This is a holiday weekend, New Zealand Independence Day is February 6th which fell on a Friday this year, so there has been a long weekend.
Today's journey took us from the farm land into the mountains, before we reached the wine fields. We started at Lake Tekapo, (the lake closest to the top right hand corner of the map, with a highway 8 symbol to its left), and drove along the 8 as far as Cromwell close to the bottom left corner, travelling through mountains most of the way and not passing through anything big enough to be called a village.
Mount Cook at about 3,800 metres is the highest mountain in New Zealand and we were unsure whether it had been in our photos of the mountains that we had taken at Lake Tekapo. From postcards we knew that it has a two pointed top and when we spotted this
When we arrived at Lake Pukaki we knew that we were correct as this is a scene from many postcards. The snow covered Mt Cook is on the right and had just started to be shrouded in a thin haze.
From here, we continued to Omorama in Northern Otago where we spotted the only accommodation in miles.
We stopped for a short walk and found himself the centre of attention. "Smaller cows at the front please and everyone look this way". The green is only possible here with irrigation, some of the irrigation gantries seemed to be a kilometre long.
The Lindis pass runs between Omorama and Cromwell in Central Otago. The highest point is 971m and the highest point on a road on South Island is on this pass. The scenery changes constantly and there are not many stopping places, so many photos were taken from the car.
Lake Dunstan is long and thin and Cromwell is at one end.
We were now well into Otago and the scenery changed to include vinyards.
We arrived at Cromwell, where we would spend the rest of the day and, after a rest, set out for a wine tasting at Wooingtree wines in Cromwell. The name comes from a big fir, known to the locals as the Wooing tree. The owners bought the land to plant the vinyard, there were objections from the locals - they didn't want to lose the fir. Keeping the tree was the obvious solution and gave the winery its name. There have been 8 proposals (that they know about) under the tree since they bought the property.
They had an interesting garden design.
Later, we went out to eat in the nearby mall, where we started with a tasting plate.
Delicious, and we didn't really need a lot after that. Cromwell is a modern, spacious town based on a grid system (read boring). Commerce is in a mall, the rest is bungalows. We wandered off to find the old part down by the lake. This looks like a film set - any interesting buildings are either gift shops or 'museums' and everything was closed - it didn't look as though anything had been open for some time.
The Masonic hall Looked abandoned
A museum now
Catholic Church
And Protestant
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