middle of nowhere

For the past few days we have been exploring the Catlins, a region on the southern tip of the South Island. The Catlins consists of miles of rolling green hills, some covered with sheep and some looking slightly more rugged, and valleys of jungles running into beautiful sand beaches and towering cliffs over the ocean. We hiked up to the tops of waterfalls, explored tidal caves, tramped through sheep pastures and investigated a petrified forest on the beach.
Although the Catlins are beautiful, they're very remote, something we didn't fully realize until our car nearly ran out of gas as we searched for a town with a gas station (Luckily we did find one in time, but we had to wait half an hour for the owner to come back from lunch to fill up our tank.) In this part of New Zealand, most of the roads are still gravel, bridges are all one-lane, and any farmhouse can become a hostel - with the bathrooms out in the barn next store.
At one point on the main highway the following conversation occurred in our car just before a ten-minute "traffic jam".
Me: Sheep.
Amy: Hmmm...
Me: Amy, slow down, I think there's some sheep up there.
Amy: Whoa! Sheep! They're in the road!
Maya: There's so many of them!
Amy: Why are they on the road? Where are we?
Me: New Zealand.
Amy: Right. Will you hand me my camera?

Hopefully I'll get a chance to post a few pictures from our latest adventures soon. Next week we'll be doing the Kepler Track, a three-day tramp through some mountains in the Fjordlands - should be interesting.