The green hill-country, thick bush or forest is characteristic for North Island as well as for northern, western and southern South Island. Another importand face of the country are the central part of the Southern Alps, which reach 3750m up into the sky with Mt Cook. The are quite similar with the European Alps in this section even with one or the other glacier. With our heavy touringbikes of course there was no way to get up there. But another destinct region east of the high alps is very atractive for cyclists. The moist air coming from the West across the ocean gets thrown against the alps and squeezes out all the water onto the legendery wet westcoast with its rainforests. On the other sid of the alps there is mainly dry air left what leads to an arid climate. Here one finds wast valleys and hills to mountains formed by galciers long time ago and now with incredable blue clear rivers and lakes. In this water you find trout as well as salmon. Only few people live here, running farms with the famous Merinosheep that is used to produce Icebreaker. A little disturbing we found the green patches in the middle of this dry land, the since not too long with hug instalation irrigated paddocks allow dairy farming. People have also left other marks in the landscape with logging hole valleys and with bulding dams for hydro power.
For cycling travellers the hole area from Rakaia Gorge, Geraldine, Fairlie, Lake Tekapo, Lake Pukaki, Lake Ohau, Omarama, Wanaka, Cardrona, Queenstown, Von/Oreti valley till Te Anau is a paradise. Starting with the maily stabil dry weather, the more gentle climbs though higher passes to the less traffic. Most of all it is heavenly to just move between these brown hills and plains, decorated with the shiny yellow Tussock grass and in the evening jump into on of the turkise-blue lakes or rivers. Here you find space to «fly» but the greatness of the mountains in the background keep you on the ground.
These wonderful part of New Zealand we could experiance together with Friedericke and Dirk, the first cycling couple we met that not only had the same direction and speed but more so the same peace and pace with getting up in the morning, enjoying breakfast, packing and loading the bikes. It was great the time together!
