Day 28 - Drive to Te Anua, Gorey ice cream, Dinner from a food truck

We left Dunedin about 08:30 and set off to drive across the bottom of South Island to Te Anua. We'd been told fuel prices would get steeper on the west coast, and we'd seen the prices go up as we got to South Island. We'd filled up at $2.12 per litre in Dunedin before we went out to Larnach castle (the guy pumping petrol was from the UK), so we were hoping as we got into the hinterland we might chance on a filling site with cheaper petrol so we could avoid filling up on the West coast for as long as possible.
Once again we had ice cream in the ice box which was not going to make it the whole journey (mid morning snack). We decided we really needed to swap driving every hour too.
We swapped after the first hour, and then when we got to Gore, we parked up to have a wander around, and to eat our almost but not quite melted ice cream and swap drivers again.
Gore is a fairly big place, and is the country music capital of New Zealand. It also has free wifi, throughout the centre of town.
The filling sites on the way in were as expensive as Dunedin, none of them accepted our 6c New World voucher, and we were down to half a tank.

Using the free wifi on the way back to the car, I pulled up Google maps and asked for petrol stations, we noticed there was a Mckeown owned card only automated site. When we'd seen these sites before, we'd noticed they don't post the price (and often they are tucked well out of the way of the main drag so they're not easy to find) and so we'd been suspicious of pulling in. Surprise! the one at Gore was $2.07, it was just tucked away down a side street so we filled up, and then squeezed a bit more in too.
Off again, I drove until we got to Lumsden, we pulled in to grab a coffee to go, and then set off in the hope of hitting a nicer place to stop and have lunch, we ended up pulling over at Mossburn on a gravel strip near some toilets. Hungry and keen to get on we made lunch from out of our chilli bin and ate under the shade of the tailgate. If we'd walked around to the loos earlier we'd have spotted the shade and the picnic benches around the corner over looking the rugby club.
Refreshed and toileted and not that far now from Te Anua, we set off again. Getting to Te Anua around 13:50. We got to the Motel and got checked in. The nice guy running the place confirmed we'd made the best choice (Doubtful sound over Milford sound)!
We unpacked and went for a walk around town. Our first great find was a souvenir shop with a wide selection of sun glasses for $5 apiece. We got 2 more pairs each, having lost one pair at Bowentown, Karen left a pair in Picton, then my new pair from Otorohanga got stood on and then stripped for parts, namely for screws to fix Karen's original pair. We discovered they had a food trailer in town near the outdoor cinema  (something I've seen a lot of in Seattle) serving Boa. No idea what they were but we thought we should give it a go. Delicious! I had venison and Karen had crab, and we both got fries :D

On the way round town we'd spotted the bigger supermarket (fresh choice) so we nipped in to seek out desert and a few other supplies. We picked an unusual flavour sorbet lolly, pear and feijoa, and ate 2 on the way back to the motel.
Since we'd had a 2 ice cream day, we needed to walk off some of those calories so we had an explore   of the end of the lake away from town. It's a massive lake!

We went back to the motel, packed our over night bags for the cruise the next day, and went to bed after a bit of trying to photograph the almost full moon. The wifi at the motel was too slow to blog or read anything online.