2000 Biking New Zealand

…at the end

5 & 6 January 2001, Friday & Saturday
Pukenui – Sydney – Johannesburg

On the morning of the 5th our host’s son-in-law drove us to the Kaitaia airport just outside Awanui to get our flight to Auckland. Drove us along 90 Mile Beach. On hard-packed sand much used by tourists and locals alike. Provided you have easy access to the beach, it is far faster to travel along it than along the road. We picked up a shell, stopped to look at a freshly-caught pinkish shark – its eyes already plucked out by birds, took a photo.

We were a little taken aback by the size of the airport, and even more so by the fact that it was closed! We were way too early, it seems. Chatted to some locals there to meet a private plane. And to a brash Afrikaner, with nothing positive to say about New Zealand, visiting from America a sister who had chosen to live in this quiet spot. At last a man arrived. Who took tickets and booked seats and weighed luggage; unpacked the 18-seater when it arrived; and re-packed it before it left. Charl had to help him squeeze our bikes into the luggage compartment (he too had said we were crazy to expect there to be room for bikes on a plane this size during the holidays – and he too was scathing about us saying we had booked the bikes on board, saying that bags had precedence) – in fact, had to take off a tyre to achieve our goal. We had foolishly watched the first passengers walking out to the plane, subconsciously awaiting an intercom call. But boarded in time – Charl making the passengers laugh by saying it was not often one got to sit in both a window and an aisle seat at the same time!

We had a three-hour wait in Auckland for our flight to Sydney. And a good trip across to that hot and humid city. Where the ‘fragile-goods’ conveyer belt simply and unbelievably dumped fragile goods off the one end!

Michelle and Jon were there to meet us. And drove us to friends for dinner and bed via the harbour with its bridge and opera house – quite a sight on a lovely night. The friends were great company, the food delicious, our room a delightful museum with a mishmash of fascinating articles hung in the rafters.

We spent the Saturday with Michelle, her kids Dominique and Jackson, and the friends’ daughter. Being driven around Sydney – to both Charl and I immediately more appealing, more liveable than any New Zealand city – criss-crossing the harbour by ferry, and visiting the zoo (best animal – the koala). ‘Home’ for something to eat and to collect Jon (they were driving home after dropping us), to Kanga House to collect the goods we had been given for Leon when we flew into Sydney from Perth in December, and out to the airport for gentle goodbyes. Great to see Michelle again – especially looking happier than when I last saw her. And to meet her family.

And so…home!

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Appendix 1

TO: Coleman Andrews, CEO, South African Airways

22 January 2001

Dear Sir

In late-2000 Voyager member Leon Louw (121449) ceded some of his then-270 000 Miles to Charl Heydenrych and myself for a trip to New Zealand. As your Voyager members are your best clients I looked forward to booking my trip – assuming I would get good service. The opposite proved to be the case, however, both with Voyager and SAA.

Firstly, getting a date of your choice is an incredibly tedious and painfully bureaucratic process. It seems you have to request a date and call back several days later to find out whether or not it is available. If not, you get to try another date and wait again and try again. It literally took me weeks to finalise our dates. Surely there must be a better way.

Once our dates were booked, I put in a request for a certificate (see attached), waited the obligatory two weeks, called (having to hold for ages as usual) to confirm, and was told we could collect the tickets at the airport. We spent a good 20 minutes in the queue and over an hour at the counter as it was here we discovered that the Kaitaia to Auckland leg of our trip had not in fact been confirmed. Several phone calls and much tapping on the computer keyboard later our tickets were finally issued. At this point I paid R656 in airport taxes and was assured this would cover all the airports (see 6). [May I suggest a better queuing system – bearing in mind that some of the people behind me stood there for over an hour? A machine that issues a number, a couple of couches, perhaps free coffee.]

As we were going on a cycling trip we subsequently called SAA and Air New Zealand to check procedures for carrying our bikes. Depending on who we spoke to at SAA we were given a variety of procedures ranging from having to pay R250 per bike each way (ie R1000 in all), to being told that provided the bikes were within our baggage weight limit (which they were), and provided we streamlined them (which we did), and provided we let the airline know beforehand (which we did), we could simply wheel them through on the day of our departure (see 4).

When we called Air New Zealand to check their requirements, it was to be told that the Kaitaia to Auckland leg of our trip had not in fact been confirmed! In addition, we were told that the flight was fully booked. Seems someone took a shortcut when issuing the ticket! Resolving this issue was a lengthy nightmare. Finally, we had to change the date and therefore spend one less night in Sydney en route to Johannesburg, and were told to update the ticket on arrival in New Zealand. You’ll probably find this hard to believe, but when we tried to do this we found that only one of us had been confirmed on the new date! Luckily the Air New Zealand official agreed to put me into a non-concession seat.

Come departure date we arrived at Johannesburg International with our streamlined bikes to be told we had to pay R500! It took us nearly an hour to resolve this issue to our satisfaction as everyone we spoke to had a different view on the issue.

We then asked if we could check our baggage all the way to Invercargill or not and were told it was no problem and happily boarded our plane with only hand luggage to see us through our one night stopover in Sydney. Seems one cannot in fact book luggage through – it has to go through customs in Australia. Luckily a curious official at Sydney airport asked how come we had so little luggage with us. Had he not, we would have gotten on the plane to New Zealand on the following morning and found later that our bikes and panniers were sitting in storage in Sydney.

On leaving Auckland we had to pay NZ$44 in airport tax – an amount we had been told was covered by the R656 we paid in Johannesburg (see 2).

We also discovered that we had been pre-assigned seats (a first for me) at opposite ends of the plane as our tickets did not show we were travelling together.

Some of the above points would have been relatively minor irritations had they not happened in conjunction with the others; some were major problems.

I hope to hear from you soon in this regard.

Request for certificate to be issued

Please issue a certificate for the following flights:

CM Heydenrych – RCM3R7; GI Day – RIM2S3

SA280 Johannesburg-Sydney Dec 5 19h50-19h00

NZ182 Sydney-Christchurch Dec 7 09h35-14h45

NZ5009 Christchurch-Invercargill Dec 7 18h05-19h20

NZ2609 Kaitaia-Auckland Jan 4 12h45-13h45

NZ107 Auckland-Sydney Jan 4 18h00-19h30

SA281 Sydney-Johannesburg Jan 6 21h30-05h30

Voyager member: Leon M Louw, 121449, 4803185041004

Thanks.

Appendix 2

Not quite Bluff to Cape Reinga on two wheels

Not much happens in this story. A fat woman and her friend decide to cycle from Bluff to Cape Reinga – and don’t quite make it.

OK – so I am not your average cyclist. I am 43, weigh well over 100kg, and just a few months back would be out of breath after facing and conquering the daunting challenge of a flight of stairs. I am also afraid of falling. Which means I brake on descents, take corners in an upright position and avoid unsealed roads. No athlete I. And yet I made the decision to cycle the 2 500km between Bluff and Cape Reinga; and persuaded Charl to join me. En route we had to contend with aching butts and hands and knees; we philosophised with gentle folk, delightful cynics, and closet racists; we became intimate with New Zealand’s rain forests and mountains and weather patterns; and we had to answer the question: At what point does it make more sense to give up than to go on? In the end the answer was simple – when it is physically impossible to go on.

Time constraints dictated our route and daily distances and from Day One we were disturbingly aware that we might well have bitten off more than we could chew. We left Bluff in good spirits despite an icy breeze, bound for Lumsden 120km north. For the bulk of the day we cycled in a vast unassuming valley interspersed with the odd hill, soon conquered. Cycled toward snow-peaked mountains distant and pale against bleached blue. Past trees with backs bent to the prevailing wind. Past deer with startled eyes and ears pricked high. Past lamb on the spit, lamb chops, lamb kebabs, roast lamb…a-graze in pastures green. Past hens a-peck on a rural lawn; and whimsical gardens; and roadside flowers in butter yellow and mustard. And arrived in Lumsden with energy only to consume a large meal and climb the stairs leg-weary to our room to sleep still travel-stained.

In the days that followed we grew to love the South Island despite our increasing exhaustion. From Lumsden into foothills and along the shores of lovely Lake Wakatipu to Queenstown; over the 1100m-high Crown Range via the Cardrona pub to Wanaka for our first rest day; along Lakes Hawea and Wanaka into the farmed and rain-forested Makarora valley; and over Haast Pass to Haast.

During the next two days – a long one to Fox Glacier, a short one to Franz Josef Glacier – it rained, but these proved to be our only inclement days in the south. Where we expected wet weather we often found ourselves cycling instead in a burgeoning bludgeoning heat – hot enough on some days to turn the tar beneath our tyres to treacle.

North to Ross where the revived gold industry now employs all of 12 people; and onward to Punakaiki and its pancake rocks. Where we sat in a hot tub overlooking the Tasman and sipped Cognac from our hip flask in preparation for our longest day – a day which tested us almost to our limits – 140-shattering km and 14 hours to Murchison. Further east then to St Arnaud; north again to cosmopolitan Nelson; over Whangamoa and Rai Saddles (7km and 6km climbs respectively) to tiny Havelock – dubbed the “Green-lipped Mussel Capital of the World” and after sampling the mussels we felt perhaps it had earned the title; and finally to Picton for the ferry trip across Cook Strait.

On the North Island things fell apart – predominantly for two reasons: We had cycled over 1200 tough km from Bluff in just 15 days and were physically spent; and the dramatic increase in fast-moving and sometimes terrifying traffic combined with gusting winds and hilly terrain sapped our dwindling reserves to nil. So on a wet and windy Xmas morning with 140km planned across the Desert Road from Taihape (reached in two gruelling days from Wellington) to Taupo, we hitched instead – bikes ‘n all – a ride with Alex the painter. And lunched well and rested some and tried to find a way to deal with our ambivalent thoughts: sorry to have failed, happy not to be out there fighting the elements.

On a bike sights are seen in unavoidably graphic detail. Dead birds and rabbits and possums by the hundred: the long-dead splat flat and sometimes skunk-striped by the road-marking brigade; the recently-dead reeking and fly-encrusted; the newly-dead wetly red. Try not to look, try not to breathe (difficult on a slow incline), try not to remember that any one of the speeding vehicles too close beside your vulnerable hide can reduce you in an instant to the same mangled mess. Try not to imagine your family placing fresh flowers beside a poignant roadside cross in the festive season. Take a traffic-free back road to Rotorua and be thankful for the shoulder most of the way to Cambridge. When the shoulder disappears, get off the saddle and walk. Avoid the killing zone by taking a train into Auckland and a bus to Waipu.

Then back on the bikes for the last four glorious days to the Cape. On New Year’s morning a late night and the Waipu Highland Games delayed our departure to such an extent we only arrived in pretty Paihia after dark. But on a fine blue-sky day en route to tiny Kaeo, we cycled along the bay and up over the hill past the golf course and back onto Route 10 past bamboo windbreaks creaking in a gentle breeze and curious cows hurrying to Charl’s piercing whistle. And the following day through charming Mangonui to Awanui and beyond to Pukenui. Where we encountered an odd sign declaring “Unlocked cars are contributing to the increased crime rate”. Mmmm…and here we thought criminals alone increased crime!

On our last day we had 70km to cover to reach Cape Reinga and its lighthouse and arose filled with nostalgia to complete our incompleteable journey. The first 50km took four hours; the last 20 three-and-a-half hours. We cycled at first on a smooth sealed road quiet enough to hear cows chomping and birds and bugs chattering. And later on a dirt road from hell resounding with the engine-sounds of straining 4x4s and tour buses. We cycled with white dunes on our right and golden dunes on our left. Northwest along what is essentially a sand spit wearing green to a peninsula where two oceans meet.

When we asked others mulling around the lighthouse base to take the obligatory photos of us standing dusty and tired under a signpost showing crow-fly distances to far-flung places, our odometer read 2 000km. Quite an achievement – in fact all we could manage – but not quite what we’d hoped. Was it tough? Yes. Did I ask myself what the hell I was doing almost every day? Yes. Would I do it again? Yes. Why? At the top of the Crown Range on Day Three we had met a young man who had cycled the 40-uphill km from Wanaka “just for fun”. When I said I thought he was mad, he looked at my bike and I with raised eyebrows and asked the inevitable: “So what’s your excuse?” Even on this our last day I had not been able yet to distil an answer from my muddled thoughts: A midlife crisis? An antidote to boredom? A need to do something drastic to slow the slide into total unfitness? Sublimation for the childbirth I’ll never experience? Because, as in everyday life, it is just as important to set a challenging goal and work toward it as to achieve it? Or maybe something altogether simpler? Because, even if only in retrospect, the pain is outweighed by the pleasure.

Gail Day
(Charl Heydenrych)