Death to the sand flies, power to the people.

I’m sitting here… looking at a screen bereft of words. Sigh. Can I ever think of anything decent to put in my blog? And then it comes to me… I remember our very interesting camping experience in February. I was really tired; camping was the last thing I wanted to do. You know, real camping, not the kind that you can hear your neighbour snoring and actually have running water and a flush toilet. No, that’s not real camping. Real camping is beside some large body of water, stony ground, a little porta-loo with a tarpaulin around it and sand flies. Oh how I wish I had remembered the sand flies when I packed. I thought ‘hey, its summer it will be really warm and sunny and I can go for swims in the lake every-day!’ but I was wrong… very wrong. We arrived at Lake Hawea mid-afternoon after a long 6 or 8-hour drive. We climbed stiffly out of the van, stretched and then sought the shade because the sun was really hot. It didn’t last. The next day I rained, believe me you don’t want to be in a tent when it rains. “Don’t touch the side of the tent!” was the saying of the week. Yes, you guessed it; it was overcast for most of the week. Then they came… the sand flies. The first morning I realised that I forgot to bring more than one pair of big socks to protect my legs from the cold and bites when I was wearing shorts. The only ones I brought were pink and purple striped so it looked really funny with black shorts. With or without the big socks the sand flies would have their way. On the fourth day we counted my little sisters sand-fly bites; she had 64! My other little sister wasn’t far behind with something like 54.
“Death to the sand-flies, power to the people” we said as we squashed them against the window of the van.
Near the middle of the week I –bored out of my brains- wrote a campers philosophy… well… that was what it started as but soon turned into just a ‘camping is’ list. Here are a few of them.
Camping is:
- the only time you enjoy eating porridge
- trying to squash sandflies without your glasses on
- missing a comfy bed
- wearing a jacket to bed
- letting your life revolve around the weather
- messy hair
- going to the loo in the rain
- toasted marshmallows
- hoping to catch fish
- fishing in your P.J's
- reading Shakespeare
- hoping that the noise outside your tent isint an animal

Oh yeah, that reminds me we were terrorised by animals that week! If I remember correctly it was a possum [well, we thought it was] that disturbed us first. I was woken in the middle of the night by this snuffling noise. It sounded as if there was someone outside my tent looking for something, trying to smell it. I lay there, stock still… listening... Waiting for another noise to tell me what it was. Then I heard it again, this time slightly modified… it was outside the door of the tent. I can’t stand it when someone is eating with their mouth open, which is just what it sounded like… I almost screamed, not from fear but from annoyance. How could this animal disturb my sleep like that just to annoy me by eating with its mouth open! But I was to scared to go outside and tell it off so I just tried to go back to sleep. That morning as I stepped outside my tent I looked down and found a naked plum pip. It seems that my little sister chucked the bag outside the night before. Sigh.
The following night I heard it again. This time it sounded as if it was caught in the fishing lines or had something caught in its throat… gross.
It was about 6:00am and I was still recovering from my second encounter with the possum… that is when I heard it. No, it was not a little animal, this time it was really a decent size. It was a bull making the noise bulls do when they are upset. ‘Oh, it is such a good thing its behind the fence’ I told my frightened little sisters, ‘phew!’ … but then we heard some hoofs on the gravel road [just about ten or twenty meters away from out tents] yup, it was a whole herd of cows walking up the road. Oh joy and they have a bull with them. Those cows freaked us out all week, we were never sure when they would come back and when they somehow slipped our mind the bull would cry a warning moo.
We also went to Queenstown where the story of the animals terrorising me continues… goats running after us, donkeys poking their heads in our van windows and a big fat kuni-kuni pig. But that is another story.