Mr Kiwi hits the road with his VFR1200X

[MrKiwi]

I recently spent a week travelling around the South Island of New Zealand with a group of friends.  The trip spanned 7 days from Saturday 21 March, but I left a day late as I wanted to attend the New Zealand vs West Indies cricket world cup semi final on Saturday 21 March.  Therefore my plan was to go to the cricket game, which New Zealand easily won, then catch the ferry from Wellington across the Cook Strait at 2:30 am.  The rest of the group left Saturday morning at 8:30 am and they rode half a day south from Picton to their Saturday night destination.  I caught the ferry and got into Picton, top of the South Island, at 5:15 am and immediately rode south to catch the guys up before they headed off for the day.  This I did.

Not as clear as I would like, but here's the bike as the ferry gets in at 1:30 am



It's dark when I arrive, so I head down the main highway.  The beauty of an early morning start is you get greeted by a lovely sunrise.



and



These pictures are taken on the Kiakoura cost, looking east.  By 10:30 I had caught up with the rest of the guys and we rode for another 5 hours to our nights destination. It rained most of the afternoon.  I did about 650 km that day on 2 hours sleep.  Needless to day I slept very well that night.

[MrKiwi]

Looks like I might need to downsize those photos! - ah yes that is better...

[MrKiwi]

On day two, I chose to do a gravel/adventure route. For most of the days, we had the roadies option (tarseal all day) or the dirties option (gravel mostly but sometimes worse than that).  As it turned out the route was rated an advanced adventure ride route, but the guys didn't tell me that until I got the beast successfully through and out the other end! 

It started easily enough, on a reasonably well maintained gravel road through a low pass known as McKenzie's Pass.



The route for the day had us travelling this road through to a high country farm, the Black Forest Station. We gathered for a breather before tackling the climb up and down the range between us and our destination.





From here we climbed up the range.  The track was mostly well formed.  It certainly was where I stopped to take photos 







After an hour of this we reached the top to get some good views, looking down onto a man made lake, Lake Benmore. it feeds a large hydroelectric generating facility.





The track down was steep, and I didn't stop to take any photos until I was heading along the side of the lake.  The first picture below is the view looking down at the track, it looks good, but soon degraded into a steep track with deep water runnels through most of the corners.  It was first gear most of hte way down, slow but steady.  With me on the bike, plus my gear it was close to 400kgs of bike bouncing it's way down the hill.







From here we came out onto tarseal roads and then headed over the Dansey's Pass.  At the top of the pass views were limited due to impending inclement weather!



All in a good day. The bike didn't get too dirty 

[MrKiwi]

The following couple of days we rode mostly well traveled routes and I didn't take a lot of photos, I was having too much fun blasting my way around well formed curvy South Island roads 

There was a nice light early one morning though

[MrKiwi]

On day five took the route from Queenstown to Wanaka over the Haast Pass and to Ross on the West Coast of the South Island.  This is one of my favourite riding routes in NZ, it is simply superb. 

On top of the pass we stop to take our trip photo.



The West Coast is lightly populated, rugged and remote.



At Ross we stopped at an old pub for the night.  The building is around 150 years old and is full of charm and hard case locals.



It was this day that the title for my story is derived from.  As I stopped for a coffee at Franz Joseph Glacier township, I put my stand stand down, or so I thought.  I go to get off the bike and it falls over   . Very embarrassing   

The local workshop was nearby and sure enough they had someone in it who knew how to weld aluminium.  Thrity minutes later and only $20 the poorer the bike is all up and running again.  Whew...

[MrKiwi]

The last days of the trip had me stopping in Nelson for a work commitment and then I headed to Picton for the return ferry trip across the Cook Strait.

A short wait for the ferry to arrive



and 4 hours later we enter Wellington Harbour.  Home is just 20 minutes up the road.  A rainbow welcomes me home 



the end 

[varaquiero]

Cracking report Mr K... pics are worth a million words. Thanks for the share.

[zebulon]

Wonderful Mr Kiwi ! You can now add your passes pics in this topic http://www.vci-forum.com/index.php?topic=677.0    Thx for the share !

[numptyspence]

Very nice, and obviously not jealous at all 

[MrKiwi]

One of the interesting things about the CT is the limited size of the fuel tank (20.5 L compared to 25 L for the Varadero), and it's thirst for fuel.

I have to say the bike is not that bad.  On trips driving on normal road conditions I can average 5.4 l/100 km. 

On this trip, given that I was riding in 1st and 2nd gear on the gnarly gravel roads, and also I did 5 mountain passes, I averaged 5.8 L/100 km over 2,600 km.  However, I twice got down to less than 1 L of fuel left in the tank which is not a lot of fun.  The Crosstourer would be better even if it had another two litres of capacity. I don't like carrying fuel and I don't like stopping all the time to top up the tank.  So far limited tank size, therefore fuel range is my only grumble with the bike.

Cheers from downunder...

[Tonyco]

Nice pics, thanks for sharing.

[Two Plugs]

You do live in a wonderful spot on this round globe of earth... ! 

[MrKiwi]

You do live in a wonderful spot on this round globe of earth... ! 

Yes, some very good scenery, some good roads.  But I've toured my homeland to death, need to find new adventures 

[zebulon]

Yes, some very good scenery, some good roads.  But I've toured my homeland to death, need to find new adventures 

Just time to come to Europe!...