[Trying out using WordPress directly for the blog instead of embedding a Sway]

We had a late night after the penguin vigil and then Diane’s guts were feeling a bit out of sorts, probably from the wacky eating schedule yesterday. The cribbage board is always a help. The weather was calm and even though our camper was parked at a 15 degree incline, we fell into deep sleep. About 3 am, though, the “Catlins Carwash” (as we are calling it, there are a lot of car washes in this country) started. Super heavy rain with gale force winds (for those who aren’t sailors, gale force literally means 40-55 mph winds, which is quite… spicy… particularly while sitting in a large, fairly wiggly, box with the long side to the wind). This experience involved the entire camper getting rocked back and forth while being splashed with waves of rain every 60 seconds as wave after wave of the storm came through.

The previous night I’d optimistically set an alarm for 7 am, about an hour before sunrise, to go down and chance seeing the penguins headed out to sea in the morning where they might be more visible and photogenic. When the alarm went off Diane and I turned to each other and joked that we were ready to see the penguins, barely audible above the lashing of the rain and rushing sound of the wind. We pulled the covers up higher and were resigned to stay in bed all day. All night a little thought had been eating at us, the fact that it had taken 2 people to push the camper out of our first, rejected, parking spot in dry conditions, and we have been parked on a grassy downhill slope all night in soaking rain. Will we be able to get out😓?

A little after 8 am we hear the camper next to us putter to life. We peek out the window shades to see how he does up the relatively gentle grade. Not well. He can maneuver pretty well on the flats, but once he tries to get up the tiny embankment onto the gravel road, he loses traction and just falls back into the grassy graveyard of our parking area. In a moment of conviction I realize that this is our ticket out of this crappy campground. I spring out of bed, pull on my pants, a rain jacket, and shoes and run outside to help. I wedge myself, along with the man’s female companion, under the front hood of the caravan and we rock back and forth and then PUSH and the caravan finally floats up onto the hard packed roadway. They are free (and I’m muddy from slipping while pushing)! Grateful, they immediately offer to help us get up onto the road as well, BINGO!

I run back into the camper where Diane is standing confused and scream something about leaving. Diane quickly and diligently identifies all the fragile items that need to be stowed before we attempt this maneuver and in a couple minutes I’m in the driver seat powering up the slope. At first it seems like I’ll make it by just not letting up on the gas and letting early momentum carry me through. No go. I get stuck about a foot from the road, just like the previous camper, spinning our little Fiat wheels in the sloppy muddy grass. Swap in Diane as the go-to driver for that “we are stuck” moment. Myself and the other guy wedge ourselves under the hood while Diane applies the gas…. And we are on the road! We exchange high-fives, thank you’s and happy travels. Then we pull the camper out of the campground into the visitors lot (which is “strictly not for camping”) and park to compose ourselves since only 30 minutes earlier we were expecting to be stuck forever.

We make coffee and some half-assed skillet toast, discovering that the fridge hasn’t been working all night (we think because of the grade of the parking spot, it needs to be flat for the propane refrigerator to work). We pop into the campground café for a muffin and, upon discovering that maybe unlimited WiFi exists in the café, Diane exchanges text messages with colleagues about impending work deadlines. Lame. We watch RVs, tiny Volkswagen-type vans, and TENT campers flee the campsite as we sit in the relative calm of the café, trying to figure out what the best move will be for the day.

Inside the café the wind seems amusing. In the camper it is a whole different situation. With the engine running a gust of wind actually activated the “parking brake in motion” alert (that we also triggered on our first day, go back and read that post). I was actually a bit concerned that this wind would be a driving hazard. We decide that what we need today is a rest day, get to a flat, well provisioned, and organized campground with access to some necessities (water, pump out, groceries, laundry, etc) and take a minute to re-group. There aren’t a lot of options from Curio, either go back to Invercargill or further east to Balclutha. East is where we are headed ultimately, so we head that way.

Once on the road, the wind dies down a bit (a BIT). The storm front is being deflected a bit by the western fjords and that southernmost edges of the island (where we were) are definitely taking the brunt of it. Driving conservatively the wind wasn’t a concern, but it continued to be quite strong all day. We attempted a few little scenic stops along the way, but Easter weekend seems to have increased the volume of people at these stops and if we didn’t see a safe parking spot and ample turnaround room we weren’t going to have it today. We prioritized getting a relaxing campsite over any sights today, basically. The one place we stopped was the Florence Hill Lookout. It had quite the panoramic vista, but guess what, that was because it was on top of a hill. So the wind was super strong. I actually had to seriously wrestle with the door to close it when we left. At the top there was a sign about the weather of the region to the effect of “if it’s calm it’s about to be windy, if it’s windy it’s about the be calm”. It also describes the wind patterns here as the “roaring fourties”, referring to the speeds of the wind. The gnarled growth patterns of the trees in the area certainly show signs of this frequent phenomenon. Hopefully tomorrow will be calm….

We press on and arrive at Balclutha, a cozy yet sleepy town of above average size (we guess in the top 10 most populous cities in the south island). We immediately make for the New World grocery store, along with the rest of the residents of the city, who are clearly threading the holiday needle along with us to stock up on supplies for Easter Sunday. We grab all the stuff we need, most importantly fresh protein and booze. On checkout the checker (and the store manager who has to approve all alcohol purchases) were suitably assured that we are at least 18 years old and there is no international incident in Balclutha on the 30th of March 2018. Around 1:30 pm we arrive at the Balclutha Motor Camp. It is a super urban motor camp and not at all the rural free-spiriting vibe we’ve been seeking so far; in fact, it looks like a good-natured quirky trailer park-based sitcom could be set here. Today, it is perfect! The manager shows me around the grounds to point out the open spots (including a level concrete driveway, yes please!), water, facilities, and while standing in front of an aerial photograph of the town describes the major landmarks (most notably the New World grocery we’d already visited). We fill Samwise up on much needed fresh water and pump the grey (as we still seem to be getting some “funk” while driving and shaking it all around). From there we are off to find food as we are starving. We walk down the main street searching for a burger. We sort of blow past this unremarkable joint until we suddenly notice that everyone in the town is in this café. We go in and order two of the first thing on the menu the “Kiwi Bloke burger”, there is no description of what this is, but it’s the first thing on the menu and is in sort of the top 3/4 of pricing, so how could we go wrong? The place is totally slammed, we can see the poor 3 women working their asses off in the kitchen trying to pump out food for all the customers. After 30 minutes or so our burgers arrive…Apparently the “kiwi-bloke” is synonymous with “everything” burger, or perhaps more specifically “a full Irish breakfast sandwich, plus salad?”. It really had it all, ground-beef patty, rashers, egg, mushrooms, cheese, lettuce, chutney, pineapple, beet, carrot, and tomato. Whoa! But, shamefully, it actually was exactly what we needed after the long morning, and we both mowed them down, possibly to the astonishment of the other restaurant patrons. We showed those locals how you eat a couple of “kiwi blokes”! Back to the motor camp where we did laundry and caught up on uploading our blog posts to the interwebs (WiFi still sucks). Went for a nice walk along the Clutha River through a field of free-range cows and a couple of adorable dogs (maybe our first German Shepherd sighting of the trip?), although still gusty, and made it back just before a good squall of rain.

After being on main power for a few hours the refrigerator is definitely still not working. So we move our perishables into the motor camp fridge and will need to call into the rental company for more guidance (and oh yeah Easter is tomorrow so good luck with that… as we have learned from sailing, it’s not a trip until at least two of your main systems have crapped out). For dinner we fry up some tasty lamb schnitzel (that you can buy pre-breaded) and green beans and carrots.

Tomorrow we will push on toward Dunedin and attempt some more penguin sightings….