Week 4: Central Otego & Mt. Cook

Greetings from yet another completely different region of New Zealand's South Island... After visiting NZ's wettest location (in Fiordland), we've crossed eastward over the Southern Alps into the rain shadow to our base in Cromwell/Bannockburn, a pair of small towns in central Otago, and NZ's driest place.  The area is very reminiscent of the historic fruit & grape growing regions in California, except with only about 1% of the population!
Here the climate is a dry, temperate, almost high desert landscape, with broad rolling glacial valleys between steep and rugged mountain ridges.  Our Airbnb was located adjacent to both a large vineyard (Pinot Noir grapes) and a cherry orchard, with a view over the grapes down to the Clutha River. Pretty idyllic!
We've continued to be remarkably lucky with the weather here.  Most days the temperature has started in the low 50's, and then climbed up to 70-75F by lunchtime under clear blue skys... I've gotten a bunch of bike rides in here, as there is a great off road trail system that's perfect for gravel bikes.  If we return, it's even expanding to connect to Queestown to total over 50 miles of spectacular trails through the river valleys and gorges. Here's a few pics of the trails I rode this week -
While I've been out riding, Norma has been enjoying plenty of time to relax in the morning, and then we go out for trail walks in the afternoon, or do a bit of wine tasting :-). This is, after all, NZ's premier Pinot Noir region...  
Beyond all the close by walks and vineyards, we also took a full day to drive up the the east side of the southern Alps' highest peak- Mt. Cook.  There we hiked some very popular trails- the Hooker Valley and Kea Point Tracks.  While this made for a bit of a long day, the walking was great, and the scenery, as we've come to expect, spectacular!  Well worth the drive :-)
Unfortunately, this brings our first half of the trip to a close...  and I've only been able to share a small fraction of the highlights of our travels. In any event, if you are ever inclined to explore NZ yourself, we certainly can highly recommend it!  Good chance we'll be back. ;-)

Now... It's on to phase 2: Australia.  Tomorrow  we fly out from Christchurch to Sydney, where we'll check in from there next week!
Cheers:-)

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