Ranfurly - in the solitude of Central Otago

Ranfurly is a small town - or rather a village in the high plains of Otago, west of Dunedin, in the hinterland, or one could also say in the middle of nowhere. The construction of the Central Otago Rail Trail, a bike path on a former railway line that takes several days to complete, seems to have brought some tourist development. That's probably why Ranfurly also has a tourist information center. In addition, the town has a hotel, two small supermarkets, a few shops with tourist kitsch, a scrapyard with surprisingly rare French and other European cars from the 60s and 70s, and even a butcher's shop. What more do you need to celebrate the new year? Well, to be honest, we only ended up here because by early November many campsites in the area were fully booked with cabins over New Year's, except for this one. That's why we booked a cabin here for 4 days, so that we wouldn't have to sit in a tent in potentially bad weather.

But in hindsight, it was beautiful there! The campground was quite tidy, and we went on some excursions from Ranfurly to St. Bathans, to the historic mountain village of Naseby, or over the Dansey Pass. At the latter, there is an old hotel-restaurant in absolute seclusion, where we enjoyed a good coffee. And promptly we were addressed in German by the waitress, as she had seen our license plates. We had a nice chat with the young woman from southern Germany who was working here as a world traveler. It's quite surprising to see where young people end up in such remote places.

The landscape was especially fascinating because of its almost infinite expanse, with a mountain panorama in the background. And not much going on, often we were alone on the roads and paths, which were often only gravel. The paths that led through farmland were particularly adventurous, quite bumpy and every few kilometers there was a cattle gate that had to be opened and closed. But it was on these paths that you could really enjoy the vastness of the landscape.