January 30 - National Park Village to Wanganui - 124 km

After yesterday's torture test, what do we do?  Go farther of course!   Today's distance was 124 km, but with a lot of downhill as we left National Park Village (elevation 820 meters) and cycled to Wanganui on the coast.  Interestingly enough, even though the track was generally downhill, we still managed to climb 1005 meters throughout the day.  We spent 7 hours pedaling as opposed to 8 the day before.  We had cloud in the morning and no headwinds until mid afternoon, by which time we had completed about 75% of the distance and were working our way up the last 150 meter hill.

The countryside is very pretty, quite rolling with pastures and crops on the flat areas, and pastures and forests on the steeper areas.  We saw mostly sheep in the pastures.

The sheep are generally skittish - a semi-trailer can roll by and they ignore it, but if we sneak up on them and say "Hi" they often scoot away.

These falls are the largest we've seen so far.  I saw a photo of them in the paper, taken last week when they were in full flood.  A huge difference!

Here's where we had lunch at a bridge over the river.  Note all the palms along the side.  A beautiful spot.  I forgot to mention that there was very little traffic on the road, so the cycling was easy.

And here's a photo of me, proving I am in New Zealand, and not hiding out in Coombs.  They even named a road after me, but forgot the apostrophe.

So, we made it into Wanganui about 1600.  We had talked to a motorcyclist earlier on - he recommended the Grand Hotel, so we found it and stayed here.  It is showing its age, but is funky and we get breakfast thrown in.  They won't make any money off us, with our cyclist appetites.  I have to be  in the lobby to use their wireless Internet, but I can sit here with a beer, so  it is very civilized.

Check out the manager's vintage car out front.  It is a 1952 Singer Sport - he calls it a poor man's MG.

I gad an hour before dinner, so I rode around the downtown to have a look.  This roundabout seems to be the centre of downtown.


Tomorrow, Laura is planning on 100 km to a town called Levin.  She claims it is a flat road - we'll see!