Chile was a huge country with an average bus ride of 20 hours, and unlike Laos, the average speed is more like 90 km/h than 20 km/h. And even at that speed, we have never been as confortable in a bus as in Chile. They drive safely (the speed is monitored inside the bus by passengers), there is room for shoulder and legs, the seat are confortable (even the most economic ones).

Anyway, here is a quick list of our visited places in Chile:

• Santiago: we did a great tour by bicycle, check our links & friends for info.
• Valpareiso: city walks.
• La Serena: nice city, the Hurtado and El Encanto valleys nearby are really worth it.
• Copiapó: initially to visit the nearby natural park Nevade de Tres Cruces, but we find out that it was closed in Winter. So in the same day that we arrived, we hopped on a bus to San Pedro de Atacama.
• San Pedro de Atacama: 4 days intense visits of the region. This place is a good example of mass tourism, but if you manage to find your own mean of transport (foot, bicycle or car) you can easily avoid that and still enjoy the region.

Jean-Christophe & Vera

But what about those Moai? Those beautifully carved, elegant, huge statues. With their back at the sea and calmly looking inland, it seems they are waiting for something to happen. But when you see those statues, you just cannot stop asking yourself the following questions: Why are they here? And what function do they have? And how did they transport them (for information: the biggest one ever transported and erected on an ahu (altar) measured 9.20 meters!)? Many scientists have been inventing many diverse and creative theories, but none really convinces and the truth is that until today, nobody has the REAL answer to those questions. But at least we have some ideas about how they transported them…

Guide: Actually there are six theories on how the Moai got transported. First there is the theory of Thor Heyerdahl who proposed that the Moai got transported facedown on wood. This theory cannot be proven true however, as there hasn’t been enough wood on the Easter Islands. Second, the theory of Pavel…

Vera: Pfff… Personally I think they are all wrong. I think at some point, the Easter Island got taken over by some alien force, planting secret seeds from which the Moai sprouted.

Jean-Christophe (JC): Not at all, they could be carried.

Vera:  What do you mean, like by a bird? A swallow carrying a Moai?

JC:  It could grip it by the ears!

Vera:  It’s not a question of where he grips it! It’s a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a 10 tonnes Moai!

Guide: Are you guys paying attention? The third theory… 

JC: Listen, in order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings 43 times every second, right? So in that case…

Vera:  …it could be carried by an African swallow!

JC: Oh, yeah, an African swallow maybe, but not a European swallow, that’s my point.

Vera: Oh, yeah, I agree with that…

Guide: The fourth theory…

JC: But then of course African swallows are not migratory.

Vera: Oh, yeah…

JC: So they couldn’t bring a Moai back anyway…

Vera: Wait a minute — supposing two swallows carried it together?

JC: No, they’d have to have it on a line.

Vera: Well, simple! They’d just use a standard creeper!

JC: What, held under the dorsal guiding feathers?

Vera: Well, why not?

Vera & Jean-Christophe

BUT

French Polynesia also has some obscure dark sides which we will lighten up a little bit in this article.

First, there is the risk of getting a disease called “La Gratte” in popular French Polynesian terms, literally meaning “The Scratch”. The scientific name is “ciguatera” and its a foodborne illness poisoning humans caused by eating fish whose flesh is contaminated with a toxin known as ciguatoxin, present in microorganisms living in tropical waters. To put this into normal words: fish eats algue, algue is sick, fish is sick, man eats fish, man sick. The symptoms of the disease are headaches, vomiting, a general state of feeling bad which can last several months (!), but most importantly (and you guessed it already): your skin gets itchy so that you are scratching yourself all over the whole day. Great! And the real dark side about this: you can’t really see if a fish is intoxicated or not. So it’s like playing a biased loto: your changes to win might actually be higher than you think!

Second, there is a natural wonder called “stonefish” that a local was happy enough to warn us for. We never heard of this fish before, but he talked about it as if it was a monster: “If you get bitten by it, you might get your leg amputated or even die!” were his words.

…

At first not being too much impressed by his words (believe us, if you learn one thing in travelling over a long time, it’s putting things into context and stay calm…) we took it for some “island talk” and more or less waved it off. But when other islanders also warned us, we started to get a little bit wary.

A quick look at Wikipedia, gave us the following information:

“The stonefish (Synanceia verrucosa), (…) is a carnivorous ray-finned fish with venomous spines that lives on reef bottoms, camouflaged as a rock. It is the most venomous known fish in the world. (…) Its venom causes severe pain with possible shock, paralysis and tissue death depending on the depth of the penetration. (…) The stonefish lives primarily above the Tropic of Capricorn…”

???

Tahiti is above the Tropic of Capricorn!!!!!!

Why did they even mention this? Why did anybody talk about this? This is paradise! We are in paradise and nothing such as people-hurting fish exist in paradise!!!

The result: In the beginning Vera didn’t want to go into the water at all. No, not even with shoes on… (somebody said they sting through shoes… shouldn’t have said that…). Later she goes in, but not without freaking out a few times (and with shoes on of course). Lucky for her, after a few days, we find a kayak, so she can paddle over the stonefish and jump in the water where it is deeper. Haha! Got you, stupid fish!

Third: At Tahiti, they eat parrots! Yeah, all coloured and nice, with a cute little beak, beautiful colours and everything. So sad! They especially like to eat them in their “poisson cru”, a local delicacy of raw fish marinated in lemon juice. Yeah fish! Here, they eat parrot fish!

Ok, bad joke…

But it is those bastards that are the main conveyors of “La Gratte”! So there you go with the dark side of Tahiti again! Maybe living in Europe is not so bad after all…

But to put everything in a brighter light: we didn’t get La Gratte, we didn’t see any stonefish and we even really enjoyed eating parrot fish a few times!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

So a wellknown saying in Holland goes. We however think that it should be changed to:

“Who digs a hole for another… makes sure the other can have a hot spa!”

As we got a few more days to spend in New Zealand and didn’t want to stay in Auckland (this city just seems to attract all rain clouds from at least 200 km around, making that it seemingly rains all the time), we rented a car and headed out to the Coromandel Peninsula, a place we had been attracted to since the beginning of our trip, but which we hadn’t been able to visit due to time issues.

Coromandel is very nice, lush and green, with beautiful sea landscapes and hilly areas. We regretted a little bit being there by car, as it made us realize once more, how conscious you are when cycling: having the time to look around and really “take in” the landscape.

Besides Cathedral Cove, Hahei Beach and Coromandel village, a definite fun highlight is a place called “Hot Water Beach”. At this beach, some nearby volcanos develop huge underground reservoirs of superheated water which, over time, escapes to the surface, of course cooling on the way. This water contains large amounts of salt, calcium, magnesium, potassium, fluorine, bromine and silica, the ideal mix for a spa. The only thing to mind is the tide: Hot Water Beach can only be accessed around low tide.

So all you have to do is rent a spade and get your man to dig a nice hole for you to sit and enjoy your own personal spa.

Life is good!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

But we won´t talk too long then of the wonderful weather we had in Rapa Nui (Easter Island). We did some great hikes there and seeing for real the huge and magnificient Moaïs was gorgeous!

We have now one month t explore the Northern part of Chile and Argentina before flying to Madrid. Yes, we are soon going back to Europe and the begining of our trip.

But for the moment we will enjoy every minute of our stay in South America, so cheers…

Jean-Christophe & Vera

Quite a change from Tahiti and the atoll of Fakarava where we stayed and enjoyed sunshine, little rain showers (free hot water!!) and a whole range of blue colored waters, sharks and delicious parrot fishes.

More soon to come.

Jean-Christophe & Vera

Yep, get that brain working…!
We are leaving Auckland the 6th of June, arriving in Pape’ete (Tahiti) the 5th of June, thereby traversing a time-zone and gaining a day. Well it was about time also, because for the moment we only kept loosing them…

Or let’s say better: we hope we are going to arrive the 5th of June. This article has been written before our departure and will be published automatically.

And our departure all depends on somebody in France going on strike or not…

Vera & Jean-Christophe

“Flight AT5240 to Pape’ete (Tahiti) cancelled”

What?!?!

First we thought (or hoped) it was just some bad joke, but no, the flight was cancelled and we were rescheduled for a flight on the 6th of June. Luckily Qantas was able to reschedule all our follow-up flights too, which made that finally we aren’t going to loose any days visiting Tahiti or the Easter Islands (our next destination), we will just only be there a little bit later than planned.

But, probably the “jewel” of this story is the reason why this flight was cancelled:

The plane that was supposed to fly us from Auckland to Pape’ete was actually stuck in Bordeaux (France) where maintenance engineers decided to go on strike!

?!?!?!

No maintenace, no take-off. And as Tahiti Airlines only has 5 planes, well there you go! Stuck in New-Zealand for 4 more days…

Crazy how some guys on strike can affect others 20.000 km away…

But New-Zealand isn’t the worst place to be stuck in, so from the airport we rented a car and decided to drive around the north island a bit, which we didn’t visit so far.

There’s a good side to everything…

Vera & Jean-Christophe

PS: Et pour les Français: on n’était même pas sur un vol Air France ou un trajet en train avec la SNCF…

Steep roads: Now if you think you have been riding (or driving) on steep roads, then you haven’t been in New Zealand yet. Visibly being a new country in which motorized traffic has been available all the time, they build roads just clearly straight. No, not straight as in “without curves” but straight up the hill, no matter how steep that hill is. On Arthur’s Pass they created their absolute masterpiece: a few kilometers of 15% steep uphill sections, making that for about 2 kilometers we had to push our bikes (this maybe also explains why Kiwis insist on talking about “push bikes” when they talk about bicycles…).

Strong headwinds: Now as if incredibly steep roads wasn’t enough, the weather decided to add a little bit to the fun by offering us some strong very strong headwinds. It is especially to note that normally winds here blow in northwest direction (which is cool because we were going southeast) but that “a few times a year, for a few days only” the direction changes. We chose to do Arthur’s Pass on one of those days. Therefore, when we finally got to the Otira Viaduct (which is only 11% steep) the wind was so strong that we still couldn’t ride our bikes.

Rain-Snow: If yesterday we had perfectly fine weather and the campsite owner had assured us even this morning that it should be a “fine day” we managed to get into a rain-wind storm (in our face, because remember, we had the wind against us…) which brought a cold that was almost unbearable. It was just fantastic!

BUT luckily after Arthur’s Pass the weather cleared up and the days after we had very nice weather with beautiful views on the snow topped mountains around us while we slowly but steadily cycled to Christchurch over Porter’s Pass.

And the good thing about days like that is that now we are really looking forward to Tahiti next week. Sunshine, here we come!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

PS: Due to frozen fingers, we don’t have any pictures of our “adventures” on Arthur’s Pass.

…now we are sitting in a small roadside restaurant in a lost forgotten village after having done several hours in the pouring rain. Now we know that our coats are not (or not anymore) waterproof, our pants neither, the covers for our shoes (”guaranteed 100% waterproof” according to the vendor) neither and that our gloves actually serve two functions: gloves and sponges (but then at least they didn’t claim to be waterproof…).

So having had enough rain for the next years to come and having enjoyed enough sandflies for the rest of our lives, we figured that (as time is running out anyway) we might as well take a bus up to Greymouth and enjoy the northern West Coast from behind a warm bus window.

Vera & Jean-Christophe

Normally the west coast of New Zealand receives about 330 rain days per year, but we were lucky enough to be in Milford Sound without rain and even better: a cloudless (or almost cloudless: just enough clouds to make for some good pictures) blue sky. Just before starting our tour we got some clothes to keep us warm and dry in case we would get wet (small moment of panic: “What do you mean “wet”? It isn’t going to rain, isn’t it? ) and a few basic instructions that would safe our life in case we would capsize (second moment of panic…). And of we went in the clear blue water.

The trip wasn’t too strenuous but easy going and allowed us to enjoy the width and height of the fjord. Especially being at the bottom of it, the brain has some problem imagining how big the fjord is in reality and even though the surrounding mountains looked small, we learned that they are about 1200 meters in reality. The fact that the water under us was furthermore 900 meters deep, made it even more confusing (and caused a third moment of panic…).

But the ultimate moment, was when a seal passed by our boat, or better: rolled by our boat (they actually do that when they are really full: they don’t really swim, but kind of “roll by” like you would roll a sausage on a BBQ to make it evenly grilled on all sides…). And it was so close and so incredibly didn’t care about us being at 20 cm distance that we could even touch and caress it before it “rolled” on. Fantastic!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

On the first day, we traversed beautiful, lush landscapes, following lake Wakatipu up onto a high plain, where it was amazingly beautiful, especially with the last orange rays of the sun lighting up the snow topped mountains around. However, with the sun down, it quickly got very cold and we decided to put up our tent next to a small creek. The evening didn’t consist of much: some quick cooking, a little stargazing and then quickly into our sleeping bags for a freezing cold night.

On day two, we only did a few kilometers until the Mavora Lakes. Two beautifully placed, abandoned lakes in the middle of nowhere (or so it seems as we were the only living souls around) with water so clear that we could see the reflections of the surrounding mountains in it, making for a strange “upside down mirror effect”. We decided not to go any further but pitch our tent in this place and enjoy this feeling of “we are the only ones in the world” by mountain biking a bit around the lake. It was good to feel “free” again without the load of the bags. Jean-Christophe also discovered the fun of “riding through water” and tested the limits of his water-repellent shoes (yes, water-repellent, not water-resistant… in the evening: “My feet are soooo cold!”) by riding through every water hole he could go. When the sun got down, we gathered wood and made ourselves comfortable around a little fire which we also used to cook a meal. And not only the fire kept us warm, also the “running around” to find wood in the dark. We again did a little bit of stargazing before heading into the tent early (this time with 4 shirts, a pair of long pants, 2 pairs of socks and a hat for Vera) for another cold night.

Despite a little rain in the night (Vera was happy, because “rain means clouds” and “clouds mean warm” - it’s definitely funny to see how your relative perception of things changes when you are out in an environment like that) the weather turned out to be fine the next morning and while our gas cooker tried to boil some water from the lake (tried, because first, the gas was frozen (despite it sleeping inside the tent and inside JC’s hat this night) and when we finally got it working, it only wanted to go on a very small flame taking one hour to finally boil some water, or honestly: we decided to drink it unboiled, thinking that our stomachs should still be resistent enough after 7 months in Asia… ) we packed our stuff to go. The road wasn’t as spectacular as it had been the last days and at for the last 30 kms we got some strong headwind as a present. But we made it and finally got to Te Anau where we enjoyed the good things of civilization: a latte coffee, a chocolate-chip-banana-muffin and a bacon and egg pie. Mmm…

Vera & Jean-Christophe

We are now back in Christchurch after the difficult route from Greymouth via Arthur’s and Porter’s Passes, but so beautiful and rewarding.

Before Greymouth, we cycled through the West coast which was quite “wild”: we had to plan carefully in advance to have enough cash and food as shops and banks are scarced there! Now we are relaxing a bit in Christchurch, having sushi and salads with coffee

Tomorrow, we are going to take the train+ferry+night-bus back to Auckland. Almost 24 hours to get there! And then, we will enjoy pretty soon some rest in Tahiti!

Cheers,

Jean-Christophe & Vera

Us: “So we would like to have a two adult tickets for the ferry and for our two bicycles too.”

Lady at the ferry office (Lady): “Ah, sorry! You can’t take bicycles.”

Us: “??? Why not???”

Lady: “Well the water is low, so it is dangerous.”

Us: “??? We don’t understand! If the boat sinks, then who cares about some bikes. They will just sink, that’s it!”

Lady: “Yes, but it is too dangerous to take bicycles on the ferry.”

???!!!???!!!

So in New-Zealand you can throw yourself off a bridge with only an elastic cord wrapped around your feet, roll down a hill in a plastic inflated ball (zorb) or being shot over in a narrow canyon…

…but transporting a bicycle on a ferry is too dangerous?!?!?!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

PS: Finally we could take our bikes on the ferry (after having talked to the skipper and having assured him that our bikes knew how to swim) and everybody on the boat survived the very dangerous trip on the boat with our bikes on board.

We are now back in Wanaka after riding our ways through the Crown Range, Arrowtown, Queenstown, Walter Peak, the Mavora lakes, Te Anau and Milford Sound. We came back by bus to avoid doing the same route. Now we are ready to set sail on the West coast.

In a few words, the trail from Queenstown to Te Anau is fantastic, alone with the nature ! Then the fjords in the South were quite impressive and we enjoyed a day trip by kayak there!

Have fun!

Cold: Of course it isn’t always warm and at some point we even found ourselves cycling in the snow. It is normal that when we wake up the tent is frozen and it isn’t until noon when the sun is at its highest point that it gets “warm”. But then, if you dress up well and have a good sleeping-bag (especially Jean-Christophe can tell stories about this “Me cold? Nooo! I will be just fine in my summer sleeping bag. In Norway I wasn’t cold neither. And if not, I will put on some extra socks…” - We ended up buying him a polar expedition sleeping bag after two nights in which he almost froze to death… ) everything is fine. And then most campsites in New-Zealand are well equiped with a fireplace in a cosy common room to heat up in the evening.

Colourful: Despite the cold and wind, the beautiful autumn colors are just a pleasure to our eyes. It sometimes seems that nature is trying to make up for the weather, by making the landscape incredibly beautiful in exchange! It’s like a painter’s palette of greens, reds, oranges, yellows and blues! Great!

Hard: Sometimes with the strong wind (doing 20 km with superhard headwind is definitely not our idea of fun… ) and the Kiwi’s idea of “hills” (they just have roads that are so steep that it is just impossible to cycle them and we have to push our bikes) we are for sure wondering what (and why!) we are doing here. But then there is always something good waiting for us at the end: a warm fire, beautiful landscapes or a “thumbs-up” from cars passing by.

Empty: Due to the low season, there aren’t too many people on the road, which makes the whole thing quite enjoyable, being able to cycle next to each other a lot of times and enjoy the landscape together. There are anyway only 4 million people in New-Zealand (and 40 million sheep!) so in general it is relatively quiet (except for the typical tourist areas, where everybody seems to clog up) and the worst that can happen is that you get into a traffic jam of sheep.

So all in all, we can say that it’s actually quite a nice experience!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

We have a special thought for our friends Nyeymo, Xyi and Win for whom we hope urgent help doesn’t come too late.

If you have a heart and a little money to spare, do not forget them neither. There are many charity organisations that can bring help to them, Médecins sans Frontières is one of them.

Vera & Jean-Christophe

We are now next to the most thrilling city of New Zealand: Queenstown. But do not expect us to do bumjee jumping or other crazy kiwi stuff, we had our own amount of thrill going up the highest pass of New Zealand ! A mere 1060 m, which in comparison to the one in Norway we did almost 2 years ago at around 1400m seems relatively easy. This is without counting on the building road capacities of Kiwis ! They like it hard and steep, we mean really steep ! Even in the lightest gear it seemed hell to cross, but we did it and we are happy to have done it and not have to do it again

So now we are resting in Arrowtown (18 km from Queenstown) for a couple fo days, time to fix our tent! Well, yeah our brand new tent (2,5 weeks old) broke a pole hopefully it will all be sorted out soon. As our next stop will require “wild” camping, so we absolutely do need a tent !

So to resume our last days: we went from the Canterbury high country to the Otago region, had a rest day in Wanaka next to a beautiful eponym lake and took the road via the Crown Range to Arrowtown.

Take care,

Vera & Jean-Christophe

The high plateau of the central South Island is awesome! Since Fairlie, we visited lake Tekapo and had an enjoyable time in a Spa nearby. Then we had a great day to lake Pukaki, and went up to the base of Aoraki/Mount Cook where we could enjoy some real cold and snow!

We enjoyed every moments, even by rain or snow it was beautiful. When the weather gets really rainy, it reminds us a lot of Iceland and no worries, our tent’s resistence has been thoroughly tested by now! It stands the tests of thunder storm, high wind, heavy showers and a river streaming underneath, without letting us get wet!

Cheers!

We are now in Fairly after some nice rides through the coast and the Canterbury plains. We are now heading to Lake Tekapu and Mount John. We hope to be able to spend a couple of days there, though it might be snowing next Wednesday…

So even if the landscape is really nice and there is a lot to see, we sometimes do get a little bit bored, but luckily enough our brains rarely sleep and come up with some ways to keep us busy even during the most annoying parts of the journey.

First of all there are of course the sheep and we have started to do some experiments on them: now if you “just cycle by” (that is withouth making any noise) they will just look at you and then keep on feeding on the juicy grass. If you however pass by them and ring your bell, they will run off immediately. It doesn’t matter if there is a huge fence or 200 meters between you and them, it’s just and impulse: “first run, ask questions later”. However, if you drive by and “baah” and “meh” like them, they will look at you in curiosity wondering what this strange sheep on wheels is, before they run off. Finally we experimented barking like a dog, which basically gives the same result as “ringing bell”. Very interesting indeed.

Other animals very interesting along the road are herds of deer that actually show a lot of ressemblence to Chinese in their absence of discretion. As soon as we drive by, one will lift up its head and then as some kind of wave all heads will go up, ears too and they will even go as far as they can to the fence to have a look at us, without shame! Very curious, just like the Chinese used to do when we were in China.

A third population group that manages pretty well to keep us busy are the numerous cars and trucks passing by at 2 cm (and this is independent from the fact if you are actually ON the road (which means on the right of the white line, as they drive on the left here) or OFF the road (on the left of the line). Very nice. We actually thought that in some countries in Europe it was pretty suicidal to drive a bike (we will not mention them here in order not to offend anybody…), but New-Zealand is just getting pretty close to that! Well at least it keeps our arms busy in making a well-known obscene signal from time to time (not very effective though) and it sure keeps us alert, but we are looking forward to some quieter roads soon.

Vera & Jean-Christophe

Hopefully, we are again reasonably fit for cycling, as the inland mountains are awaiting us! Next news probably from Queenstown.

As we wanted to start our journey on the south island (as it is said to be more beautiful) we took a bus down towards Christchurch. After 11 hours on a night bus in the pouring rain, we embarked on the ferry (still in gray weather and with clouds all filled up and ready to pour some more) where a miracle happened: on the 3-hour trip, the further south we got, the better the weather became to finally make space for a completely blue sky and amazing views on the beautiful fjord-like landscape close to Picton. We wanted to start cycling right here and now, but unfortunately that would mean our busticket would be canceled completely without refund, and as New-Zealand hasn’t been cheap so far, we decided to get on the bus and enjoy the weather from in the bus.

The landscape we drove by was just amazing: the beautiful blue ocean with seals and dolphins and the beautiful yellowish autumn colors glimmering in the sunlight. And the further we got, the more our feet, legs and actually our whole body started itching: we wanted to get out and cycle! So when the bus-driver stopped halfway to Christchurch to have us have a look at some seals warming up in the sun on some rocks pretty close to the road, we just couldn’t keep it anymore and asked him if we could go out here. He was a bit surprised at first (”You want to go out here?”) but then happy to help us and our bikes out. So there we were, standing on the side of the road, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, not really knowing where we were on a map (the bus driver had mentioned “about 15 minutes from Kaikoura”) but with this all-present motivation to get on our bikes as quick as we could. Ok, it turned out to be still 25 km to Kaikoura, but we had beautiful views on the ocean, spent half an hour observing the seals swim and sunbathe and were just happy to be moving by our own manners. Our first kilometers…

Vera & Jean-Christophe

After 3 full days of running through Auckland, finding a tent and a bike to rent for both of us, Jean-Christophe had the following remarks (very much to the amusement of Vera):

“I definitely prefer working. At least you have a real weekend.”

“I can’t believe how much we have been walking today! And I still have a belly!!!”

Vera & Jean-Christophe