29.12.18 McKenzie Country, Pudding Hill and a campground all to myself

Saturday 29.12.18

The alarm goes off at 7.30am - it's raining. Phew! In the last 3 days I have been so lucky, whenever necessary, the sun was shining - at Hooker Valley Track as well as at Mackenzie Pass. I manage to get the last available shower. There is a bundle of grass in the shower cubicles. Apparently, it has recently been mowed but not raked, and people bring it in on their feet to the shower area. A tiny frog sits on the shower wall and enjoys being constantly showered. I have breakfast, wash up, rearrange the still not dried laundry in the camper so that it can dry during the drive. At 10 past 10, I roll off the campground. Fairlie itself is a cute town and it's quite busy on Saturday morning. In the Bakeshop - either a celebrity or simply the best one around - people are queuing up for pies, which are the specialty of this shop. I'm not into pies or queuing, so I stroll up and down the main street, manage to buy a few pairs of woolen socks and merino shirts to wear underneath and yet another scarf in another store. The sheep thief Mackenzie even got a monument here, and the area was named after him. I'm in Mackenzie Country! That's something, isn't it, when you're actually a criminal and whole regions are named after you!

I check my navigation app and my map and decide to drive to Lake Opuha first. On the way there, I'm overtaken by several cars pulling boat trailers. About 12km north from Hwy79, you reach the small lake, where some boats are making a lot of noise. Families are camping by the shore, children are splashing around. No tourists, but also nothing really where I want to stay - it's too noisy for me. I follow the country road and soon I'm back on SH79, constantly harassed by other cars, campers, and trucks - it's so annoying with this slow vehicle!

I soon turn left and follow a small country road that goes up and down and suddenly turns into a gravel track. Well, back to gravel and rattling. I follow my navigation towards Peel Forest because there is a campground there. But when I'm almost there, I don't really like it, so I turn around and drive back to the main road. I reach SH72, which is the Inland Scenic Route, and I think I'll head to the campground in Pudding Hill just because of the name, which is marked on the Wikicamps app. The road is good to drive on, on my left are the mountains and there are many cows grazing in front of them - no sheep to be seen here. Suddenly my navigation tells me to turn left and I think, "hmm - why do I have to leave the main road?" and shortly afterwards, I'm back on a gravel road. It's still good, but you can't make as much progress as on an asphalt road, so taking a shortcut on a gravel road doesn't save time. I don't understand the navigation because I entered the fastest route, which undoubtedly cannot be the gravel road. But now it is like this and driving 5km back to the road would probably be the same as driving the displayed 7km. Unfortunately, after 7km, another 10km is shown, and ultimately I have driven 30km on gravel until I am finally back on the road, maybe saving 2km of distance but certainly losing about 45 minutes of time. It is already 3:30pm. Only my navigation knows about the turnoff to Pudding Hill. There is no sign indicating a campground that should only be 2km away. The entrance to the gravel road is more like a field driveway. Nevertheless, I turn off and think that maybe there will be a sign further up the slope. The road is terrible with huge holes and puddles and mud. After 1km, there is a gate to a field, I turn in, turn around, and drive back. This is shit! There can't be a campground here. This is definitely an entrance to a pasture or at best a farm.

When I'm back on SH72, I continue to drive to the left and shortly after that, I stop to see which campgrounds are nearby. I don't feel like driving around anymore, and as experience has shown, the places are more and more filled after 4pm.

The nearest place is in Methven, another 12km away. I arrive in the small town with a petrol station, supermarket, and various winter sports stores around 4:30pm and pay $25 for a powered site, and I have the entire campground to myself! Methven is a winter sports resort and apparently completely empty in summer. Snowmobiles and buses with huge tires used in winter are standing around. The showers at the campground are great, the kitchen is nice, and there is a quite cozy lounge, to which I donate a few CDs that I don't want to take with me anymore.

I'm standing next to a camping table, sitting there in the sun, writing in my diary, and there is a curious and friendly cat sitting next to me, soon lying on the table with its head on my camera. I enjoy my coffee, book a campground in South Brighton for tomorrow (30-31.12.) since everything on Banks Peninsula is fully booked. It's good that I reserved Akaroa back in May for the 2 nights from New Year's Eve.

It's one of the few evenings when I can actually sit outside until sunset without freezing. I'm not that far south anymore, and that will certainly be noticeable, as will the absence of wind from the sea.