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!