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.