Lake Ohau – Omarama

Not having a firm plan for today, we started heading towards Wanaka to see what adventures we could get into. A stop at High Country Salmon to stock up on their farm-raised salmon. It was a great addition to our larder.

Having nicer kitchen facilities at a holiday park pays off.

After some convincing, we detoured to the Clay Cliffs outside of Omarama. Similar in landscape to places in New Mexico.

Very similar to Tent Rocks in New Mexico.

After messing around for the day, we headed to our first freedom camping spot on Lake Ohau. It is a pretty open parking area on the lake, but it was pretty windy, so we went into the trees which we thought was pretty perfect.

It took some pretty good backing up skills, but we felt pretty good about our spot.

We walked around the shore a bit, but there were too many white caps on the lake, so we decided to wait to pull the boat out. Our walk was cut short by these tiny, biting, little, black, bugs. Seriously? These are sandflies? Anytime we got out of the wind, we started to have just enough bugs to make things unpleasant. We also learned later, that camping by anything green and wet is a great way to assure you will be devoured by sand flies. We rushed through making dinner, and as soon as the sun started to set, those little buggers got pretty bad. We retreated into the van, only to realize we had screen windows, so we were in for a stuffy evening of cribbage.

Would have been an amazing night to sit out by the lake.

Probably could have gotten out for a morning paddle, but the forecast had wind starting after sunrise, and I think we had a pretty rough night.

Sandfly Advice – of course we tried natural repellants, but we ended up with DEET, DEET, and more DEET. Cover every square inch of your body. Don’t itch them. Don’t wave your hands around. Oral Benadryl for dealing with the bites and itching. Benadryl is great, because it makes you drowsy, is great for sleep, and you generally wake up feeling much less chewed up.