Gone Fishin' tour of New Zealand

Plans for this years tour are beginning to firm up. Flights are booked - I'll be departing for Dunedin on October 19 to spend a month touring mostly the back roads around the bottom of the New Zealand's Southland.

From Dunedin I'm going to ride part way along the Otago rail trail then take to the back roads and head north across Danseys Pass and Hakataramea Pass to Lake Tekapo, before turning back south for Wanaka. I did the Tekapo – Wanaka section last tour, this time I'm going to divert cross-country from Omarama to rejoin the Otago Rail, then head to Wanaka via Thomsons Gorge.

I will take a detour in to Mount Cook Village this time, but the main reason for returning to Wanaka (apart from it being a spectacularly scenic place) is that I want to ride the Crown Range Road (the highest in New Zealand) over to Queenstown, where I will take the old steamer TSS Earnslaw across Lake Wakitipu and then ride the back roads to Mavora Lakes, where I'm going to spend some time fishing to see if I can catch some trout in the lakes.

Then I'll head to Te Anau for some more fishing will and probably take an excursion to Doubtful Sound, as I've already visited Milford Sound. From there it'll be right down to the bottom through Invercargill, stopping to see the world's fastest Indian, then on to Bluff, before retuning along the Catlins coast to Dunedin.

There is a new tour journal on the menu where I've posted the details so far. More to come.

Fush'n'chups anyone?