Aotearoa

Aotearoa: land of the long white cloud. 

New Zealand's South Island in particular is as renowned for its dramatic scenery as it is for its wet and wild weather. Aside from a couple of odd rain storms, for three weeks now the Maori weather gods have blessed us with bright blue skies and endless sun (evidenced by our super sexy bike tan lines). 

But, just as we were getting a bit too comfortable with the all-too-perfect conditions the heavens played a little trick on us. The day was disguised in glorious sunshine. The only hint of what was to come was the ominous lack of clouds in the sky. Too blue to be true? Yes, indeed. 

It's not often you come across a stretch of nice flat road on the South Island so, naturally, Murphy's (or Sod's) Law would have it such that this rare occurrence would be paired with ferocious face-stinging gales of headwind. The kind of wind that brings you to a complete stand still on the flats, knocks you off your bike on the climbs and then forces you to down-shift on the descents.

It was supposed to be a lovely and scenic ride through the fertile Motueka River valley and along the impressive Buller Gorge - a long but good recovery after the 40K trail run on the Abel Tasman. It definitely was beautiful but I'm not so sure our tired muscles appreciated the scenery and our camera lens didn't manage to capture any of it either. Too busy simply trying to make forward progress! 

When we finally made it to Murchison we swapped wind war stories with another fellow cyclist who battled it out for an impressive (or somewhat sadistic) 11 hours in which time he managed to cover "only" 100km. Our 68km took us about 6 hours so it seems Mother Nature was enforcing a strict speed limit for all of us out there that day.

A third day on the bikes proved much calmer skies and quite a tranquil ride out to the West Coast where we pitched our tent in the nearly invisible town of Charleston which, apparently, during the late 1800 gold rush was a bustling place. Fast forward to 2011 and even the lonely pub is shut and up for sale. 

Perhaps the dreary town inspired the sky to open up and dump some dreary weather on us. Rain overnight turned stormy and gusty by morning with a thick fog shrouding the hills for the rest of the day. After much deliberation (mostly prompted by the camp host's warning that a group of 40 teenaged school kids would be arriving later that day) we decided to stay put. 

As we make our way deeper into the heart of Aotearoa down the West Coast, into Glacier country and across the Southern Alps again, we're sure to encounter more of that long white cloud. But in the spirit of the people from Pukekura we're gonna take it in stride :-)