22.12.18 The Catlins!

Saturday 22.12.18

It's raining when I wake up, so I treat myself to some more sleep since the Icelander told me yesterday that he doesn't care when I leave. The weather forecast predicts bad weather until noon, so why should I have it on the way? The sun comes out around half past ten. I still have the washing room with 3 showers all to myself - no one here but me. I set up the table for breakfast and - boom! - it starts drizzling just as I have everything set up to eat outside. So I pack everything back inside, quickly eat on the edge of the bed, and while I'm doing the dishes in the camp kitchen, a downpour starts outside. To plan my route and a possible campground for tonight, I stop in front of the pub before I continue, and I can use the house's Wi-Fi since I still don't have any network here.

I turn onto Rongahere Road, a country road that runs alongside the beautifully turquoise Clutha River and is practically devoid of other traffic, 30m behind the campground. Huge pine cones from pine trees growing here lie on the road. If I weren't planning to travel to Australia, I would take one with me and add it to my collection from the USA and Tasmania. Apart from several showers, it remains overcast and I follow this beautiful road while a steep wall rises on the right and the Clutha River flows on the left. I crisscross through the Catlins today, this very original region in the south of the South Island, which was one of the main reasons for me to take this trip. Today, I often drive on gravel roads, which are all great to drive on, but they make the car incredibly dirty. There are no tourists around, and I don't encounter any locals either. Agriculture, sheep, gentle hills, forests - a New Zealand dream. My car rumbles over the tracks and I can only feel the peace when I stop, roll down the window, and listen to the birds and the bleating of the sheep. I pass Clydevale - at least it's marked on my map, but in the end, it's nothing more than an intersection. I follow SH1 west for a few kilometers to refuel in Clinton at a map gas station. Here in the solitude of nothingness, the liter costs 2.09$ while so far I have paid at most 1.99 or sometimes 2.03$ per liter.

This place is deserted. Sometimes you can see a few farms in the distance, and they also look like ghost houses. On the further drive, I still encounter two local drivers. One drives past me with a disgruntled look on his face when I take a little break to take pictures of the landscape and enjoy the peace. He probably fears that I will set up my camp on his pasture. I continue on the gravel road Slopedown Road towards Slopedown in the south. At a fork in the road of two gravel roads, I was just checking my navigation apps to decide which way to go to get to Curio Bay when a nice New Zealander next to me stops and asks me if I know what I'm doing here! Yes, I think I was already a certain exception, alone with a camper in the middle of nowhere standing at a fork in the road. I follow the left road and find these gravel roads really easy to drive on, as I've had plenty of gravel roads in Tasmania that were full of potholes. I arrive in Mokoreta at around 4pm and now have about 50-60km ahead of me. The road becomes a proper road and suddenly I'm driving through a super nice rainforest: the Catlins Forest Park. The road is narrow and winding, I am surrounded by gigantic tree ferns, palms, and other greenery, gurgling small streams that flow through the mossy steep walls. Absolutely something completely different from the nature I have seen so far today. New Zealand - simply an eternal natural wonder. Fortunately, this road is downhill and I'm glad I don't have to drive it in the opposite direction with this slow carrot. Unfortunately, the Catlins Forest Park is not particularly large and due to the late hour, I don't have the opportunity to walk around much here, so I am now heading towards the south coast. In Waikawa, right on the bay, which is an extension of Porpoise Bay, there is a free campground. I decide to drive to Curio Bay first, where I actually wanted to be for Christmas and now I'm here two days earlier because of the weather. I still have to cancel my reservation there anyway. If they don't have any space left, I can still come back here.

I reach Curio Bay at 5.30pm. While it was still small and manageable here four years ago and only the ice cream parlor above the bay rented out a few campsites, there is now a large visitor center with a restaurant and several parking spaces. Maneuvering the huge motorhomes alone drives me crazy because they stand, drive, and roll everywhere, and I narrowly avoid several crashes until I finally have a parking space to ask for a pitch. The price list says 24$ for a powered site, but it ends up costing 30$. Wi-Fi is free. So I drive to my designated site, which is initially blocked by my "neighbor" with his SUV because he is setting up an ugly fence (!) right next to it so that his little constantly quarreling and screaming children don't run away. Eventually, I am on my spot and already suspect: I won't stay here for more than 1 night. What I had planned as the highlight of my trip is complete garbage. The path to the power socket leads me in a bent position through a footpath through the reeds to the neighboring pitch - I'm glad that the cable from my camper just reaches there. Wi-Fi in the camper - not a chance. You don't have any cell network either. The bathrooms are theoretically relatively close by, but in order to reach them, I have to walk behind my power socket on the "neighbor's property" and take an illegal footpath over a bend if I don't want to walk about 100 meters around several pitches and the main path. However, the manageable camp kitchen is a scene of Asian cooking excesses. The tables are covered with rice cookers, food leftovers, plates, cutlery, and bags, while people eat loudly. Children race around screaming, there are about 40 people in this room, and it is an unbearable noise. Next door are the showers and toilets, and that's also something to get used to: 3 or 4 showers for this now huge campground with 120 pitches, and only three toilets and two hand basins for women. Here, you feel like there are 10 mothers with 20 children who are all being washed now, brushing their teeth, and when you want to wash your hands, you wait for 10 minutes. In the camp kitchen, you could have Wi-Fi, if only the signal weren't so bad that you can't even retrieve emails. I return around 7.30pm, fry two eggs in the pan, and eat some bread after finding a seat. Several dining tables are absolutely unusable because the previous occupants left behind heaps of trash and food. Maybe they'll wash the stuff off at some point, but it looks like they had to leave the kitchen in a hurry. Unbelievable! I brush my teeth with mineral water in the camper because by 9pm, the bathrooms are so dirty that just looking at them makes me feel sick and I definitely don't want to do anything more than wash my hands there.

Now that the sun is slowly setting, I go to Curio Bay, where an incredibly amazing sunset happens in front of me, while behind me in Porpoise Bay, a perfectly round moon rises in a pink sky. That's truly magnificent.

It's cold at night, and when I need to go out, the entrance door to the bathrooms is also jammed, and I have to walk around this stupid building, go through the kitchen (here, the door is open and thus also allows access to the bathrooms from the back, which makes the access with a code number on the back of the bathrooms completely pointless). Shivering, I return to bed and I know: Tomorrow I'm leaving here.