Monday 16 June 2008

Canadian blood donor


We did an overnight canoe trip in Algonquin park north of Toronto, which was probably the best part of our Canadian trip. The park is pretty amazing, with thousands of small and large lakes available to explore by canoe. We chose a fairly easy route with only one 300m portage. We pretty much had the whole area to ourselves because it was black fly season. We camped overnight at a beautiful campsite on a point in a bend of Little Doe lake.

View Larger Map
Mr. DEET was our friend on this trip. From the moment we stepped out of the car for the next two days we were all covered head to toe in 40% DEET insect repellent that I bought at the hunting store. I also had the 100% DEET vial as a backup, but I was scared of it :)

A liberal application kept the black flies and mozzies hovering in a cloud about 10 cm from your exposed skin. The black flies are sneaky little bastards though. They landed on my back and crawled up under my T-shirt to give me a ring of bites around my waist. Nasty! They inject an anti-coagulent so the bite continues to bleed for quite a while after the bug is gone. Still, the bite isn't itchy so I'd take it over a mozzie any day!

Apparently all the moose (meese?) try and get away from the lakes during black fly season (they don't like them either!). Sure enough, we met one on the road on the way back to return the canoes. Cool!

No comments: