After a night with sandflies sounds all around us, these were waiting to get their breakfast from our bodies. So in the morning we prepared with lots of long clothes, woolen hat etc. to give them no skin to land on. But probably it was too late and we got already biten all over the body on the evening before. So we packed our stuff as fast as we could and left this awful place in the direction of Haast. Not even the beautiful view with the fog above Lake Paringa could reimburse us for the maltreating of our bodies.
Mountains and hurting skin
The first kilometers went quite well but the sandfly bites got worse during the ride. In addition, the terrible traffic especially in combination with steep mountains affected our state of mind negatively. We had to stop once in a while to take some breath and get some energy to go on.
Spontaneous check-in at Haast
When we got closer to Haast Alina was feeling a bit sick and so we decided to check in at a Hotel in Haast. But this was not so easy as it was New Years Eve and almost all acommodations were fully booked again. We got a room for one night in the Heartland Hotel Haast. But for the other night we had to switch the Hotel to stay in Haast River Motels & Holiday Park. The weather forecast was not really good and we thought it would be a good idea to stay a bit longer in Haast.
Haast beach
After a nice New Years Eve with delicious food and playing pool in the restaurant of our hotel we checked out in the morning and drove over to the other accomodation. As we were too early to get into our room, we decided to leave our luggage there and went to the beach. This day the spooky light caused by the fires in Australia were present. All pictures had a orange touch as if one uses a sepia filter. We stopped at the beach but not for too long – as sandflies were present – again!
Route
Max elevation: 208 m
Min elevation: 3 m
Total climbing: 1075 m
Total descent: -1104 m
Average speed: 21.27 km/h
Total time: 03:11:01