Road Trip Day 23 - Ahuriri River Bridge, Omarama

It was a gorgeous morning! We drove along Lake Wakitipu to Glenorchy. It was in the opposite direction from Queenstown as we hoped to avoid some of the tourists. It was a beautiful drive, with the mountains on one side, and the lake on the other. We stopped at a relatively "famous only in NZ" store - Mrs Wooley's General Store. It had a bit of everything - organic food, postcards, magnets, general merchandise and tools! We bought a pack of chocolate-chilli biscuit (which turned out to be the best morning with coffee food!), oogled at everything nice in the shop, with Hannah commenting that she would buy lots of things in the shop if not that we are leaving NZ.

We stopped in this small restaurant to have lunch - Hannah had venison burger and I had fish and chips. It was delicious, and we took the opportunity to charge the laptop as well. The only irritating thing was annoying Chinese tourists playing videos on their iphone out loud, subjecting the whole restaurant to their bad taste of music! :/

After lunch, we continued driving. The original plan was to stop and walked around Queenstown. However, we changd our mind after seeing the enormous number of tourists! Both of us wholeheartedly agreed that we should continue our drive. Along the way, we stopped along a river - Roaring Meg. The story was that Megan was a violent, loud waitress at a bar, and got so famous for her behaviour that the locals named a river (which was equally violent and loud) after her. And they named the other calmer, soothing river after her easier-going mate (Annie). Now we know why they named the place we stayed as Gentle Annies :)

When we were almost near the campsite, a shop in Cromwell caught Hannah's attention, and we stopped in for fruit juice and cider.

After being lied to by TOP10 campsite (saying they would take dogs but ended up not!), we found a freedom camping site, which was by donation only (good as we had no cash on us!). We met a nice couple by river. The guy sells high-end audio systems, and they have been travelling around NZ for a while now. I parked in a shaded spot near them (they had the best spot in the campsite!), while Hannah and the dogs went for a stroll along the river.