New Zealand Has Almost as Much Coastline as the United States. Let That Sink In.

I wrote this in 2016 or 2017 during the two years I lived in New Zealand. Some details — prices, hours, what’s open — may have changed, but the experience and my love for this place haven’t.

New Zealand has an insane amount of coastline — for a country as small as we are, we have almost as much coastline as the United States. In terms of longest coastlines in the world, the US is number 8 and NZ is number 9. But since NZ has about 5.3 million people and the US has approximately 340 million, that means there’s a kilometre of coastline for every 353 people in New Zealand — but in the US it’s roughly 17,000 people per kilometre of coastline. And no part of New Zealand is more than 128 kilometres from the ocean.

That number fascinates me. You can really feel it in the beaches here — they are rarely crowded except in the main beaches near the cities. If you have to share a beach in the country with two other people you start complaining about how crowded it is. There’s a lot of variety too — different types of sand, water levels, wind and wave action, and having different oceans on each side of the islands makes for different water temperatures and wind patterns.

One of the most interesting beaches in New Zealand harbours the Moeraki Boulders. If you’re driving between Dunedin and Christchurch in the South Island, Moeraki Boulders is a great place to stop. They are unusually large and spherical boulders lying along a stretch of Koekohe Beach — they look a lot like dinosaur eggs or aliens about to hatch and are about 60 million years old. The largest are up to two metres in diameter and weigh several tonnes.

Science explains them as calcite concretions that formed on the ancient seafloor, gradually growing around a core of shell or bone fragment as mineral-rich water seeped through the sediment over millions of years. The surrounding mudstone was softer and eroded away, leaving the boulders behind on the beach.

Māori have a better story. In their tradition the boulders are known as Te Kaihinaki — the petrified kūmara baskets, eel pots, and food stores that washed ashore when the great voyaging waka Ārai-te-uru was wrecked on its journey from Hawaiki. The rocky reef extending seaward from nearby Shag Point is the canoe’s petrified hull. I know which story I prefer.

Visit at low tide if you can — the boulders are most accessible and you can walk right up to them. There’s a short five to ten minute walk from the car park down to the beach. There’s also a café on site if you need a coffee and a warm-up afterward.