Train Picton to Blenheim

Weather not good. Terrible, in fact. Torrential rainfall. Hideous day to be cycling. And alas, the weather forecast for tomorrow is just as bad, which is particularly unfortunate because there is supposedly a pretty good farmer's market in the next town, only 28km away. But, as always in New Zealand, there is a solution: mass transport by train! It was about a 20min train ride to Blenheim.

For the first time here I had trouble finding a bed in a hostel. The first place I looked at was full, but there was a free bed at the second, so it wasn't very much trouble. There are a lot of vineyards in this region, so there are a lot of backpackers working on them. Apparently it's not harvesting time yet; everyone is working on pruning the bushes. I couldn't give any useful tips this time.


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Wellington to Picton

Left Wellington today. Had to take a ferry to cross the Cook Strait to the South Island. It was much easier to take the bike on the ferry than on the bus. I was loaded amongst the last cars, but then the ferry traffic controllers let me off a good five minutes before any of the cars started driving off, so I got a pretty good head start. The ferry is very large; the crossing from Wellington took three hours.

Picton is a very small town. The hostel I'm stating at is called the Juggler's Rest and is highly recommended in the New Zealand network of jugglers. Apparently the owners are semi-ardent juggler's themselves. There are all sorts of props to play with. It is a very nice place- very clean, not too big.

Dinner was a bit of a change from the norm. Six young Israelis showed up, all of whom had just finished their time in the army and were taking some time to travel before starting at university in the fall. I ended up having a big Friday night Shabbat dinner with them- homemade hallah, salmon, cauliflower, mashed potatoes- a veritable feast. First people I've met to have mixed feelings about Obama. They agree that he is probably better for the US economy than McCain would have been, but they feel that he (Obama) will be too soft towards Iran and think McCain's conservatism would have made him a safer president from Israel's perspective. But it was a good dinner. Shabbat shalom!

Catching up: Napier and Wellington

So here's what I've been up to in the past few days. For starters, I took a bus from Wairoa to Napier. It would've been a long day cycling, and with the whole accident I really want to get my bike checked out before an arduous day of riding with very few towns/civilization between my starting and ending points of the day. So I hopped on a bus and am holing up in Napier for two days. Ended up finding out that the bike sustained no damage- the panniers definitely provided a lot of protection.

There's a fair bit to see around the city. After being almost completely leveled by a massive 7.8 earthquake in 1931, the city itself was rebuilt completely in the Art Deco style of architecture, the contemporary movement of the time, with a very Spanish Missionary type feel to it. See pictures below. Nowadays the city is built up enough that only the town center retains its Art Deco heritage. To walk along and see all the buildings takes an hour and a half.

Also toured the city prison, an older establishment which was one of the few to survive the tumultuous earthquake of '31 (though there are cracks in the floor and parts of the compound are no longer fully level as a result of the quake). The prison only closed down in 1992- and it would definitely be quite a memorable experience to have to stay locked up in it, even in more recent years. The current family who owns the prison complex has turned it into a tourist attraction and also partially a backpackers hostel. I elected to stay somewhere else however; I prefer my hostels to have a slightly more welcoming feel to them. In the prison's more than a century and a half of operation, there were four official hangings that took place, although the tour guide emphatically acknowledged that more were rumored to have occurred in the unknowing dead of night.

A large number of backpackers in the town are staying for a couple of months to work in the surrounding orchards. This region, Hawke's Bay, has a large fruit growing and vineyard population. Apparently this week was the first week of blueberry harvesting; many of the backpackers staying at the hostel clamored for tips on how to pick faster once they found out that I am a veteran blueberry picker, having spent so many summers doing it at home.

On Wednesday (the 25th) I took a bus to Wellington, New Zealand's capital and southernmost principal city on the North Island. It is way more vibrant and upbeat of a city than Auckland, despite only have 400,000 residents to Auckland's 1,000,000. Auckland was very quiet and sedate, with only one main shopping street, but Wellington acts more like a typical city, with a student district, a main thoroughfare, and numerous popular streets and malls.

There's a free tour of New Zealand's Parliament complex in Wellington. It was a really good tour; the guide littered his commentary with numerous digs at New Zealand's political system and persons, most of which went over my head. New Zealand has a constitutional monarchy. When the Queen of England deigns to set foot on New Zealand soil, she automatically becomes the Queen of New Zealand, but her role is largely ceremonial. I believe that all bills passed by the New Zealand Parliament get passed on to her, but I think she has very little veto power. In effect New Zealand is a republic, but it is a very conservative nation so as the monarchy bit is not problematic, New Zealanders see very little need to break of ties with England. The tour went through the legislative complex, the New Zealand Parliamentary Library, and the Executive Wing. We also went into the basement of the Parliament House and saw an actual Base Isolator- the colossal devices put on the bases of buildings to counteract and protect against earthquakes. Wellington is built right on top of a geographic fault and suffers between 10,000 and 15,0000 earthquakes each year. Apparenty the Base Isolator is a New Zealand invention, and as one of the few significant Kiwi inventions it is highly paraded about at any opportunity.

National Library:

The Executive and Legislative Halls: the one on the left is called the Beehive.

I picked up a street performer license for juggling, but I'm leaving on the 27th and am not sure if I'm going to have a chance to use it.

I've put up a map of my route through the North Island. The red line is where I've cycled, and the blue/black is where I've taken a bus. I'm going to try to include a map as I'm going for the South Island.

I got hit by a car today.

So the day's route is Gisbourne to Wairoa. The wind had died down by the time I woke up so I plowed ahead. The ride is no biggie... a couple of big hills but nothing major. Should go pretty smoothly right? Well it does. Until I get to about a kilometer outside of Wairoa. I crest a hill, stop at the top to catch my breath, and start to move over to the other side of the road where the shoulder is widened into a rest area/pull-off. I don't see any cars coming, but as soon as I start to cross a car comes round the hill and blam! I'm down. The lady driving the car stops, pulls over, meanwhile I'm bleeding profusely from my chin. Luckily not too badly hurt other than that- the panniers on my bike provided a lot of padding for the fall. The bleeding stops shortly and the lady gives me her contact information, then I end up biking to the hospital, because wouldn't you know it, the cut is deep. Really deep. Deep enough to warrant stitches.

But there is a good ending to the day. It turns out that today was the busiest day the hospital has seen in years. No one can give any logical reason for it, that's just the way the day turned out. So I show up, needing stitches but not in any near-fatal condition, and after finding out that I'm biking through the country and have not yet booked a place to stay that night (by this time it's about 5 o'clock, and in New Zealand, in a pretty small town like Wairoa, this means that everything- the grocery stores, the information center, even some of the take-aways, have closed) the nurses set me up in a spare room with a mattress, linens, and access to a shower and tell me that I'm more than welcome to stay the night. In addition, for one reason or another, the stitches are not going to cost anything. Plus they're giving me dinner and breakfast tomorrow morning- hospital food, so nothing to crown about, but hey, I've been biking all day. I can pretty much eat anything. Personally, I think half the reason they set me up with a room was so that they wouldn't have to deal with me until they had helped the other patients who were coming up. Still, all in all the free room plus dinner means that today's expenses have been remarkably low.

Ended up being four stitches all together. Have to keep them in for a week. Can't shave my chin until they're out. Heck of a way to end the cycling portion of the North Island- tomorrow I'm catching a bus to Napier, then from there going on to Wellington in a couple of days.

Don't I look lovely?

Finishing the Cape. And a bit about the NZ hostelling scene.

So I've finished up the East Cape. The hostels stayed remote, the landscape stayed gorgeous, so overall this leg of the trip has been really pleasant. Moved on from Whanarua Bay to Hicks Bay, a 63km ride. Then went from Hicks Bay to Tokomaru Bay, a rather hilly 91km jaunt, then Tokomaru Bay to Gisborne, New Zealand's eastern-most city, and coincidentally also a 91km ride.

The East Cape is very sparsely populated. After Opotiki, the population of the towns ranged between 150 and 550 people, predominantly of Maori descent. I passed very few orhards- the occupations here definitely lean more towards sheep and some cattle grazing. The houses are also a little bit more run-down and shabby than elsewhere, though after discussing it with other hostellers and hostel managers the general consensus is that the overall shabbiness has more to do with the Maoris paying more attention to family than material possessions, in opposition to Westerners' fascination with the latter.

The hostels were some of the most interesting ones i've stayed at. At Hicks Bay I stayed at Mel's Place, which is the real deal when it comes to sustainable and Eco-friendly. We're talking compost toilets instead of running water toilets, gas showers, and solar panels and wind turbines instead of outside electricity. Now generally I am all for environmental sustainability, but seriously, I have two mosquito bites on my ass from that compost toilet. The water closet and its modern-day equivalents were invented for a reason, and a damn good one at that. But hey, when the hostel is the only place around, take what you can get. Just make sure you come prepared with something like an anti-mosquito ray if you ever visit there.

At Tokomaru Bay the hostel was, in all honesty, superb. The town itself is very small, but never fear, there is an excellent little dairy-store selling divine Tip-Top (the leading NZ brand) ice cream really cheap. But back to the hostel: it's called Brian's Place, run, unsurprisingly, by Brian, a man who has lived in the town for 15-20 years and knows nearly everything about the area, oppossum hunting (his winter pasttime- they're a pest and menace here, but the fur is sought after), and just about every hostel and hostel-manager in NZ, or at least those on the North Island. Before I continue, let me talk about the main organization that makes NZ's hostels some of the best in the world.

So there are two hostelling organizations in New Zealand. One is the Youth Hostel Association (YHA), an international organization with member hostels in places like New York City, all across South America and Europe- most hostels worldwide are YHA hostels. The other organization is the Budget Backpacker Hostel New Zealand (the BBH), an organization only of New Zealand hostels. Membership in either organization nets you a couple dollar discount at member hostels. Hostels can be members of one organization, both, or neither. Pretty much 95% of the hostels in NZ belong to the BBH. It costs hostels $860 to join, but membership gets the hostels published into a monthly BBH-produced hostel listing that tells where the hostels are located, what amenities they offer, and it also submits them to user-rating; people who are BBH members can log onto the BBH website and rate the hostels. An 80%+ rating is great, 60-70% is ok, 50-60% is "well, there are worse places," and anything below 50% is "it beats staying in a sheep pen, but not much." Brian's Place had a 91% rating, and it was well-deserved. But I bring this up now because of this: there were two hostels in Tokomaru Bay. Brian's Place was BBH-affiliated, the other, Footprints in the Sand, was not. Footprints in the Sand was listed in all of the guidebooks- Rough Guide, Lonely Planet, etc. Brian's Place was listed in some guidebooks but not in others, yet it still got over 10 times the number of guests as Footprints, because it was listed in the BBH listing booklet. This just goes to show how much travelers have come to rely on the reputation of the BBH organization here in NZ. I joined when I first arrived- memberships costs $45, and you get a free $20 phone card with that, presumably to call ahead and make hostel reservations- and before I stay anywhere I always check the BBH listing of a place. Gisborne was the first town where I didn't stay at a BBH hostel, and that was only because the sole BBH place in Gisborne had such a low rating. If anyone reading this ever does travel to New Zealand and plans to stay in hostels, definitely become a BBH member.


But back to Tokomaru Bay. Brian's Place also had compost toilets, which was its only real drawback. They were much nicer than the ones at Mels Place anyway- whereas at Mels Place the toilet was located about 40meters away from the main building and truly smelled awful, the ones at Brians were spotlessly clean, pretty sanitary, and located right next to the hostel complex. I ended up staying at Tokomaru two nights. There was a local guy offering really cheap surfing lessons, only $20/hr, and with summer here winding down, I felt I had to take the opportunity while I could. Waves weren't very big, which was good since it was only the second time I've been surfing, and really I didn't progress much. I think I need more practice. Should get a few more oppotunities though.

Gisborne was pretty much a return to true civilization. Ride wasn't particularly interesting, but I hit my first really windy day today. About 15km outside of Gisborne, the wind, which had pretty much been a sidewind for the 15km before that, changed into an intense headwind. Very slow going. The Australian group of cyclists, who I kept meeting up with along the East Cape, had gone to Gisborne the day before, but ending up staying another day just to wait out the wind, which apparently had been really strong around the city the entire day. I'm not sure what I'm doing tomorrow- if the wind is still really strong I might just catch a bus to Napier. There's no way to cycle the entire way in this strong a headwind. But that's a last resort so we'll see. The local guy running the hostel says the wind can be completely unpredictable, so it might die down enough to continue.

Maori tribal poles.

There were a lot of one lane roads around the Cape. Apparently these, unlike the bridges, are not planned, but occur because the roads frequently wash out since the island is very unstable.

This picture and the one above it are of the village where Whale Rider was filmed. The village is called Whangara, located just a few kilometers north of Gisborne.

At the start of the Cape.

Opotiki to Whanarua Bay. Really pretty ride, road pretty much hugged the coast the entire time. Not much traffic. Some of the roads became one lane roads in the mountains.

Hostel is very remote. It's called the Maraehako Bay Retreat. Closest grocery store is just a small store for essentials about 18km back. I got some vegetables off of the lady running the hostel (her brother grows them)- she gave me a courgette that was an absolute giant, it weighed about 4 pounds. Unfortunately couldn't carry it, it could have fed me for days!

My name in Maori is Hamiora. Apparently a common name- the woman running the hostel said it was her brother's name, her uncle's, and her grandfather.

A new group of cycle tourers staying at the hostel. There are three of them. They are from Australia. Recommended Tasmania as a good place to tour, but take more than 3 weeks. Got a curry recipe off of them, will have to try it when I can next get the ingredients.

Back in the saddle again.

Went from whakatane to opotiki. A short ride. Longer ones up next to cross the east cape. Big Maori country. Seeing a lot more cycle tourers. Everyone seems to be tackling the country in different amounts of time- I'm taking slightly over two months, some other cyclists are taking six weeks just to do the North Island, a hitchhiker from the Netherlands is taking eight months to get from Christchurch (on the South Island) to India, and another cyclist is doing both islands in six months. I'm starting to feel like I should hve allotted myself more time! Unfortunately I have to be home for AP tests.

I made it to the island today.

Weather was much better today so the tour out to the volcanic island went through. The boat ride took about an hour and fifteen minutes each way. The island is named White Island because of the continual steam that roils off of it. There are huge deposits of sulphur on the island- early in the twentieth century a small mining operation was set up on the island to mine the sulphur, but since the island is an active volcano all the mining operations failed. It was really amazing to think that the miners lived on the island because the island itself is so desolate and has a really harsh atmosphere- we had to wear hard hats and gas masks when we were walking around. At times the sulphur content in the air just got so high that we had to wear the gas masks just to be able to breathe.


The only two colors on the island were gray and yellow. There were a few trees, but none had any leaves on them. The guide said that the only way the trees survive is by growing a root, sucking any nutrients they need out of the soil, and then the root dies and a new one grows because the soil is so caustic. There were bubbling mud pits everywhere, and steam just billowed up from underground vents. The yellow came from all of the sulphur. There was actually one spot of green on the island- there was a lake formed by water underneath the surface that was so rich in minerals that the water was a really opaque greenish color. The guide said that scientists had measured the acidity of the water and judged it to be between 0 and -0.1 pH, extremely acidic.

The island was a really interesting experience. Apparently the landscape changes every couple of years because of landslides and eruptions. It is not a magma-filled volcano, so all of the eruptions are just the result of changing pressures beneath its surface. The guide did a demonstration where he dropped a rock onto the surface, and you could clearly hear in the resulting echoes that the island was very porous. I can't imagine anyone living there- surveying the island all you can see is boiling steam clouds and rock. Definitely not your typical Pacific island. There was one side bonus. On the way back a school of dolphins swam up and started playing in the boat's wake. They were jumping out of the water, swimming up to and underneath the boat, and were definitely enjoying themselves. Weren't very big, only a couple of feet long, but they stayed near the boat for about ten minutes so there was plenty to see.




I checked out the local farmer's market in the morning before the tour. It was really small though; all of the vendors only had one or two tables set up, and there wasn't a large variety of produce at all. I got a small container of blueberries, but they were the only fruit that I saw. The market overall was a little bit disappointing, but the blueberries were quite tasty.

This was the largest stand at the market- had corn, tomatoes, melons, some kind of lettuce, and potatoes.

We now have a family at the hostel. A couple of people left today, but two who were going to take a bus out have been stranded because the buses were full. Now there are only four of us- me, two German girls, one twenty and one thirty, and the other biker. We had dinner together- takeout pizza and salad for me- and then watched the second Lord of the Rings. We have quasi-adopted each other since we work together so well. Are all leaving tomorrow. I'm the only person heading east though.

Andre, Judy, Kristina, and me thoroughly enjoying our ice cream.

Weather Problems

A freak storm came through this morning. It was very chilly when I woke up, and the weather was bad enough that the tour to the volcano was canceled. The volcano is an island about 50km off shore, and apparently the ride there is rough to begin with so when a storm comes through the tour has to be canceled because the bay is way too rough to take tourists on.

Ended up just walking around town and resting for most of the day. The town is named for a Maori woman who heroically saved her tribe when they first found the Whakatane beach. The Maori came in a huge canoe called a "waka." After they landed, the tribe piled out of the canoes and the men started exploring the area. Unnoticed, the waka started drifting out to sea as the tide came in, with all of the Maori's food and supplies in it. The women were still around the beach and one, Wairaka, saw the waka drifting away and swam out to it. Undeterred by the taboo on women touching the oars of the waka, Wairaka reportedly shouted out "Ka whakatane au i ah au!" ("I will act as a man") and rowed the waka back to shore, saving the tribe. In her honor a statue of Wairaka was raised at the entrance of the harbor. See statue below.


Also made a trek up to Toi's Pa, where the Maori chief Toi set up his base of operations for the area. The poles in the pictures below are symbolic markers claiming the territory for the Maori tribe. The pa (a pa is just a gathering ground for a tribe) is on top of one of the hills overlooking the city, and from the top you look down on the city and surrounding area for miles in every direction.

View on the way up to Toi's Pa.

Both at the top of Toi's pa.

View of Whakatane harbor.

The hostel I am staying at is called Lloyd's Lodge. Everyone else staying there is German, but they all speak English so the language is not a problem. A bunch of us stayed up tonight and watched the first Lord of the Rings and had ice cream and popcorn. It was really cool because everyone kept pointing out the places they had been to in New Zealand where it was filmed. Planning on watching the second one tomorrow.

The hostel.

Today's Achievement: Pancakes

Another day of riding. I'm planning on taking a break in the next town for a couple of days. Today's route had two sections to it: a pretty short ride to Te Puke, the self-proclaimed kiwifruit capital of the world, and then on to Wakatane (pronounced fah-cah-tah-knee).




Te Puke:
I made a stop at a kiwi orchard that has tours all laid out for the public. It was a little touristy, but informative overall. We were loaded onto a trailer and hauled throughout the orchard, where some of the history of the kiwifruit and it's uses today were explained. There are a couple of unusual parts of the kiwifruit growing cycle. The fruit itself needs a very rigid amount of heat and cold at different stages of its growth. If the New Zealand climate gets too cold, the fruit growers will sometimes hire in helicopters to fly above the fruit. These helicopters do not spray anything onto the fruit, but just by flying above them the spinning helicopter blades pull the rising warm air in the atmosphere down and the vacuum created sucks the cold air around the fruit up and away from it. This can be pretty expensive though, so the orchard I was at had installed a windmill that did the same thing on a smaller scale.


To prevent too much of the fruit from growing too close together and scarring, cedar trees are planted all along the perimeter of the tree groves as wind barriers. You can always tell when there is a kiwifruit orchard around as you are riding by because out of nowhere a stand of trees, perfectly trimmed to the same height and aligned in an untterly straight row will appear out of nowhere. Apparently there are 2000km of these trees across the North Island.


Some of the growing process was actually pretty shocking. New Zealand is capitalizing on their reputation as the "Kiwifruit Capital of the World," and as such kiwifruit growers rigorously prune and discard any of the fruit that might disprove that reputation. During the pruning season nearly half of the growing fruit gets torn off the trees. Any fruit that is too small, the least bit oddly shaped, or bearing the tiniest scar gets discarded. When the fruit is actually picked in the fall, then it goes through packing houses where after further scrutiny around 70,000 tons are pciked out and thrown away. Out of these 70,000 tons of rejet fruit, around 10,000 tons will be reused as mulch or in goods such as wines or jelly, but still, that's a huge amount of fruit to waste. Also to defend their reputation, all of the first class fruit is exported globally, while only the second class friut is sold domestically in New Zealand and to Australia.

I am taking a break and staying in Whakatane for a few nights. There's a marine volcano right off the coast which can be toured from here, so I am planning on doing that tomorrow. Since I have a few nights I bought a bag of flour and eggs and am planning on making pancakes for dinner/breakfast. We'll see how it turns out!

My road out of town: took an old railroad bridge to avoid the traffic.

A newly-planted kiwi grove. Not at the same orchard as earlier, just one I saw along the road. You can see the cedar trees growing in front of the rows of kiwi trees.

A Day of Hills

Today started out overcast, but I plowed ahead regardless. Went from Whangamata to Tauranga, 90km. The clouds that were gathering at the beginning faded out as the day progressed. The weather can be very erratic here; in one spot the storm clouds are brewing and only a couple kilometers ahead the sky is as clear and blue as can be.

I passed a couple also touring the country by bike. They were the first other tourers I've seen. There are usually a lot of bikers out but all of them have just been sport riders. This couple was stopping in the town before Tauranga, and the highway was very busy so it was hard to ride up beside them and chat. The highway here is the only main road on the northern coast between the western half of the island and the eastern half, so that is what accounted for the heavy traffic. There were a lot of logging trucks; some gave me plenty of space, but a few were definitely cutting it close to the wire.

Pictures to come later.

The cycling continues... with fruit!

Skies clear enough to cycle today. Went from Whitianga down to Whangamata (accent goes heavily on the last "ta," so it's pronounced whan-gah-mah-taaaah), 80km. It was a pretty pleasant ride- a couple big hills at the beginning, but the views at the top were stunning panoramas.

On the way up.

At the top. You could see clear to the coast, the picture doesn't give it justice.

And my bike makes its first (unboxed) appearance, fully loaded.

Like I said before, Kiwis (New Zealanders) are very big conservationalists. Apparently this also applies to their bridge-building efforts. They appear to hate building "unnecessary" bridges, so one lane bridges like below are by far the vast majority. There don't appear to be many accidents over them though, so it works out. Most of the drivers have been courteous and just give me the right of way.



I stopped at a small orchard with a stand close to Whangamata. Stocked up on some fruit- the guy had a pretty good selection. There were a lot of plums, some nectarines, peaches, and apples, and a reasonable selection of vegetables. I got a bag of nectarines and a bag of apples. The guy said his orchard was actually a rarity because he was selling his own produce. I keep seeing signs for local farmer's markets though so I'm not sure how true this is. The region I'll be in in the next week or so is supposed to be a heavy fruit-growing region so I should be able to investigate more. Had an interesting chat with the orchard owner about kiwifruit. Unfortunately they don't get fully ripe until the fall, which here is May or June, so I won't be around to try them. Usually though they are picked early for export, and this prevents them from fully ripening. At their ideal ripeness they are supposed to have a yellow center, not green, and should have a reasonably soft, not a hard core.

Eco-friendliness also applies to plastic bags here. Most of the supermarkets I have been to will only give out plastic bags if you specifically ask for them, and at the orchard today the owner had a sign up saying that any extra plastic bags (beyond the ones that the fruit was pre-packed in) cost $0.10/bag. Everyone seems used to it. At the supermarkets where bags are not most people just bring cardboard boxes that they load their groceries in.

Went to a Chinese carry-out restaurant for dinner. Can only eat so many pasta and zuchinni dinners in a row.

The place where I got fruit.

My treasure horde: nectarines and apples.