That night found us in an old farmhouse-turned Bed and Breakfast. It had huge bedrooms, immense fireplaces, and lots of windows. We never saw the proprietors—they had posted a welcome note to our party on the door, told us where the breakfast cereal could be found, and left the keys to a van if we wanted to use it. There was dinner at the local tavern down the road. The next night we stayed in a local tavern by the trail’s edge. Rooms had been built into the place when it had been a railway stop for the countryside towns. Roosters awakened us for breakfast, the “chooks” pecking around with their chicks.
That day we crossed our personal finish line. More pots of tea, pies and still more bottles of Speight hydrated us as we chose gourmet lunches off the blackboard in the paradoxically elegant Central Otago Hotel. It was set at the end of the trail at another old railroad stop, miles from anything else.
We waited for a lazy hour or two for the support van to transport us and our bikes back to home base. Over beers and happy toasts the family agreed that inviting this outsider to the gathering had kept everyone on even better than usual behavior.
A big black dog dozed and snored on the carpet in front of the fireplace. The movie score-perfect audio drew the curtain on the storybook reunion tour, and my temporary adoption drew to a contented ending. But biking came home with me as a lasting stowaway in my life.
Getting there
Qantas flies from LAX and Vancouver BC, and has a new nonstop to Sydney from SFO, with fully reclining seats in business class and connections to all New Zealand cities. A newer airline, Air New Zealand, offers frequent online deals nonstop into New Zealand cities. My personal favorite is Air Tahiti Nui out of LAX with a refueling stopover in Papeete, Tahiti, a town embedded in my mind by a Jimmy Buffet song. Plan flights that leave around a wintry midnight, and be awakened for breakfast in summertime.
