Day 4 meant my fourth day of riding in a row. It also meant that at the conclusion of the day I would have ridden 700km.

…It was tough going. I started the day in a pretty good mood, I was excited about the day ahead. It didn’t take long before I felt like I was pedalling squares. I had absolutely nothing in my legs and the first, supposed flat, 50km were torturous… but I hadn’t even hit Haast Pass yet. Have told you how steep NZ roads are yet? Living in Tassie, most of our roads are built around the pre existing landscape and inevitably contain plenty of hills, but New Zealand seems to really enjoy going straight up and over any hill or mountain pass they come across… what I’m saying is that these roads are steep.

It was at some point today where the rash I had acquired on the first day really came back to haunt me. It become a struggle to simply straighten my leg without irritating it. With being generally fatigue after the accumulated riding days, I really wasn’t much in the mood to be dealing with such an irritation. One thing that really kept my spirits up on this day however were the continual friendly honks of drivers who I had either met in Haast or simply passed a few times throughout the day.

Wanaka is considered the sleepy version of Queenstown… if that’s true, I really question NZ’s version of sleepy, because in my eyes, it was very busy! (keep in mind I do come from Tasmania). One thing that really struck me while in Wanaka was how well their tourism industry is organised. It’s hard not to want to do some (or all) of the tourist activities they have on offer.

I had set day 5 away as an ‘exploration day’, I had no where to be other than to explore the amazing town I was in. While my body was tired, I was pretty determined to make the most of the time I had while I was here so I opted for a bit of hiking and a kayaking trip around Mount Aspiring. I was here to explore New Zealand the best I could in a limited time frame, so that is exactly what I did.

While Wanaka wasn’t as ‘sleepy’ as everyone had pitched it to me, I did fall in love with everything it has to offer.

Day 6 was what now seemed a relatively short distance (75km) into Queenstown. I had definitely perked up after my exploration day the day before. I was first struck by the wall of bras pictured below as passing through Cardona. I was clearly missing something.

I then continued into a thick fog as I began ascending the Crown Range. I was mildly worried at this point because my lights had stopped working after day 1 of the trip (something to do with not liking the snow… who knows), however as I approached the top of the pass the fog began to lift and I was greeted with an amazing view of the open green valleys that lay below. As I began my descent down the Crown Range, which at this point I might add has to be up there as one of the most stunning descents I’ve ever ridden, there was a man pushing his bike up the other side of the pass. I gave him a friendly wave, but felt for his poor legs as I knew he had a while to go before he made his way to the top.

With only three more days before my departure out of New Zealand, I made the most of time in Queenstown exploring as many of the popular attractions as my two feet and two wheels would allow me.