After six days on the bike I was exhausted. I thought I'd give the tour an easy start but had done nothing of the such. So with Geraldine being a reasonably sized town (population of 1500) with a pub in walking distance from a cheap place to pitch my tent I figured this would be a great place to take a rest.

The day started by meeting the first bicycle tourers that I've seen on my trip. An Australian couple, Jim and Tonya, were packing up their bikes at the camp heading off on the same route I'm on. I was sad that I needed to take a rest day and couldn't join them for some riding. Was cool to spend some time comparing notes about our trips and gear, though. They have a rest day planned soon so I may run into them again before our routes separate. Like me, they are living by the Pedallers' Paradise books. They've actually done this before so had some helpful tips for my journey. One of those being that I shouldn't attempt to ride Homer's Tunnel to Milford Sound. Meh. Lock the bike up and take a bus, they said.

After this I spent the day off much like I would one at home. I did laundry, hung out on the computer (found a local library with free wifi and computer access), tinkered with the bike, drank a big beer and watched some tv. I spent a long time at the library attempting to upload the 800mb of pictures I've taken so far on this trip. Most places I've found Internet access at have a very low (~50mb) cap which is usually killed by posting the photos for my blog and checking email/Facebook. Only made it a little over half way but there is a bunch of cool stuff on there now (http://www.flickr.com/photos/twymer/).

Tomorrow starts the uphill trek towards beautiful Lake Tekapo!