So much happens after 22 days on the road...

So I don't even know where to begin. We've driven slightly more than 2,000 km in the past three weeks all over New Zealand in a caravan of three 9-11 person vans with trailers attached and about 5 CDs, and never stayed anywhere longer than 4 nights in a row. Usually we were in a different hostel each night. New Zealand's South Island is an incredibly beautiful and varied place... and for the first time we actually had nice weather!!! I went out and bought an actual raincoat and everything, and haven't had to use it. figures, right?
  I'm trying to figure out the best way to share everything... I think you get bullet points and if you want details you're going to have to talk to me. there's some incentive for letters, people. [1204 East Coast Road, RD 3 Pokeno 2473 NZ, hint hint hint (: ]. But there are some stories worth telling in full, so I'll get to those eventually. but if I tried that now I'd get carpal tunnel from typing too much. so here goes:

-- Kaikoura: The first place that we stopped... we stayed at the local Marae for 4 days, and that was an amazing experience. The place was absolutely gorgeous, with amazing carvings and paintings that told the whole history of the tribe. We were looking at eco-tourism and sustainability, and the main attraction in Kaikoura is the plentiful marine life.
    oh, and I nearly forgot (not)... I SWAM WITH DOLPHINS!!!! It was an incredible experience... really not what I pictured swimming with dolphins to be. I've always thought of it as a pretty exploitative, touristy, cheesy thing to do, but the company we went with was really good and took their ethical responsibilities to the dolphins really seriously. So we swam with a pod of 150-200 really playful and inquisitive Dusky Dolphins for a good 45 minutes. They are amazing animals -- so graceful underwater. They'd surge up around us and whiz around in circles checking us out, then zoom away to look at someone else. It was SO AMAZING, in case you didn't pick up on that.  So some pictures:

Suited up and excited to swim, but awestruck by the scenery in the meantime. The mountains come right down to the sea.

-- Hanmer Springs: A really cutsy little mountain town with geothermal springs...we had 24 hours off there and I wandered around in the foothills for the day and ate cheese and crackers by a stream and met really nice kiwis who gave me directions.

Me at said stream.

-- Nelson Lakes: We stayed at a really cute mountain hostel nearby at beautiful alpine lake and a reserve that is a "Mainland Island", which means that there are intensive pest control measures taken to ensure that native birds and forest ecosystems have a safe haven protected from stoats, deer, possums or other invasive, damaging pests. This was mostly an academic stop, but some of the hikes we went on were stunning.

These are pictures of beech trees covered in a "black sooty fungus" that is a major part of a Honeydew Beech forest ecology. Little bugs burrow into the beech trees and produce a sticky sweet secretion (the little droplet coming off the white threads you can see) which then feeds a whole chain of animals. The fungus feeds off the honeydew, and then falls off the tree and returns nutrients to the soils, and lots of birds and insects also eat the sugars. It's a pretty awesome system. Yeah, that's right, I'm in school. booyah.

Spring Break #2 2010!! Nelson, NZ: Pretty much one of the coolest spring breaks ever, and it was made even sweeter by the fact that it's October. Anywho, a group of 5 of us went kayaking at Abel Tasman National Park, which is one of the prettiest places ever. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be the first European to see NZ and to sail around that place. It must have been crazy. Actually, it was... Abel Tasman and his crew got into a little altercation with local Maori tribes and Europeans didn't come back to NZ for another 50 years or so. My experience definitely made me want to stick around, though.
 So we paddled for 2.5 days (ish... I'll get to that) and then hiked for a day and half up the coast. It was definitely the way to travel -- you can only hike through so much bush before it all looks the same, and we had an amazing vantage point from the water. Which was beautiful, btw... clear, teal, full of HUGE jellyfish... amazing. The first day we got to explore 2 islands that are wildlife reserves (which means that they are stunningly beautiful... quintessential golden beaches with black volcanic sand, water carved rocks, huge trees growing down to the beach...) we were all incredibly slap happy, just running around the beach and climbing on all the rocks.

See? Pretty.

Le group, from left to right: myself, Janet, Denny, Anna and Sara.

Yay rocks. There is a little cave right behind me that didn't get all the way into the picture.

The second island supposedly had a Little Blue Penguin colony around the point, but it was getting late so we all decided to keep on paddling to our campsite for the night (we had a great group... we were all on the same wavelength and had some amazing bonding experiences)... but THEN, as we were paddling along, up popped a bunch of little Penguins, just chillin in the water. It was so cool!! and penguins are basically adorable. so yeah. 

 The next day we paddled around an awesome river estuary...

The rope bridge that other EQers only got to walk across... we got to paddle underneath. I think we had the best trip plan. but that's just me. (:

Reveling on the beach. That's Denny and Janet, for those of you interested in the friends I'm making, Mom.

So anyway, our next campsite was at this water-access only beach called Mosquito Bay (I'm covered in Sandfly bites, rather than mosquito bites, though, and not from there, fortunately). It was a super cool place. (I'm starting to run out of adjectives, sorry. anyway. ) And it's here that the story gets interesting: in the middle of the night, Anna and I woke up because the tent had collapsed on top of me because the wind was blowing like crazy... it was, um, interesting. We repitched the tent and then decided to cuddle up in another tent instead for warmth and for the not-blowing-away factor, and figured it'd die down by morning and we'd be able to paddle out for the last stretch... it didn't. There were tons of white-capped waves out on the sea and the map had a red section right along where we were supposed to paddle labeled "Foul Point: Do not paddle unless calm", so we made  the safe decision and hung out on the beach and explored and hid from the wind and had a really really nice, chill day. We probably could have paddled, but instead we went swimming and played cards, and the like, and then got rescued by three Kiwi surfer dudes in a motor boat who picked up our boats and brought us to the next beach where we commenced the hiking portion of our trip. pretty exciting.

Yeah... the hiking was pretty awesome too.

Anyway, that was my trip to the South Island in a nutshell. So much for the "bullet points that will make you have to talk to me if you want details". But of course that's just the major highlights and hardly scrapes the surface.

After the South Island, we headed back up the North Island to East Cape, where we helped establish a small reserve on some privately owned land. We did the intial ecological surveys so they have a baseline to compare thier restoration to. It was a pretty humbling expericence, actually; the community doesn't have all that much going for it, and the people we talked to were incredibly hopeful about what the reserve would bring and were so heartfelt about what we were doing. We stayed on another Marae, which was another amazing experience, although completely different from Kaikoura. The area is about 80% Maori, so land heritage and protection is a very deep part of people's identity, so helping out with establishing a reserve was a very moving thing. I'd love to come back in 5 or ten years to see how this project matures. 

 Anywho... here are some more random pictures:

The view from my bedroom at EQ HQ. It's the upside of rainy weather.

A very crazy river. But a very amazing one. 

The ferry that took us to and from the South Island. And Amanda taking a picture. 

It was rather windy on that ferry, much to Paul's amusement. And mine. 

The first glimpse of the South Island. This is why I think NZ is called "Land of the Long White Cloud."

We stopped to look at a Fur Seal Colony... that's Drew.

I made friends with a crab in Kaikoura. I have a lot of pictures of him. 

Sunrise at Kaikoura. One of the prettiest yet. 

A Wandering Albatross. And mountains. And ocean. And awesomeness.

Continuing with the cool wildlife theme, that is a Weka. and my knee. NZ birds are NOT afraid of mammals at all... it's kind of weird, actually. They will walk right up to you. That's why mammalian predators are such a problem. And it must have been kind of cool for early Maori hunters trying to catch Moa... dinner would walk up right up to them. That's probably why moa no longer exist. anyway.

I mentioned jellyfish, right? They were everywhere.... this one was a little bigger than my handspan and covered in little purple dots. I haven't looked up what kind it is yet. 

So there you go. 

I should be writing a paper and prepping for a midterm, so I'm going to get on that. Hope you enjoyed this monster of a post!

smiles!!