Survived!

Did you know that only female sandflies bite, and usually only at dusk and dawn?

Well, from my experiences, all sandflies are female, and they have no concept of time.

We survived the Hollyford Track, although we came out a day early, and only made it one hut in. A couple of things led to this:

• My backpacking stove manual says that it will burn kerosene, and since this is the only fuel I could find before the trek, I decided to try it. It fails to mention that it will not burn it well, and will clog often, sometimes in the middle of trying to boil water, which will require you to wait for the stove to cool, take the stove apart to clean it, and waste lots of fuel in the process. Getting 24 km in on the trail with a stove that was becoming unreliable and wasting lots of fuel, which was limited, was not appealing.
• It dumped rain for 48 hours solid. While my tent stayed dry inside, and was generally a rock-star, the prospects of hiking 2 days in dumping rain, with tearing down and making camp the everyday in the rain, with no means to dry gear, was less than ideal. Also, the hut that we were camped outside of was nice and dry, and allowed us somewhere to watch the rain come down off the mountains.
• SANDFLIES! Milford Sound is infamous for them, and I see why now. We thought they were bad before, but we knew nothing. They swarmed here. Within minutes, any piece of exposed skin was covered. And most remarkably, unlike other sandflies, these ignored DEET after about 30 min, bite through 2 layers of clothing, and found their way into any little crack in the door or space in the zipper of the tent. And, I react worst to these, with a large raised bump that itched so badly that it would wake me from sleep, and lasted for days!

But Milford Sound itself is amazing. 2,000 m tall sheer cliffs that rise from sea level, with water pouring off of them everywhere.

Still no fish caught, although we are getting better at casting, and have been getting advice and tips from many people along the way. The car is rocking so far, and is invaluable to us. We had to buy 2 new tires for it (got a flat and the other was on its way out) but got a great deal on used tires.

We head to Stewart Island in the next day or so, which is the best place to see wild kiwi in all of NZ. Hope to call people on Thanksgiving to say hello before.

~ matt

PS- More pictures soon.