Haast to Pleasant Flat

In Haast, several cycle tourists who had seen our trolleys warned us of the extreme difficulty of the Haast Pass and how they thought it would not be feasible to cross it with the amount of stuff we were carrying. We decided to do it anyway, but with fear in our legs and heads. From Haast to Pleasant Flat was supposed to be a rolling uphill road but we didn´t struggle at all to do the 45 km. We even had time to have lunch at the falls of Roaring Billy, a beautiful spot easily reached after a 10 minute walk through the rainforest.

The campsite at Pleasant Flat is the only sign of human activity in this area. There is nothing for km and km and the views are spectacular. The whole are is dominated by the Haast River and Mount Aspiring. We lit a fire as soon as we got there, hoping this would discourage the thousands of sandflies that roam the site but it was not to be. We glazed ourselves in insect repellent but there are simply too many and they are all after one thing: tourist blood! Even putting on the strongest repellent which is pure poison does not help. The little bastards sat on our clothes until the nasty stuff starts to wear off and then they attack. No matter how hard we tried, in the end all three of us got bitten and their bites itch like hell. We hid in the tent. Hundreds of sandflies are nervously dancing around in the fronttent. They are in our bags, shoes, food....everywhere. We had a horrid night. Apart from the bites, Ella was teething badly and she cried for 4 hours. Not the best start for what supposedly was going to be a massive clinm of some 15 km to the Haast Pass.