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Ok, so this is the final post of this blog!

We arrived home yesterday afternoon after a looong flight from Vancouver. The first flight, that is, Auckland-Vanocuver was quite pleasant, we and space and the plane and service were quite nice. We slept a little and actually tried to start our 12 hours daytime zone adaptation, but I can tell you already that for me it has not worked.

When we got to Vancouver, we had 8 hours of wait till the next flight, so we just came out of the airport and made a very brief visit to Vancouver. It turns out this city is quite beautiful and worth a longer visit. It has a very nice waterfront on the bay and is surrounded by snowy mountains. We took a two hour stride around a seaside park called Stanley Park and then headed back to the airport.

The fresh air and walk helped us face the last leg of the trip. Unfortunately, this last leg was with my most favourite airline, KLM and my fears turned out to be true. The drop in overall quality is astounding when you get down from a normally nice airplane and get into a KLM one. I will spare you the tales of my woes, suffice it to say that I will try very, very hard to not get into a KLM plane again very soon.

Anyway, even after this last tiring leg of the trip, we made it in one piece to Schiphol airport and completed our trip around the world!

It has been an incredible adventure almost non stop. We have done lots and lots of crazy and fascinating things and to be honest, I was not really tired of having so much fun, but the time ran out and now it is time to get back into reality!

Coming back on from the other side

Today was our last day in New Zealand. It has been an amazing holiday, and we agreed that we could not finish it without doing a last hike in the mountains. We were sleeping in a smallish (for the north island) town called Thames, just a hundred kilometres from Auckland and right by our side there was the Coromandel Peninsula  natural park so he profited that the plane was not leaving until 8 pm and decided to go climb a mountain or two before going to the airport.

The hike was excellent, yet another change in scenery, this time we had to walk through very dense wet forest and in order to climb the steep walls of the mountains, someone had carved lots and lots of steps in the bare rock. The result was a hike that reminded us the Indiana Jones movies, like getting near an abandoned Mayan temple or something.

Anyway, we completed the hike, got back in the car and drove to Auckland airport. There we left our rental car, got in the plane and hoped for an nicer journey than the first one.

One last interesting tidbit, we are not coming back the same as we left. In fact, we are coming in from the other side!

Visiting a secret place

Well, second to last day in New Zealand and we have decided to do a very, very special visit!

I had considered visiting this particular spot previously, but it is normally quite uninteresting, just an empty field for crazy, crazy fans.

But as it turns out, this moment in time is very special indeed, because where things happened before, things are going to start happening again next week. And the empty field is now not empty at all, but full of very, very interesting stuff that has been prepared for months already. The place we visited is going to be closed for visits probably this week so the special things can happen. We got to see it in almost the perfect moment.

Unfortunately, I am not this vague for a reason. We have taken photos and would love to tell you guys all about it, but we have signed one of these:

So we just cannot post any of the AMAZING photos we took or tell you anything about how incredibly cool and special it was.

Fortunately, this will change, as in what I estimate will be roughly two years time, you will all be able to see what we saw today and we'll be able to tell you everything about it.

Suffice it to say, it was another unforgettable experience in I do not know how many we've lived here.

So to give you the last geographic information, we got up in Rotorua, drove to Matamata and tonight we are going to sleep in a town called Thames and getting our backpacks ready for the airport. This is our last night in New Zealand!

Up into the volcano!

Well, today we could wait no longer, the weather was still not good, but our plane is leaving soon and we still have stuff to do, so we decided to toughen up and get to business: The Tongariro Alpine Crossing, considered the best one day hike in New Zealand. The route takes you up to a pass between two volcanos, one of them Mount Tongariro itself, and through several craters to go down on the other side of the mountain.

Mount Tongariro is famous because it was filmed in the Lord of the Rings film as Mount Doom, the place where all evil lies and where the actual story unfolds its final surprise.

We had decided to aim for a fast climb and if time and weather permitted, attempt to turn left at the Pass saddle and climb to the actual summit of the volcano. It seemed doable, specially if we hurried.

The day came out very cloudy and rainy and as we approached the track start, we realized, we were going to do the whole climb inside clouds. It was going to be a pity, to spend so much effort and see nothing. Still, the epic of the trip required us to get there, so we started climbing fast and were in the saddle one hour ahead of the normal schedule. The clouds engulfed us from the beginning and as we got to the saddle, the wind started.

We had been warned about the wind at the top. it seems it makes a vortex and reaches speeds of more than 50 km/h, so it seemed pretty dangerous to stay there. Still, as we had time, we decided to push for the top of Tongariro, left the normal path and attacked the summit following a long series of marking poles, because the terrain was too active to have a real path.

Those were difficult moments, Josele and me climbing in very dense fog, seeing just one pole ahead of us and rain and wind hitting us from the side. We were drenched very soon and saw many groups turning back. There was nothing to see, so why bother?

But we had not gone through 1100 kms on the bike to turn back that easy, so we endured and finally, after less than an hour of climb from thew saddle, at around 11 am, we got to Mount Doom!

The weather there was awful, so we stayed there very little time, took some photos and completed Frodo's quest.

As we were going down, we realized the weather was getting slightly better, the wind was less strong, it stopped raining and there was more light, so when we got to the saddle, we decided to wait a little before pushing down to see if the clouds would move away and let us see all these volcanos around us.

And it did.

And again, this country is freaking amazing. We were in the middle of the moon, looking down into the gates to hell. It was truly the best day hike I have ever done.

Tonight we are sleeping in Rotorua, a center of Maori culture, but as we are one day late, we will not have the time to make any kind of visit. We are very, very busy tomorrow, you'll see!

The plateau of Gorgoroth

Not many opportunities to cite the Lord of the Rings left now, so you'll have to endure two or three more, please bear with me...
Today we had planned a big mountain climb, but the weather in the north is not good to us so we have changed plans and decided to go visit some geothermal sites, where we have seen incredible Geysers, fumaroles and weird chemicals boiling in the surface of pools of mud.

It has been very interesting and quite a nice day to pass a rainy day, but there was a catch. We had to use the car quite extensively, and to be honest, it is just not the same. It is more boring, surprisingly more tiring and above all, you lose the contact with the place.

We first visited the "Craters of the Moon", near Taupo:

The most interesting place we visited is called Orakei Korato, an incredible site of sulphur, boiling waters and unnatural colours.

So we've had some nice walks and gone back to the hostel to rest and have an early night. Tomorrow we attack the mountain!

The North Island

The ferry to Wellington is quite spectacular, as you can see in this photos.

Wellington itself is quite nice, despite being really big. It is a mountain city on the seaside, very steep streets and lots of greenery. In wellington we visited a very nice bird sanctuary and saw the last living species of dinosaur on Earth. This particular sancturay is a animal reserve in the middle of the city, you would think you ar ein the deep, deep jungle but in fact the park is designed with vary strong defenses against predators so that local species can thrive. It is a very interesting visit, a little nature in a sea of concrete.

(edit from Josele)
The Kaka, a rainforest parrot species... very inteligent and playful, not so cheeky as the Kea:

The Tuatara... It is not a lizard, but a survivor of the dinosaur era. It was able to survive in New Zealand thanks to the lack of predators:

 

In case you think it easy to spot such a non-lizard/dinosaur, try to spot the one in this picture (I'll give a hint where to look at below the photo):

(hint: try harder, you lazy piece of meat!)

This is the Tui, a rare bird famous for its very strange singing... it seemed to be eating some sort of gigantic hamburger, but at the same time it was quite beautiful:

(edit ends here)

And we finally, sadly went to leave our bikes in the rental shop in Wellington. It was sad for both of us, we have LOVED these bikes and they have loved us back. I think this bike model is the best possible option for this kind of trip and I will try as hard as I can to use these kind of bike in any future adventures.
These were the final numbers in the bike's computer, accumulated distance and maximum speed...

It is an understatement to say that after our love for the bikes, getting a shitty corean rental car was a BIG letdown...

The only good thing I can say about the car is that it is going to take us to our last destination, and that is no mean feat, the landscape in the north island is beautiful but not very flat...

The parallels with the Lord of the Rings are becoming more and more clear, so...

If we are on a quest in Middle Earth, where are we trying to get?

Exactly.

Achievement Unlocked!

So... we did it.

Yesterday we arrived in Picton, the last point of our bike adventure. We did the last 25 kms in a very, very relaxed way, and to be honest, quite sad to be at the end of the route. 

As a result of this last 25 kms, unfortunately I have to correct my statement from yesterday. The road between Havelock and Anakiwa is NOT the most beautiful road in the world. In fact, the road between Havelock and Picton is the most beautiful. And we rode it in ideal conditions, sunny weather and low traffic.
This is Picton, out last city in the South Island....

After that, we had an excellent celebratory beer in the most scottish pub in australasia and headed for the ferry. We were finally, after I do not know how many days, leaving the south island and going to the north. It has been a thrilling place to visit and as I already have felt many times during the trip, is the best already behind us?

Well, we still have some interesting things to do in the north and this blog is far from over. 

But the bikes, our trusty rides all these days, will not go on with us. We are going to leave them here in Wellington and take a car instead. I know, it is shameful, isn't it?

What is pretty cool in this stage of the trip is the face people puts when we explain to them that we come biking all the way from Queenstown. Bike freaks have seen our bikes and come to talk with us about routes, resting places and favourite roads.
We've become like the Forrest Gump of south island biking...

The best ride ever

We are almost, almost there!
Today we had the last real bike ride in our trip and it felt like living a small brief version of the whole 1000 km. ride.
The beginning was very tough, we had a very, very strong headwind for the first 30 kms. It was a beautiful valley, but we are tired and it sapped the energy out of us. So as every day in this trip, New Zealand made us pay before giving up what there was to see. And as always in this trip, once you have payed the price you are not let down!
I will make a BIG statement and i do not really care if you think I exaggerate, but i honestly think it's not the case:
The roughly 15 kms between the small town of Havelock and the even smaller town of Anakiwa is the best strip of bicycle road on Earth.

We seriously thought about this and I am sorry, but places like Lake Como, Switzerland or coastal roads like Calufornia or Norway can go stuff themselves. The best is here. It is simply perfect, you climb from a picturesque fishing town on the side of a fjord covered in vegetation to a beautiful lookout point where you get to see two fjords at the same time. The climb is easyish, less than 100 mts altitude and no nasty ramps. The road then snakes down the second fjord twisting so that no car can go fast (actually there are not too many) and the bikes can take the whole road. That downhill is also magical because for more than 4 kms you do not need to pedal... or touch the brakes. It is just a gentle descent with the bike entering all those curves at the right speed, never slowing down or accelerating too much. And to finish, a flat road on the edge of the water until you cross a short flat patch of land between forests so that you can get into yet another beautiful fjord and reach Anakiwa. Absolutely picture perfect ride, like the advertisement of an expensive car.

Now we are resting a little, as I am not joking when I say we are exhausted. My legs hurt all the way coming here and I really suffered in the headwind so we could do a decent average. Josele is also a little spent, so starting tomorrow night, we'll both be quite happy to change the tone of the adventure. Tomorrow we'll do the last kilometres in this amazing ride and will move on to something completely different!

1000 kilometres!

Well! Yesterday, as we were crossing Blenheim, we clocked 1000 km, not bad!
We are very near the next change in our our adventure, but as always I will just tell you about past events...

(edit from Josele) I wanted to take a picture exactly when the counter showed 1000 km. but it reset itself to 0 as I have been using the trip counter and not the total counter! So I only have the photo taken 10 meters before.


It was a pity to leave Kaikoura, it really is a beautiful place and we had great times there, but time ran out and we had to move on. We took road number 1 to the north and after a pretty nice stretch of seaside road, we finished our day in a lonely farm in the middle of the Ure valley. Total population: 2 and a dog... as usual.

We were able to buy products from the farm and cook for dinner a very, very excellent barbecue together with the wine made out of the farmer's grapes. All of it in a sunny afternoon overlooking the rows of vines. Yes, we were clearly entering grape country!

The next day we did our easiest distance so far, just 56 km and we came through Blenheim to sleep in the middle of the very, very famous Malborough Valley. It is the biggest wine producing region in NZ and we intended to visit some wineries.

So between today and yesterday we have been able to have some much more fancy food and taste some good wine. We also have tasted a lot of normal wine, I have decided that with exceptions, NZ wine is not my favourite. We visited famous places, Clouby Bay, Seresin, Isabel and Wairau River and had lots of fun.
And still, even after all this poshers, we are having barbecue for dinner again!

(edit from Josele) I added to our latest entry one picture and two videos of our swim with the seals. Please check again that post to watch the videos as they are worth it. Also, the computer at the hostel does not read my Canon SD card, so I posted some photos I take with my IPhone while on the bike (the 999.99 km one I took standing).