I took the Awesome Bus back from Te Anau to Queenstown last night. Extraordinarily gorgeous evening ride. All the mountains painted in late summer light, all the peaks out, no snow, but you can tell it won't be long.
I've booked 3 nights at YHA Lakeside, in a little "cell" of a single room, but it is a private room, so I don't have to use the earplugs any more, or worry about disturbing the other 5 bunk occupants if I need to get anything out of my bike bags.
This morning I went into R&R Sports, and traded a bottle of ginger beer for a cardboard bike box. Looks like the wrenches have a nice little barter arrangement going here. Made me laugh, so I bought them a big size in the 4 Square supermarket across the street.
It's raining in Queenstown, so I used my time to pack up William the Conqueror. I've used at least one kilometer of duck/duct tape, and the box is under a great deal of pressure, but thankfully, I have several blue NRS kayaking/river straps to hold it all in.
My flight to the Gold Coast is from Queenstown "International" airport on Friday. I changed the flight due to the continued difficulty of knowing what is/isn't going to work in Christchurch airport. They're still pulling bodies out of the rubble, and the work of reconstruction can't begin for a while.
I am watching the weather. If it clears tomorrow I might spring for the guided mountain bike tour of Walter Peak, near Mavora Lakes. You take the steamship Earnslaw across to a station on the other side and go for a ride. I ran into Mary and Ermanno, my fellow Seattle touring cyclists, in Te Anau, and they'd ridden this route. Said it was even better than Molesworth Station, up near Hamner Springs, which I keep hearing is paradise for mountain bikers.
Would be a great way to wrap up my time in lovely New Zealand.
Ironically, at the end of my adventure, I learned there's a book from Kennett Press called Classic New Zealand Road Rides, published just late 2010. Queenstown is big enough to have a bookstore, so I plan to look for it. After figuring it out on my own, using old trip reports found here and there on the good ol' Internet, parsing out the possibilities from the ripped up South Island section of the Lonely Planet Guide to Cycling New Zealand, that I found in the bike cave back in the Wellington YHA, and asking around and following my nose, there is actually a book of rides.
Isn't that just the way it is?
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