Here's Part Two! Our next stop was Lake Karapiro and Hobbiton. We stayed at an Airbnb on Lake Karapiro for a night before our tour of Hobbiton. The house we stayed at was so nice. It had a balcony overlooking the lake and two kiwi orchards, and the owners even had two dogs that were absolutely adorable. One of the most anticipated moments of this trip for me was the Hobbiton tour. I happen to be a very big fan of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. We got to see all of the hobbit holes and the party tree, and we had drinks at the Green Dragon at the end of the tour. It was fascinating learning about the history of the set too. The set is located on a farm outside of Matamata, and the original set was destroyed when the filming was done, but after Peter Jackson came back to film more movies, the set was built with more permanent materials. The Shire did not disappoint. After the tour, we took a drive past Mount Doom (a.k.a Mount Ngauruhoe) on our way to Whanganui. The peak is in Tongariro National Park and is one of three volcanic peaks in the park. The others are Mount Ruapehu (the largest) and Mount Tongariro. Our last stop on the North Island was Wellington. We went to Zealandia and stayed the night in the city. Zealandia is an urban eco-sanctuary that covers 225 hectares of forest. The sanctuary is surrounded by a predator fence that prevents pests and predators such as possums, stoats, and cats from getting in. We had a lot of fun bird watching and exploring the area. We got to see a lot of species that we didn’t see anywhere else. On the 23nd, we took the ferry back to the South Island and drove to Nelson. For the last four days of the trip we stayed at an Airbnb in Ngatimoti, north of Nelson. The first day that we were there Mom, Ryan and I stayed at the house to relax while Cooper and Dad hiked Mount Arthur in Kahurangi National Park. The Airbnb was on a ranch and we stayed in a guest house on the property. The couple, Anne and Mike, that own the property were very welcoming and it was a great place to stay. Anne is an artist and she showed us around her gallery and her studio. Anne and Mike have also designed a hedge maze on their property that is based on a famous hedge maze in Europe. The strangest thing by far that we did at Anne and Mike’s was feed river eels. There is a small bridge that crosses a stream running through the property and there are five or six eels (at least) that live underneath it. We threw chopped up raw bacon in the stream upriver from the bridge, and a couple of minutes later there were five eels swimming around in the water. The biggest eel was at least a four feet long and twice as big around as my arm. The third day we went to Nelson Lakes State Park and visited Lake Rotoiti. We did a loop hike through the beech forests and hung out on the beach. The area was gorgeous. While we were hiking we kept seeing this black stuff all over the trees and ground. We eventually discovered that it is a black sooty mould that is a result of scale insects that live in the bark of beech trees. The scale insects produce honeydew that is consumed by a variety of organisms in the forest. The mould grows on waste honeydew and creates a spongy black layer on everything that the honeydew covers. On our last full day in the Nelson area, we hiked through part of Abel Tasman National Park. We started in Marahau and took a water taxi to Bark Bay. From Bark Bay we hiked down the coast to Anchorage, where we caught another boat back to Marahau. We hiked 12 kilometers along the coast and had spectacular views the whole time. Abel Tasman is known for golden beaches which are caused by iron oxide on the granite that makes up most of the area. The beach at Anchorage was gorgeous and we timed the hike perfectly because as soon as we arrived at the hut to wait for the boat, it started pouring. On the boat ride back we finally got to see penguins! Now I’m back at Lincoln, and classes have started again. We have two more months of the semester left. The days are getting longer, and the weather is getting warmer – fingers-crossed that it stays that way!
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Mid-semester break is a wrap, and it’s going to take a couple posts to tell you all about it. So here is Part One! Ryan arrived on August 12th, and my family arrived two days later. I showed them around the LU campus, and we visited the Christchurch Botanic Gardens and Victoria Lake. We also went to New Brighton Pier and Travis Wetlands outside of Christchurch to do some birding before our trip. Our first two nights were spent in Kaikoura at a little motel on the beach. On the way to Kaikoura, we stopped at Pegasus Bay Winery for lunch and my first wine tasting! We had gorgeous weather and hiked the Kaikoura Peninsula Walkway. The Walkway is about 12 kilometers around the Kaikoura peninsula. We also stopped at the Ohau Stream Walk to see the seal pups that hang out at the waterfall! The seal pups apparently travel up the stream and stay at the waterfall for several days at a time, only coming back to the beach to feed. The waterfall provides a predator free oasis for the pups to swim and play. Unfortunately, there was only one seal pup at the falls when we got there, but it was still fun to see it playing around in water. The place was gorgeous and the food was just as pretty as the architecture. After Kaikoura, we drove to Picton to catch the Interislander Ferry to the North Island. The ferry ride was so much fun. I had never been on a boat as big as the ferry that we took. It was a weird experience all around. Driving a car on a boat is really weird for one, and seeing semi-trucks (one which was full of sheep) on a boat was strange too. Cook Strait is beautiful and the weather was perfect! We did a lot of bird watching, and I got to see a number of seabirds I’d never seen before. It was a three-hour ferry ride and we arrived in Wellington as the sun was about to set. From Wellington we drove to Napier in Hawke’s Bay, where we stayed for two nights. In Napier, we explored an estuary system across the street from our motel and got to see royal spoonbills! We also went to the National Aquarium of New Zealand. On our way north, we also stopped at Boundary Stream Mainland Island Reserve, where we hiked for a couple of hours and finally got to see parrots! The parrots that we saw are called kaka and are one of three species of large parrots in New Zealand.
Looks like I forgot to post last weekend… oops! It has been a crazy couple of weeks, but I have finally finished all of my homework. Only one more lecture and two labs and then it’s mid-semester break! Last weekend, we watched Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring in the Workshop on Friday night, and on Saturday night, a group of us went out to eat sushi in Christchurch. We also went to the Christchurch Botanic Gardens. For five days every year, the Botanic Gardens are transformed in to a fantastic light show called Botanic D’Lights. There were lights upon lights upon lights; jellyfish climbing up trees, fairy gardens, and lots and lots of people. It was a lot of fun walking around at night to see the lights, although now I want to go back to see the Gardens in the daylight. On Monday, I went on a field trip for my ecology class to Quail Island. Quail Island is a small island near Banks Peninsula. We took a ferry to the island in the morning and we went to a series of stations set up by our professors. There were stations for a variety of different ecological sampling methods. We learned about invertebrate sampling methods, point counts for monitoring birds, pest control methods used on the island, using GPS, and vegetation sampling methods. We had a really good time exploring the island even though it was snowing most of the time and very, very cold. This week has been a whirlwind of classes and assignments. I had my first big paper due for Animal Physiology, and I am very ready to be done with classes for the next two weeks. Ryan arrives in the morning, and Mom, Dad, and Cooper get here on Sunday! Then we’ll be off to explore New Zealand! We will be headed up to the North Island for the first week of break to explore Hawke’s Bay and the Shire, along with a number of other places on the way. Then it’s back to the South Island to explore Abel Tasman and Dunedin. I’m very excited to see Ryan and my family. It’s definitely been weird being so far from home even though I’ve gotten used to being away at school for most of the last three years. Being almost 7,000 miles from home is a lot different.
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