Paritea Clay Cliffs

On our recent trip around the NZ south island, I spotted one of the brown "tourist information" boards on the roadside while travelling to our scheduled overnight destination at Twizel. It read:

Clay Cliffs

The clock on the dashboard read 3:10 pm. Hmm.. We would arrive at our evening destination a bit earlier than anticipated, consequently there was still plenty of time before nightfall, so I hit the brake pedal, and turned down. About 10 minutes later, I was starting to doubt the wisdom of my decision. Strange, these days I frequently doubt the wisdom of most of my decisions. I try to console myself with the attitude that I'll probably grow out of this irresponsibility and become wiser as soon as I start growing older. 

"Are you sure you know where on earth are we going? There's absolutely nothing here! This looks just like that dusty old farm road in the Karoo, leading to a desolate dead-end at the o-t-h-e-r end of the valley." Jeanette emphasized the length of the word "other," as she questioned me, in a somewhat worried tone.

She was right. Damn. As usual. I chose my best response, by pretending not to hear. We drove for another few minutes. I spotted a signboard which told me that we had traveled 17 km off the state highway already. Hmmm.. a bit farther than I'd imagined, or planned. Nevermind, let's pressure on, I thought. Probably without any wisdom. More pig-headedness, I suppose.

"Look, here we are!" I announced triumphantly, as we approached a farm gate blocking our further progress down the road.

We finally reach our goal.

The sign says 4km by car and an easy 100-metre walk to the cliffs. The road looks like a very dusty stone tracks.
"We've come this far,we might as well take a look-see, yes?" I am still desperately trying to justify my wisdom-ness, "Look, we can pay our five bucks over in that information centre over there." I point to along grey building ahead of us. When we get there, the building is deserted -- it certainly has no information. It is bone-empty..
After a very slow a asphyxiating (whew! you could lose your breath saying the word, let alone trying to breathe in the fine dusty conditions!) progress,we eventually reach the end of the road. There are a few other cars parked there.
I query with one of the Japanese ladies,who has obviously just returned from a hike to the cliffs, "Hello, do you know where do we pay?" I ask in slow English.  Her English is roughly 10 billion times better than my best Japanese, and I gather that we were suppose to pay the admission fee at the office in the Main Road in Omarama, a small town which we'd passed probably half an hour ago.

What a sight. All around us, like scenes from Hollywood sets for pre-historic movies,chalk cliff formations

We met a family group along the way, and took photos of each other. So tourist-y...

Mom, Dad and kids heading for the hills.

Peaks and cliffs all over the place.

Intricate patterns in the earth.

A view of the river gorge which runs through the chalk valley. 

Jeanette starts climbing the cliff-face. Oops! Lots of  creamy-white chalk on black pants...

The Clay Cliffs are huge sharp pinnacles and ridges with deep, narrow ravines separating them. The Clay Cliffs are made of layers of gravel and silt, deposited by rivers flowing from glaciers existing 1-2 million years ago. Compared to the nearby mountains, which are 250 million years old, the Clay Cliffs are relatively new. Today the gravel and silt layers can be seen as sloping bands as the strata have been tilted since their deposition 1-2 million years ago.