December 13th - the journey is finished and we're getting packed up to return home today. Here are the final days on the west coast of the South Island. It's rainforest there, so no surprise that it rains. After the last rest day, we awoke to a soggy start and it didn't let up all day.
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| wet setup for breakfast |
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| ...out on the road and it didn't get better. |
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| single lane bridge |
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| another single lane bridge |
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| just after lunch... best view of the afternoon |
...but the nicest thing of the day was arriving at lunch where Emily greeted us handing us each a cup of hot coffee. Usually there are no hot drinks at lunch, but bless the crew, they made it happen.
The next day's forecast was better, but none of us expected a beautiful clear day when we got up.
We headed inland along the Haast River, a continual, but mainly gentle ascent at first...
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| ...over more single lane bridges... |
...and eventually into steeper (much steeper) and longer (like several kilometers) climbs in the forest with lots of waterfalls from yesterday's rain...
Up in these forests we saw New Zealand's smallest bird, the Rifleman, measuring only three inches nose to tail...
...and hundreds of deer in several farms along the way...
A couple of passes and distinct geography changes later we emerged above Lake Hawea...
...and faced several more very steep ascents to get around the lake...
...and then meeting Jim Pierce (who we knew from Bamboo Road) at the top of a particularly steep 1-km hill... he had come over from his home on the east coast to meet the group... there he was with a cold beer... that fuelled us for the last few km into our last campsite of the trip, and a nice setting it was...
The next morning we were all in our nice new TransOceania cycling jerseys for a photo before setting off for the last day...
...which took us up a long and again very steep ascent (you must be getting sick of hearing about steep ascents, but we were reduced to under 6 km/hr for significant stretches, not just us slowpokes, but others too)...
...before arriving at lunch at the top of the pass. This pass is the highest sealed road in NZ at an altitude of just over 1000 metres.
A great view down to Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu...
After lunch it was onto this great descent. The brake pads really got a workout...
...and further around the bend we were on these switchbacks...
...before again having to climb to get around to town without being on the main highway.
The next day we went up on the gondola and could see the road we'd come down...
...and great views of the lake and the town...
Sunday saw us going to Milford Sound. There's a single lane tunnel on that route. New Zealand is home to the Kea which is a large alpine parrot, heavier feathers (and insulation) for the colder climes, camouflaged with greenish top feathers, and they wander around the parking area looking for rubber to chew on... seriously... watch your bike tyres...
We had seen one of these in a wildlife sanctuary and been able to see beneath the wing, where camouflage is not an issue... beautiful red-orange colours...
So on to Milford Sound...
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| one lonely penguin seen on a rock at the edge of the Sound |
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| ...didn't know seals lay on their backs! |
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| a bit of competition between males on the rock |
That's the end... thanks for following our adventure... Christmas is less than two weeks away... no snow here but we understand that Canada is doing better in that regard. We wish you a merry Christmas and much health and happiness in the new year.
Bye for now... Ursula and Rae
Thanks Ray and Ursula for this fabulous account and beautiful pictures of your trip. It looked amazing!! I loved the descriptions of the rides, the stories, and all the descriptive photography. Thank you so much for sharing and for taking the time out of your trip to write up the days events and make regular posts on this site. I lived it all!!
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