Exploring New Zealand's Valleys and mountains on my Solo motorcycle adventure. Episode 12

In this episode, I have to fix a flat in the grass. I meet up with Dylan, we explore some farm tracks, come across the green juicy van not doing so well, herd some cattle and again ride through epic valleys. Just pulled over to get some fuel and to work out what to do next. Well, I was communicating with some guys from New Zealand Online through the YouTube channel trying to find out what tracks to do and a guy by the name of Dylan said he'd show me around some of his favorite tracks. So I'm going to go over Arthur Pass and meet up with him tomorrow. But I have run out of power in all my cameras so I'm gonna have to go find somewhere to stay that I can charge everything up, clean some clothes and just sort everything out for the next section of this trip. I have found one place. The reviews say it's difficult checking because there's no one to check you in and if you stay by yourself it's pretty scary. That's the big house. They have no idea where I've slept in the past. Sounds perfect. Let's do that. Now that's different. The street names are on signs low down, not higher up on poles. I was back on the main road that runs alongside the western coastline of the island. Then I'd take the turn at Kamurra to head east and over Arthur's Pass then head towards Starfield. I made the turn towards the east. I know some countries where they struggle with roundabouts. This one with a train line through the middle of it would probably freak them out. I started riding into another valley. The further I ventured the higher and steeper the mountains became. You'll notice there are a lot of large arrows on the roads in New Zealand as there are a lot of foreign tourists that drive themselves around the island. The arrows are there to remind them that in New Zealand you drive on the left. This road has large metal gates so the pass must get closed occasionally with heavy snowfall or rock slides. The road got narrower as I rode into the Otara Gorge with the Otara River down below. I gather this is to protect from rockfalls and this one to protect from waterfalls. This is the Otara Viaduct lookout. Lucky that bridge is there as the rock slides coming off this side of the hill is pretty dramatic. You can feel the wind coming straight up the valley. You probably can't hear me in fact. This new addition of the Otara Viaduct was completed in 1999 to minimise the hazards driving through here. On a map this is the area that it actually indicates is Arthurs Pass with a postcode and on the other side of this flat plain is Arthurs Pass National Park. A bit of road maintenance going on. You wouldn't want to hit one of those. I started climbing up the next ridge. I rode over the crest and well you know what's going to be over the other side. Another stunning valley. I think Homer Simpson's passed through here. They have had a very dry summer here and it's starting to show. This is the town of Darfield where I'd be meeting Dylan tomorrow. I was staying about five kilometres out of town. I was doing the speed limit of 100 kilometres an hour but I had a ute right behind me so I pulled over to let them pass. I had a car behind me right up my butt so I tried to pull off the road missed the turn off to where I'm staying and then got a flat tyre. It's just there 200 metres but I'm here. Well it looks like a nail in the tyre. I pulled out the axle. Now to put it somewhere it won't get dirt on it. The one thing the Himalayan bike has that the Scram doesn't and would be really handy right about now is a centre stand. I broke the bead of the tyre away from the rim, levered the tyre off the rim. Now to get the nail out. It's not coming out that way so I pushed it right through. Got it. I put the new tube in, tyre back on. Let's see if I've pinched it. Well I got pressure back in there but now for the tricky bit is trying to put it in balance with one hand of the bike and make sure that doesn't fall out. But then I had a bit of luck. Finally right at the end when I actually needed help because it was just it was really hard doing myself. Two guys stopped, lifted the bike up. Job done. Thank you New Zealanders. Gear's all back on the bike so let's go the 200 metres to where I'm staying. Maybe 300 metres. Took me a bit to work out which room it was and it's the Alps room and it has a bed. I have to get used to one of those again. All right shower and start charging cameras. After a good night's sleep and all the gear sorted it was back on the road again for the short journey back into town where I was meeting up with Dylan. Howdy folks. We got straight onto the road. One thing you'll notice about Dylan's Suzuki DR650 it's quite loud even at a distance. We hit the gravel and well it was more like marbles. I gather Dylan was used to it but I needed to slow down so I didn't end up on the ground. I came around the corner to see Dylan picking his bike up off the ground. Straight away. Right on to it. Yeah it felt a bit slippery. It is bloody slippy hey. There's like marbles out here. All good. Dylan checked over his bike. It was all good so we got on with it. A little slower this time. Dylan works with the farmers drilling their fields which means planting seed so he has access to riding through some of the properties. We pulled up to what I gathered was one of the farmers he knew. It's my ex-girlfriend. It's always fun you know. All right let's let's do the thing. Dylan had to make a quick stop off to one of the paddocks. This is a work trap. All that you see that is green is my creation. Here we are. We're surveying. Looks good. Work expense. Everything we're doing it's work right now. And with work done for the day we were off. A little layer off. Yeah it is warming up. So we've just pulled over here because it's warming up the sun's trying to come out so we're just layering down. We mentioned how clean Dylan's side bags were. Right now after a little what would you call it a little a little lay down look how good it looks now. Intrepid. Just got to do the other side now right? Yes. So does the other side and the bike will look perfect. We were going to check out a track Dylan had never explored before so we had no idea what was ahead. Unbelievable. Those lumps of grass always get you. I won't blame the grass. I'm just not very good at this. It was on the wrong side as well. I'm trying to get the other side dirty. This felt like a real farm track. It looked like it had barely been used. Maybe by farmers on a quad or motorbike once every few months. We hugged the side of the hill into the next little valley then dropped down into the next small valley which had a river running through it. I do believe that we might be at the end of the human track and onto the dog's track here. Definitely looks it. We decided to explore a little further on foot. You get it jumping over fences because this is uh. Yeah we'll just jump. Don't impale yourself. You can hear a stream down here so we're gonna at least investigate. I think we'll have to follow some animal tracks. Ready to slide down on your ass. By the way this bush here is so spiky. That's called using your butt to slide down. So we have made it to the bottom. It isn't that as an impressive stream but it's you know. We tried. Cool device. That's just a gorge. One of millions of gorges probably through the country that nobody ever gets to see except the occasional farmer or some random dudes traveling around on motorbikes. Now for the fun bit. Trying to get up back up this track. So he made us jump over the fence because he said oh he can't undo it but apparently. And then it was like impossible. Completely lockpick. There you go. Joys of exploring. So now to ride back out but if we want to watch this this might be fun. Dylan sort of put his bike in the wrong spot again. I need to get back in the gym hey. It's not good. It's Halloween. All right back along that fun little track. I'm sure there are those out there who spotted Dylan's error already. Dylan's kill switch was playing up. Wiggle it just a little bit. Gentle touch is what it needed. We pulled up to have a look at this stunning mountain range before us. We rode a bit further then pulled over at the farmhouse to have some lunch. So we've just stopped off at the homestead just to have some lunch and get some water into us because it's actually got really hot. Like I'm in a t-shirt now and I've got thermals on that I'm going to take off and then we're going to go past the other side of the mountain and see some lakes and find out what's from there. Just a snifter. How's it going for me? There we go. Cover it up. And then there's patience. That's a lot of work for a drink. Meanwhile I got stuck into some pineapple out of a tin. Dylan also had some noodles but in the background we could hear something very loud coming past. It is a horse. Come for that nugget of gold we were looking for the river. They were traveling 300 kilometers over to the west coast which would take them around five weeks. It's 300 kilometers in five weeks that's 60 kilometers a week. That's just under 10 kilometers a day by horse with the record that that made coming 150 meters up the road. I think it's a tough day for the horses. Epic journey that'll be. Slow one but epic. Would you like some of this delicious bread? Yes yes I would. There you are sir. Thank you. It's really good. Oh look at that vivacious boil. Not a coffee drinker myself so I won't be partaking in the sampling of the coffee. Apparently it's good. Gourmet coffee. Oh hot but it's good it's good. So lunch is over we're just get some more water and then head off to Ashburton Lakes. Ashburton Lakes. Oh we might stop at Mount Summers for an ice cream. Someone said ice cream. Someone said ice cream. All right let's mount up. We dropped down to the river and stopped for a random fact. Braided rivers are in three countries New Zealand Norway and Chile I believe. Braided river is where it separates apart from itself to go around these giant islands of stone or even small islands of stone. Here's quite a grand example where it breaks apart because it hasn't had enough time to just formulate a single path through and move all the material out that it needs. But older countries you see like a just a single line of water going down. New Zealand's just a wee youngster. Yeah we only just got here. Dylan said we needed to make a small detour to pick up some beverages and I've looked over 5,000 kilometers so far on this trip. If you don't take them out it's not stealing so if you just sit here and drink all day you know that's what I was thinking. If you if you went to university in New Zealand you know what scrumpy is and don't do it again. Sounds like goon for Australia. Yeah. My bike is running and wait for the Suzuki Spitfire starter and as promised it was time for ice cream. I was making sure I wasn't parking in front of the gas. Hey guys. How you doing? This is a dilemma. What do you choose? I know what I'm doing. What are you doing? Boysenberry. What is the most childish option possible? It's gumdrops. Orange choc chip please. That's a combination. It's probably the wrong one I'm not sure. I'm not defensive about it. So boysenberry and would you like another flavor? That's hokey pokey. Tip top hokey pokey is like the New Zealand ice cream that you've got when you're in NZ. Got the good stuff out here. I love it. It's been a while but ice cream is good and hokey pokey. yeah. Yeah so we're our little camp spots down where those trees sort of meet there. We got straight into setting up camp as we still had more riding to do today. We did have one more thing to sort out before setting off again. So Dylan has been engineering the fridge. It's hard to stake something into the... It keeps the pale ale cold. It's worth it. The idea is the lake water is just a little over a regular fridge. So not super cold but cold enough that it'll... It's colder than the air. Colder than being outside. Dylan came up with a better solution than just sticks. So these are the priorities when camping. With that sorted we headed off to explore further into the valley. We rode out into the late afternoon sun. The road was heavily corrugated. Then we came across something you never want to see. Dylan lightened up the situation with some kiwi jokes. Oh cool. Sweet. Nice view though. Great seat. It could be. That's a view. We dropped down into the next valley. So it's not too far to go up this track. So we pulled over to Mount Sunday. Mount Sunday. I got it right. Cool. And apparently it was in Lord of the Rings. I don't remember all the things from the movie so apparently there's some fighting training happening up here. But it looks like cool spot anyway. And there's just mountains all the way around. There's always one in the group. I thought I wasn't going to be hiking on this trip. This is like the fourth one. I'm not gonna lie. I'm a bit puffed. I'm very hungry apparently. Yeah if we just take the summit down there we wouldn't have to walk all this way to get up here. It's quite impressive up here. A little windy but the scenery is stunning. There's a mountain range this way just the water draining down. You can see if it was in rain. So I'm assured by Dylan that Mount Cook is over here in the clouds. Now he's grabbing his phone to see the maps. He's just going to map just in case. So after further review of Google Dylan has told me Mount Cook is this valley. Not that one. Anyway we're going to head back down because we're going to lose light soon. It'll be cold riding back. Wouldn't be the first time but we're going to try and avoid it. This one range over here is epic. It's so yeah. We do have an issue. Not an issue. Potential. The farmers have just moved the cows into where our bikes are so we've got to watch out for uh or not to step in anything particularly. McSlarry apparently. and had to stop for another photo. Well they had got the juicy van upright. I guess they were just waiting for a tow truck. The moon was in the cradle of the mountain. I saw it back there. I was trying to stop. So I got off to get another photo. It's time. There you are chap. Crack on. Did you hear that? Not holding back. Not holding back. Oh there's so much light. I should get the camera out and finish this. Get a couple more photos and drink a beverage or two. A little blocked by the mountain. I got as many shots as I could in the fading light. Well that was the last of the light so time to put this camera down and get back to that beverage. New Zealand's been stunning again. Little island in the lake. I'm drinking this one not this one. Delectable Campbell's chunky roast chicken and vegetable ten soup. 3.5 out of 5 health stars Joe. So you are in good hands tonight. So yes I am eating luxury tonight. A warm meal. Still out of the can but it's warm. Dinner is served. Well for me at least. He's got to heat up mine now. Dylan has to heat up his. What's he having? This is chunky beef and veg. 100% Aussie beef so thank you you guys. Saved me with that one. Although they've got a lot of cattle here so I don't know why they don't use their own. And we still have that yummy bread from the bakery. Whack off a slice of that. That's good. Oh that's good. I must say hot meals are really good in New Zealand when it's cold. The doorstop of bread. It's all happening. Oh I could do the whole Duncan thing. Oh get in it. Get in it. It might not look appealing at home but it sure is appealing right here. That's where it counts. We finished eating dinner as the moon rose over the mountain. Then we called it a night. In the next episode we ride into some more valleys, along some rocky tracks, herd some sheep and end up in the city.