North on Holiday

Hello, everyone!
Last week we were on holiday, so Alexis and I trekked up to the North Island and had some grand adventures!

Our first stop was Wellington, where we were greeted in the airport by Gandalf swooping overhead on an eagle.  Shortly thereafter we dragged my rolling suitcase all the way to the Weta Caves.  That's where they make all the props for all sorts of movies, including Lord of the Rings.  There were some people still working in the shop when we got our tour.  It was really cool!  They even have a master swordsmith who forges the swords.  And they have to make about four or five of each prop for different uses in the movies,  all to the same level of intense detail.

After that, we got a great bus ride from this very nice bus driver, who took us right to our stop instead of having us catch a connection.  There we met up with our friend Leah, who's studying in Wellington.  She took us around the city, and it looks like a happening place!  We had dinner on Cuba Street, then strolled along the waterfront for their Lux festival of lights.  It was lovely.

 

The next day (Sunday) we were up with the sun.  We ran quickly to church, then sauntered over to the bus stop for our long ride to Tongariro National Park.  The weather was beautiful.  When we arrived, we ran into Becca, our friend from UC!  It was pretty late, so we just bought some wifi time and relaxed.  It's winter and not very busy, so we had our own room at the hostel.

The following morning we headed out to Whakapapa Village and the start of some hiking trails.  It was cold and drizzly, but it actually turned out to be quite pleasant for hiking.  The forest around the base of the volcanoes was great.  It was super green and mossy, and there was a racket of birdsong everywhere we went.  We even saw a type of owl called a morepork.  I kind of freaked out with excitement over all the cool plants.  When we got up into the shrubbier altitudes, the views were so pretty!  Even though it was cloudy, you could see all three volcanoes (including Mt. Doom) clearly.  Between hikes we had a warm meal at the cafe.  It turned out to be a great day.
The next day was sunny and warm again.  Go figure!

Next we bused up to Hamilton.  That was our home base for our next adventure, which was Matamata and Hobbiton!  The Hobbit village was lovely.  It was quaint and comfortable.  The level of detail that went into that entire set was amazing.  They even wired leaves onto the trees so they would look like native English trees rather than NZ flora.  At the end, we got complimentary ginger beer (non-alcoholic, in our case) at the Green Dragon Inn.  It was really good.  We said hello to Pickles, the cat, on our way out, and the entire bus ride back I watched the little knock-kneed lambs that were frolicking in the fields.



Our final adventure was to the Waitomo Glow-worm Caves.  We signed up for a tour, and right away you could tell it was a very nice cave.  It was big and open with lots of cool formations.  The coolest part of all, though, was the glow-worms.  A silent boat ride carried us down the underground river.  The only sound was the echoing drips of water.  Up above, thousands of glow-worms were scattered as little blue points of light across the black cave ceiling.  It was like a dense, bright milky-way of stars arching overhead.  It was so pretty!

Then came a long day in the airport, then some long days of finishing my homework, and here I am, back in the swing of things at Uni.

Kaikoura: Seals, Shells, and Spouts

 Hello!  Spring Break has brought a whole host of adventures!  Halfway through the first week, I left for Kaikoura for a field trip.  It was a lovely place with a beautiful view.  We are studying conservation and the co-management of resources, so we visited the field station and rahui there.  A rahui is a temporary restriction that is often used to allow a resource to replenish itself.  We worked with paua, or abalone, but more on that later.

 Last Wednesday (August 27th) we headed up, and one of the first things we saw was a fluffy cluster of fur seals!  They were supposed to be up a trail by a waterfall, but instead, we found them all curled up on the beach.  Most were snoozing, but some were playing in little pools in the rocks.  They were so cute!

The second day, we tagged paua.  We glued little yellow tags to their shells until we had a layer of superglue over our fingers.  Then we made bags out of kelp, which is the traditional way of releasing the paua.  We turned the kelp inside-out to give the paua some of the nutrients and algae on the outside, then cut slits in the side for them to escape through when they are ready.  We released some of the critters this way, but others we released with the modern method:  we set them on rocks and allowed them to crawl underneath on their own time.

 On the third day we got up early to to whale watching while the other half of the class hiked around to see a Hutton's shearwater colony.  It wasn't too eventful as far as whale watches go, but it was still really cool!  We saw albatross and a lot of fur seals, but the highlight of the trip was a sperm whale that surfaced twice during the tour.

In short, the field trip was lots of fun.  There was great food and lots of fun activities.  I've only mentioned a few of the highlights here, but it was definitely a great experience all around.