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of outdoor activities, this stretch of the Waitaki is regarded as one of New Zealand’ s premier salmon fishing areas. The dams are quite spectacular in their own right.
Hakataramea was named by the local Māori people to mean dance of the speargrass( haka meaning dance, and taramea as speargrass). It represents a dance that took place at the mouth of the nearby river in which the performers wore bags made from the skin of the whekau( a native owl that is now extinct) filled with sweet-scented gum from the flower stalks of the taramea.
The Hakataramea Pass took us to an altitude of just under one thousand metres which, seemed to be the extent of many of New Zealand’ s south island passes, then into the Mackenzie Country. The Hakataramea Valley, part of the South Canterbury high country region presented broad mountain landscapes with snow capped peaks on the horizon that seemed to be painted backdrops to perhaps one of Jackson’ s epics, all seemed touchable yet well out of reach.
The mountains flanking our left where the Grampians, a name
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