South Island NZ continued

Day 3 - Peel Forest to Cromwell - Today we see rolling hills and valleys with rivers and a canal that joins one lake to another.  There are dams on every piece of moving water in this region.  In the canal they have salmon farms setup - ingenious! So the feature today was to be Lake Tekapo - very much hyped to us by many people. It is set in the mountains here, fed by the Tasman Glacier. Mt. Cook, the tallest mountain in NZ is near here (3754 m).  Well, it was nice, but it wasn't the highlight of the day (maybe because it was overcast and dull out). Cromwell was the surprise! And nobody talks about it. It is a town in a semi mountainous area, desert like and rocky, but with grass, a major river running through it, large valleys with acres and acres of vineyards. This is the Central Otago Region, producer of wines the rest of the world will soon be asking for. It is raining tonight so we fry our steaks on the stove in the camper.

 

Day 4 - We are exploring Cromwell and area today, most notably the wineries. The doors open at 10:00am and we are not late. The day proves to be a lot of fun.  We stop at 5 vintner's doors and accumulate 4 cases of yummy Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and a shockingly excellent White Port. Lunch is at a boutique winery called Mr. Difficulty and it is the most interesting combination of tastes and textures as they are show casing their wines with the food. The day is sunny and warm; the scenery is unusual and stunning. This would be a place, we both agree, that we could happily live.  Kamloops x Okanagan x Phoenix. Our little caravan happily rumbles down the road to Clyde for the night.

 

Day 5 - Clyde is a cute place, on a hydro lake, but is tiny and only a stop over. Our destination is back to the east coast from the center, to a place called Owaka. We traverse the most remarkable country side today, hills like our foothills covered with massive boulders, strewn about like a herd of grazing elephants, rugged rivers and blue lakes, forest and rolling pasture land. Tiny towns tucked in all the right places with a fruit stand here and a "petrol" station there. Honey is a big item in NZ so I have begun a collection of little pots of honey. My favorite so far is Manuka. When we get to Owaka, the camp grounds are actually out on the coast at a place called Pounawea, which is right on the beach of an estuary. But it is raining again tonight, so we just get a short wander around the resort cottages. It sure rains a lot in this country!