2000 Biking New Zealand
Day 26, 2 January 2001, Tuesday
Paihia – Kaeo; 55.5km @ 12kph, Old Saddlery
Café, $50
We only got as far as Kaeo today, not
Mangonui (another 34km) as planned. Due to a late start and, as evidenced by
our daily average, hilly terrain. No real mountains (except perhaps south of
Kerikeri), but constant ups and downs. Very very tiring. Through pretty enough
scenery.
We arrived in tiny Kaeo at 5pm planning to
take a break and move on. But the time, our slow average and the pleasant
welcome we received at the Old Saddlery Café (where we had stopped for tea)
persuaded us instead to stop for the night. So we cancelled our place at the
Old Oak Inn and booked in to the Old Saddlery Café. Our hosts, London-born and
well-travelled David and his Chinese wife Maryann, run a busy tearooms
(takeaways and meals to eat in, colddrinks and beers, sweets and cakes, Chinese
toys etc), sell spray-free veggies from their garden out back, operate a bed
and breakfast (Maryann’s young son Michael has been ousted from his room for
the night, is 7 years old, and visited me in my shower!), and lease a room to a
hairdresser from Kerikeri (on our after-dinner walk we saw a photo of her room
at one of the local estate agents advertising her business for sale). They also
supply lunches to staff at a nearby factory.
We showered and ate at the café – fresh
lemon fish (shark apparently) – and took a leisurely stroll, and had a drink at
a pub t’other side of town specifically designed for the watching of TV –
sport, we assume – with long narrow tables all in a row and high chairs for the
perching on of. On the way back to write an email on David’s computer and sleep
well in our boy-child room, we looked in the window of the Kaeo Saddlery and
Sports shop and saw an unexpected and confusing sign next to handbag reduced
from $45 to $15: “Mr Zogs SexWax”. On the road into town again the now familiar
‘private’ sign urging road safety. This one saying: “We love our children, we
like our town…please drive slowly”.
We arose to a beautiful wind-free day. And
cycled along the pretty Bay
of Islands into the main
touristed section of Paihia. Tourist shops, Maori kids in traditional costumes
dancing and performing hakas on the street corner, vendors offering boat rides
to this or that place, and bus trips to Cape Reinga
and other points north and south. And at last I found something to buy – a
machine-carved fish-hook pendant in bone.
Through town then, up the hill, along the
bay and across the bridge to Waitangi with its Treaty House / meeting house /
war canoe complex (one enters the centre here under the spread legs of a
Maori-carved female with larger-than-average genitals) which we hoped to visit
but which proved to be too expensive for the time we could spare. So up another
long hill to a golf course with a view (someone shot at Charl with a pellet gun
from a car near here), down a dirt road and onto a quiet road climbing gently
beside the Waitangi
River. Which at Puketona
dropped us back onto SH10 for our journey north. Before Puketona Charl saw a
bakkie carrying a giant plastic ball – the kind used for rolling down mountains
inside of. He stopped to watch them unload and says he called to me to wait,
but I “ignored him”. So we missed the show. He also saw a field in which there
had obviously been a helluva New Year’s Eve party – with invitation signs and
litter everywhere. Everyone talks about New Zealand as being pristine, but
on a bike one has more time to notice litter. The countryside is undoubtedly
cleaner than many, but by no means pristine – fast-food fanatics and beer
drinkers being the main culprits!
At Puketona we took a pie-and-coke break.
While we were getting ourselves off our bikes we waved at a cyclist cycling by
– Paihia-bound – with a trailer in tow. Who decided to join us and pulled off
the road. A Hollander, very skinny and athletic-looking and young. Who said he
cycles a lot, who did 3 000km with friends on a previous trip to New Zealand,
who made me feel considerably better about still struggling with our 100kpd
average by saying he prefers doing 60-70kpd only and averages 14-16kph. He
ordered a roll and a drink and sat at our table. A little later the waitress
brought over two toasted sarmies for him, and soon after another two! He looked
somewhat rueful and explained that he was always hungry when cycling! We envied
him his constitution.
And then back on the saddle for the rest of
our strength-sapping day. Up and down, down and up. Past bamboo windbreaks
creaking gently in a gentle breeze. Past a field of cows – who ALL came running
to Charl’s piercing whistle and peered at us over their fence. Charl, cycling
ahead of me up a longish incline, was so busy whistling and watching the cows,
he actually fell off his bicycle – which gave me the ‘church giggles’ so I had
to stop and get off mine. The cows actually followed us all the way up the hill
and only began to disperse once they reached the end of their field. Bored, I
guess!
We have to add today’s lost distance onto
tomorrow’s route as time is now short and our plane home awaits us!

Bay of Islands

Paihia

En route Kaeo

En route Kaeo