dolphin sex and swimming with seals

In Kaikoura. The weather cleared up beautifully and I went on the Swim with Seals trip. It was fantastic. From the boat, on the way out, we saw a small pod of little dolphins. They were jumping around and showing off a bit. And, since I witnessed a bit more than I had planned, I know that at least two of them were having sex . Dolphins are quite promiscuous, and, along with humans, are one of the only species that have recreational sex. The female dolphin can store the sperm of more than one male in her body and then, if she decides to get pregnant, can choose which sperm to use.

We swam with the seals for about an hour, right next to the rocks where they were sunning themselves. The water was quite cold so we had on fairly thick wet suits with hoods, along with fins, masks and snorkels. I can't believe how close we got to them. They were quite interested in us. We didn't have to entertain them, our mere presence seemed to be intriguing enough (and I suppose in our wetsuits etc., we probably looked pretty amusing and somewhat seal-like). Sometimes, one would just float in the water and stare at me. They would jump off the rocks into the water and swim around a bit. The pups were hopping in and out of the surf. One of the other swimmers had his fin come off and a seal grabbed it in his mouth and took off with it. The guy had to chase the seal a bit to get it back. Which, I'm sure the seal made easy, as there is no way to swim as fast the seal, should it choose to go as fast as they are capable of.

I only had 4 pictures left on my waterproof camera and I didn't do a very good job of taking them since I thought that, like the dolphin swimming, it would be over really quickly and there would be limited opportunities as the seals raced by. Too bad, as there were so many great shots during the hour that I would have loved to have taken. I'll just have to keep them tucked securely in my memory as it was a great experience and I highly recommend it to any one who gets the chance.

seals, up close and personal

In Kaikoura tonight and tomorrow night. One of the places known for wildlife - so opportunities to swim with dolphins, see penguins, albatrosses and such and go whale watching. I signed up to go swimming with seals, but it got cancelled due to the weather. Walked instead to the local seal colony. A handful of seals lying around, right next to the parking lot. You could get just a few feet from them (lots of warning signs to stay 10 metres back and not to disturb the seals as they can bite if threatened, which of course everyone is ignoring). Seals go out to sea hunting for food for days at a time, so when they get back to shore, they are exhausted and mostly sleep. Occasionally, one would switch position and this caused great excitement and much snapping of pictures, until he/she found a new, more comfortable position, and went back to sleep. Reminds me a bit of my dog actually.

christchurch

Had a interesting and unique cultural experience while in Christchurch. In one of those, friend-of-a friend sort of situations, I met up with a local New Zealand family and went with them to the Christchurch Secondary Schools Pasifika Cultural Festival. It was an evening performance of the Pasifika clubs of the local high schools. Traditional dances and songs from Maori and various island cultures (Samoa, Raratonga etc.) but filtered through the enthusiam of youth. Lots of energy and noise. Thanks to Vern, Tamara and the kids for such an opportunity.

genuine possum fur nipple warmers

In Queenstown and the night is warm so I've been wandering around the streets for an hour or so after dark looking in the souvenir shops . I don't really buy anything souvenir-like for myself anymore - too many years of attending garage sales has taught me that, if I can picture it in a box marked 50 cents, then it's not a good idea.

I haven't seen anything that I want - not even any tshirts. I probably should try to come home with something for myself, but mostly I find that there's not much that I can't buy in Canada instead of New Zealand. The 'uniquely' New Zealand things are either really expensive (I am not going to spend $60+ for a possum-merino wool blend scarf no matter how soft it is), versions of the same souvenirs that you get world-wide (chocolate covered peanuts, labelled as possum and kiwi-bird droppings, instead of moose and beaver poo and kiwifruit cookies/chocolates/tea, instead of maple flavoured, plus assorted pens, magnets, keychains etc.), or what you could get in Canada but cheaper when you take into account you have to lug it home (here I include wine and wonderfully soft stuffed animals in the shape of sheep).

There's also t-shirts - none that I've seen that make me want to take out the wallet. There's a ton of tasteful clothes that I like, that just happen to have "New Zealand" or "Queenstown" printed on them, but I'd actually be more interested if the logo and the corresponding price premium wasn't there.

I'm debating about bringing gifts home for people in Canada, for the same reasons I haven't wanted to buy anything for myself. So, if any of you have your heart set on something made from kiwi, or sheep (and that includes wool, lanolin or placenta) or with the All Blacks logo (national rugby team) on it, please let me know.

And, if I don't bring you anything, it's not because I don't love you, it's because I do and I don't think you really want a sheep-shaped Kleenex box cover, a black velvet wall hanging, or genuine possom-fur, paste-on nipple-warmers (and no, I'm not getting them for your wife/girlfriend so save your emails guys).

traffic jam New Zealand style

On the way back from a day trip to Milford Sound. The sheep had been freshly shorn and a lot of them were bleeding a bit. Kind of like after I shave my legs.

I've been doing a lot of touring and sitting on the bus and taking loads of photos. Tonight I'm in Queenstown and I'm heading soon to Christchurch and then Kaikoura. Some of our stops are in out-of-the way places and they keep us pretty busy, so I'm a bit behind in the blogging and email. The stuff I'm seeing is just beautiful and the camera cannot do it justice the way that the human eye can. My pictures seem woefully inadequate.

on the glacier

Since my motto for this trip has been 'it's not snowing', I feel I should point out the fact that, even though it's a glacier, it was actually not all that cold. The guiding company gave us each boots, wool socks, mittens, a hat and a lovely, blue waterproof jacket. We also got waterproof overtrousers, but I never put mine on. I had a tshirt, long sleeve shirt and a fleece underneath and I was fine the whole time. The guides wore shorts, but I'm a little less impervious to the cold.

I've mostly been blessed with good weather for the tour of the South Island. It was pouring rain for days prior to our group arriving in Franz Josef, but we had beautiful blue skies. It rains a lot of the west coast - some areas get 5-7 metres a year.

Franz Josef

In Franz Josef tonight - going to go walking on the glacier tomorrow.

To quote from the blog of a fellow Canadian travelling in New Zealand:

"I´m from Canada, so I´d obviously want to spend my time and money walking on a huge chunk of ice."

13 000 ft and falling

Yep, that's me.

And no, I wasn't scared at all. I figure the guy strapped to my back had a pretty vested interest in getting us both safely to the ground.


Yep that's me

made it to the South Island

Since leaving Auckland on Wednesday, in addition to the black water rafting, I've done the Hokey Pokey in Maori, gone white water rafting (including going over a 7 metre waterfall), gone in hot mineral springs at the edge of a lake, seen a 'geothermal wonderland', seen a geyer made to erupt on schedule for the tourists by putting pieces of soap inside, watched some bungy jumping, and drove past 'Mt. Doom', and done a 3 hour ferry crossing.


I'm in Picton now, on the South Island and tomorrow I meet the bus for Stray Travel (another hop-on, hop-off backpacker bus) to start my tour of the South Island.

glow worms and wellies

On Wednesday, the bus stopped for a few hours at Waitomo, which is known for its underwater caves. I went blackwater rafting with some of the people from the bus.

It's not like white water rafting, it all takes place underground. Don't we look all sexy in our wet suits and white rubber boots (or wellies as they call them here)!




This was not a particularly adventurous version of blackwater rafting - no abseils (rappelling) or much climbing. Lots of floating down underground streams, looking at glow worms on the ceiling.

a long way from home

Still feeling down - trying to write something for the funeral tomorrow in between activities. Really feeling the distance.

When we left Auckland on Wednesday we went up to the top of Mt. Eden, one of the area's many volcanoes. The sign post up there says that Toronto is 13 899 km away.

Trying to focus on the here-and-now because there's not too much I can do about stuff at home.

travelling

I left Auckland Wednesday morning, went to Waitomo to go blackwater rafting and then on to Rotarua for two nights. I leave for Taupo tomorrow. I'll post pictures and descriptions later - while my body had been on this whirlwind bus ride, my mind has been elsewhere. Kind of a weird juxtaposition of sadness and tourism.

true love waits

My grandma died today, about 10 weeks after her husband George. It wasn't unexpected - she hadn't been doing well physically or cognitively even before he got sick. She had done okay in the nursing home at first. The family had been doing lots of visiting and she's been worsening slowly. She got admitted to the hospital yesterday. My brother-in-law Andrew, (who has been amazing throughout this and all the various Stannard family dramas over the years) and George's son, David, were with her at the hospital when she died and said it was very peaceful.

Grandma was very sad when George died. My nephew Justin goes to Catholic school so he's had the concept of heaven explained to him. My sister has been answering his questions as best she can. When George died and Kathy was explaining that Grandma was sad because she missed him so much, he said that Great Grandpa George would have to wait for Great Grandma to join him in heaven before they could talk to each other again. Yesterday, when my sister explained that Great Grandma got sick and went into the hospital and may die, Justin said that if she does then they will be happy to be together again. He also wanted to know if they have hot tubs in heaven (not sure what Kathy said about that).

tree planting party

There has been a lot in the New Zealand papers lately about carbon emissions and carbon footprints (I'm sure there have been similar articles in North America). They talk about how your Carbon Footprint is a measure of your impact on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, based on your activities and lifestyle (like driving cars, flying, buying non-locally produced food, purchasing processed and manufactured goods, etc.). As you can imagine, my carbon footprint is rather large this year, what with all the buses and planes and stuff (not to mention all the travel/activity brochures collecting in my bag).

I read a story the other day about how people are doing things to offset the carbon they produce . One of the obvious things is to plant trees. When I get back to Canada, I'm going to owe a lot of trees. I also felt a strong compulsion to plant a tree after I finished grad school to make up for all the trees I killed in pursuit of that final piece of paper (don't even get me started about how many have suffered once I started working in the hospital).

So, as I am wont to do, I have spent a good deal of time contemplating my carbon footprint. First, the plane - Unlike all the paper from school and work, one could argue that the plane was going anyway so I didn't really make it that much worse. Second is the whole concept of planting trees to offset my carbon footprint (although I didn't have the cool phrase to use before), and this is the one that really confuses me more - How can the tree I plant be a 'new' tree? Since, technically, the tree I would plant already exists, isn't it more like tree transplanting? Do you get credit for 'planting a tree' if it already exists? My thought is I could get credit if I try to find one that would otherwise die if I didn't intervene. I assume that the tree people don't say, well if we haven't sold you by the time you are 6 feet tall then it's into the mulcher with you (or do they)? So those trees already in the shop probably don't need rescuing. Does that mean I have to go and find one at the original nursery stage where they weed out the crowded and unwanted ones (shades of apple thinning here) and rescue some of those? Hmm.

[Now, before you get all pedantic on me and ruin my contemplation, I have heard of the option of compensating for the emissions produced by buying the equivalent ‘carbon offset’ credits from emission reduction projects such as retiring corporate emission credits or tree planting in Kenya (apparently if you plant the trees in Kenya there's no problem with the whole space-time continuum problem of trees that already exist).]

I've got a plan!

I'm still in Auckland (arrived Saturday) and after a lot of obsessing, I have a plan. There are three different companies that run hop-on, hop-off bus networks, each a little different - different routes, different philosophy etc. Plus, each company offers more than 10 different pass options depending on how much of the country you want to see. I have literally spent days pouring over the different brochures, consulting my Lonely Planet Guide, the Internet, and other travellers trying to figure out which would suit me best in terms of personality as well as budget and time constraints (I'll be leaving NZ in a little over a month, if you can believe it) and what I want to see/do. I've decided to cut down a lot on the north island potential itinerary for now and go almost directly to the south island, stopping to hit a few things I really want to do most of all (I found it is best to blog about things after I do them as plans often change rapidly and completely, so you'll have to wait to find out what those are).

I'm staying in Auckland one more day to tie up some loose ends, including replacing one pair of jeans that I've been wearing almost constantly. Today, I went on a free day trip around Auckland which included a bridge walk on the Auckland Harbour Bridge to where they have a bungy jump off the bridge (didn't jump, maybe later in another location).

diving at Poor Knights Islands

Today I went scuba diving at Poor Knights Islands. As I keep reading, it's one of the top 10 dive sites in the world according to Jacques Cousteau. Something to do with a warm current that sweeps down from Australia, bringing with it species of tropical fish that normally wouldn't be in the area. Sorry, no pictures since I took the waterproof disposable camera and haven't finished the roll.

I had a good time. During the surface interval, in addition to lunch we toured around the islands a bit and went into the world's largest sea cave, Riko Riko, which is 7,800,000 cubic feet. Apparently, the acoustics are so good that Neil Finn, from Crowded House, once played a concert inside.

leaving Kerikeri

On my last night in Kerikeri, we had a party with pizza cooked in the wood fired oven. About sixteen people, some I know, some friends and acquaintances of Richard's. It was a lot of fun. Around ten or so, after the bulk of people had left, guitars and a harmonica came out and the piano was pressed into service. We only had two guests in the lodge and they came to the party and were there to the very end. What a great evening. So many great memories in Kerikeri. Tomorrow, I leave for Whangarei and will try to arrange a scuba diving trip to the Poor Knights Islands.

horse by moonlight

Went on a sunset horseback ride last night. We rode to the top of a volcano and had wine and cheese and crackers while the sunset. We rode back in the dark and there was a beautiful, almost full moon. I wish this picture could have turned out better.

being interesting is hard work

I got a chance today to swim with dolphins. The first time I went, a few weeks ago, it took 2 hours to find some and it was a bit rainy and the seas were too rough to swim. This time, we lucked out and within 8 minutes found a friendly pod with no juveniles in it (there are regulations that you can't swim if there are young dolphins in the pod - for your safety as well as for the dolphins).

It was amazing and hard to put into words. The dolphins swam around and underneath and looked right at me as they went by. Bottlenose dolphins are quite large, 300 kg and 2-3 metres in length. Dolphins like to be entertained or eventually they swim off. To be 'interesting' to a dolphin means making highpitched noises and whistles and waving at them from the boat. In the water, it means making high pitched noises in your snorkel and being active - diving down, doing somersaults, moving a lot. The sea was a bit rough and you can only be 'interesting' for so long before you get completely tired out. When the dolphins move away from the swimmers, the boat picks you up and moves you closer to the pod and in you go again. We did that three times.

No pictures today, bringing the camera in the water was too difficult. A kind lady who didn't go in swimming took some pictures for me, but it was with the disposable, waterproof camera, not the digital so I won't see them until I finish the roll and get it developed. I suspect there won't be much to look at - just a bunch of unidentifiable heads in a big mass of water.

oh what a night

Tonight was my last night at the Landing Restaurant. And what a night it was - 90 people for a wedding buffet. Lots to do and many many dishes all at once. But we survived.

I am really going to miss working at the Landing. It has been the best experience. The people there are just incredibly fun and I learned some new things. If I didn't need to see at least some of New Zealand before I go back to Canada, I'd definitely stay here for a lot longer. As it is I stayed an extra week, in part, because I wasn't ready to leave everyone.

The new HelpX person arrived. Her name is Lorna and she's from Scotland. It's been good having another traveler here. She showed me all her photos from the South Island which helped me decide that I should definitely make it down there. It's also helpful to have her around because it means I can go to Paihia one morning and go on another trip to try to swim with dolphins - the last time I went the weather was too rough to go in.