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Otago

Lovers Leap and The Chasm

Dunedin City District

GPS -- -45.895754, 170.675520

Lovers Leap

A great loop track close to Dunedin City. The track circles Sandymount (the hill) while passing by The Chasm and Lovers Leap and skipping across the top of the 100 meter high dunes of Sandfly Bay.


Directions

From Dunedin; Take the Highcliff road over the peninsula and turn onto Sandymount road. Follow this till the end which is the Sandymount Recreation Reserve. From the parking lot, just follow the signs to Lovers Leap. Please note that if you have small children with you, keep them close, there are lots of cliffs and steep drop offs.


Other adventures in close proximity


Helpful links

By Hidden Otago

Third times the lucky

It was one of those lazy unmotivated Sundays, when your not to sure what you should do, but you have that urge to get something done. I jumped in the old '85 Corolla, and headed over to the peninsula. Whilst driving I came to the conclusion I should go see Lovers Leap and take some pictures of course. I started up over Highcliff Road and passed by the turn-off to Larnach Castle. There where road cones, lots of them. Having such a 'Mint' car, I drove right around them and headed down the road. About the second corner in I realized my apparent mistake. There was no road left. It had slipped away down the bank with the last downpour. Even two cars where lying upside down at the bottom of the slip.

Backtracking just a little, I headed down to Portobello to try and sneak up the other side. This way didn't fair two well either, slips everywhere, road missing. I knew one other road that passed by Hoopers Inlet that would possibly make it there. To my surprise it was open and a very nice drive. I parked up at the top of the hill and headed down though the cypress tunnel toward The Chasm. It was a very pretty day out that made every picture you took look postcard worthy. The Chasm was massive and kinda scary, I opted out of venturing down to the bottom of this by myself.

The trail then lead over to Lovers Leap, It had a very nice viewing platform, but way to far away for my liking. I headed off down the hill to get a closer look. It was much further than it looked and quite steep and slippery. No real trail that went there as far as I could tell. Standing atop the huge archway over the ocean was a very scary feat, I would not recommend this to anyone. There is a rather large obelisk sticking out of the ocean on the other side of the arch, a remarkable sight if I do say so.

After scrambling back up to the viewing platform, the trail headed around the hill and crossed over the top of the Sandfly Bay Dunes! These are 100m high and a whole another adventure. Look out for my page on that. The sun was setting as I made it back to the car and headed off home in the dark. Great times.

Still alive - Stu