Return from the FALL BREAK Journey

Kia Ora!

Thimo, Anjali, Liz and I have returned safely
from our sensational Easter and Fall Break!

We travelled the perimeter of the South Island,
tramping the copland track near Mt Cook,
working our way up past the pancake rocks,
sea kayaking two days in tropical Abel Tasman,
and working our way east and south through
Nelson, Marlborough, Christchurch, and Oamaru.

We had a good mix of exercise and relaxation,
saw some truly amazing natural places and wildlife,
and had only minor injuries (sandflies, feet & knees!).

I will include more details in a short while -
there is paper-writing to be done this week!

I'm enjoying the rain almost as much as Wainui Waterfall,
at the northernmost reaches of Abel Tasman National Park.

Trip 2 to St. Clair Beach

On my second trip to St. Clair Beach,
I was among friends, one of whom
joined me in wearing tiny shorts.

Don't Matt and I just look coy?

Images compliments of Liz - Thanks!

One Year, Baby!

Today I am proud to say
that Jennifer and I have been
together for one ripe year!

Woo hoo!

Love you, Jen
~Danno

The Lovely Jennifer Harmening

I'm sure you have all been wondering (or if not, you should be) what is the lovely Jennifer Harmening up to these days? I am here to fill you in, just a bit. For a full synopsis you must call her, email her, or knock on our door!

Since the beginning of February Jennifer has been adventurously employed as a crew member with the Minnesota Conservation Core! In the image to the left you can see her in her full gear, alongside her fellow crew members. They do a diverse range of projects for parks in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, and she is on the "St. Paul Roving Crew." She is now a chainsaw-wielding woman of the woods, as much of the MCC's projects involve removing invasive species like Buckthorn from the area's parks. Future projects that she is excited about include prairie restoration and prescribed burns. She is definitely getting her hands dirty, and learning many things about the local ecology in the process! Recently, Jennifer said that she saw, in just one day at work, llamas, horses, ponies, cows, swans, cardinals, black-capped chickadees, dogs, a big black beetle, and 3 pheasants, as well as a bunch of crazy hot-pink bugs. So YAHOO for working in the great outdoors!

Another JL Harmening current event: a couple weeks ago, after heavy snowfall in St. Paul, Jennifer's car slid into the back of a delivery truck, rendering her Jeep mostly useless. Ouch. But she is okeedokee, which is the important thing. Insurance paid for much of the damage, and she is now the owner of a lightly-used blue Subaru Outback. Back on the road, and in station wagon style...

That is all for now for Jennifer! We continue to communicate ala webcam, and look forward to celebrating our one year anniversary on Wednesday, April 5th - so congratulate us!

Oh here we go to FIORDLAND

Mega-Trip Number Two happened just one week
after the amazing trip to Mount Aspiring National Park,
so come along as I wind through another three days...

**inhale, hold, exhale; repeat**
Okay, you're ready to go!

Fri-Sun March 24th to 26th
on lakes Manapouri and Te Anau
in the Fiordlands of the South Island.



SWEET RIDE
Thomas (from K Flat) was Mr. Organization for this trip - he booked the rental vehicle, and made all of our reservations. Thanks, dude! I went with Thomas to pick up the car on Friday afternoon, and we were very pleased to lay eyes on the purple Toyota Previa that would be our sweet ride for the weekend. It was Thomas' first time driving in NZ, and would be my first as well, since I was the only other person on the insurance form as an alternative driver! We drove off towards 505 Great King to get packed and ready to go, feeling sufficiently like soccer moms!

NIGHT 1
We arrived late in the evening at Freestone Backpacker in Manapouri, our accomodation for the weekend, and checked in to our two awesome cabins (there were seven of us, and four bunks per cabin). The cabins were equipped with stoves, all the kitchen supplies we needed, a very nice table with benches, and a couch! Each of the cabins also had a quaint front porch with cushy recliners and a table, looking across over Lake Manapouri and the mountains of this area of Fiordland National Park. "It is the largest national park in New Zealand (12,500 km2), and a major part of the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage site. Prevailing westerly winds blow moist air from the Tasman Sea onshore here into the mountains; the cooling of this air as it rises produces a prodigious amount of rainfall, exceeding seven metres in many parts of the park. This supports the lush temperate rain forests of the Fiordland temperate forests ecoregion" (wikipedia). Fiordland National Park is home to many amazing sights, including Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound, two of the most popular destinations in New Zealand. We opted not to go to either of these locations, however, for they must be reached by cruise boat, and that is expensive. We still knew that we would get to see some amazing flora and fauna in more accessible areas of the Fiordlands. One individual we met the first evening was the hedgehog pictured at left. Although cute and small, these hedgehogs are among New Zealand's mammalian pests, as they eat the eggs of ground-dwelling birds. This first night we ate cheese and had a little to drink, and played a rousing game of SPOONS, which Matt and I came out of tied as victors. Then we went to bed exhausted! Phew!!

DAY 1
Upon waking I was strangely giddy, and ran around singing everyone awake, first Matt and Thimo in our cabin, and then Liz, Anjali, Thomas, and Al in their cabin, just down the hill. In response to my "Good morning, good morning, how are we all this morning? Good morning, good morning to you!" I got only groans and grumbles, but at least people were ready to join me in wakefullness. I made breakfast - toast and peanut butter and jelly, and toast and beans, and cheese, of course, and plenty of tea. We spent a few hours noodling around and sitting on the front porch, before making sandwiches and getting ready to start our day with a hike on the Kepler Track.

KEPLER FOREST ROMP
The Kepler Track is a 60 kilometer track that encircles the Kepler Mountains which lie between Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau. We decided to take a short 2hr hike up to the first hut on the Kepler Track, where there is a prime area of beach on Lake Manapouri. We accessed the Track via Rainbow Reach, across a swingbridge over the Waiau River.

We once again found ourselves amongst the temperate beech rainforest of New Zealand, this one even more old-growth-feeling than those in the Matukituki Valley. I could not put aside the feeling, with the immense fern cover, that I was in some sort of prehistoric forest. The trail wound its way through the woods, and at various junctures crossed more streams. At one of these places, rather than taking the bridge, Matt and I decided that we would cross trees that had fallen over the stream, like people would have done before the bridges were there. We crossed only to find out that we were on an island, and we had to cross again on the other side of the island, still not connecting up with the path that the others who crossed the swingbridge were on...Well, we crossed back over again and, at this crossing, I got poked by a sneaky stick and slid into the water with my right leg, not noticing that I had dropped my sunglasses in the stream. We hopped off of the trees and on to the mossy ground, where we met a couple fiesty fantail birds. At first we thought we were in a nesting area of theirs, because they wouldn't stop squawking at us, but when they followed us into the woods, we knew they were just bastards. Imagine my excitement, then , when I found out I had to cross back through bird territory to rescue my glasses from the depths of the stream...Once I was on the log again in the middle of the stream, the fantails decided I was harmless enough to start swooping at me, and one bird rushed under my arm, the other nearly grazed my head! I had never been so afraid of gettting my eye poked out by a little birdy. Cheap shots, too.

Matt and I got out of bird country only to find ourselves in the thick of the untamed woods - moss-covered stumps and full trees laying across bushes and trees, and groves of ferns everywhere - where to go? This was definitely a test of our forest skills, and luck, but we found our way back tot he track, and only slightly behind Al, who tends to doddle. The rest of the walk took us deeper into the woods, past a marsh and lake, and up and down the dirt and gravel trail. A fern bird even ate one of my loogies - I din't know at the time that it was waiting for me to scare up some sandflies from the ground for it to eat, but it gladly gobbled up my phlegm, much to the dismay of certain individuals standing to either side of me.

LAKE MANAPOURI
The gorgeous Lake Manapouri was waiting for us when we reached the first hut on our journey up the Kepler Track. We spent a good hour eating lunch by the lake, skipping the slender, round stones, getting eaten alive by jerky sandflies, and engaging in our normal antics, before returning through the woods, back to our darling purple van in the Rainbow Reach car park. In the image below (from left to right, Matt, Thimo, Al, Anjali, Liz, Thomas, and I), we stand on the rocky shore of Lake Manapouri.

LAKE TE ANAU
After getting back from the Kepler Track, we decided to take advantage of the rest of the BEAUTIFUL day and rent kayaks to head out onto Lake Te Anau. They were not really kayaks, however, but more like plastic floats that you sat on top of with two pointed ends, and with about the efficiency of paddleboats - yippee! No, the important thing was that we were out on the resplendent lake, which was still as glass. Thimo, Thomas, Liz and me went kayaking, while Anjali, Matt and Al hung out onshore and in Te Anau city. We got to watch the sun set behind the mountains on our paddle back across the lake, and mostly all of our appendages went completely numb - I could not move my fingers or toes! The day was exceptionally clear and warm, but that meant that we had no clouds for insulation as our source of heat fell to the west. When we got back to the van, then, and found out that the others were nowhere to be found, we got to spent an excruciating half an hour walking around, chattering teeth and deadened nerves, until we found a heater in the television room of the hotel across the street and warmed up there, thawing. In the lower half of the image above, we walked over the rounded-rock southern shore of Lake Te Anau, on Sunday afternoon.

NIGHT 2
A warm dinner was just what we needed that Saturday night, so we went back to the cabins and gorged ourselves on some great spaghetti (compliments of chef Dan) and bread and wine, and ginger nut cookies. I ate too much and fell asleep like a lame-o, but the others stayed up and had a rousing (?) game of Wizard, a favorite game of Thimo's, which he, of course, won by a long-shot. I woke up at 2am, realized I was a loser, and read on the front porch by candlelight for a few hours, finishing Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. and it was good.

DAY 2
The second day we accessed the Kepler Track from the Lake Te Anau Control Gates, and spent some time walking around the southern shore of Lake Te Anau. We didn't have a lot of time spare, however, because we had to be at Real Journeys in Te Anau to go on our boat trip across Lake Te Anau for our guided tour of the Glowworm Caves. The boat ride across the lake was great, and we got to feel the wind rushing through our hair for a while on the top deck - a little faster than our kayaks the day before...

GLOWWORMS GALORE
Once we reached the other side of the lake, we hopped off the boat and waited around for our tour of the Glowworm Caves, actually part of the Aurora Te Ana-au Caves, in the lower area where we entered, are still quite alive, and water rushes through them, in streams, waterfalls, and whirlpools. We slowly worked our way up into the caves, on walkways through rockier parts of the cave, and on boats through larger pools of water, working our way up to the glowworm grotto, where the highest density of the worms live...! Below is a promotional photgraph from Real Journeys. My pictures from inside the cave did not turn out well!


The glowworm that we were seeing all over the ceiling of this cave were completely translucent and about the size of a matchstick. When the worms get hungry, a chemical reaction occurs in their stomach that makes them glow with a small, bluish-white light - and the hungrier the glowworm, the brighter it glows! Each worm lets down small groves of sticky string webs that dangle from the cave roof, and flying insects in the cave, who are drawn to the light, get stuck in these webs as they fly toward the light, at which point the worms move swiftly down their web, deliver a poisonous bite into the victim, and take it back to the roof for eating. The glowworms live in this larvae stage for about 9 months, after which time they pupate for one month, and then emerge as small flies. As flies, they live for only 2 to 4 days, in which time they mate, lay their eggs on the cave walls, and then, in most cases, fly into a glowworm web and get eaten up! Ahh, the circle of life, food for that from which they came! In the middle of the Glowwork Grotto I almost forgot that I was in a cave, inside a mountain, because it looked like a perfectly clear, starry night! That is a lot of hungry glowworms, and there one is below!


ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Following the wormy adventure and our boat ride back, we filled our bellies and headed back to Dunedin, dreading another week of classes. Can't we just keep adventuring? Please?? A gorgeous sunset, the best I've seen yet in NZ, followed us home, and you can see it pictured somewhere toward the beginning.

Cheers until next time, my cheeky travel companions, and those of you who managed to make it to the end of this posting!

~Danno

A Sunny Day Excursion

In terms of its average weather, Dunedin can be roughly described to citizens of the United States as the Seattle of New Zealand. The weather is often very unpredictable, but usually a bit overcast, and often rainy. The locals have lovingly given it the nickname "Sunny Dunedin" for that reason.

So when a sunny day comes rolling around, we all get rolling outside, and Thursday the 23rd of March, just before the dessert party, was the perfect day to roll over to the beach! I had not yet visited any of Dunedin's beaches and rode my bike over to Saint Clair Beach, which I found to be breathtaking.

On the suburb of Saint Clair, to quote Wikipedia: "Five kilometres southwest of the city centre, Saint Clair lies on the lower slopes and at the foot of Forbury Hill. One of the city's wealthier suburbs, many fine houses are situated in the tree-clad slopes...At the foot of the hill is St. Clair Beach and an open-air heated salt-water swimming pool; the beach's sea wall and esplanade were rebuilt and renovated in 2004. The beach is one of the South Island's more popular surfing venues. The small promontory of White Island lies three kilometres off the beach."

The beach is a very popular place to surf, and many wet-suit-clad individuals were trying their luck and/or skill at the constant waves. Without their wetsuits they would only last minutes - the chilly waters come straight up from Antarctica and are not accommodating for too long. Wondering if anyone is surfing now? Check out the surfcam mounted on top of the saltwater pool!

I shared the beach with the surfers, lots of people walking their dogs, parents standing or sitting still while their children ran around them in circles, and many red-beaked seagulls. Then, as if to prove a point, about 30 minutes after my arrival at the beach, a dark and foreboding cold front encroached on the beach from the Southwest (in the distance on the image above). Thank you, Sunny Dunedin! I hopped back on my bike and was able to beat the cloud and rains home. The beach is gorgeous - there will definitely be a return trip in the near future...

Cheers! Enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of Spring, as I am doing the same for Fall here! Apple picking is just around the corner...

Dinner Party!

Yes, a dinner party - a formal dinner party. Liz and Anjali outdid themselves on Thursday, March 23rd, preparing five main courses and many accompanying dishes for a decadent and diverse meal. I threw a healthy plate of guacamole into the already-eclectic mix, along with a few pitchers of Mojito. Thimo contributed many a White Russian, Matt brought some wine, and we were set for a great evening. I have to admit, I ended up rolling around on the floor in pain afterward, but the gorging was worth it! Above are the two chefs, mighty proud; and below are the happilly filled recipients of much food, from front left around the horseshoe to the right: Sean, Anjali, me, Nathan, Ruth, Al, Christian, Liz, Holly, and Thimo.

Hawea, Wanaka, Aspiring and Glaciers, Oh My!

Decisions, decisions…
We knew that we wanted to take a trip from Friday the 17th of March to Sunday the 19th…we had been considering it all week long…Ted had unlimited access to a car all weekend…it seemed like a good idea…yeah, sure, we could go on a trip…yeah, we’ll have to figure out where we want to go…well, I guess we just have to know by Friday…SO when 5pm Friday came rolling around, Ted mustered up some intense resolve, and we decided to follow this bit of agency and pack up and head out toward lakes Wanaka and Hawea, in search of some picturesque hiking and camping…But before leaving: by now used to the fact that New Zealand’s weather can be warm and sunny one hour and torrentially wet, cold and miserable the next, I ran over to Kathmandu, a local ‘outdoors store’ and invested in a very nice waterproof and windproof jacket. I also stopped by the pawn shop and grabbed a much needed sleeping bag, an item I did not think to bring to NZ in the 6 hours I gave myself to pack the night before leaving. He he he.

Rollin’ to a Start
Aaaaand so we were off! and after four hours of driving through the dry, rugged terrain of Central Otago, found our way to a motorpark camping area on the shore of lake Hawea, which looked lovely in the moonlight. The five of us, Matt, Thimo, Ted, Shannon, and I, squeezed ourselves into two two-person tents and drifted off to snoozy land. Yes, we became a little closer that night, Matt, myself and Thimo spooned (in that order) intimately in the small tent. The next morning we were startled by Hawea’s beauty, especially the mountains across the lake that were barely visible by moonlight. We had ourselves a belly-filling breakfast of baked beans on toast, fruit and cheese, which may or may not have inspired Matt and I to give the immobile tractors on the playground a sporting ride (note the fancy flask filled with Jack in his right hand, essential for a tractor-riding boy from Tennessee).

Seeding the Adventure
We left Hawea with a taste of the scenery on our lips, looking forward to the delicate flavours of Mt Aspiring and Rob Roy Glacier, where we had decided to hike and camp for the remainder of Saturday and Sunday. The Department of Conservation provided us with some pertinent information, including, “Yeah, you have to ford the river a few times to get to the carpark, but as long as you have insurance, or don’t care, you shouldn’t have any problems.” This is where our thoughts of adventure began – I had never driven a car through a stream or river, and I don’t think the other had either…The drive through the countryside around the western shore of Lake Wanaka was gorgeous. I had to be careful not to let my camera trigger finger get to happy, because I knew there would be plenty of pictures to take on our hike.

Fording!
New Zealand has all-purpose (!) signs to which they attach a specific hazard of some sort, and this time the hazard was FORD: a point where a stream or river must be crossed. We were expecting these fords, but we were not expecting five of them! We decided that to properly commemorate these crossings, we would take a picture at each one, however, for your enjoyment, I have included only the picture of the best of the five, where the happy car-full of four forders excitedly entered the stream with a SPLASH! You can see, in the background, the waterfall that feeds the stream – a feature that wowed us at that point, but would become a common feature of the mountain-sides as the trip progressed.

Tititea / Mt Aspiring National Park
Mt Aspiring National Park is in the centre of Te Wahipounamu (the place of greenstone), or South West New Zealand, a UNESCO World Heritage Area, that incorporates Aoraki/Mt Cook, Westland/Tai Poutini, Fiordland, and Mt Aspiring National Parks, covering 2.6 million hectares or 10% of New Zealand’s land area. Wow. In this area of snow-capped mountains, rivers of ice, deep lakes, unbroken temperate rainforests, and tussock grasslands live some of the best examples of animals and plants once found on the supercontinent Gondwana. Again, for those geologists out there, to quote the information sign at the carpark: “The rocks of the Southern Alps began as layers of sediment and rock deposited on the seafloor about 220 to 270 million years ago. They were subjected to intense heat and pressure before being uplifted to form mountains. The force of the glaciers, which filled most of the surrounding river valleys at the height of the Ice Ages, shaped the current landscape. Today, Mt Aspiring National Park retains about 100 glaciers.” The West Matukituki Valley, where we entered, is the eastern gateway to Mt Aspiring National Park, the third largest national park in NZ.

The Hike Begins
From the carpark we were told that the hike to Mt Aspiring hut, the first official bunking and camping site along the Mt Aspiring Trail, was about a 2.5 hr hike, so we decided to take it on. Just as Matt, the first of us to step onto the official trail, set his left foot down in the gravely dirt, the temperature dropped 7 degrees, 50mph winds gusted forth, the clouds cracked open, and angry rain began sharply spitting into our faces – this is how it seemed, as if the gods of Mt Aspiring were watching as we got out of the car (when the weather had been calm, sunny, and altogether pleasant) and were attempting to thwart our efforts to move forth. But we did not let them scare us away! No! We put on our waterproof jackets and trotted out. Much of the more grandiose scenery was shrouded in cloud-cover, but the view nonetheless was spectacular. The trail followed the West Matukituki River between two ranges of mountains, with mostly cows and sheep spotting the grassy flats of the valley. The intense rainfall contributed to a couple of precarious and unavoidably damp river crossings, but these were the only major obstacles to come between us and the Mt Aspiring Hut, where we arrived late in the afternoon, set up our tents, dried off and warmed up, had a bite to eat, explored a little, and finally retreated to our warm sleeping bags.

Feathered Invaders, Scavengers
We woke up at 6:30am to a refreshingly clear morning, a spectacular sunrise above the valley and the now-visible mountains, and a dozen forest parrots gnawing on our tents. You could question who the real invaders were, us or the parrots, but regardless, they were eating whatever gear they could get in their sharp, strong beaks. May I introduce: the Kea. Kea are a species of forest parrot that live in the temperate (especially beech) rainforests of New Zealand. I am unsure of the composition of their diet before humans came along, because they have a sweet-beak for tents, backpacks, shoes, clothing, and just about anything un-natural to their locality – they have even been known to prey on the non-metallic parts of automobiles! We could not help falling for these cheeky birds, even though, as one kiwi girl camping outside said, “Don’t you know that they can rip you apart with their beaks? I’m not kidding!”

Her Majesty
We packed up camp and got dressed for a little romp through the woods, our destination a flat that opens up to give a magnificent view of Tititea’s / Mount Aspiring’s peak. In the picture included, Mt Aspiring is on the top right. Believe it or not, Tititea, which translates as Glistening Peak in Maori, at 3,033 meters (9,944 ft), is the only peak above 3,000 meters outside the Aoraki / Mount Cook region. We stood in awe for at least ten minutes. We then turned around and headed back from whence we came on Saturday, back to the bridge over the West Matukituki River where we could hop on the trail to Rob Roy Glacier! Click here for a panorama of the area we walked through.

Fern Forest and Glacial Grandiosity (yay!)
After crossing the river and hiding our packs in the woods, we embarked on our 1.5 hour uphill journey through the fern-filled temperate rainforest. We stopped at one choice point to fill our Nalgenes with glacial stream water – why not! It was, of course, delicious and refreshing, refreshing enough to temp us toward a little swim later in the day…

The trail carved into the hillside followed the stream up the mountain to its source, the Rob Roy Glacier. The glacier, known to many as the “Jewel of Mt Aspiring National Park,” begins (at 2,606 metres) high above Rob Roy Peak, clinging to the ever-steepening mountainside as it descends into the Rob Roy Valley. We were not lucky enough to see any huge chunks fall off, but it was a lovely place to stop and eat lunch, and, of course, a great photo ‘op.’ Another highlight of the area are the waterfalls, the largest of which (pictured earlier) falls 150 meters from peak to valley.

We decided it would be a GREAT idea to catch a swim in the glacial stream on our way back, since we had by this time worked up quite the sweat, yeah (**wiping off forehead and flexing legs**). The dip in the stream was great, mostly because it meant that I didn’t need to shower again for a few days (one thing that hasn’t changed during my stay in NZ is my infrequent tendency to shower 2-3 times a week…). Many people glanced and/or stopped to watch us while we romped around in the water, sort of like creatures at the zoo, but awkwardly outside of their natural habitat. They may have just been jealous. Heck, I would be! No one joined us, however, they were either too young, too old, or too middle-aged to do those sorts of things. Ah well. We drank the rest of our glacial water on the hike back to the car, met up again with Shannon (who had decided to sit out for Rob Roy), and headed back to Dunedin!

[Sounding & Resounding]
This trip took me to the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life (so far). The fact that New Zealand holds so many diverse formations, biomes, ecosystems, and therefore plants and animals, on their two small islands continues to astound me. I’m loving it, and can’t wait for more adventures in the future.

Cheers!
Danno