North & South

Carol and Roger finally made it to Wellington, New Zealand’s Capital…on the very southern tip of the North Island.  We found it an enchanting and vibrant place…full of energy and commitment to the outdoors.

After a day of sightseeing, we hopped a ferry for the South Island.

We weren’t sure what to expect.  The North Island had proven more lush and far more scenic than we anticipated.  We knew the South Island was more sparsely settled, more mountainous, and more prone to stormy weather than where we had just been.

The ferry ride was supposed to take three hours…  

…but after only two our ferry entered the waters of the South Island.  We figured we were almost there.  As usual, we were mistaken and in for a surprise.

For an hour, we cruised past bays, sounds, and inlets…scenery that made us think we had travelled half way around the world only to end up in the San Juan Islands.

It turns out the last third of the ferry ride sailed through a long bay lined with fjord-like inlets.

Everywhere you looked was a feast for your eyes.

The inlets hosted salmon farms… 

….and commercial oyster beds.

It seemed like a perfect place for boating.  And indeed it was.  Scores of both sailboats and power boats.  It seemed there couldn't be that many people who live on the South Island.

Just a postscript….the New Zealand government has a sense of humor.  As we were driving from Christchurch to Invercargill (on the very south end of the South Island), we ended up on the road between the small town of Clinton and the slightly larger town of Gore.  Some years ago the Kiwi government decided to rename the highway…

The World's Largest Dairy

We set out on a 240 km, three-day ride around Mt. Taranake, one of New Zealand’s active volcanos.

It was a pleasure not to fight gale-force headwinds and get off the main highways.  

The back roads around Mt. Taranake roll through beautiful dairyland.  We were graced with sparse traffic and cool, sunny weather.

This is the heart of New Zealand’s dairy industry.  Around here, there are more cows than people.

There are more than one thousand dairy farms in the district.  

For decades, these farms fed scores of small dairy plants.  No more.  

Today, almost every one of them is closed down…driven out of business by the largest dairy in the world.

This plant boasts it processes 4 million liters of milk a day, 365 days a year.

As the market for dairy products…cheese, yogurt, and butter…has grown in Asia, New Zealand’s exports to these destinations have skyrocketed.  It’s brought prosperity to the farmers and turned the dairy industry into a global juggernaut.  The dairy business is no longer dominated by small family farms; it’s agribusiness to rival any in the world.

Farmers no longer negotiate the price at which they sell their milk.  They have literally become numbers in the big dairy’s books…

…who are even told what times of day to milk their cows.

Farmers have tried fighting the dominating size of the dairy by going large-scale themselves.

Our hosts one night on our ride were retired dairymen whose son manages a co-operative of more than a dozen family farms.  

The co-operative milks 10,000 cows a day, using the latest in high-volume production techniques.

But they’re still on the short end of negotiations with the huge dairies.  In all, we’ve spoken with three farm families.  Each said in the old days it was more of a financial struggle, but they wished they could have the freedom of those days back again.

By the way, local folklore says, if you can see Mt. Taranake, it’s going to rain.  If you can’t see the mountain, it’s already raining.  Guess what happened the day after we shot this photo?

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Tour of the Treetops

The town of Rotorua is known for adventure sports.  This is the place where bungee jumping was invented.

Carol doesn't take physical risks often.  Yet, for weeks she had been reading about a canopy tour company in Rotorua, one of our rest-day locations.  While there are other zip lines in NZ, this is the only one through native forest.  Apparently, none of the tree or plant species we saw on the tour exist outside of NZ.  Don't ask their names though, as she can't even pronounce the name of the town we were/are in at any time.  The Maori language is related to Hawaiian, and a complete mystery to us.

Another good reason to take the tour is that the company uses a portion of its profits to fund a native species conservation program on its over 1000 acres of forest.  Its few employees handle the program completely on their own time.  The company has a 30-year lease on the land from the government which loosely monitors their conservation programs and offers some advise.  We got to see photos of the neatly laid out (for program documentation) corpses of possums, stoats (weasely things, yuck), and rats (huge) collected in the first 5 days of their predator elimination program in 2013.  They use special traps which instantly kill the animals.  It's very important, as the possums and stoats are eliminating wildlife in amazing numbers.  Even normally vegetarian possums are eating birds, etc.  There were no land mammals in NZ prior to the arrival of Europeans.  The birds, in particular, had learned to walk up and say hello to other animals...snap, gulp, gone.  Once the predators are eliminated, they will put a protective barrier around the whole zone to keep other mammalian predators out.  It sounds impossible, but has been successful at another nature reserve near Tauranga, about 90km east of here.

There were 8 of us new to zip lines touring that day, including a 7-year old with his parents and a 16-year old who came on his own to see if he could conquer a fear of heights.  At the end of the tour, he admitted to having fun, but was still terrified at the prospect of perhaps doing it again.  On our last zip Dan, the guide, taught us how to go upside down.  I didn't try feet up...this time.

Carol was frightened, so went before the teen-ager - to not see his fear - and put on a good face before the first zip, only about 20 meters off the ground.  The guides attach you to the line and you walk down stairs and walk off the platform, not jump.

Unfortunately, the photos of us actually zipping didn't turn out.  One of our two guides had a camera that was malfunctioning.  Along with zipping, we also walked across several types of swag bridges.  This one actually had "rails", as it was our first.

The others did not, although we were always attached to lines for safety.  Look mom, no hands!

Carol was totally relaxed after the first zip.

We went over 22 meters above the forest floor, and on a line 220 meters long.  We landed and took off again from a platform built around an 800 year old tree.  When we took off on this longest of zips, all we could see was trees, no platform for landing was in sight.  We flew over a valley that went perpendicular to the zip and could see the treetops in both directions.  What a thrill.  We walked on a pathway with 2000 years of leaves and other organic matter that was so spongy it was more like bouncing though the forest.

While zipping, we flapped our arms and made bird calls - ok, it probably scared more off than it attracted - leaned back and looked up at the clouds, leaned over and looked at the forest below, and just had an all around good time.  Am I having fun yet?  In the second photo I wasn't screaming, but that one is no fun to look at.













At the end, we all knew one another's names, were cheering one another on, and were truly a team.

Headwinds

Ever since we left Auckland, headed south to Wellington, the wind has been blowing in our faces.  The forecast for today was for gale-force winds, so we decided to take the bus half way to our destination.

We thought something was amiss two days ago, when we rode from Whakatane to Rotorua.

The ride was 81 km with a Cat 3 and two Cat 4 climbs.  Eighty-one kilometers is just over 50 miles.  It should have been easily manageable.  Instead, it was a killer.

We later discovered we had head-winds of 30 km/hr...with gusts up to 45 km/hr.  On top of that, on the steepest part of the big climb...

 

...they were re-paving the road with fresh chip-seal.  Loose gravel littered several long sections of the road.  The road surface, wind, and 11% grade made the climb a painful grind.




We planned a rest-day in Rotorua...the self-proclaimed adventure sports capital of the world.  But more about that in the next blog post.  We hoped by the day after our rest day, the winds might die down a bit.  That proved wishful thinking.


As you can see, the ride went down the east shore of New Zealand's largest lake...Lake Tuapo.

The lake is 160 km in circumference...about 60% larger than Lake Washington.

From the moment we set out, the wind blew.  Forty-five km/hr sustained winds and gusts even higher.  We tried to capture how windy it was with our camera.

This is not the ocean.  This is Lake Tuapo.  It's not supposed to have any waves...much less waves big enough to surf on.










When we arrived at our hotel in Turangi, I did some internet research on how much extra effort it takes to cycle into a 45 km/hr headwind.  The answer is it takes a third more work than to ride the same path on a calm day.

Ride Name	Distance	Elevation Gain	Elevation Gain per km	Cat 4	Cat 3	Cat 2
Whakatane_Rotorua	80.92	1290	15.9	2	1	0
Tuapo_Turangi	49.47	525	10.6	2	0	0

On several occasions, we asked locals if winds like this were normal here this time of year.  They all said, no; it's much more blustery than usual.  But when asked how much longer these winds would keep up, they all said, the weather forecast calls for even stronger winds over the next few days.  We can barely contain our anticipation!

fjns,vnsd,mvnasd,fmnasd,fmnsdf,mnf,msnf

Greetings From New Zealand

Greetings from New Zealand!  After a month in a country where the dominant landscape color was brown, what a change New Zealand is.

We flew from Melbourne to Auckland and made it to our B&B in the northern suburbs.  What a beautiful and relaxing place!  Between the home and the water is a linear nature reserve, and every 1/2km or so along the street is parkland which intersects the reserve.  It is hard, even after seeing it, to imagine the lushness and variety of birds.  NZ created parklands along all the rivers (which start in bush lands) in the Auckland area that enter the bay, bringing bush birds, as well as shore birds into the area.  

With a view of the Auckland skyline, as seen through a soon lens, as it is probably 5km away as-the-birds-fly...

We to a couple of days to re-assemble our bikes and get oriented and to replace the brake on Carol's bike which was toast following our flight.  We rode to town and hopped a bus for Hamilton, from where we set our on our first day's ride.

The first 83km were flat and quite picturesque...though along quite busy highways with a wide shoulder in most places.

Then we hit the Kaimai Range...the green portion on the map above.

One Cat 4 and four---count 'em, four---Cat 2 Climbs...all within 10 km.  It was as grueling as anything we faced in either Italy or Australia.

Finally, we summited and started downhill and into a land of bright green fields that glittered in the (finally) sunshine.  We limped in to Tauranga after 122km and one last stiff climb at the city limits, where the view from our hotel was almost worth the effort.

The Royal Botanical Gardens

Melbourne is a big, bustling city…four million people...too big and too diverse to cover in one blog post.  

So we won’t try.  

Instead, we’ll show you pictures from our favorite place in the city…the Royal Botanical Gardens.  

Some of these flowers may look familiar.  Some will be new.   We hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

And we would especially like to thank John and Maureen Ryan…

 …who were more than our hosts in Melbourne.  They shared their family with us, acted as chauffeurs and tour guides, taught us how to speak some Australian, but mostly displayed the hospitality for which Aussies are famous.