After Milford Sound we decided to head straight to the Catlins, unfortunately Terry had other ideas but we'll get to that later.

We stopped off along the way at a place called Gemstone beach, there was a guy there looking for gold who had a makeshift dredge. It was absolutely pouring down but Casson was out the van the instant we pulled up to check it out. This might not seem strange to you but it turns out that he's paranoid about getting wet and not being able to dry our clothes. I never knew this about him before we travelled but it was like an obsession in South America and New Zealand and is a running joke between us (I may have even mentioned it in another blog)

Unfortunately he didn't find any gold or gemstones so we carried on towards the Catlins. About 5 minutes down the road Terry started making a really unhealthy noise, we were about 8km from Riverton which was the nearest town so we limped into the nearest garage there.

The garage was really helpful and spoke to the hire company for us and they agreed to fix it the next day. We still had the van so we decided to get some fish and chips and go and camp on the beach. The chippy was really odd, not least because if you wanted vinegar you had to pay for it and it came in a little plastic pot like a urine sample!

The hire company phoned us up a little later on and agreed to pay for a campsite for us with electric hook up (and showers)! It was a really nice site, there was a huge hall we could sit it with a TV and a real log fire. Casson LOVES fire and was up and down like a yoyo keeping it going but it was so nice to get out the van.

The next day the van was ready at about 3pm so we got back on the road and carried on to the Catlins.

We camped that night on top of a cliff, it was so windy that I was paranoid that the van was going to blow over (even though we weren't that close) so we moved a bit further away so I could stop worrying.

General points
1) Every creek or river that we crossed had a name, even if it was a trickle eg Harrison's creek, Cold water culvert. For days I'd been reading the names out loud and eventually Casson asked "why do you do to do it in an American accent?" My reply? "It's not an American accent, I'm doing the X Factor voice"

This then led us to each taking a turn at remembering the X factor contestants over the years and announcing their names using the X factor voice. Then Casson joined in reading out the bridge/stream names. THIS is what happens to you when your in a van together 24/7 for long periods of time. People are not going to want to be friends with us when we get back, we're turning into weirdos!