Adria and I are tucked into a hostel in the weirdest town ever - Haast.
Adria is cooking dinner and I was just uploading the best pictures to-date when the connection crashed; so no pictures this go-round. Insted, you'll get a description of the pic and my cheesy commentary.
Pic 1: An action shot taken from my perspective of Adria riding yesterday.
You think she's stoked? This is what I got to look at all day yesterday, in addition to the rest of the gorgeous scenery over here. She is grinning from ear to ear, and that's the way we both looked yesterday. Yesterday was probably the best day of riding she and I have had. We were on a double-track gravel road, winding through open graze land (all free range livestock over here - the only living beings more stoked than me about that are the animals!). We started at higher elevations and ended up between the gorges that we were looking at all morning. Riding along a river, explored an old sheepherders stone cabin, two water crossings that made us crack up (Adria cleaned both of them!).
Pic 2: An old blue and white camper van parked on a hill, backdrop of clouds and blue sky, foreground of lush green grass and a bottle of wine on a table.
We stayed at a farmstay a few nights ago - super nice hosts put us up in this old camper, since we dropped in and all the cabins were taken. We scored. Who needs a cabin when you can stay in an old camper - it kinda reminded me of Into the Wild, but nobody ate poisonous shrubs and died at the end. Adria fell in love with the goat on the property. There were lots of sheep, too. The hosts grow peonies and export them to the states.
Pic 3: a blurry picture of a group of folks outside a stone building at night.
My cheesy commentary: Three words: "Cue the locals." Maybe you've seen the Chevy Chase movie where he and his wife are looking a buying a home in this old New England village and the locals really want him to live there (he's a famous writer and they think their town will benefit from his presence) so they stage all this fake, corny behavior to mis-represent the town as this idyllic, quaint village. Well, Adria and I experienced that firsthand at Chatto Creek. We had ridden the Otago Rail Trail, and were dusty and tired and needed a beer. We stopped into the Chatto Creek Tavern for a Speight's and ended up sleeping in a room only 18 feet from the bar. We shared drinks with the locals - farmers, sheep ranchers, an architect, a guy with a pet pig, a local police officer. If I blindfolded you, teleported you to this place, removed the blindfold, and asked you where you were, you would have said "New Zealand." The men all had sunburned faces, bulbous noses, crew cuts, popped collars. There was rugby on the TV. Pictures to follow.
Pic 4: Adria hunkered over a map with a local from the i Site shop.
My cheesy commentary: i Site stores are like our own little travel agencies. This day, our plans changed at the last minute when we learned that a bus was involved to get where we wanted to go. I think my exact words were "F the pavement." We ended up on 70 Km of gravel road and loved it!
Big ride tomorrow to the glaciers - 120Km - up at dawn!
Cheers!
