Not the TT2000 Part Three

Next up on our magical mystery tour was a bit of roadie so that we could run the big girls over some favourite gravel further up the island.

The first day of this adventure began with a trip up the West Coast and ending in Reefton where we knew there would good pies to be had...

Leaving Wanaka, we had a real blast through to Makarora and onto Haast.  The roads were perfect and once the pace was set that was pretty much it unless we caught up to slow traffic.  The only issue we had was both collecting birds on our way out of Makarora.

I dunno what the birds were but there were brown  and a fair bit larger than your average sparrow or even magpie.  I caught my one first.  It flew out of the scrub and hit me on the upper arm (felt that) and chest before disappearing off in a cloud of feathers.  Just before it hit me, I caught a glimpse of brown and was really concerned that it was a hawk and that I was going to have to fight it while it was in my lap...

Colin scored his one a split second later and in about the same way.  Feathers everywhere...

Onto the Coast proper, the ride up from Haast in the great weather was also a 10/10 but we had to add a little more excitement to our day somehow...

After a stop in Fox for an ummm, pie, we decided to carry onto Franz for fuel as there was still plenty in the S10's tank.  Arriving in Franz, we hit the forecourt of the servo only to discover that we could have as much diesel as we wanted but no petrol...bummer...

I quickly consulted the GPS and it lied to me in saying that the closest fuel was 62km away in Harihari.  This was a bit of a relief as I knew I could make that easy.

But then we had some more luck.  There was fuel in Whataroa (and I reckon I already knew that from the last trip but maybe hadn't got Whataroa's location right in my head - was it before or after Harihari?) so we stopped there, filled up and all of Colins Christmases came at once...

Yes, that is 2kg of jet planes, hopefully there will be some left on our next ride...

That excitement over the rest of the day was spent cruising past a lot of the checkpoints on our TT2000 plan and into Reefton for the night.  The motel even had a little reminder of where we'd come from: