Before heading to Christchurch for the SCOT reunion (we were going to stay with my friend Shanon who I used to work with on the ship) we thought we'd nip to Akaroa for a few nights. We got there quite late so we camped there that night and the next morning it was cold, wet and miserable so when Shanon text us to ask us if we wanted to come a night early we jumped at the chance! We had a walk around Akaroa before heading back to Christchurch, it's a lovely town bu...

On the way to Kaikoura we had a detour inland and went to see castle hill rocks, they were basically huge rock formations in the middle of nowhere but they were pretty impressive. It was raining though so the walk around them was really slippy but for once I didn't fall over. Kaikoura is a lovely town on the coast, we found a great campsite right next to the beach and found a spot where we could have a campfire, Casson was off right away looking for wood. Unfo...

We didn't really have much time in Dunedin so we decided to drive around the peninsula and check out a few sights like lovers leap before moving on. It was really nice there, great views. After the walk to lover's leap we sat at the top of the hill with a brew watching the clouds roll in. At one point it was a blue cloudless sky to our left and black thunderous clouds to our right. That evening we made our way up the coast and stayed on the beach just outside...

After our night on the cliff we were up and out early and heading towards slope point, after a quick stop here we carried on to the petrified forest. This was pretty cool, the tide was out so you could see all the petrified trees in the sand.I'd walked on ahead and Casson had stopped to look at something. When he caught up with me he said he thought he'd spotted a yellow eyed penguin. They're quite rare but it was a known spot for them. As we walked back we went ...

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...