So we have made the bold decision to send our bicycles home. The coldness of winter is starting to grip us in Italy which means cycling was starting to not look as fun. We also are heading to Greece, Turkey then India so we dont have the time to cycle around anymore (as we only have two weeks each in Greece and Turkey). So we were toying with either selling the bikes here in Italy or sending them home.
After some heated debates and reflecting on our travels we could not bear to sell the bikes. So next we had to try and ship them home. This proved to be difficult, as companies do not ship small items (ie. bike boxes) to NZ. Well they do, but at a heafty price of 1000euros on a plane. So we started researching the Italian Post System. So far we have sent our packs home via post from Vietnam and numerous other packages around the world and it has worked out fine. Our problem here was that the size of the bikes was over the allowable limit (of 1m max dimension). So Nat utilised all her mathematical prowess and solved some complex trig functions to arrange the bikes in boxes that were under the limit. We ended up taking the forks, handlebars, seats, pedals and wheels of the bikes and putting these in seperate boxes. We also had to send all our gear home, like our panniers, racks and cycling clothes (which are worth more than the bikes!!). So after modifying countless boxes, we came up with 2 large boxes with the bikes and 2 smaller ones with the gear.
Because they were so bulky we had to take them to the post office from our campsite on the outskirts of Rome on the metro on different days. The guys at the post office were in hysterics the second day we arrived with a big box to NZ, but by the fourth day and box they were laughing saying "no more packages to NZ". But it turned out very cheap to send them and fingers crossed the kids arrive safe for we have many places we want to cycle back in NZ.
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