Day 35: Tekapo to Twizel: 'Tour de Twizel'

60km, 4 hours - mountain biking.

We swapped packs for mountain bikes today and rode the 60km from Tekapo to Twizel on the Alps2Ocean track.

Jared warned me last night that this is going to hurt my bum and I'll be using different muscles to hiking. Well he was correct. After a half hour my bum hurt and I still had 40km to go. I got over this thanks to the boys having the great idea of us all carrying a six pack of beer for the journey.

We loaded up the little bike sacks with so much beer and snacks. David's even had an entire bunch of carrots which I will always find oddly amusing. We had not yet gone 15 minutes flying on the downhill section when David's whole bike back and bar broke and fell off. Had we overloaded it?! We were unsure but I had to call the bike company to get them to come fix it and we all got so guilty about the amount of beers we all had stashed that we quickly took out all the bottles and hid them in the grass so that the bike people wouldn't see. How old are we?!? 15?! The lady came to fix it and said it was too heavy to which she opened it up to see what was in it and was absolutely stunned to see a whole bunch of carrots. Never in her life had she seen that in the packs.

With a new bike rack, and our beers all reloaded we continued riding along the Tekapo canal. The bitumen was fine but try riding on a rough dirt road trying to drink a can of beer. We were covered in it! Splashing everywhere. Whose stupid idea was this.

We passed a man who I though looked in his 60s called Paul who is trying to be the fastest man to walk the TA starting in Auckland up to Cape Reinga, down to Bluff and then back to Auckland. He walks 20hours a day and micro naps the other hours. Absolutely insane, he looked half crippled and then when one of the boys asked him his age he said 50. Oldest looking 50 yo out there. He came and chilled in the campground with us for an hour or two in the evening before hitting the road again..just crazy!

We reached lake pukaki and as per our record the cloud lifted and we got clear views of Aoraki/Mt Cook for our lunch break. Simply stunning!

The ride was so much fun alongside the lakes and then we headed into a mountain bike track through forest and across the fields. It was such a great change from walking!

My bank balance is taking a hit every time I reach a town and this was no different. We spent about 2 hours at the Twizel Bakery. Why does NZ do sweets and pies so well.

We got ourselves tent sites at the holiday park and I ended up taking myself out to dinner at the Thai restaurant. It was everything I wanted and more. It was nice to sit in silence for an evening and eat such flavoursome healthy stir fry!

Ren x

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