Otago

The Otago region, which is bounded on the north by the wide Waitaki River and on the south by Catlins Forest Park, takes in a green and often mist-shrouded coast, in which the chief towns are Balclutha in the south, Dunedin in the center and Oamaru in the north. The interior of the region is sparsely populated; here the climate is of continental, with hot, dry summers and very cold winters.

Central Otago consists of a plateau broken up by the folding movements in the Southern Alps, falling sharply to the west but with a gentler gradient to the east. The Clutha, one of New Zealand's wildest and most abundant rivers, has carved out deep gorges in its westward course from the alpine lakes Wanaka and Hawea. During the ice ages the