Day 15 : Eels, Bogans and a Faint

Well, it's been an odd sort of a day, fun and interesting but also quite strange. First the good news is i'm back on the bike. The knees are still painful but manageable with some strong Ibruprofen, we had a light training ride yesterday of around 40km cycling to Richmond and back. On the way, we visited the Hoglund Glass Factory and the Bays Brewing Company where we were treated to a free tasting of some of their fine beers. The 7.5% Doppel Bock "Exterminator" was particularly good.

Today we loaded up again (although slightly lighter weight - we left the camping gear behind in Nelson) and rode 53km from Nelson to Motueka. This is a beautiful part of the country, and also the Hop capital of NZ which reminds me of my home county Kent. On the way, Kym insisted on checking out this place ;-)


We stopped for a break at a place called the "Jester House", a really cool and odd cafe / accomodation place (http://www.jesterhouse.co.nz/jester.html). I sampled a beer here from the Mussell Inn in Onekaka called "Eel ale". We're visiting this brew pub in a few days when we head up the coast and i'm really looking forward to it as todays beer was great. Anyway, the Jesters house has a stream and a bunch of tame eels living in it which you can feed. The oddest thing is that when someone rocks up with some food, they start climbing out of the water and slithering up the steps by the stream, reaching up to take the food. If you don't like eels, it would be a very scary experience as some of them were big! This also sparked a heated debate between Kym & I on the subject "is fish a type of meat or not ?". It's funny how subjects like this can be so contentious and create so much discussion when you're on the road.

There's a lot of cool art galleries in this area too and a bit further up the road we came across the gallery of a local sculptor, a real friendly guy who makes some amazing stuff. Here's a couple of pics Kym snapped...



We're now in Motueka which is a nice enough place, and the take off point for adventures in the Abel Tasman National Park. Usually arriving at your stopover for the night is fairly uneventful and just involves looking for accomodation, but not today! I was taking a shower after cycling and I possibly had the shower a little too hot, and maybe stayed in a little too long (it was a very good shower). Anyway, I was about to get out and started feeling a bit light-headed. The next thing I know i'm waking up in a pile in the bottom of the shower. I've never fainted in my life so it was a kind of odd experience, the whole "who am I, where am I, what am I doing here ?" thing on waking up was really strange. Anyway, we decided to head out to check out the town and the next thing a bunch of local bogan kids in a lowered Holden Commodore came cruising alongside and decided to spray us both with water. They lapped the block three times after this hanging out the window laughing. Kym was very keen to start a fight, but I managed to convince him that as I was wearing flip-flops and had recently fainted it probably wasn't a good idea.

Oddly enough, neither of these events, or the fact that it is now raining hard has put a downer on the day. I'm just stoked to get back on the bike...happy days!

Ps. Kym has just mentioned I should really say i'm OK, in case anyone is worried.