Another beauty of a day! Well, sunrise should I say... 6am wake up call and 6.30am pick up by the chatty ‘everyone’s my mate’ Blackwood man for Ellie to go and throw herself out of a plane (hopefully). I’m not great in the mornings so let’s hope there’s not too many questions and chats because I can’t deal.

Ellie got suited and booted straight away and was due to take off at 7am, thank god there weren’t many questions I think he could tell I was very tired, he made the biggest cup of coffee I’ve had in a long while! I just about managed to get myself outside in the freezing cold (first time I could see my breath since December last year!) but the sun was out and Ellie was off for round two!
Pretty sure I heard her from 13,000ft screaming her head off, I was so bloody jealous! The guys at the skydiving centre said if your not scared to jump out of a plane your not psychologically stable... well that’s summed up me then because I had no fear haha!

She was buzzing with adrenaline and had such an awesome time, and a fab landing straight into her bottom! What a way to start the Halloween day!

We missed the pick up for kayaking so we moved that to tomorrow and hired bikes for today to do part of the great taste trail, only the owner’s new Thai bride was new to handling reception and wasn’t quite sure where a bike rental place would be open because it’s shoulder season. Only she gave me a free code for 10gb of WiFi which is usually 5$ haha thank you very much! I found a place in the eco lodge up the road so we had to trek there before we got them, that was a challenge in itself!

The second obstacle were the horrendous up and down hilly roads getting out of Kaiteriteri, I couldn’t remember there being that many before but my god it was one hell of flipping work out on a push bike. Motivation for yourself provided by yourself included screaming at yourself ‘cumonnnnnnn’ s*** that was hard.
Then when we found the sign posts for the trail we thought we could go across the flat sea front only to find another god damn hill, proud of us though! We never once got off the bike which was good of us haha.

Once the hills were over the nice part began, riding between the fields and rivers, then through acres of vineyards and olive tree farms. Then through very deserted but lovely streets of houses sat on huge wide roads with no cars anywhere. Then we got almost to Motueka the next town and we went through a golf course (not sure that was a wise move, golf and footballs are attracted to my head a lot of the time). The scenery just kept getting better it was incredible! The snow peaked mountains one side with vineyards at the bottom and that beautiful turquoise water and the houses over looking the sea... phwoar! We were on snobs row! Incredible places, could see Ross living in the one. It looked very snazzy and quirky and large...!

First stop of the day for some wafer crackers and cucumber and then we found a hops brewery so of course it would be rude not order a tasting board sat in the sun shielded from all that wind aswell, bloody delightful! :)

I had some ale and cider and Ellie tried two of the ciders and a lager all brewed at the place where we were, hitting all the right spots they were they were!

Next up through the main town which was extremely quite of course.. but it is a Thursday afternoon so who’s about on these days anyways... it’s not like people work and shop or evening exist here?
We found another brewery and bought a cider for later on and then when we were almost at the end (all bar another 6km out of the total 35km) I spotted a free tasting winery, result!
A cute little house that had very little acres and only brewed four different wines, the guy who owned it was from Coventry but married a kiwi. They made good wine anyhow! And we felt obliged to by a decent bottle of wine, their only rose twas a yummy one! I wanted a red one but I haven’t swayed ellie that way yet.

Our buts we’re so flipping sore from that hard seat, we had to balance on our one but cheek it was that sore. We took the mountain track back the easy rider track got us around to the start instead of going over the road which was way better even though we did get defeated on parts going up probably more because the corners were hard to get around without falling off the edge and our butts were killing us.

A whole lot of fun but a whole lot of aching.

After we dropped the bikes off I thought we could take a short cut back to the lodge, across the sand banks and sea rivers instead of the road. Ellie wasn’t impressed and didn’t think it was a short cut. Haha! The screeches when her feet went in the sludgy sand was hilarious. (As of jumping out of a plane and riding a mountain bike down dirt tracks wasn’t enough me she said) haha!! Love a shortcut.

We got back to the lodge, a very empty ten bed room to ourselves because there wasn’t a bus stopping in town today and everything seemed to be shut. Ellie managed to grab the guy that owned it when he ran in to grab something and he said because there was a bank holiday Monday this week they have Thursday off aswell in this town.... what?! How does that even make sense?

Oh wel the dry hostel is turning into a wet one tonight then because we weren’t being watched by anyone and the bar and shops were closed.

Happy Halloween!