Cycle: 39km

This was day two of our three relatively short (rest?) days of cycling. We got up late having slept well and found our loaf of bread was dense and full of seeds and we decided this would be the foundation of the days meals. Good thing really as we didn't really pass any shops at all today!

Again, as is our habit, we didn't really get going in the morning because we weren't going far. We walked down to an impressive beach at the end of the Truman Track. The rocks are soft here and have been carved into dramatic shapes. The whole place didn't feel very stable!

The cycling was again not very easy today. More hills and little flat land meant we found things challenging and not recouperating! Oh well, at least we weren't going far! The coastal scenery remained impressive until he finally left the West Coast for good and embarked on the start of our cross-country journey towards the North Coast.

We had one stop today at Charleston where we found our way through the tour bus of pensioners and were disappointed by the limited choice. Luckily the kind lady at the bar replaced my dropped bottle of coke and gave us the paper to read while we enjoyed our cookies. We had been banking on there being a store but there wasn't so we tried the campsite and managed to get a tin of beans and a tin of tomatoes. We haven't had this isolation from shops since the East Cape really! No fresh vegies for us today!

We arrived at our fantastic eco-hostel: Beaconstone mid-afternoon and chilled out for the afternoon. The toilets here were composting long-drops but they didn't smell at all. In fact they were quite pleasant, although I wouldn't want the job of using the compost! The owners were quite inspiring people, Grae and Nancy, who we chatted to about all sorts of things. They don't make any money from the hostel but are pretty much self-sufficient (solar panels, rainwater, compost toilets, vegie-patch etc) and had done a really good job on the hostel. The bed was amazing. Super-firm coconut tree hessian-type material (copra?) beds with lovely thin pillows. Wow!

We thought we had the place to ourselves when four Chinese girls arrived who didn't seem to understand that I didn't run the place! I politely explained that, yes, there was room and, yes, they could have a look round, but, no, I didn't work there and they needed to go and find the owners. This took several attempts!

Our bread was yummy and luckily filled us up but we were in need of a shop the next day really...