I think "Zea" is Maori for hilly

Well, how to sum up the last three days? New Zealand is everything that everyone says it is. The landscape is simply amazing and beautiful and the people are as friendly as they come. I just now accessed the internet and these posting may be fewer and farther apart than I had hoped, but I'll do my best.



After touching down in Auckland and gathering the goods, we assembled our bikes and hit the road. It was an ambitious start, we rode 60 miles to Glen Murray where we stayed in a backpacker's hostel. The scenery was unlike anything I've ever laid eyes upon; the colors were more vibrant than an acid induced kaleidoscope show. Not that I know what that's like, but I can imagine. The farms were rolling and never ending. There were mostly sheep, some cattle, a lot of wild turkeys, more sheep and a few dead hedgehogs to boot.



From Glen Murray we travelled to Raglan. A small artsy/surfing community roughly 42 miles westish. I nice ride until we got to the main highway leading to the town. The road was decent, but it's a holiday out here this weekend, so there were a lot of folks heading in our same general direction. That's not a bad thing in it's own right, but New Zealander's think they're on the Autobahn, on any road. A bit frightening to say the least. For dinner we had the famous fish, chips and beer. The chips were great, the fish turned out to be a entirely fried, head to tail, flounder and the beer was zesty. An interesting meal and not all that satisfying. Oh well.



Today we left and made our way towards Hamilton. It was only a 24 mi. ride, but what started out as a beautiful road, turned into a gravelly dirt/treacherous 8 miles of possible carnage. My body is extremely sore just from trying to keep the bike upright. I only wrecked once and was going slow enough not to draw blood. I'm sure it was beautiful around us, but it was hard to pay attention when all you could stare at and look for was a rut in the road to stay in. Glad it's over. We're now in another backpacker's hostel and about to eat some pasta. Hope to make a long day out of tomorrow, but we'll see; the weather is about to turn. Until next time. Pics will have to wait for another computer, sorry.