Beastly weather last night, the DOC site must have got flooded. Glad we went for the freedom camp option, even though we were next to the beach with the waves crashing next to us and the wind howling all around us. We had intended to visit the Moeraki Boulders next door before heading on but the weather was so beastly you couldn't even look into the wind and rain. It got slightly better after breakfast but we were running late after helping out some guys jumpstart their engine. So, after a quick look at the state of the roads, we picked our route back towards the West coast. There are warnings all over the South island, mostly flooding, wind and rockfall. The North island had also got pretty severely hit the last few days.
The road towards Wanaka was flooded in a few places, two pretty bad, but fordable in the end (being cautious we only crossed the worst couple when we saw the locals do it). Central Otago must have been OK, after an hour the rivers weren't so swollen and the wind and rain had died down. We decided to stop just before Wanaka - there is a big free camp by the lake at Cromwell which we had seen in our CamperMate app.
Stopped at Clyde on the way (oh, and to see some lamas at a farm). Lonely Planet described it as looking like "a movie set for a 19th century gold rush town". All we saw were masses and masses of prefabricated-looking houses. In the end, right in the centre, we saw the 4 houses the guide was talking about. Hardly worth a stop. The last few kilometres to Cromwell are truly beautiful however, just after the Clyde damn. We definitely like the West side more than the East in Otago.
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