Back to campus and my computer!!! Have been on the east coast for the past week, spending the school week in a youth hostel in Opoutere (on the Coromandel peninsula) working in the estuary next door.
THE HOSTEL
Was awesome, I only have one other hostel experience to compare it to, and that was in Chicago and it was full of loud, drunk Swedish guys on a backpacking trip. This was totally different, we still slept in bunk beds, but they were in separate buildings all over this little plot of land by the water. Most girls slept in the main room, which used to be an old school house, and is now a sunny bunk room. There was a reading room with a fireplace, a patio with wicker furniture and couches, and picnic tables all over the lawn. We saw the owner a lot, he was very friendly, called everyone "brothah" and had an old dog named Fritz that followed him around everywhere and slept in his room. It cost $22 NZ each night to stay there, and it didn't have wifi or cell phone service, but was really nice and had amazing views.
THE ACADEMICS
This is Chris my lab partner for the week (the 25 of us pair up randomly by number for each week's projects, but he actually goes to U-M) and we're working on shellfish monitoring here. Scoop up some sand, dump it in the sieve, wash out the dirt and measure all the living things left in there. As you can see, we had a lovely rainy day to do this the first day
Our homework for the week is to map out the region, we hiked up one of the mountains and did some drawings, and the next day we kayaked through the estuary and did some measuring and ground-level drawings (we have water-proof notebooks, they're awesome! You can drop them right in the ocean if you want, and they will be a-ok). Here are two contrasting views from the mountain we hiked up for a vantage point (called the pa site)
nice and natural
Not so natural. Pine forests are planted all over NZ and then cut down when they mature (in ~20-30 years) and then replanted. There are ugly, man-made tree forests like this all over the place, either packed with tall pines, or dotted with newly-planted saplings
THE WEEKEND
Here's the good bit, because this weekend was crazy. We had no concrete plans whatsoever for the weekend, every decision on this trip was made on the fly, which is the way I like to travel, though I'm pretty sure it drove some people crazy. It should also be noted that we were set on not spending money on places to sleep. More on this later. We rented some cars, and assigned some very confident drivers to each vehicle for the whole weekend. They had to get used to driving on the left side of the road, shifting with their left hands, and giving way to the people turning RIGHT (counterintuitive, this driving rule apparently changes frequently). I was dreading having to drive (for those who don't know, I am not the best driver on the RIGHT side of the road) but other kids were really pumped and fought over who would GET to drive. Crazies.
I ended up in an all-girls car with my favorite people on this trip so far: Morgan, Kayla, Kathryn, and Annalea. These are my kind of people, seriously no drama, they don't stress over stupid shit, and are really funny: a necessary trait when you're stuck in an old hatchback for hours with a radio that only picks up one strange reggae station every once and a while.
Friday night, we ended up sleeping on a big tarp on a beach called Octopus Bay (camping on beaches is not actually legal, but you can sneak on the more secluded places like this one). We had to kind of hike down a mountain to get to it, all of us in jangles (remember your kiwi vocab! jangles = flip flops!) but once we got there, it was like our own private cove to party on at night, and swim around the next morning. Gorgeous, with surf-worthy waves.
The tarp. Josh is underneath, pulling out rocks and driftwood so we sleep like babies on the sand
I took this on the hike back to the cars in the morning. Look to the right, see that sand? That's where we slept Friday night! Surrounded by cliff faces and pohutakawa trees
We spent Saturday on various different beaches on the Coromandel peninsula, tanning and snorkeling and walking through the beach towns.
Kayla and me. I <3 my roommate!
Sibley is very excited about snorkeling
Morgan on the swings in Coromandel town. When's the last time you swang (<made up verb?)? Because it is seriously fun, and not limited to children
Saturday night, we were in a bar in Whangamata (pronounced: "fung-a-mah-tah") and it started raining. It was then we realized we hadn't made any plans for sleeping in this kind of weather, but luckily had about 8 tents among us. We ended up in a random New Zealand field (that looked like it didn't have any sheep in it), pitched the tents in the rain all facing each other, and had a rainy wine party. Overall, a weekend I will never forget.
When we got back to campus on Sunday, it was Natalie's 21st birthday (we are about evenly split between 20-21 year olds) which is slightly anti-climactic considering the drinking age at bars here is 18. Instead of going out, we threw a party here because we had the campus to ourselves, staff have Sunday off. We ganged up together to make a great dinner, baked her a cake, and had champagne with dessert, then had a party in this small house on campus that is just for students (one of the teachers used to live there, but now it's just a place for EcoQuest students to throw parties). It reminded me of summer parties at Michigan.
Cake for Natalie!
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