Given the country’s plethora of geological wonders, it was only a matter of time before New Zealand landed on UNESCO’s Global Geoparks (), which officially joined the network of geologically significant sites in May, spans 7,200 square kilometers in the Canterbury and Otago regions of the South Island, stretching from the windswept Pacific coast to the base of the Southern Alps. Shaped by volcanoes and glaciers, the area is full of unworldly formations like the chiseled clay cliffs at Omarama and the limestone outcrops of Elephant Rocks, which made an appearance in 2005’s . As this landscape was once an ancient seabed, there are marine fossils to explore as well: a deep gulch near the farming town of Duntroon has offered up baleen whale bones and the skeleton of an extinct giant penguin. And there’s human history, too. The braided Waitaki River was an early highway for New Zealand’s first people, who left traces of their lives along its banks, such as the centuries-old rock art at Takiroa. Add in Waitaki’s burgeoning vineyards, farm-driven dining, and unspoiled shorelines, and you’ve got a destination that is as well rounded as the Moeraki Boulders, a scattering of large spherical stones on Koekohe Beach.
