Road trip first days

On Sunday is the big day, there is a family reunion. Yesterday we have packed our suitcases again because we are moving on to another cousin. We brought the big ones to Rolleston and lent a car.
After all the preparations we go to the reunion. There are several cousins. In total, including us, we are with 31 family members. We have a lovely day. We stay for the night and go to our next cousin in the morning. We have a lazy Monday while they do a lot of preparations for the road trip.
On Tuesday, in the afternoon we leave for the road trip. First goal is Moeraki Boulders. A beach with huge round boulders on it. It looks like some giants played there with marbles. Some of them are cracked open and shattered around the beach but most of them are still in one piece. You can walk up to have a view over the beach. We can’t stay here for the night but just 10 minutes further on the road we can. We are not the first, there are some more campers out here. It is a lovely spot, just a 50 metres away from the sea. We go fishing with the long line, did the same yesterday evening but we didn’t catch anything. The people in the other campers are with their campers, watching what we are doing. The first 21 hooks didn’t work but then the last four hooks come in. We caught four rigs, a small breed of shark. Now the other tourist come to us, they are very interested. Some come from Germany and I explain what is going on. They ask what we will do with them. That is easy, Nige cleans them and then we cook them and eat them. It tastes great! Fresh shark, swimming in the sea just an hour ago. But it is getting late and we are off to bed.
The next morning, we step out of the bus and almost straight on the beach. After breakfast we go with one of the buses to Katikipoint near Moeraki. A walk over the cliffs and then we see penguins, just a couple of metres away from us. A bit further on we see seals sleeping on the cliff. You can go to them in range of 2-3 metres. Deep down near the sea are much more seals. And a lot of birds, some more penguins. Very interesting. It is very high on the cliff and I’m very careful. Still afraid of heights. But most of the time the view and the amazing animals win it from me being scared. We go back to pick up the other bus and go on the road again to Dunedin.
We don’t have enough time to have a walk through the city but we get a pretty good view. On to the Catlins!
Cathedral Caves. We are there on the right time. Enough time to walk to the caves and it is low tide. Amazing caves, very high and you can go in on one side and walk through to come out on the other side. The only not so nice thing is the sand-flies, there are an awful lot of them and they like us very much, eating us alive! Back in time before they close the gate, you can’t spend the night here. We take off and go in search for a place to park the buses so we can sleep. We end up on a unsealed road, which is common down here. We drive around and it is getting darker but finally we find a parking spot where we can stay. We’ll find out where we are tomorrow.