Mileage: 265
My (very) brief love affair with rain.
Remember when I posted I didn't mind rain? Yeah well, I take it all back.
I realized how boring it must have been, reading about all these amazing days I've been having so I decided to switch it up a bit. It was freaking miserable today. I didn't remember much of the scenery since I was too busy trying to see through my rain pelted, fogged up visor as I navigated twisty, rain slicked roads that were also being worked on so had huge sections of gravel. Lovely.
It didn't start raining upon leaving Wanaka but it was already chilly. I debated whether to zip the warm liner in and decided it wasn't cold enough. I should have, because by the time I thought about it again, I was freezing my ass off. Today's route was 265 miles and it rained about 200 of those miles. I'm counting sprinkles too. The rain never became torrential, but it was heavy and constant enough that it made seeing difficult especially because my visor kept fogging up. What made it worse was riding through the darkness of the rain forest and handling some pretty twisty roads. My body was pretty beat as well. I was still pretty sore from the activities of the past few days (3 hrs of horseback riding, 3 hrs of canyoning then bungy jumping) and my throttle hand was aching. When I stopped for gas, I had to bend it out of the claw shape it had frozen into. It was hard enough to keep the throttle open much less having to navigate through twisty, wet roads. I was exhausted.
It was really a shame, because the road was beautiful as it wound through the rain forest, then the hugged the ocean. I couldn't enjoy it as I had to focus on the road while being tired, cold, wet and sore. I just wanted to get to where I was going so I could get off the damn bike. I didn't even bother taking any photos until I got to the Birdsong hostel in Hokitika. If I were home, this would have been one of those "too tired to ride" days where I shouldn't be anywhere near a bike, but I didn't have much choice but to push through.
We got to the hostel a little before 3pm, a bit bedraggled and a whole let wet. At least there was a nice view of the ocean. I've always loved the scent and sounds of the ocean and the hostel was pretty darn cute.
Lovely ocean view from the common room.
We hung at the hostel for a bit, then walked into town in search of food. The Hokitika Town Center was about a mile away. We found a local eatery, Hokitika Cheese & Deli. I had grilled monk fish, drizzled with hollandaise sauce on a bed of sauteed veggies for dinner,a homemade rasberry cheesecake with homemade whip cream for dessert and a nice cup of latte. Ahhh...that hit the spot. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera to memorialize this delicious event, but I'm glad I didn't as it had started raining again and hadn't let up when we were ready to head back. Noooo!!!
We walked about a half mile in the rain. I had a now soaked and tattered town map over my head that was pouring more water on me than fending off and the rest of me was soaked, so I decided to do a little hitch-hiking. It seemed the local thing to do and as they say "When in Rome..." So I hitched my thumb out and tried to look very wet and pathetic (which wasn't very hard). Three cars rolled by without even slowing down. Suddenly, I heard another car and turned around, sticking out my thumb. The little blue SUV passed us, then pulled over! Matt and I raced to the truck and a little old man with tats down his forearm beamed at us through the passenger window, motioning for us to get in. The ride was short since we were only 1/2 mile from the hostel by then, so didn't get to converse too much with our savior. He asked us where we were from and I found out he had been out fishing, which wasn't a big surprise given all the sand I was sitting on.
And now I'm lounging on a bean bag in front of a nice fire, hoping tomorrow would be a little less tiring and a lot dryer.
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