Few places in the world rival the South Island of New Zealand either for superb fly fishing or for stunning scenery, and the Ahuriri River in the Canterbury District is the sort of place every fly-fisherman who hasn't been wants to go to, and where those who have been long to return.
Turquoise in color, 100 km in length and replete with stretches of fast-flowing, boulder-strewn water, interspersed with languid, deep, dark pools, the Ahuriri meanders through a wide, arid valley, largely devoid of plant life but for the purple lupines that line the dusty shingle road and the occasional cluster of tussocks and willow trees along the river banks.
At its headwaters the jagged, slate-colored outline of the Barrier Mountains pierce the sky, more than 2,000 meters high, their peaks covered in snow despite the glaring sun overhead. Farther below, on either side of the river, talus-sloped mountains descend and merge with a row of undulating hills, the grass on which is cropped to the roots by the over-many sheep that inhabit the inhospitable area.
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