If you have a letterbox in Upper Hutt, New Zealand, you’ll find a copy of the Upper Hutt Leader inside on Wednesday (NZ Time).

The front page should feature a couple of grubby cycle tourists who arrived home over the weekend.

For those of you who don’t live in Upper Hutt then please move here. We need more friends. Before you pack your worldly possessions and set sail for the green grass of the valley, you can read the story online here.

It’s been great being home and we have ridden our bikes every day so far. We just can’t shake this bug yet. Riding our bikes just feels normal.

Our homecoming podcast should be online later this week or early next. There will probably be one more podcast where we review our trip, some of our gear and muse on our future plans.

We also want to provide the cycle touring community with a decent gear review portal so keep coming back and hopefully we will have extensive reviews of how our kit list stacked up after 13 months on the road.

The West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island covers the distance between the two major cities in the North Island, Wellington and Auckland, but this part of the country only has 33,000 thousand residents and bugger all cell phone coverage.

This week’s How Are You? Where Are You? podcast follows our journey up the coast and introduces some of the people we met along the way. All of them outstanding citizens.

This trip home is blowing any stereotypes we had about the people of this land out of the water. We have ridden into big walls of kindness, laughter, wisdom and friendship.

We visit some Greenstone carvers, glacier guides, a gold miner, a fisher and do our best to give some sort of verbal justice to the magical scenery, all while coming under attack by the wildlife in Arthur’s Pass National Park.

The Ride Up From Haast

Clockwise from top left: up and over tiny Haast Pass; a Coaster’s rules; Belted Galloways, our favourite breed of cattle; this way on the West Coast Wilderness Trail; riding through native bush

Life on the Coast

Clockwise from top left: the salmon truck and Dirk arrive at Lake Ianthe; salmon released; Baden and gold miner Des; water reservoir near Kumara; farm house at Whataroa; Des and Shelley inspect the mine

Home of Pounamu

Left to right then down: Stan McCullum, master pounamu carver; the mighty Arahura, the greenstone river; Amy’s pounamu; Jade cutting blade; our hosts Jules and Mark in Fox Glacier

The Majesty of Arthur’s Pass

From top: up towards the viaduct on Arthur’s Pass; Waimakariri Valley; watch out for the cheeky Kea; New Zealand fern; Cass railway station

Our Journey Up the West Coast

We became members of a cycle touring gang in this week’s How Are You? Where Are You? podcast.

As we headed into the remote Catlins region of southern New Zealand, we were joined by a couple of good buggers from the States.

Brian and Nick taught us a great deal and we had a brilliant time riding through some of the most stunning landscapes these isles have to offer.

Laughs and cheese rolls were shared on the journey and Nick’s mechanical nous came to the fore when Baden’s bike Fausto suffered his most catastrophic failure of the trip. A gallant attempt to resuscitate him an in impromptu ER in a woolshed was in vain, leaving the pair stranded in the wilderness until a kind Russian family came to the rescue.

There were some giant hugs handed out in Balclutha when we went our separate ways. The Americans drawn by the city lights of cosmopolitan Dunedin while the local kiwis sniffed the smell of moonshine in the Hokonui Hills.

Gang Riding in the Catlins

Clockwise from top left: spotting the Yellow-Eyed penguin in Curio Bay; the same bird on our banknotes; more sage advice from Brian and Nick; riding to New Zealand’s actual southern-most tip at Slope Point

Cycle Touring in Heartland New Zealand

Clockwise from top left: sheep rule the roads; Gore would like to be known as the Brown Trout fishing capital of the world; Shannon serves up the moonshine; Gore operates a No Gumboots Inside policy; Cheese Rolls, typical kiwi grub.