Magical Moeraki

So far, I have been showing you photos taken by phone- mostly my outdated one and occasionally Fran’s newer one. But for the truly incredible sights, you deserve the good camera. But I don’t just use the word “magical” in the title of this post to reflect the special beauty of these sites, but I use it because the geologic processes that created their features is awe-inspiring.

A Picassoesque pano of Aeromoana

The first is Aeromoana. It was so beautiful that Jeremy ran barefoot across painful rocks to yell out to me to make sure to take a panoramic photo (he had refused to put his shoes on in the car and had let us go on without him). 

A few Kiwis told us that this was their favorite beach so we drove an hour out to the tip of the peninsula to see it. Yes, the walk up the jetty for the iconic view of the lighthouse and our closest encounters yet with fur seals were pretty great... 

...but the thing that knocked our socks of were the shells. 

No one prepared us for the endless glittering jewels in the sand. Also, the sand in New Zealand has been the softest, finest sand I have ever felt. All three of us went nuts collecting the little opalescent spirals, one more lovely than the next. Later Jeremy said that walking on this beach was his favorite part of a pretty amazing weekend.

From there, we drove out to Shag Point, to an obscure place indicated by our favorite guidebook (NZ Frenzy: “look for the red mailbox…”) to see “mermaid pools.” 

Talk about magic- an ancient bit of bone rolled around on the ocean floor somehow becoming encapsulated in a sphere of rock, called septarian concretions, which weathering later cracked open. A huge plesiosaurus skeleton was found this way here, now exhibited in the Otago Museum.

Even most locals don’t know about this particular spot and it was nearly empty. The massive rubbery kelp undulating in the surf added to an otherworldly feeling and I could imagine that the seals we encountered were actually mer-people lounging on the rocks.

We completed this homeschool geology lesson by visiting the much more publicized Moeraki boulders: more of the same, but fewer, and more perfect spheres. Pretty cool, but still not as magical as Shag Point.

A trip to Moeraki isn’t complete, according to locals, without a meal at Fleur’s, a boat-to-table seafood restaurant. Lacking a reservation (they were completely booked on a Tuesday night), we were told that we could sit on the patio if we were willing to brave the sea breeze. 

These were the best seats in the house! We dined on the freshest, tastiest, and most beautifully presented fish and scallops we’ve ever had with a 180-degree view of the harbor.

--> This trip taught us to expect the unexpected and wondrous.