Because of its reputation as a safe, clean, green country, New Zealand attracts visitors from around the globe. Maybe due to a relatively manageable topography and small size, many decide to “do” it on bicycles. Underlining the fact that New Zealand has become sort of a touring “mecca” are two bike-mechanic stands at Auckland’s international airport terminal, allowing jet-lagged travelers to reassemble their bikes safely, comfortably, and within arm’s reach of the McDonald’s counter! Just between the racks is a board bolted to a concrete wall that informs newcomers of the national law regarding bike helmets: failure to wear one could entail a $55 (NZ) fine. Oddly enough, our beefy craniums wouldn’t fit inside the purposeful vise, and our luggage contained no helmets! “No worries,” as law-abiding pilgrims are offered bike helmets in a variety of colours and sizes at the tourist information office located inside the terminal!
Built over bays, peninsulas, and islands, Auckland, “the City of Sails,” had undergone a few changes since our last visit in 1996: mainly the new 328-metre-tall Sky Tower that heightened the skyline and Asian restaurants that colonized downtown. Still other things hadn’t changed: rugby still monopolized the headlines, and meat pies and bright-pink Lamington cakes were still sold shamelessly at bakeries. Yet another change was Adventure Cycles bike shop (www.auckland-adventure.co.nz), a socially and environmentally engaged humanitarian organization that has resettled from its landmark back alley to busy Customs Street. Owner Bruce O’Hallaran, with his alternative approach to business that includes the visionary guaranteed buy-back policy (“buy a bike from us, then cycle around the country, and we’ll buy the bike back from you when you leave”), has certainly contributed to making New Zealand’s international touring reputation. The buy-back policy can be extended to helmets: we were off the hook!
Over-excited by the proximity of Australia and good friends, Janick invested $349 (NZ) in a return ticket across the Tasman Sea and momentarily abandoned her partner. So it was Pierre on his mini solo-ride:
Back in 1996 during a previous five-month ride in New Zealand where Janick and I had a rendezvous (she was already in Australia and I was jumping from Singapore after a leisurely crossing of Southeast Asia) and decided to move in together on the road, I pedaled mainly throughout its fabled South Island and a few areas on the North Island. Having never ventured north of Auckland, the opportunity was now there for me to broaden my Kiwi horizons and become familiar with the country’s Northland. Browsing through the Active Volcanoes of the World Catalogue — after all, it was our “cyclovolcanic” quest that brought us back to New Zealand — I was happy to discover that besides Auckland’s own young and attractive volcanic field, there were two others hidden in Northland. Sitting right astride the boundary between the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates on top of a very dynamic subduction zone, the northern half of
Aotearoa, Land of the Great White Cloud, is also sort of a volcanic mecca.
My first destination was Whangarei, where several cinder cones and lava flows criss-cross an already extremely hilly landscape. The red patches of scoria and black stripes of basalt accentuate the myriad other bold green mounts. On the shoulderless, overused and only useable road between Auckland and Whangarei (apart from the relief of a half-paved half-metal road through Mangawhai Heads and Bream Bay that took me to a blissful state as it hugged the coast and spiraled over lush ridges carpeted by native bush), I might have been a young adrenaline junkie checking out Kiwi Land’s well-elaborated menu of extreme “dishes” item by item! This particular one was about dealing with near-death experiences on a bicycle and blind trust in your fellow mad car-and-truck drivers! But no, I was just an old bum pedaling his life away, currently obsessed by insignificant rocks!
SH1, the main road, past Whangarei becomes less hectic, and it wasn’t long before I steered a course for the Bay of Islands on charming Old Russell Road. Being the off-season, the popular and scenic byway was devoid of its usual hordes of cyclists and RV renties. The same went for the seaside and historic resort towns of Russell, Paihia, and Waitangi. Following a great night on the perfect turf of the local lawn bowling club, I visited the premises of Waitangi Treaty House, where local Maori chiefs and the Queen of England’s representatives came together in 1840 to sign the document that gave birth to modern-day New Zealand. Here is Whare Runanga, a fine marae (Polynesian temple), and an amazing replica of one of the first wakas (giant canoes), which traveled from Hawaiki (French Polynesia’s Raiatea Island of today) to Aotearoa, circa 800 AD. Also in Waitangi, at its supermarket, I met the only other bike traveler we were going to meet on this winter sortie in New Zealand. Sarah, a young woman from Germany, was treating herself after an internship in some Kiwi tourism industry business. We discussed the possibility of keeping each other company, but she was heading south, from whence I’d come. I was cycling straight across to the west coast following the green-cone alignment of the Kaikohe-Bay of Islands volcanic field. Like the Auckland one, many of the symmetrical mounts topped with little depressions were used by Maori tribes as pas, natural and volcanic fortifications that helped them keep local and foreign adversaries at bay.
On the way down the west coast in Waimamaku, I was instructed in some elements of Maori culture as a family rescued me from awesome torrential downpours. Welcome to the wet coast! Our earlier stay in the Society Islands was quite helpful in getting a grip on few concepts previously explained to me. Leaving my hosts with a collection of computer wallpaper images of the Taputapuatea Temple, the mother of all marae (located on Society Islands’ Raiatea), was most appreciated too!
The sun reappeared, and I zipped through the Waipoua Forest section of the coast that was bisected by a sweet, narrow, winding, rolling paved road that immersed me in a highly animated vegetal world. I paused for a few minutes to walk and pay a visit to the “Lord of the Forest”: Tane Mahuta is the largest standing kauri tree in New Zealand, with a height of 51.5 metres, a volume of 245.5 metres, and some 1,500 years old! The forest of giants gave way to neon-green grass, but the dizzying topography remained as I kept snaking my way through the spectacular, natural set of rollercoasters at speeds oscillating between 3.4 and 80 km/h! Hard on the fingers, indeed.
Australia was sunny as always, but after 10 days of senseless beach fun and wine there, it felt good to straddle my bike and reunite with Janick through Auckland’s tough southern boroughs and quickly join the Pacific Coast Highway and the rugged Coromandel Peninsula. A slippery dirt road made an incursion into a thick subtropical rainforest dotted with various pongas — the countless tree ferns that New Zealand is renowned for and the country’s 15th biggest kauri tree —and took us across the peninsula to the pub anticipated at the next crossroad in Coroglen, not too far from the expanses of water that Captain Cook aptly christened the Bay of Plenty.
At any Pack n’ Save’s heated entrance hall, our late-afternoon haven from the bitter cold, shoppers freely inquired about our mental sanity. “Bloody cold isn’t?” “Did you know that it’s winter now in the Southern Hemisphere?” “Why are you cycling New Zealand in July, mate?” Though we knew that these were winter’s coldest days —then why did most Kiwis come to the supermarket barefoot or, worse, wearing slippers? — we decided to brave the weather and ride during low season. We were more than fully aware of New Zealand’s massive, successful tourism machine that consists of backpackers’ hotels, roadside picnic areas, RV campgrounds, elaborate tourist information centres, and countless agencies willing to take you on an adrenaline-charged “ultimate Kiwi experience.”
Wooly-clad under a warm winter sun, we hauled ourselves away from the Bay of Plenty’s seaside resorts and headed up to Rotorua, the “Thermal and Volcanic Capital.” I wondered how many cyclists were injured each year on these narrow lanes, and I almost asked a “men-at-work” crew if a shoulder and reduced speed limit were included in the new design. Sporting dubious road engineering, slippery-when-wet asphalt, and careless drivers, this mecca must have won its pseudonym for other reasons than its being devotedly “cyclist-friendly.” Still, to be fair, let’s not forget the airport’s bike stands!
The wide Bay of Plenty looked smaller from above. We were back without the bikes (left behind in the prisoners’ fire-exit cage at Rotorua’s police station), onboard a Volcanic Air Safaris helicopter that was destined to land on White Island, 50 kilometres offshore. Currently New Zealand’s only constantly erupting volcano, it is the northernmost volcano in the world’s most active volcanic alignment, the Taupo volcanic zone. This zone starts at Whakaari, alias White Island, and ends 300 kilometres farther south at Ruhapehu, North Island’s highest peak at 2,797 metres. A traditional Maori story explains that this alignment arose out of one chief’s need for fire and some ocean-swimming gods, and somehow the telling of it was a unique backdrop to the chopper landing inside the high crater walls that enclose a stunning green steaming pool, fumeroles, sulphur vents, and geysers. Back from this fascinating place we soaked in Rotorua’s Polynesian Baths — a most relaxing experience, says the brochure — before releasing the bikes from jail and trespassing upon the local rowing club’s balcony for the night!
Rotorua and Taupo, farther south on the shouldered Thermal Explorer Highway, have taken full advantage of their location over a subduction zone. At either town’s tourist information centres, visitors elbow each other reaching for a zillion glossy brochures advertising tours to nearby volcanic attractions: take a 4X4 to Tarawera Volcano; a flight to White Island; a tour of Wai-O-tapu, “the volcanic wonderland;” or visit the Volcanic Activity Center, the Craters of the Moon Volcanic Reserve, Wairakei thermal valley, and Whakerewarewa thermal village, to name just a few of many theme parks. Luckily, this is low season! A dream come true for us volcano buffs, we rode from mud-pools to hot springs hardly noticing the cold drizzle!
Lake Taupo, New Zealand’s largest lake, like a bullet-hole in the middle of the North Island, is a remnant of a volcanic eruption, one of the world’s largest to have occurred in the last 5,000 years! In 186 AD, a few centuries before the first Polynesian settlers landed with wakas on the shores of Aotearoa, what is known as Taupo volcano exploded with such force that the giant mountain emptied itself completely, creating a tremendous depression that quickly filled in — Lake Taupo. The lake’s east shore road, with its blind corners, provided a few more close calls before we could land on Prue Keenan’s doormat in Turangi.
Australian by birth, Keenan, a whitewater-rafting guide and seasonal lift-ticket vendor at nearby Whakapapa ski field precariously located on active Ruhapehu’s north slope, was now calling this outdoor enthusiast’s heaven home. Our roads had first crossed in 2000 in Colombia, where for a few days we shared road and campsites on our respective “descent of the Americas.” A brave woman, Keenan had landed in Vancouver, where she bought a mountain bike, complete with racks and panniers, to be ridden alone to Bolivia. A warm reunion in frosty New Zealand saw the three of us venture on the snowed-in Tongariro Crossing. Rated as “one of the best” day-walks in the country — yep, that’s in the brochure too! — the 17-kilometre trail linking crater lakes amongst cone-shape peaks offers breathtaking views on both east and west coasts. It is visited daily by 500 “trampers,” in high season that is!
Feeding a craving for the “road,” Prue and her Cannondale escorted our caravan out of town for 40 kilometres before saying good-bye and turning around. On Highway #46, we were alone again, pushing through a treeless plateau surrounding Tongariro National Park — shrubs and moss on either sides and commanding views on immaculate volcanoes Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, and Ruhapehu. A landscape straight out of Lord Of The Rings — wait a minute, it WAS in LOTR! Lofty Mount Egmont/Taranaki, the exile defeated in a battle — over a female mountain, of course! — against Mount Ruhapehu, already looked impressive from a distance. Serpentine, narrow backroads led us to the foot of the symmetrical glaciated giant, our last volcanic rendezvous in Kiwi Land, and to movie star Tom Cruise, who was in town filming The Last Samurai. Mount Egmont was cast to play Fuji-san, the Japanese volcano. This upcoming spring, watch for The Last Samurai film location booklets next to LOTR ones at the New Zealand international airport’s tourist information office! Could be a great cycling itinerary! For now, time to fly north — to the tropics!
