surprised about in New Zealand is how weak the beer is. Alcohol content of 3-4% is normal here and the IPA we had from the brewery did not taste hoppy to us at all. We think we should start frequenting pubs to make money in drinking contests with the locals!

Tomorrow Sarah and I are going to do an overnight tramping trip on the Coast Track of Abel Tasman National Park. The park is supposed to be one of the most beautiful coastal areas of New Zealand with turquoise waters and golden beaches so we are very excited. After that, we will start to make our way down the rugged West coast.

Keep the comments and emails coming! We love to hear from all of you and spend a lot of time laughing and talking about your comments!

Stats from the 2nd Week:
Taumarunui to Aussie Bay
4 days cycling

188.96km (47.24km / cycling day)
NZ$458.05 (NZ$65.43 / day)
11 hours. 36 minutes, 1 second in the saddle
Longest day: 72.28km

Fun Facts:

The only indigenous land mammals in New Zealand are bats.

Almost half the world’s whale, porpoise, and dolphin population lives in New Zealand’s waters.

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!

Big news – we cycled for a net elevation gain today! That means no more rolling hills. We started this morning, after a day of resting, at 170m. We ended up, after 40km, at 820m for a net gain of 650m. Most of the day was gradual uphill which wasn’t too difficult at all. There was one giant monster of a hill right near the end of the day near a town called Raurimu. Raurimu is famous for its spiral railroad track designed to overcome really steep hills & get trains from the valley to the plateau above. Too bad we couldn’t cycle along the railroad spiral…instead we had to make it up the long, steep grade. Yikes! We sat on the porch of a deserted ski chalet and ate a sandwich in preparation for the climb. Jamie gave a pep talk, the major gist of which is “Do not give up or you will be totally screwed, there is no way we can push our bikes up this hill!” I thought about trying to hitch-hike to the top but didn’t really want to face the humiliation of admitting to that on this website. So, as you might guess, we made it! We were even cheered along by friendly beeps from passing cars. At the top we were greeted with beautiful views of Mt. Ruapehu – a gigantic snow covered volcano on the horizon. Here’s me with the mountain in the background. You can’t really see it, but it was pretty in real life:

We’re currently right outside Tongariro National Park which is host to one of the most famous day hikes in New Zealand – Tongariro Crossing. For now we’re planning to skip the hike for two reasons:

1. It is really cloudy, rainy, and in general bad hiking weather. We’d miss all the views. It’s not raining hard enough to make biking miserable yet, though (knock on wood).
2. We want to haul ass to Wellington so we can take the ferry to the South Island. We’re planning to come back and see sights on the North Island only if we have time after we’re done in the South.

We’ve left the nice back roads and are back on the highway for now, but it hasn’t been horrible so far. I think we’re far enough out of Auckland to be rid of the major traffic hassles. Every once in awhile we run into a bridge where the shoulder disappears, which is bad news for us because we spend our days riding on the shoulder. At these bridges our method is to slow down, look behind us for giant trucks, and dart across when the coast is clear.

Other news for the day: we ate an entire package of cheese & and entire package of cookies today. We were also on track to finish an entire loaf of bread today, but decided to save it for breakfast. We’re both really hungry all the time, which is fun!

Hanging out in the tent:

Campsite had a flock of chickens. Jamie liked this one best:

Sarah carefully studying the elevation maps in our cycling guidebook. I spend a lot of time doing this:

Jamie tallying the daily stats:

Stats from the 1st Week (2006.01.01 – 2006.01.07):

Auckland to Taumarunui
6 days cycling, 1 day resting
327.9km (54.56km/cycling day)
NZ$436.89 (NZ$62.41/day)
20 hours, 33 minutes, 20 seconds in the saddle

Today Sarah and I are taking a rest day at the Taumarunui Holiday Park along the Wanganui River. We arrived here yesterday after two of our best days so far. After talking with a man at the tourist information station, we decided to take the inland route down to Wellington and we found some quiet back roads that took us off the main route and into the heart of sheep country. The roads were narrow and beautiful and traffic was practically nonexistent. The first day we cycled to a small village called Bennydale where the local pub owner let us set up our tent behind his house. We were having a beer in his pub when a group of locals asked us if we would like to have a drink with them. It turns outs these locals were farmers raising sheep and cattle – our dream come true! The men were discussing the best way to treat a wooden fence post to make it last the longest and the different carbohydrate/protein makeups of the grass at different times of the year. The women were bragging about how their 14 year old daughters were at home making dinner while they were enjoying their beer. They were also very eager to discuss “Dr. 90210” and American celebrities like J-Lo and Paris Hilton with Sarah. The other thing we noticed is that these people really know how to drink. We were amazed at the number of 1 liter bottles of beer these people were able to put away. After seeing them, we decided it would be best not to ride our bikes on these farm roads at night! As they were leaving, two of the farmers, Roly and Maury, offered to give us a tour of a real Kiwi farm the next day because we were going to be passing their farms on the way out of town. Of course we accepted!

The next day we cycled a short way in some beautiful hills to Roly’s farm. He is a 3rd generation family farmer and raises sheep and cattle on his 1700 acre farm. We hopped on the back of Roly’s 4-wheeler and he gave us a tour of his entire farm. As we drove around, Roly filled us in on all the ins and outs of raising lambs and cattle. We learned how the animals are switched to new paddocks with regularity, based on the levels of grass, type of terrain, and needs of the animal. We heard the gory details of what you do with a “shitty sheep” which is an animal with diarrhea all over its back-end and tail. The diarrhea attracts flies, the flies lay eggs which hatch to maggots, and the maggots eat the sheep along with its shit. That is why they crop the tails on sheep when they are young. After the tour, we had some pork sandwiches with Roly for lunch and he introduced us to his herding dogs Buddy, Patch, and Bruin. A three year old herding dog is so valuable to a farmer that they can sell for up to $3000. Afterwards we headed down the road to Maury’s farm where he and his family were drafting lambs to be taken to the freezer works where they would be processed and sent off to England or the United States. The entire family was working together and it looked like they were having a lot of fun. They showed us their shearing shed and they all agreed that shearing sheep was one of the hardest jobs in the world. A shearer is bent over for 12 hours a day in the stifling heat of a shearing shed and a good one can shear up to 400 sheep a day. Maury’s family had a different type of dogs called Huntaways which were breed specifically for herding sheep and cattle in the terrain of New Zealand. After the drafting, the family was off to lunch so we said goodbye and headed down the road to Taumarunui.

Roly told us it was all downhill from his farm to Taumarunui, but he failed to mention all the rolling hills along the way. Three hours and 45kms later, we arrived at the Holiday Park. As soon as we pulled in, Sarah’s nose started bleeding. She has been getting nose bleeds at least once a day this week and every one we meet has a different theory from pollen, to heat, to the heavy breathing she does on the bicycle. As soon as the camp host saw Sarah bleeding she flew into mother hen mode and whipped out a cold compress, cold flannel, and set Sarah down in the shade to rest and recover from her horrible affliction. After Sarah recovered and we set up camp, we decided to rest here the next day. Tomorrow we will start climbing towards Tongariro National Park. This will be the start of some real climbing and we will get up to 800m near the park, so we will be traveling slowly. We will continue to head South until we reach Wanganui on the coast.

Climbing the hill to Roly’s farm:

,

Chasing sheep on the 4-wheeler:

Roly’s lambs fattening up on the lush grass:

Roly moving his bulls to some fresh grass:

Docile steers:

A quiet road to Taumarunui:

Sarah’s bloody nose and cold compress!

Today Sarah and I made it to the Waitomo Caves to see the fabulous glowworms. As soon as we rolled up to Waitomo, we were greeted by the New Zealand tourism industry for the first time. We saw a lot of families in camper vans with tired, crying kids and a lot of young guys in wetsuits saying “My name’s Ian and I’ll be your guide today…”. We haven’t really been thinking about it, but we have been travelling through some rural farming country which is very beautiful, but which doesn’t have a lot of tourist activities. It still feels at this point like we are trying to figure out what this trip is going to be about. It is easy to travel all day by bicycle and enjoy the countryside and then just fall asleep in your tent as soon as the sun goes down without really doing anything.

We have both been impressed by how green and beautiful it is here and Sarah’s quadriceps have been impressed by the rolling hills. She still refuses to try clipless pedals, so she is stuck doing leg presses all day. Her bike has gotten progressively lighter every day so far and mine is getting heavier. However, she does have me as her personal soigneur and gets a leg massage every night, so life isn’t all bad and I’m sure she will get stronger soon.

It’s funny – Sarah and I are both nervous but about completely different things. She is worried this trip is going to be too difficult for her physically and I’m worried the bikes will break down beyond my abilities and we will be stranded somewhere in the toe jam of New Zealand with no chance of rescue. So far, we have both been spending a lot of time reassuring each other that everything is going to be allright.

Here are some photos from our ride today:

Tomorrow we will have to make a decision. Head for the East coast and Mt. Egmont National Park or head directly South towards Wellington which will take us by Tongariro National Park. We got some advice yesterday that the road heading directly South is much more bikeable and traffic is lighter, so we are leaning in that direction but are going to gather some more opinions tomorrow before making a decision.

Today was the third day of cycling – we are making slow but steady progress towards Wellington where we’ll take the ferry to South Island, which almost everyone prefers to the North. The day started out with something very exciting – my toenail finally fell off! I am now left with a hideous nub. It better start looking normal soon. Gross, I know, but everyone who’s been near me during the past 3 months has had to listen to me talk about the gruesome details of my poor toenail that’s been dying since I ran the Twin Cities marathon on Oct 1st. Don’t worry, I won’t post any pictures, but just needed to note this major life event.

Today Jamie and I rode from Hamilton to Te Awamutu. Only 30 km – not quite up to our daily mileage goals! You see, I woke up this morning & packed the sleeping bags, mats, and tent…and immediately felt exhausted. At first I thought it might be due to the fact that the coffee we brewed in our wonderful french press stainless steel mugs (a very thoughtful Christmas gift from my brothers!) was a bust. First we used the ‘boiling water’ spigot in the campground only to discover it was lukewarm water. Ick. We were low on coffee so I dumped out the tepid water as fast as possible so we could re-use the beans with proper boiling water. To my dismay, the water I poured out was decidedly brown – precious caffeine down the drain! I boiled up some new water, drank the weak-tasting coffee and, as stated before felt exhausted.

I knew this trip would be physically very difficult for me and boy was I right. The 30 kms we covered today were, as the guidebooks call it, “Rolling Hills”. Ouch for my leg muscles. We’d speed down one descent only to labor up another hill. Repeat, repeat, repeat. For those of you in Seattle, the hills were not quite as steep as Queen Anne, but they were killer enough for me. I was panting and straining up each ascent while trying to be positive by concentrating on how big my leg muscles will be soon!

Sarah eating a snack:

At approx. 30 kms we stopped for some lunch & ice cream. As we were eating my legs started cramping and hurting. The next town was another 30 km away and rather than torture myself I told Jamie I wanted to stop for the day. He wanted to go on (bastard!) but was nice enough not to give me a hard time about being so tired.

We bought stuff for dinner at the local grocery store. The store was insanely busy – we waited in line for quite awhile before we actually got to the cashier. She then asked us for ID to buy our beer (legal age is 18 here). We gave her our US drivers licenses. She wasn’t sure of their validity so buzzed her manager to look them over. Everyone in line waited, manager came over, and said “We don’t see these too often, could we have a look at your passports?” We handed over the passports, she examined them thoroughly, put her finger on the “1980” on mine, everyone waited, … and then she asked me “So, how old are you?” I said 26, she said OK, and all was fine. The cashier then explained “We have to get ID from everyone under 25.” That didn’t make any sense at all to us, but we just left – we were happy to have our food & beer.

Jamie enjoying his hard-won beer:

Our average speed today was actually fairly high – about 17 kms/hr, with a riding time of 2 hours. Tomorrow we’ll stay in Waitomo which is the home of the world famous glowworm caves. These are huge caverns that are the homes to thousands and thousands of glowworms. They live on the ceilings, and as you float through on the small rives that run through the caves you can look up at the glowworms like stars.

Sarah and I began our New Zealand on January 1st. We decided to cycle down the West coast of the North Island in order to get to the South Island as quickly as possible. Some Kiwis and some Dutch travellers recommended that we spend 80% of our time on the South Island and 20% on the North.

We had just spent a full day relaxing at our camp site so we were both excited to begin bicycling. At the camp near Auckland, we met some Dutch and Australian travelers and a couple of Kiwis as well. The Dutch immediately asked us what we thought of President Bush and then burst out laughing. The Kiwis didn’t discuss politics, but they loved to make fun of the Australians because they said you can meet a beautiful blonde in Sydney and then be immediately repulsed when she greats you with a gravely “G’day mate!” We also sampled the famous New Zealand meat pies which were actually really good.

We got on the road early on the 1st and started to head South on the Great South Road. It was a pretty easy road and traffic was light, so we were happy after being warned by multiple people that the drivers in New Zealand are not friendly to bicyclists. After riding about 20kms we stopped for an ice cream and then we had to get on SH1. Peddler’s Paradise recommended taking SH1 most of the way from Auckland to Wellington so we were a little dismayed when we realized it was a 4-lane divided highway with a speed limit of 100km/h and a 3 foot bike lane with a lot of debris and no separation from the road. Yikes! After a couple of on-ramp and off-ramp crossings, we both decided we would like to have mirrors on our bikes. At about 30kms, Sarah got a flat in the rear. We examined and patched it and were about to start off again when we realized that she had a decent side gash in the tire.

Only 30kms into the trip and Sarah’s tire was already trashed! We decided to continue on down the road and swap out the tire with our spare folding tire when we camped for the night. We rode a little ways on and met some local children during a water break. It is really funny to hear kids with a New Zealand accent. This one exclaimed, “Yous fellas rode all the way from Auckland?!” and then decided he was going to ride the rest of the way with us. We convinced him not to, but he wouldn’t let us leave until I agreed to “make a muscle with him.”

The rest of the day was uneventful until about 60kms when Sarah cracked. I did my best Phil Ligget impersonation telling her “she was a shell of the woman she once was” and “all she could do no was limit her losses and live to ride another day.” That cheered her up a bit and she ate a neat little snack bar we found here called “One Square Meal” that has 33% of basically everything you need to eat in a day. That held us over until we made it to Te Kauwhata were we decided to camp for the night. We rolled into the village centre and a senior citizen on the city council welcomed us to the town and told us where the Domain camp site was. Domain camp sites are areas in the town where you can camp for free (we think) and he also let us know that the town was going to double in size soon because they are building a prison here and the senior center is also building several more housing developments. We purchased some middle bacon for our evening meal and got our tent up just in time before a nasty thunderstorm came through. We waited out the storm in our tent and then cooked up a pretty tasty dinner of potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and some fried middle bacon.

We were about ready to go to bed when Sarah started to feel sick. She had a sore throat and was sneezing and then got some horrible diarrhea to go along with it. She spent the rest of the night getting up every 20 minutes to run to the toilet. When we woke up in the morning, she was still feeling very weak and sick, so we decided to rest there for the day. I rode into town to get some toilet paper, orange juice, and yoghurt for breakfast and as we were eating we heard Sarah’s front tire explode. Her tires must be cursed! (The only other explanation we could think of is that we didn’t deflate her tire on the airplane and that somehow affected it.) Sarah spent most of the day sleeping in the tent and I fixed up her tires and a couple of other things that were broken.

We traveled 62.11kms at an average speed of 14.5km/h on our first day. Slow, but a little further than we expected.

After a day of rest, we were ready to get on the road again, so we hopped back on the bikes and rode down SH1 to Hamilton where we are right now. Nothing else broke today but the road was the same busy highway for most of the way, so the riding wasn’t very relaxing. About 2/3rd of the way through, we discovered a much quieter side road which we took. We were both happy to be off the highway, but the tradeoff was this road was rolling hills the entire way. The trip today was 65km and it took us about three hours.

In Hamilton, we stopped at a bike shop to get a new tire for Sarah (Vittoria Randonneur) and I got a new cycling cap that says New Zealand in three different places on it so people will really know I’m a tourist now. (I had to get a cap because the top of my head was burning – like father, like son.) Sarah and I are about to go have dinner now. There are a lot of Indian restaurants in this town, so we are going to try one. Happy New Year!

We’ve made it to New Zealand! As Jamie mentioned it took 4 flights & 36 hours (23 flying, 13 layover) to get here. We arrived in Auckland at 2:30pm on Dec 30th, got through customs, then put our bikes back together, strapped on our 8 panniers, 2 handlebar bags, and 2 frame bags, and rode to our first campsite.

For your entertainment here are some highlights from the past two days:

• We acquired bike boxes fairly eaily thanks to the nice people at Bike Cycles in Wilmington. Jamie thought it’d be a good idea for us to ‘test’ fit the bikes in the box. Thank goodness he did, because it took multiple hours of bike disassembly to cram them into the boxes. We both worked ourselves into quite a frenzy in my mom’s garage: Jamie was running around in a sweating fit & I was taping up boxes with wild abandon & much excess tape.
• Momentary panic attack when we realized the bikes, their giant boxes, and all our panniers were not going to fit in the two small cars we’d planned to drive to the airport in the morning. Aunt Beverly saved the day by letting us use her SUV – everything fit in perfectly.
• Wilmington to LAX went smoothly. Upon checking in at the international desk we were informed we’d need Australian visas for our 3 hour layover in Sydney. WHAT?! Just the day before United had told me we wouldn’t need visas… We applied for them at the United ticket desk and thankfully they were approved. The lady helping us really freaked us out when she said “Sometimes last minute visas are denied, I really don’t know why and there is nothing I can do about it. So if that happens, you two are on your own.” Ack!!
• Got to Sydney. Our longest leg (14 hour flight) went very smoothly. We slept for a few hours, woke up & took Benadryl, then slept again. Thanks Mom for the Benadryl!
• Had to go through security again in Sydney. Our allen wrenches & socket set, which we’d been carrying with us since Wilmington, were confiscated as ‘banned items’. Much panic ensued again – we needed those tools to put our bikes back together in Auckland! We begged and bargained and the very nice people at New Zealand Air finally agreed to take one of our carry-ons, stick the bikes tools in it, and process it as checked baggage.
• During customs in Auckland we were stopped because one of the trained dogs smelled something illegal in one of our bags. NZ is extremely strict about bringing fruit, vegetables, meat, and milk products into the country. The dog was apparently smelling the apples we’d had in our carryon but had eating before landing. They searched the bag to make sure there were no more illegal apples, then let us pass through.
• Customs also took away our tent and sent it for inspection in the ‘BioHazard Protection’ room (or something like that). They were inspecting it for seeds & foreign plant material. We passed the test and our tent was returned in a giant messy heap. ugh! So I got the lovely job of re-rolling and re-stuffing our tent into its bag on the sidewalk outside the airport.

The Auckland airport has a very nice area with bike work stands where we put our bikes back together. Everything came through just fine with only a few minor scrapes & we successfully reassembled everything. Hurray! We then rolled out of the airport – on the LEFT side of the road, very tricky – towards our first camp site. Only 13 km on a not-too-scary road. We set up the tent, ate a little bit, chatted with some fellow campers and went to bed at 9:30pm. We both slept through the night just fine, woke up in the morning at a decent time, and today we have been feeling normal. Is it possible to adjust to jet lag that quickly? I hope so!

Here’s me with our bikes & baggage feeling very relieved that everything made it:

Putting bikes back together in Auckland airport:

Campsite:

The day has finally arrived! Sarah and I leave for New Zealand this morning at 07:45 EST. We will arrive in Auckland, New Zealand on December 30th after 23 hours of flying and 13 hours of lay overs. Sarah is sleeping like a baby right now, but I am definitely feeling nervous. It is hard to believe we are actually doing this.

Today we got some bike boxes from BikeCycles in Wilmington and packed up our boxes for the flight. US Airways would have allowed us to just wrap our bikes in bubble wrap, but we are flying on United for one leg of our journey and they require us to box our bikes. After a couple of minutes of staring at the boxes and comparing them with Sarah’s 61cm Rivendell Atlantis with racks and fenders, I realized her bike was not going to fit in the box without some serious disassembly. We had to remove her seat, front rack, and both fenders. On my bike, we removed the front rack, front fender, and seat and were able to squeeze it in. We were under the impression that we were just going to need to remove the pedals, lower the seat, and turn the handlebars to fit the bikes in, so the process of disassembling the bikes was pretty nerve racking as we wondered whether or not they were going to fit at all. Now we’ll just have to see how many pieces the bikes are in when (if?) they arrive in New Zealand.

If anyone knows if bike boxes come in large enough sizes to hold an assembled touring bike with racks and fenders, leave a comment or send us an email and let us know. We plan on avoiding airlines that require boxes instead of bubble wrap in the future, but if we do have to use boxes we would like to avoid as much disassembly as possible.

In other news, we secured the first sponsor of our site! Averatec has provided us with one of their 1100 Series notebooks which I am using to make this post right now. It is an extremely light and powerful notebook, so we are very happy to have it for this trip. You can find out more details on the Gear page, which I also updated with the rest of the details on our notable gear. If I missed anything it is probably Sarah’s fault.