To read from the beginning, click here.
It was a dark and stormy night… (Credit: Snoopy!). Windy for sure. We got a bit of water on the floor of the tent, but we stayed dry on our pads. The rain had diminished somewhat. enough to make a break for the kitchen and bathrooms. We fired up the stove and made coffee and oatmeal mixed with granola. If the weather had been nicer, we would have taken the long route around back to Christchurch, but in the end we decided to get back on the ferry, have a stop at Lyttelton, and reassess our options from there. We said good-bye’s to Derrick, Jared, Michelle, Boh & Moss and different points of the morning, and headed out.
The rain had started again, so we packed up wet, and donned our rain jackets for the ride back to Diamond Harbour and the Ferry to Lyttelton. Uneventful except for the wind, but this time at our backs. In Lyttelton, we stopped at a coffeeshop to order a “Long Black” and a “Long White” which is how you order just plain old coffee or coffee with milk in NZ. Essentially, Americanos. as everything else is Expresso, Cappuccino, Latte, etc. We haven’t seen anything resembling a drip coffeemaker here. It’s either an Expresso machine, pod coffee, or instant coffee.
While sipping on the coffee, we looked at the various options — there were three: A city bus through the tunnel (and unloading the bags from the bikes and putting them on the bus front rack), up an unpaved bridle path of unknown quality, but known steepness, or back up over Evan’s Pass. We opted for Evans. It was quite a ride. The 40mph winds at times propelled us up the mountain to the point where it felt like we were riding e-bikes. Then you’d turn a corner and the wind and rain would hit you in the face. The two wind boosts we did get make the climb tolerable and we made the top and started the descent. That required brakes full-on to keep the speeds reasonable and the bikes under control, but at one point I could smell my pads smoking.
We reached the bottom only to be buffeted from the sides by the winds, which tended to through us from the bike lane into the travel lane. If you compensated and kept a straight line, the wind stopped and you had to quickly turn back before hitting the curb. Nerve racking, to say the least, and Dana decided to walk a few sections. We got into Woolton and stopped at a grocery store to stock up on provisions for our early morning flight to Melbourne. It was a short trip from there back to Sheralee’s & Jean’s.
Sheralee & Jean had secured bike boxes for us and we had a chance to throw our wet things in the dryer. Our original plan was to take Jean up on his offer of taking us to the Airport that evening and getting whatever rest we could in the airport. Sheralee checked on an airport shuttle that would pick us up at 3, but it was booked. Jean offered to get up at 3 to take us to the airport, and Sheralee made the bed up again so we could get some sleep before we had to leave. Warmshowers hosts are the absolute best. Even better, it let us relax and enjoy Jean’s paragliding videos, including views of Mt Cook that we would never have seen from the ground.
We could’ve watched all night, but reality crept in and we loaded the boxed bikes into Jean’s caravan and we all headed to bed for a short night’s sleep.
At 3 am, we got up, grabbed our devices and bags, hugged Sheralee good-bye, and climbed into our private Jean shuttle. We got to the airport, unloaded, more hugs to Jean, good-bye to NZ and went into the airport to start the next part of our adventure.
Leave a Reply