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Reminder signs like this one near Moeraki, on the East Coast, are common in New Zealand. While cyclists are almost sure to notice them, drowsy drivers might not.

In almost every email she sends me, my mother reminds me to stick to the left side of the road, and so I do.

But two weeks ago, on a rural stretch of highway between Geraldine and Fairlie, I saw an honesty box advertising eggs across the highway, and I made a U-turn to check it out. A moment later, a pickup truck followed me in my tracks and pulled up beside me in the gravel driveway. The man at the wheel said, “G’day,” and not unkindly began chatting with me about homegrown eggs, fly fishing and the Catlins, the down-south region where I was headed. Then he got to business:

“I saw what you did back there, cutting across the road like that,” he said.

“Oh, but I looked behind me. There was nobody there,” I answered.

“But look what you’re wearing,” he said. I had on a blue jacket and green shorts. “In those colors, I can’t see you.”

Couldn’t see me? I get it—no neon colors—but what? Was I invisible?

“But you said you saw—”

“New Zealand,” he cut in, “has one of the worst accident rates for cycling in the world. There’s a lot of publicity about this, but cyclists need to help themselves out, too.”

His advice? Wear a neon-yellow vest.

Fair enough, and while I have not yet bought a vest (I know—I should) I have been riding ever since with my neon rain poncho wrapped around the rear of my bike. I have also done some homework, and though I can’t confirm that cyclists die more frequently in car collisions in New Zealand than elsewhere, the man was generally right: Kiwis are dangerous drivers, responsible for some of world’s highest traffic death rates. In 2011, 8.9 people died in car crashes per 100,000 people in New Zealand, the ninth highest rate in the world, according to a recent report from the International Transport Forum. (Britain bottomed out that list at 3.8 traffic deaths per 100,000 people, while Malaysia ranked highest at 23.8 per 100,000.) According to the same report, “New Zealand had 9.1 deaths per billion vehicle kilometres travelled in 2008—more than twice the lowest rate of 3.9 in Iceland. South Korea had the highest rate of 20.1 deaths.” And the man also was right that talk of car-bicycle collisions has been hot. It’s all over the news: In late 2010, five cyclists in five days were struck and killed on New Zealand roadways. And in September 2009, a woman evidently not watching the road ran over four cyclists at once in Auckland.

Most of these terrible events certainly were accidents, but some bicycle-auto incidents aren’t accidents at all. Two American cycle tourists—journalists and colleagues of mine who, by coincidence, I chanced to meet in Nelson Lakes National Park—were attacked recently by a driver near Wellington. The man behind the wheel was apparently stirred into a rage by the sight of the pair pedaling along the road; he leaped from his vehicle and physically assaulted one of the two.

Frequent memorials, like this grim white cross on New Zealand's coastal Highway 1, remind passersby of the perils of the roads.

And there was the highly publicized case in early 2010 of a Christchurch gentleman named Richard Freeman who threatened to “nail” cyclists with his black H-2 Hummer. He claimed to have already knocked two cyclists off the road and brazenly said he’d do it again. Police eventually became involved in the online frenzy of arguing between local cyclists and Freeman, who lives off of Dyers Pass Road, a popular cycling route I pedaled in early February. He eventually retracted his threat, but I trust he’s still a bike-hater. Moreover, his words still hang in the air for us on bicycles to ponder every time we hear the roar of a vehicle approaching from behind. And they also leave us wondering: Who were the cyclists that he claims to have blown off their bikes?

One of the most tragic and alarming collisions took place just over a year ago. German touring cyclist Mia Susanne Pusch, 19, had recently blogged about the dangers of riding a bicycle on New Zealand roadways. She railed against the callous, brash driving of truck drivers, calling them “beasts” and noting how closely they tended to pass her. Days later, a truck driver hit and killed Pusch. I, too, have nearly been knocked off my bike by closely passing truckers–many of whom drag double trailers that swerve uncontrollably like sheets in the wind. Many of the trucks are loaded with stock en route to meat factories, and I have seen firsthand the consequences of truckers driving carelessly: Near Kaikoura, back in January, my family and I saw the crushed and mangled corpses of sheep lining the road after a stock truck overturned.

So who is usually at fault in bike-car accidents? I tend to believe that cyclists, well knowing the risks of the highway, tend to do all they can most times to avoid collisions, whereas drivers have less need to worry about immediate consequences of carelessness. (A driver can fall asleep and his/her car keep moving, whereas a bicycle will usually fall over if not carefully operated. In other words, riding a bicycle requires awareness; driving doesn’t always.) Moreover, evidence reported last year in Australia suggests that cyclists, having a higher vantage point than most drivers and no obstructive barriers to their immediate vision, are more aware of their surroundings than drivers. I entirely agree.

Even without high-visibility clothing, the author is plainly visible while cycling on a gray, wet day near Dunedin. But Kiwi drivers have a relatively high tendency to hit things they didn't mean to, including cyclists.

So, is it safe to travel in New Zealand by bicycle? That’s the question asked on this forum, Travelling Two: Bike Touring Inspiration, and the conclusion seems to be “not especially.” Narrow bridges, apathetic drivers unwilling to brake, close passing and road rage are points that come up, and I’ve encountered most of these in the last five weeks. And while graphic billboards placed along New Zealand’s highways continually remind drivers not to eat, text, look at maps or doze off behind the wheel, these signs are hardly consoling for cyclists.

My last words (for today): I wear a bright blue jacket and keep a neon poncho around the rear of my bicycle, and if you say you can’t see me, I think you’re exaggerating. And if you do see me, please give me some space, because I’m as far to the left as I can be. Mom’s orders.

Along New Zealand's small rural roads, eggs are frequently sold via honesty boxes. The author found this box near Burkes Pass late in the day, and it was empty.

For the hungry cyclist fresh off of four days in the backcountry eating wheat flour dumplings, coffee and trout, nothing may be so gratifying for one’s most immediate cravings as filling a supermarket cart from vast selections of bulk nuts and fruits, aisles of fresh produce and shelves stacked to the ceiling with wine and beer.

If, that is, he doesn’t first come across a roadside honesty box, perhaps New Zealand’s quaintest local food experience. Many tourists in automobiles surely pass right by them unaware—but cyclists see these handmade, unguarded food stalls in the distance, usually first as a cardboard sign advertising some product of the homestead. Many times it’s just pine cones, sacks of sheep stool or firewood—and sometimes the sign is just a notice that a reputed local bull is ready and eager to mate. But other times these signs tell passersby of apricots for sale at $3 for a kilogram bag, or walnuts at $2 for a heaping sack, or garden fresh eggs $4 for a dozen. Some stalls—generally about the size and appearance of a doghouse—hold avocados, peaches or rhubarb, and the excitement as one approaches from the distance is in anticipating just what you’re going to get. One day two weeks ago, as I rode from Akaroa west across the flat and swampy farmland by Lake Ellesmere, just a bit south of Christchurch, I was starved and out of gas in a region conspicuously void of grocery stores.

Then, in the distance, an honesty box appeared.

“Please not manure! Please not manure!” I begged in prayer.

It was walnuts, a buck a sack—and so, for a scraping of change, I was saved by New Zealand’s homiest food tradition.

The honesty box is like an artifice from a fable, an instrument of innocence, temptation and redemption, and the opportunity to do good. And though they represent neighborhood, trust and quality, these unguarded treasure chests are robbed at times by scoundrels too cheap to drop a few dollars on fantastic, organic, homegrown bargains. Many gardeners in the honesty box business have even abandoned the trade because of thieves. Others plainly have grown wary, posting signs in their stalls, beside their produce: “Smile for the camera!” or “We can see you,” or “If you steal this lettuce, we’ll turn your license plate number over to the police.” Certainly, these warnings add a bitter bite of modern reality to the otherwise cheery experience.

But in the quiet Catlins, according to a home gardener I met named Pania, stealing produce and small change from tin cans is rare. Pania said that she has lost $5 sacks of potatoes on occasion but that overall her honesty box is a winning endeavor. By keeping it stocked with potatoes, carrots, peas and currants, Pania pulls in some $5,000 a year. She even keeps a pile herbs in the stall beside a note saying, “FREE.”

It pays to be honest, and this meager-looking honesty box in the Catlins village of Niagara generates $5,000 a year, according to its owner. Some small farmers fear that a developing Parliament bill could control or restrict such roadside sales of food.

Petty theft, though, may be the least of the threats to the honesty box, for a proposal, first introduced to Parliament in 2010 and still being drafted, aims to boost safety of food by tightening restrictions and regulations on growing it. Many people have voiced concerns that the measure could banish the age-old liberty of growing herbs or tending to a garden—and selling such homegrown goods via roadside honesty boxes. Titled Food Bill 160-2, the legislation seems to assume that health hazards are at play in current food production means in New Zealand, which may be true in some operations. But the bill may overreach its intentions, some worry. According to this blog post in The Healthy Home Economist, the Food Bill could go as far as empowering local police officers, as well as Monsanto employees, to double as “food safety officers,” who may inspect suspect locations—sometimes without a warrant.

But just how real the risk is that gardening rights could vanish may be unclear. Government officials have recently assured that the bill is only intended to regulate commercial operations.

Like honesty boxes? We’ll see.

Anyway, the gardeners and small-scale farmers I’ve recently chatted with are hardly concerned about the Food Bill. Some hadn’t even heard of it and shrugged when I asked, seemingly concerned with little beyond the day’s weed-picking chores or just which of their hens were waning in productivity and needed to be culled from the flock.

I, for one, just hope I don’t need to rely entirely on New World and Four Square supermarkets for my food needs the next time I travel in New Zealand—and as a cyclist on the move carrying 25 pounds of luggage, my next meal is always on my mind.

Ryan Monger (at left) set out for Costa Rica in 2004 looking for waves. There, on the beach, he found something much better.

People’s paths cross endlessly as they make their brief journeys through this world, but only occasionally do eyes meet and sparks fly. Even less often, the two paths will course together for a distance, and more rarely still do they stick together and proceed forward evermore as one—a rough description of love and partnership.

But who needs metaphors of motion when love strikes two travelers on the road—two strangers on separate trips who had probably assumed that their best companions would be their sleeping bags? Ryan Monger of Washington state was a single man in 2004 when he flew to Costa Rica with two friends. They had gone with surfboards and weren’t looking for much more than waves. But in a beach hostel Monger met an English woman named Joanna—and riding emerald curlers quickly became the least of his interests. The two spent night after night just talking on the beach, sundown to sunup. They adjusted their itineraries to keep on the same course, and soon they were officially traveling together. After several weeks, the two lost their footing completely and went sliding down that perilous, slippery slope.

“By the end we knew we were in love,” Monger explains, though it wasn’t the end. Monger’s three months in Costa Rica may have been up, but his journey with Joanna was only beginning. Monger was going home, and back to college in Santa Barbara, but he made Joanna an offer:

“I tried to convince her to come up to California by asking her for her favorite fruit, vegetable and flower,” Monger explains. “I told her if she came to visit, I would have all of those growing in my garden. She said raspberry, carrot and sunflower.”

Monger got busy in the dirt that spring, and when Joanna arrived his garden was full of weeds and arugula – but a handful of raspberries, several scraggly carrots and a single sunflower told her that this young man was committed. The two became a pair, and the next year they spent five months in New Zealand, working on organic farms (“WOOFing,” as it’s called) in exchange for lodging. Much of the labor was picking apples. Winter came, and their trip came to its end, and Monger secured work in England as a science teacher. Finally, as though the knot hadn’t been tied years before on a tropical Pacific beach, the two were married in 2009. They’ve since made it extra official by having a son and buying a three-acre farm in northern Washington, where raspberries and carrots are sure to grow. Sunflowers have been a bit more finicky.

Traveling does seem to facilitate encounters—especially between like-minded people searching for similar things. (Then again, I am surrounded just now by caravans in an RV camp in Pounawea, in the Catlins, where the most common greetings I receive are: “Makes me tired just looking at your bike!” and “Hate to be you on those hills!”) Travelers—especially those going solo—also tend to be more outgoing than they are when at home, and meeting others is just part of the daily routine. And so it was that Pauline Symaniak (featured in this blog several weeks ago) found a brief romance recently while cycling through New Zealand. The object of her affection was also a cyclist, a man she first met on the lower slopes of Mount Cook.

There is a rule that rarely proves fallible in encounters between cycle tourists: The two parties are headed in exactly the opposite directions. They meet, usually, on the highway, briefly chat by the roadside and then say goodbye and carry on. This is probably the chief reason that most such meetings don’t flourish into romance. Sure enough, Symaniak was going south on the West Coast highway and he north—but the man quickly rewrote his plans and backtracked to remain in Symaniak’s company. And while he was lightly loaded for a brief tour and she heavily encumbered on a bicycle rigged for two years of travel, they made their paces match.

As Symaniak says, “when you’re traveling, you’re free and happy and flexible with plans.”

Their companionship only lasted a week, and Symaniak has yet to know just what the future holds. They will likely meet again in the United Kingdom—but, she asks, who ever knows just what sort of a person a perfect travel mate may be while at home, among familiar things, stationary?

“(While traveling) you don’t see the person in their regular routine, their normal life,” Symaniak says. “Are they different? Would you find each other boring in normal life? You don’t meet their family and friends, which is part of getting to know somebody.”

Of course, to avoid the pain of difficult—and usually inevitable—farewells, travelers might just avoid making close friends while on the road. I recall Chris McCandless, the main character in Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, following just such a tack. While that route isn’t necessarily a recipe for starvation—a fate which met McCandless—it does serve up a generous portion of emotional loss. It precludes a whole world of potential, diverts one off entire unwritten maps of possible adventures.

And isn’t half the thrill of going anywhere just to see where you might end up?

One of thousands of properties destroyed by the February 22, 2012 Christchurch earthquake

If the ground shakes and no one is there to feel it, did an earthquake really happen? Sure did. Just look at the Quake Map records for Christchurch, much of which feels like an abandoned post-apocalyptic wasteland today. Since September 4, 2010—the day of the big quake at the beginning of the storm—roughly 10,000 earthquakes have rattled the region around this biggest city on New Zealand’s South Island, and thousands of residents have fled.

Some hostels, locally called “backpackers,” have closed, and I passed one that was a sad shadow of happier days, its sign tossed into a rubble heap and its doors and windows locked. So I stayed in a gloomy “holiday park” on Linwood Avenue, where $20 bought me a tent-sized patch of grass among the resident RVs (remind me it’s time to quit traveling if these sorts of places ever become my destination). In the morning I rode through town to have a look at what the earthquakes have done to Christchurch. It was a bumpy ride over miles of split pavement and spilled gravel from construction projects. Crews of workers appeared hard at work, but much of the city is yet to even be demolished. One sector of the city center has been entirely closed. Peering through the chain link fence down the abandoned boulevards and blocks of condemned buildings, onlookers feel they’re looking into a movie set or a scene from an unhappy future in which the world’s cities are only inhabited by ruins, ghosts and silence.

Even in some residential neighborhoods that are partly occupied, things are quiet. Vacant lots strewn with rubble tell of homes split to bits by the most damaging of the quakes—which hit on Feb. 22, 2011—and others are simply vacated, with bricks and shingles piled about the perimeter as these houses, quake by quake, disintegrate. In this small city of 400,000, about  10,000 homes have been condemned or destroyed and it’s expected that up to 10 percent of the population could eventually be scared away by the ongoing shaking, which geologists predict will persist for years.

A fence along an intersection marks the perimeter of Christchurch's closed-off city center

I spoke to a pair of local women on the street who said there hadn’t been a quake in some days.

“But that usually seems to mean we’re due for a big cluster of them,” one added with a nervous sigh.

In a bicycle shop, where I stopped for a bottle of lube oil, the owner told me, “Everyone is scared stiff here, but we hear some tourists are actually coming in order to feel an earthquake.”

An elderly lady with her husband lamented New Zealand’s isolation from the global community in such hard times. “Not everyone really seems to even know what’s happened,” she said. “People forget about us since we’re way down here on the bottom of the world.”

But Christchurch’s residents—the majority that hasn’t fled, that is—are hauling themselves forward. The city is currently carrying out a massive reconstruction project. And while structures are knocked down and rebuilt from scratch, the downtown has been resurrected in a hip and artful arrangement of shipping containers, painted and designed and outfitted to house coffee shops, apparel outlets, banks and other essentials of a thriving city center.

I didn’t stick around long, and by noon I was climbing over Dyers Pass Road southward. As surely as the gray gloom of Christchurch’s ruined districts had sagged my spirits, they ascended again as I gained elevation and finally topped out at just over 1,000 feet. From this saddle I took a look at the rolling wild hills of the Banks Peninsula ahead and said a farewell to Christchurch and the Canterbury Plains to the north, and I sailed downhill toward Governor’s Bay. I had decided I would reach Akaroa at the far southeast end of the peninsula that day. Locals warned me that this northern scenic route was a very hilly ride, but I underestimated the challenge. I was counting, for one thing, on grocery stores—but there were none. I was also expecting water sources. Opting not to go knocking on people’s doors, I found no faucets or fountains and so went thirsty for a full 40 miles and six tedious hours.

The spacious scenery of the Banks Peninsula is as exhausting as it is beautiful.

After that first climb out of Christchurch, I hit another one of perhaps 2,000 vertical feet between Diamond Harbour and Port Levy. Then the road turned to gravel (a surprise) and went up (a bummer) steeply (a heartbreaker). It was another 1,500-foot ascent, then down again to sea level, where the asphalt resumed. I was running on empty now and had found nothing to eat for hours but one ripe fig dangling over a fence. I had found one drinking fountain—except it was broken, care of the earthquake. I had a bottle of wine, and I was so hungry, dispirited and drained that I considered collapsing in the grass and unscrewing the cap, though that would have gotten me nowhere nearer to a banana heap or a loaf of bread. I knew that the grocery store in Akaroa closed at 8, so I had to hurry—and to my horror a sign directed me onward over an ominously named Summit Road. It was another 1500-foot beast, which I crawled up in pain, with a sticky throat and thick tongue. Over the top, I saw the town of Akaroa ahead on the shore, but it was too soon to cheer; six miles of coastal ups and downs remained.

I reached the town store half dead and just in time to buy a few pieces of fruit, six eggs, carrots and a three-ounce package of walnuts—for $18. Some 4,000 calories in the hole, I refueled before taking the last four miles—which included another 800 feet of climbing. My legs were near the point of quitting—athletes call this condition “bonking”—and I walked the last quarter mile to the gate. Thankfully, the Onuku Farm Hostel, familiar from my first days here in January, had plenty of room for me to camp, and for $12 a night I made myself at home for two days of rest, relaxation and mussel dinners foraged at the seashore.

This oversized replica reminds passersby that sandflies could be a lot nastier than they are. Photo courtesy of Flickr user kalavinka.

When Andrew Patterson with Radio Live New Zealand interviewed me several weeks ago about my claims that living and traveling can be expensive in New Zealand, he asked me what Kiwis might do to better promote their nation’s image as a tourist destination for Americans. I said that I thought New Zealand could do no better in promoting itself to America—Americans are already infatuated with New Zealand as an exotic, dazzling and quasi-fantasy land (Lord of the Rings has been a boon to tour operators here who lead walks through the film’s scenery).

But a better answer to Patterson’s question occurred to me only hours later: “Whatever you do, don’t tell any foreigners about the sandflies.”

Oops. Well, this is one well-kept secret that must come out: New Zealand is the generous home to one of the nastiest, most incorrigible, maddeningly annoying bloodsucking insect pests that lives. Called sandflies in common practice and roughly resembling gnats, these vampires of the genus Austrosimulium live throughout the islands. Of roughly a dozen species (exact counts vary), just two bite—the New Zealand blackfly (A. australense) and the West Coast blackfly (A. ungulatum)—and among these it’s only the females. Yet the misery for which these select pests are responsible is tremendous, especially for bewildered tourists who step out of their cars with cameras loaded for shots of Hobbit country but no defense against insects. Locals, mysteriously, seem to have adapted, or have just quit complaining. They even do their best at making light of the grim matter with sandfly sculptures and giant replicas and cafes and menu items named after the tormenters. I, however, have yet to have a good chuckle about sandflies.

Both biting species occur on the South Island, so help me. And though the East Coast does have some sandflies, the worst clouds of them turn vacations into nightmares along the western coastal zones and in the mountains, where rainfall and vegetation prove particularly hospitable to the insects. I have encountered some ghastly swarms near Franz Josef Glacier and near Milford Sound, but the greatest blood loss occurred in the Molesworth farm wilderness and at a national park campground on Lake Rotoiti, where I even risked burning my little house down by cooking dinner locked in my tent.

Just how bad can these bugs really be? Well, I’ll say they outperform even Alaska’s mosquitoes in wickedness. In especially bad circumstances, one may be encased in clouds of sandflies within just seconds of stepping out of a car or coming to a stop on a bicycle. Then they’re upon you, and rather than cleanly inserting a needle and withdrawing just enough blood to keep them sated until the next tourist passes—as the comparatively graceful mosquito will do—sandflies seem to actually munch chunks out of their prey. The bites hurt, and those insects that manage to latch on undetected will swell until translucent with the faint pinkish hue of your own blood. (Squash too many of these and you’ll begin to resemble a late-1980s designer art canvas.) Meanwhile, they release an anticoagulant that keeps the blood coming while causing itching in many victims. Most insect repellent seems to have little effect, and even if you happen to find a remedy that stops them, the pests will still swarm you in vile squadrons, buzzing in your ears, tangling in your hair and generally driving you mad or into a tent. Fishing? Stopping to admire a view? Doing some open-air yoga in the green grass? Forget about it in bad sandfly country.

A Te Anau pharmacy advertises relief from sandflies. Photo by Alastair Bland.

Yet I know Kiwi folk who enjoy the great outdoors—who even sit in the grass and read books—and surely there must be ways to stop sandflies. Good to know is that sandflies dislike poor weather, and when it’s raining and blowing may be the best time to stretch out in the grass with that favorite mystery novel or throw a fly in those sweet riffles just upstream from camp. But even when they’re bad, these insects can be managed.

Here are 10 tactics toward winning the battle against sandflies—even if the war is a lost cause.

1. Repel Ultra bug spray. It’s 40 percent DEET (diethyl toluamide), one of the nastiest bug poisons on the recreational market. Though it seems to deter the worst of stinging insects, dousing yourself with DEET-rich fluids may come at other health costs.
2. A 50-50 blend of baby oil and Dettol eucalyptus-scented disinfectant. This is a recipe we learned of while shopping in a New World supermarket, when a bystander saw us browsing for bug spray and scratching our legs and said, “Sandflies? Here’s what really works.” And it sort of works.
3. Geranium leaves. I don’t know what else to tell you except that I suppose you’re supposed to rub yourself with them. Sounds lovely.
4. Citronella oil. Rub it on your skin, but don’t hold you breath.
5. “’eaps of Marmite!” one Kiwi woman assured me. “You mean you put it on your skin?” I asked. “No! On your toast.”
6. “’eaps of Vegemite!” another Kiwi woman told me. “Supposedly it’s the vitamin B that the buggers don’t like.”
7. Drinking beer with a splash of kerosene. (This could be poisonous and we don’t recommend this.)
8. Eating garlic. Already doing it. No results.
9. Rubbing the skin with rancid bacon, as New Zealand’s West Coast gold miners did in the 1860s in their direst hours of torment.
10. Blends of olive oil and disinfectants like Jeyes Fluid or Dettol.

A government pamphlet available online reports that no oral medicines have ever proven effective against sandflies, though I’m keen on the beer recipe above. While DEET is widely recognized as a reliable deterrent, the only remedies that work without fail here are to keep moving and, the instant you stop, zip yourself into a tent.

Meanwhile, I’m here for a while—so can anyone offer ideas on what really works against sandflies?