January 10th
We passed the 10.000km mark:
The next day finally we saw a Vincent Black Shadow, Dean had one in his Garage. Great bike! When we got ready to leave Lynnie gave us the key to their batch, a beach house in Koitiata, close to Wanganui. We spend the evening walking along the black sand beach full of drift wood, cooking and relaxing.
In the late morning we left for the Wanganui River Valley Road, we enjoyed the ride even though it was not much gravel road left and we past Athens and Jerusalem. The plan was to go down the “Forgotten World Highway”, a small partially gravel road in-between green hills and rain forest and staying somewhere in the nature for the night. Unfortunately it started to rain… slowly… more and more. So we continued to find any dry place, either a camp site or a pup with rooms. But we were on the “Forgotten World Highway” and nothing was around. In the end we found a little camp ground and they had a dry caravan available where we moved in for the night.
When we woke up it was still raining… but we continued driving direction Stratford, Mt Taranaki. The rain became harder the winds turned to storm, so we spend the next night in a hostel – a former old nursery school building where we were the only guests… honestly, it was a bit spooky.
Luckily the weather cleared up next day, and we went off to see Mt Taranaki. Covered in clouds we could not really see the top but we spend a lovely day riding around it, stopping at several surf beaches and going to the west cape lighthouse. Arriving in New Plymouth we could stay in the house of Franziska and Jens with their 4 kids, who moved three years ago to NZ and offered us immediately to stay for the night. We spend a great evening talking at the fireplace… Unfortunately today morning it started heavy rains again. Thankful to have a dry place we are sitting now here, catching up, sewing our sleeping bags, looking for new tires, playing around with little 2.5 year old Elena and hoping the weather will get better a bit at least… we are not sure if we will continue today or staying in this “warm” house of Franziska and Jens for one more night.
