Over the top of the Crown Range, the road falls into the Cardrona Valley and the mood changes completely. After the switchbacks on the Queenstown side, this is long, open country: a broad trough of tussock and schist with the Cardrona River braiding along the bottom, a few sheep stations, and almost nothing else for kilometre after kilometre. The road descends at a gentle grade with sweeping bends you can read well ahead, and on a calm day it is one of those stretches where you find yourself riding slower than you need to, just to make it last.
The valley was gold country once. In the 1860s miners worked the river gravels here, and a settlement grew up around the diggings. Most of it has vanished, but the Cardrona Hotel, a little white weatherboard building with a tin roof and a veranda, still stands by the road a few kilometres further down and claims to date from 1863. It is one of the most photographed pubs in the country, with an old car usually parked outside, and the garden behind it is a pleasant place to sit with a coffee or a beer in the sun. In winter it fills with skiers.
Those skiers come for the Cardrona Alpine Resort, whose access road leaves the highway in this part of the valley and climbs the slopes to the west, and for the Snow Farm, a cross-country ski area on the other side. Somewhere along this stretch you will also pass the famous Bra Fence, a roadside fence festooned with thousands of bras, started as a prank in the late 1990s and now a fundraiser for breast cancer research. It is exactly as odd as it sounds.
The weather here is typical of Central Otago, which has one of the most continental climates in New Zealand: hot, dry summers, cold winters with hard frosts, and wind that funnels down the valley. Snow can fall on the road in winter, and black ice lingers in the shadows on cold mornings. In summer, watch for sheep, cyclists and tourists in camper vans who are trying to take photos and drive at the same time.
At the bottom of the valley lies Wanaka, about twenty-five kilometres away, a lakeside town with fuel, shops, cafes and restaurants, and Lake Wanaka itself, with its famous lone willow tree growing out of the water. Cromwell, to the east, is another option for fuel and supplies.