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New Zealand South island Road Trip 2025 – Moeraki Boulders

| flynny101

From Elephant rocks we make our way to the East Coast.

There’s one more geological marvel we want to see.

But before we get there we stop at a PDS to empty the grey water out of van and top up fresh water.

While there and another van pulls up and out jumps Debby Downer wanting a chat.

Moeraki Boulders? Says him after asking where we are heading. That’s a big lot of disappointment. nothing there, just rocks on a beach…

And he proceeds to launch into a general whinge about the world, life, and modern times intermingled with a racist rant or two. I curse at how slow the grey water tank drains and opt to just pretend it’s finished so I can move on quicker…

So what are the Moeraki Boulders?

Well old racist Karen was sort of right, they are rocks on a beach.

But not just any rocks, they are concretions, Septarian Concretions to be exact. Similar to the ones we saw in the cave tour only bigger. Much bigger.

What the hell are Septarian Concretions?

I’m glad you ask.

They are nodules of rock, typically spherical, usually formed in cabanate rich mudstone. They often “grow” around something, a crab claw or dinosaur bone for example, so often contain fossils in their centre.

So basically as dumbed down as I needed it explained to me, a bit of organic matter is engulfed in mud and a rock “crystal” grows around it before the mud/sand is rockyfied itself.

Time move son and the softer mudstone or sandstone is eroded from around the harder nodule leaving behind big marbles.

And if that’s not impressive enough to make you want to check them out. Well they are on a spectacular stretch of beach.

And, well

Just look at them!

There are other, similar concretions 20km south at Shag Point (Teheheh, Shag!) that contain plesiosaur fossils but we are heading north…

And that end’s our New Zealand adventure, for this time. The following day is spent making our way back up to Christchurch, we’ve a plane to catch.

All in all we had a great trip. To recap here’s a list of links to all the awesome stuff we got to see and do.

Rafting through the most amazing Glowworm cave

Checking out Pancake Rocks

The beautiful Hokitika Gorge

Dinner and more glowworms at Sunset Point

A mind blowing walk on the Franz Josef Glacier

West coast sunset at Bruce Bay

The Waterfalls of Haast Pass

The Omarama Clay Cliffs

The proglacial Lakes of Aoraki

Stunning Lakes

the Elephant rocks

And finally the Moeraki boulders.

Along the way we took advantage of clear dark skies to do a bit of Milkyway photography

Back to Road trips

New Zealand South Island Road trip 2025 – Aoraki

| flynny101

From the Clay Cliffs we make our way up to White Horse Hill campground which is nestled below the towering peak of Aorali/Mount Cook.

White Horse Hill is a paid ground. During the winter the main toilet/shower blocks are closed off as the frequent negative temperatures lead to burst pipes and what not. What you are left with is two of the smelliest drop toilets I’ve ever encountered, And I’ve done long weekends at Newnes Camp ground in it’s heyday.

Take the biggest breath you can here and hold it as long as you can, a young whipper snapper was heard giving advice to her younger brother…..

Don’t let that put you off though, the scenery is well worth a skinny loo or two.

We roll in late afternoon and set the camp up. The temperature is already -2ºC and falling. The little diesel heater fitted in the van is amazing.

As night settles in and the temp plummets to -8º we decide to brave it for the sake of the most amazingly clear night sky.

Clicky Clicky to see full photo

The next day we head out on the Hooker Valley Trail.

Normally this gives the closest access to the base Aoraki the general public will get and also views over the proglacial Hooker Lake, complete with icebergs, however only a short section of the trail was open at the time of our visit due to track work and a bridge being washed out.

the short open section did, however provide great views over the Mueller Glacier and it’s lake.

Next we return to the van and duck over to the village for a coffee. While there we dropped in to the Department of Conservation information centre.

Wow!!!

What an amazing free resource. If you were in the area and the weather was bad you could easily spend a whole day in here. There are displays and videos and more lots more.

But today was a blue bird day so we have a quick look and then head over towards the Tasman Glacier.

Here you can take helicopter tour or a boat tour on the lake. We opt to just do the tourist walks.

Sitting between NZ’s two tallest peaks the Tasman is New Zealand’s largest glacier, being up to 4km wide and 600m thick in places. It had remained a fairy constant 28km long through out its recorded history up until it starting to retreat in the 1990s. It’s currently 23km long and retreating on average 180m/year.

Looking up the lake from the tourist lookout the glacier is’t much to look at. Compared to the white snow and crystal blue ice on the Franz Josef, the Tasman crunches up and contains a lot more rock and minerals (Glacier flour), giving it a dark, almost dirty appearance. Without the information sign at the I doubt most people, me included, would pick it out in the distance.

The lake, however is stunning.

The Blue Pools. When named they were connected to the glacier and very blue. Now they are cut off they are more a stagnant green.

Back at the van we start heading back down the valley.

On the way in I’d caught a glimpse of Wakefield Falls. It caught my eye on the way back out.

Is that waterfall frozen?

Looks like it.

It’s difficult to come to terms with scale here. That waterfall tumbles 230 vertical meters.

We pull over for a better look.

Na, it’s flowing. Looks like a cracker of a slot it’s tumbling into.

Should we go for a look.

hell yeah.

I grab the camera and off we go.

There is what appears to be a former tourist trail that comes and goes through the scrub and scree.

Did I mention it is hard to come to terms with scale here? It becomes apparent it’s further than it first looked.

Belatedly I realise in my excitement to get going I failed to grab my puffer jacket and beanie. This is how silly tourist get themselves on the news kids. Luckily not today though

Halfway up we meet to Russian(?) guys coming back down.

Did you get to the waterfall? ask we

Yes yes. Beautiful. Very careful. Very careful.

We push on. We reach the end of the flatter basin and the terrain gets steeper and looser. We had been yeeting up but slow here. A rolled ankle, rock fall or dislodging the scree here would be bad indeed.

There is still a fair way to go. Says Kylie. We should set a hard stop point.

Good idea.

It had been about 2:15pm when we left the van. We decide at 3:15 we need to turn around to get back prior to loosing the light.

I think we gained about 200m of elevation from the road. A bit after 3pm we get to a point where we had a a reasonable view into the slot where 3 streams of the falls converge.

We are so close. Another 10-15min and we’d be at the base of the falls. but hard stops are hard stops and but I know by the time I get the camera set up and get some shot we’d be close to time so thats what we do.

I’d guesstimate the bottom tier you can see here is about 50m tall

We get the shots and video in and scoot back down.

Part way down we come across this old information sign. Weird spot but I guess the old tourist track came up to this vantage point.

Explaining how the moraines pushed up by the glaciers formed dams in the rivers as the glacier retreated. or sumfink

Back at the van we chug down the road making for a freedom camp at lake Pukaki

New Zealand South Island Road Trip 2025 – Clay Cliffs

| flynny101

From Wanaka at the end of the Haast Pass we head up to Omarama for another geological wonder, the Clay Cliffs.

We miss timed it a bit and got there pretty much at noon which meant the contrasting light made photography difficult but hopefully the epicness of the landscape still came through.

The Omarama Clay Cliffs are on private land and there’s a honesty system donation to enter.

Formed from millions of years of sediment deposit at the bottom of a lake then uplifted and tilted, the Clay Cliffs are a classic example of what is termed “Badlands erosion”

They really are spectacular.

Kylie has a much better and more scientific explanation of these formations.

Here’s what she said

“I still remember the first time our lecturer brought us here and told us to “run wild and free” as he explained to us this magnificent example of tectonics in action. The Clay Cliffs are sedimentary deposits that were once the base of river bed. Due to the position of the Ostler Fault line under the South Island of New Zealand the river bed has been uplifted overtime and then eroded to form these strikingly alien planet like features.

New Zealand is an amazing country to see Earth in motion, similar to Iceland where tectonic forces are still very much at play building the landscape as we speak. Unlike Australia that is so ancient it only erodes now.

Anyway the Clay Cliffs are totally cool, I’m still finding new parts of it to explore every time I come back.”

Click to make the photo go biggish

it was still a little chilly
Ice

After spending most of the afternoon here we jump in the van and make tracks up to Aoraki aka Mount Cook.