What’s worse, a mangled tricycle graveyard or a swarm of killer sandflies? Sarah and I got to make that choice last night when we free camped in the Buller River Gorge.

About 6pm, we had cycled nearly 80km and were both feeling tired and hungry, so we were riding along slowly, scanning the sides of the road for a good place to camp for the night. We searched for a bit and found a gravel road leading to a clearing off the highway that was flat and extremely well hidden from the main road. We thought we had hit the freecamping jackpot. Until we saw the trikes.

About fifteen old tricycles were strewn about, all of them mangled in some way. Thrown together in what looked like it could be an art project, junkyard, or maybe the work of a demented child killer. We both had the same reaction to the site: very creepy.

However, the site was too perfect otherwise to pass up so we decided to camp there for the night. We made dinner and ate quickly since we were both being bit frequently by sandflies. We were used to being bothered by them, so we didn’t think much of it. We then retreated to the safety of our tent and were soon amazed at how many sandflies were swarming around us. So many were landing on our tent it literally sounded like it was raining outside. Every time we opened the tent to grab something or pee, we had to going on a killing spree in the tent, swatting all the sandflies that had made their way in. We were both imagining horrible situations like the tent splitting open and being eaten alive and weren’t looking forwarding to getting out of the tent and packing up in the morning.

When we woke up, the sandflies were still there, biding their time and waiting for us. We formulated a plan and then dashed out of the tent and packed up our gear faster than we ever have before.

We got bit a lot as we packed up – we had to run in place while standing to avoid being covered by flies, but we did have one small victory against the little buggers. As we were packing up the tent, many of the flies invaded it searching for our warm succulent bodies inside. Little did they know the tent was about to be collapsed and they were trapped inside to die. Here is a picture of the carnage later as we unpacked the tent again.

In happier news, we have arrived at the West Coast are now in Westport. We are now going to turn and head South towards rocky coastlines, glaciers, and the Southern Alps.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 8:00 pm and is filed under New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.