Click the link to see the summary of the trip!
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Moeraki Boulders Holiday Park |
| Moeraki Boulders Holiday Park |
Tel: +64 (0)3 439 4439
Website: www.moerakibouldersholidaypark.co.nz
Fee: $30 for 2 pax for powered site
Recommended by Ian from Glenmark Holiday Park, we visited Alex at Moeraki. We still haven't really seen much penguins and arriving at Hampden was our last hope.
The Holiday Park is very spacious and clean! It is located next to the beach, so the wind is always blowing and the temperature drops drastically at night. Gilbert was very impressed with the toilet actually, just because they provided a floor mat and a bench for you to put your stuff. The facilities are located in different buildings, so getting from the car to the toilet to the kitchen mean braving the cold and walking in the wind.
The kitchen has about 3 electric stove tops and just 2 large tables for dining. The kitchen walls are what made this holiday park so different. Lots of graffiti, drawings and messages were scrawled on every surface of the walls and ceilings.
One particular message was about how this family decided to escape the Christchurch Earthquake by having a campervan "holiday" away from all the disaster that have struck them.
Remember in Oamaru, we packed our chips from Fat Sally's to go? Well, a day's old chips are not edible, but we used them as bait!
Yellow-eyed Penguin Colony
Location: Katiki Point, Moeraki Village
Fee: Free
We thought we could see the penguins come up to shore from the holiday park, but nope, we had to drive on a long, winding and narrow gravel road which leads up to a lighthouse.A short walk away from the parking lot, you'd reach a fork in the road. To turn right to head towards the lighthouse or to walk straight, past a fence and a door. We walked straight down the path instead.
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| Walking straight |
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| Penguin Burrows |
Moeraki Boulders
Location: Koekohe Beach
Website: http://www.moerakiboulders.com/
Moeraki Boulders are just located just 25 mins walking distance from the Holiday Park. Instead of walking, we just drove up to the beach in the morning. It's unique shape is formed by concretions that have been exposed through shoreline erosion from coastal cliffs that back the beach. They originally formed in ancient sea floor sediments around 60 million years ago.
Maori legend tells that the boulders are remains of calabashes, kumaras and eel baskets that washed ashore after the legendary canoe, the Araiteuru was wrecked at nearby Shag Point (Matakaea).
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| Alpacas |
We had a hard time squeezing our hand through the fence though and as the alpacas become more excited at the on sight of food, they'd bump our hands and the treats would drop to the ground. In the evenr that we were able to squeeze our hands through without them bumping our hands, they'd lick and use their thick lips to suckle every morsel from our palms.
TOO CUTE!
Scenic Drives
On our way to Dunedin, we stopped once again to take pictures of the magnificent view that stood before us. How do you not love the blue sky and the mountains? I must say, in the pictures, everything looks so serene and like it is such a perfect weather, but in actual fact, the wind was howling and it was freezing!
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