I was undecided as to whether this post should go under “tinder tales” (possibly coming soon) or spontaneous adventures. It might make a reappearance, honestly, but for now, it was a spontaneous adventure with a new friend.
(It is absolutely no secret that I take serious advantage of Tinder while travelling. How else am I supposed to meet people my own age in a university town, or while in a city for two or three nights?)
This is how I met Jeff. He was in town for only a few days and we got chatting over messages about exploring around. Since I had the next day off, we decided to meet up and go explore some of the area to the north of Dunedin. I didn’t have a place in mind, but Jeff is American, and didn’t know anything about the area, so I made the executive decision to explore the Blueskin Bay area, since I had never been there. We enjoyed a long walk down the beach and along the estuary after Jeff decided he needed to dip his feet and then his head in the southern ocean. I’ll be honest, its the first time a Tinder match has taken his shirt off within the first half hour of meeting me.
But while we were talking and walking, I learned that Jeff had never heard of the Moeraki boulders. Now, I’ve been trying to get there ever since I moved to Dunedin (actually since before; I tried to make it a stop on Chris’s and my South to Dunedin road trip) and I also knew that the tide times were right if I wanted to go that day. Before I really knew what I was saying, I suggested that we drive up there. Its not a very far drive, but it meant taking the rest of the afternoon to do it. Jeff readily agreed and we headed back to the car and drove further away from Dunners.
We parked at the beach carpark rather than the visitors centre and we walked down the beach. This approach offered us the otherworldly view of the boulder appearing out of the mist from a distance, which was quite cool. Jeff offered to take pictures for me – even after I reminded him that I was a travel blogger and we would have to take a bunch – and then I took some for him.
While we were clowning around, there were plenty of other people doing the same. These odd spherical boulders are not created by the sea, as we both originally thought (and presumably so many others do too). Instead, they were formed within the cliffs and have been “dumped” on the beach by the subsequent erosion. Some of the boulders have cracks in them, giving off the appearance of being a dinosaur egg about to hatch, while others are already cracked and in pieces, which prompted me to glance around nervously for giant pterodactyls. Several of the cracked boulders are already tiny ecosystems, as well, with minerals and crystals sharing tiny sea space with corals and seaweed.
We had a blast wandering among the rocks, digging our toes into the sand, and exploring the sandy cliff edges – for at least an hour. There are around 50 boulders scattered in a very small area on the beach, and presumably more still to appear. I found it very interesting that the boulders only appear in a small section of the otherwise vast stretch of beach.
The New Zealand Department of Conservation calls the Moeraki boulders “geological marvels, exposed by erosion of sedimentary rocks laid down from 65 to 13 million years ago. They are formed by the gradual precipitation of calcite in mudstone over 4 million years. These spherical concretions are internationally significant for their scientific value.”
If you are in the Dunedin area, and looking for a unique afternoon adventure, definitely drive up SH1 to Moeraki. It’s signposted and there’s a small visitors centre and cafe just up the dunes from the rocks. What happened with Jeff? That’s another story for another time, if I ever get the guts to post my dating life on my travel blog.
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