February 22, 2026
We woke up to a partly cloudy but extremely windy day. It was time to check out of the beach house and move north to our next destination at Moeraki. On the way we made a side trip to Mount Cargill. We drove up the road to the summit where we had panoramic views of the entire city of Dunedin. Unfortunately it was so windy that we did not want to spent much time up there or take any of the trails that were in the area. The short walk to the summit from the car park was extremely uncomfortable with the wind. It felt like I was in Iceland!
We drove back down the mountain and continued further north after stopping for a gas fill-up. We stopped at the Puketaraki Lookout which had some nice but windy views. A sign at the lookout mentioned there were some blowholes close by on Huriawa Pa, and they might by really good today with all of the wind. It might be worth checking out on a future visit.
We continued the drive on to Shag Point. I was hoping to get out of the wind, but it just would not let up. The picnic area shortly before Shag Point was a little more sheltered, and we watched some fur seals. One seal was resting only a few feet from where we parked the car. Then we drove out to the point and watched more fur seals in the gusty wind.
We drove to an area just north of Shag Point that had a lookout onto a beach containing hundreds of mini Moeraki boulders. It was not low tide, so not a good time to walk down to the beach and the faint trail at that location was overgrown and looked hazardous. So we viewed the mini boulders from the top of the cliff.
We drove on to Moeraki and checked into our lodging at the Moeraki Village Holiday Park. We had a studio apartment with a kitchen and a nice ocean view.
The tide was too high to visit the Moeraki boulders, but it was the perfect time to drive to nearby Katiki Point, where we saw a group of yellow-eyed penguins in 2023. We waited for about two hours at the same spot where we had previously seen them, but we were not successful this time. However we did get to watch many fur seals.
We drove back to our room and cooked dinner: eggs and potatoes. We had a nice view of sunset colors from our room.
