Weekend in the Naki

Gidday Mates,

Whats going down on the other side of the earth? Over here in the land of the long white cloud (Aoteroa), things are going as good as ever. Last weekend brought us to many more cool new places and sights. On Friday night we hit up the local pub in Owhango for some New Zealand piss. Yes, that is what some of the locals call alcoholic beverages. We didn’t get too crazy and were home quite early.

Saturday we headed west on the Forgotten World Highway towards Stratford. The drive was quite cool. Lush, fern-filled forests lined the rugged hills as we twisted this way and that. The road got quite narrow and became gravel as we came through Morgan’s gorge.

We took a small detour off the “beaten path” to check out one of the largest waterfalls on the North Island, Damper Falls. We walked through a pasture that was filled with ewes and recently born lambs as are many fields these days. Once we got to the trees there was the wooden walkway that we have come accustomed to. The view was outstanding and gave a certain sense of awe as we observed without a human in sight or within earshot.

Damper Falls (74 meters high)

After taking the view all in, we jumped back in our van and headed back to the forgotten highway. Not too far down the road, we were taken by the sight of Mount Taranaki aka Mount Egmont another one of New Zealand’s volcanic mountains. Roberta thinks it is just awesome that all of a sudden there is a large, single mountain sticking up from the earth. Definitely different from those mountains she could see growing up. We weaved our way through the dairy cow-filled pastures to Egmont National Park. Roberta also loved. At the National Park we checked out Dawson Falls and headed out on our second hike of the day to check out the Wilkie’s pools. It brought us through the Goblin Forest and closer to Mount Taranaki.

Mount Taranaki in the distance

Mount Taranaki

Dawson Falls

Goblin Forest

Wilke's Pools

We then carried on to New Plymouth located right on the Tasman Sea. We had ourselves a great “tea” a.k.a. supper and rolled on in to the local holiday park for a night’s sleep. Yes we finally spent the night in our van. It was easy to get to sleep that night as the ocean waves carried us into our dreams.

Sunday we were awoken by the blistering hot sun. It definitely has a lot more kick near the hole in the ozone, but apparently the hole is getting smaller. We decided we would take in the famous coastal walkway here.  The sand was brilliantly black from the breakdown of volcanic rock. After checking out the surfing competition, we decided to hire some bikes so we could take in more of the walkway. Few things feel good when they hit you in the face but ocean mist is one of them.

We decided to drive to the wharf instead of walking there. On the way, we noticed a path up one of the volcanic outcroppings- Paritutu Rock- and we couldn’t resist the temptation to climb it. After a steep ascent we were rewarded with one of the most spectacular views.

Mount Taranaki was covered by clouds unfortunately

Mount Ruapehu and Mount Ngarahue in the distance

After going to the I-Site, we decided that we would go check out Pukekura Park. It is known around New Zealand as being one of the nicest in the country. Roberta was quick to comment on how it put Central Park in New York to shame. There were definitely many beautiful plants. After a couple hours of aimless wandering, we had to make our 3 hour venture back to our base.

Roberta’s note: It was not aimless wandering, it was a beautiful garden and I spent the entire time loving the scenery, the flowers, the ponds, the ancient trees and the waterfalls. And at the end I got ice cream. Score!
Over and Out

Waitomo Caves

I'm on a blogging roll!

On Sunday we drove out to the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves. These were fantastic, I'm so glad we went. Jared is such a good sport, he had already been on his first trip to New Zealand but went again with me just so I could see them. We got there just in time to make the bus for the first tour, the Ruakuri Caves. It is a two-hour tour, and they let you take pictures, so here we go:

When you first enter the cave, you enter through a 15 m high spiral staircase. This man-made entrance is used because the natural entrance was used by the Maori people as a wahi tapu (burial ground) and it is a sacred place. 

Jared on the spiral staircase. 

The entrance to the cave.

The tour took us down about 60 m into the cave. There was a river flowing through it and you can actually go Black Water Rafting down it (if you aren't cheap like Jared and I). 

This was one of the best parts of the tour. There is a room at the end of the path called "The Pretties" and it is a whole bunch of- you guessed it- pretty formations. My picture is terrible so I stole one from the internet: 

Another very cool part of this tour was the glowworms which are only present in Australia and New Zealand. They are actually not worms but the larval stage of a fly aka maggots. These glow worms produce light through a chemical reaction in their hind end making it look like the stars to their prey which are other insects. The insects fly up towards the light and get caught in the stringy traps that work like spider webs. 

They then reel in their prey and suck all of the juices out of them. They are in this stage for 9 weeks and then build a cocoon. They emerge as a mosquito-looking fly that has no mouth who's only purpose is to reproduce. They live and mate for around 4 days, laying eggs in groups of 20. The first larvae that emerges eats the rest and the cycle starts again.

Their sticky lines on the cave roof.

The next tour was into the Waitomo Glowworm Cave. We weren't allowed to take pictures, so here is a shamelessly ripped-off picture:

If you can imagine it, it was like the starriest night ever, completely chocker-block full of glowworms. 

This is where we exited the cave, but it is also where the cave was entered in 1887 by a local Maori Chief Tane Tinorau and an English surveyor Fred Mace when they set out to explore the cave. All they had was a raft made of flax stems and candles to light their way. I'm not sure if I would be brave enough to do this. 

That's all for now, until next time!

Tongariro National Park

Hey everyone,

  

 This Saturday we went out to Tongariro National Park. We couldn't have asked for a better day, it was so clear, we could see every mountain perfectly. There are three mountains in Tongariro National Park: Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro. 

This is Mt. Ruapehu on the drive up. It has two ski fields on it- Whakapapa and Turoa. It last erupted in 2007. 

This is Mt. Ngauruhoe (pronounced nare-uh-hoe-ee) and it was Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. 

It is my favourite of the three, this picture doesn't do it justice! The last time it erupted was in 1977.

This is Mt. Tongariro. It's actually made up of 12 cones and technically Ngauruhoe is one of Tongariro's cones, not it's own mountain. It last erupted in August of this year, and spewed ash all over the place, closing highways and what have you. You can't really see from my crap picture but it puffs constantly and you can really smell the sulphur even from where this picture was taken. 

The first thing we did on Saturday was take a 2 hr hike on the Taranaki Falls Loop.  This was a great hike, there was a little bit of everything.  

         

There was bush with flowing streams..

Flat sections that gave us great views of the mountains. That's Ngauruhoe on the right and Tongariro on the left. And Jared, of course. 

And waterfalls! This is Taranaki Falls. 

When we were done that hike we decided to drive up State Hwy 47 and see what we could see. We stopped and checked out an ancient Maori dwelling and got some pictures of Tongariro from across the lake. Then we stopped in at Tokaanu thermal pools. This was very cool, there is so much geothermal activity around this place! 

One of the hot pools at Tokaanu. Too hot for me to put my fingers in!

After that we drove via Turangi back to Taumaranui. Lots of great views along the way. This one is about 5 minutes down the road from where we are staying. 

We are staying in Owhango while we work here, that is A, B is where we did the hike, C is where the thermal pools were, and D is where we are working. More on that in the next blog or two.

Until next time!

The Second Leg

Hey all,
Back again with an update from the Land of Tui beer. Much has changed again in the last week or so.

We heard from the mechanic early last week that the motor in our van was fried. It was too bad that after Lucy had blown up that everyone said not to buy a diesel engine. This would have been valuable information beforehand. Basically fixing it would cost more than the value of the Lucy, so we decided that her short venture with us was over. It wasn't quite what we had in mind when we bought her but thems the breaks.

Roberta finished up her locum at Massey last week while I got back into the vehicle shopping once again. We decided this time to have a mechanic check things out on whatever we were going to buy since neither of us are metal heads. Since we had the bed frame and camping stuff in our old van, we could now buy any van and just take the seats out. I looked at a few and then picked one out that seemed to be the best for a mechanic to look at. The mechanic said only a few small things needed to be done so we decided that we would take it......... but I called the guy back and someone had walked in there waved money in his face and he sold it. @#$%. Back to the drawing board. Had the mechanic look at another prospect and he said not to buy it. It had looked alright to us so good thing we had it checked over. We then started looking at dealerships. We heard our fair share of lines from the used car dealers let me tell you. After a few more days of messing around we found ourselves a van at the right price and we got warranty and a service included.

Meet Esther, the 95 Toyota Estima. She's on the left, Lucy on the right. As you can see they look very similar but she WILL treat us a lot nicer. She is a couple years younger but still has some character and battle scars. We took this picture when we were ripping out anything salvageable from Lucy before the wrecker came to crush her into a cube.

On a positive note we are becoming DINKs (double income no kids)! We got a job in the same clinic in a town called Taumarunui. We start there on Monday. More on that story as it develops.

Until next time!

A Little of This, A Little of That

Hey all, back again with an update from the land of the kiwi bird. We have had an interesting week to say the least.

Our Pad for the month.

Last weekend Roberta was on call, so we just stuck around Palmerston North. I went with Roberta and the attending student on the calls. I basically sat back and shot the shit with the farmers while Roberta and the students did the job. There were 3 pulls that resulted in 4 live calves which is quite rare here. One of the students said it was the first live calf she had seen after a dystocia! Most of the time things are quite rotten by the time the vet gets called out, so it was nice for them to experience a happy ending. On Saturday night, we went out for Alex's celebration dinner since she was now a human pathologist after passing her big exam the week before. We met a lot of good people, all of whom were "real" doctors. I had been warned by my fellow countrymen before about the steak in New Zealand and in my opinion they were right. It just doesn't compare to a North American steak. I will savour the first one I have when I get back home in a few months.

 

Last week I went with Roberta to work for a day. We spent the morning disbudding dairy calves with the students. The farmer wanted us to watch the students carefully because the last time they were done some still got some horns. They did great though and things went quite smoothly.
I also spent two other days riding around with some dairy vets at a private clinic. It was good to get a glimpse of how things are done in private practise here and see some new country. We did some pregnancy diagnoses, some liver biopsies for copper and selenium, some metri-checking, and some metricure infusions for all my vet friends.

 

On Saturday, we had job interviews at a clinic in Taumarunui. It is located around 220 kms north of Palmerston, in the central part of the North Island. We had decided we would make a weekend of it and have a look around the area as well. Little did we know what was lying in our future.

The drive on the way up to Taumarunui was quite nice (Of course I forgot my camera). The landscape changed from quite flat to rolling hills to rugged hills with a lot of sharp curves in the road. I think that New Zealand made the roads so winding so the country would seem bigger! We were bucking it up one of the hills into the gusting wind when the oil light started to flash. I wondered what the heck was going on because the oil level was fine when I checked it before we left. Then I looked at the heat gauge which was in the red. Oh Sh%$! I quickly pulled over as the van stalled. Once stopped we could hear the sizzling of a cooking engine with some smoke coming from under the hood. Not good. After a bit of a fit, I called the AA which is like our CAA. I tow truck driver came, had a quick look, put some water in the rad, and said that probably the radiator hose blew or the radiator had plugged up and probably had blown the head gasket. For the non-metal heads this basically means the engine is buggered as I had suspected. We got towed back to the tow truck driver's vintage car wrecker yard which was an interesting/hillbilly place. He rented us a car to head the rest of the way for our interview. We headed up to Taumarunui and had the interview which went alright considering the circumstances and then headed back to the wreckage yard. By the time we got back there it was 5 o'clock. I had gotten the AA Plus package which allows you to get your vehicle towed anywhere for no cost, so we decided to get the van towed back to Palmy. There was no one that could do it that night, so they put us up in a hotel in Ohakune that night for free. It was quite a nice place with a hot tub and all.

Yesterday we got towed back with our decrepit van back to Palmy and I had it taken to a mechanic so he could have a good look and see if it's even worth fixing or if we should just scrap it. You never really know what you are gonna get when you buy an old vehicle. Don't really know if it was just bad luck or if the guy sold me something that was messed up in the first place. So now just waiting to see what the mechanic has to say and go from there.
Oh well just a little bump in the road.
Over and Out.