Tag Archives: Lake Moeraki

More Moeraki

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Thursday 12 March 2026 – We didn’t fancy kayaking or paying to join the organised hike from the Lodge, but we had time on our hands, and felt we should go for a walk. Obviously. Showers were (accurately) forecast for the morning, but later on in the day we embarked on a walk to Monro Beach, some 3km to the north of the Lodge and reached along a public path. This is a rainforest walk, through some more rainforesty rainforest. The path starts out quite wide,

crosses a suspension bridge

View from the suspension bridge

and then becomes rather narrower as it wends its way through the forest.

There are some impressively tall trees

but apart from that, it’s just this rainforest path, you know?

It’s pleasant to be out and walking in all that greenery, but frankly, once you’ve seen one rainforest, unless you’re rather better versed than I am in the lore of the rainforest, you’ve seen ’em all, so there was little to remark upon. We reached the beach

and Jane started scouting around to try to find some greenstone. It’s a stony beach so there’s plenty of scope for fossicking. I’m not hugely into that, so I took some photos of the environs. There are some moderately dramatic rocks out to sea

and a colourful jumble of them on land

and it seems that the beach is not unpopular as a walking destination;

possibly because the weather had cheered up since the morning there were a few couples walking the path at the same time as us.

We got back to the Lodge with time for a Nice Cup Of (Twinings finest Earl Grey) Tea before going out on the Lodge’s daily 5pm pre-drinkies walk. This time we were guided by Kirsten, who took us along a path to the lake, via a few notable plants and trees. Fringing the Lodge’s grounds are some very old trees

and Kirsten showed us a few more as we walked the short distance to the lake shore.

As before, fantails accompanied us at times, seeking the insects we disturbed. I only had the little Sony camera with me, but managed to capture this shot.

I’m not sure whether the bird is feeling sad or is simply fed up that we haven’t disturbed more insects for it.

Kirsten showed us a couple of locations that could possibly come into their own after dark: one was a Lemonwood tree, which is a favoured perching spot of Morepork owls; and the other was the bole of a fallen tree which is known to harbour glow worms. So, after (another very fine) dinner, we pottered out with torches to see what we could see. Not, sadly, owls; but we found our way back to the glow worm tree and

there they were! Since we were not pressed for time, we experimented a bit with photography of this tricky subject. The photo above was simply captured using Night Mode on a Samsung phone, but I had the Nikon with me and had a go with that, too.

Not a huge difference, to be honest. We tried with a little bit of light

which give a slightly better idea, although the light does overwhelm the glow from the worms; and one with a little less light,

where, if you use your imagination, you might be able to see a little bit of the tree (lower left) as well as the glows. Finally, before we left the poor things in peace, we used the torch to illuminate one;

you can see the sticky threads it has exuded to trap insects attracted by its glow.

That was it for the day, so we retired to sleep the sleep of the just been out for a walk, wondering how much of the following day would be usable for touristing, because the weather forecast was pretty dire.

Friday 13 March 2026 – Forecast:

Reality:

We were, then, reasonably confident that the morning was a write off. However, it was (a) nice to bunk off and take things easy from relentless touristing and (b) a good opportunity to catch up with the laundry, as These Things Are Important, You Know.

However, the forecast was for the day to improve and the rain duly stopped, so, having exhausted all the hikes near the Lodge, we didn’t go for a walk. Obviously. We took up on a slightly left-field recommendation from Donovan, one of the serving staff at the Lodge, and headed out towards Jackson Bay. There’s nothing there apart from a famous fish and chip shop and it would be too late for lunch by the time we got there and anyway we’re eating too much as it is; but we thought it might make a nice excursion – it’s about 65km south of the Lodge.

The route takes one near the small township of Haast which features a petrol station and a coffee shop called the Striker Cafe.

This was only open until 2.30pm and we got there only just in time for a coffee. So we also treated ourselves to cake, which was lovely but which we might, of course, come to regret: “sin in Haast, repent at leisure”. Then we carried on along the coast road to Jackson Bay, which led past some pretty varied scenery.

One stretch of arrow-straight road led through rainforest, which felt distinctly weird.

One thing Jane had spotted en route was a Pioneers Cemetery, so we stopped off to take a look.

Several graves were dotted throughout the woodland, some with headstones, many without.

It was a sight to cause mixed emotions: sadness because it seems a rather lonely and neglected site; but a certain warmth that the contribution of the pioneers to the generation of the area is recognised via a heritage location.

So: Jackson Bay, then. Indeed a small place. It has a wharf, from which Jane hoped to see perhaps penguins or maybe dolphins but didn’t.

The wharf is perhaps not being best maintained.

it has a handful of buildings,

chief among which is The Craypot, the fish’n’chips place recommended by Donovan.

It may not look much, but it seems like it’s a destination restaurant; lots of locals we talked to knew about it. Outside the Craypot is a rather fetching installation featuring many, many abalone shells (the locals call them pāua).

Jane had a quick chat with the owner, who said that he and his family had eaten all of the shells’ inhabitants over the years, having fished for them where they used to live further south. Abalone fishing is currently forbidden in Jackson Bay in order for the population to regenerate; the sustainability of fishing generally is taken quite seriously,

but I take issue with some of their guidelines.

I can’t even run at 9kph for any distance at all, far less walk at that speed.

The road from Haast to Jackson Bay features a few speed restrictions for roadworks, and it’s clear that rockfalls have been a problem.

Also, some of the scenery is markedly different from the rainforest flora we’d seen thus far in these parts.

On the way back to the Lodge, we made a couple of stops in the hope that there was some more scenery to take in. The first was also so that I could indulge in schoolboy giggles.

Actually, this site was a pleasant stop, apart from sandflies, which were occasionally a bit of a nuisance. There’s a lake there, Dune Lake, which we could have walked around had not evening drinks back at the Lodge been making their siren call, but we walked a little of it

to a viewpoint, which has a great outlook on more of that unfamiliar vegetation we’d seen earlier.

There’s also a small marine reserve, Tauparikaka Marine reserve, which is an attractive setting.

The other stopping place was Knight’s Point Lookout, which offers, I suppose, a decent enough view

but has a surprisingly large car park for what it offers, with multiple bus parking and camper van slots. I guess the presence of public toilets might have something to do with it, because it’s otherwise just this decent view.

Back at the Lodge, we had our final, again very fine, dinner as the sun (which by now had made an appearance) set over the excellent view from the dining room.

These will be our final images from the Wilderness Lodge at Lake Moeraki. Tomorrow, we move on, again further south, and the pace of events picks up somewhat – no more three-night stays as we make our way down to and round the south coast. We have just over a week left in this lovely country and, we hope, lots more to see and enjoy, so stay with us for the rest of the trip, won’t you?

What, The Actual Fox?

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Wednesday 11 March 2026 – As is becoming a common pattern in this trip, a short journey from one accommodation to the next turned out to be rather less dull – in a good way – than the simple journey of a couple of hours it might have been had Jane not done her usual thing of finding Things To Do En Route.

What we had to achieve was to get from Franz Josef to Lake Moeraki, a journey of just over 100km. Since the journey passes by the neighbouring Fox Glacier, Jane suggested that we should investigate a couple of viewpoints that present themselves on Google Maps. Although the distance between the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers can be as little as five kilometres up in the mountains, it’s about 25km by road from one township to the other; as usual, quite a scenic drive.

The Fox Glacier township is even smaller than Franz Josef.

There is a Fox Glacier viewpoint marked on the maps; counter-intuitively, one drives 10km away from the glacier to reach it, but, distant as it is, it does offer a decent view of the glacier.

It also offers a fine view of a sweep of the southern alps, and a thoughtful person has installed a sighting device to help you identify what you’re looking at.

In theory, one can see Mounts Cook, Tasman, Dampier and Teichelmann (or, to give them their Māori names Aoraki, Rarkiroa, Rakiroa and Rakirua), but the weather was against us that day. As well as the sighting device, the site has an installation called “The Canoe of the Gods”.

An info board explains how this pays tribute to the myth of the creation of the mountains, which are named after four brothers whose canoe capsized and created the South Island.

We called in back at the township for a coffee and (in Jane’s case) a vast cheese scone (of which someone else ate half – Ed) at the excellent Cafe Nevé, and then carried on to the next viewpoint possibility, which is reached by a walk starting at a car park just outside town. The walk goes by the south side of the Fox River

along a well-made path. (It’s robust enough that one could drive up it and save all that energy; but that’s not allowed, and I’m rather glad, as it’s a pleasant walk. I was careful to walk in a butch kind of way, as I wanted to avoid the Fox Glacier mince.)

It’s exceedingly rainforesty – probably the most rainforesty rainforest we’ve yet walked in this trip.

We saw this sign

which indicates something I’m hoping for back in the UK. The temptation to see how warm the actual spring was by sticking a hand in evaporated somewhat on looking more closely at it.

The path leads gently uphill for about three km to a couple of viewpoints for the glacier, the first of which allows me to indulge in some photographic nerdery, because the light conditions were quite challenging – very dark foreground and bright background.

I had the Nikon with me as well as my phone.  Taking photos with the Nikon requires care – it would be easy to overexpose the bright parts, and once those highlights have been clipped they cannot be recovered. So the trick is to turn the exposure down so that the highlights are not lost. It is possible to do this on the phone, but it requires special buggering about which I can’t be bothered with. So I just pointed the phone at the scene to see how its software dealt with the conditions.  Here are the results.

Nikon, no processing
Phone, no processing

The phone’s Gallery app has its own processing capabilities and so I tweaked the phone image using the “Light Balance” slider. And, once I got to my laptop, I processed the Nikon RAW image using DxO Photolab. Again, here are the results.

Nikon, RAW processed
Samsung, Gallery processed

As ever, a certain amount of personal taste comes into this, but the Nikon image unsurprisingly has a lot more detail in it and I think looks a lot less garish. But putting the processed Nikon image next to the unprocessed phone image shows what a good job a modern software can do to improve phone images.

Nikon, RAW processed
Samsung, not processed

The path carries on from this viewpoint to another one where That Chap is on duty again to make sure you don’t do anything you might regret.

The view was fine enough

but Jane spotted that the clouds were moving leftwards so we waited a few minutes and – lo and behold!

we got a cracking photo of the glacier and the mountains beyond.

Much of the time we were there was accompanied by the soundtrack of helicopters whizzing about, and I wanted to wait to get the perfect shot of a helicopter against the glacier. So we waited and listened for a helicopter. Finally, one came along and flew by the glacier, as I wanted. You can see it in this photo.

Oh, yes you can.

I think that gives a great insight into the deceptively huge scale of the glacier.

Rather than just walk back along the path to the car park, we took a small diversion along what was signposted as a “Moraine Path”.  This was even more rainforesty.

It was a delightful diversion, including taking photos of the tiniest mushrooms you ever did see, which were growing out of a tree.

The path was quite up-and-downy for a while, but then offered the pleasing illusion of being part of a narrow gauge railway track.

It was a very enjoyable walk, but now it was time to head to Lake Moeraki, and our next destination, the Wilderness Lodge there. The weather had closed in a bit by then, and the landscapes on the drive were quite dramatic in places.

The Lodge is basically in the middle of nowhere – the nearest town is Haast, some 33km away.

It has cabins for guests

many of which, like ours, have a lovely view over the Moeraki River.

The lounges are very comfortable

and, as we discovered later, the food is excellent. But before we ate, we joined a guided tour organised by the Lodge, to explore a bit of the local area. Jack, our guide, explained a little bit about the unique nature of the environment. Lake Moeraki is near the west coast, but most of the bits north of it have been exploited in some way – what was forest is interspersed with farmland, which has changed the nature of the nature in it. But the Lake Moeraki area has never been exploited, and so is closer to what it was once originally.

The six of us were enjoined to don welly boots and Jack led us across the Munro Creek

and along a path where he explained about some of the trees we could see.

Silver Beech
White Pine (Kahikatea)
Red Pine (Rimu)
Mature Rimu
  • The Silver Beech, particularly one as old as this one, is a rare tree these days. It’s slow growing and doesn’t bear fruit – it reproduces via wind-blown pollen and seeds. The last ice age, 12,000 years ago, did for them and since that time other, faster growing trees have tended to dominate in the rainforest.
  • An example would be the White Pine, which is not a pine, actually – as any fule kno it is Dacrycarpus Dacrydioides. This particular tree was the basis for some added CGI and use in the film Avatar. It’s a faster-growing fruiting tree, hence being able to compete in the silent, slow war that is a rainforest. (Fruiting is useful – the fruit get eaten by birds, which then distribute the seeds.)
  • Finally, Jack asked us to guess the age of the Red Pine, or Rimu tree. To cut a long story short, we were all out by a long way: the one he showed us, not much taller then him, was about 100 years old – surviving by consuming tiny amounts of resource in order to grow.
  • He also showed us a mature Rimu, which, having got to the point where it reached the canopy, could compete on more equal terms with the trees around it and grow much faster. This one, like the other mature trees he showed us, is thought to be about 900 years old.

Then Jack took us towards the banks of the Moeraki River where he intended us to see a wildlife cabaret. But first we were distracted by a bit of birdlife – a fantail was flitting about in the trees near us, feasting on the insects we people disturb as we crash through their landscape.

I took many, many photos in an attempt to catch it with its tail doing the fan thing, but only managed to get this.

Not perfect, but you get the idea.

By the banks of the river, we had a view back to the Lodge

and Jack started the cabaret act by rinsing the chunks of meat he had in a container with river water and splashing the rinse water in, before throwing a couple of pieces of the meat into the river. Obligingly, the local denizens started appearing to feed.

and soon there were a lot of them.

These were Longfin Eels, the same species we’d seen in the Wildlife Centre in Hokitika, but living wild in the river. It’s worth emphasising that the eels are in no way dependent on this feeding, but they’re happy to join in if the food happens to be there.

Guide included for scale

Drinks and dinner followed our return to the Lodge and, well fed up and agreeably drunk, we retired for the night.  We had no formal activities planned for the next couple of days – a chance to relax, maybe, but my money is on Jane finding Interesting Things for us to Do.