Christmas Eve

CHRISTMAS EVE / WAIHUA BEACH (103km, 563km total) - For being Christmas Eve, today sucked. This has easily been the hardest day of biking on this entire trip. I'm wondering why I didn't think to take the bus all the way to Gisborne?

The day started out well enough. It was flat from Haumoana all the way to Napier. We got the earliest start yet, leaving before 8am. In Napier we found internet, a grocery store, and breakfast. The cafe we landed at was too expensive for my blood, so I went a few doors down to a bakery and got a muffin and something called a Christmas Twist. It was completely disgusting. Covered in currants, candied pieces of unidentifiable fruit, and tons of sugar and frosting. I couldn't eat it all, and immediately regretted my decision to be cheap. Yeck!

When we left Napier the road was still good for about 20km. We stopped in at a really cool winery with a unique patio, a mix of rustic and buddism and comfort. They charged for tastings though, so we didn't stay very long. When the road started climbing into the hills, it went from friendly to very very mean. We passed through a lot of steep gorges, an endless series of ups and downs. The worst was a breakneck decline with a 180 degree turn at the bottom, followed by a super steep incline up the other side. (I would later learn this is called the "Devil's Elbow".) We passed a nice set of lakes, but then immediately got back into the hills.

Towards the end of the day, as we neared Raupunga, there was a spectacular railway bridge over a huge gorge. This was the Mohaka Viaduct, the highest railway bridge in the southern hemisphere. We stopped for a couple pictures and a look at the map. We were aiming for Waihua Beach and there was only a few kilometers left in between. We hoped for one more ridge and then a nice downhill to the beach. Were we ever wrong. Seven steep hills later we were still in the middle of climbing. Each hill seemed to come out of nowhere and each was steeper than the one before. Our biking guide book somehow overlooked this section of the trip. If there is a biking hell, this is it.

When we finally did get to the downhill I let loose on the brakes and flew down as fast as I could. I was ready to be done. At the bottom I looked back for Shad, but he wasn't there. I waited and as the minutes ticked by I got more and more worried. Had he fallen again like he did coming out of Marokopa? As I waited there, cars began to stop. The first one told me my friend's tire exploded and he was on the side of the road. The second one to stop told me my friend had been hit by a car! Worried, I stashed my bike under a bush and went out to flag down the next car to come by. I was picturing Shad with a broken arm or a concussion or any number of ill fates. The first car to pass stopped immediately and offered me a ride to the top. They had been the first ones to stop and help Shad and had been sent to get me. When we got to the top Shad's bike was upside down and his hands were covered in blood. They had been the first things to hit the ground when he went down and gotten sufficiently torn up.

Shad's Hands

I changed his tire (which had indeed exploded) as he tried to clean and wrap up his mangled hands. He'd bent his saddle, but other than that and the tire the bike seemed okay. Apparently he had just hit a bit of gravel on one of the turns and couldn't keep upright. We then flagged down the next car to take me back to my bike and finally we were able to coast downhill the rest of the way to the beach.

At least the beach was everything we hoped it would be. We went around a hill at the bottom of the road and found a perfect isolated spot sandwiched between the river and the Pacific Ocean. There were even a number of logs stuck into the sand that I could hang my hammock from. I worked on securing those longs and hanging my hammock while Shad wandered the beach and took photos of the sunset.

Christmas Lights

Then we went to work. I made dinner while Shad prepared a fire. Our Christmas dinner was absolutely delicious: spiced tomatoes and tuna with mushrooms and vegetables, served with rice and tortillas. Shad insisted that we stay another night, but I pushed back. There wasn't enough water (the river was undrinkable), no shade, we needed to get his hands cleaned up, and I was eager to get to our couch in Gisborne. Our host is Carol and I have no way to get in contact with her should we decide not to show up. Plus we would never make it around the East Coast to Mt Maunganui by New Year's if we took another day.

Our Christmas Family Photo

After a bit around the fire, I went down to bathe and wash dishes in the river. The water was nice and warm and it began as a very pleasant experience. I waded in about waist deep and started washing the dishes. Then I began to feel a bit of debris moving past my feet and around my waist with the current. At first I though nothing of it. Then as I began to feel it more often I got freaked out and thought it was leeches. I got our real fast, but there were no leeches or anything that I could see. Telling myself it was just my imagination, I inched back into the water, not as deep this time and crouching for a quick escape. Again I felt the sensation of debris bumping up against my body. I reached for it and only found pebbles, but I kept feeling it, especially around my butt. I looked to my left and the headlamp shone on the water, and there beside me was a very curious 2-foot long freshwater eel! I moved out of that water as fast as I possibly could, cursing to all hell. I was not about to let an eel swim up my ass! I got dressed and finished the dishes from the shore. I went back to the campfire shaken and was very happy to end the night with a bottle of scotch, a warm fire, the sound of the waves, and no eels. Merry Christmas.

Raupunga, New Zealand