Sandymount & Sandfly Bay, Otago Peninsula
Long route at right. Short route at left.
Screenshots of the NZ topographic map are licensed as CC BY 4.0 by Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand (LINZ).
The Otago Peninsula extends east from the city of Dunedin (Ōtepoti), Otago, South Island. It has several short hikes, all of which make convenient day-trips from urban/suburban Dunedin. There are three different tracks to Sandfly Bay, two of which I cover here.
One of the tracks is the Sandymount circuit, which has a long side-trip downhill to the bay, the Sandymount/Sandfly Bay Track. I didn’t reach the beach, due to sea lions blocking the way, but at least I saw a number of sea lions. DOC reports that this track is closed for lambing from 1 September to 15 October.
Lower part of long route at right. Short route at left. Not mentioned in my blog post: the middle route, Ridge Road Track.
See note about how the names on this map don’t match the topomap and the DOC webpage.
Below, I also mention a shorter route further west, the Sandfly Bay (Walking) Track. It is closed for wildlife preservation from 1 November to 28 February.
DOC recommends staying 20 meters away from sea lions when they are awake, and 10 meters asleep.
Naming inconsistency
The topomap and DOC website refer to the short (western) route as the Sandfly Bay Track, but the sign posted by the track calls it the Sandfly Bay Walking Track.
The website and topomap don’t name the side-trip from Sandymount to the bay, but the sign posted calls it the Sandymount/Sandfly Bay Track.
I think the posted sign makes more sense.
Time
Long route:
DOC estimates 1 hour for the loop track, and 45 minutes each way to Sandfly Bay.
AllTrails users averaged 57 minutes for the loop, including the short side-track to The Chasm, which I skipped.
The hike took me around 2 hours 45 minutes. Of this, perhaps 30 minutes was spent observing sea lions.
Short route: DOC reports that the Sandfly Bay Walking Track takes 15 minutes one-way.
Longer eastern route
For the loop and its short side-trip, but not the long Sandfly Bay side-trip, AllTrails users report 140 meters of elevation gain and 2.7 kilometers in length.
The loop begins and ends at a small DOC parking lot on Sandymount Road. Beginning clockwise, the hike starts through trees and shortly emerges into hilly sheep pasture. (The DOC topomap displays all of this as public conservation land, so I don’t know why sheep graze there.)
The grazed area covered approximately the first half of the loop track, going clockwise. Sometimes, an impact track split off from the main track to take a more efficient, narrower, higher-elevation route, before reuniting. Possibly because of the separating tracks, I missed the turnoff to The Chasm and didn’t get a good view of Lovers Leap.
The loop track is mostly on dirt/grass, with a few muddy patches. The side-track downhill to Sandfly Bay is largely sand. Ascending it was the slowest part of the hike for me.
Sea lions occupied the tops of sand dunes and the low areas alike, and I couldn’t spot a safe path to the beach between them. At one point, a juvenile male sprung up from the dune grass, at a distance of about 2 meters, and barked at me, so I retreated.
If 1 is an easy track, and 4 is using hands and feet on exposed rocks, I give this track’s terrain a 2 at its worst.
Shorter western route
There is also a western route to Sandfly Bay: the Sandfly Bay (Walking) Track. The trailhead is at a parking lot on Seal Point Road. It looks like a much quicker way to reach the beach. I only went as far as the cliff lookout point.
Scroll down to the second set of photos.
