SA and Botswana
| South Africa (days) | 21 |
| Transport (km) | |
| Run | 75 |
| Hiked | 27 |
| Total km bike/run/hike | 102 |
| Weather (days) | |
| Sunny | 17 |
| Cloudy | 2 |
| Rain | 1 |
| Heavy Rain | 1 |
| Accommodation (days) | |
| Hotel courtesy of Friend/Family | 9 |
| Friends/Family House | 8 |
| Camping | 4 |
| Activities (days) | |
| Flight or Car Travel | 7 |
| Safari | 7 |
| Explore City | 5 |
| Wine Tasting | 1 |
| Hiking | 1 |
I was not cycle touring in Africa. The main reason for visiting was to see my Uncle Drew and to go on holiday with my sister Abi. I had a brilliant 3 weeks seeing Joburg, on Safari in Chobe National Park, on Safari in SA and visiting Cape Town. Thanks so much for a great time Uncle Drew. It was great to get to know you and see SA and Botswana. The wildlife and the countryside are absolutely amazing. I loved learning how to use my camera. I ate far too much food and managed to catch up on sleep having left the UK exhausted with all the preparations for this trip.
Australia
| Australia (days) | 54 |
| Transport (km) | |
| Biked | 2393 |
| Run | 109 |
| Hike/Walk | 137 |
| Car/Train | 4924 |
| Total km bike/run/hike | 2639 |
| Biking/HikingStats | |
| Mean km/day on Biking Days | 106.56 |
| Mean km/day on Biking and Other Activity Days | 61 |
| Mean km/day on Hiking Days | 15 |
| Mean km/day Biking/Hiking over all Days | 48.87 |
| Accommodation (days) | |
| Friends/Family House | 17 |
| Camping | 10 |
| Couch Surfing | 8 |
| Dorm Rooms/Hostels/Backpackers | 7 |
| Warm Showers | 7 |
| Random people met along the way | 5 |
| Weather (days) | |
| Sunny | 35 |
| Cloudy | 12 |
| Rain | 2 |
| Heavy Rain | 5 |
| Activities (days) | |
| Biking | 16 |
| Flight or Car Travel | 8 |
| Explore City and Biking | 4 |
| Explore City | 3 |
| Biking and Hiking | 3 |
| Hiking | 3 |
| Chill Day | 3 |
| Wildlife Sanctuary | 1 |
| Body Surfing | 1 |
| Feeding Wild Dolphins, Whale Watching | 1 |
| Jet Boat Cruise Whitsundays | 1 |
| Surfing | 1 |
| Diving the Great Barrier Reef | 1 |
| Wetlands Walk | 1 |
| Bird Sanctuary, Butterfly Sanctuary, Skyrail | 1 |
| Wetland Boat Cruise, Swimming in Pool | 1 |
| Running and Hiking | 1 |
| Yacht Racing | 1 |
| Wine Tasting | 1 |
| Fishing | 1 |
| Cave Explore and Biking | 1 |
Country summary:
- The people are extremely friendly, helpful, generous, funny people. English people (POMES) have a view of AUS that is a mixture of Home and Away, Neighbors, The Flying Doctor and Crocodile Dundee. This is wrong!
- I biked less than I thought I would as I did a couple of road trips with Kim for 3 weeks. During this time I did lots of hiking instead. Variety is the spice of life :-) I did 25 days of biking in total (only 16 of which were just pure biking with no other added activity as well), so half the time.
- The countryside is beautiful and the wildlife amazing. I loved the sounds of all of the wildlife in the forests and the bright colours.
- I loved the variety of the different landscapes from the tropical Darwin, desert center and snowy mountains of the South.
Notes for cyclists:
- Australians spend much more time outside and doing sports than the Brits and will generally understand what you are doing and why.
- Couch Surfing and Warm Showers are fantastic organisations. I met some really lovely people and appreciated having a break from free camping and also to met people at the end of a day cycling on my own. You tend to find a lot of Europeans and Americans in Youth Hostels. When I travel I like to met people from the country I am traveling in rather than other people from where I was living or where I have visited before. Therefore, Warm Showers and Couch Surfing were really good for me.
- It is relatively easy to find somewhere to put your tent out of the way and camp for free.
- Aus was really expensive. Food was double verses the UK.
- Australians were generally very supportive of a girl on her own on a bike. I did not feel unsafe to put my tent up in a forest out of the way somewhere.
- The only times I had to pay for accommodation were when I was traveling with a friend who was not happy to just sleep anywhere and wanted things like AC! In this instance we stayed reasonably cheaply in hostels. If I had not been traveling with Kim then I would not have needed to pay for accommodation.
- Dormitories in hostels cost about £10-£15 per night. This is ok if you are backpacking with money but too high for the average scummy cyclist. Free camping and Warm Showers or Couch Surfing are the way to go.
- My fitness improved considerably over the 2 months. There are parts of Aus that are most definitely not flat.
- Traveling on bike round Aus is awesome fun and easy to do. It is a great warm up country to get used to biking long distances, make sure you are happy with your equipment and generally prepare for the more challenging places.
- There are parts of Australia that are really remote. Make sure you ask locals about each area you are traveling to before you set off. It can be difficult to guess from maps. There were stretches of road without water or food stops for literally 150km and so I had to carry about 15litres of water. Each year many tourists die because they are not prepared for this!
- Cycling around Darwin area can be quiet uncomfortable if you do not like the heat (it was the first time in my life I have ever thought it would be nice to sit in the shade for a couple of hours and drink a cold drink - it did take 6 hours of biking in a cloudless sky, 80% humidity and 40+C for me to get to this point though). I now realise how much I am meant to live in hot countries....
- Make sure you have plenty of sunscreen.
- Although internal flights can be very cheap when booked with a round the world ticket make sure you budget for excess luggage charges. I was extremely fortunate not to have to pay these charges but you might not be that lucky. Quantas are cheap for the flight but their excess luggage charges are insane. If they had charged me as advertised then I would be short 4 months travel budget!
- Even though I was very strict with my budget (when I was not traveling with my friend Kim that is ;-)) I still went over my budget for Aus.
- It is much better to buy food in supermarkets and carry it than it is to try and buy it in local stores or in restaurants. I think I ate out 3 times.
- Tap water is perfectly drinkable and so you should not have to spend money on water. Just make sure you carry lots.
- Get away from the main tourist spots - but if you're a bike tourist you know this anyway. It is in the blood.
- The roads are tarmaced and good quality (unless you specifically choose to go off road). It is easy to average 100km per day.
- There are good bike shops in most towns and so you should not need to carry many spare parts. If you get stuck then just hitch to the nearest town. People will be very helpful and you should not have to wait long for a lift. Loads of people have trucks.
New Zealand
| New Zealand (days) | 47 |
| Transport (km) | |
| Biked | 1706 |
| Run | 55 |
| Hike/Walk | 450 |
| Car/Train | 674 |
| Total km bike/run/hike | 2211 |
| Biking/HikingStats | |
| Mean km/day on Biking Days | 106.8 |
| Mean km/day on Biking and Other Activity Days | 59.3 |
| Mean km/day on Hiking Days | 31.63 |
| Mean km/day Biking/Hiking over all Days | 47.04 |
| Accommodation (days) | |
| Camping | 13 |
| Random people met along the way | 12 |
| Warm Showers | 11 |
| Friends/Family House | 9 |
| Dorm Rooms/Hostels/BackPackers | 1 |
| Couch Surfing | 1 |
| Weather (days) | |
| Sunny | 22 |
| Cloudy | 14 |
| Rain | 5 |
| Heavy Rain | 6 |
| Activities (days) | |
| Biking | 10 |
| Hiking | 6 |
| Flight or Car Travel | 6 |
| Chill Day | 4 |
| Explore City and Biking | 4 |
| Explore City | 3 |
| Chilling and Biking | 2 |
| Explore City and Running | 1 |
| Cruise on Milford Sounds | 1 |
| Explore City and Hiking | 1 |
| Flight or Car Travel and Hiking | 1 |
| Hiking and Kung Fu | 1 |
| Running and Kayaking | 1 |
| Flight in Private Plane around the North Island and Quad biking | 1 |
| Biscuiting behind Speed Boat and Biking | 1 |
| Hot Springs and Swimming and Biking | 1 |
| Clay Pigeon Shooting and Squash | 1 |
| Jet Skiing | 1 |
Country summary:
- Go to NZ for the scenery not the wildlife (there is very little). The forests are silent verses Australia.
- I ended up spending much more time than I though doing the great walks rather than biking. I only did solid biking for 10 days, hiked solidly for 6 days and did a mixture for 12 days.
- The South Island is a completely different country to the North Island and so it is definitely worth spending time in both in order to get an appreciation of the whole country.
- The people are very friendly, supportive and generous.
- Many people live in rural communities along way from anything. I met some people that would travel 1h30 just for a squash game.
- Auckland and Wellington are totally different to the rest of the country. They are reasonably large cities. The rural areas are extremely rural.
- Sunburn hurts! The thin ozone layer really makes a difference so you can burn even when it is cloudy.
- South Island really remote. Towns with names on the map might only have a few houses in them and sometimes no shop and often no accommodation. Carry a tent.
- Most of the houses are made of wood. Apparently they are better at withstanding earthquakes. I missed stone/brick buildings. To an English person a house made of wood and a corrugated iron roof is not really a house - it's a shed!
- The country is very green and the scenery amazing however it lacks vibrant colours like you find in Australia and the tropics.
- North Island feels like it will explode any minute. As you travel round you might suddenly see steam coming out of the ground, boiling mud pools and Gizzers. In some areas there is a very strong smell of sulphur. I found it very strange. It does mean that there are loads of hot baths to bathe in though.
- The New Zealanders are a really hardy bunch that still walk around in T-shirts when I found it very cold and was wearing many layers. They often do not have central heating installed and just use more blankets and electric heaters in the winter months. I was cold even in their "summer" and so I do not like to think what it is like in winter in the South Island.
- New Zealanders have a mentality of "if it is not broken don't fix it". This means that if they have a perfectly functional kitchen then they will not change it just because of fashion. The same holds for the decoration of their houses. The decoration of the majority of the houses reminded me of photos from 1970's UK. I found it quiet quaint - in a total non patronising way (of course ;-))! Apparently, when a friend of mine landed in the country the pilot announced "Welcome to New Zealand. Set your watches back 30 years".
- New Zealanders can fix anything. Most people have a large tool kit and know how to mend things. This comes from a history where imports were expensive and in short supply and so people had to learn how to fix things themselves.
- The average age of a car on the road is much older than in the UK. I like this mentality. We are extremely wasteful in Europe and the US because it is often cheaper to buy a new thing than fix an old thing and because of the pressure of society to always have the newest and best. It might be cheaper to our pockets but what is the cost to the environment?
- The mojority of the Maory people live in the North Island. The ethnic make up of the Southern Island is very white. I did not like this very much.
- The Southern part of the South Island really did remind me of Scotland. This is because a large percentage of the population can trace their roots back to Scottish settlers over the last couple of hundred years. The names of the towns and streets are Scottish. The area has the same harsh beauty of Scotland as well - barren and mountainous.
- Apart from in the cities of Wellington and Auckland, I found the country singularly lacking in cultural things to see. It may well have been that I just did not spend enough time in the different areas but I did not see very much music, theatre or history really.
- I missed stone structures and architecture and old things. I have decided that I don't really like "new" countries.
- From the information I had about NZ before I arrived I thought that I would fall in love with the place but I did not. I very very much enjoyed my time there and the people were really lovely and the scenery very pretty but I would not like to live there. I am not a city person but I do like culture and old architecture. I would miss this.
- New Zealand really does feel like it is on the edge of the world because it is so far to travel to other countries. I means that travel is expensive for New Zealanders and so they don't tend to travel as much out of the country as Brits do when we just pop across to Europe.
- I was in NZ during their "summer" but I was really cold for the first 2 weeks. This was partly because I was used to Aus and South African weather by this point and it was a bit of a shock to the system but mainly because it was cold on the South Island! It rained a huge amount while I was there.
- There are loads of Europeans visiting NZ over the summer. It felt like half the population of the South Island were from Europe traveling round or working for 1 year. You will not be sort of company from fellow Europeans that's for sure.
- It seemed like half of the traffic on the road where camper vans. It is the "thing" to do in NZ - hire a van and drive round for a few weeks, living in the van.
- The South Island is really really bad for Sand flies. I am not normally too bothered by insects and flies especially when I have insect repellent but these creatures became far too much after a week or so. The can climb up your trouser legs so that you need to wear repellent even under your clothes. By the end of a couple of weeks my legs were really swollen and I had hundreds of bites - and this was even with the repellent. I forgot to put it on under my trousers one night and was eaten alive. They were far worse than any mosquito bites and the bites took days and days to calm down.
- The Great Walks are fantastic but make sure that you book the huts in advance as they get booked up very quickly through the summer.
Notes for cyclists:
- Putting up a tent in the rain when you are already cold and wet is not fun. Be prepared to do this a good few times even in the summer (especially on the South Island).
- Although many people and cycling forums warned me about the bad roads and the dangerous driving in New Zealand, I did not really find this to be a problem. Yes lorries drive too close sometimes and some drivers are inconsiderate but I did not find this any more so than Europe and the UK. There are many good quiet roads to choose from.
- It is relatively easy to find somewhere to put your tent out of the way and camp for free. It is called "Freedom Camping" in NZ. There are some regions where it is illegal though and there will be signs up to let you know this.
- You do need to carry a tent (especially in the South Island) unless you want to rely on people putting you up if you are stuck. Towns on the map may not even have a small shop let alone accommodation.
- Cycling round NZ is a popular thing to do and I met several other cyclists on route. If you need to you should be able to find a traveling companion on the cycling forums or on the road when you get there.
- Beware of the Sand flies.
- The great walks are really worth doing and a good break from cycling.
- New Zealanders spend much more time outside and doing sports than the Brits and will generally understand what you are doing and why.
- Couch Surfing and Warm Showers are fantastic organisations. I met some really lovely people and appreciated having a break from free camping and also to met people at the end of a day cycling on my own.
- NZ cost about the same amount to buy food and other supplies as the UK.
- NZers were generally very supportive of a girl on her own on a bike. I did not feel unsafe to put my tent up in a forest out of the way somewhere.
- The only times I had to pay for accommodation were when the weather was so horrendous that I could not physically erect my tent.
- Dormitories in hostels cost about £10-£15 per night. This is ok if you are backpacking with money but too high for the average scummy cyclist. Free camping and Warm Showers or Couch Surfing are the way to go.
- The South Island is hilly but the route that the roads take are manly through the valleys and so I did not find the biking anywhere near as challenging as I thought I would do.
- Traveling on bike round NZ is awesome fun and easy to do. It is a great warm up country to get used to biking long distances, make sure you are happy with your equipment and generally prepare for the more challenging places.
- Make sure you have plenty of sunscreen.
- It is much better to buy food in supermarkets and carry it than it is to try and buy it in local stores or in restaurants.
- Tap water is perfectly drinkable and so you should not have to spend money on water. There are many rivers and streams and so you should not have to carry much water on the bike.
- The roads are tarmaced and good quality (unless you specifically choose to go off road). It is easy to average 100km per day.
- There are good bike shops in most towns and so you should not need to carry many spare parts. If you get stuck then just hitch to the nearest town. People will be very helpful and you should not have to wait long for a lift. Loads of people have trucks.
