Wow time here is flying. My last post was an assignment to write and post a blog entry about fisheries management in New Zealand....so feel free to read that if you're interested but this is an update about the past few weeks. Unfortunately, the internet here is like a certain amount of MB and we used a lot of the data for this month in one day with a lot of people uploading photos from the South Island, so I can't upload any more here at the moment...We are about to start our research projects & will need internet for that, so we have to plan ahead a bit! But if you want to see where I've been, you could search google images for Kaikoura, Arthur's Pass, Nelson, Abel Tasman National Park, and Takaka! I'll put up some photos when I can :)
We spent a day driving down the North Island from Kaiaua to near Wellington, a solid 9 or 10 hour drive. I slept most of the way. The next morning we got up super early to make the first ferry across Cook's Strait. It felt WAY more choppy than the first time I was on the ferry! It was a rough trip but we made it to the South Island and drove a few more hours down to Kaikoura. Kaikoura is a really touristy town right on the coast & surrounded by big (ie. they got snow on top of them while we were there) mountains! Right offshore is a reallyy deep trench, which causes upwelling which makes the area really rich for marine life. We spent the week at the local marae, which is sort of like a church type building for the Maori community. We started our time there with a Porwhiri, a formal introduction ceremony, where the visiting group presents a speech, a gift, and a song to the marae and its members. We all slept in the same room, the Wharenui ('wh' is pronounced life F), which is covered floor to ceiling, and even on the ceiling, with amazing sculptures of ancestors and of historical events for the local iwi (tribe). Brett, who works for the Department of Conservation and is also an active member of the iwi, gave us a great explanation of each panel of sculptures. Originally, Maori was not a written language, so a lot of the stories and histories have been passed down orally for a couple centuries. The first day, we had a 'mihi mihi,' or introductions, where we each went around and said something about our ancestry, where we are from, and who we are/why we are here today.
The focus of our time in Kaikoura and over the course of the South Island as a whole was ecotourism. Kaikoura has 4600 residents but over a million people visit each year. So tourism is a huge economic opportunity but also comes with a lot of impacts - environmental and social. Most of the tourism activities in Kaikoura are based around marine mammals, so as part of that, one of our 'classes' involved partaking in a 'dolphin encounter' tourist trip.....not a bad day's lecture! We woke up at 4:30am, took some seasick medicine and hopped on a boat, watching the sun rise over the mountains [google image Kaikoura here! haha] We got to go swimming with a big pod of wild dusky dolphins. I am typically very hesitant of touristy attractions, but it was still really amazing to swim with the dolphins.
The night before we left Kaikoura we had a big talent show at the marae. It lasted for hours and I don't remember the last time I laughed so hard! Everyone got up and did something - songs, jokes, raps, games, writing, etc. It was awesome! I played 'Come Let Go' by Xavier Rudd an 'Mama You been on my Mind' by Bob Dylan. The next day we packed up, said our goodbyes, and hit the road to Hanmer Springs for a weekend off. Hanmer is basically a ski resort town, and we stayed at a campground. Went running on some trails in a planted forest right near the campground, celebrated St. Patrick's Day, and got a little work done.
From there we headed to Craigieburn, up in the mountains a bit west of Christchurch. We stayed at an environmental education center. It's right near Castle Hill, where I had gone climbing a bit in January! It was MUCH colder there than on the coast, and colder on the South Island than the North overall. We spent about a week there, learning about alpine ecology, farming and land issues, and tourism. A lot of Douglas Firs were planted for erosion control but they've invaded and there's a local effort to try to get rid of them. So we spent one morning helping pull little fir seedlings. It was bizarre weeding for Christmas trees! My guitar broke during that week, just fell over and the head popped off the neck! Rough couple weeks without it, but it actually just got fixed by someone in Kaiaua! Very grateful for that :)
From Craigieburn we traveled to Nelson Lakes where we visited a mainland island project. The beech forest there produces honeydew through a mutualistic fungus and the sooty beech scale insect. It's a great source of sugar for the native birds and insects, but also for the invasive wasps! Invasive wasps are a huge problem there because they eat up all the honeydew, and also are not very pleasant for people visiting the park. So there's a whole wasp poisoning scheme going on as part of the project, along with rodent control, to help protect the honeydew cycle and the native birds.
From there, we traveled up to Nelson where we had about 4 days off for spring break! Went to see the Hunger Games movie, spent a while at an awesome Saturday market there, went to the climbing gym a couple times, went to a festival, hiked in Abel Tasman National Park for a couple days, and tried to go rock climbing in Takaka but couldn't find a climbing partner with a rope! All in all a fun, relaxing spring break.
Drove back up to Kaiaua, and it was great to get back and not be living out of a bag! We've had a quiz and a bunch of assignments over the past week, so it's been pretty busy, lots of coffee consumed. We've been learning about mining in New Zealand this week, which is something not typically thought of to be happening in New Zealand! Yesterday we went to Waihi where the Newmont company has a gold mine. The town's motto is 'Heart of Gold' so I had Neil Young stuck in my head all day. It was really incredible to see the open-pit operation. So much technology & planning involved. Now I obviously am not a huge fan of mining in general, but the company does do a good job of being receptive to the community, making sure the community benefits, and trying to minimize impacts. Definitely a big contrast to the when I was in Ecuador & spent a month living in a region that has been fighting an illegal copper mine there for the past 3 decades. The majority of residents in Waihi support the mine's presence, and it seems like it does as good a job as any mining operation could do. Mining in New Zealand is definitely really controversial, particularly coal mining. So it was really interesting to learn about that this week. We had Jeanette Fitzsimons guest lecture the other day, and she is a former Member of Parliament for the Green Party and a very passionate opponent to mining, especially coal. She actually had gone to Waihi earlier in the week to protest the Martha Mine there. We also got to hear the other side of the story from a Newmont representative and from a local member of the council who is in charge of regulating the company and making sure they abide by the standards and restrictions. If you google Waihi Martha mine, it is really pretty shocking to see the physical structure of the open pit mine - virtually right in the center of town!
Well right now we have a 3-day weekend right now which is so nice! Today was absolutely beautiful, warm, not a cloud in the sky. Laid out reading for a while (Beasts by Joyce Carol Oates - very bizarre & intense book! I also read The Road recently....I need to find a more uplifting book to read), got my guitar back!, went for a run, and finished my work journal, which was my last assignment. We just have our final exam on Monday and then we get right into DRP's (Directed Research Projects). I will be at Warrenheip, a predator-free reserve a little ways south of Kaiaua, working with my friends Lauren and Jon to look at growth and mortality rates of different native tree species. Very similar methodology to my project in Ecuador! So I'm looking forward to that starting. We're spending next week reading and prepping and then a week in the field, a couple weeks of writing back at EcoQuest, and then presenting our results in Auckland. Time is quickly winding down!
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