Spectacular New Zealand

Total distance: 8600 km
Christchurch - Akaroa - Rakaia Gorge - Geraldine - Mt Cook - Wanaka

Only two weeks in NZ so far, actually some of the hardest weeks on our trip, but we fell in love with the country. It's a country of superlatives. The grass is greener, the mountains higher, the climbs steeper, the rain heavier, the wind stronger and the landscape the most beautiful of all. Ok, this sounds like an advertising brochure, but somehow this is how we feel. Maybe it's because the end of our trip is coming near, maybe it's because after all of Asia we just enjoy the nature even more or maybe it's because we are finally really used to this way of traveling. For whatever reason, we are happy every morning when we wake up, so glad to have another day of cycling in front of us, we enjoy the day on the roads (most of the time, just if the headwinds get too strong you can hear us swearing), and we are happy in the evenings, when we arrived after a hard day and have a nice meal and a tea.

We arrived in Christchurch and after enjoying the city for a few days, we left on our bikes towards the Banks Peninsula. There were two choices of roads, one over the hills, the other one flat. We opted for the road over the hills, assuming that we were reasonably fit and that the views must be nice from the top. Well, the views were really nice, but the climbs were sooo tough. The roads are so much steeper here than anywhere else we have been so far, it took us a while to get over the rim of the crater and when we finally arrived in Akaroa, we needed a break. The village was really nice, we spent the day in a small little Café at the seafront, the sun was shining and we had a beautiful view over the sea. In Akaroa we met another cyclist from Switzerland - Roger - and since we were heading in the same direction, we decided to leave together the next day. This was two weeks ago and we are still riding together and have a good time.

From Akaroa we cycled westwards along the inland scenic drive towards the mountains. We had a few really tough days with strong headwinds and a looot of rain, but at the end of the day we were always rewarded with beautiful views over gorges, mountains, rivers, etc. After about 10 days, we arrived at Mount Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand. We camped at the bottom of the glacier and hiked the next day to the glacier lake. Although the weather wasn't really nice, it was great. Just have a look at the pics!

Now we are in Wanaka, waiting for the weather to get better after two days of riding in torrential rain.  For now we are enjoying to just sit in the kitchen of the camp ground with a cup of tea and free Wi-Fi - which is really an exception here in New Zealand. But if the weather gets better there's a lot of things around here to do - bungee jumping, kayaking on the lake, hiking in the Mt Aspiring National Park, paragliding, skydiving, canyoning and so on!

---