V. Quick Update

So Mack and I have spent the past few days in Dunedin and the Catlins with Dave Rogowski '08, who was kind enough to host us for a few days! It's been a quick half a week, but we've seen and done quite a bit.

To rewind, Mack and I had previously finished up the Milford Track, which turned out to be spectacular, great weather and awesome views along with meeting five other Americans, four of whom are doing a semester abroad in Christchurch. After Milford, we spent a day in Queenstown to return snowshoes and get rested and fed, and having had a few glasses of wine and some cheese on the way out of town, we made our way here, Dunedin, passing most of the Central Otago Rail Trail (a 150+ km trail for biking, best during the summer months).

Anyways, not much time left on the internet, so we leave here, go north to see Mount Cook, then jump over through Christchurch to Blenheim for a bit of touring, and then back to Christchurch to fly out on Wednesday! Crazy to think that it's the end of the trip, but I'm very excited to be heading home for the sake of a bit of continuity and structure in my life.

Photos up after some editing at home.

Kiwis Don't Make Straight Roads

Well, Mack and I are pretty exhausted -- we just finished up a 16 mile hike with 3000 ft elevation gain in the last seven hours or so. This turned out to be our version of the Kepler Track, a Great Walk in the Fiordlands of Southland near Te Anau. Sadly, the hike has an alpine section that requires previous experience in relatively extreme snow situations, so we both bailed pretty quickly on that one. However, we are heading north into the Milford Track early tomorrow morning, in which case doing a long hike today was probably not the best idea ...

In other news, we left Mount Bruce a little over one week ago and have been busy travelling and hiking since. After boarding the ferry at Wellington, we cruised over to the South Island and immediately drove to Abel Tasman National Park where we prepped to leave the next morning for a four day hike in the park labelled as one of NZ's other Great Walks. It was truly spectacular -- you hike along some of the most crystal-clear beaches I've ever seen in my life. Definitely a destination for a summer vacation, though it gets pretty busy; in fact, it's New Zealand's most popular national park (~300,000 visitors per year), and we managed to see about 40 people or so while we were there, very cool. I wish I could post pictures, but I just haven't had many free minutes to even load them onto Mack's computer.

After Abel, we travelled down the west coast of the South Island, hitting up Westport, Greymouth, and all the way down to Haast. On the way, we stopped for one day in Barrytown to make our own knives which was perhaps one of the coolest things we've done on this trip, plus I now have my very own ridiculously sharp handmade (by yours truly) kitchen knife. We also saw two different glaciers, the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers, though they weren't terribly interesting and we weren't willing to shell out a lot of money to go walk on them. Other than that, we've just done a ton of driving and we've seen a lot of really cool little stuff along the way. We also have a lot of really good pictures, which I'm excited to edit and hopefully turn into a book once home.

So yeah, that's pretty much it -- we leave early tomorrow morning from Te Anau to the beginning of the Milford Track, and return in three days! Pray for good weather ...

We see a rainbow everyday

Oh, paradise. Not really, but since it rains here so often, we are actually averaging over one rainbow per day. Kinda crazy when you think about it, but the weather here is so strange, we can't even rely on the weather forecast from the day beforehand. Chances are it's either (a) rainy, (b) windy, or (c) a combination of (a) and (b).

Also, Mack just was able to put a ton of his edited photos up on shutterfly (he has a computer, unlike myself, hence the larger number of edited/nice photos). Go see them here!

So ... the following pictures are probably not in order, and many of them are unedited, so my apologies in advance. But hopefully once I'm done writing this, at least the order will be improved.

Here's a shot of what a good path through the woods looks like. On really rainy days, we generally get completely soaked because we're walking through wet underbrush. Can you find the way through the forest?

Me. Apparently happy to find a very shmushed rat. You can kind of see it on the right side of the trap. I didn't feel a need to show a close up. You're welcome.

Here, we're at the final stages of making sure one of traps is good to go. This trap is the DOC200 (DOC = Department of Conservation), which usually has two traps that are more easily set but also incredibly powerful, so you have to be extra careful. Mack is placing the final rabbit chunk in the trap, and afterwards, we screw on the top and we're good to go.


Oh, never mind, I take that whole close up thing back. But really, can you even tell that it's a rat anymore? Maybe the tail gives it away ...

The reserve itself is surrounded by farms, so there are a bunch of access trails to the park that are larger, well marked trails. The one in this shot (Macks' photo) is of Charlie Access. The trails are conveniently done alphabetically (Alpha, Billy Goat, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel).

Mack was able to follow Diane around one day when she was kiwi tracking. Essentially, it amounts to using radio telemetry to triangulate a signal from a kiwi. It is made quite difficult, however, because the radio signal bounces off of small hills and other obstacles. Also, the kiwi sleep in dark, dry holes in the day, so actually finding them is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Coming down from Charlie Access, one of the many farms surrounding Mount Bruce.

The farm again (sorry, unedited).

Moo.

On our way back one day, we decided that we should grab a few traps that we hadn't found a few days before. Ever so luckily, we got a nice big ferret that had been decaying for a good while, with a bunch of rotten egg as icing on the cake. An ever so happy Mack ...

So on to something much more cute and cuddly! Last week, Mack and I were able to get in on doing a kiwi release. Here's a shot of a relatively small kiwi being checked out by the bird staff before being placed into a new aviary. Note the strange marks on it's head are not the eyes (they're smaller and more towards the beak).

A picture of the kaka, one of the parrots at Mount Bruce.

The red-crowned kakariki.

So last weekend, Mack and I were able to borrow Diane's car (thanks!) and drive down to Martinborough and Wellington. Martinborough is a huge wine region in the southeastern portion of the North Island. While we didn't spend to much time here, we did get two free wine tastings (we're pretty good at talking up whoever is giving us wine) and we had some of the nicest weather we've had since being here.

At the first winery we visited, the owner invited us to go into the fields and take a look at their last crop of the year, which was a last harvest affected by Botrytis, a fungus that causes the grapes to shrivel but also an increase in the concentration of sugar in the grape (hence late harvest dessert wines with more sugar).

Un-fungus'd grapes.

The drive to Wellington was perilous and fraught with dangers! Not kidding. There's a 13 km section just before Upper hut that is rated at highway speed, but has these ridiculous 90 degree or more turns. Also, New Zealanders are crazy drivers. The government has pretty awesome signs like this one all over. Oh yeah, and we drive on the left.

We visited the Te Papa museum, which had a huge Monet exhibit that we didn't have time to attend, but we did go see the free exhibits on Maori and Pacific history, which were really interesting. Sorry, no photos allowed.

Next, we hit up the national Food Show, which was a chance for food makers to show off their latest Kiwi and Australian products. One of the prepared foods from pitango. Mmmm, free samples.

Kikkoman, one of maybe two international food vendors at the entire place (over 150 separate booths).

There were also a few cooking contests, but only for those that had entered before. We did get to see some really cool food plates that had already been made like this one.

More booths.

Happy Mack! Behind is Belinda Jackson, who is giving a talk on wine tastings, specifically for white wines.

Sunset at Mount Bruce after a rainy day.

That's all for this time. We leave next week Tuesday for the South Island, planning on doing Abel Tasman, Milford, and Kepler Great Walks (if the weather agrees) and then heading back up the east coast of the island. More detailed itinerary to come.

Eastern North Island and a Bit of Work

Heyo. So nothing too much has changed since the last post, basically just trying to cover as many paths as possible until we leave. Mack got a chance to kiwi track yesterday while I was checking email, so hopefully I'll be able to do that in the near future. Last week was quite rainy, which made going into the field rather unenjoyable -- one day we cut a bit short because we were soaked within about 15 minutes of going out. Our walks to arrive at tracks to begin work are getting longer and longer, today being about 1.5 hours. However, nice days here are just amazing. The forest is very interesting, in the fact that it's much like a tropical rainforest (traps heat, incredibly humid, lots of rainforest-like plants like ferns) but also very empty of fauna other than birds.

Anyways, here's a photo of a trap with a relatively fresh rat. Probably not going to publish the old/decaying/gross ones, but you get the idea. This is one of the older traps called the Fen 2. (Mack's photo).

Me getting the rat out. Fun times.

This past weekend, Diane (our cool roommate from France), Mack, and I went for a bit of a North Island adventure to see as much as possible on the Eastern side. We began our trek from Masterton, heading north to Taupo. Here's Mack and Diane looking across the Lake Taupo:

The lake (on a nicer day) gives an incredible shot of the Tongariro National Park, which Mack and I are planning to visit either this weekend or the one after:

After Taupo, we headed north to the Rainbow Mountain Track just south of Rotorua. The trek itself was quite easy, about 1 hour each way with a view of hot springs on the way. A view from the top (the weather was pretty terrible on Saturday, thus the resulting gloomy image):

After passing through Rotorua, we headed up to Tauranga and Mt. Maungani. The very popular surfing beach nearby:

Morning of Sunday, sunrise at Gisborne and the Bay of Plenty:

Mack.

More.

The drive from Gisborne to Napier was absolutely beautiful. We also stopped off at hot springs on the way, which were incredibly refreshing after sitting in a car for a loooong time.

Mack running on the beach just outside of Napier looking North.

Mission Estate, one of the wineries we visited in Napier.

Back to Mt. Bruce. Here's Diane prepping the kiwi food (ox heart, veggies, etc).

One of the many very colorful birds here at Mt. Bruce, the takahe:

It was a bit nippy recently.

One of the small kiwis that they're nursing until it reaches 1 kg, enough to fend off predators like ferrets and stoats. It doesn't like being disturbed, as it is nocturnal, so sorry for the not close up.

Here's an idea of all the trap locations in the park. The green is the park, blue dots are the trap locations.

Bait stations with poison.

Mustelids, our worst enemy! I.e. stoats and ferrets.

The exhibit in Mt. Bruce just got a renovation a few years ago and is incredibly nice! Lots of information and interactive stuff for kids and adults alike.

A video detailing the history of the area.

This is where we work.

Til next time.