Central Otago

Saturday we drove up to Middlemarch in Central Otago to bike on the rail trail. The rail trail is a bike/walking trail on what once was 150km of railway track from Middlemarch to Clyde. The drive itself was beautiful. Central Otago is the only region in New Zealand with a continental climate and the best place to see the Fall colors.

Large areas of this central region are sparsely populated. If it wasn't for the sheep you'd worry you were the only living thing.

More and more sheep. They really are everywhere.

Parts of Central Otago have a "other world" quality. The desolate hills go on for miles with rugged rocks that seem to have been dropped from outer space. It's extremely dry and barren; you don't even see sheep here so you know it's rugged.

More Central Otago landscape. Notice how there are very few trees? Since it is so dry, the trees mostly grow in the valleys near the rivers.

This is the Kye Burn River near Middlemarch. Central Otago was an important gold-mining area in the later half of the 19th century. The railroad and most of the towns here have significant links to the gold-mining past.