Current Location: Martinborough, Aotearoa
Great day for a ride yesterday. The ride was basically downhill the whole way. I think I started at an elevation of 1000 ft and ended the day at about 400 ft so it was a breezy day for the most part. Wings over Wairapa was going on in Masterton which is a big air show held here. I caught a couple of old planes whizzing over me as I was riding but other than that I didn’t catch any other planes. Fortunately for me once I passed Masterton all the traffic was going the other way so it was overall a pleasant ride. I cut over after Carterton to the back roads to avoid any unnecessary traffic and found that an astronomical society here has built Stonehenge Aotearoa which I thought I could just walk around and take a few pics but they ended up bilking me outta $15. I’ve found that if I go outta my way to see something I am somewhat of a captive audience as if I’ve already gone that distance I might as well see what I went there for, anyway I got a few pictures but it did cost me some time so I got in a bit later than expected.
Met up with Alex today and helped out on the vineyard today for a while. As we both have talked about the first days are always pretty interesting since were learning new things. Our job today was to tuck in the vines into the wires surrounding them. I think at some point well go through and thin the leaves out so that the grapes can get some sunlight. I tried some of the not-yet- full-grown grapes… not so tasty yet. I managed to score a homemade pizza lunch out of Simon and his wife for helping out today (stellar pizza.) We did some wine tasting around town and had a time talking to the proprietors of some of the places. Everything in this town revolves around wine, I think every cafe, store, theater, etc… can serve wine and it seems every sign has something to do with wine, quite the wine culture here.
It was nice to be back in the hammock after a full month and a half lazing about in beds but my argument still stands that it doesn’t make all that much sense for me to camp when it is just as expensive to camp as it is to get a hostel (usually $2 or $3 difference,) though I must say that most cycling tourers camp so the possibilities of meeting other tourers is greater when I camp, so I guess for that reason i’ll keep camping.
A slight change to my itinerary as monday is Wellington day (each province? has their own holiday) and it happens to be Wellingtons on monday so I figure that might be the worst time to try get into town as the train only runs twice that day, once early in the morning and then again late in the afternoon which means I would be navigating in the dark to a hostel, so I’ll put it off an extra day and just head in Tuesday. That means South Island on Wednesday!
I see on newspapers that there is an outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter, oh cruel fate what am I to do now for sustenance? Maybe I’ll switch to Nuetella and bananas, that sounds delicious.
I’ll post more pics when I get to a real computer.