The World's Fastes Indian

I feel like me and Mike are just finding our groove in New Zealand as we round the corner of our last week. Over the last month Mike has mastered the manual shifting of our big rig and we seem to be surfing more often than not. It’s all starting to come together and I have to say that the last couple of days have been some of the most fun.

After leaving Queenstown we headed south, about as south as I will probably ever get, to Ivercargill. If you have ever seen the movie the World's Fastest Indian you might remember that the motorcycle loving main charter in this true story was from Invercargill. Aside from motorcycle racers my friend McKayla, also lives in Invercargill.

I met McKayla on my first stay at camp in Hawaii. She was traveling with Claire, who we met in Nelson, and became a good friend who I have kept in touch with over the years.

McKayla showed us an awesome time during the day we spent in Ivercargill. After breakfast, which consisted of eggs, New Zealand style bacon, toast and coffee we headed to a place called Bluff where they host an oyster festival every year. The festival was was pumping and there were oyster delicacies galore, beer, a stage with music and even the Prime Minister of New Zealand showed up to take in the festivities. I tried everything I could stomach – some good and some gross.

Mix and me slugging back a few cold oysters - can't say I'm a huge fan of these critters

This was more my style. 

After the oyster fest we went to the Invercargill Museum to track down more information about the Worlds Fastest Indian. Essentially, the story goes like this, Burt Munro was a motorcycle enthusiast from New Zealand who is famous for setting the under-1,000 cc world record, at the Bonneville Salt Flats in August of 1967. What is so impressive about this, is that Burt’s record still stands today and that his motorcycle was done on such a shoe string budget. Burt made most of the parts himself and traveled to Bonneville, Utah all on his own dime. His story is a really awesome one of tenacity and Kiwi ingenuity. He’s definably someone that New Zealander’s are very proud of.

The Fastest Indian (replica)

After our day with McKayla we bid her farewell and headed out to find some surf in a town called Riverton. To send us on our way McKayla gave us the indgediants to make the Original Kiwi dip. We whipped on up the other night and it was awesome! - Receipt to come.