Finishing the Southern Scenic Route

We left Owaka yesterday with bags full of clean clothes and hopes that the forcasted scattered showers would scatter themselves away from us. We were back to riding through rolling hills... at times we were on top of the hills looking at views of the rolling landscape as far as the eyes could see... a myriad of different green and brown colored fields decorating the hills with a few scattered patches of trees and an ocasional barn or country home (and of course sheep!).

We arrived to Balclutha after about 30 km and for the next 40km, the cars steadily increased as we came closer to Dunedin... apparently NZ roads are not only for bikes. We did approach a lone cycle tourist on the route; however, as we came up behind him he had one look in his mirror, saw two girls about to pass, and then took off at high speeds... guess he didn't want to chat :) The southern scenic route then took a turn off the busy SH 1 and we were relieved from hugging the side of the road.

Our relief soon ended when we realized that the 10k hill in front of us was all gravel! (Oh dear!). We had the option of turning back and going to the busy SH1 (that we heard only got busier and may not allow bikes) or trudging our way up the deep gravel road. We tried riding a bit of the hill, but soon realized that the gravel, hill, pannier combination did not provide good prospects for our nice smooth skin and beautiful bikes. Reluctant to turn back, we traded our bike shoes for running shoes and began a "nice" stroll up the mountain with our heavy bikes. We were surrounded by a panoramic view of rolling hills and a large lake down below and as we crossed over the top of the hill we were greeted by the east coast on the other side. We had a nice walk, but were not sad to see the gravel finally end and hop back on our bikes.

It took a while to get the legs moving once again, but we were soon zooming along down the east coast on an open road with few cars, a view of sand dunes, deserted beaches, and ocean to our right and sheep farms dotted with small cottages to our left. The ride along the coast with cool ocean breezes made our 10k journey over the gravelly hill all worthwhile.

We soon approached Dunedin and had to climb a long steep hill in order to enter the city proper... ugh! We got to the top and couldn't find the roads listed on our directions so we just headed along any road that didn't go up and eventually pulled up to the closed information ceter in the city proper. Luckily, there was a map outisde and we found directions to our nearby hostel.

We had had a long day... travelling well over 100km and we couldn't wait to get off our bike seats and fill our bellies... we were dreaming of a nice big pizza... Mmmm... The trip to our hostel was all up hill and we cranked and cranked our way up one street after another until we finally lost steam and walked the last 100 m. to our lodge. When I went to check in, the nice nice lady told me there was leftover pizza in the dining room (am I dreaming I thought?!). There was in fact pizza, and before mally and I moved our bikes and gear off the sidewalk and into our rooms we downed all the last remains... we couldn't have been happier!

Today we are exploring Dunedin... we've been to the farmers market where we ate crepes and drank elephant juice, checked out an art exhibit in the nifty looking train station, and walked in a few stores to look around. We'll spend the rest of the day checking out the city, relaxing a bit, and mourning our approaching departure from NZ.