The mussels that never were.
Upon arrival to the South Island, we went off exploring the Marlborogh Sounds (huge river valleys that are now submerged by the sea and offer absolutely breathtaking views*) We parked up in a fairly basic campsite, in a picturesque* site, overlooking the sea. The camping sign said "only take what you can eat from the sea/beach", and showed a picture of a hand picking up a mussel (we're talking the shellfish kind). This, coupled with the fact that the local town of Havelock is famous for its huge green mussels, led me to believe that there must be a ready supply of shellfish along the shore. Off we went in the drizzle, which was speedily turning into rain. After about 10 minutes of unimpressed looks from the unimpressed one, Jen returned to the van particularly unimpressed with the whole Ray Mears hunter-gatherer survival situation. After one hour, twenty minutes of shoreline scavenging, I returned to the van with a bag full (in the extremely optimistic sense of the word) of shell fish. In 80 minutes I had collected 10 decent sized cockles and no less than 4 smaller than average mussels (upon closer inspection 5 of the cockles turned out to be empty- pesky birds). My hardy companion then decided that our current site was no longer desirable, and that we should move to another campsite 10km back towards where we came from. The rest of the afternoon was spent setting up camp, waiting for the rain to stop, cooking in our van, reading (Jen), and getting fed up that the rain hadn't stopped and going off exploring the beach (Mark). By the way, the rock around the beach was really fascinating- it had basically been made from compressed wood and, as a result, looked, crumbled and even smelt like old wood. They made some stunning cliffs (geologically speaking!). Oh, back to the mussels. Well the sun started to set and my belly rumbled so i went to prepare my seafood feast- i was going to have them with some fried rice, garlic, onion and other veggies. As i went to clean them under the stand pipe in the fading light, the bag split and all my 9 shellfish fell into the grass. After much seaching and scorning the dinner gods, I eventually recovered 3/5 cockles and 3/4 mussels. Not my initial intention, but still a tastey addition to my fried rice. I returned to the van and set about cooking up said feast. After just 30 seconds of boiling the water to cook the mussels, the gas ran out! Middle of nowhere = 0 local services open = 0 replacement gas + 0 electric supply = 0 working fridge = 0 chance of keeping said mussels = 1 very vexed Mark, angrily throwing 6 shellfish back into the sea before sitting down to 1 meal of cold rice, cheese and tomato with a dollop of pesto to add any sort of flavour. Average time taken per mussel = 45minutes. Could have been so tasty*!

* Only applicable when the sun is shining.