Cycle: 88km

We slept fantastically and rose feeling good in the morning sunshine. Josua made us laugh by greeting us with: "It's so good to wake up without hunger!" Poor lad had been starving!

The sky was clear but a dark haze was building in the valley opposite the station - it turns out the farmers had been waiting for a break in the total fire ban and were now burning all their logging off cuts. By mid-morning the valley was almost dark with smog! Boo!

We gorged ourselves on porridge as usual, then embarked on the day's challenge: Lindis Pass. We'd already been over Lewis, Arthur's, Porters & Burke's passes and our route will take us over Haast Pass so this was the main pass that we might miss. In typical Scott & Claire style we couldn't let this happen so set about nipping up it on our day off! Josua thought we were amusing taking these passes so seriously. Lewis Pass is the highest at 965m - Josua is used to a normal pass being about 2300m ! We'll have to go and visit him in the Swiss Alps and see what they're all about.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the pass was pretty easy with only the final 2km being steepish. At the top we met a nice couple from Australia who were visiting family and had cycle toured in Alaska. They were nice to chat to and kindly took what we think is the first picture of what we refer to as "The Awesome Foursome" - Scott, Humphrey Longbottom (Scott's bike), Claire and Lottie Celeste (Claire's blue bike)! The man had a posh Canon camera so was a safe bet to take a decent picture!

The main issue we faced was the heat. It was scorching. This made a nice surprise as we'd sincerely thought that summer was long behind us, but the 30 degree temperatures and all the smoke didn't make for much fun by the end of our km day. By the time we'd descended back down to Omarama we were cooked. The logical thing to do was to seek shade and drink plenty of fluids. We did this, but with a couple of beers in a beer garden. Mmmmh, Monteith Radlers!

Back at the ranch (sorry, "Station") we indulged Josua and ourselves to another fine home cooked meal. Then craziness started. The professional clown (I kid you not) staying at the station decided it would be a good idea to get his balloons out! They were impossible to blow up for all the tired cyclist, but he was happily making hats for everyone double-time and we all laughed a lot wearing them. There were lots of people who'd had rather too much red wine which made it all the more amusing!