All the Way to Someplace Else (and back again).: 2014

Our Free Weekend on the Wild West Coast

On the way to the West Coast
getting into the Alps

On the way to the West Coast

This weekend we had a free weekend so we went to Hokitika (Ho-key-tea-kah)which is on the wild west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. We saw glow worms, the beach, the Tasman Sea, driftwood, Castle Rocks (Google it) and a kea on a sign. There are only three passes (places where you can drive through the mountains) on the South Island to get through the Southern Alps to the Tasman Sea. We drove through a place called Arthur’s Pass to get to the west coast.

Walking to Castle Rocks

Climbing around the Castle Rocks. We sure are small!

On our way to Hokitika we visited Castle Rocks. If you’ve seen the movie the Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe then you have seen Castle Rocks too. Castle Rocks is where the battle between Pater and Aslan’s army and the White Witch’s army was filmed. The Castle Rocks are made of limestone. We climbed around and up some of the Castle Rocks. It was cool to climb up high on some of them. I felt like I was in Narnia and you could see far to the Alps when you were up there.

The viaduct through Arthurs Pass. We drove on that!

Trying to sneak up on the cheeky kea

One go drive through Arthur’s Pass you are in a temperate rain forest. The west coast of New Zealand gets lots of rain. When storms come across the Tasman Sea from Australia, they hit the mountains of the Southern Alps of New Zealand and drop all of their rain on the west coast of the South Island. That part of New Zealand gets lots of rain each year compared to where we are living in Lincoln on the Canterbury plains where it is dry and hotter. The plants on the West Coast are very different then the plants on the plains.

Sign carved at the main entrance to the beach

The wild driftwood beach in Hokitika

When we got to Hokitika, we had dinner at one of my Mommy’s favorite restaurants called Stumpers. Then we went on the beach to watch the sunset and have a fire on the beach. The beach was black sand with big waves, lots of driftwood and bridges and sculptures that people had made out of driftwood. There was even a driftwood cow. Hokitika is known for having beautiful sunsets. The fire was made out of driftwood we collected and it was really, really hot. We had s’mores and watched the sunset and talked. After that I got a shower and went to bed.

Pretty pebbles where the surf comes in on Hokitika beach

Sunset on the beach in Hoki

Driftwood fire on the beach

Playing on the beach

Lake Kaniere

The next day we went to Lake Kaniere (Kai- near-eee) on a walk and saw a water fall that was 63 meters high. Do you know how tall that is? On the walk we heard a really pretty bird over and over and over again in the rainforest. We also heard noisy insects and saw mushroom in strange colors like orange blue and red. Later we were told that those mushrooms are really poisonous so it is good that my mommy told us not to touch them. I had fun skipping stones across the super clear lake.

Walking into the rainforest

Lake Kaniere

Interesting mushrooms we saw on our walk

The bright colors say "do not touch!"

A fern uncurling- you can see why the fern is a national symbol here

Exploring 60 meter falls

A fan tail that was teasing us in the rainforest

Once it was dark, we went to see the glowworms. They glow like a greenish blue light and kind of look like stars in the sky except they are attached to the side of the dell (cliff that you can walk up to from the base). You have to be quiet and cannot use a torch (that is the word they use for flashlight here). Glowworms are larvae (young) of a special kind of fungus gnat. Their tails glow so that they can attract prey (other bugs) to their webs. Did you know that glowworms are sometimes cannibals? They will eat their neighboring glow worm if they get to close! How’s that for being a nice neighbor?

This is what the online New Zealand government sponsored encyclopedia says about glow worms. We couldn't take an pictures of them but you should google images for glow worms because they are very neat!

What is a glow-worm?

None of the world’s glow-worms are true worms. In the northern hemisphere the name is used for beetles that fly around at night with their tail-lights flashing.

In New Zealand and Australia, glow-worms are the larvae (maggots) of a special kind of fly known as a fungus gnat. Fungus gnats look rather like mosquitoes, and most feed on mushrooms and other fungi. However, a small group of fungus gnats are carnivores, and the worm-like larvae of these species use their glowing lights to attract small flying insects into a snare of sticky threads. One species, Arachnocampa luminosa, is found throughout New Zealand, and others occur in Australia.

Hundreds of Arachnocampa larvae may live side by side on a damp sheltered surface, such as the roof of a cave or an overhanging bank in the forest. Their lights resemble a star-filled night sky. Māori call them titiwai, which refers to lights reflected in water.

Beetle or fly?

It was first thought that the only insects that glowed were beetles, such as the northern hemisphere fireflies. So people believed that New Zealand’s glow-worms, too, were beetles. But in the 1880s, George Vernon Hudson took glow-worm larvae from the Wellington Botanic Garden and raised them in a tank. He showed that they had a pupa stage and then emerged as a special type of adult fly – known as a fungus gnat.

Habitat

Glow-worms need damp places, where the air is humid and still, to construct their snares. Caves and old mining tunnels are ideal. In the forest glow-worm snares are commonest on moist banks beside a stream or in a ravine.

Prey

Small midges are the usual prey of glow-worms, but all sorts of flying insects get trapped in the sticky snares, including mayflies, caddisflies and moths. Forest glow-worms may also trap spiders, plant hoppers and even millipedes. The glow-worm simply cuts free any prey that is too large, or unwanted.

Adult glow-worm flies are never caught in the snares – they are not attracted to the light, and even if they brush against the sticky threads they are strong enough to pull free.

Light display

The glow-worm’s tail-light shines from an organ which is the equivalent of a human kidney. All insects have this organ but the glow-worm has a unique ability to produce a blue-green light from it.

Farm Visits Day

Listening to Neil Gow and Peter Chamberlin

Last week we went to three farms in one day. One was a sheep farm, one was a dairy farm and one was a deer farm. The first farm we visited was a sheep and crop farm. The farm owner’s name was Peter Chamberlin. Peter talked about how he manages his farm which is mostly very dry and stony land. He also talked about earthquake damage on his farm and that the epicenter( the place where an earthquake starts) of the February 2011 earthquake which was a 6.2 on the Richter scale was at his next door neighbors. Besides sheep Peter also grew peas, barley(like my family does), wheat and grass seed. He had a really bad windstorm in the spring this year (our fall in Delaware) that knocked down a lot of big, old trees around the perimeter of the fields that the animals used for shelter.

The second person we visited was a retired farmer named Pat Morrison who talked about irrigation and how important water is to farmers. He and his wife Margaret had tea and coffee and juice for all of us and even had made savouries for our whole group. His son now runs their farm as a dairy which is a change since the last time we visited in 2011. Pat and Margaret's gardens and lawn were beautiful. We all loved laying on his lawn.

Having class on the lawn with Mr. Morrison

Our group

Colin Guild explaining velvet to us

The students really enjoyed their visit with Colin

The last farm we went to was named Quartz Hill. The owners name was Colin Guild. His farm was 7,000 acres. He had sheep and cattle but was especially proud of his deer. Colin grew the deer to be able to sell females deer(called hinds) to other farms, deer meat (venison) for people to eat and also harvested velvet. He raised a kind of deer called red deer which are much bigger than the deer we have in Delaware. Velvet is deer antler that grows from the deer’s head before it hardens and turns to bone. Some people in the world take deer velvet pills like you would take your vitamins every day. We drove our bus out onto Colin’s farm to see his pastures with the deer in it. Then we went into the deer shed where he harvests velvet. We were tired at the end of the day when we went back to Lincoln.

My sister and I checking out the velvet. It was heavy!

Deer out in the pasture on Colin's farm.
They were scared of our bus.

Some of Colin's working dogs

The Livestock Auction and Antarctic Centre

Allister the stock agent talking to us

Today we went to the Antarctic Centre and the Canterbury Livestock Auction. The Canterbury Livestock Auction is held every Tuesday morning. At the auction there were lots and lots and lots of sheep, lots and lots of cattle, 4 big sows and a few piglets for sale. We saw the cattle, sheep and piglets being sold. Farmers and stock agents were buying and selling. A stock agent that my mommy knows named Allister met us at the auction and told the students what was going on. He walked us around the auction and explained things until he had to go and sell some sheep for the farmers he works for.

Sheep for sale in the stockyards

Stock agents selling cattle

I'm all dressed up for Antartica!

After that we went to the Antarctic Centre(that’s how they spell center here in New Zealand). At the Antarctic Centre we saw live penguins, watched a 4-D movie, went through an obstacle course on a Hagglund(which is used for transportation in Antarctica), and experienced an Antarctic summer storm. I even got to dress up as an Antarctic explorer with all of the layers of clothing that they have to wear when they go outside! I liked riding in the Hagglund. We drove into a three meter deep pond in the Hagglund which can stay afloat in water for up to 5 hours. It can also span a gap or crevasse up to 3 meters wide and drives up steep hills easily because it has tracks instead of tires. It was bumpy and very loud to ride in but very fun!

We saw little blue penguins. Little Blue penguins do not actually live in Antarctica but live in New Zealand. All of the penguins at the Antarctic Centre were there because they were injured or had been born with a problem that would not allow them to survive in the wild. We saw a penguin swimming around that only had one leg because it had gotten caught in fishing line. His name was Bagpipes.

The movie we watched took us through Drake’s passage which is some of the roughest sea in the world. During the movie we got sprayed with sea spray and seal snot in our faces. There were also straps that whacked at our legs as if they were seaweed. Our chairs rocked and there were bubbles too.

The US Air Force base for the Antarctic program

Antarctica is the 5^th largest continent. It is also the windiest, coldest, driest and highest place in the world. It was the last to be discovered. The coldest temperature on the planet was measured at Vostok, the Russian Antarctic base and was degrees -128.6 degrees Fahreheit on July 21, 1983. That's really cold! The United State has three permanent bases in Antarctica where they do research: Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Palmer Station and McMurdo Station. The US Air Force flies all of the US, New Zealand and Italian researchers down to Antarctica from Christchurch New Zealand. The US has an Air force base here in Christchurch which is known as the gateway to the Antarctic. The US Air Force program here is called "Operation Deep Freeze".

The snow and ice storm room

The Hagglund we rode in

My sister in the Hagglund looking out at the water we were in up to our windows

Our whole group with YouDee

After visiting the Antarctic Centre, I really want to go to Antarctica some day!

Going South for Our Free Weekend

Mackenzie country is dry but still pretty.
It is named after James Mackenzie who was a famous sheep thief.

This past weekend we had a long weekend with an extra day off so we went to Mt. Cook or Aoraki (its Maori name). On the way we stopped at Lake Tekapo (Lake Tech-a- poh) and Lake Pukaki (Lake Puh-kah-kee). At Lake Tekapo, there is a statue to James Mackenzie's dog Friday and all stock dogs. Friday was such a good sheep dog that Mackenzie would send him out on his own to steal flocks of sheep and bring them back to him. There is also a pretty, old stone church that looks out on the lake. The lake is so blue because the lake is fed by glacier water and the rock flour (which comes from the glacier rocks rubbing together) absorbs all of the other colors of the spectrum and reflects back the blue color only. It is so pretty. Lake Pukaki is in front of Mt. Cook and is also fed by glaciers.

Lake Tekapo is so pretty. Here I am in front of it.

My sister at Lake Tekapo

The lupines at Lake Tekapo are so pretty

My sister and I in front of the statue of Friday at Lake Tekapo

Mt. Cook or Aoraki from a distance with Lake Pukaki in front

The road in to Mt. Cook village

At Mt. Cook we went star gazing and 8 wheeling. Mt. Cook is a natural heritage site for darkness. There isn’t much light pollution so you can see many more stars then we can see at home in Delaware. When we went stargazing we saw the moon and Jupiter. We could also see three moons around Jupiter. We also saw the southern cross. The southern cross is a constellation that only appears in the southern hemisphere. It also appears on New Zealand’s flag. You have to be careful when you look for the cross because there are two others in the sky. You have to first find the two southern cross pointer stars to locate the southern cross. We also learned that the constellation Orion appears in our summer sky in Delaware but also appears upside down here in New Zealand in their summer sky (our winter time).

Me at our campground the morning after
stargazing. Mt Cook is in the background.

While star gazing we saw the jewel box which was a triangle of yellow stars with 2 blue stars surrounding an orange star. We learned that red stars are the oldest, yellow stars are the middle age and blue stars are the youngest. We also saw a nebula, a star nursery where stars are born which was a white cloud of gas with a bright star in the middle. We also saw three new stars off to one side.

We also looked at a star in Orion named Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice is a reddish star which means it is either old and burning out or has already burned out and we don’t know it yet. Beetlejuice is so far away that it takes 600 years for its light to reach the Earth. That means that the light that we see from Beetlejuice now was actually emitted by the star 600 years ago and is just reaching Earth now. We looked through special binoculars and a high tech telescope to see the stars and the planets. It was so dark we could even see satellites (3) overhead going by.

The Argo. It was windy.

The next morning we went 8 wheeling in a machine called an Argo. When we went eight wheeling, we went up the Tasman valley between the mountains a little ways and saw the Tasman glacier. Here they pronounce glacier (Glaze-cier). It was really bouncy because of all of the rocks we went over and we went fast! It was fun. I liked climbing up the hill of rocks on foot to look down at the glacier and the lake in front of it. It looks milky or chalky because of all of the rock flour in the water that hasn't settled out yet.