12 January 2025

We both slept in this morning.

I did awake during the night because the radiator between us was “pinging”. Pen would snore, and it would ping in response. I felt it a couple of times to see if it was warming up, and it wasn’t, but I could feel the pings. About this time I discovered that whatever I’d done when I got off the boat yesterday morning, was affecting my middle finger’s lower joint whenever I straightened it. Aside from that, it wasn’t causing me any problems at all, and I’d forgotten about it until just now.

We finally got up about 9.00am and had our wash and then breakfast. Once that was all sorted, we went into town.

Pen had decided that, if she hadn’t forgotten what to do, she’d like to hire a couple of e-bikes so we could explore further afield. I wasn’t so sure because I like to be able to sit on the seat and have my feet flat on the ground. But, the bloke at the “Green Shed” had said that they could lower the seat to my level, so I was willing to give it a go.

But first, lunch. Pen went to the 4Square to buy a sandwich for us to share, and I went to The Snuggery and bought us each a $5 Southland cheese roll. They heated this for me, and I sent Pen a text to say that I’d be about ten minutes. Which she read about four hours later.

Rapidly cooling cheese rolls in hand, we went to the “Red Shed” for our bikes. We went here because the lady there had said that we could cycle to various points of the island and leave the bikes there whilst we went for a walk. Chances were the “Green Shed” would have offered the same freedoms, but since we already had this information, we went to the “Red Shed”. They only had one bike left so they rang up the “Green Shed” and got two similar ones and two helmets. So, I guess it was six of one, half a dozen of the other.

I tried the bike and could sit on the seat and touch the floor with my tiptoes, but I knew from previous experience that roads more often than not have cambers that mean that there will often be one side, usually the left, where the road would slope away out of reach. Still, I gave it a test run to the end of the wharf road, indicating as I did my turns, and found that using it wasn’t too bad.

Pen, not having ridden a bike since, possibly, 2013 (at least I’m used to balancing on two wheels, even if I don’t do it very often now), was equally as circumspect, but she had no problems either.

And so we paid up and set off. We started out by taking the relatively flat coast road, even though we wanted to go almost 180° in the other direction. And I was finding it easy, probably because I was used to going at (marginally) faster speeds. The only parts that I missed were having a rearview mirror – which I’d had on my old bicycle as well as FAB-e, and gloves. (Ditto. I’ve got a pair of leather palmed fingerless gloves that I would have brought with me if I’d known I was going to be cycling up hill and down dale.)

Pen was quite a bit slower than me, which was fine, except that I didn’t know how far behind she was until I’d pull over and look back. (See the aforementioned comment on review mirrors.)

We got to the first overtaking bay on the coast road and, when Pen had caught up to me, turned back and rode through town, dropping the gear ratings and raising the e-bike ratings from ECO, through TOUR, up to SPORT, and then maxing out on TURBO. This flattened out the hill nicely.

Until…

I got to the top of the hill and tried to “upshift” back into the higher gears. (Thanks for explaining this Google.) However, instead of smooth changes, the bike was clunking and jerking. I figured, and Pen said, that as the lady who’d explained the gear changes to us had said to downshift quickly to get the right gear to climb the hill. Naturally, I figured that if that was the case, then I needed to upshift just as quickly when I got to the top. Maybe the bike didn’t agree with me.

Anyway, I got it working and set off down the other side of the hill, once again well ahead of Pen. This didn’t matter. It’s better to go at a speed you’re comfortable with, rather than faster or slower than you want.

Every so often I’d get to a junction, or point of interest, and stop so Pen could tell me which way we were going. (I didn’t think of turning the GPS on my phone on until we were at the top of the first hill.)

When we reached the first picturesque bay, I had a toilet stop and then we found a comfortable ledge of sand to sit on and enjoy our not even luke warm cheese rolls.

Then it was onwards to one of the walking tracks.

This one, we discovered, is the twin of Stirling Point in Bluff. If you remember, Stirling Point had a large, shiny, aluminium shackle and chain disappearing into Foveaux Strait. What we found here at Lee Bay was its counterpoint – a rusty chain and shackle holding Stewart Island to the rest of New Zealand. Māori mythology was that the demi-god Māui used the South Island/Te Waipounamu/Te Waka a Māui as his canoe (waka) when he hauled the North Island/Te Ika-a-Māui, (the fish of Māui) out of the Pacific Ocean. Stewart Island/Rakiura, is the waka’s anchor stone. Therefore this chain is linking the South and Stewart Islands and the chain at the anchor stone’s end, being underwater, is rusted.

Having taken a suitable number of photographs of this “chain” (Te Puka) we continued on, seeing in the distance what we assumed was Stewart Island. If it was, the winds here blew straight off the New Zealand Mainland, as evidenced by the foliage.

This was another beautiful and someone mystical walk. Maybe not as much foliage and old trees, and definitely not the variety of birdlife; being regenerating growth; but it was still lovely to walk through.

Well aware that we only had our e-bikes for four hours, we walked until just before 2.00pm and then started the return journey. At one point I heard a shrill peep and stopped to see what had made that sound. It was Pen that saw the black bird with a white chest and white wing stripes. I had to think about what it may have been.

“A Tomtit?”

This was confirmed a short time later when one flew into the tree ahead of us and posed nicely whist I snapped off one or two, or three photographs.

We got back to where we had left our bikes, got some photos of Kally and Scott, and Pen and me riding them, and then began the cycling journey back to town.

This was fine, with no issues, until I started following Pen up a hill. I only got a few metres, tried to change gears, and nothing happened. I couldn’t move the pedals or anything.

Now what? Text Pen to tell her I’d derailed and to ask the bike company to come and get it?

Fortunately, someone came to my rescue. Maybe not International Rescue, but I was still happy to receive his help. He had a good fiddle with the chain and gears, getting greasy in the process – which I apologised for, but he said wasn’t an issue as he’d just been catching fish.

Pen sent me a text to see if I was okay. I had typed a reply, but didn’t actually get the chance to press send.

After a lot of pulling and trying to get the chain out from where it had jammed between the gears, and a test ride himself, my hero finally got it going again. With the suggestion that I try to limit changing gears…

“I’ll put it into turbo boost on the hills and leave the gears as they are.”

“Good idea.” …he gave me a push to get me started.

I managed to get to the top of the hill and sped past Pen saying my chain had slipped and I wasn’t going to stop again until I reached the Red Shed.

Which I managed relatively easily.

I got to the Red Shed, got off, and gave my nether regions a chance to recover. I don’t remember bicycle seats being that uncomfortable, and I wouldn’t really want to go any further.

I’d just bought a notebook and two postcards with lenticular printing of two Kiwi, two Tūī, and two Pīwakawaka and had managed to get the feeling back down below, and was about to start playing a game on my phone, when Pen arrived.

We returned both bikes, the Red Shed said they’d tell the Green Shed to check my bike out, and we went looking for either an ice cream (to sit on, in Pen’s opinion) and/or a hot chocolate.

We got the hot chocolate from The Snuggery, deciding that it was too cold for ice cream. Even for medicinal purposes.

After a look around town to find out where we needed to go this evening, (close by) and a quick look at the DOC centre which was closing so we couldn’t even get inside, we returned to the Stewart Island Backpackers and started processing our photos.

The regular Sunday evening quiz was on at 6.00 pm at the South Sea Hotel, so we thought we’d go there and have our evening meal at the same time. In the end, we got our meal (just), but arrived too late to be able to score some seats for the quiz. Fortunately, the restaurant is in a different section to the bar’s quiz. Also fortunately, they were able to squeeze us in, even though we hadn’t booked. Which we had tried to when we were getting our bearings for this evening.

We were told that the table was destined for someone and would we be finished in an hour and a half?

No sweat.

I had pulled venison pizza and then a Mississippi Mud Cake without the raspberry coulis as it had some kind of liqueur in it. As did all the desserts, I don’t know what non-drinkers were supposed to have other than ice cream sundae.

After this we came back to the backpackers and started typing up the blog.

Steps – so far = 11,783

Kilometres on foot – so far = 8