Opoutere

When I walked outside my room this morning the first thing I saw was a huge rainbow over the Hunua mountains... it was a good day. It was the first really chill day we've had... I made a kite (we're in the midst of a VERY large storm... last night the power went out (we all played cards by the light of our headlamps) and there has been some pretty intense winds.  It was nice today,  but we're due for more weather this evening and tomorrow).
     We're back at EcoQuest after spending the week on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula in a little town called Opoutere. Basically, I went from field work meaning sitting in the middle of the desert in the dust measuring rock track depths to field work meaning  sitting in the middle of tidal flats in the estuary in mud up to my ankles counting shellfish. It was awesome... we were helping in a shellfish monitoring program across the Haukuri Gulf region (Northern NZ), so we went out at low tide three days in a row to record how many cockles, wedge shells and welks were present across the estuary. The first day was windy, the second morning was pouring rain and super cold, and the last day was just the most perfect weather ever.
   We also got to explore a little bit... we hiked up to the top of a hill near the hostel we were staying at. It was the site of an old Maori Pa, or fortress, and you could tell why the tribe had chosen to build it there: we could see for miles (it seemed) and had a really nice overlook of the whole harbour and valley, and it was kind of steep climb up. There wasn't much left of the settlement -- just shell middens. They ate a lot of shellfish! Not so surprising, really...
   Tomorrow we are going to an island called Motutapu near Auckland to help out with a community restoration day... should be fun, especial with the wind. It might get canceled because of the weather, which would be a bummer. but so far so good.
  smiles!