This morning, we started to repack everything for the next hiking section. We bought food for eight days. Mixing the oats in the sun at the campground was fun.
We gave away some brown sugar to a French guy who was travelling by bike. He was already travelling for five years! He rode his bike all the way to New Zealand with a lot of great long-time stops on his way, really cool!
When we were done with packing, we left our backpacks at the reception of the campground and went to the city center of Wanaka. I liked the little town right at a lake. It was touristy but not as bad as Queenstown. We looked at different outdoor shops and I saw a jacket I really liked on sale. But oh well, I wouldn’t necessarily need it on the trail and so I didn’t buy it, saves money too. Instead, we got some good ice cream! We met Selma in town and she had some ice cream with us.
We went back to the campground, got our backpacks and walked a little along Lake Wanaka. Then we went to a good spot to hitchhike to Lake Hawea. We were really lucky: We just had to wait for about five minutes until a car stopped and gave us a ride.
About 20min later, we were dropped off at Lake Hawea and went to the Lake Hawea Hotel. Selma has told us that it is possible to camp there. When we arrived, the hotel looked so fancy that we wouldn’t have thought that it is really possible to camp there at an affordable price. But it was! The campsites were behind the hotel and it just was 12$ per person to camp there. And even better, they had a good burger with fries that is just 12$ as well. That made our day ???!