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!