We left the rain behind as we drove from Milford sound back through Queenstown to the east coast, again in search of the sun and so Matthew could get some fishing done. It was a long days drive, but we wanted a few days of relaxation before we headed back to North Island. The next morning we headed to a little place called Karitene beach. The sun was shining so we headed for a walk along the beach to get some air in our lungs and so Matthew could see if it would be worth him fishing at this spot later in the day. While we were walking we noticed loads of mussel shells on the beach, so went in hunt ourselves. We came across piles of rocks covered in huge Mussels. So we picked about 20 of the best looking ones to have for tea. I was a bit unsure of this at first having never cooked Musseld, but thought it would be fun to try and free! Matthew was really pleased even though he doesn't really like Mussels that much as we were 'living off the land'. Matthew decided that it was a bit of a dangerous place to go fishing so we headed up the coast to shag river to see some fur seals on the way to Moeraki.

The afternoon in Moeraki was glorious and while Matthew went fishing i wrote some postcards and read my book, relaxing in the sun. I then prepared the mussels (they took a bit of cleaning) and although there was no fish for tea the mussels were lovely and enough and we had both had a really good day. The next morning we went and had a look at the Moeraki boulders which are huge rocks that have been eroded by the sea into smooth boulders. Similar to Devils marbles in Australia. They were really cool, with everyone slightly different. The next few days were spent driving up the coast back to Picton to get the ferry across to North Island. We had intended on getting some skiiing in, but as the weather was quite bad the ski fields we intended to go to were closed. We decided to give the skiing up as a bad job for now and hope for better weather in North Island.