MILTON TO DUNEDIN
Again as we retire for the night there are forecasted threats of wet weather, but we are getting used to these empty threats.
We arise early - not because we have far to go - our trip today should be less than 60 kms, but because by now it's hard to stay awake past 9 o'clock or so. So we sleep in to 7:00 am and once the bags are packed and we have breakfast in our room we are on the road by 8:00am.
It is to Andy's credit that while sitting around watching the closing ceromonies last night and studying all of our travelling reference material that we discovered a road less travelled that would get us to Dunedin via a road much closer to the coast. We decided on this one. And what a great decision it was.
About 10 kilometers outside of Milton at a place called Waihola (that's where the sneaker fence is), we turned right and headed towards the coast. We didn't know that we had to climb over a very large hill - the steepness of which rivalled just about everything up to this point. But as always a good steep climb has it's rewards and we cashed in on these rewards with breathtaking scenes of the lakes we had just cycled past as we exited Milton.
We carried on across this mountain and finally the coast of the South Pacific was in our sights. It was good to get back to the ocean as we hadn't seen it for almost 10 days.
The remainder of our trip into Dunedin was fantastic. To our left were large pastures with images of sheep being herded by a border collie, and other livestock enjoying the sunny day. To our right was the ocean - beach mostly - large expanses of smooth dark sand with large crashing waves, rough rocky cliffs and lush tropical vegetation. Not bad for a day's work.
We cycle into Dunedin, finding our way into this moderately large city with some degree of difficulty but we finally make it and find accomodations for the next two nights.
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