Three days on the road and five hours' sleep later, Mike Stewart and Gareth Samuels are buzzing and humbled - and a bit smelly.
The pair, known as Eva's Angels, were one of 31 two-person teams to compete in the $10 Queenstown Challenge for Cure Kids - a three-day Amazing Race-style fundraiser from Auckland to Queenstown.
The teams finished on Saturday afternoon and were jet-boated to Queenstown Bay.
The event raised $260,000 for Cure Kids, which funds research into childhood diseases.
Mr Stewart, who lives in Queenstown but is from Auckland, is close friends with Aucklanders Tiff and Peter Mitchell, whose daughter Eva (7) suffers from gastrointestinal failure and is a Cure Kids ambassador.
Eva's Angels were the $10 Challenge's overall winners. They started fundraising five months ago and together raised about $11,500. Team Korbs raised more than $18,200.
The teams took part in a variety of antics up and down the country - BMX riding at Taupo, a military assault course at Waiouru and filming a music video at a Christchurch rest home.
Standing on a Queenstown Bay wharf on Saturday night, Mr Samuels said: ''It feels like one day to be totally honest. It was just such a ball of laughs and such a great cherry on top of everything. And incredibly humbling.''
Mr Stewart recalled how the pair had been given a lift by two sisters in their mid-to-late 50s, just out of Tirau, near Hamilton.
The women had only gone out for a mountain bike ride - but ended up driving them to Tokoroa, on to Taupo and finally Waiouru.
Mr Stewart: ''Their one concern was to get home to cook dinner for their husbands.''
Another man drove them from Christchurch to Queenstown when he'd only left the house to go fishing. The pair paid for his Queenstown hotel on Saturday night and invited him to the post-competition dinner.
Cure Kids' research and innovation manager Tim Edmonds, who was in Queenstown, said the teams raised $7000 just to get to the start line.
''We can't do what we do without their amazing fundraising.''
In a statement, Cure Kids interim chief executive Dellwyn Stuart said: ''It's not about winning or losing this challenge - it's a heroic effort to enable our vision of a healthy childhood for everyone.''
