The sandflies strike back

The day started with picture management and buying more ebooks. Then we checked out and started another great road trip day. Today's plan was driving at least half of Arthur's Pass. The first part was still through a wide valley with farm land and enormous river beds but then the valley got more narrow and the climb up slowly started. Along the way we found Gandalf and a viewpoint. At around 11:30 we arrived at the car park of Devil's Punchbowl. It sounds worse than it is though. We were preparing for our 1 hour walk to the waterfalls there and that's when we realized. Where is Machiel's small bag? We searched the whole car just to conclude that we must have left it at the previous camping. A call to the camping confirmed it. Since Susanne's Swiss knife was also in there, it made sense to pick it up. Sucks, but after hiking to the waterfalls we drove back and forth to get it, eating lunch while driving to win a little time back.

When we reached the same location again, we drove to the Bealey Spur track for a longer hike. It was a nice trail, not too steep, through the forest with views of the valley. At the top the wind was very strong which made it hard to make pictures of us. We tried our best and then went further to lake Pearson where we wanted to camp. It was cheap and the landscape was nice. We went out of the car. A little later there were a couple of sandflies. Not too bad though. We walked to the grass field to find a nice spot for our tent. There were a few more sandflies now. We got the tent from the car and set it up. Even more sandflies now. When cooking dinner it felt like by now the sandflies had called their mates from all over the country to celebrate our arrival. It was simply horrible. To make it all even worse, Susanne's spork broke in half. We had dinner in the tent and only left it once more to brush teeth before sleeping.Read more