Sojourneyers – One family's adventure

Captain James Cook was also no fan of sandflies!

Before I start peppering this blog with posts about the grandeur and beauty of NZ and making exhaustive use of the thesaurus to come up with new ways to say “gorgeous”, after a sleepless night spent scratching, I must vent about the one (and only one) complaint about this country so far–the ubiquitous sandflies on the West Coast of the S. Island.  I may be overly susceptible to their unique agony (as evidenced by the 60 sandfly bites that covered my legs after a trip to Miami last year), but I’m finding them more troublesome than the mosquitos in SE Asia.  Their small size make them difficult to spot, as do their lack of an identifying whine like mosquitos and they don’t limit their prowling hours to dusk. And sandflies is a bit of a misnomer, because their presence is not confined to beaches–they haunt lakes and parks and car pullouts.  The welts from their bites increase in itchiness over several days and ankles are a preferred target. So, if you see me wearing my Tevas with long pink socks (channeling a Midwestern Comparative Lit professor), know that I haven’t (yet) thrown all fashion rules out the window — just that desperate times call for desperate measures.