This morning we woke up from our first shot at freedom camping really early. I mean 5:30am early. I guess you can say the paranoia didn't wear off over night. Anyway, we packed our tents quietly and hit the road. Laughed and high fived about our success as we slowly road in the cold, foggy and rainy morning.

In town we hung out on a bench for a while to wake up and eat a little breakfast. We ran into another cyclist (the first American I've seen on a bike here) going the other direction and talked about the route. When we were sufficiently conscious we hit the road heading to Franz Josef glacier. A short ride, just 23km, but a bit hard. We had to pass two steep hills then one much shorter one. I wound up leaving James behind and meeting him again at the end.

Today's weather was very cloudy and it rained most of the day which is also the forecast for the next few days. It rains most of the time on the west coast so our long stretch of good weather was lucky and couldn't be expected for the whole trip over here.

We had been given good advice by cyclists along the way about where to stay in Franz Josef on the way. We knew camp sites in town were $20 and found out that the YHA hostels give steep discounts to cyclists as part of a green travel deal so we decided to stay there as it was cheaper. This is my first bed I've slept in since Little River six weeks ago.

Franz Josef is a tiny but neat town. Mostly full of tourist activities and expensive food places, we discovered a cute little European bakery that doesn't seem to fit in. The prices were incredible with $6 pizzas big enough to feed a hungry cyclist and $3 giant deserts. Compared to the $20 burgers in nearby stores this is crazy.