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.