I woke up before sunrise hoping to get an early start thinking I could make the 110km trip to Akaroa in a day. By the time I was ready to head out at 7am it was raining hard. Wasn't supposed to stop at any point today so I figured I had to deal with it. It rained for a majority of my day and the only thing worse than that was the strong headwind I was pushing into. All I could think was “what the hell am I doing here?”. It was a very busy road (though not a single car failed to give me ample space and nobody honked), my legs were screaming and I was drenched and could see my breath from the cold.

Fortunately the rain stopped and it warmed up a bit though the headwind never gave up. I could finally start to enjoy the absolutely phenomenal scenery I had been surrounded by all morning. This was also the point when I realized the only way I could get Internet again today to wish my mom a happy birthday was by continuing to fight the wind all the way to a town called Little River, 80km from the start of my day. When I made it I was rewarded with my first meat pie of the trip and about 10 minutes of free wifi before the store shut down due to an employee emergency. Meh, at least the meat pie was good.

From there I decided its was time to call it a day. Biked another 8km to the cheap campsite by the town only to find out out they were closed due to private event. Place next door ($40 teepee “eco stay”) was full because of this. Shit. Fine, I guess I'll continue on and stay at Hill Top. After seeing what “hill” means here I decided I'd go stay in the pub lodging in town. 15km more (putting the day at 100km) and they have no rooms left but call a b&b 1km away and find me a place to sleep. Apparently I'm not good at roughing it but this sure is a nice way to end a day like today.