Sorry - we wrote this on the 20th Jan...

.... but due to technical issues we couldn't publish it!!

It's not every night you get to go to sleep, with your van overlooking a remote, wave lashed, beach, while a great big sea lion wanders around looking for a spot to sleep. We kind of knew the Catlins was a bit off the beaten track. This was confirmed at the local tourist office, staffed by volunteers, who when we said we wanted to relax said, "Not much else goes on round here". Also, when you ask where you can buy bread from and the answer is given in kilometres, then you get there to find it is frozen bread only, it kind of confirms it.

Fortunately, we have calulated that the most cost effective food to buy round here is carrot cake and we are also still stocked up from David and Marguerite's generosity.

There are several modes of weather that can be experienced round here. Overcast and rainy. Sunny but windy. Right now we have an interesting sunny, overcast, rainy and windy effect going on.... Well, we were told to expect a UK summer, and it's damned near identical to the last few UK summers, but with sea lions and less working.

The Catlins has lots of little beaches, tracks, waterfalls, and hidden gems to explore. Yesterday was a "follow the brown sign day". These signs indicate the local tourist attractions. We saw a couple of pretty waterfalls but our favourite so far has been the Cathedral Caves. These are large caves,accessed via a long, sandy beach. You can only get into the caves at low tide, and even then have to wade a bit through knee deep water to get to another set of caves. The fun was increased by going to the back of the massive caves and making goblin noises. Please note: only one of us did that and it wasn't Kara.

We also spent two nights at Curio Beach. On one side of our campsite was a long protected, sandy beach (3 miles long) called Porpoise Bay. Allegedly 20 dolphins live here but they are VERY elusive. On the other side is Curio Bay, which has a fossilised Jurassic forest, only visible on the sea floor when the tide is out. It's also home, (again allegedly), to 5 families or rare yellow eyed penguins.

Special things we have done:
- gone to a remote campsite on the basis of "there's always a good walk you can do from those campsites" only to discover that it was boxed in by cliffs, ocean and farmland. The only walking option was back down the dirt track we drove in on.

- Had to spend two nights at said campsite because a certain member of team Stanford accidentally stuck two nights fees in the honesty box, and having spent that £3 we were damned well going to stay there

- almost walked into a 1 tonne, full grown, aggressive, adult male sea-lion on the beach, because "we weren't really looking where we were going". This caused much amusement to German wild life spotters. We know that sea-lions are dangerous. As our guide on a tour we did last time we were out here said "If a sea-lion approaches you, it wants to do one of three things - play with you, fight you, or make love to you. All 3 involve biting."

- It has come to Martin's attention that sea-lions are a bit like his old uni flatmate. Sometimes they are on the beach sleeping, sometimes they are elsewhere. But you never ever see the transition from one state to another.

- Thought we saw a dolphin, only to discover it was a seagull, doing a dolphin impression (it had a wing stuck up like a dorsal fin, the tricky bugger).

- Averaged approximately 20 minutes per new campsite, attempting to ensure van is perfectly flat. Not had much success but at least now we can figure out which way we are sloping so we put out the pillows so we sleep without waking up with a head full of blood.

- Totally failed to see the penguins coming in on the dead cert "Everyone sees a penguin" beach. Off again later to give it a second go.

In summary, the weather hates us, the wildlife spurns us, the Germans laugh at us, but our camper van is cosy, and we are full of carrot cake. Oh yeah, and we haven't been to work for more than 150 days.


UPDATE: we got to see the penguins coming in. Hooray!!!