Sunday, May 15, 2011

Adventure 13: The land of the dinosaur eggs!

April 9th
One attraction which is relatively close to Dunedin which we hadn’t been to yet is the Moeraki boulders.  When we told Ash (our Kiwi host) that we wanted to go there his response was something along the lines of, “Aren’t those just some big rocks?”  Well, I suppose you could say that, but what makes them so interesting is that they are enormous and perfectly round!  It looks like they were just dropped from the sky onto this one stretch of beach, and are only found a few other places in the world.  They somehow formed on this one specific beach which had the perfect conditions.  We’d seen postcards and other people’s pictures of them and it looked like the perfect day trip so we rented a wee car and took off up the highway! 
Our first stop, recommended by friends who had gone before, was at the Evansdale Cheese Factory.  We’d received reports of good cheese and free tastings, both of which we all greatly enjoy.  It was a little factory, well-marked and right off the side of the highway with a large metal cow with a funny face out front...so far, so good!  When we entered, we were the only guests so we had the full attention of one of the workers, who gave us tastes of all of their specialty cheeses while explaining the differences in taste, texture, and how each is made.  Most of this went in one ear and out the other.  Let’s be honest, we just wanted some delicious free cheese! However, it was interesting to hear about how they hand-make all of the cheeses and the inspiration for some of the names (women, places, employees who happened to be working at the time).
After looking at the prices of the smallest pieces of our favourite cheeses and realizing that even those were rather above our price range we continued on down the highway, making a stop to eat our packed lunches by a public rest area in a little town along the way.  One of my favourite things about New Zealand is that there are always exciting and unexpected stops to make along the way of any road trip, usually involving scenic overlooks and, if you’re lucky, native wildlife.  One such stop which we encountered on this trip was called Shag Point, promising seals and possibly penguins, along with a name that was just too good to pass by.
Leaving our car at the head of the trail, we followed the path down along the cliff.  I noticed that there was a side trail leading down to a beach which looked as if it hadn’t been trod on recently, so of course we decided to go investigate!  After a few minor slips by some of our company on the way down, we reached the beach which had beautiful, up close views of the crashing waves and lots of big rocks to scramble over in search of the perfect view.  Picking our way (more carefully, this time) back up the hill, we continued on the more well-beaten path to the official lookout point and were rewarded with the sight of an entire pod of grey, fuzzy looking seals!  There were two main outcroppings of rock, one which held the majority of the sleeping seals and the other which was the resting place for only a couple of the little guys.  One of the seals on the less inhabited rock appeared to want to get over to the other side but was lacking the means to cross the water.  He scooted up to the edge of his rock, laid on his belly, and peered down over the edge of the rock, weighing his chances on making the leap down to the water.  He decided this was not a viable option (a good choice, in our opinion) and began flippering his way up the rock to try and go around, conveniently bringing him closer to us!  Occasionally stopping to check out the potential crossings, he seemed to tire very easily and it didn’t seem that he was going to make it all the way up to us within the next hour so we left him to it, wishing him the best of luck on his mission.
Next stop: the Moeraki boulders!  There’s one little café at the top of the hill before you walk down to the beach and they have a clever little donation box where everyone who goes down to see the boulders is supposed to put $2.  This seemed a bit unnecessary to us, considering the restaurant owners were just capitalising on all of the tourists who wanted to see the boulders and they didn’t have to do anything to get them (or keep them, there’s no moving those things) there.  Sticking it to the man, we walked past the collection box, hoping that no one would yell at us for skimping on the fee (we’re clearly not all that rebellious; even this unmanned box made us nervous...).  The walk down to the beach was only about a minute, but it was probably one of the best-smelling minutes of my life!  The path was lined with manuka honey trees which were bursting with sweet-smelling yellow blossoms.  Manuka honey is a New Zealand specialty and, though I haven’t actually tried any, it’s reportedly very good and I know that it’s expensive...that means that it’s high quality, right?
Once on the beach, we could see the boulders a little ways ahead, some half buried, looking like overturned bowls, others sitting almost completely above the surface: massive balls of stone which could have been rolled up by an ancient game of giant marbles.  Some are situated in nice little rows right along the water’s edge, while others are scattered about farther up the shore.  We’d seen pictures of people sitting in one of the rocks which had somehow broken open, leaving a partial shell of hollow rock big enough for a person to get inside.  Apparently there’s some geology thing which gives the boulders their round shape and hollow centres and causes some to have thicker shells than others.  We soon found one broken rock that looked like the top of a chipped tea cup sitting in the sand.  My immediate idea was to crawl right inside for a picture, but that was quickly abandoned when I noticed the big pool of water in the middle.  I settled for perching on the side instead and we continued on our hunt for the bigger rock which would allow us to actually crawl inside.  Soon, our search was rewarded!  We came upon the remains of the large stone which looked like it could be a little hobbit hole, conveniently unoccupied!  One by one, each of us crawled in and posed for our photo, feeling like extreme tourists but fully embracing it J
Next, we decided it was time to actually scale some of the giant rocks.  Leslie, Amanda, and I scrambled up on top of 3 of the boulders which were situated in a roughly triangular shape.  We’ve been going to balance (a mix of yoga and Pilates) classes at the gym so we thought it would look cool to practice some of our poses atop the rocks.  It was a rather precarious perch, but definitely tested our skills!  Not wanting Ford to feel left out, we taught him to do “downward dog” in between two of the rocks which were situated more closely together.  I’m sure it’s a skill he’ll utilize in the future.  We wanted to try some sort of flat picture with all of us so we asked a nice German couple to take our picture and made our best attempt at spelling out “6-8-7,” the number of our flat.  I can’t say it was an extremely successful attempt, but if you use your imagination it’s possible to see what we were aiming for!
After our all of our touristy wishes had been fulfilled, we climbed back up the sweet-smelling hill and hopped back in our car before someone made us pay.  Our last stop before heading back to good ol’ Dunners was the small town of Omaru a little ways up from Moeraki.  It was a quaint little town with an historic Victorian harbour.  It was a pretty little place, whose only downfall was its small but overpriced ice cream cones.  We had an uneventful (the best kind) of trip back, utilized our car to pick up some frozen pizzas from the grocery store for dinner (the first time we haven’t had to carry our food back!), and settled back into the flat, checking another item off of our “To Do” list on the fridge J    

No comments:

Post a Comment