New Zealand
Wharariki Beach
Archway islands rise from the surf behind dunes where fur seal pups play in rock pools.
Archway Islands stand offshore like cathedral ruins sculpted by the Tasman Sea. Wharariki Beach at the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island is unreachable by car — the twenty-minute walk through farmland with grazing cows is the only approach, and it is what keeps the beach wild.
The rock formations at Wharariki are massive — arches and sea stacks carved through by wave action over millennia. Fur seal pups play in the rock pools at the base of the cliffs from October through January, tumbling and wrestling in water shallow enough to observe from arm's length. The sand dunes behind the beach shift constantly, revealing and burying streams that change course with every storm. The beach faces the open Tasman Sea, and the surf is powerful and unsupervised. Farewell Spit begins a few kilometres to the east.
Solo
Walking through the farmland gate and onto a beach this dramatic, with no facilities and no other buildings visible, is the West Coast distilled to its essence.
Couple
The seal pups in the rock pools from October to January. Sitting on the rocks watching them play, with the Archway Islands as a backdrop, is an afternoon that costs nothing and gives everything.
Friends
The scale of the beach and the formations rewards exploration. Splitting up to find different vantage points, then comparing photographs afterward, is how groups experience Wharariki best.
- Archway Islands stand offshore like cathedral ruins — massive rock formations carved through by the Tasman Sea.
- Fur seal pups play in rock pools at the base of the cliffs from October through January.
- The sand dunes behind the beach shift constantly, revealing and burying streams that change course with every storm.
- No road reaches the beach — a twenty-minute walk through farmland with grazing cows keeps it uncommercialised.
Pack your own — the nearest shop is in Collingwood, forty-five minutes back down the gravel road.
Collingwood's Courthouse Café does whitebait fritters and mussel chowder.
Staffa
Scotland
Hexagonal basalt columns form a sea cave so resonant Mendelssohn scored it as an overture.
Saharna
Moldova
Twenty-two waterfalls through a wooded gorge to a monastery where pilgrims kiss a footprint in stone.
Lake Tortum
Turkey
A turquoise lake behind a ten-thousand-year-old landslide dam, a 48-metre waterfall at its head.
Pir Ghaib
Pakistan
Cold green water pouring from bare limestone where no waterfall should exist in Balochistan's parched heart.
Putangirua Pinnacles
New Zealand
Pillars of ancient gravel tower like a ruined cathedral, exposed by six million years of rain.
Milford Track
New Zealand
Four days through rainforest and over a mountain pass Victorians called the world's finest walk.
Mount Sunday
New Zealand
A solitary hill standing guard over a braided river plain — Tolkien's Rohan made viscerally real.
Mount Taranaki
New Zealand
A near-perfect volcanic cone so symmetrical that satellite photos look digitally rendered.