Kimsjo's blogg: February 2011

This is for Janet, the Drewcrew and everybody else who dont understand swedish, enjoy the reading:).

On the Thuesday the 25th of Januari I left Ettrick and Melrose Orchard behind and took of on my pushbike. With the sight of dark clouds in the northwest and headwind I slowly moved forward between the different fruitorchards in Teviot Valley, Cantral Otago. Ther're heaps of them here and everywhere you look you'll see apple, apricot or cherrytrees in the otherwis dry and rough landscape that reminds a lot from the scenery in Lord of the rings. Ooh yeah, I almost forgot, it was close to this area they did a lot from the movies so it's not to starnge:).

It's been nice to benn working for a while and got some experience in the orchardwork. I understand a lot more about an appletree now then I did before I came here. How important it is to take care of it whit prooning, thinning and some times spraying to get a god crops. I also got my fingers use to the work and learn how to place the ladder between the some times thick branches wich is very good for my upcoming career as an applepicker in a few weeks. I made a lot of new friends but to be honest, I'm sick of the town Ettrick.

With 12 hrs timedifferent it was the 24th of januari in sweden and ofcourse I pulled of the raod after a couple of hrs to make a phonecall to my mother on her birthday, as always, she had just arrived home from her work:).

At lunchtime I enetered the town of Alexandra where I wrote the last post on my poorly updated blog. Alex is a pretty famous town here in NZ for vineyards an fruitorchards in the area. The landscape between here and queenstown is spectacular. I ate lunch, did som internetthings and bought a new traveladapterso I could charge my camera again becouse the otherone broke down a couple of weeks ago.

The plan for the day was to get to the town of Cromwell were I was gonna meet up with Glenn for som camping. As some of you already know me an glen were working togheter in Ettrick a couple of weeks before X-mas and he is now picking cherries in cromwell and are camping with his wee tent on some random place beside a like outside the town. Glenn is a 28 year old Kiwiguy from Dunedin. Very smiley. Everywhere he goes he drives his Yamaha MC and follow the works around the southern island. We met up at the supermarket and bought supplies. Bread, Ham and a 24 pack of export gold, you now, I have to stay hydorated on the bike:). After we pretty much finished the beer we took the last 4 one to go. We got the brilliant idea to climb a relatively big hill in the area cinsisted of loose rock and sand with a wiew ower the Valley and the town. Up was no problem but the descending was an adventure:). In the morning I heard glenn took of to work on his bike. I ate breakfast and headed north in the stron northwesterly wind.

In the town of Tarras I met my fellow travellers for the coming 3 days. Caroline Macarez, a french girl and her boyfriend Pier-luc Gagnon, a french canadian. Funny people and we decided to bike togheter. After a couple of hrs biking we stopped for a break along the raod. In the far distance we saw some ducks crossing the raod and 2 of them got hit by the nextcoming car. When we passed the ducks later on my new french friends stopped and picked them up to take a look at them. Caroline put her fantastic smile to me and asked "Fell for Duck to Dinner?". The rest of the day I was pedaling with 2 dead ducks on the back of my bike and later on when we camped we had duck, rice and melted butter for dinner:).

I was 2 more days with these guy before we slitted up on the morning in lake Tekapo. I headed out on the road on my own and my next campsite became Rangihita River just outside the town of Geraldine close to christchurch. I tried all day to get hold of Rink, a girl I met up close to Nelson on the way down. She lives in Dunsandel but she was out of town for the weekend wich meant no visit there. From here I decided to follow Inland Scenic route 72 upp to arthurs pass instead of the eastcoast and Lewis pass. When I woke up from my tent the older couple inte the camper beside me offered me breakfast. Except from them there were 3-4 other campers parked on the big field. Only older people thou so I felt a little bit as a memebr at a camptrip with PRO. I mean, sore legs, drinking coffe with creme and sugar with cinnamonrolls while we're listening to some kind of NZ "ring sa spelar vi" :). They were asking me if I wa gonna camp at Mt somers the next coming night but I explained that 30 km was a little bit to short for the day.

The weather was cloudy but the rain kept away and in the perfect time to stop for lunch I enetered the town of Mt Somers. The Inland Scenic rout is problably the best road I been following here in NZ so far. It goes by the bottom of the mountains and just by looking west I can tell a crossing of the country will be hard work. I miss my I-pod that got destroyed in the rain down in Invercargill so I cannot listen to my American countrymusic anymore :(.

My Body starts to feel alittle bit better thou. The inflammation in my left forearm starts to go away and the scrubs from my bikeaccident starts to heal very good. I start to get in applemode again and i'm exited for and applepickingseason up in Motueka, if I find any work ofcourse :).

In the afternoon the wind added up to the stage were it;s practicaly impossible to move forward. I found a nice campsite at Rakaia Gorge thou with a nice weiw over the gorge that goes through the mountains and out a few miles south of christchurch. The wind during the night was as they would say here "Bloody ridiculous".

In the morning the wind was weaker and rain came in instead. I layed in the tent pondering about staying another night. It was raining now and if the wind starts againg biking will bee really hard. The only things I had in food was some oatmeal and rice so I decided to bike anyway. You would thing that NZ in the month of Feb would be hot and tropical with a lot of Kiwigirls running around in bikini, and I'm sure thats the case, nort of Auckland. To lunch it was pretty cold and windy and I was biking in raisnclothes, I even put on my boots to keep some heat up in my feets.I spent most of the time before lunch on a gravel road far out on the countryside with sheeps and cows.

By lunchtime, or no, actually long after lunch becuse I was starving, I arrived to the village of Springfield. Once again I met a couple of French Canadains from Quebec who had pedal their bikes the other direction from Arthurs Pass. They told me I have an hard jorney ahead so I took a 2 hour lunch and by the time, the sun started to shine on my wet clothes. A bus arrived full of chinese people so I became the phototarget and for a while I felt like a moviestar. They are problably going back to china and show their friands and family the wet and lost Swedish guy on his pedalbike:). During the break I also realised that the batteri in my camera was empty. Great, tomorrow I'm entering the most scenic area on the island and no photos will be taken. The afternoon was sunny and I started the journey across the country ower to the westcoast.

During the night on my campsite at lake Lyndon went down and it was problably the coldest night in NZ for me so far. Cold enough to make me freez in my summersleepingbag with a comfortzone on 8+. I woke up several times in the night and it was nice when I felt the sun against the tent in the morning. I put my things togheter and by 9 I was all set for a day in the ridicoulos wind. My plan was to get to the Village of Arthurs Pass and after 2 km of biking I knew thats gonna be a challenge. By the time I passed Castle Hill I was thinking that it should be very good bouldering in the area with a lot of big rocks. Two minutes later I saw a dude with long blond hair throwing out a crashpad from his happy campervan. I pulled over for a chat and it turnes out it's Matt and his girlfriend from the state of New York in USA. They are here climbing and travelling on the sothern island. We talked for a while and later on we changed emails and stuff like that. It's amazing that I almost got more new friends from US and Canada during this trip than from NZ:). I kep pedaling for a while and stopped for lunch at lake Pearson were I got the lunchentertainment for free. It was 2 guy in the age of maybe 5 that was running around on the beach throwing stones in the water and feeding the ducks whit bread. There parents made several attempts to get the boys to the table for som food but that was not interesting at all. Every once in while they came up to me and asked what I thought about the "splasch" from the stones. I did thumb up and smiled and they runned proud away to get more and bigger stones :).

After the lunch I continued in the wind and people I met for shorter conversations on the road tol me about stormwarning at Arthurs Pass for the night. "So get your ass up there as fast as possible:)". If you want to know how it is to bike Arthurs Pass on a day like that, read this:

Imagine pedal your pushbike for 80 km. If you think that sounds hard, then add approxomately 35 kg of gear you also have to push forward. In this concept, you also put in a steedy uphill pretty much all the way and I guess your knees will hurt just to think about it. If you then take one of the most windiest days you ever encountered and I promise you will have a very good sleep in your wet tent:).

Very tired I arrived to Arthurs Pass village just by the time the really bad wheater came in. I saw the "Bunkhouse" on a sig and with stormwarning it felt like a good idea. I met a couple of guys from Isarel, otherwise there were no people around at the cheap and dirty accomodation were you pay by an "honesty box" when the owner are located in christchurch. On the night the weather was really bad and I decided to rest for the day or wait till the bad weather calm down.

Im really glad I didn't even considering biking in that wheater becuse it was really bad. Actually I didn't even want to take the 200 m run to the store. So instead of being out in the rain and biking trying to be a "hard guy" (or stupiud:)) , me and the Israel guys stayed insade and ate our foodsupplies :). Kind of nice actually:).

Like always in NZ the weather can change over 5 minutes and 5 a clock it was sunshine, I decided to descend from the mountains before bad weather came in again so I put my bike togheter and took of. It was approx 3 km to the topp of the pass and then the steepest downhill I ever been to with the bike. It was a dangerous ride down becuse it was wet and with an 16% the speed was fast. I also needed to wave away and Kea that hunted me (a mountain parrot). I came down safely thou and put up my tent outside the village of Jacksons.

This night was the first night on the trip, when i've been biking, that I put the alarm on my cellphone. Otherwise I use to wake up aroun 8-830 am but this night I put up the tent very visible from the road and there was a big sign "overnight camping prohibited". I also felt with the last days of headwind that it would be nice to hit the road early and be able to hear my own thoughts on the bike and not only the wind whistling around my head:). I started biking around 7 am and it was pretty cool, good conditions. Very scenic lanscape. I was looking to the hills in the west and knew that from up there I would be able to sea the Tasman sea and further out from there, the big continent of Aussie will be located. Not to much happend during the day, mostly biking and enjoying the scenery and the resonable wind.

Right now I'm in the town of Reefton approx 2 days from Motueka. Biking is holding up good and next time you'll hear from me I hopefully got som new work at an appleorchard:)

The computer here was really slow so I only got up 3 pics. Burt Indian, Caroline from France and the west coast crew sa couple of months ago

Cheers Mates