Bicycles are dangerous!

From Queenstown we decided to take the boat over lake Wakatipu to go to Walter’s Peak, from where we would cycle over a inland road to Te Anau on the West Coast. However, when we wanted to take the ferry over the lake we were in for a little surprise…

Us: “So we would like to have a two adult tickets for the ferry and for our two bicycles too.”

Lady at the ferry office (Lady): “Ah, sorry! You can’t take bicycles.”

Us: “??? Why not???”

Lady: “Well the water is low, so it is dangerous.”

Us: “??? We don’t understand! If the boat sinks, then who cares about some bikes. They will just sink, that’s it!”

Lady: “Yes, but it is too dangerous to take bicycles on the ferry.”

???!!!???!!!

So in New-Zealand you can throw yourself off a bridge with only an elastic cord wrapped around your feet, roll down a hill in a plastic inflated ball (zorb) or being shot over in a narrow canyon…

…but transporting a bicycle on a ferry is too dangerous?!?!?!

Vera & Jean-Christophe

PS: Finally we could take our bikes on the ferry (after having talked to the skipper and having assured him that our bikes knew how to swim) and everybody on the boat survived the very dangerous trip on the boat with our bikes on board. ;-)

This entry was written by Vera and posted on May 16, 2008 at 7:44 and filed under New Zealand, World Trip. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

5 Comments

  1. marie-annick
    Posted May 16, 2008 at 22:18 | Permalink

    c’est que c’est capable de partir toutes seules, ces petites bêtes là!! je suis sûre que vous aviez oublié de leur acheter des gilets de sauvetage, mais où aviez-vous la tête? pensez-y à la prochaine traversée! en tout cas, bonne continuation.

  2. Sophie
    Posted May 26, 2008 at 18:23 | Permalink

    Bonjour à tous les deux!
    Je regarde de temps en temps où vous en êtes dans votre petit périple. Vous avez vraiment de la chance, profitez à fond de l’expérience!!
    Vos photos sont vraiment très belles, ça donne envie! et ça donne des idées pour des futurs projets de voyages!
    Ca fait toujours plaisir de lire vos posts…

    Profitez bien!!!

    Sophie, française rencontrée à kathmandou

  3. Jürgen
    Posted May 27, 2008 at 22:41 | Permalink

    LOL, I think if you would have told the skipper that you take the bikes on your arms so that they don’t stress the boat he would believe in it too.

    How is the winter in New-Zealand?

  4. Vera
    Posted May 31, 2008 at 3:18 | Permalink

    @Marie-Annick: Oui, t’as raison. Cela aurait peut-etre aide a convaincre le skipper plus vite…

    @Juergen: LOL :-) We will try that next time…

    By the way, recently we had another “bicycle transport story”: when we wanted to take our bicycles by train a guy snorted that “bicycles are dangerous on trains, planes and ferries and make for a lot of damage…” ?!?!?! Now for information, they are transporting HUGE trucks on the ferry! And then two bicycles are dangerous?!?!?!

    @Sophie: Salut! Ca nous a fait enormement plaisir de savoir que tu suis notre periple par internet. Recemment on a pense a toi, en se disant que t’avais reussi a nous donner l’envie d’aller en Inde quand meme un jour. :-) Pour l’instant c’est pas sur l’agenda, mais qui sait. Sans doute un jour! :-)

    Vera

  5. Maude et Baptiste
    Posted March 9, 2010 at 3:01 | Permalink

    Hello!!!
    On se souvient tres bien de vous! Une chouette rencontre en terre venteuse. Merci pour votre petit mot. On a bien rigole en lisant vos commentaires concernant le bateau. A nous ils ne nous ont rien dit.
    A une prochaine
    Maude et Bapt