The title of this piece refers to a classic Italian post-war movie and aptly introduces the theme of this post; the moving image. My time in New Zealand allowed me the chance to catch up on some flicks. First up was The Big Lebowski (one can never tire of his dudeness), then a trip to the art-deco cinema in Hokitika to watch Avatar in 3D. The 3D wasn’t so bad but there will be better films for it. I was initially unnerved by Jarhead Jake’s resemblance to a certain Lance Armstrong … a man of amazing skill on a bike, which I respect greatly but a man of numerous other qualities which I loathe. Anyone familiar with how he operates knows that I should add nothing further. Another movie I saw was Sherlock Holmes; a very miss-able film perhaps saved by Robert Downey Jnr’s acting. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was quite thrilling but the gruesome sadist scenes were unnecessary in light of the fact that her mystique is explained further along. I made the effort to see Five Minutes of Heaven, simply because it’s an Irish flick and often they are worth a look. The acting was excellent and of course the theme quite upsetting. To think that I lived (live?) peacefully only 200k from the Troubles.

I do love movies and so I will always make the effort to go if there is an interesting cinema to experience one in. I never managed to load movies onto my laptop’s hard-drive but part of me doesn’t want to have such easy access. This allows me to savour the pleasure. As I mentioned in a previous post I mislaid my phone and iPod Touch in a pub in NSW. My guess is that most people would be lost without their iPod and so I didn’t know what to expect. As I have no movies or TV shows on my laptop my only real connection to moving images is in the cinema or the odd decent TV room in a hostel. I’m not one to spend time on YouTube preferring to limit my www time to emails and updating this website. I was curious to see how I would fare traveling with less technology.

Well, I can only say that it has been a cool experience. Each evening I look forward to sleep knocking me out to the world as my dreams are providing me with all the entertainment I could ever need. In the mornings I emerge from the depths of sleep flicking through the dream channels to recall what ‘shows’ I have been watching during the night. It is really unfortunate that consciousness must slap me awake at some point. My imagination has gone wild; my dreams have all the mystery, murder and intrigue one could ever want. I'm aware that pillow-talk is the more appropriate time to discuss dreams so I will only bore you with the dream where I stole a bicycle. It was a really cool mountain-bike laced with beautiful XT components. Despite its expense it was very inconspicuous as it was a Monteith’s (a west coast NZ brewery!?!). A brand-name that nobody would be familiar with in cycling circles but anyone who knew their bikes would see its hidden beauty. So, I robbed the thing in broad daylight and being plain stupid I did not wear a hoodie. Thus, people saw me cycling around town on it. Suddenly the law (Beadie from The Wire) was at my house. Realising that I was snared I faced the music explaining that I had no choice but to take the bike as it had been in my dreams to do so. While my Mom tried to convince her that I was a good kid my neighbour (Eddie Murphy) came over to see what the commotion was all about. As she was pleading with Beadie I exited the scene with Eddie to hit some golf balls off the cliff-tops onto the beach below. Bizarre. I’m slightly alarmed that I might steal this bike when I see it because I dreamed that I had no choice. If Penelope Cruz was to play the law instead of Beadie then I definitely will.

‘til soon
The Bicycle Thief

ps - for the record Steve managed to make the bag-drop … sounds like a drug deal I know but I am now reunited with my iPod. Suffice to say I couldn’t wait to play Ara Batur and Von (Sigur Ros) … what a fit of satisfaction! Back to regular dreamland now I guess!

The remaining ride through Arthur’s Pass National Park was really enjoyable. It was a rolling ride with some tough sections but thankfully most of the elevation was climbed by the time I started up Porter’s Pass. I actually thought I had gotten over it but the bike-touring kiwi couple with whom I had lunch by the lake told me that it was around the next bend. It was only a few kilos of extra work so nothing too bad. I was thankful that I did not have to climb it from the other side. That would have been a long 939ms of climbing from sea-level. Instead I was tearing down the descent with screams of laughter. The sun was out, the hard work was done and I would have a nice relaxing pancake flat procession up the aisle of Canterbury to the alter at Christchurch. Then, I hit the head-wind … URGHH! Trust nature to make me grovel for the last 70 clicks. Needless to say I was pretty beat-up after a very long 150k ride on heavy New Zealand roads. Still, it was great to arrive into Christchurch … the third leg of my bike-trip complete. The leg from Queenstown to Christchurch added a nice round 1000k to my accumulated totals. So far, I have 4615 kilos of loaded touring in the legs. I do a decent bit of exploring unloaded but I’m not tracking that. I have also stopped tracking the amount of kilometres covered in my flips but I must have done at least another 700k in NZ … the days of wet weather and hot days again meant that flips were the most comfortable way to bike. Who the hell wants to have to dry out socks and shoes after a hard ride? I must kick this habit though as it won’t help me race a bike faster.

Christchurch seemed to me to be a little like Cambridge; lots of old buildings on campuses and the option to go ‘punting’ on the Avon river. Once you realise that it is not all that happening a place at night but for one cool tiny back-lane quarter you decide to embrace it during the day. There is plenty of activity in the Botanic Gardens and Hagley Park and of course, the nice little beach town of Sumner is not all that far away. Once I found the artisans’ market and the art-house cinemas I was happy. To top it off I found a huge Borders and so stocked up on books. I was told that there is only ever a need to carry one book when travelling as it is possible to exchange books at hostels. However, the quality of such exchanges is terrible. It’s impossible to find a classic book (good by definition) and the Germans have a habit of dropping off books written auf Deutsch and taking an English text instead. While I read some deadly German literature in university when I studied German (Kafka, Hoffmann, Goethe) I cheated by reading the translations and so I certainly am not going to read German on holiday. In any case the majority of German texts in exchanges are just translations of trashy English novels except for that one about the fall of the Third Reich. That one looked interesting but it must have been a 1000 pages long, too much heavy reading for me and I‘m a slow reader! So when I should have been spending time thinking about losing weight for the next leg across the Andes, I was in fact piling it on with books. For those that are interested in what I am reading I picked up Dickens’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ when I traded in Steinbeck’s ‘The Winter of our Discontent’ at the second-hand shop. This was a fabulous book which provided a fascinating critique of modern society.  This assessment still applies despite the fact that it was written in 1962. I picked up Niall Ferguson’s ‘The Empire’, which is an account of how a country that once was not that ‘great’ managed to colonise large parts of the world. I thought I may as well read this as I have been to India, Australia and New Zealand and I am from a former colony myself. Indeed, in heading to South America I will be embracing more former colonies, albeit not under the crown. For lighter-reading I am relying on Haruki Murakami’s brilliant imagination for escapism; ‘After Dark’ and ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ are two of his that I have yet to read. I am currently in the middle of the Dalai Lama’s ‘Art of Happiness’, which always make me laugh when I whip it out as people hesitate as they make the assumption that I must be unhappy. The truth is that I’m not at all, I’ve always been curious about Tibet and just didn’t manage to read it when my travels took me there. Of course, I will have to read some maps too but I’m pretty lazy with maps as I like surprises.

The last week of my stay in New Zealand was graced by a visit from the sun. People in Christchurch had been mumbling that they hadn’t seen much of the sun all summer but thankfully things turned as soon as I turned inland from the town of Greymouth on the West Coast.  The last week of my trip would be blessed with glorious sunshine.

I took the quieter and more scenic route around Lake Brunner to Arthur’s Pass. This is a national Park in which lies the pass that takes you back over the Southern Alps to Christchurch. Porter’s Pass further inland is higher but coming from the West the hard bit is the climb up Otira Gorge to the town named after the Sir Arthur Dobson who ‘discovered’ the pass. Of course, he didn’t really discover it, it was shown to him by a native as a means of transporting gold off the West Coast but being a whitey he gets all the plaudits. The weather showcased the landscape to perfection and it turned out that the section from Greymouth to the town of Springfield would be my favourite scenery of the NZ trip. To be honest, it did feel a little European with lots of pasture lands and evergreens perched on mountain-sides but the familiarity was still spectacular. Unfortunately the many photos I took didn’t do it justice, one would need some sort of IMAXX lens to capture the amazing 360 degree views.

Re-indexing my derailleur to ensure that I had access to my easiest gear meant that I left Greymouth rather late. It was only 100k to Arthur’s Pass but I would have to climb from sea-level to 920ms and I was aware that the pass was difficult. I did not reckon it could be too tough, unless it was up and down all day but I knew this wasn’t the case as there was a long flat section from the coast to the bottom of the Alps. In addition, one of the world’s most scenic train rides travels from Greymouth via the town of Arthur’s Pass to Christchurch. My thinking was that if a train can get up there then I shouldn’t have too many problems since trains can only climb gradual ascents. Still, 100k on heavy roads is a long day on the rothar. I spent the whole morning looking at the Southern Alps rising straight up in front of me and all that was left for me was to figure out through which stunning peaks I would ‘pass’. After lunch temperatures soared to thirty five degrees and I was still riding on what I would consider flats. I admit, I started to get a little worried as the longer it remained flat the steeper the road would pitch at the end. I noticed signs reminding traffic that the gradients ahead were very steep and so vehicles towing trailers should not advance. However, there were plenty of HGVs on this road pulling two trailers and so I reckoned it was all a bit of a false alarm. I passed through the nothing town of Otira aware that all would shortly be revealed. I snaked between a couple of mountain-sides and there she was in front of me; a beast of a climb with no end in sight. The train-tracks disappeared into the darkness of a tunnel, which meant that I would have to climb over whatever it was that the train couldn’t. So much for the gradual ascent! It was as if this road would take me to some fiery dragon’s lair amidst the small puffy clouds. Normally these things are never as bad as they look but the effects of the heat and the previous 90k had softened me up no end. My tyres seemed to be glued to the road, I was in my 22x32 but it didn’t make things any easier. I managed to make it through the tunnel section and just about hung on until I got to the scenic look-out. I was not alive when the Allies tried to storm the beaches of Normandy but it was that feeling of shell-shock that I had when I pulled over at the look-out. There was no end to the water-falls of sweat and my chest was rising and falling much like a puppy’s such was the need to suck in oxygen. I didn’t know what hit me. It was vicious to say the least and I was only half way-up. The hardest thing was that due to the trucks groaning their way up the mountain it made it very difficult to work the bike up the climb as the road was so narrow. I had to ride a very tight line inside the road, which took huge concentration. Naturally my legs and head were already fried from the heat and so it was just agony.

Having sized up the enemy properly this time I managed to cajole my horse around the steep bend to the viaduct which was less sharp. This viaduct was only opened in 2000. I could not work out which way the old road went up but needless to say I’m glad I didn’t have to ride it as there was nothing but shale mountain-sides around me. I still could not see the finish but I was no longer going to slide down the mountain. Indeed, one more impossible section remained before I finally crested the summit … was it a mirage or did this place not look a little like Sally Gap? It was unfortunate that my bike computer stopped registering in NZ. Thus, I do not know what gradient I was climbing. Perhaps it is on the web but I reckon it probably elevated me 600ms vertical in 4kms, which is hard with the bags and a heavy steel bike. I have rarely suffered so much to turn the wheel a single revolution. 15% on asphalt is not impossible as I have ridden shorter sections of 20% off-road. However, every climb has its own personality and I think it was just the nature of this climb, the trucks and the heat that messed my head up. I won’t forget it anytime soon.

I descended to the town of the same name and as I loved the scenery so much I decided I would take yet another day off the bike and go hiking the following day. After a bad night’s sleep due to the early morning trucks racing through town I decided I would climb Avalanche Peak. I started out with intentions of just climbing to the tree-line but of course, the Moses in me meant that I had to climb the mountain. There was no European-style messing around with the trail taking me through woods and around flushing meadows. Instead the track just went straight up the mountain-side 1100ms vertical to an elevation of 1833ms. If I was going to climb this I would have to toughen up kiwi-style. Despite the boulder-scrambling I climbed up in two hours, it would have been less but for some photo-stops. A very fit mountain-runner might get up in an hour but there is more climbing than running as it was a very steep hike. The difficult bit was coming down and it took another two hours just to get down to the road again after a small picnic on the side of the mountain. My quads were a mess the next day from having to brake so hard tramping down. Thankfully, this action is the opposite to cycling and so my legs should be ok for the 150k remaining to Christchurch.

Look after yourselves

Marco

My original plan was to take in Mount Cook. However, having experienced a week of rain in Queenstown I decided to omit New Zealand’s highest peak from my itinerary. It did not make sense to bike 420k out of my way to visit a mountain that could be under cloud when I got there. It is not possible to bike up it in any case and I would need even more time to ‘tramp’ it. Omitting it would allow me a more relaxed ride up what is known as the ‘Wet’ Coast, from where it is also possible at points to view the summit of Mount Cook.

While I was sad to leave Wanaka my work there was done. I pedalled out with an open-mind but I was unsure if the country could deliver as good scenery as Wanaka and Queenstown. I had not pedalled more than 20k before I turned the corner into Lake Hawea; my jaw dropped. The weather showcased it to absolute perfection and it was one of the few times that a panorama photo was needed to convey the full beauty of the scene. Unfortunately I do not have such functionality on my camera. Regardless, I became really excited about the scenery that I might witness further up the road. As I was not carting camping equipment my way-points had to be wherever the hostels are situated. While there are plenty of hostels there is also plenty of distance between some of them. I would need to suffer a few big  days on rougher roads but thankfully the weather was largely compliant. There was an absence of wind, which was a huge stroke of luck as the winds can slow you to a standstill in this part of the country. In addition, while I did see some rain I managed to more or less avoid it on the bike. The squalls seemed to hit at times when I was under cover and so could enjoy some rain-delay indoors. I did get caught out at Franz Josef Glacier but as wet as I was it was a warm day. The other thing I needed to watch out for were the hills. I had been warned that NZ has a lot of hills but I had also heard that they weren’t bad at all. I didn’t know who to believe but the West coast is reasonably flat bar a few sections where there are some twenty minute climbs. I am guessing the non-stop hills that people are referring to are on the East coast, not sure. 

By all accounts, I was having an easy time of it and I could sit back and enjoy the ride. Having climbed Haast Pass from the less difficult side I was soon on the West coast and in World Heritage country. Haast Pass, the lowest of the three passes, would mark my first crossing of the Southern Alps. As the whole of Westland is a World Heritage Site, there is very little in the way of civilisation and where there are towns, they are to provide for tourists. It is effectively rainforest with some beaches and glaciers thrown into the mix. It was strange cycling through so much wilderness, there was no farmed land at all. If it wasn’t for the tourist traffic it would be totally unspoilt. However, the sand flies or ‘Draculas of the West’ spoil it. These flies are murderous. It was impossible to stop for more than two minutes without being eaten alive. Like mosquitoes, the females are only supposed to bite at dawn and dusk when they normally feed. However, the perma-grey clouds must give them a false sense of dawn and dusk as they bite non-stop. They have a death-wish as unlike mosquitoes you can feel them bite and they are still sucking when the inevitable hand-slap comes. You can’t but kill them as their teeth are sunk so deep that they can’t pull the rip-chord. The trick is not to itch. However, the problem is that no sooner do you survive one twenty minute window of not itching than the next kamikaze pilot dives into you. The bites didn’t effect me so much but some people were scratching for three days. There was little incentive to explore the bush when these barbarians were at the gate. Thankfully I was able to pedal faster than they could keep up, so as long as I kept moving I was fine.

The ride up the coast wasn't incident free. There was one cranky day when I didn’t have enough to eat and then some drama when the BNZ ATM swallowed my plastic. As the ATM was not at a physical branch I eventually managed to ensure its delivery to the nearest branch 180k away for my collection. Throw a weekend into the mix and I had an excuse to slow down until the bank reopened on Monday. Fortunately I was able to convert some hard dollars into some soft kiwi ones to tide me over. There was also the time when I pulled over on the side of the road to rummage for some pic 'n' mix. But for the fact he shouted at me I would have missed the clown on a uni-cycle coming the other way. Ok, he wasn't a clown but he did have red hair and a crazy grin. Unbelievably he had a rucksack on his back. I could barely believe what I saw. Needless to say he didn't stop to chat as I'm sure his 29" wheel took a great deal of effort to mount with a back-pack on. Then again maybe not; it seems that he was one of a merry band that travelled over to Wellington for the Uni-cycle World Championships. One other funny incident was when I was internally debating on whether my view of mankind is a little too dismal, only for me to stumble on a group of hippies who had managed to ditch their shag-wagon on a straight piece of road. It was a scene straight out of the seventies with the van looking like it would topple but for the fact that there were 10 hippies hanging off the side of it as counter-weights. Meanwhile a girl had her face in her hands ... oops, I guess it was her fault but no doubt they all had a good laugh about it later. Only hippies will know how it is possible to sleep 10 people and their stuff in a VW shag-wagon. Clearly they are good at Tetris. My only regret is that I didn't stop to shoot the scene as it was so funny. However, my initial thought was that they needed neither another chief nor an Indian. Needless to say my prognosis for humanoids tilted towards the more dismal side of the scale.

I spent the weekend on the beach in a photogenic little town called Hokitika, where I managed to watch Avatar in a small art-deco cinema. The cinema was supposed to close due to lack of business before the community intervened and installed the latest digital technology. This allowed me to watch Avatar in 3d … why they didn’t finish it at the tree battle I’ll never know. Goddam Hollywood! I then biked through Greymouth to Pancake Rocks to inspect some ‘Burren-esque’ rock erosion. It was on this day that I cracked. It was so grey and miserable that I could feel some crazy depressing weight on me. I really felt the need to get off the coast. Fortunately the rocks were worth the trip but I could not help but notice that every house was for sale. It seemed to me that as pretty and wild as the coast is that it is largely inhospitable but for the brazen few. After a while people get the message and sell up. It left me wondering what the more populous east coast is like but I will have to save that for some other time. All that remains is for me to traverse the Southern Alps once more to see Christchurch.

Mind how you go

Marco

Before skipping Queenstown I rode out to Glenorchy. It was a chance to cycle along the hilly shore of Lake Wakatipu to a nothing town in a part of the world where a lot of Lord of the Rings was shot. I had intended to bike the 4WD track to Paradise but the creeks were bursting and the clouds were so low that there was no point. I turned around and headed back to Arrowtown via a lunch-stop in Queenstown. Arrowtown is a lovely little town 20k from Queenstown. It’s the kind of place where tourists stay if they don’t like the hustle and late-night noise of Queenstown. Arrowtown is an 1860’s styled gold mining town with modern conveniences. So, as ‘quaint’ as it is, it is just as fabricated an experience as Queenstown. This town is memorable for me as it graced me with the first puncture of my trip. I wouldn’t have minded if it had been a nugget of gold which did the damage but it was the common shard of glass which penetrated my tyre’s immunity. Still, there are worse places for morale to be deflated than two kilometres from my destination in broad daylight.

The climb up Crown RangeWanaka was to be only a 60 kilometre hop from Arrowtown assuming one went over Crown Range as opposed to the longer valley road. I was warned that it would be a tough climb and as the ski-station of Cardrona was 27k away I was bracing myself for a slog of 3 hours of climbing. While the steep sections were tough, the brow of the crown flattened out somewhat before pitching up again for what turned out to be a gem of a ride. It looked pretty gruesome while riding it but it wasn’t that bad at all. It was a shock to see that the climb was only about 10k long and even more of a surprise to learn that it was the highest road pass in New Zealand at a mere 1076ms. 700ms vertical is quite an easy day at the office as far as passes go, so after a couple of snaps there was plenty of time to enjoy the very long descent to Wanaka. I stopped for some lunch at the pub in the town of Cardrona on the way down. The access road to the ski-station is located in this town but the ski station is a lot higher up, which explains my initial error. I spent an age listening to the live-band in the pub. They were playing familiar Neil Young and Pink Floyd covers, which was a delight as I mislaid my iPod and phone in a pub in Kempsey in NSW. They should come back to me before my trip to South America but their fate rests in the hands of surfers ... hmmm! Fingers crossed that they will make the drop in Sydney when they are supposed to. While being without an iPod is challenging it is an interesting experiment. Your ears tune into any music you hear and you really appreciate it when it’s stuff you like. If I get desperate enough I can always break into song on the bike when the wind is howling and there is no-one to hear but for me, the Gods and some bemused cattle.

I eventually cruised into Wanaka, a place I was told, where I might want to spend the rest of my life. Indeed, my initial impressions were very positive. The hostel had great views across a green and onto a skate-park, behind which lay Lake Wanaka and the lake itself was surrounded by mounds and snow-capped mountains. It was beautiful. While there were tourists and travellers there, the small town isn’t as touristy as Queenstown. The tourists that visit are not the adrenaline tourist but people who love the outdoors and simply want to explore the lake paths, the forests and the National Park next door. By all accounts they blend in with the locals who want to do the same thing. What impressed me most was that bikes are cool in this town. Kids take their BMXs to the skate park and there is also a monster purpose-built dirt-jumping track in the woods. In addition, there are several marked trails in the forest by the lake for pretty challenging mountain-biking sessions.  To cap it off, Wanaka lies at the foot of the highest road pass in New Zealand with a lot of other scenic and calm roads for some nice road-biking. The weekend I stayed saw the Challenge Wanaka ironman distance triathlon and so there is obviously a competitive side to this town too (for a change, I was the guy on the grass by the lake reading my book wondering why all the ironmen passing by were ruining a perfectly nice sunny day). To think that there are three decent ski stations and a proper snow-park nearby for the three months of decent snow they get and it’s a winning combination.  

I was intrigued that they managed to have a skate-park and a dirt-jumping park in such open places. In Ireland and the UK it just wouldn’t be possible. The whole thing would be mired in health and safety and the threat of litigation. The beauty of New Zealand is that it is not possible to sue someone for personal liability. While the amount of cover is reducing, pretty much any resident can walk into a medical centre and get treated for next to nothing in cost. If you slipped and broke a bone on someone else’s property you are not able to sue. Instead, your medical expenses are covered and if you require time off work you will get two-thirds pay from the state for all but the first week. I may not be 100% accurate on the facts but you get the gist. This explains why New Zealand is the home to so many extreme activities.

Wanaka seems like this town straight out of the movie ET. It seems a throw-back to the eighties, when those of us that were kids back then, could freely roam during our summer holidays without the slightest concern from our parents. They had a fair idea where they might find us but we were pretty much free to roam the neighbourhood and fields nearby to our hearts content. Our parents always knew that we’d come home the moment we got hungry, got bored, got in a fight or simply exhausted ourselves. Of course, life is not so straight-forward anymore as we wrap ourselves and our kids up in a web of fear and ‘insure’ that everyone else does the same through the threat of litigation.

However, as cool as Wanaka is, it’s a tiny place and it’s hard to forget this point unless your interests are not particularly diversified. If you want to catch a gig, then it’s a five hour drive to Christchurch. There is rarely going to be a new restaurant opening up in town to sample and pretty soon you will have walked all the walks and biked all the trails. This explains why there is a generation gap. Kids who have spent their school years growing up in a small town on the corner of the map (making the grand assumption that GMT is the centre of the universe) will tend to broaden their horizons by travelling to Wellington or Auckland for university. On completion of their studies they are likely to work in Australia or Europe for a stretch before returning home to New Zealand at some point. Thus, there is a fairly lively part of the population missing in Wanaka and it is evident in the vibe of the place. It feels like a sleepy mountain town; the kind of town where you might dose off and never wake up. It’s a great town for kids as they can BMX, skateboard, dirt-jump and snowboard and get grass-stains on their clean clothes to their hearts’ content. Outdoorsy parents will enjoy the seasons, the scenery and of course the fact that they don’t need to worry much about their kids. Retired people will welcome the calm of the lake and the tranquillity of the open spaces. However, if you are not ready to settle down and your world is bigger than the bowl of a skate-park then you might want to look elsewhere.

'til soon

Marco 

NZ's highest road pass - Crown Range 1076ms. Snow peaks of Remarkables in distance.

On arrival in New Zealand I was struck by how familiar the setting seemed; the barren mountain-sides, drizzle and sheep transported me back to days when I have cycled through Connemara. It was a shock as New South Wales (only three hours away) is so different in terms of its beaches, sunshine, droughts, bush, snakes and kangaroos. While I am very fond of Ireland’s natural beauty, New Zealand is a long way to travel to visit an over-sized version of Connemara. Naturally I would soon learn about the diversity of the landscape in New Zealand. It truly is a stunning piece of geography; not only have I cycled through parts of Connemara but the Swiss Alps and conceivably the Amazon too. I am typing this in Glacier Country and it’s very bizarre to see how the glaciers run into the rainforest and then into the Southern Pacific Ocean.

My first week in Queenstown was spent in a party hostel. This made the most sense as it is a party town ... certainly not a place fit for a Queen. It’s the kind of place where tourists spend a week to get their adrenaline kicks by day and to drink a few shots to settle their nerves by night. This made it easy to make some friends. Of course, it would have been very easy to spend a week, then a month and before you know it a year has passed and you are working behind a bar. I am old enough to recognise a slippery slope when I see one!

When you love descending Alpine passes on a bike for free the attraction of the ‘extreme’ stuff is diminished. Why do a thirty second bungy when you can throw your bike down a mountain at speeds of over 80kph for thirty minutes? Thus, I bungyed neither the ‘Ledge’ nor ‘Nevis’, I did not swing through a canyon, I did not sky-dive Queenstown and I did not jet the Shotover river. My feet stayed firmly on terra firma ... unless of course, they were on the pedals. I did manage to check out the mountain-biking and there are some really cool trails. I had plans to ride the long and steep Dewer Track but having descended 6k into Skipper’s Canyon I realised that it was one of those tracks that you would not want to start at 1pm in the day, you would definitely need a back-pack of food and gear and you would probably want a flare in case you needed to get choppered off the mountain. Thankfully, my experience of Connemara has taught me to respect a changeable climate - I do not plan on being the Irish kid making headlines back home for all the wrong reasons. I biked back out of the Canyon and just did a road ride up to Coronet Peak ski-station instead. They do have some dedicated trails for mountain-biking. The coolest is probably the ‘Vertigo’ track straight down through the trees beside the Gondola. Being a roadie I’m not used to descending long off-road sections of over twenty percent in gradient. Thus, I was happier slogging it up to the top on the access trail. This is a fire-trail that people would race and time themselves up ... needless to say I made sure to make time to stop and check that my brake pads weren’t rubbing on the way up ... Goddam 16 kilo mountain-bikes !

Having neither jumped off the ‘Ledge’ nor slipped down the proverbial slope, I hatched plans to get out of there. It’s a cool town but there is definitely a hint of Seahaven (the town in the Truman Show) to it. It’s all a bit surreal really. I didn’t have the time to peel off the layers of the onion to get to the heart of Queenstown. It seems a place over-run with tourists and we all know that tourists keep their head down and their minds closed so that they can visit a place to check the boxes. Of course, it didn’t help that the weather was shocking for the week I spent there. The scenery is stunning if the cloud isn’t so low-slung that you can see it. It was only while waiting for a pizza that I managed to see the Revolver DVD being played on the TV. This DVD showed people, base-jumping, down-hilling, hang-gliding, dirt-jumping etc. However, I recognised the faces as being those who worked in the shops as opposed to those of the token 23 year old tourist that one would see in the marketing DVDs for all the extreme stuff that happens here. I stayed to enjoy the whole DVD. The penny dropped that this is the real Queenstown; people who moved here so they could do the extreme sports they love on their days free from serving tourists in a piece of nature that we all know from the Lord of the Rings to be stunning.

Next port of call – Wanaka

Marco

While I was out the Great Ocean Road in Victoria I met a 67 year old English guy who had spent five months biking New Zealand a few years ago. He is one of those people who doesn’t believe in marriage or kids. He does have a lady friend of 27 years although they live in separate houses in North Wales. The freedom he enjoys allows him to spend five months touring on a bike every other year and having biked all over both North and South Island I was happy to let him plan my route. My original intention was to go from Christchurch to Queenstown but he suggested going the other way as the winds along the West coast would be more favourable.  He told me that New Zealand is all good but the way he went it just got better and better. Thus, with the relatively short time I have here my route is as follows: Fly into Queenstown and do some mountain-biking, take a bus tour to Milford Sound, ride to Wanaka and chill out, bike out and back to the bottom of Mount Cook (NZ’s highest point but you can't bike up it), head out the west coast to Fox and Franz Josef Glacier and on up to Greymouth before finally biking over Arthur’s Pass to Christchurch for my flight back to Sydney.

I am conscious that this is my last bit of travel in the land of familiar white-folk for a while (maybe colonisation by the crown isn’t so bad ... oops, how could I forget the 700 years yadda yadda yadda) and so my main priority in New Zealand is just to slow things right down to absolute holiday mode and relax as much as possible. The only effort I intend to make is in trying to learn some Latin American Spanish in advance of the next leg of the trip. At some point I will have to engage the brain and check over all my gear and equipment to make some deletions and additions in light of the potential challenges of the Andes. New Zealand provides few headaches in this department as they have good outdoor and bike shops in case you are short. They also have heaps of cheap hostels, which means that there is no point in carting my camping gear. Thus, I am travelling relatively light here.

Go-Go-Gadget holiday mode

marco

I have transited from New South Wales to New Zealand. Thus, this post concludes my Ozzie adventures.

In the 'Best Brewski' competition; my favourite ale was James Boags - A Tasmanian brew with a bit of bite.

In the 'Trans-VIC/NSW Rocky Road Challenge' the winner was Fernando's Fudge in Milton - The soft creamy texture of the chocolate fudge blended really well with the smooth goo of the marshmallows.

In the 'Fantasy Female' contest the hottest chick was found on Bondi - Either a Spanish or Latin American backpacker who sent the imagination into overdrive before her boyfriend came along and ruined my day.

Some impressions of New South Wales are in the gallery ... I had plans for a bikini gallery but I'm creepy enough already! These turned out to be simple point-and-shoots to give people an impression. Hopefully I will fare better in NZ.

Mind how you go

Marco

Having spent a week in Sydney I thought I would bail to explore the coast up to Byron Bay. This would mean spending New Year’s Eve in Byron. Leaving everything until the last minute meant that the only chance of getting accommodation was to take a surf camp up the coast and have them arrange a hostel for me. This worked a treat and I looked forward to the opportunity to spend time in the water as opposed to on the road. Being a nomad makes conversation quite tiresome at times. While it’s great to have the ‘where are you from?’ card to pull from the back pocket as a conversation starter, a lot of people are simply travelling and so it’s often a case of same conversation different person. Naturally you meet some cool characters along the way but in the main backpackers are a very polite bunch unless they are travelling with a large group of mates. Thus, the surf camp would provide me with a new scenario; same people and the possibility of a different conversation after a couple of days.

Stormy weather had blown in from the West Coast making the swell pretty big. Normally this is a good thing for surfing but for novices the waves were too big, had too much energy and crashed too early. Thus, paddling out beyond the break took a lot of work. Inevitably the power of the waves against a 9ft foam board meant that the effort to get behind the break made you think twice about catching a wave back into the impact zone. Five days of non-stop rain made for tricky learning and left little opportunity to chill on the beach, catch some rays and wait for better conditions. Often it was just easiest to float on the board out the back and pretend that you were waiting for the perfect barrel to come to shore. Still, one session was awesome and like learning anything new it’s a case of paying attention and letting the pennies drop. If you have the patience then you will pretty much figure most things out. Surfing is great fun and there is no need to master it as the fun is in trying. From what I can make out even experienced surfers get very little return for their time in the water and so it’s just a game of patience ... something I have lots of.  It’s cool to think that whenever I visit Manly, Malibu or Mayo that I can rent a board for a couple of hours and have some fun with it.

The camp itself was carnage; just like being back in college. Like any group tour the people can be hit and miss; in this case it was about 50/50. I got on well with a bunch of people but the most fun were a group of kiwi girls who took me under their wing for some more partying by the time we got to Byron Bay. It was great being back in that zone again as it was exactly what I needed. We had a very cool bunch of instructors who invited everybody on tour to their beach party on New Year’s Eve even though we were no longer on camp. I still can’t understand a word they say but they are effectively professional degenerates buzzing off a cocktail of surf and weed by day and booze and coke by night. Fun people to be around until their wheels inevitably fall off as they float to a more mind-altering buzz. I had originally feared that the surfer-set would be particularly flaky and annoyingly vain. Team Billabong, who stayed with us on camp, were exactly that. They were very into their bodies and overly ladish. Our instructors weren’t like that at all; cool for me is when you can naturally transcend the box people put you into and these guys did it well even if they were wasted half the time.

Of course, if kids need any convincing that smoking lots and lots of pot is bad for you then they should take a trip to Nimbin. This is a town not too far from Byron Bay where a bunch of travelling hippies decided to stop and stick around for a while. I could see why they did as the scenery is pretty cool. In 1973 they organised Aquarius; a festival which sounds a bit like it might have been a Woodstock of sorts. The hippies remained and attracted a whole bunch of people like them.  Interestingly they didn’t attract too many as it is still a one-street town. While they flouted the law they were left pretty much left to their own devices.

Unfortunately Nimbin has the highest rates of bi-polar and schizophrenia in Australia and so the government put two and two together and called in the law; much to the angst of the backpacker who blows in to buy some ‘cookies’. Police presence has increased meaningfully to such an extent that street dealing has been driven down the lanes much like anywhere else. This doesn’t stop signage pointing out that there can’t be anything illegal about nature but for sure something has changed. I’m all into peace, love and happiness but I’m a little suspicious of hippies who think that love means sex and that peace and happiness means getting stoned. The original hippy message is inevitably ‘wasted’ and Nimbin seems such a place. Still, it’s funny seeing a shrivelled up aul’ lad sitting on an armchair in the middle of the street high as a kite. He laughed at absolutely nothing and could barely walk. The shame is that he is probably forty.

Byron Bay itself is a pretty cool place. The week between Christmas and New Year is always pandemonium as it is over-run with tourists, both Australian and international. It’s annoying having to queue half an hour for a burrito but such is the damage curious blow-ins like me do to the local area. The old chilled out alternative surfing town of Byron Bay is what everybody wants to see but the arrival of tourism makes it now look and feel like any other modern beach town with its weekenders and consumers. I’m sure it quietens down again but once an area has given in to the temptation of the tourist dollar it is never the same again. Probably best to visit when no-one else is there but by all accounts a good party town with a hint of the original arty and surfer vibe to make it a beach town with a difference.

Will talk soon.

Giller

Unbelievably I am struggling to decide on which city I prefer. It is not a case of one being better than the other because they both have totally different vibes. For sure the familiar energy of Sydney made it seem safe and homely. Overlay this with the very cool beach scene, a very hospitable climate and a lot of very beautiful girls and it’s a very appealing prospect. I’m not even a beach person (let’s be honest - sand is literally a pain in the ass) but the entertaining muscle-beach of Bondi full of beautiful people was as much fun as the family-friendly beach of Manly where everybody gets along. Of course, there are a string of other beaches which I didn’t get a chance to check out. On the other-hand the prospect of having to rise very early just to do a few laps of Centennial Park so that I can enjoy my bike is hardly enticing. The park itself is choc-a-bloc with cyclists doing laps which makes it almost as stressful as the roads and so hardly worth getting out of bed for. I ride to switch off not to switch on. I save that for racing.

Melbourne has a great alternative vibe and having lived in Ranelagh for the last six years also seems kind of familiar. However, I’m starting to see myself more and more as an outsider, which makes the prospect of finding a place where I feel I belong very challenging. Ultimately I want to feel that I’m contributing to the energy of a place as opposed to consuming it. As much as I love organic markets, fixed-gear bikes, retro clothes and a healthy cultural scene I really just consume these products. This is much like an Irish kid who buys Quiksilver tees; he wants to be associated with the surfer set even though he can’t surf. I am ultimately a consumer of the alternative vibe. I’m not overly comfortable with this and it is interesting to note that I don’t really have friends who are grungy, play in bands, work behind falafel stalls on weekends and as bike messengers during the week. As Mrs Hope would tell me; “show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.” Still, it is more positive to be surrounded by the things you like rather than the things you don’t like and with Melbourne having a pretty active cycling fraternity and a stronger cafe and cake scene it is a very appealing town. But there is the weather to think about and while I never really think much about the weather I can’t quite put it out of mind when it comes to Melbourne and Victoria.

Thus, to bring this to a conclusion I am going to employ a little tool that I learnt from Kirsty while watching ‘Relocation, Relocation’ on TV in Sydney. Yes, I am guilty of watching a property show over a late breakfast while my gracious hosts are busy at work. Such British shows run on a loop here on the Lifestyle Channel starting with Property Ladder, then Relocation, Relocation followed by A New Life in the Country and capped off with Grand Designs before going back to Property Ladder and so on. Pretty unbelievable and surely confirmation of the fact that there is something unsustainable about the Australian property market. I can’t quite put my finger on it but there is definitely something in the air that smells odd. Anyway, where house-hunters can’t decide between two properties Kirsty encourages them to make a list of the various rooms and amenities and rate them. The property that tallies the highest wins. The tool is supposed to convince you to make a decision to make an offer on the property.

Perhaps making a simple list off the top of my head in relation to cities will help decide whether I prefer Sydney or Melbourne. Marks are out of 10 and in no particular order of preference. This is based on the assumption that the necessary A$100k salary required to live centrally and enjoy the place properly is attainable.

Melbourne

Ladies - 6

Bike Friendliness - 10

Bike route options - 5

Alternative Scene - 9

Things to do - 8

Cafe Scene - 8

Restaurants - 8

Music scene - 8

Arts scene - 8

Parks to read in - 8

Space to breathe in - 8

Neighbourhood appeal - 7

Convenience - 7

Distance from countryside - 4

Stress-free vibe - 7

Expense - 5

Beauty - 8

Dry weather - 4

Sunshine - 5

Cakes - 7

Beach scene - 5

Friendliness – 7

Accessibility to Mountains – 1

Eurosport - 10

Sydney

Ladies - 8

Bike friendliness - 1

Bike route options - 2

Alternative Scene - 4

Things to do - 6

Cafe Scene - 6

Restaurants - 7

Music scene - 7

Arts scene - 5

Parks to read in - 7

Space to breathe in - 7

Neighbourhood appeal - 6

Convenience - 7

Distance from countryside - 5

Stress-free vibe - 7

Expense - 6

Beauty - 6

Dry weather - 8

Sunshine - 9

Cakes - 6

Beach scene - 9

Friendliness - 7

Accessibility to Mountains - 2

Eurosport - 10

And the winner is ... MELBOURNE ... 163 pts to 149. That’s that I guess.

Take care

Marco

Ps: My photos of Sydney are in the gallery if you want to have a goo.