When last I posted, I was descending a hill, laughing out loud at the beginning of a wild adventure - one which had only just begun. Cut to black, roll credits. Of course, real-life adventures are not like their movie versions. The descent flattened out and became a climb. What goes down must, in all likelihood, go back up, and the hills in New Zealand almost guarantee this near certainty. ...
Today I started the Tour Aotearoa, 3,000km (1,800-mile) cycling route linking the northernmost point of New Zealand with its southernmost point. To get there has taken about 19 days and has come with a bit of its own crazy story, which will be added to retroactively. But to summarize, in those 19 days, I have traveled from Christchurch, which is about 2/3rds of the way up the South Island, all the way to the tippy top of the north. To do this, I first cycled from Christchurch to Picton via the Sounds To Sounds route, another long-distance trail connecting the Queen Charlotte Track in the north to the Milford Sound in the south. From Picton, I took a ferry to Wellington and stayed a few days, seeing the town. The ultimate goal, however, was to get to the start of the Tour - no easy feat. In the end, I opted to take a car and drove (on the wrong side of the road) from Wellington to Auckland. From Auckland, I took a bus to a town called Kaitaia, then cycled the 100ish km (during which I waited out a storm that brought ~4.7 inches of rain) to the Cape Reinga lighthouse and the start of the trail. There are, of course, many parts of this story that have been grossly summarized here, but to get something out, I have chosen to skip them in favor of writing about this new natural starting place, with the intention to fill them in later. ...