What in the world is in Timaru? Not a lot, truth be told. Quite how it came to be included in our New Zealand South Island itinerary is a bit of a mystery. Luckily, Darren put his ideas machine into overdrive and came up with a tailored day trip to show me some of the highlights he’d experienced on his recent solo South Island trip.
We arrived in the port of Timaru to a very gloomy grey day and picked up a rental car to drive inland through the pretty countryside of Canterbury. Very typical scenery with rolling hills and fields of sheep. Darren rather excelled himself with the first stop, which was a bakehouse aka pie shop in Fairlie. Pork belly puff pastry pie with apple sauce and a garnish of pork crackling, don’t mind if I do. I couldn’t help feeling a tad smug also as the drive over Burkes Pass revealed brilliant blue skies, leaving the leaden grey clouds to linger on the coast.
A stroll by the glistening turquoise waters of Lake Tekapu gave us a chance to stretch the legs. I’m sure the locals don’t pronounce it Take-A-Poo but the playground humor makes me chuckle every time 🙂
And then in Twizel (which immediately makes me think of Twiglets, although there were none to be found), we rented a couple of mountain bikes. Whilst Darren had spent the best part of five days biking the Alps 2 Ocean route, this was the condensed two hour highlight version. The bike was a night and day improvement on the Wellington one, and the scenery was just blow away breathtaking, especially with the glorious sunshine of California proportions.
We cycled through yellow fields of waving wheat, the snowbound Mount Cook majestic in the distance. A brief lunch stop at Lake Pukaki included a mini picnic of succulent sushi salmon with soy and wasabi, washed down with lashings of ginger beer (the non-alcoholic type).
Cycled back to Twizel, followed by a scenic drive back to Timaru, and all in all – a Grand Day Out, as Wallace and Gromit would say.
The crusty coastal weather continued as we sailed into the Otago peninsula to dock at Port Chalmers. I asked Darren what was on the agenda today – surprise surprise, a bike ride! Ah, but this time on e-bikes. Hallelujah! Praise be to Ogden Bolton Jr, Michael Kutter and others along the way for the invention and evolution of the electric bike. I was mighty happy to power up for the day.
After collecting the bikes in Dunedin, we followed the shoreline bike path past Anderson Bay and MacAndrew Bay, fighting a ferocious headwind. We stopped for coffee and cake in the little village of Portobello (not a mushroom or a market to be found) and the weather was looking up.
Imagine a horseshoe shaped bay that you want to do a circular route round and you’ve got to cross the water somehow. Lucky for us, Darren had booked us on the bike taxi from Portobello to Port Chalmers, a one woman operation involving a tiny metal boat and a few bike racks.
Safely on the other side, with the advantage of the e-bikes and the wind behind us, we were flying! Back in Dunedin, we figured 30+ miles of cycling still deserved a drink. True to form, Darren had that all wrapped up too, with not one but two breweries on the agenda – Noisy Brewing, followed by Steamer Basin on No Name Alley.
