Field Work at Tongariro National Park

After a 3 month break from field work I got back in the game by going to an amazing place up in North Island (first time there yay!). Since I decided to write my professional placement report on the Heather beetle which is released in Tongariro National park I had the opportunity to go there and help out with some work checking release sites.

The day could have started better. After 2 days of rain Christchurch was flooding and so transport issues were arising everywhere. My plane got delayed by 2 hours (why did I get up so early...), but free wifi at the airport consoled me and soon I was off to Palmston North where a colleague was waiting to pick me up and embark on our glorious adventure. 

So we then had to hike for 40 minutes through dense bush to get to one of the sites (a DOC release site, what were they thinking?..) had to cross a river and not wanting to get my boots wet ended up walking bare footed. Talk about a real hobbit experience with the volcano from the film just behind me :D Didn't last too long, had to put my boots back on after stepping on some thistles, not the most pleasant of plants to step on... Luckily this was the last site of the day and a warm motel room was waiting for me after this long, rainy day.

Look at all that dead heather. Oh and the steaming
 volcano casually in the background...

Visited many more sites the second day, and it was great to see for myself how the agent was acting, how much damage to the heather was being done. Really got me more excited about my work, amazing what effect getting out of the office can have on me :)

Kayaking in Akaroa

Way overdue post as I did this in January, but it's a great weekend worth remembering so had to get around to writing about it. So, after a failed attempt to kayak a few weeks prior (was too windy so they wouldn't rent us kayaks) we decided to rent kayaks from the university club and bring them to Akaroa ourselves. This proved to be a great idea as we then had the freedom to paddle as long as we wanted and go to different areas of Banks Peninsula.

The first day we decided to go to Pigeon bay as the waves were quite high in other areas and not even the guys wanted to attempt 5 meter high ones. After demonstrating the latest in kayak fashion which the boys executed very entertainingly we got going. We paddled to some caves one of which was quite a tight squeeze, but cool to go through as it was completely dark at times despite not being all that long. There was an extra challenge for me to go through caves and climb rocks as I was wearing flip-flops (the ultimate comfort shoe for such expeditions). I believe I completely broke them on this trip :P Visited a couple more caves where you could kayak in before heading to the end of the fiord and turning back.

We stayed at a campsite right by the water and had quite the near miss at dinner. So we were boiling our pasta on a gas cooker which looked like a hotplate unlike most of the gas cookers we typically used on trips. It wasn't functioning well in the beginning, but we finally managed to get it going and cooked our pasta. Just as we had finished, took the pot off and turned of the cooker it exploded. Yes, we were all sitting just a meter away and no, none of us got hurt. But we were really lucky as we found a large metal piece of it about 10 meters away the next morning (imagine if that had flown at one of us!) Instead we were completely unharmed apart from the ringing in our ears from the loud bang. Glad to have finished the day without any casualties we went to bed anxiously awaiting the next morning.

The next day we drove to Akaroa wanting to see a cave just outside the bay. However, we were quite tired and let the guys go the distance while we relaxed about half way. Just as we decided to start heading back the wind changed and the water became unsettled. For those who don't know I have a fear of small unstable ships so this wasn't exactly a walk in the park for me. I did freak out slightly as the waves got bigger and started pouring into our kayak and so we decided to head to the shore a bit closer to us instead of going all the way back. Luckily the guys saw us on their way back and then drove the car over to us while we waited. They had gone all the way out to the cave and seen penguins, but also mentioned that the waves were extremely high so I was quite glad for not have tried to go out that far. Was quite happy to be back on stable ground.

All in all a weekend well spent with some great people some of which are leaving NZ soon, but who I'll hopefully get a chance to visit back in Europe :)