Finding a hotel worries cyclist

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33447, 31 January 1974, Page 18

Finding a hotel worries cyclist

A schoolteacher from New Caledonia who is touring the South Island on a cycle has one pressing worry — finding a hotel each night.

“I can’t sleep outdoors in the mountains because its too cold,” said Mr John Dreyfus who is 43. Mr Dreyfus started his tour in Blenheim on Friday, and on his first night thought he might have to sleep outdoors.

“I rode for miles and miles, and there was no hotel,” said Mr Dreyfus. With dark approaching, he stopped at a farm house just north of Kekerengu on the Kaikoura coast and told the occupants of his problem. They provided him with accomodation and food for the night and asked him to stay longer. Mr Dreyfus said the hardest part of his journey had been crossing the Hundalee Hills, south of Kaikoura. “A farmer in a truck stopped and took me over the hills; he said he would take me to Christchurch if I wanted.” Mr Dreyfus will leave Christchurch tomorrow. He hopes to ride to Palmerston, go inland to Alexandra and Queenstown and reach Invercargill before February 18. At Invercargill he will sell his bicycle—which he bought at Blenheim—and use public transport to return to Auckland. Mr Dreyfus is the headmaster of a school at Poro, near Houailou, on the east coast of New Caledonia. He [is also a correspondent for a

daily morning newspaper in Noumea, “La France Australe.”

Before settling in New Caledonia he taught for nine years and a half in Algeria. Previously, he worked as a reporter for a French newspaper, “Le Republicain Lorrain,” in Metz. While Mr Dreyfus is touring the South Island, his wife, who also teaches at Poro, and their two children, are on a holiday in France.