February 16: The SUICIDE highway

A bit too much of that NZ wine sampling last, ugh! Sunlight pours through our east facing glass doors, waking us and foretelling another hot one. Tom and Karen are by and we're all promptly off along the beach at 8:30am. Farewells all around as the beach road reaches Rte. 2. And how busy!!! Traffic just flows by us on New Zealand's busiest section of highway, aptly coined "the Suicide Highway" for it's narrow verges and rambling trucks.

We stop for "breaky" at the Rustic Pumpkin, which includes flat whites, short blacks and humble carrot cake, with huge plates of eggs, ham, spud triangles and toast in between. Must get back on the cycles, even tho we can hardly face the continual traffic. Terrain rolls gently and we are stuck on a decent verge (remember that means shoulder of the road) as double and triple trailers whizzed by 5 feet from our elbows. Pass thru Katikati, town of murals and one giant inflata-rugby ball. Have our first view of kiwifruit farms. Finally we ride into Tauranga (pop. 118,000) at rush hour, but on a wide verge. Score a gravel bike path into the Domain (remember this means park) and after carrying bikes, gear and cart up and over a 25' high pedestrian overpass and up a couple dozen steep park steps, we emerge onto downtown and grab the Strand Motel, steps from the harbour.

We'll relax and take a day off tomorrow, and we need it! Today has felt like we'd been on a bike machine stuck on medium hard for 5 hours, with the drone of truck traffic as an accompaniment.


40 miles today, 254 miles cumulative.

Word of the day: Metal road= any road surface not of concrete or macadam