Quien Es Mas Macho?

To kick-off our 14-day self-guided bike touring odyssey around the top of the south island, we took the Tranz Alpine train from Christchurch to Greymouth – with our rented tour bikes safely stowed in the baggage car. This is a great way to start a cycling trip. You can wear skin-tight bicycling outfits on the train; enhancing your swagger as you step on board, and ensuring that your fellow train travelers make comments like “Wow, are you touring NZ on bicycle?” and “You must be very fit!”

The map above shows the train route to Greymouth. After disembarking in Greymouth we pedaled around the top of the island and back to Christchurch – about 740K. You probably can’t read the little text blocks in the map inserted along the train route. They say things like “it’s good you’re not trying to ride over these mountains on a bicycle,” “130K cycling in one day is OK, but get a rest day before and after,” and “a sore butt during your tour is a sign you should have spent more time in the saddle prior to starting the trip,” and my favorite: “I pity the fool who doesn’t bring sand fly repellant on a NZ bike tour.”

While the Tranz Alpine isn’t as high end as the E&O railroad (table linen and four course meal were curiously absent), the scenery is top notch, and the conductor provides hilarious commentary. Note the water bottle on the table next to that sweet mountain scene – keeping this water bottle full would soon become my purpose in life.

Obviously the photo of our two cycling heroes was taken at the beginning of the trip. Note the pale skin, broad smiles, lack of scars, and panniers full of energy bars – all dead giveaways that no actual cycling has yet occurred.

After three days of pedaling hard we took a break and went surfing on the west coast – this was absolutely the highlight of the trip. We were at a beach with a wonderful break for beginners. It rained that day, and we stopped at the beach en-route on our pedal-tour from one hostel to the next. Rolling up to the surf instructor on bicycles laden with gear, then slipping into wetsuits and hitting the waves for two hours is a great way to engender the admiration of the locals – this is when we clinched the “Quien es mas macho?” title from the NZ tourism association.

Unfortunately, we were freeeezing cold by the end of the surf session, and immediately got back on the bikes pedaling hard to the next hostel on our itinerary (the lure of a hot shower can be very strong). This meant no lunch at the restaurant overlooking the surf spot; sadly we were not able to parlay our macho title into hearty back slapping from the waiters, obligatory requests for autographs, and free extra large helpings of NZ green-lipped mussels.

At one point my legs and butt were so sore that I tried to charter this sweet NZ cargo airplane. Because of the current exchange rate in the little island nation of New Zealand I made a competitive bid of USD$74.63 plus a couple of Obama T-shirts and a used Britney Spears album. My offer included a clause requiring the co-pilot to massage my quadriceps during at least half the flight time. Andrea threatened to call me a “lily livered wimp” on the blog if I chartered the plane, so I called the deal off. Wimp, sure… but lily livered? My liver is stewed in prunes, not lilies; get it straight.

OK, just kidding about that cargo plane - but my butt was hurting by day four. Realizing that my macho title might be at risk, I suggested crazy things like swimming with the seals in Kaikoura (which included a boat ride out to the icy cold ocean and the chance for me to do a seated backsplash entry off the Lloyd Bridges Sea Hunt-style zodiac). Also I proposed more sane things like joining our hosts on a 10pm walk into the river valley near a small town to look at glowworms (impressive!). The glowworm excursion happened on a crystal-clear night in a place with very few electric lights (small town about a 10 min walk away), which gave us a top-notch view of the Milky Way.

We stayed in the Waiau hotel near the end of the trip. It's a historic building that was purchased 5 years ago and renovated by a couple with real passion and attention to detail. It has big rooms with high ceilings and little sinks – bathrooms are down the hall (apropos in a building that originally used outhouses). My request for a vintage chamber pot was not taken seriously. This location was halfway along a 150K+ portion of the bike trip from Kaikoura to Waipara and one of my favorites – an inland road that up until 2 years ago had been gravel. The roadway was recently sealed by the Kiwis in an effort to capitalize on the beautiful route as a bicycle and motorcycle touring destination.

The only reason to select this road is to get to a couple little towns along the way – since the main highway is an easy option for the trips south, there are almost no cars and absolutely no trucks along the route. Glorious scenery. Combining the recently sealed road with gentle rolling hills, no vehicle traffic (except motorbikes who give you a wide berth) and beautiful weather (well, one of the days was rain-free) creates a great ride. The NZ:USD exchange rate means we paid USD$40 to stay in that beautiful historic place.

To help us appreciate the historic hotel a little more, we stayed at Waipara Sleepers the next day. Most of the rooms are ancient railroad cars that have been converted into rooms. This facility gets the award from Andrea and me as the dirtiest lodging ever. As a silver lining, a pub nearby featured a group of drunk rugby enthusiast Kiwis at around 1pm (that's 1pm, not 1am), including one particularly festive guy who was dressed in pink fishnet from chest to ankles (some tearing was evident – he had to squeeze into the outfit). The pub also proudly (and loudly) played “Cracklin Rose” by Neil Diamond over and over again which an elderly, red-nosed native danced herky-jerky to on the patio with the pub dog.

At times during the bike odyssey I thought we might have been overtraining – I was first introduced to the concept of overtraining when I was studying to be an aerobics instructor. There weren’t any bike touring fans at my aerobics instructor school, which is probably why my definition of “overtraining” differs with the bike touring aficionados I’ve met.

My thinking on overtraining: If a) your muscles are soaked with lactic acid from the last workout, and b) you push them hard again while they are still sore, then c) not only are you are at significant risk of injury, but also the workout while sore will likely not build muscle mass. Good recovery is as important as a good workout; intense sessions without adequate recovery can be counter-productive.

Contrast this with the bike touring aficionados thinking on overtraining: If we do 130K for 5 days in a row instead of 65K 5 days in a row, we can eat 24 platters of nachos instead of 12.

We made it back to Christchurch 14 days later (on schedule!) after only two punctures, two spills (Andrea’s got some impressive gouges on her right calf that look like a tiger mauled her – rhoowar!) and one much compromised derailleur. Overall exhausted, but very healthy and hearty – so all’s well that ends well. Despite rumors to the contrary I’m now a big fan of bike touring, provided I get to spend at least half the trip driving the support van and leading the team through exercises on recovery days ;)

Houston, we have a problem

Houston, we have a problem: my husband doesn’t like to travel! We’re taking 2009 off, primarily to gallivant around some portion of the world, and my husband is already calling it quits. Yikes!

He’s itching to go home to California and stay with his mom and eat tamale pie, and go to my mom’s and eat green-and-gold stew. With daily visits to the respective local fitness centers, of course. He spends a sizeable portion of his time in internet cafes looking at places to buy in Silicon Valley (I might be ready to do that by September). When a Beach Boys tune comes on the radio, he turns it up and sings along. He suggested basically skipping the North Island of New Zealand, and I think he was serious.

OK, OK – it’s not quite as bad as all that, it’s more a travel-style sort of thing. I don’t mind packing up and moving on to a new place every day or two, the better for a change of scenery and the newness of the next thing. Brian would much rather stay put for at least several days at a time, if not weeks.  That's not a bad thing -- we've got good long stretches of visiting dear friends on our list for this year -- but that's not really travel to me, it's "going someplace."  It can be fabulous, it's just not the adventurous sort of travel I love.

I do need to remember that I had a lot of down-time in Singapore before taking off for this trip, while Brian worked up until the last minute. I get that he wants to veg out for a while.  But if this isn't the year to travel overland from Tunis to Algiers (or further!), I don't know when else we'll do it.

Brian's travel checklist also has a requirement for a nearby great gym, of course -- any locale without one is pretty far down on the list (somehow, I don't think the small towns between Tunis and Algiers will have fitness centers). If you know Brian, you know he doesn’t even consider a hilly 6-mile hike a day's workout, whereas when I travel I pretty much consider exploring a new town on foot for an hour or two enough physical activity for a day.

Then there's my focus on good food vs. Brian's focus on food that's good for him. Brian is pretty darn happy with a hostel-style kitchen, where the available spices run the gamut from salt to pepper. (We even stayed at one otherwise-fabulous place where we bought salt and donated it to the cause so they would at least have that.) Despite being a great cook in “real life,” he is happy to open a can of soup and pour it over some brown rice and call it dinner, but that's not my idea of actual food.  If I don’t have a normal range of pantry basics and some fresh vegetables, I’d much rather eat out.

Eating out of course requires choosing a restaurant, which I view as a major highlight of my day, and Brian considers a waste of time that could be better spent writing postcards (hmmm...any wonder the folks on his address list receive more postcards than mine do?). He’s not a fan of perusing the menu board of every restaurant in town before deciding where to eat, while according to me we’re simply on a leisurely stroll through town (see Physical Activity), with the added feature of reading about food. And really, I hardly ever make him do a second round of menu-reading before sitting down to eat.

So basically, Brian wants to work out more, eat healthier meals, spend less money on food, spend less time packing up, less time searching for a new hostel or hotel, and less time on the road. I guess maybe I should listen to him a bit?

Here a baa, there a baa, everywhere a baa baa

OK, most people already know that New Zealand has a lot of sheep. I guess I'd heard that too, but it wasn't until I started the 14 day bike trip odyssey with Andrea that I started to appreciate just how many sheep are on the south island.

Yep - when your butt is incredibly sore from uber long rides and your quads are throbbing from hill climb #976, the rest of your senses start to function at a higher level. Olfactory senses for example. Smell. On the bike you can tell when sheep are over the next rise way before you see them.

There are probably more than 15 million sheep in NZ, which 3X the number of people in Singapore. It's a good thing the sheep haven't learned how to walk and SMS at the same time, because it would create massive gridlock. I shudder to think what the implications would have been on US inaugaration day - all the sheep texting Obaaaaama back and forth.

The 2nd picture here is covered with sheep - if you look close you can just make out the little dots on the hillside with a faint hint of fluffiness. Happily, most of the sheep are responding well to my calls (AKA "baa") - yes, I'm referring to the sheep impersonations I'm so famous for. It works better on the bike than when we're in the car with the windows rolled up, I'm still trying to figure out why. I got the best results with the sheep in the vineyard - I surmise this is because either a) the sheep are shorter than the grape vines so they couldn't see that I was on a bicycle - which is a dead giveaway that you're probably not a sheep; hardly any sheep ride bicycles in NZ, or b) the sheep were sampling a little too much of the chardonnay and were "baa"ing back just for the hell of it. I'll continue my experiments and will provide regular reports as I learn more.

NZ also has salmon farms. Andrea explained to me that the locals are only allowed to farm the "good" salmon (when she says high class stuff like this I just nod my head and smile - I didn't know there was a difference and thought "good" salmon was what Santa left in your stocking or if you were able to get it on sale at TJs) so it's extra uber delicious. When we stopped at a salmon farm I scampered out to feed the salmon with the kids (Wow! Look at that one, he's huge! Hey, stop splashing me!) while Andrea negotiated prices with the Salmon farmer. I think they were charging something like $15NZ per kilo, which is about $7.5US per kilo, for salmon that was gutted a few seconds ago and still panting. We opted for the salmon sashimi. I don't want to say how much the tub 'o sashimi cost - this is a family blog.

We're now in Kaikoura and even went swimming with the NZ fur seals today. No, I did not eat any seal sashimi. I'd like to write more about sheep, salmon, and seals - or just about anything starting with "S," but I need to get up to the room and hasten my butt's recovery from muscle soreness in preparation for the ride tomorrow...

Penguins Like Their Water Cold

I should have clued in the minute I saw these little guys hop, hop, hopping from the surf line up to their nests in the rocks (or when I saw those two sleeping on the beach getting a tan -- that's another story). No doubt about it, the ocean off the south end of NZ is cold.


Instead of drawing the logical conclusions others would, I could only pull up memories of old Batman TV episodes; the cackle of The Penguin lyrical in my head "Wah, wah, wah. I've got you now, Batman! Watch out for my umbrella - is spouts gas (frightening!). Now I'll dip you into this deep freeze water - wah, wah, wah..."


Yea, this isn't Bondi Beach. It is cold - at least without a wetsuit, and I didn't bring one. It just wasn't at my fingertips living in Singapore. Thankfully, there are beautiful breaks (not as nice as some we had in the southeast of Australia - Avoca beach almost brought a tear to my eye) as well as excellent beach vistas here.






After one particularly brisk body surfing session with A she came out of the surf covered in little flecks of green and brown seaweed; a top-notch mermaid impersonation. Sadly, there was no pocket for my camera in my swimming "togs" so I can't provide you with visuals.




The warmest water we've had in NZ was in Doubtful Sound(!). Those are the dark, icy looking waves in the last photo. Jumping off the cruise ship from the 2nd deck into the dark depths ellicited lots of satisfying "whoooa" comments from the elder passengers on board; highly recommended.




The fjord water was the blackest I have ever seen (last photo is of the fjord - expect Nessie to pop her head out any minute). The top layer is brackish and creates some sort of layer above the salt water underneath that sucks all the light out of everything. Supposedly it gets brighter after you get below where the brackish stops - but I couldn't dive that far down. Man, it was spooky... (cue Penguin laughter).

Delightful Doubtful Sound

We went out to Fjordland for a fantabulous day/overnight on Doubtful Sound (so named because Captain Cook was doubtful the ship would be able to get back out if they entered it there...heee). We had gorgeous weather, a great kayak outing and swimming (cold!!) off the back of the boat, lots of fur seals, a few bottlenose dolphins up close, and some beaker whales from very far away. And great food -- soup was served as afternoon snack as a warm-up after the activities, buffet dinner was really good, especially potatoes with hollandaise sauce.... And they sang HB to me because Brian has a big mouth. ;-)

We picked up bicycles today for a 2-week trek starting tomorrow -- first on the train across the mountains to Greymouth (west coast), then north around the top part of the South Island. We shouldn't need to ride every day to finish on time back here in ChCh, which is good because I've been having knee isues -- not good! I've been riding the stationary bike in gyms along the way and it's not giving me much trouble on those, so I hope it'll be OK. Taking way too much ibuprofen though!

Tramping the Hump Ridge Track

Glorious!

I didn’t go tramping the first time I was in NZ (1995) (because I strained a groin muscle just before the days I’d planned to do so; perfectly innocent explanation, really), so I was quite keen to do one on this trip. But we aren’t carrying our real backpacks, sleeping bags, or cooking gear, so we needed a route with a kitchen and beds and bedding available in the huts. This also meant we got to pack light, just our food and a change of clothes, yay!

I came across the Hump Ridge Track in my research before leaving Singapore, and knew it was the one for us – 3 days, lodges as needed, a variety of terrain and scenery, still relatively inexpensive. It’s also quite new, set up only in late 2001, which means it’s less-known / less-popular – handy for us since we didn’t know basic dates like when we were leaving Australia, when we’d be in the south of the South Island, etc.

HRT is 55K/34 miles over 3 days, and its profile is super-flat beach walk and steep hump (= day 1), hump ridge and downhill (= day 2), and small-hills forest and coast walk (= day 3).

The forest was simply beautiful, almost primeval – ferns and gnarled tree limbs and moss – so much moss:

A maximum of only 40 people a day go on the tramp, and we only had about 15 along with us. And everyone tramps the loop in the same direction, so you see few people on the trail.

Ah, the serenity!

Many views were filled with Dr. Seuss-esque trees:

I wanted to take this green ottoman home and put it in our living room (not that we have a living room at this point!):

HRT has lots of boardwalk – more than 12 miles! – which tends to make these parts of the trail less-than-arduous:
Although when the boardwalk is up up up, some arduousness creeps in -- we climbed to about 900 meters (nearly 3000 feet) the first day, most of it over the last few hours:

Most of the boardwalk is to protect the delicate terrain (particularly the tundra above tree line), and some of it traverses the worst of the mud fields. However, there is still a ton of mud and a lot of water on the trail – so much that I made up a song for it:

Pathmaker, pathmaker, make me a path
Cover the mud, put logs in the bog
Pathmaker, pathmaker, don’t make me wade
Just make me the perfect path

(In my defense, your honor, please note that this was after many hours of attempting to pick through mud fields in my new running shoes, and one’s mind wanders after a while.)

Though in some places, the trail was lovingly groomed by feet for great long stretches:

in others it was totally root-ridden:

The view from the top of the hump was fabulous – we were quite a way above tree line, looking down at the coast where we began (tree line is where dark turns to light in the picture, and we started right where the little spit of land juts into the water at 9:00; all of that distance was day 1.)


The lodges were fabulous – we had “premium” rooms both nights, as we’ve determined we’re too old and cranky for dorm rooms. Great kitchens, better-stocked with cooking gear, plates, and utensils than most hostels, probably because nothing disappears from the lodges since no one wants to carry out more than they brought! Hot oatmeal was included for breakfast both mornings…yum.

We got to drink water directly from nature – that doesn’t happen much in the US! And it was kinda fun to retrieve it using a billy-can on a rope on this bridge – delicious!

Aside from the blisters and knee problems (I won't go in to that...), it was an absolutely delightful tramp!

Part of me would love to get back to NZ with real gear to do one of the "great walks" in the real backcountry – but to tell you the truth, from what we hear those trails are more overcrowded than we had here, despite the little luxuries we got (chocolate mints in the room!). I'm perfectly happy to take the easy route when it leads to this much joy!

Moeraki boulders!

(backtracking a few days now that we have picture technology!)

The Moeraki boulders were definitely a highlight! Perched in the surf in a line -- only large ones are left because smaller ones all got carried away over the years.

It was hard to get a photo of the whole line without people in it -- I snuck a quick one in at an opportune moment because we only do point-and-shoot, but there was a guy with a fancy-dancy camera (and to those of you who own them, please know I say that in a nice/jealous way!) who was waiting for ages to get the shots he wanted.

The boulders come out from the cliff, and have a bit of a honeycomb pattern on them from their crystal-ish structure. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moeraki_Boulders for a better explanation than I can give.

Sand flies were here before you, and they'll be here long after you're gone

The most mischievous animal here is the small black sandfly which are exceedingly numerous and are so troublesome that they exceed everything of the kind I ever met with, wherever they light they cause swelling and such an intolerable itching that it is not possible to refrain from scratching and at last ends in ulcers like the small Pox.

Their almost continual rain may be reckoned another inconvenience attending this Bay. 

Captain James Cook, upon entering Dusky Sound, 1773

Tomorrow is February 4^th (Andrea’s birthday) - we'll start our cruise on Doubtful Sound – which makes my gift shopping much easier.  Nothing says romance like bug repellant and hydrocortisone cream.

Instead of posting a photo of the many scabs on our ankles following the hump ridge trek (party favors left by the sand flies after they bit us over and over and over) I’ve opted to provide a photo of a very typical stretch of road in southern NZ.  Isn’t that nice?  This is actually quite typical – a NZ road trip is top notch.  Don’t even think about sand flies.  They won’t be on the roads, they’re only “in the bush” that’s close to the coast or in the bays.  

World's Southernmost Micro Brewery!

The slackerboy was looking forward to a visit to the Invercargill brewery – the world’s southernmost!  We were first in line when attendants opened the facility - and long overstayed our welcome. We slowed down only long enough to take before and after pictures of our visit.

It may appear that Andrea had too much to drink in the "after" photo… not true!  What you’re seeing is the sisterly love that comes so naturally after bonding with a brew master.  That's our friendly brewing professional on the left.

We couldn’t tour the brewery during our visit because they were not brewing that morning.  This sad situation left more time for sampling the product and admiring the many awards won by the brewery.  Our favorite offering was the “pitch black” which scored a 9/10 from some contest we’d never heard of.  OK, to be completely honest, we liked anything that came in a two liter bottle.  http://invercargillbrewery.co.nz/

Being Cargille in Invercargill

Ahhhhhh, Invercargill.  I hoped to be welcomed like a prodigal son, or at least free wireless access – anything to take advantage of the surname connection.  Where’s my 30% family discount?  After we’d been here a few hours one of the locals told me that the Gaelic meaning of “Inver” loosely translates to “We cheat tourists who are named.”  Nuts.  Where’s the haggis?  Where can I get fitted for a kilt?  

The staff at the YMCA are letting me slip in for workouts, but only because I purchased a month-long New Zealand YMCA membership for about $35USD in Christchurch; what a bargain.  My cost per workout is already down to about $3.50 – ha!  Please admire the photo of the card provided, and note the low-tech approach to controlling membership privileges here - super cute.  The gym is not as high end as the fitness we had in Singapore, but you still get to listen to the funny accents of your fellow exercise partners which is great. 

Cardio in the Catlins

The hostel we stayed at in the southeast corner of the south island was fantastic - a converted 100 year old hospital - rambling with excellent wood floors.  Andrea and I focused on building our cardio base by riding razor scooters up and down the main hallway.  Also fantastic body surfing, and we saw penguins strolling up the beach! 

Rest assured that while the “Usually it’s open from 2-4pm” approach to customer service may be long gone from your home town, it is alive and well in New Zealand.  The lap pool we hoped to swim at in the Catlins was supposed to be open from 2-4 that day, and again from 6-8.  Sadly it was closed because the supervisor had left the county and forgot to tell anyone (true story). 

 

Seafood is abundant

In the interest of efficiency, Andrea and I have started buying fish in bulk. Adjusting our diet to almost exclusively salmon sashimi has also opened up more time for trekking and other ways to get big nasty blisters and itchy sand fly bites...

South of the South Island

If I've learned anything in New Zealand, it's that Kiwis will make any sport extreme if you give them even half a chance...