Aperitif

Couldn't wait for the main course - so Steve and I went off for a little taster yesterday
Many thanks to TrailWorld, Hertfordshire www.trailworld.co.uk for looking after us - what a blast!

Bit of background...

For me there is added excitement on this trip. Not only am I going to be riding around the awesome South Island with my best mate, I then go and visit my son Oliver and Lauri, his beautiful new bride, in Hamilton on the North Island

Gonna need some wheels...

    

We need a couple of bikes that will make 200+ miles a day, handle gravel and tarmac and look the billy bob. It would be dull to use a 1200GS again and we don't need the range or the load carrying on this trip. It'd be fun to try a couple of different models for comparison. 

So Paradise have got us a BMW F800 GS and a Triumph Tiger 800. Should be fun. Hope the fuel pump lasts on the Beemer!

Paradise Prebooked

Like most of our trips planning consists of: 

1. Looks amazing

2. Go to the pub with a map to get a list of must see locations

3. Find someone else to organise the details

4. Get really excited

In this case the "must see" locations are a couple of the top LOTR (Lord Of The Rings) locations and Milford Sound. A quick Google for bike hire threw up 3 or 4 companies offering tours of South Island. Email exchanges gave us a good feel for one of them. They had the bikes we wanted and could organise a route. Best of all they were friendly, helpful. 

And called Paradise Tours (http://www.paradisemotorcycletours.co.nz)

Deposit paid, flights booked and we're ready to roll.

Kia ora

No, not the popular orange-style drink you bought in the cinemas of your youth. It means hello in Maori.

Kia ora and haere mai (welcome) to the fifth blog in the round-the-world-in-bite-sized-chunks series.

Where are you off to this time then? Graham and Deefor are flying to the other side of the world to visit the land of the long white cloud. The land of fjords, glaciers and Lord of the Rings. Maori culture, world class sailing and the awesome All Blacks. But best of all the setting for some of the greatest motorcycling roads on the planet.  New Zealand.

Graham and Deefor off on a two week bike trip, somewhere with glaciers? Haven't we heard that before. Yup, it's a bit like "Three men go to Iceland" (http://threemengotoiceland.blogspot.co.uk/) with a bit of "100 Years of nonsense" (http://route66.omega-prime.co.uk/) thrown in.

Essentially a bit more nonsense. Or "Kutukutu ahi" as they say in those parts.


Kutukutu ahi: Noun.Delirium, raving, nonsense, meaningless talk, incessant grumbling, harping on a subject, drivel, gibberish, waffle