Thursday 07 February

Sylvan DoC campsite, Mount Aspiring National Par, close to Glenorchy, west of Queensland.
Well the last 24 hours has seen the not-so-good and the absolutely wonderful in NZ.
I'll get the not-so-good out of the way first. It just has to be the sandflies. Last night was the worst we have had. We tried to sit outside and play Crib as the sun went down, but we gave up and went to bed just after 9 as they swarmed around us. John spends all the time in long trousers and a long sleeved top and covers every bit of exposed skin with DEET insect repellent. He sleeps clutching his tube of Anthisan, as he somehow still seems to get the did bite and the irritation and itching is bad enough to wake him up in the night. I usually manage to get through until mid afternoon in shorts and a T-shirt, they don't seem so bad in the midday heat, but get into long trousers and long sleeved top before the afternoon. My main problem is my face, where the skin is very sensitive at the best of times. I tried putting insect repellent on and next day my face was all blotchy and scabby, looked like an early case of leprosy, and it itched which rather defeated the object. Last night I tried some herbal anti-sandfly stuff I bought but it didn't work at all, they were all hovering around my head and I couldn't play cards because it required a permanent swatting action and this morning I had rows of notes around the back of my neck, under my chin and in my hairline.
Now for the absolutely wonderful and that has been most of today. Needless to say we were up early and on the road by just after 8. The early morning sun on the mountains around Lake Wanaka and then Lake Hawea was too beautiful for my vocabulary to describe. The air was clean and fresh, we stopped the car as we rounded a curve in the mountain road and from a vantage point looked down on Lake Hawea. The water was motionless, the sun's rays rippled across it, and beyond highlighted a million different shades of green, as the folds in the mountains produced light and shade in all their contours. Back in the car and continuing on our journey we gasped and marvelled at the scenery all around us. The memory of the sandflies faded into the past.
Not being city-folk we had decided to bypass Queenstown and continue west, on and up to a small place called Glenorchy and then on to Kinloch, a DoC site by the Routrburn River. It is so nice, it was 27 kms down a gravel track. I think we have learnt that the sites close to main roads were probably intended as car-parks for hikers as they usually had tracks leading off them. This time of the year they appear to be used by the large Motor Homes as a convenient and cheap overnight stop as they press on with their journey from one tourist attraction to the next. All the sites we have really enjoyed, and that certainly includes this one, require a lengthy and often quite tortuous trip, and then to return you need to retrace your footsteps. This one actually had a sign up saying that due to the narrow twisting nature of the track it wasn't suitable for larger Campervans. We pitched up and then went on a two and a half hour walk through magic forest to Lake Sylvan and around it's shores.
We are in Lord of the Rings country, as we climbed up the Kinloch Road there was Isenhard straight ahead, and from the campsite we looking up at Lothlorien. Hobbits could have appeared around any of the great big trees and dead stubs of trunks in the forest. We came back, lit a fire, stood a can of beans in it and cooked sausages. I did the washing up in the river, the incessant noise from which forms a wonderful audio background. Now we are sitting round the fire with a bottle of red wine. It's very windy which is keeping the sandflies away, but also not very warm. Methinks bed early again tonight.