Okaiura to Okoirore

A cyclist´s nightmare usually has the reocurring elements such as wind, rain, narrow and busy roads, big trucks,...

Our nightmare today was pretty complete with big trucks blowing us, literally, off the road and rainfall that got us looking like a chicken that fell into the sea...absolutely soaking.

At first it did not seem that bad but soon the drizzle became proper rain. By the time we passed Matamata the sky looked so menacing that we had lost all hope of staying dry today. Our main goal now was to get to Okoroire as fast as we could. Luckily the countryside in these regions are dead flat so we made good progress but we had to get on the highway for about 15 km and that was horrible. Twice I got blown off the road by logging trucks and it is scary. Some truck drivers do not understand that when they pass us at 100 km/h and so close to us, the mere replacement of air caused by the sheer volume of these huge monsters pushes us off the road.

We took the backroads again as soon as we could but by now the rain had started to fall very heavily and we could hardly see. We seemed to be lost as well so we asked a passing farmer if he knew of a campsite. It was right in front of us and we did not see it. There was a hotel as well so we decided to get a room so we could dry our stuff. There was one of those little air-blowing heaters that smell of burned hair after a while but it got our clothes dry.
The hotel could well be the set for Fawlty Towers, a retro style that must have been grand in the seventies and the owner-farmer-hunter sure was a character of a million stories. Vanessa and I ate two massive hamburgers and drank a few beers to forget today´s weather and traffic perils. Ella loved the hotel. She just could not stop running through the bar, the foyer, the restaurant, and there was all this new stuff she could not keep her eyes off. The bar with all the bottles, the billiard table, the deer and wild boar heads on the wall, the paintings of landscapes,...

Vanessa is not too worried about the roads but I am. I am having serious difficulties to get on the road without thinking about traffic and how unsafe it is. Tomorrow we are having to do 40 km of highway and I am not looking forward to it.