By Liz

14th March (77km cycled)

These next sections of the trip shall be known as summits, sand flies, and steep roads. We wanted to get up the coast fast, to get away from the flies that bit, to Abel Tasman where we were going to swap bikes for kayaks for a few days.

Andy has been amazing at planning out the route that so far had not really involved any climbing. He has been using the book Pedallers’ Paradise by Nigel Rushton.

We have been using it as a touring bible for the past month. But now we were going into the Westland, over the southern Alps, where signal was patchy, and hills abundant. The daily climbing and distances would have to increase if we wanted to reach Abel Tasman by the end of March. The book breaks down the 1000 odd kilometre distance into bite size chunks. So we worked with these and followed them to the letter.

From Queenstown we went to Wanaka. The profile for the day was this rather daunting prospect:

As the book says.. through to Arrowtown was lovely. We stopped there for a break. Many people we had met had said Arrowtown was much nicer than Queenstown but for me it was another tourist trap, a high street of shops offering all the jade and merino wool goods you could need. There was a cute coffee bar / pub where we stopped and it was enough to spend half an hour there.

A banana and a coffee is all I need to get up the Crown – apparently! We set off slowly up the switchbacks. They were steep, and there were 7 in total. It was hard work. We stopped for lunch where it levelled off, trying to get out of the wind behind some hay bales in a farm, and ate our new flavour of the month, tuna wraps. Unfortunately we bought tins but didn’t have a tin opener!! Duh. The prospect of having a crisp wrap was a bit depressing… so Andy, ever resourceful, got the knife out, and a cup, and a short 15 minutes later he had hammered his way through the tin to the juicy tuna!

We continued with the climb. I am glad it was cold, I don’t think I could have done it in the heat. We made it, but my goodness. At the very top we recorded 25% gradients. Yowchee!!

The decent was cold! I put on my buff (first time of wearing) and we stopped not too long after at the Cardrona hotel for a ginger beer by a warm fire! Mmmm didn’t want to leave.

A speedy 24km later we had arrived in Wanaka. It seemed peaceful and the holiday park was lovely. Big area for cooking and chilling out. We met up with the Spanish couple Judy and Cesar (from Oamaru) and swapped stories.

Tomorrow, should we have a rest day or crack on to Haast?! Decisions decisions!