We drove south out of Dunedin and onto the Catlins route. We stayed on the coastal road for a couple of hours, until we came to Nugget Point. We parked up and walked along a gravel path that lead to a large wooden lighthouse and wooden platforms built on the rocks overlooking the sea. From the raised platforms we could see large chunks of nugget shaped rocks…quite a spectacular view. Nugget point was the last of the good weather for the Catlins. We continued along the road and grey clouds began to gather. Just as we reached Curio bay it was going dark and the rain began to pour. In the rain and dark we struggled to find a place to park and ended up in a layby with "no camping" signs. But we decided the weather was too bad for anyone to come out and move us on. The rain battered the camper and the wind howled around us all night, by morning it was still pretty grey out but the rain had turned to drizzle and so wasn't as noisy on the roof. We moved on from our layby quite early as technically we shouldn't have stayed there, we parked up in the Curio bay car park and set off on the short walk to the coast and the Bays wooden platform. Curio Bay is also known as the Petrified Forest due to the large amounts of tree fossils imprinted on the flat slabs of rocks on the shore. We viewed this from a platform before going down into the bay. From the platform we also spotted penguins….finally!! We slowly made our way down and managed to get quite close to one penguin that was stood on the rocks calling out to other penguins hidden in the bushes. We watched the penguin until he hopped off to join his friends and then we returned to the camper for breakfast.

After our exciting morning we drove out of the Catlins and on to Invercargill where we immediately found the local pool for a swim, a shower and a warm up in the Jacuzzi and steam room. And it was in the steam room (of all places) that we met Andy Pope. Our meeting with Andy made our visit to Invercargill a highlight of New Zealand, despite the bad weather. So, as you do…. We made friends with Andy whilst the 3 of us were sat in the steam room of Invercargill pool. We chatted about our trip, where we had been, where we going and the fact that we were travelling NZ in a campervan. He got very excited about the fact that we were "Pommes" and were travelling through his local town. He insisted that we follow him back to his house and use his land to park up on for as long as we wanted. Being terribly polite and also suspicious of everyone and what their actual motifs are we were very unsure about following this guy that we had just met in the swimming pool, who claimed to have 120 acres of land and a huge shed for us to park in. However, we decided we had nothing to lose by following him back to his house. We drove out of Invercargill and into the countryside with Andy's red ford ranger leading the way. After about 15 minutes we followed Andy off the main road and down a dirt track to a huge metal shed. At first we were slightly worried that our new friend lived in a farm shed, but Andy quickly explained that he had brought us to one of his many fields that he rents out to farmers, it was milking time and there was also plenty of calves about. We didn't have much time to think or question what was happening and before we knew it Andy had us inside the shed watching 20 cows all being milked on a large machine and a farmer on hand to explain the process to us. Next up we went through to a barn-type building where adorable little calves from 3 days to 2 weeks were running around. The farmer came in and gave me a large bottle of creamy milk and led me to a calf. I held the bottle as 2 eager baby cows tried to suck the milk out of it - amazingJ. Andy was not a person for hanging around for long and soon had us back in our camper and following his ranger once again, this time to his house. We pulled into the entrance of "golden acres" and down the small track to a gorgeous house with a huge back garden and nothing but fields on every side. Andy owned most of the land around his house but also had a lot rented out. He had built his house from scratch on one of his many plots with multiple living rooms, a large farm-house style kitchen (with breakfast bar island!!), play rooms for his 3 children, numerous bedrooms and bathrooms, a huge decked area out at the back, a fancy BBQ and of course…a hot tub. We were amazed. Andy told us that his wife and 3 daughters would be home soon and that he wanted us to have dinner with them all. Again, being terribly polite, we thanked him but said we couldn't possibly. He had to ask us 3 more times before he finally convinced us to have dinner with them. Andy's wife, Ange, was just as lovely and made us feel even more at home. Despite the rain Andy got the BBQ going, as we were entertained by their 3 daughters who were dancing about the living room. Andy cooked us off large steaks and lamb chops and served them up with roast potatoes and salad. I enjoyed a bottle of wine with Ange and Ben had a few beers with Andy. We couldn't believe how nice and generous they were, we felt ashamed that we were so suspicious of Andy when we first met….genuinely nice people. That night we went to bed in our camper, which was sheltered from the wind and rain under Andy's large metal shed.

In the morning we got ready quickly and went to knock on the door to say thank you before leaving. We had barely reached the door when Andy had us back inside, sat at the breakfast bar and was cooking us up poached eggs on toast. He then pulled out some wellys (or gum boots) and said we were going digging up veggies to stock up our van. Our hesitation was once again brushed aside as Andy loaded us into his ranger and set off for the fields. We trampled over several fields with Andy leading the way and digging up masses of carrots, leaks, parsnips, yams, beetroots, cabbages and anything else he could find. Poor Ben had been given the sack, which by the time we had finished had him bent over double with the sack full to bursting and slung over his back (the shock from the electric fence didn't help him much either!). We returned to the ranger absolutely caked in mud, the sack went into the back and we carefully climbed into the front....mud went everywhere. We returned to golden acres, loaded the veggies into the camper, hosed down our shoes filled up our water tank. We said our final goodbyes to Andy, not being able to thank him enough and just before we left he went into his freezer and brought out a large slab of frozen venison for us…..what a guy! We got back on the road and headed in the direction of Te Anau and Milford Sound.