The sign says it all

The road to earthquake valley

More fossil Baleen Whale bones found in the rocks here

One side of the rift

The other side of the rift

7th July 2010 - Back on the Vanished World - Fossil Trail

Item 16 in the booklet simply states- Earthquakes. Huge blocks of Otekaike Limestone tumbled when the land slumped thousands of years ago. Caution! - rocks still fall and the ground is creviced! It goes on to talk about the fossils that can be seen in the rocks including the whale bones above.

I know this is not up to the size and dimensions of the rift valley in Africa but it is still quite awe inspiring to walk into a fairly enclosed area where the middle section had dropped by some 100 feet+ It was easy to spot some of the crevices, in fact to cross one of them you walked over a flattish piece of limestone that had fallen from the cliffs. Plenty wide enough but I could not see the bottom. Apparently geologists have tried to determine the depths of these crevices and have given up trying to ascertain the depths - so deep in places. Whole area is quite overgrown so was warned not to leave the trackways - umm - after crossing the makeshift bridge I took note. Spent at least an hour and a half there, very cold and frosty but with a lovely blue sky.

Drove on then up along the Waitaki river to Kurow. Here the road forked, left for Mount Cook and the upper part of the valley - one place I wished I had time to visit and right which would take you back along the opposite side of the river to the Pacific Ocean and the main highway to Christchurch. Due to time restraints I took the latter course and drove up to the Kiwi backpackers in Christchurch.

One thing I was told and how true it was - travelling around both islands one must allow additional drive time. In the UK I generally work on an average speed of 50 miles traveled per hour's journey. here it was down to 40 kms per hour travelled - much slower. There is a great place up near Mt Cook called Twizzle which was the site of the construction camp for the two dams at the head of the Waitaki river. Apparently all the building materials was trucked in and houses built for the construction staff. At the end of the project these houses were to be demolished but the construction company found that the locals (and not so locals) were very interested to buy them, so the town of Twizzle remains. This was also one of the sited for Lord of the Rings.