Today was really a day of driving. We left the lovely campsite and headed South down the Southern Scenic route. We stopped in Tuatakere? apparently the Sausage capital of NZ and did the only sensible thing in the circumstances. We went to the butchers. They obviously haven't been to the incredible sausage shop in Masham Yorkshire which does about 30 different flavours on any one day but they did have 3 types to choose from (all lamb) Mmmmmmm. We stocked up receiving a butchers dozen (that will cause arguments) and then headed via the info site to get a Clifden caving map (Ash you gotta do this with us, it has climbing inside) to the Yesteryear Cafe. It was full of aged cool stuff and I had an amazing choccie milkshake and the rest of the litre of milk she'd obviously mixed thinking the glass was 4 times bigger ;-) while listening to the record player that Anne was chuffed with. It was here that I picked up Mark's msg so we gave him a call to find out he's been a superhero over the weekend helping with several incidents on an Explorer camp down South. Sounded very epic with marque's full of people blowing over in the wind and people burnt, broken and having fits but apparently everyone will be OK and my big bro saved them all with assistance. He's great. He's even greater in that he's going to send us a webcam over with Ash and a laptop that hopefully feels a bit healthier than this one so we'll be able to webcam home and see how beautiful you all look.
Right back to NZ we drove some more to Riverton where Ric magnificently navigated us to the Beach House Cafe for tasty tucker for lunch with a view. It was sunny too.
On departure of said cafe we stopped for some deep south ice-cream at which point as we explored the kiddies play ground with our ices the heavens opened so we hid under the play ship. Ric and Nigel ran away to hide from the rain so Anne and I went on the Sea-Saw. It was an incredibly good sea-saw too with big tyres under to help the bounce. Once the ice-creams became in danger though of washing away we too submitted to the rain and ate them in Emw.
We carried on our road trip to Invercargill which on advice we drove straight through and out the otherside to Buff the place the ships to Antarctica go from. I was driving and when we eventually got there on 4 wheels I felt like I'd done 200 laps of Silverstone on a bike. It was a tad windy hence the 2 wheel analogy and it was so tiring to wrestle with the wheel continually and concentrate on not being blown into the sea. Small blessings at least Anne and Nigel in the back don't suffer from travel sickness. I still feel bad about driving Doc Ali along the back road from the lakes to Newcastle not realising she was getting greener by the minute. Sorry Ali. Bluf was pretty windy. Not wanting to be outdone by my brother I went into an electronic toilet booth to pee and mid flow the siren started going off very loudly, the door opened wide onto the viewpoint pathway and I was informed the police had been called after an unauthorised entry. Slightly miffed and severely traumatised I did as anyone would, pants up and sidled out the door to see how many people were watching. Lets say it wasn't my best toilet experience but the view from the loo was good when the door opened. No I couldn't see a TV from the loo though Chris P, sorry.