We woke up early, packed, and at eight o'clock immediately after the reception opened, reserved two more accommodations. One in Greymouth YHA, and also our last night in Auckland City YHA.

We chose the Chardrona Road to Queenstown. It was drawn to the map partly sealed, partly gravel. We had found, that most of the bridges in NZ are named after the river they cross, plus an ordinal number. Elina followed the bridge names on this road, and told me, that we crossed the Cardrona river eleven times. The road surface had just been smoothened by a kind of plane. It made sure, that the surface was two inch deep loose gravel. Finally we came to a very steep edge. We saw the bigger road, we were supposed to end up, just below us. According to the map, and my odometer, we should still have had 15 kilometers this road left. Actually we did. The road was about 700 meters below us, and it took all 15 kilometers to get down there. What a serpentine. The second place where we saw a recommended speed of 15 kph in one curve.

This road was also one of those roads, one should not enter with a rented vehicle. We also read somewhere, that this road is the highest public road in NZ. The highest spot was about 1200 meters above the sea level. In many mountaneous areas in the world you can climb up to 2500 meters above the sea level, but I suppose the NZ mountains are so sharp, and disintegrating, that you cannot just make a road very high. Also since the population of NZ is so low, you don't need to go everywhere by a vehicle.

There was a very good grocery store near the main road in Frankton, so we stopped to buy something to eat. Then we rode forward along the shore of the Lake Wakatipu. After 40 kilometers, we found a nice rest area down the lakeside, and stopped for a small picnic brunch. The rest 130 kilometers to Lake Manapouri we rode non-stop. We found the Possum Lodge, left our packages there, and headed to Milford Sound.

The beginning of the road was straight, following the shoreline of Lake Te Anau. Then it turned to a winding road inside of a rainforest. And like everywhere else outside of the cities in NZ, despite of the twisties and the bad visibility the speed limit was 100 kph. The tar was again soft and slippery because of the sun. We stopped to see the Mirror Lakes. There we met two Danish bicyclers, who had ridden 2800 km in two months. They still had six weeks left, and after that they were heading to Indonesia.

Disappointed to the rippling Mirror Lakes, where you couldn't mirror even yourself, not to mention the mountains, we went on. The road was straight, and ascending towards the top of Mount Christina. This part of the road was named as "The Avenue of the Disappearing Mountain". The mountain top looked like descending under the horizon when we rode towards it. The high branches arching on top of the road made the phenomena even more effective.

After the rainforest section, the road started to raise in a valley towards a steep rock face, until we could finally see the black mouth of the Homer Tunnel. The Homer Tunnel is 1200 meters long, and lays about 900 meters above the sea level. It drops in 1:11 ratio, so it's about 9% downhill. For not acting as a drain, it first raises a bit forming a divide, then starts to lower. There is also a slight curve in the lower end. So in the middle of the tunnel you cannot see light from either end, and the tunnel is pitch black. With the ghostlike sounds of the cars, the feeling was like in a coalmine deep under the earth surface.

The tunnel was quarried during 17 long years. First it was one-lane only and gravel. The traffic was every other hour upwards, every other downwards. In the mid seventies the tunnel was widened, but even nowadays, two buses cannot pass each other in the tunnel. While we stopped in the lower end of the tunnel to have a chocolate bar, we saw this scene, when a line of three buses reversed out from the dark tunnel.

In the tunnel, our headlight showed us the tunnel roof, but not the floor. Anyway, in a tunnel the floor mostly goes to the same direction with the roof, so we found our way out somehow. The tunnel floor is nowadays also sealed, but the tarmac is very bad, full of potholes and grooves. An interesting kilometer, that the bicyclers, we met, waited for with a fear.

The fjord town Milford Sound turned out to be just a tourist harbour to the fjords, with a hotel, a very expensive backpackers lodge and an airport. We sat for a while on a mole just admiring the still waters of the fjords, and the reflecting figures of the mountains. Sunny Milford Sound, a rare scenery, since the annual rainfall here is about seven meters, and there are only some dozens of sunny days in a year.

The Homer tunnel was difficult to see from the Milford Sound direction, since the road was very steep, and the tunnel opening was behind a corner. One just felt like riding against a rock face with no exit. In the tunnel, riding up, the headlight pointed even higher, and we couldn't see even close as much as when we rode down. I moved sitting on the tank, and Elina on the rider's seat. So we managed to push the front down a bit, and in addition to the roof, we could see also the upper parts of the tunnel walls.

On our way back the road was mostly shaded by the trees, and as such, very dangerous. The black sun melted parts were hardly noticeable by eye. Close to the Mirror Lakes ther were some sliding tracks on the road, and when my eyes followed them, I found one car off the road. It had crashed to a tree. Luckily the terrain here was flat, and woody, so the car was just slightly damaged in the crash instead of dropping hundred meters down some edge.

The wind at night was very stormy, so I had to park the bike behind one wall very close to it, since I was afraid the wind could fell down the bike. Todays ride had been the longest so far: 514 km.