Going Your Own Way: Two Months Across New Zealand

Looking out from the veranda of Carsten and Carmen’s home in Waikuku Beach, we basked under the morning sunshine, feasting on a breakfast of scrambled eggs, cheese, home-baked bread, and local honey. As we sat, they discussed the joys of moving to New Zealand and its effect on their children growing up. Carmen brewed a second pot of coffee as Carsten scratched their dog behind the ear.

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After four weeks of living in a tent, riding most days, breakfasting on peanut butter wraps, and sitting on dusty floors, this return to comfortable homeliness was pure bliss. None of this would have been possible had we not followed the pre-planned route of the Tour Aotearoa. Equally, none of this would have been possible had we followed the pre-planned route in its entirety, Carsten and Carmen’s home being a 200-kilometre ride from the nearest point on the trail.

We had met Carsten about three weeks earlier, during our second day on the Timber Trail through the Pureora Forest Park, about day nine of our 54 total days spent riding through New Zealand. He buzzed by, calling “Hallo!” in his ever-cheerful but undeniably German accent as I stood holding the bikes and Georgie refilled our water bottles from a stream. In many scenarios, that would be it, a quick greeting or maybe a discussion of the route ahead between those heading in opposite directions. But we were following a well-known long-distance trail, which meant we were following the same route as Carsten. Our plans had fortuitously coincided, and each night, we camped in the same towns, becoming familiar faces to one another over the next nine days to Wellington.

For this trip, we started along the Tour Aotearoa route, originally devised by the Kennett Brothers as an annual brevet that challenges riders to complete the 3,000-kilometre route in 30 days or faster. The riding is hugely varied. Starting on the sands of Ninety Mile Beach at Cape Reinga atop the North Island, it follows flat rail trails, exciting mountain bike tracks, and middle-of-nowhere gravel roads. It passes through some of the biggest cities of Auckland, Wellington, Palmerston North, and Invercargill before ending in Bluff at the base of the South Island. It even includes an optional jet boat trip on the Whanganui River. So striking and variable is the terrain that many choose to complete the route at a slower pace or in stages over multiple trips.

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The benefit of having a pre-defined route to follow alleviated the anxiety of route planning in an unknown country, removing the fear of finding ourselves facing a barbed-wire gate with a large “private land” sign. Having come across this numerous times throughout Spain, Italy, Sardinia and the UK—and more than once ending up pedalling along a fast highway as the only feasible detour—we could ride easily knowing we were utilising the knowledge of those who’ve ridden before us. This meant that, save for weather-related surprises, the track would be largely passable and legal. There were even alternatives to the gnarlier sections for those on heavier touring rigs.

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Beyond the security of a known route, there’s also an increased likelihood of meeting others and sharing those tales of how we handled tough sections, gleaning knowledge from each other’s research of the route ahead. On the same day we met Carsten, we also met Jon and Deb, who were riding the northern half of the Tour Aotearoa. As with Carsten, we saw them nearly every day at some point, and we soon struck up a friendship. They shared their accounts from racing and big bikepacking trips, offering us a wealth of knowledge we didn’t think we could possibly reciprocate, but after a few days, we noticed they’d started carrying wraps for lunch, something they’d picked up from watching us! A sense of close-knit camaraderie quickly developed from shared experience and goals. Their trip is one many of us dream of; tired of the slog of career-driven lives, they took a year out, rented out their home in Colorado, and set off in search of adventure. 

On such a busy route, you will also inadvertently see people flash by and never learn their names or stories, which always seems a shame. On day three of the trip, we were battling fierce headwinds across the flat Hauraki Plains with nothing but each other to hide behind. We saw a pair following us, gaining quickly. They whipped by with a wave and a quick greeting that was stolen by the wind. This was an occurrence we expected to happen frequently over the coming weeks. The disparity in speeds of riders across the route will mean you often meet someone new to chat with at a campsite: those going slower, amazed at your progress, and those who turn up hours after you, dusty and exhausted, having ridden far further that day. 

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Except, wait a second, “Aren’t you the two who passed us a week ago on the Hauraki Plains? How did we get here before you?” Joost and Eva were fast on the bike, having just completed the Tour Divide in the States, followed by time touring Cuba and Costa Rica; they were strong. But here, they took days as they came and regularly took a day or two off the bike to experience the landscapes or shelter from the weather. We had leap-frogged them but would now see each other for the next few days, always amused by their infectious energy, such as pulling a bottle of gin out of a tail bag at one point. They were another couple who had rented their home out for a year and gone off on a bikepacking adventure around the world. Food for thought there.

A good route builder will weave highlights seamlessly into a journey whilst maintaining a flow. However, no matter their talent, you’ll naturally find your tastes will diverge at some point. If you have the ability and time to jump off route, you can visit some of your own highlights or inject some personal adventure. Sometimes, this can be a simple turning off, visiting somewhere, and returning a few miles back to where you were—much like our flying visit to the movie set tour of Hobbiton from the Lord of the Rings movies, only three miles off route and (as a longtime LOTR fan) worth every one of them when sat enjoying a beer in the actual Green Dragon Inn.

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So successful was our Hobbiton detour that the very next day, we again decided to forego the pre-planned route and took a self-planned, two-day detour to Rotorua to visit the geothermally active town and its natural hot springs. But as we turned off onto a small Komoot-suggested road into the hills, a local stopped us and warned that the area we were heading to was not particularly safe. Unsure if she was serious or just trying to stop people from going past her home, we anxiously discussed our options.

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Following the advice meant turning back on ourselves and spending some miserable miles on a busy state highway or risking the mortal dangers that could lie ahead. The possible dangers and two-day detour soon seemed worthy when we stood in the kiwi hatchery watching two-day-old kiwi chicks being cared for. Combine this with soaking in the 40°C water and looking out over the lake, and the detour was worth every extra mile.

But within a lengthier detour lies a dilemma: do you return the way you came or loop around to find the route later on, potentially missing out on that bit in-between, forever unknown? What if it was an absolute gem of the entire route? We did just this and were rewarded with quiet country gravel roads and a beautiful riverside trail. Everyone we spoke to later said how good that section we missed was, but was it better than hot thermal pools? We will never know. Better than seeing two-day-old kiwi chicks? Unlikely.

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Wildlife detours formed a strong backbone for our trip, with our entire South Island plan based on improving our chances to see some of New Zealand’s special marine and bird life. The first detour took us to Kaikōura, which is renowned for its marine life, the sea trench just off the coast, and the combination of major sea currents forming the perfect habitat for dusky dolphins, fur seals, and sperm whales. The second saw us travelling to Dunedin, home to the only mainland nesting colony of albatross in the world. But both sit on the east coast, and the Tour Aotearoa route follows the west. Handily, the Kennet Brothers could assist here with another route, the Sounds-to-Sounds, which flows more to the east of the island. However, we still needed to divert off to reach our detours. We patched together a series of organised routes from the guidebook, sprinkled in a few roads, and stumbled across a few trails, researching our own ways adding to the sense of adventure.

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Navigating back to the route after Kaikōura, we once again faced the choice of going back the way we came or looping around. The way back, although a pleasant ride, was a day and a half back along a road we’d already ridden, and there’d be a significant amount of climbing. Looping around involved a busy, winding state highway and the accompanying concerns about riding in traffic. Instead, unencumbered by having to follow a pre-prescribed route where we didn’t want to, we booked a train down the coast and sat enjoying the views out of the panoramic cars over the rocky coast and rolling plains. From the carriage, we spotted the state highway traffic winding into fast, dark tunnels with no cycle lane; we were sure we’d made the right decision.

Most cyclists we met on the North Island seemed to be following the same Tour Aotearoa route, but on the South Island, we met riders on far more diverse adventures. We crossed paths with the likes of Elaine on a shared Warmshowers evening, following a long-term Tour Aotearoa and Sounds-to-Sounds combo before setting off for Vietnam. I spent a serendipitous evening chatting to Mike at a campsite, creator of the Camels, Dunes, and Wadis Loop in the United Arab Emirates about all things bikepacking and his meandering tour of the South Island. We met the Hughes family, who were spending a year cycling around the world with their three kids and discussed the cycle tourism industry with Pete, a member of the New Zealand Cycle Trails board. In all these interactions, we talked about the trails we’d share just as much as stories and tales from places we would unfortunately miss.

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It’s easy to get consumed by a bikepacking bubble and forget that people without bikes do, in fact, exist. As the setting sun cast a golden light over us at one campsite, we got talking to Jen, who loved being outdoors in the tent and was out there for the weekend enjoying nature. Discussions led to our route and a rough idea to visit Dunedin, which turned out to be her home, and she kindly offered to put us up for a couple of nights. Once we got there, we left the bikes behind and jumped in her car to visit the albatross colony visitor centre, some of her favourite beaches, and a few microbreweries in the city. It was a chance encounter that you can’t find on any pre-planned itinerary, but it provided some of the best memories of our entire trip.

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Facebook groups for big routes like the Tour Aotearoa and Sounds-to-Sounds allow you to chat to those with prior knowledge and gain their insight. Hannah was one such person, found through one of these Facebook groups, who had done a similar Tour Aotearoa and Sounds-to-Sounds trip and now resided on the island of Rakiura (Stewart Island) off the southern coast. After following our journey down the country, she invited us to stay with her if our detours took us that way. Rakiura doesn’t offer any bikepacking, but it’s a stunning island, and Hannah showed us around some of her favourite spots. An absolute highlight here was seeing kiwi out in the wild (the birds again, not the people!), aided by Hannah’s position as a guide with one of the local kiwi tour companies.

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We finished our tour with a few days to cycle back from Bluff up to Queenstown for a flight home. Once again, we were now following the Tour Aotearoa route but in the opposite direction to the conventional flow. This gave us an interesting view of the route, which was very different from how many will experience it when finishing in Bluff. As is often the way with big routes, the finale can be somewhat dull but necessary to get you to some final point. Think arriving at John O’Groats with all its tourists or through an industrial estate at the back of an airport. It’s a struggle I have with many of my own routes that require some form of transit system. Here, the final stages near Bluff are flat and next to a busy highway, and they feel somewhat anti-climactic.

Thankfully, we did that final section in reverse, so we experienced a crescendo to our final few days. As we headed north from humble beginnings in the flat expanse, views of distant hills slowly grew into snow-capped mountains towering above our final gravel road. We saw a few Tour Aotearoa riders heading in the opposite direction and waved cheerily to them. As we neared the end of that final day, I spotted two riders sitting on the other side of a river crossing; they were watching with keen interest in how I would tackle it. We quickly realised that after not seeing them in over a month, it was Joost and Eva sitting there on our final day.

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Our decisions and detours over the past 40 or so days meant we crossed paths once more—friends made because of riding a pre-planned route, friends reunited because of not religiously following that pre-planned route. We sat and shared a final coffee with them; the bottle of gin from before was, unfortunately, nowhere to be seen.

Further Reading

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