oldacura

My Stoker & I have often thought about riding a tandem in New Zealand. However, we never got around to it and in the meantime, we have gotten older. We would still like to do a bike tour on the South Island but not sure we can handle the distances and grades. I was in New Zealand in the late 80's and remember the beauty but also the hills.

So, my current idea is to consider an e-bike tour (not tandem). I know this is heresy to many but may be the new reality. We have ridden e-bikes and my wife owns one. The problem that this solves is to reduce the strength gap of the two riders. We would likely rent the e-bikes there (not take them from here).

A web search found some outfitters that offer multi-day supported tours that also rent e-bikes.

Does anyone here have experience with this sort of thing? Any recommendations?

Thanks

72andsunny

Sorry, I've been off island for a few years, so I can't help you with any specific companies. From memory, most of the local tours were like this one: https://puretrailsnewzealand.co.nz/c...on/ebike-hire/ where they drop you off at one end of a trail and pick you up at the other. Note: trails in New Zealand are often converted rail road lines. They're rarely paved.

If you've got the cash, I'd do a Santana Tour. They're now using a small cruise ship to circumnavigate the island. If you don't have the cash, I'd recommend renting a van and driving yourself between towns. The distances between much of what is worth seeing are very, very long.

Kiwi Mike

robmitchell

Hermes

We were on the Santana trip with Rob. We thought it was a great trip and we rode our singles. We took our tandem to Santana's Tahiti trip earlier in the year. Queenstown and the surrounding area is magnificent and an adventurer's paradise.

Our two favorite rides of the trip were Queenstown to Glenorchy and Akaroa to Lyttelton Harbor outside Christchurch - 50 miles, 4475 ft climbing with lots of 11-13% grades with lovely weather. The Akaroa to Lyttelton was a fantastic road ride that started with 4 small climbs to soften up the legs and then a 4 mile climb. Once cresting the top, it was a fast 20 miles to the ocean and then more climbing into Lyttelton.

The cycling cruise is definitely the way to go. However, Queenstown, NZ is clearly a stand alone vacation stop with a lot of things to do including cycling.

conspiratemus1

New Zealand has some magnificent landscapes best enjoyed on foot or by mountain bike. Lots of motorized tourists but if you can do things that require even just a short walk, especially up a small hill, you leave most of them behind in the parking lots. Wicked long trip to get there from eastern North America. Roads are rough chip-seal at best, much coarser buzz than we feel here (but less puddling in the rain.) No paved shoulders, anywhere. Speed limit for all rural roads is posted 100 km/hr. There is only one road, Route 6, down the Tasman Sea west coast of South Island. Around Blenheim-Nelson-Queen Charlotte Sound wine-county there are more road choices. The driving culture is not sympathetic to the cycling pace, contrary to the "green and leftie" image of NZ in foreigners' minds. Motorists drive big North-American Jeeps, pickup trucks and SUVs, aggressively. The foreign tourists in rented RV-campers are generally considerate, but the locals stuck behind them get impatient because the tourists would hesitate to pass a cyclist on a blind curve or when there is oncoming traffic. So the locals blast by close in retaliation against us as being the cause of the slowdown. (And we were riding as individual bikes, not bunched up in a group.) Waneka-Queenstown was frenetic with "adventure" (i.e.,motor-sport-oriented) recreation -- shuttle vans full of jetboaters and off-road ATV tourists, drivers racing back and forth to get as many trips in as possible. Lots and lots of new condos on the mountainsides. Bar fights and alcohol-related sexual assaults often in the news. (I can hear you saying, "A bar fight where nobody gets shot makes the news?...) Worst on the roads were the huge tour buses, dozens per day in the more scenic sections in this era of mass tourism. Even on long tangent stretches of deserted Route 6 with nothing on-coming, the bus drivers won't slow down or pull across the centre line to pass so their enormous tires get up close and personal with you. No place to bail except into the gravel but you'd be under the wheels first if the driver judged it wrong. The only time on a bike where I've been sustained scared. Staff from Pedal Tours (whom we toured with) told us they have complained to the police and to the bus companies. One company response was, "Mate, we've got a schedule to keep. Like we're going to drive a bus all the way 'round South Island at 30 km/hr just for you?" The police, well, they know what side NZ's tourism bread is buttered on and it's not cyclists poking their way along the coast holding up production and not buying much stuff.

Distances are long. Even though our invitational group were all experienced riders capable of doing way more miles a day than a typical Pedal Tours customer, we still used van lifts to avoid particularly ugly traffic (Waneka-Queenstown) and to allow hiking and visiting caves and glaciers without having to worry about riding 80 - 100 hilly km on top of a four-hour cave tour (of which I enjoyed every second.) Pedal Tours provided 2 vans & drivers to carry the whole group when necessary, with bikes and luggage. And they gave us lunch every day, too. They drove us from Christchurch to Nelson to start the tour and then back to Christchurch from Dunedin at the end. I think the trip would have been a big disappointment if all we had done was grind out the miles day after day on rough roads that were often desolate out of view of the water, busy from adrenaline-junkies with ADHD, or fast and needlessly aggressive. Indeed, it's the only cycling vacation I can remember where I think it would have been better not to have been encumbered with a bicycle at all. The riding itself mostly sucked but NZ itself was worth the journey. Rather than tour on e-bikes why not just rent a car and take advantage of the greater speed that the car gives you to enjoy more of NZ walking, away from the roads?


I should note that we visited in 2017, a few months after an earthquake wiped out the main highway on the Pacific Coast between Christchurch and Blenheim. All traffic to North Island had to detour inland along roads not meant for heavy trucks and so those roads also were needing to be repaired to keep up. They included roads on our cycling route. The detour lasted a year. This was on top of a devastating pair of earthquakes in Christchurch in 2011-12 that destroyed the cathedral and much of downtown. A third of Christchurch's population -- it is the principal port of South Island -- has drained away as very little had been rebuilt in 5 years. (Would you take a mortgage on property in a quake zone?) While we were there, a public memorial was dedicated to those who died in the second quake. It seems that many died in buildings that had been improperly certified by the government, for political reasons against the advice of its experts (now where have we heard that before??) as safe for occupancy. They collapsed with the second tremblor. There seemed to be gritty sourness of mood born of the frustration of probably never getting life back together again, in this little distant echo of the British Empire at the far end of the world.

headasunder

Conspiratemus1 makes some interesting points most of which I agree with. The driving culture here in nz is atrocious and the open roads tend to have very little shoulder for cyclists to safely stay clear of joe bloggs sitting inside his steel box. There are however a network of cycle trails that are first class, the west coast wilderness trail, Alps to oceans to name a couple that involve very little busy road riding and are well serviced by bike hire/tour companies with plenty of accommodation options at various distances. We did the Otago rail trail on a tandem last year while the riding was a little flat the country pubs on route were a great mix of cyclists and locals, business was booming, plenty of e bike riders amongst family groups who would never have been there otherwise which is one of the big pluses of e bikes.
Having lived in Christchurch for the last 20 years its interesting to hear your perspective on the earthquake. I have no comment to make on the event and the ongoing stories but I will say that the city is finally back on its feet with a lot of the big anchor projects completed or about to be and the centre is attracting people and businesses back which I couldn't have said a year ago

oldacura

Wow! I'm glad that I inquired. This is completely different from my expectation. My personal experience is more than 30 years old.

In 1988, we took an extended vacation from the US to NZ. We flew into Christchurch (a beautiful small city), rented a car and drove clockwise around the South Island. The larger cars were Honda Civics. Lots of Mini Coopers (the old little ones). Not many buses or trucks. The only place we found many tourists was Queenstown. Stayed in sleepy little towns. Did the Milford Track and other hikes. Beautiful, slow-paced country. I really wanted to move there but didn't because of family reasons.

That is what made me want to do a cycle tour of the SI. However, based on your descriptions, I now think that if we do this, we'll want to stay off paved roads.

I found this company through a websearch:

https://www.adventuresouth.co.nz/NZ-Cycle/Electric-Bike

I don't know anything about them but they appear to offer on- and off-road bike tours.

Now we'll have to re-think this. Ahh - the good old days!

Thanks for the info.

conspiratemus1

I can't tell you how happy and relieved I am to hear this. We really liked CC and were glad to have several days to explore the city before our bike tour assembled (and to get used to riding on the left!) Our hearts ached for the residents, what with the more recent quake and then the huge Port Hills wildfire that was still burning when we arrived. We wish only happiness and success for our Kiwi Five Eyes partners -- you've been asked to bear up under a big load. By all means visit NZ and enjoy its natural wonders. You can't see that much from the highway anyway. Walk lots. Wear out your boots. Sweet as.

Addendum: I'd also advise visitors to learn a little about the history of the Maori, NZ's indigenous people. While most Maori today live on North Island, their circumstances and the attempts to foster reconciliation are much in the news around the country and it helps to have some historical context for controversies that you may read about. This story resonates with us in Canada particularly.

reburns

oldacura

I appreciate all the info. However, there seems to be a big disconnect between the wonderful experience of bike touring of NZ that so many have reported and the picture conspiratemus1 paints. His account sounds very grim but credible.

Why do so many sing the praises of a SI tour? Is it cognitive dissonance? Have they invested so much in the experience that they cannot accept the less than shiny parts? I'd like not to plan and invest on such a vacation and then find the situation that conspiratemus1 describes.

At this point if we were to go forward, I'd probably plan an off-road or rails-to-trails tour.

Thanks for the info.

headasunder

Just holidaying in Nelson at the moment plenty of cycle tourists and trail riders in town, have seen a couple of tandems fully loaded as well. The tasman trail is well thought out and super easy riding, very hot weather as the whole country inherits a heatwave from Australia. Saw about 12 cycle tourists at various points of nowhere on the drive up and across from Christchurch I suspect the distances between way points and the gradients involved would rule out electric bikes, perfect for the trails though. There is an app specific to NZ trails put together by an intrepid cartographer who has ridden all of them and collected way points by the gazillion it's called Great rides app and it's well worth a download.