Roadtripping New Zealand

If you’re looking for nightlife in Wanaka you might be a little disappointed. Dinner at the Speight’s Alehouse was fantastic but didn’t have the buzz we were looking for after 9pm on a Wednesday. Young Cal was hot to trot and dragged us out to the only place open past 9pm that had any signs of life and that was Fitzpatrick’s Irish pub. They served a decent pint of Guinness, had a band, a pool table and heaps of backpackers ready to party. But if you’re looking for a big night out, best to head over to Queenstown.

I was secretly thankful for the lack of nightlife in Wanaka though because I was absolutely shattered from the riding that day. Back at the apartment Alby and Dave started to discuss the key themes of Epicurus’ philosophy of happiness … possibly aided by a few too many beers. It wasn’t long before I was sound asleep listening to their jibberish.

After another unexpectedly late night we woke with headaches again and readied ourselves for another day in the saddle. We took a liking to the Kai Café & Bar in Wanaka — their killer coffee and ‘Eggs Benny’ were becoming the go-to staple for breakfast. The owner of the Kai had just swam the length of Lake Wanaka the day before and after riding along the lake and seeing how massive it was (42km!), we all thought there was no way that could have been possible. But he did. That’s just how they roll in Wanaka.

We headed out to do our own version of what’s affectionately known as “The Block” (as in, casually ‘just going around the block’). It’s the Wanaka - Cromwell - Crown Range - Wanaka loop. But we didn’t think we could fit it all in and we were looking for something a little different, so we did changed things up a little. We went over the Crown Range, up Coronet Peak, took the back roads to Queenstown, then headed on to Glenorchy before riding back to Queenstown for a late lunch.

The Crown Range is undeniably awesome to climb over with very different but spectacular views on either side. If you ever stay in Queenstown or Wanaka you’ll likely find yourself riding this route a few times.

Coronet Peak was a recommended diversion that we rode and were glad we did. It’s only 8km long but the views and descent were well worth the price of admission.

From there we travelled through the back-roads to Queenstown the opposite direction that was ridden on stage 4 of the Tour of Southland this year. All I could think of was how incredibly scenic but gruelling that stage would have been to race.

We passed through Queenstown, which seemed like a thriving metropolis compared to where we had been for the past couple days. It felt nice to be back in civilisation but we wanted to ride one more road before getting back into the hustle and bustle.

The ride to Glenorchy undulates and hugs Lake Wakatipu for about 45km. The lake was something special as landslides have changed it to a much more turquoise colour than usual and it was hard to take our eyes off the water for the entire ride. But storms were looming and we could see that we were riding right into the thick of it. We turned around just before Glenorchy as we were all getting really hungry.

Back in Queenstown we got a snack pack of Monteiths Radler Bier (“radler” is German for “cyclist” but it’s basically a shandy). The legend of the Radler goes like this: apparently there is a pub at the top of a popular climb in Bavaria where all the cyclists stopped for a beer after they’d hit the summit. But all the cyclists would drink the taps dry, so the pub started watering down their beer with lemonade. And the Radler was born. True? False? No clue, but it’s a good story.

The thing all the cool kids do in Queenstown is go to Fergburger. There’s always a queue, so it must be good, right? Well this time it was as empty as I’ve ever seen it and we were absolutely famished so we got some take-away and headed to the lakeside. There are lots of great food options in the area but the burger you remember is always the one you have when you’re most hungry.

Before we packed up the bikes for the evening we had this camera drone that we were busting to use to shoot some cool footage. We came across this awesome bridge that crossed the Shotover River (the Lower Shotover Bridge). I could tell the story with words, but it’s much better described in this video:

To drown our sorrows we saw the Lake Bar as a great option for dinner and they delivered. Montheiths on tap, big helpings of lamb on the specials menu, and a bartender named Josh who happily made two trips in his own car to drive us home as the rain came bucketing down while we waited for a taxi. Just another personal touch that Wanaka left us remembering.

On our final day in New Zealand we decided to have a sleep in because we had enough golden hour photos and we decided they were kinda fake anyway. Who wakes up at 6am on a guys’ roadtrip? Who were we kidding …

We went to Kai Café again, got into the Eggs Benny and got rolling at the civil hour of 9am. We had a 70km roll over the Crown Range to the Queenstown airport where we could return the hire van, disassemble our bikes, pack up and board the plane. It couldn’t have been scripted any better — once we stepped inside the airport the temperature fell and the heavens opened up for one hell of a rainstorm.

Our roadtrip was only four days but it was enough to leave us with heavy legs and feeling satisfied. We could have stayed a week longer but this short visit left us wanting more and gave us an idea of the possibilities for our next visit.

Thanks for coming along on the journey and if you’re ever looking to get away for only a few days or a few weeks, definitely put New Zealand on your bucket-list. It’ll blow your socks off.

Disclosure:David McQuillen (the owner of The Sufferfest training videos) and I had the idea of creating a Sufferfest point-of-view training video while we were over in New Zealand. Since I had hired Chas and Drew to photo/video this so we could bring it back to you, we thought we might as well get something extra out of it as well.

I won’t give too much away now, but in a couple months we’ll be able to show you what we came up with. It’ll be stunning (and will make you suffer on the ergo of course).

None of this could have been done without the support of Specialized Australia and we’d like to thank them for contributing to this Roadtripping piece. Thanks also to Tourism New Zealand, Tourism Wanaka, Wanaka Edge Apartments, Specialized, The Sufferfest, and to Chas and Drew.