Touring: Mutch ado about New Zealand
How much?! To be fair to James Cargo in England, I had been told that there would be port charges when the bike arrived, but with my customary optimism I had dismissed the information from my conscious mind. Five hundred and eighty eight New Zealand Dollars! Then another NZ$100 here, and another NZ$170 there. Stone me! This was around £400 – there were NZ$2.2 to the pound at the time – not counting the £240 for the ludicrous, outdated carnet de passage to let me temporarily import my bike, so I could ride it, and all this on top of the actual shipping fee which was a not unreasonable £800 ... although that was one way. Blessedly the bike had survived the ocean passage unscarred, and impressed onlookers by firing up instantly on a touch of the button. On the bright side the sun was shining, and after lengthy delays my wheels were finally rolling beneath me. I’d been here two weeks already, staying at the home of my oldest friend on planet earth: Rosemary from over the road back in 1950s London suburbia when we still had
killer smogs and Cliff Richard had yet to take his Summer Holiday. I got lost in Auckland amid heavy rush hour traffic before finally getting clear of the country’s biggest city and out into the fabulous lush country of uncluttered curves on faultless asphalt, the massive engine pulling out of the bends like a pebble from a catapult, my arms straightening under the colossal torque of the purring motor. Nonetheless it took 2 hours, 45 minutes to reach Rosemary’s. “It usually takes me an hour and a half,” grinned Graeme. “Ah yes but you have a three litre engine in your BMW and I only have a one and a half litre engine in my bike, so that’s about right,” I explain, “do the math.” Graeme looked at his feet for several seconds, then at me, then grinned. Rosemary and her fellah Graeme had hosted me at their dairy farm north of Auckland close to Ruakaka where I’d realized there are those in this world who are cut out for early mornings and hard graft and there are those who write about it. Like Dirty Harry said, ‘A man’s got to know his limitations.’
My duty was to head North for The Bay of Islands, round a thousand bends of sub-tropical forest-lined roads. I’d left the coldest winter in living memory behind me and wasn’t missing it a bit. The Riverside Lodge sat four kilometres out of Paihia off the main road by a river, where for $70 I got a room with en-suite facilities, and a parking spot round the back. As I moved the bike, a murderous dog raced at me, snarling loudly before pulling up sharp on a chain fit to tow a barge. Phew! “Would it be a good idea for me to give him a scratch behind the ears?“ I asked the owner, Greg Turton. My host studied his hound, airborne in its eagerness to kill me. “Probably not.” He advised. That evening, while eating tuna on the patio, I heard feet behind me and turned to see the unchained hound heading my way: one bowel loosening moment and it was upon me, eyes fixed on mine as my heart raced. The bluntfaced head dropped onto my thigh, the eyes focused dreamily on my dinner. Slowly I extracted a chunk of Tuna and held it before the jaws of death. Tuna gone.
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