Hello hello hello!!!!
For those of you in Canada it is currently 5am your time, or 10pm here. I'm settled on the couch, my laptop on (of all things!) my lap and a really really long cable connecting me to the internet. It has been almost two weeks since I updated this last to which I say I'm sorry! I'm having a hard time getting myself to update. It is so easy to just wait until I have something to write about and today I do.
Since I updated last I have sat under trees and counted fruit (it was to see if the rats were eating them); helped build a new enclosure for Kiwi birds (this translates to moving many many many wheelbarrows of dirt); ripped english ivy off a hillside (invasive species); helped to replant a wetland; and today we checked traps at Rimutaka Forest Park. When I feel slightly more motivated I will post a movie of changing the trap and some photos of the park. Lucky viewers, my camera-lady Mellissa didn't like seeing/touching or otherwise considering the animals in the traps so the trap we recorded was empty and I was just changing the bait.
So Rimutaka, the beast of a hike. Mom I think you would love the scenery here, the thing is almost every single track I've been on has sections that are either immediately beside a cliff or with a drop off just beside your foot. It reminds me of doing the trek up the mountain when we took our family trip out west.
How it works: we did about 14km of trail and checked 50 traps. The first 13 traps were on a switchbacking section of trail that went up about 6ft at a time over 500 or so metres and doubled back increasing your altitude another 5-6ft higher over another 500 or so metres. It was sooooooo bloody steep! It might have been at most about 3 or 4 km and it took us about 2.5 hours to do those 13 traps. The rest were done in 2 hours. I hurt in muscles that I had forgotten even existed but may (at the very least) have some sweet leg muscles when I get home.
The highlight for many was how I could handle picking up a dead rat and snipping a piece of the tail off but when I opened a trap and saw a skitter out of the corner of my eye I jumped back and screamed like one of my campers. Stupid big spider.
Tomorrow I go to some sand dunes and monday we get to help out at the zoo! Tuesday, because all these days are simply flying by, I go to the south island. There, Wednesday morning, I will set out to hike the Queen Charlotte track. For more info on the track you can click here. It will take me 3 days at 20km a day but thankfully I wont need to carry my own pack.
Update you all again later, cheers!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
Oops and Hello!
Kia Ora everyone! I have been in New Zealand for almost 3 weeks now and I love it. While I've had some bouts of homesickness I think I've settled in and am starting to plan my time outside of the volunteer house.
hmmm what have I done? We had some bad weather our first week at the volunteer house so several of our hikes or projects were cancelled or post-poned. A lot of what we do is help community partners with projects they've started. A lot of it (especially in the summer) was weeding or "tree releasing". What this means is that when a native tree is planted you go back every couple weeks or months and you pull up the weeds and grasses that would quickly choke out the slow growing native varieties. Several tree species live to be several hundred years old, there is a Rimu tree we saw at Otari Wilton that is 800 years old. Some of the time this is done on sand dunes, sometimes in river valleys. Some of what we do is helping with maintenance, at a place called Nga Manu we cleared overhanging branches from the trail and removed nails from used wooden boards. One task repeated on several tracks every couple of weeks is checking traps. For what? Australian brush tail possum and rats. All we've caught are rats, but thats a good thing because it means there aren't any possums to kill the birds.
In free time mostly we watch movies and just hang out around the house. Its not expensive and we're usually really tired if we've gone on a hike. On the weekends we've checked out museums, the botanic garden, and the beach!
Thats all for now. Hopefully you've had a chance to live vicariously through my photos here, and here.
Take care and enjoy spring in Canada, here it is fall, at 8pm it was alreayd dark.
hmmm what have I done? We had some bad weather our first week at the volunteer house so several of our hikes or projects were cancelled or post-poned. A lot of what we do is help community partners with projects they've started. A lot of it (especially in the summer) was weeding or "tree releasing". What this means is that when a native tree is planted you go back every couple weeks or months and you pull up the weeds and grasses that would quickly choke out the slow growing native varieties. Several tree species live to be several hundred years old, there is a Rimu tree we saw at Otari Wilton that is 800 years old. Some of the time this is done on sand dunes, sometimes in river valleys. Some of what we do is helping with maintenance, at a place called Nga Manu we cleared overhanging branches from the trail and removed nails from used wooden boards. One task repeated on several tracks every couple of weeks is checking traps. For what? Australian brush tail possum and rats. All we've caught are rats, but thats a good thing because it means there aren't any possums to kill the birds.
In free time mostly we watch movies and just hang out around the house. Its not expensive and we're usually really tired if we've gone on a hike. On the weekends we've checked out museums, the botanic garden, and the beach!
Thats all for now. Hopefully you've had a chance to live vicariously through my photos here, and here.
Take care and enjoy spring in Canada, here it is fall, at 8pm it was alreayd dark.
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