New Zealand - Day 4 Taihape to Palmerston North

DAY 4 - Monday 20th

We had woken up and the rain had stopped and the roads were drying out quickly. Today we just grabbed a quick maccas breaky so we could get going quickly. Heading south from Taihape the destination for today was to be Palmerston North which is only 110kms away, however I had a 440km twisty little back route devised with the help of Andrew from the famous Bandit Rider Blog.

Turning off at Mangaweka we took the Manawatu Scenic route which is another excellent biking road and is quite easy to follow, when we first turned onto the road I thought we must be on the wrong road as it turned to dirt straight away. Er what happened? Turns out it was freshly tarred it looked like dirt but wasn't. There are a couple of turn offs along this route to be wary off though otherwise you could get lost. The signage is small and hard to notice in places. Much like the southern scenic route on the Catlins - South Island it is sign posted with a scenic route sign as follows.

Manawatu Scenic Route

Stu & Me

The road is quite winding in sections and with sweeping curves over hills and most of it has no corner advisory signs so you need to take it easy. Next stop was in Ashurst and we then turned up Saddle Rd over to Woodville, there were some good views from up this twisting hill and at the top we found there were hundreds of wind farm generators. From the hill we could see our destination of Palmerston North it was probably only 15km away.

Looking back to Ashurst and Palmy North

Ashurst

I stopped in for a quick photo at the wind farm lookout whilst the others continued along the road below, I saw them passing by but I don't think any of them saw me standing up at the look out, there could have been a bus load of swedish bikini girls with their tits out and I don't think they would have seen it!.

There were literally hundreds of the things scattered all over the hills here so obviously this must be a really windy area, luckily not today and it was our first day without rain.

We continued on towards Waipukurau where we had to pull over to put our wets back on as more rain approached us. The road from Woodville up to Waipukurau was mostly just straight highway and nothing much in the way of fun, it was pretty heavily trafficked too as it was the main road to Napier Hastings. The rain only lasted for about 5 minutes and then was dry again so the wets came back off at lunch. Annoying putting this stuff on and off in a short space of time.

Stopping in at Waipukurau for a spot of lunch at the bakery I filled up with a chicken salad roll which was brilliant. I noticed they had won awards for their pies and Geoff mentioned that the pies were really good.

Returning to the bikes Rick was looking at the suspension on the bikes and then pulled out his tyre pressure gauge to check the pressures as they had cooled down over lunch. All the bikes tyre pressures were found to be at 42F and 45R. No wonder the bikes were sliding around so much in the wet the pressure was too high and the tyres can't get enough heat into them. Obviously done by the bike hire shop to increase the tyre life. We let the pressures down to recommended levels 36F & 42R. I'm really starting to wonder about this bike hire place.

Leaving Waipukurau and heading to another equally unpronounceable maori named town we stopped at this sign as I hadn't seen any signs for a while. This didn't look right and then when we went another 2 or 3 kms up the road and noticed a beach on our right hand side we stopped and turned around and headed back again. If anything the beach should have been on our left side not the right. There was a small tiny sign in the middle of a curve just before Porangahau saying Wimbledon which was the way we were supposed to be going. Signage in NZ is quite poor and compound that with the unpronounceable Maori names and not being able to spell the name of the town makes navigation without a gps quite difficult.

Yeay we're going the wrong way again!!!!!

The road to Wimbledon has nice sweeping curves over hills through farming country. We came upon the place with the longest name in the world. Later on we asked a couple of maori people how to say it and even they were having trouble. Whathafukdoesitsayinenglishpleas?

Lads at the longest place name

Stopping in Wimbledon Geoff stalled the Tiger and it then refused to start. Fuck! and we are in the middle of nowhere with no phone reception. As we are unsure what's wrong the batteries were swapped out of the Street triple and the tiger. The Tiger fired back up again and we made for Dannevirke and then straight to Palmerston North to go to Supercheap auto to see if we could get the battery tested. We were thinking its not being charged but can't be sure in the middle of nowhere with no tools.

Wimbledon Main Street

Wimbledon Tavern

The Tavern was closed today, a note on the door said they were taking the owner to the Doctors and a local pulled up in a ute and confirmed the proprietor wasn't well. Geoff noticed they guy in the ute had a couple of guns in the back of his ute, yep we are in banjo country here.

More battery problems?

The road into Dannevirke from Wimbledon was a fantastic little ride with all sorts of twisty bends, I came around a corner and there were sheep standing on the side of the road which made the heart beat a little faster as I wasn't sure if they were going to dart out in front of me, luckily for me they didn't because that would have ended badly.

The ride back into Palmerston North was interesting just out of town where it went through Manawatu Gorge, which was a fun bit of road but far with too much traffic on it. The road twists it way around the river here but didn't have time to stop and take snaps as we needed to get to supercheap before they closed at 5:30pm.

Riding into Palmy I was keeping an eye peeled for a silver connie but couldn't see one, little did I know Andrew from the Bandit rider blog was waiting at a set of traffic lights in his car. We went straight to supercheap. The battery tested ok, so we swapped them back into the respective bikes. So it must have some other issues. Andrew turned up and we said hello and a bit of a chat about what was happening. He wasn't surprised in the slightest that a triumph wouldn't start and we all laughed about it. He suggested we go to his house where he has tools and a multi meter to do some testing. If he knew what he was in for I'm sure he would have never offered!

I forgot to take any photos from this point as we were all busy trying to find out what was wrong with the Tiger. The side stand switch was checked and metered, clutch switch checked and all the electricals pulled out and examined. There was some cussing. Relays and fuses were checked and hammers swung into action. It was charging at 14V when it was running. Then some more cussing. After an hour or more of stuffing around and Geoff was acting like a hysterical old woman we thought we were going to have to slap some sense into him. Finally we decided that it wasn't going to start, admit defeat and we'd have to unpack the tiger. It was here Geoff pulled out Ricks camera bag, that Rick had conveniently left unzipped in the top box. A camera and two lenses went crashing onto the concrete. Then there was a bucket load more cussing. Could anything else possibly go wrong? I'm sure Andrew's neighbours must have thought a bikie gang had moved in next door!

Photo blatantly stolen borrowed from Bandit Riders Blog

We had to give up and ring the bike hire place in the end. His response was somewhat underwhelming to say the least, stating "yeah it does that sometimes". Then he said "Try it again for me". No shit it started straight away and without any hint of the slow cranking or the no cranking it was exhibiting before. So Geoff tried it 3 more times and it fired every time. I think this sent Geoff over the edge into irrational thought cursing and swearing and saying he was going to sell his triumph when he got home. Geoff said "This bike is cursed, It's the Black Pearl, arrrrrrrrrgh" RE: Pirates of the Caribbean film and from that point on she was called 'The Black Pearl'. Rolling out of Andrews place Geoff almost smashed off his down pipe with one of the panniers. I had to shake my head, it's a wonder Andrew didn't tell us to F*ck off right then and never come back. Yep I guess it can get worse. Some people should not be allowed to ride bikes with panniers. Yes Geoff you're one of them, you crashed into each of our bikes and a house for f*ck sake!

I invited Andrew to dinner to which he accepted, not sure why he wanted to hang around a bunch of completely insane lunatics like us but it was good to sit down and chat with him about bikes, riding in NZ and everything else in general. Similarly to Geoff and Jules previously we hit it off pretty good and it felt like I'd know Andrew for a long time when the fact was we'd never met before. It would have been good to get a ride in with him if circumstances had been a little different.

I'd mentioned how many times we got lost already and he laughed and asked us where are we going tomorrow. I showed him our route and he quickly said "well you're going to get lost again unless you turn here"(shows me a pic of another tiny little road sign on facebook). Yup thanks mate I'm sure we would have missed that one too but we didn't thanks to your forewarning. Cheers Bud!

It was fantastic to meet you Andrew, another 'highlight' of the tour there's no doubt. A big 'Thank you' from all the guys for letting us use your tools and was great to catch up and just chat with other like minded bike riders. As I said if you're ever over here let us know and we'll catch up.

Selfie fun with Bandit Rider

Today's Map Reference

New Zealand - Day 3 Gisborne to Taihape

DAY 3 - Sunday 19th

The morning dawned with bright blue sky's and the promise of sunshine for the day. It was most welcomed after the last 2 days in treacherous conditions. The beach looked much more inviting today than it did yesterday.

A quick breakfast down by the beach and we were headed off to Napier today via one of the inland back roads, Tiniroto Road which was marked as one of the top rides in the NZ road atlas and I can see why. There were quite a few sections of road works happening on the road but other than that it was a little gem of a ride and this is where I gained my confidence back and started to really enjoy the road and my ride now that it was dry.

Lads on Gisborne Beach

Gisborne Beach

The road out of Gisborne flows through some flat plains with vineyards lining the road verges before it starts to wind its way up into the hills. This road I really enjoyed in the dry as there were no towns along it so was only really frequented by the farmers that live along here. I think we only saw about 3 cars in about 100kms. Once the road got a bit twisty I wicked up the pace as I was having fun, this was my type of back road, looks like the others were still half asleep as I left them behind until I stopped for a couple of pictures.

Stopping along here for a quick break in the hills gave us a chance to soak up the quiet sunday morning. Everything around is so green and beautiful, obviously thats why it rains here so often. I noticed that nearly the entire road is un-signposted and is quite windy so you need to be careful.

There's a bridge over a river down there

Even the signs were growing moss

The road from Wairoa to Napier was another absolute cracker. This was a main highway but nothing like a main highway we have here in Australia. It was 118kms of roller coaster ride through the country, with some twisting turning sections up hill and down dale. 2 MG sports cars overtook us and and were putting the peddle down. I thought to myself that these guys must know the road quite well being locals so I will keep up and follow them, so I did just that.  I wish I had my R1 along here those pesky little Mg's would have eaten the dust of my rear tyre, the tracer couldn't cut it in the real tight bends with it wallowing around over the bumps. We had a blast riding the road here chasing the mg's so I failed to stop an take any photos. This was just what we needed to overcome the lows of day 1 and our confidence was soaring now, the complete opposite of the previous 2 days.

Arriving in Napier there was some sort of old fashioned car rally on and the main street of town was blocked off. There were people everywhere in clothing from the 1920's with cars of the same era. So we headed back to the marina on the way into town for a spot of fush and chups. The service was so slow I think we must have waited for at least 45min to get our order but luckily the fush was really good.

Napier Beach

Napier

We got stuck in  bit of a traffic jam in central napier and wasted about 30 minutes trying to get in and out. I'd like to drop in here when there is no events on, it looks like a nice place to visit.

Lunch in Napier

After lunch we took the Taihape - Napier road. The road out towards Taihape was another beauty with rolling hills with sweeping bends for kilometer after kilometer through rural farming land until the road finally started to change and wound its way steeply up into the forested mountains. The best bit was there was virtually no traffic in the whole 150km trip.

Sweeping roads for mile after mile

The scenery gradually begins to change from rolling hills to more mountainous forested hills and peaks, this area reminded my much more of the South Island. The road through the forest is superb and I was wishing for my R1 here as this is a beautiful road with twisty bits and higher speed sweeping bends. The road was in relatively good condition much like the roads on the South Island. I think this has to be my favourite bit of road so far.

This road is known in kiwi land as Gentle Annie. She lived up to her name and was gentle with us. The road used to be unsealed until a few years ago, it would have been a treacherous road when it was dirt. This has got to be one of the North Island's best rides and I'm glad we got to ride most of it in the dry.

Gentle Annie

Riding over the other side of the range there are some steep grades and the landscape changed from lush mountain scenery to brown barren open farming country on the tops of hills, it must be high up in the alpine region here as most of the grassland was brown and dead looking. There was an interesting swing bridge much like the one in Queenstown that they do the bungie jumping from. I took some gopro footage that I might put up later on. We had to stop and put our wet weather gear back on as the last 50kms into Taihape it rained again fairly consistently heavy.

Taihape home of the giant alpinestar?

The rain had stopped and we wandered into Taihape from our Motel room, the Aspen Court Motel which was a good place to stay with free wifi, the rooms are spacious and clean. Taihape has only one pub in town and it was a complete dive. So we went to the bottle-o and picked up some beer and got some malaysian takeaway and took it back to our rooms. The Malaysian was surprisingly good.  I quite enjoyed the Mac's Green Berets pale ale's, very nice. Rick was the life of the party after a couple of beers.

Rick the party animal

The rain started coming down again late in the evening but the forecast for tomorrow was good so we will all be looking forward to that after 3 days with some heavy rain.

Map Reference

New Zealand - Day 2 Rotorua to Gisborne

DAY 2 - Saturday 18th

For some reason I couldn't sleep even though I was exhausted after events of the previous day, and I had only a couple of beers so it wasn't the drinks.  The others slept in until about 8:30am and then got up. The forecast on the metservice was for 140mm of rain across the interior of the Island in the Rotorua area. Rick wanted to cancel tonight's accommodation and stay here again which was considered by everyone. Riding winding roads in torrential rain isn't high on my list of fun things to do but Stu told us all to man up.

Geoff came out and said "Check this out" showing us the previous day's effort. It got bigger and darker over the coming days and he looked a bit sore getting on and off the bike. Ouch!

Looking for fuel on the way out of town we found a Yamaha dealer which we stopped in at to borrow a set of allen keys. The Tiger's steering was as bent as a high court judge after the crash, so we loosened up the allen bolts holding the forks and then re straightened the steering at least Geoff could ride it properly now. By the time we had done this and found fuel and actually got underway it was about 11am again with another 470km ride planned for the day around the east cape and throw in some rain and it was starting to look like it was going to be hard work.

Straightening the steering

Less than 5 minutes out of Rotorua the heavens opened up and we had to stop again for one optimist to put his wet weather gear on. We soon turned onto highway 30 to Whakatane. There were 3 huge lakes that we skirted around the edges of that I would have liked to stop and take some photos but it was raining so heavy it would be a wasted effort, you couldn't see the other side of the lake it was raining so hard. Then the rain became biblical, at one point there were rivers of water 5 feet wide flowing along each side of the road and I was sure I was going to see an Ark float down one of them. I saw a car ahead plow through water across the road with water spraying higher than the car into the air so we slowed down to 30kmh. If we hadn't seen that happen and hit the water across the road at 80-90kmh we would have aqua planned and all crashed, the water was 2 - 3 inches deep.

We arrived in Whakatane and continued on however only 1 bike was following. I stopped and Rick went back to see where the others were. He came back a little while later and said the Tiger had stopped and wouldn't start so we went back into town. 

Outskirts of Whakatane waiting for the others

We found a bike shop that had just closed and the owner took pity on us poor Aussies and reopened to see if he could help. He put a new battery in and the Tiger fired straight up no problem. Geoff decided he would also buy a new rain suit at the shop to replace the one he ruined yesterday. It gave us a chance to oil the chains as well.

We left Whakatane and followed the coast along to Opotiki. There are some fantastic little beaches along the road here and lucky for us the weather had finally come good again and the road was dry so we picked up the pace a little. I was feeling tired along here and thought I could do with some coffee. The coastline along here is pretty stunning.

Volcano in the back ground

Heading towards Opotiki

The coastal ride into Opotiki was very scenic and it was about 2:00pm by the time we got there, so we put in a splash of fuel. Coming into town I was feeling the effects of the lack of sleep so we stopped for a quick bite at the bakery and a coffee. I really needed a double shot coffee to pick me up. By the time we were ready to get under way our group decided to split up, it was 3pm and the route plan had us tackling the east cape road with 4 and a half hours(326km) of riding to do with highly technical winding coastal road. Stu and Rick headed that way with Geoff and myself taking the shorter option of Waioeka Gorge to Gisborne which is only a 2 hr(143km) trip which should put us in Gisborne by 5pm. I just couldn't consider taking that much on so late in the day and being as tired as I was, I thought that was really pushing my luck when I didn't really need too.

Riding into the Gorge we could see rain in the distance heading for Gisborne but it was a fair distance ahead. The gorge was dry to start with and a fabulous run but the further we got into it we came upon wet patches. Motorcycling is all about confidence. When you have it you can ride like the wind and when you don't it can be slow and painful.

With the road changing from dry to damp to wet then dry again in patches it made it difficult to judge how fast you could go into some of the blind corners and on top of that both Geoff and myself were having little slides in the wet here and there. You could see small patches of oil on the surface of the road. As I said motorcycling is a confidence thing, this afternoon wasn't to be our day with what happened yesterday and the small moments we were currently experiencing we took it very cautiously. The roads here seemed to be very slippery in the wet and our confidence was probably at an all time low.

The road through the gorge pretty good, some spots were a bit broken up but for most of the way it was ok. There were quite a few rock falls on the road that we had to be careful of. I would like to ride this road again in the dry it would be much more fun, it's very scenic as the road follows the river through the gorge with massive hills on either side.

Waioeka Gorge

Me at the Gorge

Geoff at Waioeka Gorge

Coming out of the gorge the road then opens up and makes it way through rolling hills filled with farming land, as we approached the crest of one hill we could see we were about to come into another rain storm so we stopped to put our wets back on. I noticed that the tar on the road was in very poor state of repair. That black patch was as slippery as when we walked on it and most of the chip seal had sunk below the surface of the tar. No wonder Geoff hit the deck yesterday.

Just as we were setting off for Gisborne a rainbow appeared to our left and below us, quite odd to see one down so low.

The trip into Gisborne was through some light drizzling rain and we made it in by 5pm as planned with no more incidents. Geoff and I made an opportunity to wash some clothes as his got covered in red wine in the crash yesterday. Both Geoff and I were glad to be off the bikes as we were both tired.

Gisborne is a pretty little town and as I've found with most towns on the trip has a large clock right in the centre of town, this is a unique thing to New Zealand so far that I've seen.

Gisborne 

Gisborne Beach

The beach was only 1 minute from our accommodation but wasn't looking to pleasant this afternoon. We stayed at the Captain Cook motor lodge which had pretty decent rooms and laundry facilities. Stu and Rick arrived into town at about 7:30pm and met us for diner at the local pub at around 8pm. They had a ball riding the coast road which was dry all the way. I would have loved to do it but not in my current state of mind. At least tonight I got a solid night's sleep thankfully.


Today's map reference