A 2 wheeled adventure

We hired some mountain bikes for an afternoon in Arrowtown (just outside Queenstown). We'd read about a 4WD track that goes to a place called Macetown which is a ghost Gold Town and naively thought we'd give it a go. What a (good) mistake, it was incredibly hard, up ridiculous dirt tracks, over about 20 river crossings (over the same river!) and some hairy descents on the way back, it was so brutal (at least to someone very sheltered of off-roading experience) but it was so much fun!!! Claire reckoned it was harder than a 45 minute spinning session with Sam and that is a challenge hard to beat! We never thought we'd get to the end, we felt like we had bitten off so much more than we could chew, my boots got soaked from hardly making it across any of the crossings without stepping into the river but they'd have got soaked anyway cos at many points the river was so deep! Claire fell off her bike in one of the crossings but thankfully was unhurt apart from some damaged pride and a good soaking but she did get a whack from a combination of pedal/river stone and I had a massive boulder kick up at me and crack me on the chin, from which the bruise is now a lovely shade of yellow. Following on from the title of our blog, (for those of you who haven't noticed, it's called 'starry nites and insect bites') we have seen many a beautiful clear starry night, and I have obtained a minimum of 52 bites from lovely sandflies all from a little place called Okarito in the space of a 15 minute chat with a bloke from Hull, I know it was at least 52 as I counted 26 on my left foot and there were way more bites on my right foot!! Since then I've not given them a sniff of virgin white skin, Claire has exposed way more skin than I have (head out of gutter please if that's your natural inclination!) and suffered the consequence though nowhere near to the same extent as the feast they made of me. They are renowned, I've read a quote from Capt Cook who didn't take kindly to them either, the bites actually hurt and draw blood, more vicious than mosquitoes I reckon.