Up north

Back on campus and yet again faced with summarizing a packed week. This is our last week on the North Island. We're going to the South Island on Sunday and won't have internet for the next month, so I’ve gotta make it count. Prepare for an INFORMATION OVERLOAD this week. 

This week's theme was marine ecology. We were all fitted for wetsuits, which make everyone look very sleek and slim, and they keep you warm in the water even when you're in for hours, and we snorkeled in 3 different locations: Goat Island, Matheson's bay, and the Poor Knights. If you don't have "diving in the Poor Knights" on your bucket list, add it right now. It was one of the best days I've ever had. I can't believe I've never snorkeled before (I mean, it's actually pretty believable. Pittsburgh isn't exactly a destination dive spot) because this week was amazing. The following pictures are from the Poor Knights.
*The Poor Knights and the Tutukaka area are some of the top dive sites in the world.
We took a boat out there, about 14k off shore, and we went in in 4 different locations, including some underwater caves and tunnels. 

The water was perfectly clear, and we were swimming in a mix of deep trenches, bright orange kelp forests, and cave/tunnel systems. We saw stingray, a moray eel, schools of blue mao mao playing, a giant scorpion fish, snapper and kingfish that weigh as much as me! and clouds of pink/orange jellyfish EXACTLY like in Finding Nemo! I even got a jellyfish sting on my right hand, seriously, how badass am I! (they were small, don't be too concerned, almost all of us fell victim to the jellies at some point on Thursday) I have excellent pictures of all of these underwater creatures, but I need to find a place to get film developed. 

About half of us. I am having so much fun with these crazy kids

Shout out to mis padres. THANK YOU FOR SENDING ME TO NEW ZEALAND!!

We stayed with a bunch of graduate students in the Goat Island Marine Reserve Research Facilities for the University of Auckland. They were all marine biology students working on their masters projects. While it would be awesome to go snorkeling and diving for research all the time, staying with the students from Auckland has made me realize marine biology is definitely not for me. The ocean is such a big place, and I think working on species conservation dealing with marine life would just be the most frustrating thing. Our lectures this week were all guest speakers, some were pro-marine reserves, some were anti-reserve, some were fishing enthusiasts, and some were students talking about their projects. I would tear out my hair if I had to deal with this kind of stuff all the time. Not to mention, their facilities smell like fish. Not the life for me, but definitely cool to pretend for a week.

We had a long weekend free, getting dropped off in Auckland on Thursday night.

We met up with Eli's friend Lizzie (she's the unfamiliar face second in from the right next to Eli) at a wine festival. She's doing a study abroad program in Auckland and she hitchhiked to meet up with us before the weekend. Apparently, hitchhiking is super common here and regarded as generally safe. 

Triple bunk beds (!) at a hostel. We've stayed in 3 different youth hostels this trip so far, one in Opoutere, one in Leigh (pictured above) and one in Auckland. The first two were very camp-esque, in the middle of nowhere with multiple buildings and lots of grass, and the one in Auckland was coed and like a hotel with multiple levels, electronic room keys, and people you don't know in your rooms. They also gave you vouchers for "first drink free" at the surrounding bars <very tricky strategy

After Auckland, we drove up to Cape Reinga which is the tippy top of New Zealand. We had all kinds of outdoor adventures planned: 90 mile beach, sliding down the giant sand dunes, the ancient Kauri forest, and camping each night. It rained straight through the weekend, from the hour we left Auckland in the rental cars on Friday afternoon, to the time we got back to campus on Sunday. I can count the breaks in downpour on one hand for the whole weekend, and let me tell you, there are few things in life more demoralizing than pitching a tent in a rainstorm. We still visited all the places on our list, but were a little soggy at all of them...

Despite the rain, I like this picture. This is at the very tip of the country where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. I am pushing the Tasman here, but it blew my mind that you could SEE where the bodies of water met. 

Party in the rain!!! Against all odds, all the cars met up at the same campsites both nights. (On a side note, thank goodness for the DoC, or else sites like these wouldn't exist.)

 SAND DUNES. Lawrence of Arabia^ (there aren't any pictures of us sliding down, the risk of sand in camera seemed unreasonably high, but it was a freaking blast)

So high! This dune went almost straight up, you just had to walk up it like a ladder, sticking your feet in the sand

We stopped for lunch at a very cool, out of the way restaurant called Cafe Eutopia, which looks like a giant boat. The whole restaurant is hand built out of stucco, and it was full of little nooks with tables, and had a circus tent top in the back with coffee tables and mismatched chairs. It looked like something out of a fairy tale land inside, and is one of the best unexpected discoveries so far on our rental car adventures

taking advantage of the limited sunshine.

The biggest living Kauri tree in New Zealand. The Kauri is kind of a national symbol here, this particular tree is thought to be thousands of years old (notice the umbrella-ed Asian tour bus below it)

Stopping for some swinging on a Pohutakawa tree on the way back