White Island

We got up at about 5am this morning to head to White Island, which is an active volcano! We got on a boat to take us out to the island. After about a 2 hour boat ride, we got close enough to the island to hop in smaller inflatable boats to bring us to shore. They gave us hard hats and gas masks and we suited up for the tour.

Some of the group being boated over to the shore

Once we arrived on the island we were taken around to see various parts of the volcano. We saw steam coming out of vents, bubbling pools of hot mud, and sulfur-filled streams running across the island. We even got to see the huge acidic lake located at the center of the island.

Me and Erika in full gas-mask glory in front of a vent shooting out steam

It felt like I was on a whole different planet (we joked that it looked like mars!). The only vegetation was a few little fern-like plants along near the ocean because the rest of the island is too acidic for anything to grow. When it was almost time to leave, our guide announced to us that this volcano erupts about every 10 years, and the last time it erupted was 2000... yikes! Good thing we made it around the island without any mishaps!

Me on white island!

We loaded back on to the boat to take us back to the main land. Most people passed out on the boat because we were all so exhausted, but everyone jumped right up when we heard some people out on the front deck yelling that they saw dolphins. I grabbed my camera and ran outside to see about 80-100 dolphins swimming along both sides of our boat. It was so amazing! Since the water is so clear here, I could see them swimming alongside the boat underwater. I stood out on the deck for probably almost 20 minutes watching them swim and jump and play along next to our boat until finally we pulled away and towards the dock.

Dolphins!!!!!!!!!

Once we got back to shore, we headed back to the university for bbq dinner and movie night. We definitely needed to relax after such a fun-filled day.

Rotorua and Zorbing

This morning we packed an overnight bag for a two day trip to Whakatane. We left early in the morning and stopped on Rotorua to go zorbing! They described it to us as sort of like rolling down in a hill in a giant hamster ball, so of course I was really excited to do it. It was much different than I expected, but much more fun! They piled us in a van to get to the top of the hill where there were a bunch of huge plastic balls waiting for us. I watched a few people go down the winding path and it seemed like they weren't going very fast or sliding around much. When it was my turn up, they hosed a little bit of water into the ball and I dove in! Soon as I knew it, I was rolling down the hill and sliding all around inside the ball! It was much faster than it looked like from watching others and I was sliding all around and going backwards and sideways, it was insane. I had so much fun!

 

Me zorbing! (a little poor quality because I took these shots from my movie)

After the rest of the group went, we changed out of our swimsuits and got back on the coach to head to Whakatane. We got to our motel, which was really nice with large rooms and I even got a double bed for once (thank god!). After getting settled, we headed down to the docks for dinner at a really nice seafood restaurant right on the water. I had a huge delicious meal of fish, scallops, oysters, and shrimp.. yum! Then we walked through town and headed back to our motel for the night.

Hamilton Free Days

Both wednesday and thursday we had lecture then had the rest of the day to work or explore the city of Hamilton. Wednesday Erika and I got lunch at an indian food place and then went shopping in the city for the rest of the day. Thursday we all pretty much spent the day doing research and laying out to get some sun. These 2 days were pretty boring and relaxed but it was good to get some work done

AUV Launch, Raglan Beach, and Whale Bay

This morning we got to sleep in because we were launching the AUV for a practice run in the morning. Around 10:30 we met up with our TA, Adam, and some other PhD students who were doing a practice launch of the AUV. AUV stands for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, and it is a torpedo-like device that can be remotely operated from land or a boat.

Adam and Alex launching the AUV

The AUV belongs to the University of Delaware and was shipped the whole way here to NZ to help in some of the PhD research Adam and some of the others are doing. We were invited to the practice launch so we could learn a little more about AUVs and how they are operated so later on we could learn about the type of research they can help do. AUVs can contain a number of different instruments to measure different parameters in the water like temp, salinity, depth, and bottom profiling.

The AUV going off on its first NZ mission, a practice launch in a lake

After playing with the AUV, we got lunch on the road to Raglan Beach. Raglan is a cool beach because it is on the west coast so it has bigger waves, and it has black sand! The sand is black because it is close to the rock source, which is black, basaltic rock full of heavy metals. When this rock weathers away to form sand, it forms a black sand at first. Raglan is close to the source rocks, so it still contains this black sand. The heavier minerals cannot be transported as easily by wind and water so beaches further up the coast from Ragland (like 90 mile beach!) don't have black sand.

The black sand at Raglan

We dug a small trench so we could see the layering of darker and lighter sand, which we learned was from different concentrations of the heavy metals in the sediment. The waves at Raglan were pretty big and the wind was blowing like crazy, so it was not as much fun as the other beaches we have been to, but it was still pretty awesome. We only got to spend a little bit of time there since we spent so much of the morning with the AUV and we needed to get to our next stop at low tide. The next stop was Whale Bay, a rocky intertidal shore a little bit south of Raglan.

The rocky intertidal Whale Bay

We got there right at low tide so most of the rocks were exposed, leaving small tide pools full of organisms for us to see. This area was a coastal biologist's dream. We found a bunch of species of crabs, snails, limpets, and barnacles. Covering most of the rock was a black seaweed-looking plant called pseudolithoderma.

Pseudolithoderma- it was covering almost all of the rocks!

A sea star I found in one of the tide pools

Besides the great marine life, there was also another organism that littered the water- surfers! The waves here were great so we got to see a ton of surfers doing all sorts of tricks. Honestly, I am surprised there were so many of them out there because the waves were huge and going straight into a shore full of rocks!

A sweet surfer shredding a wave

This rocky intertidal environment was pretty awesome so we ended up spending a lot of time sitting on some of the big boulders. Art told us more about the geological aspects of the area and how this area was the source of the black sand at Raglan. Whale Bay has was are known as pillow basalts, which are huge dark rock formations made by lava erupting under water and cooling quickly. The pillow basalts weather to form boulders, which weather further into cobbles, which weather into sand, creating the black sand at Raglan. Isn't geology fun?! We splashed around a little more in the tide pools, but the tide was coming in quickly so we had to pack up and move out.

Thanks for the Keens, mom! They are perfect!!

On the long bus ride home, Art decided it was Karaoke time so we had a very interesting ride to say the least. Then it was back to the university for dinner and a relaxing evening.

First Uni Day and Geocaching

Today was the first day with no real plans except lecture. We had geology lecture from about 10am to noon, then I had some leftover snacks for lunch. I spent the afternoon getting unpacked and settled into my room and starting to do a little bit of research for the projects we have due during the trip. One of the projects we had to do was a geocache. We got divided into groups of 4 and were given GPS coordinates and hints for helping find our geocache. My group decided to go after dinner to find ours. It ended up taking a long time with lots of interesting twists along the way. Here is the synopsis of our journey!

We obviously had a lot of fun and it felt good to finally find it and not give up! Since it took so long to find and to travel there and back, it was dark by the time we got home. When we arrived back, we found out that a few other groups tried to find theirs, but we were the only ones who were successful. Go us!

Tidal Flats and Tairua Beach

This morning we ate breakfast in the hostel again and packed all of our things back on the coach bus. We had to time our departure perfectly because we were going to tidal sand flats and we needed to get there at low tide. We were able to get there at just the right time to walk across a huge tidal sand flat to see a lot of the biology there. We were able to see the sea grass beds as well as numerous amounts of shells and other organisms. I spent a lot of time looking in the small tidal pools for unique and interesting shells. We learned some sampling methods and practiced taking cores of sand and using a sieve to find organisms living in the sediment. The sediment in this are was anoxic (no oxygen) under the surface layer so the sediment appeared black when it was dug up. We spent a lot of time here identifying organisms for our biology class, then headed back to town to grab a lunch.

We then climbed up a small dormant volcano so we could get a good look of the area. Looking down one side we could see Pauanui beach, and on the other side was Tairua Beach. The view from this area was breathtaking, since we could see so much in all angles. I really loved being able to see the tidal flat we had just been on, since the water pattern through the estuary looked gorgeous.

Pauanui Beach

The estuary and sand flats

We then walked back down and spent some time in Tairua beach. Apparently there are beach cameras that take photos of the beach every half hour so that geologists can look at wave activity and how the beach is changing over time. We lined ourselves up to spell "UD 2010" on the beach to get our picture taken by the beach cam. Art couldn't find the pictures online, but he is trying to contact the organization in charge of it so hopefully we can see if it worked!

After a nice amount of beach time it was back on the coach to head to Hamilton, the location of the University of Waikato. I was so relieved to finally go to the university because we had been living out of our suitcases for so long that I had gotten very unorganized. We got to the uni and got to unpack and organize, and we have our own rooms which is so nice. Exhaustion was setting in with everyone so we spent the first night in Hamilton going to bed really early.

Hot Water Beach, Cathedral Cove, and Buffalo Beach

Today was a huge day of beaches and traveling. We ate breakfast in the hostel, and hopped on the bus bright and early so we could make it to our first stop, the hot water beach. We arrived at the perfect time- low tide. There were already a bunch of people there digging holes on the beach.

Hot water beach!

There is thermal activity under the beach that causes the ground water under the sand to reach very high temperatures. When I stood in the surf, I could did my toes down into the sand and it was so hot that it almost burned! When we were digging our hot tubs we had to made sure a little bit of seawater could get in too because the water coming up from the ground would have been too hot by itself. It was a little disappointing since there were so many people on the beach and the tide was coming in, so we only had a good spot for a little while. We had to get back on the road anyway, because our next stop was Cathedral Cove.

We arrived at the Cathedral Cove area and Art and Doug told us to be prepared for a long hike. It was about a 45 minute hike up and down hills all along the side of the mountain to finally make it down to Cathedral Cove. We spent most of the afternoon there, which was nothing short of spectacular. There was a short sea stack not far off shore that we spent a lot of time swimming out to and jumping off of.

The beach at Cathedral Cove and the sea stack we jumped off of!

We also explored a sea cave that had a little mini beach inside, and walked through an arch to get to the other side of the cove. We learned about the progression of weathering along a beach- first is a sea cave that weathers to a sea arch, that eventually becomes a sea stack. Cathedral cove had great examples of all three. It also had what is called "honeycomb weathering" where bits of sediment blown by the wind wear away rock to form a honeycomb pattern in the rock. It is a good thing we had a lot of time there because we learned a lot but still had time to goof around and have fun!

Me, Christine, and Erika in front of a sea stack on the other side of the cove

Us gals posing inside one of the smaller sea caves

Me, Erika, and Christine standing on a rock in front of a large sea cave

We got to swim and play for awhile but we still had one more beach to log, so we hiked the 45 minutes back up out of the cove. We got back on the bus and headed back to Whitianga to do a beach profile of Buffalo Beach, the beach right outside our hostel. We did a contest to see which group could collect the most different species of shells. My group ended up with a lot of shells, but we only came in second place. I found a bunch of really interesting and unique shells that aren't found in the states including pipi shells.

By the time we finished at Buffalo Beach, we only had a little bit of time before heading back into town for dinner. We ate dinner at a really good thai restaurant, then headed back to the hostel. I felt a little bit of a cold coming on, so I took some airborne and headed to bed.

Driving to Whitianga

This day was pretty uneventful since we needed to get the whole way from Paihia to Whitianga. We got up fairly early, ate hostel breakfast, and got in our coach. Most of the day was spent driving, although we made a few stops along the way. We stopped in Thames to go shopping, and stopped in Wellsford to grab some food. We finally arrived a little before dinner time in Whitianga and got settled into our new hostel. This hostel was practically on the beach and had a great view and fantastic accommodations. The girls had a whole floor to ourselves with a kitchen and lounge area, which was really nice. We got settled and walked into town for dinner. After dinner, we all hung out in the lounge in our hostel until bedtime. It was really nice to finally be able to relax and get to know everyone better since we had been traveling so much.

90 Mile Beach, Dune Boarding, and Cape Rienga

This morning we woke up and had breakfast at the hostel. We had to get up pretty early because we had a full day planned. Since we were going to be driving on a beach on a pre-planned tour, we had a different coach than usual and Stu wasn't driving us. We drove up the west coast of the northernmost tip of the north island along a beach called 90 mile beach. (For the record, they call it 90 mile beach, but really it is 90 km.. naming FAIL). It was pretty sweet because we had a special coach that actually could drive on the sand so we drove about 40ish km actually on the beach.

A sea arch in the distance on 90 mile beach

Freshwater running across the sand towards the ocean creating antidune formations

Once we drove awhile up the beach, we turned inland and drove through a stream bed through huge dunes. These dunes had to be the biggest I had ever seen in my life! Our driver then tells us we are pulling over to go dune boarding. I remembered that Mike had done that on his trip to Australia and New Zealand, so I knew I could not pass this opportunity up.

The view of the stream bed we drove through to get to the dune boarding site

The climb up the dune was insane. It was a very steep climb and especially trying to climb up while the sand kept shifting under my feet made it even more difficult. When I finally got to the top, I was terrified by the view. Since I am really afraid of heights, I wasn't sure if I would be able to go through with it.

The steep climb up the dune

After I watched a few people go down, I knew it was now or never. Plus, how else would I get down? I finally got up the nerve and headed down the side of the dune. It was like a faster, face-first, version of sledding, and it was awesome! Despite my reservations at first, I got right up and did it again.

That's me!

The whole group after our dune boarding experience

Unfortunately, more tours showed up at this spot, so we had to get moving. We headed to Taputaputa beach for lunch. We had the chance to go swimming again, so of course a bunch of us went in. We found a bunch of small jelly-like blobs floating around in the ocean with us that we assumed to be fish eggs. However, Doug told us that they were probably larvaceans, a small organism that forms jelly sacks around itself to stay afloat. After lunch and a quick dip, we headed north to Cape Rienga, the northernmost part of New Zealand.

The Cape Reinga lighthouse

The Maori have a legend about Cape Reinga, since it is the northernmost part of the country. They believe that when a person dies, their soul travels the whole way up 90 mile beach, then goes to Cape Reinga. Once a soul reaches Cape Reinga, it can depart and go up to the sky. It is such a cool place because it is the part of the island where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea meet, so there are unique currents which also play into the Maori belief that this is where souls go to depart Earth.

The view walking to Cape Rienga

A sign at the northern most part of New Zealand

It was a long walk to get to the lighthouse and back, so we were pretty tired by the time we got back on the bus. I slept most of the ride back to Paihia, and was so thankful that dinner was waiting for us at the hostel. After we ate, Art took out the ROV and we got to try it out in the pool. I got to drive it for awhile, then passed it on to some others to try operating it. It was then time to shower and go out to spend Trevor's $100 bar tab. It ended up that our professors and Stu were out too so we had a good time bonding and hanging out with them. We ended up staying out way too late, but the next day's plan was driving all day so we could sleep on the bus.

Bay of Islands Tour and Waitangi Treaty Grounds

This morning we woke up pretty early at the marae. Since we had stayed up late the night before, breakfast was running a little late so we threw around a rugby ball on the lawn until breakfast. Stu, our coach driver taught us how to correctly throw the ball to get the right kind of spin on it. It was harder than I thought- I was so temped to throw it like a football! We then had a wonderful breakfast, and the Maori performed a goodbye ceremony to us before we got on the road again.

We arrived in the town of Paihia, where we boarded a cruise ship for a tour of the Bay of Islands. The tour was about 4 hours long and we spent it going past a bunch of gorgeous islands and learning about each of them. Most of them had little towns with boats offshore, and each island had a unique story of its history.

The typical view of the islands on our cruise- be jealous, the whole country looks like this!

The furthest island we went to was home to the famous "hole in the rock". The hole was created by a fault in the rock that was widened into a cave by the wave activity, and eventually worked the whole way through the island to create a hole. Apparently, the hole keeps getting bigger because when storms create huge waves, the water gets funneled through the hole and erodes it even more. There is another cave forming the same way on this island that will soon break through to be another hole.

The hole in the rock; you can see the other cave that to the left of the hole

Me on top of the boat in front of the hole in the rock

The conditions were stable enough for us to drive through the hole, which was pretty awesome. Apparently if you get dripped on, it's good luck... and I got dripped on! We went back through the hole and continued on the tour to Cable Island. Here, we stopped and got off the boat for about an hour and had our first opportunity to swim on the trip. It was a little cold, but I went in anyway. I had to get a swim in the first chance I got! The boat came back and we finished out the cruise by heading back to Paihia.

We boarded our tour bus and headed to Waitangi, and the Waitangi treaty grounds. This is where the treaty between the Maori and the British was signed. We toured the grounds and saw the largest Maori canoe ever built, and a mast that contained the current NZ flag, the british flag, and the old NZ lag before the treaty was signed.

Largest Maori canoe

The flags

We left and headed back to Paihia again to our hostel to check in and eat dinner. This hostel was pretty cool and was almost like a little resort hotel. There was a pool and a hot tub and a little outdoor area to hang out, which was a nice place to eat and have lecture. That night we explored Paihia and went to a bar called the Salty. It was karaoke night there so we tried to see how many people from our group we could convince to do it, since the winner got a $100 bar tab. A few people sang, but Trevor did this amazing rendition of "Escape" by Enrique Iglesias... and he won!

Trevor interpretive dancing while singing karaoke

It was such an eventful night that we came back to the hostel and crashed to get ready for our big day tomorrow.

Tane Mahuta and the Motuti Marae

This morning we got up, packed our bags back on the coach bus, and got back on the road. We went to a Kauri forest to see a huge Kauri tree that is very important to the Moari, the first inhabitants of New Zealand. The Kauri trees are very important to New Zealand and are now protected. The particular tree that we went to see was named Tane Mahuta. A Maori tour guide led us to Tane Mahuta while telling us the story of what the Maori people believed about this tree. Apparently, the earth and they sky were husband and wife and they kept having children, the plants and trees and animals. There were so many children that no one could breathe, so Tane Mahuta grew so large that he could put his feet on the earth and arms to the sky to separate the two and create space for everything to live. Our tour guide told us more about how Kauri trees pollinate and grow, and he performed a sacred song and prayer to Tane Mahuta.

Me in front of Tane Mahuta

After that, we headed to another ferry to get across an estuary to continue north. We had about 45 minutes before we had to board the ferry so Emily, Rina, and I sat by the water and relaxed. Turns out that the ferry left early and the three of us were left behind! Fortunately, the ferry was running faster than the schedule so it came right back to get us and we weren’t at fault for missing it.

After a short bus ride we arrived at the Motuti Marae. A marae is to the Maori like Indian reservations are in the states. We learned a lot about the culture while we were there. When we first arrived, they performed a ceremony welcoming us on to the marae. They sang a song to us and we had to sing a song back to them, so we decided to sing “Hakuna Matata”, which ended up being totally hilarious and the Maori people loved it.

Us in front of the main building at the marae

After we got settled, they took us on a walk up to their church. The chief told us a story about how a bishop from France had brought Catholicism to New Zealand and the Maori people. When he died, this group of Maori people went to France to retrieve his body so they could have him buried in New Zealand where he meant so much to the people there. They actually brought his body back to this very marae and had him put in a casket in their church. We sat through a short ceremony and got to see the casket of the man who meant so much to the religion and spirituality of these people.

We walked back down to the marae and played some ultimate frisbee on the lawn until dinner time. They fed us a nice dinner, then they took us to a mangrove tidal flat behind the marae. We walked along a wooden catwalk through the tidal flat. At the end, a few of us decided to hop down into the mud and play around. Some people tried to race through the mud and ended up covered in it, which was pretty funny to watch. 

After playing in the mud!

We came back to the marae and got cleaned up, then they separated the girls and the boys to teach us some tribal songs and dances. Our group of girls learned a chant in the Maori language, and the boys learned a dance called the Haka, which is used to intimidate enemies in battle. We came back in to the main room and both groups performed. Watching the boys do this dance (shirtless, by the way!) had to be the most hilarious thing I have ever seen! Some of the Maori people voted on who was the best and of course the boys won, but they deserved it. By this time it as getting pretty late, so we packed it in and went to bed. It was almost like a giant sleepover, because they had laid a bunch of matresses on the floor of the main building, which was pretty cool.

Our marae sleeping arrangements- sleepover!

And We Arrive Safely!

At around 5am I arrived safely in New Zealand! We landed in Auckland airport, got our luggage and headed to our coach bus to meet our driver, Stu. They wanted to keep us busy the first day so we would be more able to adjust to the time difference. So, we were off to our first stop in Auckland, Mt. Eden. Mt. Eden is one of a few inactive volcanoes in Auckland. It is a cinder cone volcano, and we hiked up to the top to see the cone.

The cone at the top of Mt. Eden

 Unfortunately, it was raining pretty hard all morning, so I was a little cold and wet during this trip, but it was great to start off the trip going to a volcano! I grabbed some scoria samples to bring back with me, and then we headed off to our next stop.

Next, the group got on a ferry to be taken to Rangitoto Island. Rangitoto is also a volcano, but unlike Mt. Eden, it is a shield volcano (a much larger volcano with less steep sides). Here, we got on a Volcano Explorer Tour. I hopped on to a tractor-pulled tram and we proceeded up a very rocky and winding path up the mountain. Along the way I learned some really cool things about Rangitoto. It was the most recent of the Auckland volcanoes to have erupted, and that was 700 years ago. There was tons of volcanic rock everywhere, a type known by the Hawaiian name A’a. I have never seen anything like the amount of broken up rock that littered the slopes of this volcano.

Me on the volcanic rocks!

When we finally got up to near the top, we got off and climbed up to the summit. Right when I made it to the top, heavy fog set in so I didn’t get to see the fantastic view we were planned, but it was still amazing to just be at the top of such a large volcano. Then it was back down the other side, to the only sandy beach on the island. I grabbed some rock samples there too, because the rocks on the beach had been smoothed and weathered by the water. We had a few more minutes to explore the island before hopping back on the ferry to the main land.

We then headed in our coach to our hostel in Auckland, got comfortable, and spent the rest of the afternoon getting lunch and exploring the city. We shopped for a little bit, had dinner, then spent the evening getting settled. What a great way to spend the first day!