Riding from Wanaka to Makaroa was pretty easy as far as the gradient and wind goes, but about 10 kilometers out of 'town' it started raining hard. It was mostly down hill and we were just in our spandex and shirts so we were getting pretty chilled. Makaroa consists of two cafes, a DOC (dept. of conservation) center and a hotel. We got to the first cafe, stoked to get into a warm shelter and they immediately told us to leave all of our stuff outside, "there are lots of old people here" the lady told us. Confused and feeling bad things towards this woman we took our things back outside in the rain. After we bought our coffees and soups and what not we took out some of our food to eat and the same lady, very upset this time, told us we could eat their food inside but our food had to be eaten ouside. We were literally going through body convulsions trying to warm up our bodies and all I wanted to say was "I hate you and your bland overpriced soup!"
We took the high road and decided to leave with dignity and try and wait out the rain in the next cafe. Luckily this one was quiet, with good food and drinks and they didn't mind us taking our shoes off and huddling on the couches. After watching some horrific footage of the christchurch earthquake, we set off for our campsite. Skyler and I noticed that Lucas' back tire was bending and about 4 km from the campground two spokes busted.
The next morning Lucas hitchhiked back to Wanaka, got his tire fixed, hitched back to our campsite and we set off for Haast at about 1pm. The ride started with a really tough climb and then a long flattish 60 km. Shortly after that Skyler got a flat. We underestimated the 'mostly downhill' part as we were exhausted when we got into Haast later in the evening. We got some essentials from the store and made our two packets of ramen with some eggs for our dinner. We met a fellow bike tourist from San Francisco and we noticed that his dinner was three times the size of our dinner and only for one person. No wonder we were getting so hungry!
Yesterday our ride was pretty mellow, we set up our camp at Lake Paringa and then rode another 7km up the road to a cafe/salmon fishery. We struggled to stay awake eating our treats and then headed back to camp. This morning we woke up to several people putting boats into the water. The whole campsite perked up when a guy water skiied naked out of the boat launch. We rode another 80 km into Fox Glacier today, stopping for coffee and fish and chips on the beach (these were literally the only two commercial establishments for the 80 km). We got and expensive beer and are now headed back to cook up some quinoa, kidney beans and some veggies into what we expect to be a stew... something none of us have attempted so it should be really good!
Long winded post but I'm too tired to edit so there! Tomorrow we are resting and will hopefully meet some friends that are driving from Chirstchurch.
The end.
More pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/56993065@N03/
you dudes are too hardcore. like for real...you owe it to yourselves to book a room at the ritz when you get back to civilization.
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