Our journey started at 4:30am on Thursday January 5 with us leaving for Frankfurt Airport. Everything went smoothly thanks to Jonas' parents driving us there in Vroni's parents' bus that was big enough. We could check in all our luggage and bikes without a problem and after a quick but hearty goodbye, we got on our first flight to Taipei. After a 12h flight we arrived at 5:30am local time with 17h of transfer before we had to catch our next flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. As there is no visa required to enter Taiwan, we took the chance and got on a bus to Taipei city center. With an all-day metro ticket we got around the city to visit some temples, get street food, visit the famous Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall and to hike on the beautiful Elephant Mountain Hiking trail. Before getting back to the airport we met up with Christian who is a friend and former AIESEC coleague from Bayreuth who is currently in Taipei to do his Master's degree. He led us to some delicious restaurants with typical local dishes. Well-fed and exhausted we got back on a bus and caught our next flight to New Zealand.
After a refueling stop in Melbourne, Australia, and an overall flight time of 12h, we arrived Christchurch, New Zealand, in the evening of Saturday Janaury 7. Our bikes were in a surprisingly good shape and the customs control had no complaints, so we got into New Zealand and had to put our bikes back together before cycling to our hosts. New Zealand decided to greet us wamly with some pouring rain that allowed us to test all our new rain gear for the first time - you have to see the positives, right? Our first evening in NZ ended with some quick dinner, a very necessary shower and a comfortable bed at our hosts' Andrew and Dee's place. On Sunday we got some groceries, had a quick city tour of Christchurch in the afternoon and in the evening Dee and Andrew took us to a nearby hill to have some fish & chips and a beautiful scenery - just awesome!
On Monday Dee and Andrew had to go back to work which left us with a free day to pick up our drone (ahhhhh, finally!!), buy some last supplies and pack everything to get ready for biking on Tuesday. All of that went very smoothly and in the evening we prepared some Schnitzel with Franconian potatoe salad as a little thank you for our hosts. We also managed to pack all our stuff into the bike bags and to get Droni (the third "oni" on our team) into the air for the first time, even though strong wind did not allow us to get some usable footage yet - this keeps the tension up ;-). Our day ended with receiving some great recommendations and tips on where to go and what to visit in on the South island of NZ before going to bed early in order to be fit for the first real day of biking.
Keep cycling,
Vroni, Droni & Joni
