Very early in the morning, at 05:00, shortly after the rooster made itself felt, we were reminded by the alarm clock that it was time to get up.
We got up so uncomfortably early, because according to the guidebook we expected a strenuous route and we wanted to ride large parts of it before the midday heat. After an hour everything was neatly packed and we started the tandem tour with a strenuous climb.
After a few kilometers we reached a nice place for breakfast. This was the first breakfast where we changed from our daily 1kg portion of yogurt to cornflakes with milk. We don't take the milk fresh, because on the one hand it is difficult to get UHT milk and on the other hand powdered milk is much more interesting in terms of weight. Even though powdered milk is not quite as good as real milk, we don't want to do without it. We also use it for sauces, so we don't have to use cream.
After breakfast, we drove a very nice route through the interior of the country. We noticed that the route was much less strenuous than expected.
But after Hicks Bay we had to climb a very steep slope in the midday heat.
From Te Aruora we drove a 22km long road to the East Cape. To our disadvantage, about half of it was a so-called "Gravel Road", i.e. a more or less good gravel road. The condition already makes campers and also some car drivers turn around. With the tandem and a lot of luggage this is almost an ordeal or positively formulated a demanding upper arm training for the driver. Due to landslides the road was partly only one lane, further it was around the cliffs at the end quite narrow and steep.
Shortly before the East Cape we finally pitched our tent and lay down to sleep, because we wanted to get up early the next day.