Trees for Travelers

We meant to post this as soon as we got to Dunedin, but we forgot! Sorry Rusty and Wal!

While we were in Waimate, we purchased two totara trees (Podocarpus totara) and planted them at Rusty and Wal's house to help make up for some of the airplane emissions on our long flight here. Totara trees can grow to be 30 m tall and over 1000 years old, so these guys should be around for a while!





Rusty and Wal are starting a row of Trees for Travelers, and we had the honor of planting the first two trees! We're looking forward to visiting them in about 500 years when they're full grown.

Carrie

Wildlife Encounters

We’ve had a great week for wildlife. On Wednesday night, Elizabeth heard something moving around in the bushes as she was leaving our hostel. It was a hedgehog! We heard (and saw) it again Friday night. I did a little reading on the internet, and apparently they’re quite unafraid of people. They seem to think the spines are enough to deter anything that might want to mess with them (unfortunately for them the spines don’t do much to deter cars- the first hedgehog we saw here was roadkill). I should also mention that hedgehogs have been introduced to New Zealand and are considered a pest because they eat the native snails, insects, and bird eggs.

On Thursday Matt and I explored the Otago Peninsula. Sand Fly Bay is one of many bays along the peninsula. The bay, we learned, is named not for those pesky insects, but for the fact that sand flies across the bay from the sand dunes on windy days. I hate flying sand, so thankfully Thursday was calm and beautiful. Sand Fly Bay is a popular place to look for New Zealand’s Hooker’s sea lion, as well as the rare yellow-eyed penguin. The penguins spend the night in the bush around the bay and spend the day out fishing. This means the best time to spot them is at dawn and dusk. We were there in the middle of the day, but we did see lots of penguin tracks going up and over the sand dunes (there’s a card in the picture for scacle). Amazingly, Matt spotted a lone penguin jumping around on the rocks at the far end of the beach. We watched it from considerable distance since they are very shy so we didn’t get any pictures. But just so you can see what they look like, I’ve included a picture from the New Zealand Department of Conservation.




We saw about 10 Hooker’s sea lions napping on the beach, and two more playing in the water. Matt took some great pictures of them playing in the waves.






I’m trying to keep a nature journal and sketchbook as a record of the things we see. I started this in Virginia. I’ve had numerous journals, and I had a few nature journals as a kid, so this is a renewed effort by me to pay attention to what I see. My inclination is to write and make lists more than to draw, but I’m forcing myself to draw even though I’m not very good. The only way to get better is to practice! I drew a picture of the hedgehog and tried to draw a sleeping sea lion and a landscape, but they’re nothing worth sharing. Maybe in a few months I’ll show you a handsome sketch.

Carrie

RSS

Ok, so I had mentioned that a good way to track our blog is to RSS it. If you would like to read a bunch about RSS you can do that here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29
Basically RSS just tells you when we post a new blog entry and so you don't have to load the page all the time to check. If you have an Apple RSS is built into your web browser (Safari) when you have our blog up in your browser there should be a small blue "RSS" in the address bar. If you click on it it will take you to a new page which is the RSS version of our blog.
For those of you who do not have an Apple I think it is a bit more complicated. I've never used an RSS reader for PC so I'm not sure of the exact details but I did a quick search and came up with "Active Web Reader" which seems pretty popular and it is free. You can download that program at
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/31625
After you download it you will have to figure out where to enter the address for a new RSS feed. The address for our feed is:
feed://beta.blogger.com/feeds/3396504549365280558/posts/full
Ok, once you've mastered RSSing you'll discover that tons and tons of sites have RSS so maybe you'll use it for some other things. It is a nice way to get news feeds. Ok, that's all good luck. If anyone out there does have a PC and knows their way around RSS please share your knowledge with us. Thanks.

Matt

Update

This is "Cannibal Cove" in the Catlins

So I think there was some confusion about why we moved again. The place we stayed when we first got here (to Dunedin) was the living-room of Carrie's friend Elizabeth. We were not planning on spending much time there we just need a place to crash while we found somewhere else to stay. The first place we checked out was a hostel that was at the top of the steepest hill in the southern hemisphere (no joke). And the woman there seemed like she would be pretty stressful to work with/for. So we held out for something better and we found it. Now we are staying at the amazing hostel called Elm Lodge. We are staying here in an incredible room in exchange for two hours of work per day. In reality though we do a whole week at once. As I type I am working the desk. My shift is from 9:00am to 8:00pm so that takes care of a full week. Its a great deal. We don't get our food paid for but we do have a kitchen so we just go grocery shopping and feed ourselves. Anyway, that's where we are. Now to what we're doing:
So far since we've been here we have done a tour at the Cadbury chocolate factory. That was fun but it turns out that I don't really like anything that Cadbury makes except for the eggs and the milk chocolate. Everything else was sort of weird. We also went to the Speights Brewery tour. That was great! It is a really cool old brewery here in Dunedin. I learned all sorts of stuff and at the end you have 15 minutes to drink all you can. So I gave it my best. I've been playing a bunch of Ultimate here. There is a fairly active ultimate community in Dunedin. They play on Wednesday nights and Sundays but there are also several players who are training to represent the kiwis at the world championships in Perth this November. So I've been working out with them on Thursdays and Mondays. Last Thursday we just did sprint training I limped for three days afterwards. Also, last weekend we went south to the region called the "Catlins." It is the southernmost point on the south island with lots of cool bays, inlets and points to hike (limp) around. Ok, enough rambling. I hope everything at home is good. We're doing great. I have to go check the laundry now.

Matt

p.s. Happy Birthday David!

We've Moved Again

I thought I should let everyone know that we have moved again. We are still in Dunedin but now we are living in a hostel (they call them "backpackers"). We have an awesome room here in a beautiful old house and we get it all for 2 hours of work per day. Great deal. On top of that we have internet right outside of our door. So we are definitely in touch now. Ok. Our new coords are posted to the right. We're waving.

Matt

Pure Danger

Sunday was our first day in Dunedin. I saw Elizabeth for the first time since we parted ways two years ago in the Irkutsk airport at the end of the Tahoe Baikal Summer Exchange progam. Being the adventurous people we are, we decided to tackle a challenging Geocache on the Otago peninsula near the city of Dunedin. The title of the cache was "Vertigo Extreme" and was rated 5/5 for terrain difficulty. We followed a sheep path along the edge of a cliff about 100 m above the ocean, then down a steep but manageable grassy slope to a ledge about 30 m (100 feet) over the rough surf below. Watching the waves churn from such great heights was vertigo-inducing! We searched in vain for the cache, but did see a rainbow, numerous seabirds, and a sea lion hunting fish! Check out the pictures Matt took of it! Once it even came up with two fish in its mouth, but it lost one when it tried to turn them around in its mouth.



The rainbow was a sign of the rain coming in from the Pacific, so we had to leave our sea lion friend to make it back up the slope before we got too wet. Even so the rain and wind pelted the left sides of our bodies as we made our way back to the car. This is another great example of a place we never would have found if it weren't for Geocaching.



For those of you keeping track at home this geocache was at 45°52'43.09"S, 170°44'19.64"E.

Carrie

On the road again

Just thought I'd drop a note to say that Carrie and I are on the road again. We are headed down to Dunedin for about a month. We're not sure what our internet situation is going to be so posts may become less frequent for a while. Thanks for checking back with us periodically though. By the way, I recommend RSSing our site if you know how. It makes it so that you only have to check the page when we have posted something new. Very handy.

Matt

Cup'a

New Zealand is a part of the Commonwealth (Britain). This mean several things: Queen Elizabeth II is sovereign (whatever that means), they compete in the Commonwealth games (that's like the mini-Olympics just for former colonies who didn't kick the British out by force), if you appeal a court case to the highest level it goes to an English supreme court (that's not what they call it but its the same idea), and they drink a lot of tea. It is this last point on which I intend to pontificate today. People here drink a lot of tea. As I've understood it until now "tea time" was some weird afternoon pause in the British day during which they all sit around and eat crumpets or scones or something as the drink a cup of tea. As it turns out I under estimated tea time. First off, "tea" here means "dinner" at home. It is not a meal between lunch and dinner it is simply dinner. In fact, in my experience, "tea" doesn't include tea at all. Most Kiwis don't drink anything with "tea."

So in addition to tealess tea the Kiwis have added in an extra meal each day. They call it morning tea or smoko. I really like morning tea. I think that this will have to become a part of my life permanently. Basically around 11:00 in the morning they stop whatever they are doing and sit down for 15-30 minutes for something to eat and a "cup'a." It is perfect for me because I don't usually eat breakfast when I first get up but I'm usually hungry before lunch. Morning tea is the solution. A quick snack and I'm ready to go for the next hour until we have lunch. Wonderful.

In the evening, after tealess tea and the kids have gone down, there is another round of tea (the drink not the meal). Another nice treat if you drink tea. Which brings me to my problem with all of this. I don't drink tea. Well I never did. However, with all of this tea everywhere I realized that I would get sick of saying "no thanks I don't drink tea" over and over again so I've started drinking tea. And I like it a lot. With a lump of sugar and the right tea it can be just right on a cold day. In the end I'm just writing to let you know that upon our return if you come to my home I may offer you a "cup'a" and it means I'm making tea at 11:00am.

Matt

Cutest thing ever

So today while we were working I glanced over at the sheep in the next paddock and noticed (for whatever reason) that one of them in particular was laying down. Now this is nothing unusual. There are most often many sheep laying down. However, when I glanced back at the paddock about two minutes later the same sheep was standing up. Again, this is not unusual. Sheep stand up and sit down all the time. However, when I looked a bit closer I realized that this particular ewe was also munching on something. As I looked closer I realized that it was in fact the placenta of the lamb that it had just (right that second) birthed. Now I know that this is all a part of nature and that the placenta is full of nutrients etc. but needless to say the placenta eating was not the "cutest thing ever" referenced above. The lamb however was in fact the cutest thing ever. It took it a while to get itself free of the sack but once it did it was only about thee attempts later that it was up on its feet wobbling around and being adorable. Anyway, I thought this was a pretty cool thing to see like that without really looking for it and I thought I should share. Oh! also the farmer who owns all of these sheep has been breeding them to have twins and triplets so this lamb was just one of a pair that came out right then. I didn't see the second one born but Wal told me it came out healthy and happy.


Matt

Better Pictures of the House

This is a bit of a better pic of the house. The best place to see the house is at the blog we just set up for our hosts. They have a great picture with labels and everything. Their blog can be found at "earthwoodwaimate.blogspot.com"

You can see here an example of one of the walls that we built. These three rows took us about an hour and a half. Its amazing how quickly the progress comes. Very satisfying. You can only go three high at a time and then you have to wait a week for those rows to dry before you can stack on top of it. In this pic you can also see the window that Wal (the father here) and I built to sit in this wall. Ok, we didn't actually build the window. They bought the actual window at a garage sale a few years ago but we did build the frame and get it all built into the wall.

Here's a good picture of the bricks before they are in the wall. Each brick is 300mm x 300mm and weighs 20 kilos. So that's about a foot square and nearly 45lbs each. When you build the wall you do it like you do with legos so that the seams on one row line up with the mid-points on the row about and below. Because of this at the ends of the walls you need extra long bricks. The big ones are 300mm x 450mm and weigh 30 kilos. They require a lot of effort when you are moving them.
Building a wall is really a team effort. First we have to line up all of the bricks on the wall to make sure they fit. Many bricks need to be broken of chipped to accommodate rebar, windows and posts. Then each brick has to be lifted and dunked into water. While one person is dunking everyone else is gloping mud onto the wall as mortar. Once the mud is in place the brick is put into position and the process repeats. Its a lot of fun but it is very messy.

Working on the walls is hard work and it is best to do when the weather is good because everyone ends up wet and muddy so we only really do that if the weather is cooperating. Other days we spend working on other things. We have been doing a lot of gardening and today we worked on putting up a fence/native tree barrier that will act as a wind/ugly houses break. This is a picture of the line we were working on today. You can see the fence posts and wire on the left. Tomorrow we will put up windbreak stuff on the wires. On the ground you can see a whole ton of used carpet. Rusty (the mother here) is really into reusing things from the reclaimed resources center (the dump). The idea with the carpet is that it will keep the weeds at bay while the new trees are growing up. We will cover it all with mulch before we are done.

Ok, well that's all for today.

Weather Report: Today was very warm but windy as can be. T-shirt and jeans but my hat was on very tight.

Matt