Chatting with Pat, my WarmShowers host, I found out that the kiwi fruit is not a New Zealand native but is of Chinese origin. Surprise!
Continuing on the kiwi topic: while riding this morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I thought I saw a kiwi bird. I only saw it for a few seconds before it ran in a bush. But the beak seemed too short as far as I could tell. After a bit of research I figured it was weka, also a flightless bird endemic to this area. What a disappointment!
Somewhere after Ross, I caught up with a young Dutch guy on a touring bike who was going in the same direction. We rode together while chatting for about 40 kilometers; luckily there weren’t many cars. He is also doing his version of the TA route. He did a few of the off-road tracks that I skipped and he confirmed some of them were barely passable.
Other than that, today was short, nice, and unremarkable. Like a blip on a radar.
Today in numbers:
71 km – distance cycled
4 – recognized subspecies of weka