Mrs B is thinking of taking a 3 month sabbatical to visit New Zealand, and if I promise to behave, she said I can go too🙂. It won’t be a wall to wall biking holiday, but we’d like to do a few days doing the classic rides on both islands. If possible, I’d really prefer to take my own bike and chuck it in the back of a hire car/van (old injuries mean that I’ve got quite a tailored setup on my own bike, and I often get neck & shoulder pain on hire/demo bikes). We’ve travelled by air with our bikes quite a few times, but am wondering whether it’d be a bit more stop-over friendly to just get our bikes air freighted out to NZ in bike boxes. I’ve no idea on cost yet, but just wondered if anyone on here ever done anything similar? If so, how did you get on? Did the bike arrive in one piece?
Sent bikes to Oz (about 6 of them) a few years back with transglobalexpress, they are a freight broker so some better prices but you will need to sort out some customs stuff and will probably need an address to ship to.
Recently I've taken them on the plane with me.
One idea is you might be able to get a better balance of flying with the bike and shipping clothes in a smaller box vacumn packed to get the volume down
Ah, thanks Mike, I hadn’t thought of the idea with the clothes.
Shipped my bike out on a slow boat as we were/are here for 2 years. When we came on holiday for 3 weeks prior to that we bought 2nd hand bikes here and sold them after we left (I have a brother here so that made logistics much easier). In total (depreciation and fees) that only cost us £250 for 2 ~2015 GT Sensor Elites.
I'm not sure what I would do in your case, depends how much you like riding YOUR bike.
yeah it's what I did flying back this time, didn't do too badly with what I started out with back here!!
I air freighted a bike to Aus for a similar trip, but the sending courier didn't get the paperwork right and I had to pay around $600 taxes and handling fees because I was technically importing the bike 🙁 So take care if you do things that way.
Personally I'd travel with the bike in a decent wheeled bag. I've often stored mine in left luggage at stopover airports if I was visiting for a few days to avoid dragging the bike into the city.
I like Mike's suggestion of couriering other stuff instead if you need to - it'll be lighter and less valuable. Your bike going missing is a trip ruiner, but you can always buy more pants...
you can always buy more pants…
Yes, NZ has an excellent variety of homegrown fashions.
Rough costs:
air freight a bike ~ £250
fly with your bike as luggage ~ £100
bike hire ~ £40 per day
Thanks for the feedback. Some good suggestions that we hadn’t thought about. For the amount the riding we’d like to do, I think the cost of taking our own bikes will be close to hiring bikes. Like the idea of freighting out a couple of boxes of clothes, walking boots etc., and travelling with bikes in Evoc bags, rucksacks on back etc.
If the costs are close then you'll have o trade off the comfort of your own bike vs the wear & tear.
Transporting bikes by air can be quite hard on them. Do you have to buy a bike bag?
Transporting bikes around in the back of your car is a headache - they take up space that you might want for other kit.
However much of the riding you might want to do will be nowhere near decent hire shop (i.e. if you have particular requirements on your bike & fit).
Although TBF, I'd just be doing a few days riding form ChCh, Nelson, Alexandra and Rotovegas to keep me happy, lots of bike park and back country to do from there, which could work with hire bikes.
Transporting bikes by air can be quite hard on them. Do you have to buy a bike bag?
With a decent bag it's not really, especially long haul where it's containerised.
Back in 2009 I flew via LA with Qantas/BA and they let me take a bike for FREE, worth checking. Loads more luggage that way round too.
If you take the bike on the plane or post the bike make sure you clean it to within an inch of its life. NZ customs do not mess about!
You want to fully strip and clean every component - inside the tyres, inside seat tube and bottom bracket etc
Saw a few people getting fined $250nzd, for slightly dirty hiking shoes.
Bikes these days are mostly part of your luggage allowance, so it's just knocked off your total KG, via US does give bigger allowances on some airlines but they are being cracked down on.
We flew with bikes for a 1 month stay in 2001 (staying in / travelling by camper van). Fairly serious mtb couple (Mrs was racing at elite level) so bikes seemed essential.
If going again we wouldn't bother and would just take kit (shoes, pedals, helmets etc). Bikes just got in the way most of the time, topped off with some transit damage and a little hassle with extra cleaning on entry. You'll be doing so many other things (not like doing a week in the Alps where mtb is the primary reason for the trip).
If you take the bike on the plane or post the bike make sure you clean it to within an inch of its life. NZ customs do not mess about!
This.
tbh it is easier to just hire unless you really want your bike. Hire and E-bike and go wild 😉
I've done it enough and might have got a slightly easier ride coming from Oz but it's sensible not forensic there - no need to do inside the tyres as somebody suggested 😉 I can generally have one clean enough to meet Oz/NZ rules in a couple of hours.
Another thing to consider is if you plan to post any outdoor gear then I think you pay a flat fee for decontamination on the way in. This is different to the rules if you are flying with your gear, where they'll inspect it first and only clean if it isn't up to scratch.
Our friends fell foul of this when they shipped tents and other camping gear over. They spent hours cleaning the stuff to within an inch of their life, were complemented as "the cleanest I've ever seen" by the customs lady, still had to pay $600...
Living in NZ is harder, because every bike trip overseas ends in a long trip to the car wash or frantically scrubbing your 5.10s in a hotel sink 😀
I've found NZ Biosecurity (in Wellington at least) to be pretty friendly and reasonable. Once they see sparkling clean tyres on my bike they're generally happy.
Make sure to check inside your tyres for weasels though. They're sneaky.
Just air freighted two bikes to NZ using transglobal/TNT. Cost £600 and was a complete nightmare. I made sure all the (complex) paperwork was sorted beforehand only for the courier to mess it up completely. Ended up with bikes arriving a week late in badly damaged boxes. By some miracle the bikes were ok though.
If it’s a bike focused holiday then take your bike as luggage. If not then just hire, although there is amazing riding here, it’s sparse compared to UK/Europe...
I'd definitely agree with Jimmytripod on the occasionally sparse riding.
A lot of the best (singletrack) riding was in the slighty more populated areas which also gave more decent bike hire options. The riding in the more remote areas (e.g. the southern fjordland) tended to be more gravel road farm and pylon tracks so bike choice wasn't as critical.
Hiring bikes might also yield access to more information about the riding available in an area (I guess less of an issue now with GPS, strava etc).
Hmm, just had chance to check replies - thanks again for the feedback. Quite comfortable about travelling by air with the bikes, as we’ve done it loads over the years - but only in Europe. It’s really good to know about the bio-security stuff with NZ. It’s sounding like it’s going to be more sensible to hire, and maybe just take our own (pre-cleaned) saddles & pedals. Added bonus of not taking our own bikes is I guess we’ll be able to get away with a smaller & cheaper hire car.
So long as you clean bio isn't that bad, worst hit I've heard of was the first year of ews/crankworx where the pro's let the side down!