76.1 miles, 2854’ climbing
Lodging: Assure Aspiring Court Motel, Haast
Weather: Sunny
A notice board along the highway yesterday said that the road would be closed from Lake Maeraki to Haast between 12:30 and 3:00. To beat the closure, we packed up before sunrise. A local cafe was open, and we saw a Kea bird out the window as we waited for breakfast. They are known to be nuisance birds of the parrot family. Fortunately this one wasn’t up to mischief; perhaps he was begging food since there were signs not to feed the keas.
Unfortunately Sarah’s tracker stopped working overnight, so for a while she was not trackable. Garmin support said the issue was resolved, but it was not. It’s hard to get support with the time difference and hard to understand what suddenly changed. Kinda frustrating but eventually she was able to get things working again.
We rode out just after sunup. It was cool, but there was little traffic for the first hour. Today was all a road ride, and again with little to no shoulder on the road. Some busses passed within an arms length, not fun.
Usually we take our time, stopping for coffee or to look around, but we kept it moving to beat the traffic closure. Lake Maeraki came and went with no sign of a closure, and the road moved to the coast. At around 60 miles we found our photo checkpoint of the day. A tour bus passenger stopped there and informed us that the closure was only a few minutes up the road by car. It was 12:35, so he suggested we wait there for 2.5 hours. We decided to go up the hill anyway to gauge the situation, and they were letting people through the construction area one direction at a time, so on we went.
Once through the construction zone, we came down the hill to a great looking beach and stopped for a look. Eventually we arrived to Haast at 2pm, had a good lunch, and checked into our hotel.
No comments:
Post a Comment