Meandering away from Dunedin, SK and I splattered the NZ South Island with our presence in the same way paint touches a Jackson Pollock. Our first drop of colour landed us at a real life secret garden, or secret beach rather. If you were a girl born sometime in the 90s, or a mother who had a girl who was between the ages of 5-15 during the 90s: the place made me feel like Mary Lennox (the protagonist from The Secret Garden and yes I had to google that).
The story goes once upon a time the wealthiest man in Dunedin was struck with the same issue that every father has when the first post-puberty bathing suit season arrives: “God forbid boys look at my daughters the way I used to look at girls.” Unlike most fathers, he could afford to tunnel deep into a rock cliff to create a private beach. Flash 50 years forward and, in a beautiful spot for solitude, there are many 20-somethings strewn about with notebooks and pensive faces. I desperately wished all of them weren’t – I just wanted to sit and watch and hear the colours form matter. Instead, those tantalizing whispers were overcrowded and left only my temporal cynicism. I looked around at the secluded spot, appreciated how noise was drowned in rhythmic waves, and I bet every inch of irony in the world that the man’s daughters had all lost their virginity on that cloistered beach.
Our next colour of choice was white: for White Fish. Fleur’s inhabits a completely unassuming shack and happens to be SK’s favorite restaurant. But even the peeling paint couldn’t hide the shining scales of a fish in Fleur Sullivan’s hands. She creates tastes to enhance the subtle savories of the sea (and not merely the sauce heaped on whatever because it’s all about the sauce anyways) and even some famous British food eater named Rick Stein decided out of the entire world, Fleur’s was the place to write about. Given all of this built up hoopla, I had also determined that if there were one place in the world that could make me like white fish: it would be Fleur’s. SK was happy to oblige my investigation and we had a platter of six different white fish including groper, gurnard, blue cod, snapper, tarakihi, and warehou. The previously considered flavourless-waste-of-chew-time won over each of my taste buds as the fish’s fine oils held the flavours Fleur proficiently formed to perfume the flaky delicacy on my plate. Divine. As we made our way back to the car, we spied a real fisherman filleting fish and hosing away soliciting sea gulls.
The blue sky that had joined us at Fleur’s began to fade as we drove down the road to the Moeraki boulders. What is so special about these boulders, beyond my fascination with rocks, is that to the Artist’s eye, they are perfectly spherical. Our walk down to the beach was shrouded as the ominous sky became overcast. We were no longer on a beach, but some greyscape surrounded by petrified dragon eggs (more commonly referred to by scientists as “gradual precipitation of calcite in mudstone over 4 million years ago”). Some cracked with impatience and secreted their amber amniotic fluid in anticipation of their eventual birth. Too graphic? My bad. But truly, a lot of the rocks were traced with cracks of a golden-red resin. When I am a multi millionaire, I’ll get a degree in geology just so I can identify these things.
We set up camp at a golden beach called Purakaunui (Poo roo ka nu ee) and then went off to do some free penguin viewing of the other endangered penguin of New Zealand: the Hoiho or, in non-Maori terms, the Yellow-eyed penguin. Double the size of the Blue penguin, the Hoiho is considered a mid-sized penguin 2-2.5ft (62-79cm). We settled into stillness and listened to the hush of waves singing the shore to sleep while the sun tucked Earth in with its last warm hues. Through the serenity, a completely ungraceful black and white cucumber tumbled into shore, shooks its head, and teeter-tottered its way to its burrow. This creature has got to be one of the top ten most awkward in the world. Considering all of their life skills are limited to under the sea, God Darwin knows why they come ashore! Survival of the fittest, my bum! (But thanks for looking the other way Darwin, Hoiho’s are adorable!)
Sunset. Sunrise, I was awake for that too. It was one of those vain sunrises, which can only ever happen when the sun is met with his reflection on the sea. Narcissus Sun takes twice as long to rise as he is mesmerized by his own golden crown cresting the Earth’s crust. So brilliant and yellow it overpowers the usual reds, pinks, and oranges. He is blindingly beautiful, and he knows it.
Can “wet” be a colour? The Cathedral Caves, our next stop, had a specific visiting window during two hours of low tide. Of course, we arrived with 30 minutes to spare. Combating my Chitty Chitty Bang Bang childhood nightmares of having the tide come in while I was unawares, SK and I ran down to the beach. T minus 20 minutes. We quickly ran into the caves and both wished we’d had the foresight to bring our headlamps. So instead, we took many photos which could easily be mistaken for the missing documentation of Jesus’ second coming. T minus 15 minutes. We ran into the other caves, finding dead ends at utter darkness and slime coated walls. T minus 10 minutes. At this point, SK started refusing to run around with me because, maybe his grown-up bones kicked in whereas my inner child was still freaking out: “Uh – last I checked your Subaru Legacy isn’t Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” I took a few photos of “wet” to try and distract myself while SK kept finding further away places to explore. T minus 5 minutes. Thankfully, the sandflies were on my side and started attacking us and SK gave in and we ran back to safety, water just passing uncomfortable-thigh levels.
Our final touch on our here-to-there masterpiece was Curio Bay, which was home to a 201.3 to 145 million year old forest. It sits on the edge of a reef and you can walk amongst stumps that Medusa has since fossilized into stone. There are logs intersecting along the forest floor and it’s a heavy feeling, knowing you are treading land where, let’s say, a triceratops gave birth or a little brontosaurus was eaten by the chicken’s ancient ancestor: the t-rex, whose bits and pieces were later scavenged by raptors. And I was tripping over the same stumps that the t-rex had initially knocked over in his graceless hunt! While I don’t quite have the metaphysical perspective to feel insignificant when looking at stars, looking at a 200 million year old stump does the trick.
That night we made it to SK’s Aunt and Uncle’s. They are dairy farmers. Over a lovely meal SK’s Aunt asked us where we were headed next [ans: The Keplar Trek] and what nights we had booked for. We realized we should probably look at our bookings to see if we needed to print anything. SK started fiddling with their ipad and, after a few minutes, muffled a swear with a snort: “We’re supposed to be up at Luxmore hut tonight.” After some impulsive solutions were brought forward, we decided it did not make sense to start a 5 hour hike at 8pm. So we were forced to have a hot shower, wash our clothes, and remember what sheets felt like. Our blonde adventure mishap could wait until morning.
The crazy piece of land that hides Tunnel Beach (the rich man’s beach for his presumably gorgeous daughters).
SK: serving as an example of what one of the many suitors on his way to go woo some cloistered, hormone-raging teenage girls may have looked like.
The secret beach. (Yes, I successfully maneuvered the camera to avoid all the pondering-the-meaning-of-life wannabes).
Looking back at the shoreline from the funky peninsula.
SK and me outside Fleur’s
The fisherman spraying away the leering albino flying rats. So satisfying.
Voila. (SUCCESS)
About to hatch!
An example of the dragon’s which are born from the Moeraki boulders.
The studly dragon next door.
These boulders slowly appear as the coast erodes. It looks absurd, doesn’t it? So unnatural – and yet it is..
Casual roadside oddity dubbed: god’s toilet.
SK setting up camp at Purakaunui (Poo roo ka nu ee)
This is the beach we went to watch out for the Hoiho. To the left of the picture, you can make out a straight edge which is the corner of the hutch humans hide in to spy on ze animals without zhem knowing (and/or smelling)!
The Yellow Penguin returns from the sea. She looks quite dramatic, thoughtful even. Like the New Zealand’s version of Ireland’s Selkie.
(ooh bummer, I did a vertical movie. Amateur! Oh well, watch it full screen and you get the idea – look in particular at the way his head bobbles around!).
The luminescent sunrise knocking back darkness.
One of the several entrances to the Cathedral Caves
Jesus on his way to go absolve the world’s sins, again.
A good photo of SK walking in the wrong direction from our car…
200 million year old forest from the Jurassic period. You can see the fallen logs crossing each other and the myriad trees now shrunken to stumps.
Close up of the stone log, it’s bark so perfectly preserved over hundreds of thousands of thousands years. Come to think of it, it is quite striking how little has changed in the patten of bark over 200 million years – like bark pretty much looks the same. You could look at this one of two ways; either trees peaked early and are therefore not’ that impressive of a specimen, or trees figured their evolutionary perfection way faster than humans did.
If you look closely, you can count the rings of this wee stump. Of course, there will not be 200,000,000 of them, so I guess you’ll need to do some carbon dating in order to figure out the trees precise age. Regardless, it would appear as though it had several severely dehydrated years!
travelingrealblonde 