Tents all dry finally we were off further north to a place called Karamea. Steve and Al had seen a picture of it which looked beautiful and wanted to go so off we went. The road to Karamea takes you up and around the mountains and then back down to the coast and is also the end of the road once you get there so it's the same way back.

The weather on the West coast is very unpredictable and gets a lot of rain and yo yo temperatures, today was one of those days that started off sunny then drizzle then torrential rain and wind. We were hoping that it would be a passing thing and we could find a nice sheltered spot for the tents and go and explore the area. We got there and once again there is very little to explore, there looked to be one shop which was attached to the petrol station I don't even remember a visitor's information spot because these are what we usually head to when we first get to a place. We drove to the beach thinking that we'd see something like the guys had seen in the picture that led us here but there was nothing special at all. Quite deflated and p*ssed off we had to now drive back via Westport for 2hrs on the same road we'd just come off of, we had lunch and jumped straight back into the car to try and make some of the journey to Abel Tasman. By now we had learnt that there is very little point staying somewhere just for the sake of it or hoping that the weather will brighten up because you could be waiting quite a while.

Driving back up the mountain the rain was really coming down now and didn't appear to be stopping the further we went. We were driving to Murchison which is on the way to Abel Tasman depending on what the time was we were going to see if we could make it the rest of the way today. As mentioned the rain was like nothing I'd ever seen before, the further inland we went the more waterfalls we saw that were falling onto the road and the higher and faster the river we were following went, it really was quite amazing and I completely appreciated that we were in the 4X4 Terrano because ploughing through water was easy as bro! (Sorry for the local talk)

Upon arrival into Murchison it was easy to say that we couldn't go any further so had to find somewhere cheap we could rest our heads for the night. This came in the form of a small run down shack with the majority of it sectioned off as sleeping areas, it wasn't inviting or somewhere you would ever book into intentionally but it was only one night and I was pleased we had our own sleeping bags as I'm not sure if the bed linen had seen a washing machine since it's creation. The house was owned by two chaps who did gold panning and deer / wild boar hunts for tourists so really we were dosing down in their house. We had made up a huge pot of chilli the night before so scoffed that down for dinner watched a film and went to bed. We all slept quite well that night surprisingly.