Stuck in a flood

We returned to Manapouri at around 14:30. The goal was to drive towards Queenstown and sleep in our tent again on a campsite along the way. It was raining here again however, and it would likely not stop until midnight. Nevertheless, we figured we could camp as the weather the next morning would be dry and likely sunny. We had already researched some good campsite options as well. The car was thirsty for fuel, and our app Gaspy said the best place for that would be in Mossburn. But on the way there it didn't take long before the road was closed. A friendly guy in orange vest told us that due to flooding we'd have to take a detour. In hindsight, this is when we should have turned around and found accommodation back in Manapouri or Te Anau. But we weren't aware of the severity of the situation. Sure, it was raining, and this particular road was just closed, but surely it's not as bad as in Fiordland?

We only just made it to Mossburn taking the detour, with less than a liter left in the tank, and we fueled the car. But we started wondering if we could camp tonight at all. We saw more and more puddles on grass fields and also close to the road. We realised we couldn't camp tonight unless we wanted to try out how good our mattresses can float. Queenstown accommodation was booked out unless we felt like spending over 240nzd. There was a nice camping with cheap cabins 4 km north of Mossburn, which sounded perfect. But... the road to it was closed due to flooding. We figured we could still get there via a different road taking 44km. That turned out to be wrong. At the crossing to it near Lumsden another nice guy told us that this road was closed too, which also happened to be the road to Queenstown. He mentioned it might still be possible to go to Queenstown via Gore but that he expected more road closures throughout the day as the water levels were rising. Airbnb and Campermate mentioned some motels and hotels in that direction and Lumsden already looked a bit crowded and what was there was expensive. Not knowing where else to go, we continued in direction Gore.

The rain got more intensive and the road conditions worsened. Several times we had to pass through flooded road parts, which were tricky to control our Suzuki Swift in as the water tried to push it to the side. We reached Balfour, but their only Motel was booked out. We continued another stretch to Riversdale. At this point it was getting a bit desperate, we were sick of driving in these conditions. Riversdale's Hotel was booked out, too. They told us Gore was also booked out. We felt stranded. We considered sleeping in our car or pitching a tent on a small not too flooded piece of grass in the center of Riversdale. Both didn't sound too good. A Suzuki Swift isn't really the car for sleeping. The Internet now told us there was a state of emergency issued for the area. We decided to go back to the hotel and asked if they knew someone with a couch or a floor or at least a roof. They discussed a while, called someone else in the town until eventually two road maintenance workers who stayed in the hotel offered to share a room (they had one each) and give their other one to us. We were incredibly thankful. Especially when we later in the evening received an emergency SMS alert asking inhabitants of Gore to prepare for evacuation, and the river that caused that was flowing nearby Riversdale too. The hotel room wasn't cheap but cheap enough, and the in-house cafe served us a nice pizza dinner. We were mainly glad we could finally relax, and that we didn't end up trying to camp.Read more