122km to Haast- 417 Kms in 4 days and still going strong

A wild night with errant schoolboys and torrential overnight rain made Fox G a rather average experience. A bunch of 15 year old boys ” kings ” descended on our backpacker accommodation and made for a real racket as we were trying to get off to sleep. Graham finally put a stop to proceedings with an authoritative display of a big voice telling them to ” shut the f up ” – it worked !

Graham again began the days cycling early and was away with the wind – head down – going for it – happy to not be with the 3 roadies. At days end he was actually 45 mins ahead of us despite a much lower average speed – 23 km for him – 27 km average for the 3 on road bikes. the difference was we stopped more often for photo ops and other breaks – time to relish and enjoy the really remarkable scenery that is the deep sth west coast. Fine clear weather and a gradient that was generally easy made it a great day to be on the bikes.

Ali was up the the task despite all the road rash he is carrying – but fair to say we were all pleased to finally see the Long Haast river bridge and the end of a big day. Tomorrow we have a huge climb straight on up to the Haast Pass and hopefully a nice fast descent to Makarora our next stop.

Theo and Sue – friends of Graham invited the team to their Haast retreat to enjoy a big dinner of fresh venison back steaks . An interesting couple , fishery expert now retired and Sue an environmental ecologist working for govt.
Rod , our driver and general support -jack of all trades – in the lazyboy – story of his life!