ca. 95 km
In the night it started to rain, and it was not stopping the whole next day. No chance for biking. The tent was our home and our castle for that day, luckily the gas station supermarket was right around the corner. No chance for cellphone network in this area, but our neighbours received the weather forecast, which gave us hope for the next day. And indeed, late in the evening the rain slowed down and finally stopped.
The next morning sometimes the sun came out, but it was not really confident for a dry day. We rushed out with our rainclothes to the Haast Pass, the highest point of our New Zealand biketour that year. We started at more than 300 m above sea level in Makarora, so it was not that hard to bike to the 563 m high peak of the road. Just the final section was long and steep. But we had to change our clothes - no rain, instead much sweat inside.
The way down inside the Haast River valley is the most scenic part of this leg. It's partly very steep and curvy until we reached a one lane bridge called "Gates of Haast". Here we were already at 100 m above sea level. Some km later in a sharp left turn, the mighty Landsborough River comes inside and the valley widens significantly. Masses of water cascading down the hillslopes everywhere from the rain the last day, it's very impressive. This way we were biking a long time until the valley opens to the ocean and we reached the small township of Haast. No camp there during that time, we picked some food and continued to Okuru at the Haast - Jackson Bay Road. We were not so happy to go 17 km south in a dead end direction, but at least it was a flat coastal road. The good news is: now Haast has two own campgrounds.
Camping Haast 1 on OpenStreetMap