The Black Lung Gets a New Favorite Animal, Part 3: Also she learns all of the things from Barbara

Sunday morning after our LOTR adventure, we went to church. This was mostly notable because the bishop said he was new, and then during the meeting, they called new people for the following presidencies-Relief Society, Sunday School, Primary, Young Women, Young Men, and a new ward mission leader. For those of you who aren't Mormon, that's pretty crazy town. Basically the entire ward leadership changed within two weeks! That's hardcore.

Anywho, after church, road trip! New Zealand is such a pretty country. I think the only not beautiful parts of the trip were places were there was a lot of logging or something. Basically, humanity is the worst. But New Zealand is great! The first place we stopped to look around was Stormy Point Lookout. There are these signs there saying something about being able to see 5 different geologic times because of rivers or something. I don't know. It was interesting though. Stormy point is partway over a mountain, and people often talk about how it's the less attractive side of the mountain, which is so totally ridiculous. This is the less attractive side of New Zealand???

  What a hideous vista. Good thing my beautiful face is there to block it!

Um, look. There's some different river valleys or something. 

After making it over the mountain, we drove through the desert, which is not like any desert they have in the American southwest, in that there are still so many plants. But they are much smaller and less green than regular New Zealand, so I guess it is pretty deserty. 

 No self-respecting desert has so many plants in it. 

We also stopped for lunch along the way, and I had my first (but not last) delicious meat pie. They're not like pot pies at all, in a good way, and they are definitely a barrier to my already shaky quest to become a vegetarian. Like, on the one hand, the environment, and also sad cow faces. On the other hand, yum. We also passed a super awesome, creepy forest. We didn't get any pictures of it, but it was crazy dark beneath the branches of the trees. It was definitely an enchanted forest, but like, the dangerous kind, where the trees try to eat you. We were on the shores of Lake Taupo for quite a while, which is a lake that was formed by a massive volcanic eruption about 25,000 years ago. The volcano is still there (dormant, but not extinct), and if it ever erupts like it did then, New Zealand is toast. So hopefully it won't happen!

You can't get a sense of its bigness from pictures, because we drove next to it for a very, very long time. But it's ginormous.

Also, dormant but not extinct volcanic activity is what makes our destination such a cool place to visit! Our first road trip stop was Rotorua, which is known for geothermal activity. Bascially, there are hot springs, and mud pools, and that distinctive egg smell that is so gross. A lot of the geothermal pools are ones you have to pay to get in, which we were not about, but we did stop at this excellent mud pool a few kilometers outside of the city. 

 Look how excited I am by geothermal activity!

Once we got into the city, we had awesome evening plans-we went to a hangi, which is a Maori cultural experience/dinner cooked in a traditional way (in the ground). We went to the Mitai village, and it was really fun. The only complaint I had was that the food was served very last, and I was very hungry. So, first we went down to the river? stream? I don't remember. And we saw the warriors row the canoe into the village. Dang, this is definitely where I should have written this immediately, because I know I am forgetting some of the details/facts. But it was very cool! Then there was a welcoming ceremony where they sang a bunch of songs and showed us some traditional dances and traditional weapons. Lets be upfront about this-many of the men were v.v. handsome. But they were all very talented and the entire program was really entertaining and educational. 

 Here they are! In the canoe, which I think had a special name. They were doing some very intimidating chanting as they rowed. 

 This is a sacred spring at Mitai village. The water was so beautiful and clear, and unlike the hotsprings, it's freezing cold. Apparently you can get cold springs, too.

Part of the welcoming ceremony. I decided to enjoy it more and take pictures less. Basically, you really should go to your own hangi when you visit New Zealand, because I'm not doing a good job writing about it.

After the show, we finally got our food! Which was great, because I was so hungry! The food was very good, and I of course ate too much and felt pretty awful for our last outing of the night. Just down the street from Mitai Village is Rainbow Springs, which is a wildlife park/conservation place. We signed up for an extra awesome, after-the-feast nighttime kiwi tour of Rainbow Springs, so when the food was done, a nice lady named Barbara came to get us and the other tour people. Barbara was great. She taught us so much! On the way to see the kiwis, she taught us about silver ferns, which are so pretty. In the United States, when you see ferns, they're like a groundcover. And there are ferns like that in New Zealand, but there are also tree ferns! They look kind of like palm trees, but with fern fronds instead of branches. Silver ferns are one of the national symbols of New Zealand. They're kind of iridescent at night, so you can tell the difference between them and other ferns. According to Barbara, Maori people would place silver fern branches along paths through the bush, and then if they were travelling somewhere at night, they'd be able to find their path from the shine of the ferns. 

Fern trees! The color in this picture is not right for me to figure out if they're silver fern or not, but I can totally tell in person.

Other things we learned from Barbara: The only mammals that are indigenous to New Zealand are 3 species of bats. All other animals that evolved there are birds and reptiles. If you go to New Zealand now, you will see a lot of mammals, but they're all ones that people brought there. So basically, many of the native animals are in trouble because they have not evolved to deal with the competition and predators. One sad example of this is the Moa, which was a giant bird, not unlike an emu, that used to live in New Zealand. Sadly, they were hunted to extinction about 600-700 years ago. One bird that is still around but not doing great is the kiwi. They were the reason for our night tour-they're nocturnal. They're about the size of a chicken, and they look like they don't have any wings at all. But they do, they're just tiny. The only thing a kiwi uses its wings for is to put the tips of their noses under when they sleep. They have really strong legs though, which are their main defense against predators. Fun fact about kiwi birds-they technically have the shortest beak for body size of any bird. They don't look like it, but the beak is actually measured from their nostrils to the tip of the beak, and kiwi nostrils are way far down there. Another fun fact about kiwis-they lay huge eggs! They are about six times bigger than eggs laid by other birds of similar size. The eggs are almost 70% yolk, to feed the baby kiwis for about 10 days after they're born. Also, because the eggs are so big, kiwi moms can't eat for several days before laying the eggs. There's just no room for food!

There were nine different species of Moa. This is one of the big ones.

After teaching us lots of cool things about kiwis and showing us some other birds, we went into the nighttime kiwi encounter. It's very dark in there, and you have to be super quiet so the kiwis don't just hide. Everyone was very cool about it. People were super quiet but also super excited when they saw a kiwi. We were all pointing them out to each other, and it was sincerely great. I felt like we bonded. When we went, they told us we couldn't take pictures, which is fair. Leah went back a month or so later though, and they said she could take a picture, so she sent me this:

Yeah, I'm not sure I can see the kiwi in this picture. So now I really don't feel bad that we weren't allowed to take pictures. But it's so cool when you spot them moving around. 

As part of the tour, we were also given tickets to come back to Rainbow Springs the next day. We didn't have set plans for the day besides seeing Rotorua, so this worked out. Before we went, we got some shopping in (Rotorua had the most excellent shopping of any place we went), but then we were back to see the birds! Right near the entrance to Rainbow Springs is a ginormous piece of green stone (which is what we would call jade). Barbara told us that it was good luck to rub it, so we totally did that. Also near the stone we saw a sad swan that lives there. Basically, swans mate for life, and its swan partner had died recently, so the swan wanders around Rainbow Springs to get affection from people. Sad swan is sad.

 The sad swan was not there at this moment. But the stone is part of a fountain, so it's super smooth and kind of cold and overall very pleasant to touch. 

Rainbow Springs has a lot of really cool birds and some reptiles, and my favorite besides the kiwi were the keas, which are a kind of parrot. They live in the mountains on the South Island, and according to the internet, they are the only alpine parrot in the world. There was one specific kea there named Jenny, who was raised by people and therefore not able to live in the wild anymore. Keas are pretty cool. They are very smart and mischievous and will apparently eat all of the rubber out from around your windshield so the glass will fall in and they can steal your stuff. They are also crazy loud when they want to be. Jenny really got us a couple of times. Keas are also not doing great, but I honestly don't know too much about the issues facing them. They will kill sheep though (like slowly and grossly, I don't want to talk about it), so I think farmers are not big fans. Still, they are neat, so I hope that they get saved. 

It's Jenny! I did not get a video of her shrieking, but this was still pretty awesome. Also, she doesn't like women very much, which is probably why she tried to get us. 

Another cool bird we learned about was the Tui. They have a weird looking chin feather thing, and they make really, really cool sounds. Sometimes they sound like R2D2! We actually saw tuis in the wild, too, which was exciting. I don't think that they are in trouble, which, thank goodness! We also saw a bunch of other birds, like kakas (another kind of parrot) and wood pigeons (which are like pigeons on steroids-so big!), and a bunch of other cool birds but I can't remember what they're called. Return trip! We also saw some lizards and fish, but I'm not gonna lie, my interests did not lie in a fish/lizard direction.

Tui in the wild! This was a different day, which I will tell you about later.

A Rainbow Springs Tui. You can kind of hear the cool sounds that the tui makes.

At Rainbow Springs, there is also a daytime kiwi enclosure that is inside and dark so that the kiwis think it's nighttime. It then gets light at night so the inside kiwis will go to bed. We went through there a bunch of times, because it was really neat. The nighttime enclosure you're much closer to the kiwis, and it really feels like you're seeing kiwis in their natural habitat. But the daytime one it's much easier to see the kiwis. They are so cute! And their walk/run is adorable and hilarious. We were so interested in the kiwis that we signed up to take an extra behind the scenes tour of Operation Nest Egg. Tour guide-Barbara! It was great to see her again. Basically, the reason that kiwis are in such trouble is because of predation by non-native species. The biggest threat to kiwi eggs are possums (the cute/bush killing Australian possums, presumably first brought to New Zealand for fur). The biggest threat to baby kiwis are stoats, which are related to weasels, but smaller. Stoats were actually brought to New Zealand to try to solve their rabbit problem (rabbits also brought over for fur), but now they have a stoat problem and a rabbit problem. The biggest threat to adult kiwis are domestic dogs! Apparently kiwis smell pretty irresistible to dogs, and kiwis haven't evolved to be protected from animals with sharp teeth, so even if a dog wasn't trying to kill a kiwi, they pretty easily can. Basically, do not let your dog go off leash! Many, many people in New Zealand don't seem to be aware of this, because I think I only saw one person actually using a leash the whole time we were there.

Operation Nest Egg is a conservation program to artificially keep up the numbers of kiwis who survive to adulthood. Without any intervention, the survival rate for kiwis is really low. Accorbing to their website, when they started the program, the survival rate for baby kiwis was only about 5%. Basically, scientists steal the kiwi eggs and hatch them in the center, then raise the kiwis in captivity until they are big enough to fight off a stoat. Apparently they only have to be about a kilogram to be able to do that. Now the survival to adulthood rate for the kiwis hatched in captivity is almost 65%. So they are really helping kiwis to survive in the wild. Unfortunately, this is very expensive, and if they stopped doing it, the survival rates would go right back down, but it's a good way to keep the population up while they work to get rid of the invasive species. Apparently, raising kiwis in captivity is easy, because they hate people and have never in the history of kiwis imprinted on a person. So they are happy to leave when the time comes. We got to see eggs in the special fancy incubator and several baby kiwis, which are tiny and adorable balls of fluff.

 A ginormous kiwi wearing a rugby jersey!

This is taxidermized kiwi, but this really is what they look like. They're so cute!

After spending a lot of time learning about kiwis, we finally left to go to some hot springs. We heard of a great free one, and when we got there, it did indeed seem very cool. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that the facilities were basically an outhouse that looked like a place where murderers would hide and kill you, and we had not put our suits on beforehand. We will plan better next time. After that, we decided to go see the redwoods! 

True fact-many transported species, plant and animal, are alive and thriving in New Zealand. They just love it. One of those is Redwood trees, like the kind from California. There are some trees at Rainbow Springs, and and an entire grove in Rotorua. The trees grew much faster in New Zealand than they do in California, but they are much less dense because of growing that way. The redwood grove was really neat, with the giant redwoods mixed with ferns and other native plants. We did get kind of lost, and probably would have starved to death out there if not for some nice people who noticed that we seemed very lost and helped us get turned back around. 

 If you've ever been to the Redwoods in California, you'll notice that although these are super tall, they're not crazy big around like those are. 

I'm almost 100% that this is a silver fern, and those curls are new fronds opening up. 

 Redwoods and ferns, living together in harmony. 

After that, we went and got some delicious dinner from a really frazzled guy who seemed to be the only employee in the pizza place. But it was great pizza. I just felt bad for him. I also got some ginger beer, which I love, and which is plentiful in New Zealand. I mentioned something to him about it, and he said he thought we called it root beer, so I helped him learn something too. They are not the same thing at all! We also got some hokey pokey gelato, because we had been meaning to try the hokey pokey ice cream. The gelato was good, but the ice cream, when we finally got it, was even better. I'll tell you more about it in a later post.

At this point, it was pretty late, and we were crazy tired, plus, we had a really big Tuesday planned, so that was it for the night. But it was a great couple of days, and I am for reals all in on kiwis now.

Next time: Caving and hobbits in the same day! We are ambitious vacationers.

The Black Lung has a Wizard Fight, Part 2: We become Peter Jackson's Neighbors!

Day 2 of New Zealand started way too early, and it's not because we had to drive to Wellington. It's because the wonders of jetlag and the 17 hour time difference (that changed to 18 hours once Daylight Savings started? ended? partway through the trip) had me waking up at 4:30 in the morning. Le sigh. I did adjust to the time pretty much by the next day though. And the early start gave me time to get all the way ready and have a leisurely and delicious breakfast of orange chocolate muffins (so good-we ate them a lot while I was there, and I have not ever seen them here. I will have to start haunting store bakeries), super creamy chocolate milk, and feijoa juice. Feijoas are apparently a fruit that is very popular in New Zealand, but not in season in November. The juice is super good though.

After breakfast, we were off to Wellington! It's about a two hour drive from Leah's house, but we had an appointment at 9, so we left a bit early. Then, of course, the drive went great and we got there way early. So we walked around the harbor near Te Papa, which is the national museum of New Zealand. We didn't really get to go there, because it was closed before our 9:00 pickup and was closing pretty soon after we got back in the afternoon, but it looks very cool. I would love to get it next time I'm there. Anyhow, the first thing we noticed about Wellington is that it's windy! I have never actually been to Chicago, but our tour guide did say that Wellington really ought to have the name The Windy city, and I couldn't disagree. We about blew away several times.

 If you let the wind blow into your eyeballs, your hair will stay out of your face!

I tried to lean as far forward as this statue, but the wind kept blowing me back.

But at 9, our ride arrived! Yes, it was our full day Lord of the Rings tour! Right away we noticed that our tour guide was Irish. But he was also a very knowledgeable Wellingtonian, so that was fine by us. The tour was him driving us to various locations in and around Wellington where LOTR was filmed. I already mentioned in part one, but it bears repeating that I am a huge LOTR fan. I love the books, I love the movies, I mourn the lost potential of the Hobbit trilogy (short version-it shouldn't have been a trilogy! There was not enough story for that much screen time, and it was boring). So when Leah said we could do half day or full day, I said "Full day!!! Please." It was definitely a good choice.

We started off with maybe 12 people on the tour. First our guide drove us to Mount Wellington lookout, which has truly awesome panoramic views of the city. Also, people who live up there must be nuts, because the hills up to the houses are too steep for walkways, so they have these cable cars that go up the hills at certain points. Looking at them made me feel a combination fear of heights and small spaces that would be exponentially greater if I actually had to get in one. But it's a really pretty city. Fun fact that we learned-Peter Jackson used trickery to get New Line to agree to filming in Wellington by saying it has an international airport. Technically, this is true, but it only flies to Australia and Fiji. Also, the runway ends at the sea, so I feel it would be somewhat stressful to fly there.

 Panoramic view from the top of Mount Victoria

With the city in the background. Also, still so windy!

After we left the lookout, we went to the first filming location, which is some woods on the side of the mountain. These are woods which are planted with some kind of fur tree not indigenous to New Zealand and therefore kind of scraggly looking from fighting the wind, which makes them fun and creepy for the scenes of the hobbits running from the Nazgul!

 Right behind me is where the hobbits roll down the hill while running from that farmer!

 Hobbitses hiding from a Nazgul! In the movie, they had a fake tree stump on this spot. Also, these are other tourists, I think from Australia, to make up our 4 hobbits.

 Nothing in particular filmed here, I just think I look nice.

Imagine a ring wraith right there! I just watched the movie yesterday, and I totally recognized the area from the scene.

We also learned here about the scourge of the possum. They are not the same as opossums, which we have here in the US. In fact, they're pretty cute. But they aren't indigenous to New Zealand (more on non-native species in another post!), and they eat a boat load of vegetation every night. They're basically destroying the bush, so currently New Zealand is trying to poison the heck out of them, which is controversial to say the least.

After that, we went to WETA, the prop/special effects place. We got to see all sorts of awesome things that they've made, and touch some of it. They also showed us some cool stuff about the history of the company. They have done a lot of movies besides Tolkien ones. All of it is very impressive and cool and some of it is way gross. I wasn't very excited by the horror movie stuff. We were only allowed to take pictures in the lobby, but even that stuff was cool.

 This dwarf guards the entrance to the no pictures area.

I met Gandalf!

At the end of WETA, which is incidentally named after a gross bug that is from New Zealand, the half day tour people left, and there were only 5 of us left: Leah and myself, plus 3 Canadian guys who I think worked together and were in New Zealand for some sort of government conference thing. They were pretty hardcore LOTR people too, and we had a pretty good time with them. We had lunch at a really cute little restaurant along the coast, which is also on the road that Peter Jackson lives on. Our guide only told us which house it was when we were past it, and I couldn't find it again to save my life, but it was still pretty cool.

Across the street from the restaurant. It was really a beach road, which Peter Jackson also lives on. 

Next we headed to a park outside of the city which is where some of the river scenes were filmed. On the way there, I also saw an LDS chapel, so that was thrilling. The river was kind of hard to recognize at first, until you realize that the shot was mirrored (I think?) so that the cliffs were on both sides of the water instead of just one. Then it was pretty easy to visualize those creepy Urukhai chasing our heroes as they canoed away. I also made friends with a dog there!

Imagine an elf canoe, and creepy dudes chasing you through the woods. Not pictured: my dog friend.

I found a picture of my dog friend!

Minas Tirith and Helm's Deep were right here. Kinda hard to visualize, yes? I get Helm's Deep, but Minas Tirith? Must be magic.

We also drove past a quarry which was the site of Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith. You can't actually go up there anymore, the quarry people get mad at you. But we looked at it! Then we went to the park where Saruman lived! There was some sort of Highland festival going on, so we could hear bagpipes the whole time we wandered around. This is where we got to have wizard fights. Our tour guide regularly stashes large branches in the foliage for people to have mock fights with, which is awesome and hilarious. We also learned that the magestic mountains in the background of Saruman's house are actually on the South Island, but they often would composite those things on because the locations down there were a lot harder to get to.

 Saruman's tower was right there. And I think that white spot was the tent with the bagpipers.

 Just two wizards, walking in Saruman's garden, talking about how the one ring is totes evil. 

 Hey wait, one of the wizards is totes evil, too!

 That escalated quickly.

Friends again! This was a super giant tree behind us. 

Our final stop of the day was the location for Rivendell, which is one of the beautiful sets in the movie. It was filmed in Kaitoke Regional park, which is a super beautiful place even without Rivendell. The first thing we did when we got there was eat some muffins, but then we went across this awful swinging pedestrian bridge to see the native bush. 3 of our group, including Leah, thought this was great fun. Myself and one of the Canadian guys did not think this was fun. We thought it was terrifying. I also thought I would throwup and die while crossing it. But I didn't!

After that, we went across a normal, not scary bridge and saw a family of eels living in the middle of the river! They came out from this giant rock, and it was super cool and somewhat gross. Eels are weird looking, man. Across the bridge and into the woods a little ways is Rivendell. There is actually a sign and an arch put there by the park, mostly because tourists kept looking for it and wandering off into the bush and getting lost. Amazingly enough, almost the entire Rivendell set was built practically, even though they were just going to tear it down after they finished filming. It was very cool to be there, even though the sets are long gone. Our tour guide also had a hobbit cloak and a replica of Sting, so we had some awesome photo ops and talked about the dreaminess of Legolas. I definitely have grown into an Aragorn person, but there's no denying the appeal of Legolas. He's just so cool! And that hair!

 Evil bridge of death!

Background, evil bridge of death. Foreground, eel rock! 

Welcome to Rivendell, hobbits!  

Meredith and Sting, ready to take on some orcs.

Then it was time for our tour to end. We just chilled in the van, talking about everyone's future plans (us-road trip, Canadians, end of business trip) until we got back to Te Papa. We did go in for a few minutes to use the facilities, but it was almost closing time, so we decided to head back to Leah's. We stopped at a really cool rocky beach on the way back, and did not fall into any tide pools. And we got back to Leah's in time to rest up for our road trip.

At the beach, still windy!

Laters!

Next time, on The Black Lung: KIWIS!!!