An afternoon tramp up the mountain

Well, last week I took the time to wonder up a trail that runs behind laboratory. I figured it was just a quick jog up the hillside next to the farm, so I figured it would be good for a quick stretch of the legs. It starts in a little bush, moving into open area near the pastures.

 I was pleasantly surprised of the spectacular views from the hillside, and was thankful I decided to bring the camera. The hillside is covered with open pastures (including a cow that I somehow managed to startle), the walkway, and the rest consists of large yuccas and grasses. The yucca have clearly flowered and the temporary flower stem is dying off, but there are still numerous little birds darting in and around these large bunching plants, as there is little in the way of bushes on the hillside.

Towards the top of the hill, the trail continued, and so I followed on, but decided to snap a photo of the lab, and much of the marine reserve landscape (from above water, as the reserve is basically only covered below the sea.

 Over the top of the hillside the trial ran along parallel with the shore. After taking a nice picture of Goat Island, I ventured on enjoying the fenced trail and the flowering bushes filled with small birds, chirping and chasing each other. These were the only flowering plants at the moment, except for a few low ground plants which were overwhelming smothered by grass. The beautiful yellow flowers were great against the dark green of the brush behind. They almost appeared to be a weed plant except for their size, overgrowing grasses and even into trees and brush. And much like a good weed, a beautiful flower, accompanied by thorny leaves.

It started to cloud over behind me, and for fear of it raining a put the camera away for a while as I walked along the hilltop, but shot a picture of the clouds as the sky went from a light, baby blue to a darker grey and swirls of white.

But the weather cleared eventually, as the trail started to near a forested area, a few trees clung to the cliffside, again filled with these same small birds.

 Then to my surprise the trail dipped down into the forested gully between the hillsides. Not a big fan of dark places like this, and it was a long way off, but what the heck. Along the way, they had name tags for some of the trees. One more notable tree was the cabbage tree below.

So, in I went under palms and great trees, over brooks and under tree sized silver ferns. It turned out to be a beautiful trail. Long and not so dark, with decent light permeating through the canopy above. There was so much to see, it was hard to choose what pictures to put up, but I did decide to put up this cool orange fungus  that scalloped at the edge.

(Silver Fern)

When I finally emerged on the other side, I was greeted by more pastures. The trail did not take long at this point to end clearly at a fence and lack of trail. At the end though, there was a spectacular view of the cliff side, that otherwise would only be visible by boat. The high winds were beating the shore with surf, creating a white foam around the base of the cliffs.

The weather seemed to be turning again as you can see from the dark clouds above, so I packed the camera up and headed back through the forest and down the hillside to the station while running between the rain drops. The rain actually was just some spitting, nothing terrible, but as I got over the hill I was glad that I was almost home, as I could see the rain coming over Pakiri Beach. I toddled back down the trail and back to work. A wonderful little gem of a trail sitting under my nose this entire time. Sometimes it pays off to take that "other" road.

Catching up!

Well, it has been too long updating this so I will have to do it in parts of the weekend. I have been busy getting settled in, looking for permanent places to live, working on my proposal and finishing up a paper. There have been good days and bad weather wise, and on the nice days I have been blessed with a few beautiful sunsets. These are for you Dad, I will keep them coming. Pictures are hard to take here there is a lot of sunlight, but when it dips down over the horizon and radiates through the clouds I get some wonderful shows of colour.

At night, there are a few critters that have been popping out, such as some large snails, little skinks, and Derek's favorite, the Praying Mantis.

A little while ago, I took a trip to Pakiri Beach, not quite ocean park, but beautiful in it's own way. The trip there took me up the mountain side, through the rolling hills of pasture, down through a jungle road (One way dirt road I might add!), and finally to a middle of no where spot with a beautiful white beach.

The beach was on the other side of a bird sanctuary, so naturally there were number of birds, few of which came close enough to the camera, with the exception of this little guy (to be identified at a later date).

Unlike Ocean Park, there are almost no habitations here, just a campground and a handful of cottages you could count on one hand. The beach was beautifully set against the background of the cliffs, topped by the rolling pastures. Far in the distance is the Leigh reserve, but despite it's proximity, it is quite a drive.

I will try and post a few more tomorrow, though the weather is nice so I want to go do something new, just not sure what, probably go for a drive to the west coast. Stay tuned for more!

After the storm

Well, today we had a tremendous storm, going from mild rain to torrential downpour, the likes of which I have only seen a few times in my life, and never more than a minute or two. This kept up for over 3 hours, with power outages, flashes of lightning, and thunderous booming. I would have taken pictures of it but my camera was in one spot and I was in another attempting to stay dry. Shortly after lunch however, you would hardly known we had been through such a storm from the view of my room. The sun was shining and it warmed up quickly. I then decided to take a walk, which I do several times a day, down to the shore and often along the beach and up the hill. There was a great bustling of birds around and everything was wet as expected.

Just another gorgeous day in Leigh. There are farms all along the road to the station and there is one with sheep right on the reserve. They were merrily chowing down on the wet grass, not apparently phased by the storm.

Then at the bottom of a gully where there is access to the beach, I started to notice some major changes. Normally a small river ends at the beach, the water flows under the sand into the ocean. Well, this clearly was in a state of change as all the water ran down the slopping banks of the surrounding valley, through the river, and overflowed over the beach. Over the beach may not be an accurate term, more like cut a swathe through the beach to make its way to the ocean. This resulted in a 4 to 5 foot trench in the beach, exposing rocks and wood which had not seen the light of day in many years. A sulfurous smell rising from the beach as an enormous amount of sediment was deposited into the ocean in a great visible plume.

I continued my walk down the beach, the cliffs still glistening from the rain. A few cormorant like birds were sunning on the beach before heading to fish in the murky plume.

Underestimating the heat and my camera running out of battery forced me back to the station to continue working on my thesis proposal. Tomorrow is my errand and rest day, and I plan to enjoy the marvels of the future, and go see a movie that is not to come out for another week for those still in the past! After seeing Star Trek, I will venture to Warkworth to run my errands, get groceries, and hopefully pick up some weight and fins so I can do a little snorkeling. Until then I will leave you with a nice shot of Goat Island in the sunshine.

Tour of my temporary home

Well, this is the little place I call home for the moment, the Leigh Marine Laboratory. It is a relatively small campus in the middle of no where. Leigh is a very small place and there is not much around. Ignoring the mess, as I am still living out of my suitcases till I get a more permanent address, this is my room; 3 walls and a glass sliding door. Today at least, I finally got a pillow to call my own!

 My bunk room is located in the bunk house, an odd building, more like a beach house, but the outlying veranda/hall way is pretty open, which today has proven to be troublesome with the rain blowing in all over the place. This makes going the bathroom at night difficult, since my room and the bathrooms are on opposite ends.

The main lab area is a beautiful new building with some very up to date labs for measuring and microscopy. There are some nice office spaces but the area is a little crowded and very warm as of late, so I haven't spent much time in there.

Much like the Huntsman in Saint Andrews, they have a very nice discovery center which I toured through on my second day in Leigh. Interestingly enough, they both have a very windy road leading to them with an almost hairpin turn.

Where I spend most of my time is in the kitchen/eating area. The large tables are better to work with and when it was very sunny, it was much cooler there, so it was easier while I am acclimatizing. I usually spread out on one of these tables and work most of the day into the evening, grabbing food from the kitchen when I feel hungry.

But inevitably, Leigh is much to far out with few amenities and much of my work is to be done in Auckland, so I needed a bit more than a bike. So I got one step up, a Honda Civic. She has been a reliable car for a previous Canadian graduate student and although there may be some minor work to do over the next couple months, it should be a good little reliable car for getting to Warkworth (only place with a grocery store) while I am in Leigh, get me too Leigh when I move to Auckland, and get me to a few exotic new frontiers. I have been driving her for about 5 days, made a few trips around and frankly haven't had too much trouble on the other side of the road. Mary-Ellen has instinctively named the car Rosey.

Well, the weather has been miserable the last couple days, little sunshine, lots of wind, and lots of rain. Hopefully things will turn around again soon so I can go explore some more of the coast. I did catch a movie (Ironman 3) and as exciting as the movie was, the theatre I was in was almost as exciting. They have a set of 3 theatres in Matakana, outside of Warkworth, which seat around 50 people, but they are all big cushy suits, and the front row consists of lazy-boyz. The ceiling of the particular theatre I was in was covered in yellow and orange paper flowers with fake birds along the edge and up the wall. The others have their own designs apparently and I look forward to hopefully seeing one of those when I go catch Star Trek next weekend. Well, not much else has progressed, still working on a project outline, but will fill you all in when I have something concrete. I miss you all and hope everything is well. Feel free to send me an email or facebook message.

First Week So Far...

Well it has been a long journey, 33 hours in airplanes and airports and I seem to have lost a day somewhere along the way. I arrived groggily at the airport in Auckland at the wee hours of the morn, to be greeted by my supervisor, Dr. Andrew Jeffs. I spent my first day trying to stay awake while hiking with Andrew's wonderful family to the top of dormant volcano on the island of Rangitoto in Auckland. This volcanic island had wonderful views of the isles and eroded summits of ancient volcanoes as well as the city nestled among them.

This was followed up by a trip down the mountain back to the shore, but along the way we stopped to go "tramping" through some old lava tubes. Spelunking is not one of my hobbies and as interesting as it was I don't think it will be high on my list of things to take up.

After an interesting supper of Lasagna I finally crashed at 9 pm. The next day we went for a lovely tour of campus in Auckland, took care of the remaining paperwork and then headed off for Leigh. It was a nice trip up the coast, lots of rolling hills with sheep and dairy cattle. I arrived at the Marine Institute and was given a wonderful tour. It is a bit smaller than the Huntsman center, but very reminiscent. I then settled in to a bunk room and went about the arduous task of trying to remember the names of everyone I was meeting. Everyone has been so helpful though and over the course of the weekend I was already set up to purchase a car off a Canadian student who is finishing up. I also got the opportunity to see a bit of the coastline close up. The biggest thing here is the large number of birds. I was first greeted and continued to be greeted by a group of loud seagulls that always congregate at the beach nearby. High in the trees on the cliff, overhanging the beach are a group of cormorant species which I have yet to identify (still no field guide, what I wouldn't give for a Petersons).

In my travels through the intertidal (more of that to come later) I have found two creatures that really peaked my interest. The first is a wading bird that always seems to be where I want to go. They often start squawking at me in protest but never seem to get far.

The second curious creatures were the octopuses. I have now seen two individuals in the intertidal, waiting in shallow pools with not much more than their eyes sticking out of their burrows. Hopefully I will get brave enough to get the underwater camera into the pools later.

Since arriving though, I have been hard at the grindstone, reading up as much as I can about the local species and the work that has been done on them in order to come up with a project. I miss you all back in Canada and that is the hardest part about being here. It has been a great start to a 3 year adventure and I look forward to sending you more frequent updates. I leave you with a wonderful look on the marine reserve as the sun sets.

-Mark

36 Hours to Take Off

With only 36 hours to take off, the basement looks like a windstorm swept through it. I am done all I can do to help pack, at this point it's Mark that has to make everything fit and have the final say of what goes and what stays. He's got two very large suitcases that we've filled with everything from toiletries and clothes to bedsheets and dive gear. He's even taking a few kitchen items, such as a pan a few spatulas and some dish towels with the intention of purchasing the rest once he arrives.

As big as the suitcases are, they are still not big enough for everything we had wanted to take. It doesn't help that my suitcases won't be going down for another few months.

He also has his carry on bag to fill with his James Bond books, laptop and official documents.

He will be leaving here on Tuesday morning, and arriving Thursday morning (New Zealand time, which is Wednesday afternoon Canadian time). As Mark keeps saying, he will call us from the future once he arrives.

His plans once he arrives are to set up his bank account in Auckland, register at the university and purchase a few things that he will need for his new living arrangements. He will then go out to Leigh where we will be living and figure things out from there. He will need to find accommodations, a fridge (as they are not rented with their apartments),  his first grocery order, and unpack. He will then start his PhD, which will be an adventure on its own.

We all know it's not a party until the cake arrives

This weekend was very busy as Mark and I geared up for his big celebration. There was cupcakes to be made, chips to portion into bowls, pop to be poured into glasses and candy to be passed out into dishes.

Saturday night, we had a house full of aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends, who turned out to wish Mark the best of luck on his trip as he leaves next Tuesday. There was so much conversation, and wisdom shared it was hard to take it all in.

Mark has most of his lists done, and now that the party is over, we will begin getting him ready. There is nothing left to purchase, but so much deciding left. Choosing what gets packed, what gets shipped and what he will purchase when he arrives. We have decided to lay out all the "needs" in one space and the "wants" in another. We won't have room for "would be nice".  We'll start by packing the needs and then prioritize the wants.

Mark and I figured out last weekend that he is entitled to 4 breakfasts while travelling. He leaves here at 6 in the morning to arrive at breakfast time in Ontario. He then flies to the west coast after a 1 hour layover to arrive in time to enjoy breakfast time on the west coast. After an 11 hour layover, he flies to Auckland where he arrives at 630 am, just in time for breakfast.

Mark has made arrangements for his stay in Auckland. He plans to be there 2 days before travelling off to Leigh. He has to register at the university for his scholarship, do some paper work, meet his colleagues, and finish setting up his bank account. He has temporary lodgings once he arrives in Leigh. From where he will find an apartment for us to live.

I have no doubt that this weekend will go by in the blink of an eye. Mark and I are getting ready to be separated, temporarily, through creating Skype accounts and figuring out regular Skype dates. Please email us if you are interested in having skype dates with us while in New Zealand. We will email you our skype names.

For those of you who are asking: I am hoping to fly down this summer one school is finished.