Prague to Sedlec-Prčice

 Ride day 1: 64 miles, 4163’ elevation

Lodging:  Dalmo Pension

We rose early and packed our bikes in the hope of leaving Prague before traffic became heavy. Ultimately we took bike paths and small streets, and traffic was never an issue. We took a side street down to the Vitava River, carrying our bikes down a steep staircase to reach a bike path. Two rows of tiles laid through the cobblestones provided a smoother surface for cyclists in each direction, and there were quite a few cyclists, seemingly rushing for their commute. The path was occasionally bumpy or across gravel. We joined our route, the Prague-Vienna Greenway, following bike paths away from traffic, taking underpasses for some busy roads, an escalator in a metro station, until finally we were out of the city. 

Prague seems clean for a large city, but the small towns and countryside were absolutely immaculate. We rolled through gentle hills all day. Rain clouds threatened, and the wind suggested a downpour was coming, but we never had more than light drips. 

Near the town of Pruhonice, our route led through a park where cycling is absolutely not allowed. A man walking his beagle saw that we were trying to figure out our way and offered us directions on how to bypass the park.  Additionally he made claim that every other person in Czech Republic owns a dog, we have not been able to verify this yet. His directions led us to one of the main streets in Pruhonice and to a charming breakfast spot for coffee, scrambled eggs, and fresh bread.

After skirting the forbidden park, we took a grassy singletrack to rejoin our route. The majority of the bike route is a narrow two lane road without any center line, but traffic was mostly light and the drivers considerate. At one point we had to backtrack and detour around a closed road, but it was fine. 

We stopped for lunch along the way at a local restaurant and the young woman who waited on us kindly translated the menu as they didn’t have an English version.

We rolled into Sedlec-Prčice around 4pm. The proprietor of our guest house met us; they knew from our online reservation that we would be coming. The proprietor’s daughter (14ish?) translated for us and showed us our room. The pension (guest house) is modest, clean and comfortable. We walked through town for a look around before heading to dinner at the only open restaurant, a local pub.  We spent a bit of time using Google Translate with the waitress to help us with our order — steak with cranberry and cream in a gravy with steamed dumplings. Tomorrow will be a short ride to Tabor.

Tucson to Prague, a day in Prague

0 miles, 0’ elevation

Lodging:  Mosaic Design Hotel

Travel from Tucson to Prague via Chicago and Zurich made for a long day and night. We took a shuttle arranged by our hotel from the airport where we unpacked and reassembled our bikes and bags. The only issue was that TSA had opened our boxes, and Sarah’s bike bags were missing. Fortunately they turned up in Ed’s box. Seems careless of TSA to pack items from one piece of luggage into a box ticketed to another passenger, but we were good to go. We assembled our bikes and the hotel let us store our bikes and boxes in a small garage around the side of the hotel.  We also picked up chain lube, air cartridges, and Gatorade to prepare for the cycling portion of our trip.

After cleaning up, we walked into Old Town to meet Tucson friends Sunil and Donna for dinner. We had realized via Strava that they were in Prague and that our itineraries would overlap for one day. We dined at an outdoor restaurant and had a great evening catching up, finishing with a walk across the famous Charles Bridge.

On Thursday we booked an English language walking tour with Sandeman’s for the morning.  Our guide, Karel, was charming and funny and full of historical stories, leading us through old town, new town, and the old Jewish quarter of Prague. After 2 1/2 hours on cobblestones, the tour ended, and we grabbed lunch. We logged 6 miles for the walking tour and a few more exploring later on. The public art in Prague, both new and historical, are amazing. We had dinner at the Asian restaurant by our hotel and called it a night.

Reflections on the 2025 Tour Aotearoa Brevet

TA Brevet Ride Numbers:

Total Days: 30

Rest Days: 1 (needed bottom bracket repair)

Miles Traveled: 1823.7

Total Elevation Gain: 99140

Average Miles: 62.9 

Longest Ride: 91.3 miles

Shortest Ride:  23.3 miles (excluding zero day)

Total Climbing: 99140’

Most Climbing in a Day: 6755’ 

Least Climbing in a Day: 577’

Days with Rain: 11 out of 30 days

Number of Ferry Rides: 5

Number of chains that needed to be replaced: 2 (one each, shortly after the beach)

Number of days where goats jumped onto the trail in front of us, scaring the bejeezus out of us: 2

Number of fellow brevet riders who finished the same day we did: ~12

Trip Totals including days before and after the brevet:

Miles: 1898.95

Climbing: 105437’

Overnights (Including night before and after): We ended up preferring to stay dry indoors.  The holiday parks and hostels were great places to stay.

• Hotel: 18
• Cabins / tiny homes: 6
• Backpackers / Hostels: 3
• Tent Camping: 4 — amazing views of the night sky when it wasn’t cloudy

Highlights:

• Heading down to Ninety Mile Beach with the riders at the start of the brevet, seeing the giant sand dune, riding through the creek bed, and arriving at the beach with the surf pounding in.
• Riding singletrack through forests filled with trees, moss, ferns that could be as large as palm trees, calling birds (some that sound like R2D2 from the original star wars), and rail tunnels.  The Timber Trail, the Kaiwhakauka Track which ended in a jetboat ride to Pipiriki, the Remutaka Cycle Trail, and the West Coast Wilderness Trail were all favorites.
• Seeing the birds of New Zealand which evolved with no predators and thus aren’t too intimidated by mammals like us.  
• Riding the jet boat from the landing near the Bridge to Nowhere to Pipiriki.  The jet boat driver was very careful when near any canoes, but we did have some speedy turns near cliffs, a real blast.
• Seeking out the 30 photos we needed to take at photo checkpoints to make the Tour Aotearoa Hall of Fame.  The quest for these sights took us places we might have otherwise missed, the descriptions were entertaining, and we had fun debating where to snap some of the pictures such as which cows were most photogenic.
• We were very taken with the eels at the Kiwi Centre in Hokitika on our one zero day!
• The swing bridges were cool every time although the very narrow ones by the Bridge to Nowhere, where signs direct you to tip your bike up onto the back wheel were challenging. This was especially true when there were a couple steps leading up to the narrow bridge.  After a while we realized we could wriggle the handlebars through and wheel across while squeezed next to our bikes.
• Hokitika Cycles in Hokitika and Velo Ronny’s Bicycle Store in Whanganui were the kind of bike shops you love stopping into, staffed with super friendly people who enjoyed helping TA riders.
• After the brevet, we toured Stewart Island where we saw some amazing bird life, did some hiking, and enjoyed a few days off the bike.  We also took a tour to Milford Sound and did a short bike tour that included  visiting a winery.  There’s so much to see in New Zealand both on and off the TA.  While it’s challenging to lug bikes around when you’re not riding, these post-ride adventures were also trip highlights.

The only downside to the Tour Aotearoa:

• Sharing some roads with big lumber trucks, busses, and impatient tourists when there’s no shoulder. Drivers are at least as considerate as drivers in the US, but there’s so little space on some roads that you could reach out and touch some passing vehicles.
• After being passed at speed by a large truck or bus, you might get blown around for as long as 15-20 seconds.
• Many New Zealand cyclists wear neon green or yellow for increased visibility, though we didn’t feel unseen with our blinking lights and reflectors. There just wasn’t much room.

TA compared to riding the Divide:

• Brevet vs Touring:
• The choice of doing the brevet vs touring is similar to the trade offs to racing the Tour Divide vs touring it.  When you join the event, there’s a lot of cameraderie among the participants, especially those on your same pace who you see repeatedly during the ride.  Outside of the events, you will still meet a lot of riders on the route.
• For the TA brevet, participants must offset their carbon emissions from travelling to the start and end of the brevet.  This was over US$400 for us travelling from the western US, so kinda pricey. There’s no entry fee for the Tour Divide
• For the TA brevet, participants must donate NZ$100 to a charity of their choice.  We proudly donated to Alzheimers New Zealand and the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand.
• If you tour outside of the TA brevet, chances are very good that you’ll meet others en route as you will on the Divide.
• Cell phone coverage: Outside of towns, there isn’t much phone coverage on either route except, unexpectedly, we had coverage in the great basin along the divide.
• Resupply & Food:
• Towns are closer together on the TA, and other than the first day, we never carried more than 2 liters of water which saves weight on the bike. 
• A lot of small grocery stores carried freeze dried dinners in New Zealand.  We’ve never seen them for sale outside of outdoor sport stores along the Divide.
• There are way more pies and fish and chips on the TA than on the Divide!
• Camping vs Hotels: With careful planning and flexibility, you could ride the TA without a sleep system. Your bike would be a lot lighter, and it’s nice to not pack up wet gear in the morning. It’s too far between hotels to do that unsupported on the divide if you sleep every night.  You pretty much need a sleep system on the Divide.
• Clothes and Gear: 
• We didn’t have any really cold nights in New Zealand, and I didn’t wear my non-biking gloves.  I only wore my warm shirt once, and it was more about laundry than about warmth. I never used my overmitts though there were a couple of mornings where my hands were cold.  I used all my warm gear on the Divide.
• On day 1 on the beach at the TA, we each started with 4 liters of water.  After that, we never carried more than 2 liters.  That’s a lot of weight you don’t have to carry!  
• In New Zealand, we only used our water filter a couple of times at camp sites where the water is collected from rain, and signs explicitly tell you to purify the water.  In contrast, we had 8-10 liters of capacity on the divide, started most days with at least 4 liters, and filtered from cow ponds and creeks.
• E-bikes: they are really popular in the states, but we don’t recall seeing any on the Divide, perhaps due to the distance between charging opportunities. They are popular in NZ, and we saw a number of people riding the TA route on them.

Queenstown and Arrowtown

Queenstown to Arrowtown via Coronet Race: 31.1 miles, 3465’ climbing, in the clouds
Gibbston Valley: 23 miles, 1713’ climbing
Arrowtown to Queenstown, soggy version: 17.5 miles, 1070’ climbing

Lodging: 

    Blue Peaks Motels, Queenstown 

    Tiny home in the Hampshire Holiday Park, Arrowtown

Having finished the TA brevet, we decided to do some shorter rides around Queenstown for a more relaxing experience on the local cycling trails which are largely separate from traffic. 

First we rode to Arrowtown via Arthur’s Point. Once we got out of town we were on a separated bike path. We detoured up towards the Coronet Loop with rain threatening. Our gpx route wasn’t accurate, and we chatted with a visiting Aussie about the local paths. We climbed up steep switchbacks to the Coronet Race, an old flume trail where water was carried to mines back in the day. We were up in the clouds with some drop offs, very glad it wasn’t actually raining since the narrow trails looked like they could be slippery. After a long traverse, we descended through a creekside canyon to the Arrowtown trails. Our tiny house in the holiday park was cute and comfortable, and we made it without getting rained on.

The next day, under threatening clouds, we rode up the Gibbston Valley, a popular route for wine tasting tours via e-bike. Several miles up the trails, we crossed a long swing bridge. A few miles later was a large bridge with a bungy jumping setup in the middle. We watched a couple of people jump towards the beautiful blue-green river below: one who screamed and one who was calm. Continuing up the valley, we saw rafters below on the river which had beautiful pools and cliffs, very inviting on a warm day. Finally we stopped for lunch and went for a wine tasting at Peregrine winery, known for their Pinot noirs, and we chose a bottle to take back to our holiday park. Apparently the Otago region has more Pinot noirs compared to the more productive Marlborough region which produces a lot of Sauvignon blanc. Trivia: all wine bottles in New Zealand have twist off caps. 

On day 3 we packed up early in the rain to head back to Queenstown. Every hotel in NZ seems to have an electric kettle and tea and coffee fixings, including fresh milk if you like, but we got good coffees at a kiosk by the holiday park entrance. It rained all day. We attempted to return to Queenstownnvia a route we hadn’t fully followed already, but closures forced us back onto the TA route. It was a short but damp ride, the last of our explorations around Queenstown on this trip.

We located a couple bike boxes at a bike shop, not plentiful at the end of the season, and carried them back to our hotel where we washed off our bikes. This is the end of our trip. We packed up bikes and are headed for home. We will post some reflections next week about reflections on the TA and our time here.

Three days on Stewart Island (Rakiura)

 Lodging: Kowhai Guest Lodge

After completing the TA we decided to take a few days off of our bikes to visit Stewart Island, just south off the coast of South Island. Lodging there books up in advance, and we couldn’t plan dates far ahead due to the uncertain nature of bike travel, so we were excited to find a room in a guest house where you book a bedroom and share the kitchen and living areas with other guests. In the end we were the only ones staying, so we had the place to ourselves including a deck with views of the town harbor. Only a few hundred people live here, so it’s small and peaceful. We could have brought our bikes and used them to explore, but we wanted time off and left them at our hotel in Bluff.

Just after our ferry docked, there was an 7.4 richter earthquake ~100km away, and we all got tsunami warnings on our cell phones. No tsunami materialized. Our hosts, Peter and Iris, showed us around our guest house which was only ~0.3 miles from the ferry dock, shops, and restaurants and had a beautiful garden. Peter and Iris pretty much treated us like family friends rather than lodgers during our stay — very generous with their knowledge of plants, birds, wildlife, and local history.

The next day after arrival Peter took us on a private tour of nearby Ulva island, an island unique in that it has no predators. As a ranger in the late sixties, Peter was part of removing predators and restoring natural habitat on the island. New Zealand had no mammals except a couple bats. All mammals were introduced, and many wreaked havoc with bird populations. Native birds aren’t fearful of people since they evolved with no predators which makes them extra vulnerable to predation, but it’s great for bird watching.

Peter is a colorful character with an interesting background as sailor and also served as a Ranger of Ulva island for a year when he was younger.  He was super knowledgeable about all of Stewart Island and its surrounding islands.  We saw a sea lion resting on the beach meters away as well as a number of local birds including the saddleback, tui (which make strange sounds — whirring, clicking, and R2D2 sounds), kaka, parakeets, yellow heads, fantails, Stewart island pigeons, and others…  The robin is particularly curious and approaches you to dine on the insects you stir up. We learned about the many ways that the population of invasive pests such as rats and possums are controlled and about many of the plants, native and otherwise.  It was a great tour.

At our guest house, every evening a kaka flew in for apple slices. The kakas large parrots are similar in size to the keas we saw in Fox Glacier. Iris and Peter left apples to feed them (no cores or seeds). The bird would eat the fruit except the peel. It felt strange to feed the wild parrots here when there were explicit signs not to feed the others in Fox Glacier, but Peter and Iris assured us it was fine to do. The kaka visited us multiple times in our evenings there.

The next day Peter came by and invited us to their home for coffee and a visit.  They were both so nice and welcoming, and their house was lovely with views of both the town harbor and their expansive garden.  After our coffee we went on a hike up Fern Gully and around Ryan’s Track.  It rained for a bit of the walk but later cleared.

In the evening we headed out for a kiwi sighting on a tour we had booked before heading to Stewart island.  Kiwi are usually only active at night, so we headed out at dusk.  We took a boat to surrounding islands seeing several albatrosses, fauveau shags, fur seals, sea lions. We spotted a rare yellow eyed penguin on Bench Island, then we split into two groups to silently creep through the rain forest in search of kiwis. The stars and Milky Way were bright above us with distant sounds of crashing waves.  We spotted one kiwi in the forest, apparently dining on worms, pecking its long beak into the forest floor. Later we also saw a juvenile on the beach, easier to see its large oval body and dinosaur-ish feet.

After coffee on our last morning, we took the hour long, bumpy ferry ride across the swells back to Bluff. We walked to our last hotel where we had stashed our bikes, packed up, and rode the ~22 miles back to the town of Invercargill. It was a bit windy and open, all on cycle trails but partly near the noisy road. It felt good to be back on the bikes but at an easy pace. Tomorrow we will transfer to Queenstown with Catch-a-Bus-South for a little more exploration.