In his latest blog post, Dale Dunlop, The Maritime Explorer, will get an eclectic experience of boulders, steampunk and a jam empire at Moeraki Boulders, Oamaru & Geraldine. If you are interested in what Adventures Abroad has to offer, please check out our Small Group Tours to New Zealand.
Alas, we are only a few days from wrapping up this phenomenal tour through New Zealand with Adventures Abroad led by one of my all-time favourite good guys, tour leader Chris Tripodi. If you ever get a chance to travel with him, grab it. In the last post, we had just a great day exploring the Otago Peninsula and tomorrow we are going to go out with a bang as we take a one-hour flight over the Southern Alps featuring New Zealand's highest peak, Mount Cook/Aoraki. I can't wait for that, but there are a few more natural and man-made attractions that I want to highlight in this post, starting with the Moeraki Boulders. We'll then go on to the town of Oamaru, which is the steampunk capital of New Zealand. So hop in with Chris and our Kiwi driver Ian and let's continue this amazing journey.
Moeraki Boulders
Ian urges us to get going early from Dunedin because our first stop of the day will be much more enjoyable if we get there before the inevitable crowds. We comply, and about an hour later, we pull into a near empty parking lot and make our way down a set of stairs to one of the most wondrous sights we've seen on this trip. Before us is a beach that would be worth visiting in its own right, but it is what is on the beach that is truly amazing.
This is Moeraki Boulder Beach and it is strewn with huge, perfectly spherical boulders that you would swear have to be man-made.
As you can see, the beach is completely deserted and the boulders are mostly half buried.
But then you look further down the beach and see that at least one is completely free-standing and you head for it.
These boulders are what is known as concretions and they are millions of years old, formed by a natural but rare process between layers of sedimentary rock. As the beach shoreline erodes, more of these concretions are exposed over time. They are the type of natural formation that is so unexpectedly weird that you just kind of stare at them, open-mouthed and then you get your camera out.
The more you look around on Moeraki Boulder Beach, the weirder things you see, like this concretion that looks like the back of a tortoise.
Or this one I called R-2 D-2.
And of course, this one is the ultimate in concretions – a 10 if there ever was one.
Walking on Moeraki Beach with only our group was the perfect way to start the day.
And then the hordes began to arrive and it was time to depart. Back in the parking lot, three huge buses arrived and soon there would be hundreds of people and it would be next to impossible to have that perfect boulder to yourself for a shot like this.
We all thanked Ian for his prescience in getting us to this beautiful spot ahead of the crowds.
Oamaru
40 km (25 miles) north of Moeraki, we came to one of the strangest and most interesting towns in New Zealand, Oamaru. Actually, it is a small city of 14,000, making it the third largest on the South Island after Christchurch and Dunedin. It has a distinct appearance created by the many Victorian-era buildings that line the streets.
I wasn't really satisfied with my photos so I have included these three courtesy of TripAdvisor to give a general idea of what the city looks like.
Ian parked the bus at Friendly Bay waterfront park, where there were a number of interesting sculptures carved into dead macrocarpa trees by artist Pita Langan, including this one with carvings of Otago area wildlife.
From here, we made our way down Harbour Street through a district known as Whitestone City, whose name is fairly obvious from this photo and quite unlike any other city or town we visited in New Zealand.
At the end of the street, I hopped onto this penny-farthing and took a quick spin.
Actually, how the hell anyone could get onto one of these things without a step ladder is beyond me. BTW, the name comes from the bike's two wheels resemblance to two British coins. The ridiculously large copper penny and the ridiculously tiny farthing.
You do get the sense that the people of Oamaru just might be the most whimsical in the world and that is brought home to you as you round the corner of Harbour Street and come face to face with this.
This contraption, for lack of a better word, stands in front of the Oamaru Steampunk HQ, which bills itself as New Zealand's Premiere Steampunk Experience. Now I had no friggin' idea what the heck steampunk even meant and even after Ian tried to explain it, still had no idea.
Here's about the best definition I could find: Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction and fantasy that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. It often blends elements of Victorian-era fashion, social structures, and technology with anachronistic or fantastical elements. Essentially, it's a "what if" exploration of a Victorian world with advanced, steam-powered technology
OK, can someone please explain the inherent contradiction in the word 'retrofuturistic'? I'll let these steampunk experts try.
The bottom line is that steampunk is fun and this retrofuturistic locomotive is the perfect backdrop for that fun. Whether it be a threesome –
Or a solo act.
Or the whole damn lot.
Oamaru is one place I will definitely spend more time in next time around.
Geraldine
Our final stop on this penultimate post from the Adventures Abroad tour of New Zealand is another very interesting South Island town, Geraldine, which takes its name from an Irish family that settled in the area in 1857, the Fitzgeralds. No, it wasn't Geraldine Fitzgerald who the place was named for, but the ancestral Irish family name, which the town's burgers preferred to Fitzgerald.
Anyway, the town is noted for its artisans and there are a lot of small galleries and craft shops to explore, as well as the home base of the Barker family fruit products business. This is a sculpture of Anthony Barker, the jam maker who went on to create a booming business that allowed later generations to buy and restore Larnach Castle, which we visited in the last post.
Geraldine is the last real town we'll visit on this AA tour and I thought this collection of three sets of posters on the main street really summed up why I fell in love with small town life in New Zealand.
Remember Tang? Worst imitation of OJ in the world.
In North America, we had Chip 'n Dale. In New Zealand, they had Ches 'n Dale, who were the mascots for Chesdale cheese.
Note the £4.61 cost of staying at The Hermitage at Mount Cook. That's where we'll be staying next and I expect the price might have gone up a bit since.
So from Moeraki to Oamaru to Geraldine, it's been quite a nice trip and all by bus. In the next and final AA post, we'll take to the air for the ultimate New Zealand adventure. I hope you'll grab a seat.
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