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

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.

The trail where we took the argo

Graeme our driver. He was lots of fun!

The Tasman glacier face close up

Looking over the hill down on the Tasman glacier

Looking down on the Tasman glacier. I was making my mommy a bit nervous.

The trail up the valley to the glacier.
Graeme called this his "office" lucky guy!

The path we climbed up to look down on the glacier

Mt Cook up close. Sure was pretty!

A Farm Visit: The Acheron

Scott talking to us in the wool shed.

Last week we visited my Mommy and Daddy’s friend Scott McFadden at his farm the Acheron (Ak-er-ron). It is our favorite farm to visit and Mommy has been visiting them since 1999. Scott talked to us in the wool shed about the farm and how large it is. It is a medium to steep hill country farm. They don’t get that much rain there during the year. At the bottom of the farm where the wool shed is, it is 400 ft above sea level. At the top of the farm it is 1,400 ft above sea level. Our elevation in Harrington is only about 50 ft above sea level.

Sheep in the yards

Scott's working dog named "Happy". He is a huntaway.

Scott has 24 beef cows and 20 calves. He also has 3,300 ewes (ewes is pronounced you. Ewes are adult female sheep) and 1,340 ewe lambs. It only takes Scott and 5 dogs to take care of all these animals and the 804 hectare farm. Do you know how many acres that is?

The kind of tractor you need in hill country

Showing the students how to body condition score
and evaluate a wool sheep

Scott talked about different types of sheep and why certain breeds were good for certain types of farms. He grows wool for Smartwool. Did you know that you can buy Smartwool socks and sweaters in the US? Then we went hill trekking and climbed up a big hill on the farm (you would call it a mountain) that overlooks the Hurinui (Hur-i-new-ee) river and out to the sea.

The climb to the top

Some of the students ahead of us.
No sky is as blue as a NZ sky!

When we left the farm we went down to the edge of the Hurinui river to explore. It was very cold. It also had lots of rounded rocks at the bottom and I skipped one. The river is fed from the glaciers up in the mountains so that is why there are all the rounded rocks and the water looks blue. After that we got back on the bus and left to go back to Lincoln University.

Our group at the top looking out to the Hurinui

Brrr...the Hurinui was cold. Justin was crazy!

Willowbank and KoTane

Last week we visited as place called Willowbank. It is a zoo where they have animals that are native to New Zealand, animals that the settlers brought with them on purpose and some other interesting animals. Do you know what native means? It means something that was already here in New Zealand before the British settlers came and was not brought here. The only native mammals to New Zealand were 2 kinds of bats. Everything else was brought here by the settlers.

The Puekeko or swamp hen

We saw animals like wallabies, kiwi birds and pukeko. We also saw deer and a peacock (my little sister calls it a pea pot) in the farm animal part. We even saw some eels and black swans. Eels are long, black, thick and slimy looking like a water snake. The biggest one was about 6 inches thick and 1.5 meters long-yuck! Also we saw some Keas. Keas are alpine parrots. They are the only alpine parrots in the world. Their feathers are green with orange underneath of their wings. Keas love honey so the zookeepers used honey to attract them to our group. One Kea came and landed next to me and bit me on the hand and elbow. Geeze those beaks are sharp!

The kea or alpine parrot

The cheeky kea that bit me!

My sister's "pea pot"

The kiwi is the national bird of New Zealand. The people of New Zealand are also sometimes called kiwis. It has a long beak and cannot fly. Their egg is about 6 times the size of a chicken egg. The egg makes up about ¼ of a females body weight. It is the equivalent of a human giving birth to a 5 year old child. Kiwis are endangered in New Zealand. They are endangered in New Zealand because animals like stoats and weasels that the settlers brought, eat them. Because the animals that the settlers brought with them have no predators to eat them, their numbers keep growing. Also, cats and dogs eat kiwis too. They showed us a picture of a dog that got loose from his owner and attacked and killed 500 kiwis. Kiwi birds are nocturnal which means they are awake at night and sleep during the day. Willowbank collects eggs from the wild and incubates them as well as breeds kiwi birds to release back into the wild.

Doing the hongi

Chief Justin picking up the offering

After the kiwis we saw and participated in an event called KoTane (Co-tah-nay). KoTane is a Maori traditional welcome and concert. The Maori are the native people of New Zealand. A Maori warrior greeted us and challenged us with a spear to see if we came in peace or for war. After our chief (Mommy’s student Justin) picked up the offering (a fern) and they knew we came in peace, our chief and their Maori chief greeted each other with a hongi (hong-gee), a Maori greeting in which two people press their foreheads and their noses together to share the breath of life. We then were invited inside for a Maori concert.

The women of the tribe welcoming us with the powhiri

Me doing the haka

Maori men doing the haka

Maori women doing the poi dance

The boys got to participate in a haka, a traditional Maori war dance. I also participated in the haka(Hah-kah). We stomped our feet, stuck out our tongues, and slapped our knees and our chests with our hands. Even the New Zealand national rubgy team the All Blacks perform the haka in front of their opponents before each game. You can find it on You Tube to watch yourself by clicking on this link All Blacks Haka vs. England Then the girls did the poi dance. The poi are white balls on a rope. Traditionally they were made with rocks and flax. They swung the poi right and left, forward and backward and up and down while singing. We then had a traditional Maori dinner called a hangi which means that the dinner was cooked in a hole in the ground for many hours. We had lamb, pork belly and chicken and lots of kinds of vegetables. It was good.

Our whole group

My favorite things at Willowbank were touching the eels and seeing the kiwi birds.

Our First Free Weekend

On our free weekend we went to Kaikoura (Kai- cour-rah). About halfway there the bus broke down and we were stranded in a town called Cheviot. We were there for about 3 hours while they sent mechanic with a part to fix the bus. While we were there we got an ice cream, played on the school playground, sat talking with the students, and had dinner. When the bus was fixed we all jumped in and off we went the rest of the way.

On our first day in Kaikoura we got up early about 6:00 am and got ready to catch our whale watching boat. The land under the ocean drops off very deep close to the shore in Kaikoura so the whales can come in and feed closer than most places in the world. We traveled on a big, power catamaran boat (two hulls). They use something called a hydrophone which is an underwater microphone to find the whales. We got to put the headphones in our ears and listen for them. The sperm whale is very loud and makes clicking noises. Did you know that the sperm whale is the loudest mammal on earth? They are also the largest toothed mammal on the earth. The first whale we saw was huge. His name was Maki. They see the same whales so often that they have named them and can recognize them by patterns on their backs and the shape of their tails.

Our first whale going, going and gone after watching him for about 5 minutes

The second whale that we saw was big enough to make the first one look small. It was enormous and his name was Tutu. It easily could have flipped the boat over if it wanted to, fortunately they are pretty smart and don’t want to. Tutu has been known to protect younger, smaller male sperm whales from Orca. We were able to see both of them dive under the water. The average time a whale spends under water here is about 30 minutes but some whales have been known to be able to hold their breath for as long as 2 hours!

The Dusky dolphins were jumping everywhere

Then we found a large pod of Dusky dolphins. It seemed like there were 500 of them and they were all over the place! They did backflips, barrel rolls and many other things and they aren’t tamed at all. They were having fun and showing off!

They swam all around, in front of and under our boat

When we got back we went to the beach. Now, when you say “beach” you think sand, big waves and what not. This beach was nothing like that. I mean sure, it had waves and people on it but the waves were smaller, about 2 feet at most and there were very few people on it even in the middle of summer here. In place of sand there were rocks, rocks, rocks and more rocks. There were also scallop shells that we found because the tide was low. They were everywhere (scallops are a bit like clams). The water was freezing!