Day 5 (Dec6) Cromwell to near Tarras via Wanaka 84.1km =439km total

New attachment to my bike, stereo with surround sound

Andriys dream has come true, he found a flag

Hard men at shooting range



Puzzle world



Lake Wanaka

Camp for the night


Day 5 (Dec6) Cromwell to near Tarras via Wanaka 84.1km =439km total

We camped about 5km out of Cromwell on a wicked lake Dunsten, the views were spectacular and the night got even better as Mark got a wicked campfire going – but we realised that we were missing marshmallows and potatoes to make the most of the fire. Gotta do that next time.

Cromwell is a nice spot so we headed back into town for some breakfast and to lube-up as rules state that we can only do so in public, and the lake scenery provided way to much privacy, would have been too GW to do it there!

So once the lube was applied we had a long road to Wanaka. It was a pretty standard ride, smooth rolling hills – which I was stoked with as I was trying not to imagine what Lindis Pass would be like the next day.

Even though it was a scenic drive, the coolest thing into Wanaka has to be the "Have A Shot" stop next to Wanaka Airport, for a small fee we were handed out 30x 20mm rifle rounds and a box of shot-gun shells and were let lose on the firing range.

We saw some girls shooting the clay pigeons, they hit one out of about 8 attempts we watched – so we decided that it was either really hard, or they just sucked. We finally got our turn, and both hit 3 pigeons from first 3 shots – so I figured that those girls must of sucked……unfortunately that's all I hit with the remainder of my shots all missing and I decided that it actually is hard! Mark was a shotgun sniper nailing about 5 pigeons so he was one up on me, he also made me temporarily deaf as I forgot to put on my earmuffs on……the shotguns are wicked, the kickback in them is just way to cool to describe…..it sucked that there were no rabbits running around at that time…..

Anyway, even though he smashed me at clay-pigeon shooting, my superior KGB training in rifle shooting proved too good. They put the target pretty far – we couldn't really see what we were aiming for…..but after 10 bullets individual training, we had a 5 bullet shootout where I kicked his ass – so its one all biatch J

Anyway, once we got into Wanaka, Mark had a kayaking mate who was meant to show us around – too bad the house was empty, so we went into town, had a beer, some food, and came back – house was still empty, I think Mark is lying, he's got no friends there and it was randoms house. So we took the most out of an empty house with lots of bushes (NGW – im talking about bladder relief) and free hose water and set off again as we wanted to do few more ks to make Lindis Pass day easier! I should mention that Wanaka is pretty darn cool, the views there are unbelievable and its just the best place to relax (even if you didn't cycle there), if you haven't been there, check it out!

We cycled another 20-30km out of Wanaka, it gets dark at about 2200 there so we made the most of this. Once we decided to start looking for camp spot we realized it was all rocks, on top of this, Mark was super keen to camp near a river and we found a gate….it was a quarrie, with 3 smashed up cars, signs with "Keep children on the leash – Cyanide baits" and im sure there were a few zombies and Lara Croft hiding behind some of the gravel hills surrounding us, ofcourse there was absolutely no soft grass and we would have had to sleep on gravel. Even Mark admitted defeat and we cycled another 3km to make camp right under the noses of curious cows (and a bull) who watched us and made weird noises whole night long. In return they got a good grass feed in the morning and we set off to Tarras for breakfast before the freakin Lindis Pass!