Finally...a look back at New Zealand

With the luxury of free, unlimited internet (thanks to our family and friends for making our stay in the Netherlands so comfortable!), we now have the opportunity to share our thoughts and photos from our 5 week trip to the North Island of New Zealand in late February and March. (Of course, I have added incentive to complete this as we are getting ready to leave for our next journey! Stay tuned for Iceland!)

Background: We left Antarctica on February 22 and flew from Christchurch on the South Island to Auckland on February 26. We departed New Zealand on March 30.

Mode of transport: We rented a reasonably priced Toyota with high mileage from Ezy Rentals, a company which actually has a category of rentals (of which this was one) called El Cheapo.

Accommodation: A large portion of our nights were spent in our tent at Holiday Parks, purpose-built lodging and park with communal and well-equipped kitchens, bathrooms and sometimes extra bonuses such as mineral hot pools. Holiday Parks offer a wide variety of accommodation - from tent camping to cottages with all amenities.

Weather: Mostly fantastic! March started off with warm, sunny weather - perfect for the beaches of the Northland. When hurricane force winds and heavy rains came, we switched from tent camping to budget accommodation under a roof and altered the itinerary so that we spent the ugly days in the wonderful Te Papa Museum in Wellington.

Our Route: From Auckland, we traveled north up the Northland Peninsula to the very northernmost point, Cape Reinga. From here, we continued to the Coromandel Peninsula and then to Rotorua, a town located in a geothermally-rich area. After enjoying the mud pots, geysers and geothermal pools, we headed to the Art Deco towns of Napier and Hastings to enjoy the architecture. We traveled all the way to the southernmost tip of the North Island for a couple of days in the big city of Wellington. We then returned to the center of the island for much improved weather and a stunning 4-day backpacking trip on the Northern Circuit, which includes the famous Tongariro Crossing. We stayed on in this wonderful area to play amongst the recent mud flow of Ruapehu volcano with our friend, Anne, and her buddies at the National Historical Society. Anne joined us for an incredible tour of an active volcanic island (White Island) and we ended our trip after a quick loop around the under-developed and largely Maori (the original New Zealanders) East Cape.



Our Top Ten List: It really was a fantastic holiday, so it's difficult to restrict our highlights to just 10...but here goes...

1. The warm, sunny weather and the fantastic sandy beaches of the Northland Peninsula, especially the beaches at Tapotupotu, Pakiri and Ahipara, where Michiel got his first real taste of boogie-boarding.

2. The awesome (the word truly applies) girth ("omtrek" in het Nederlands) of the last remaining giant Kauri trees on earth.



3. The multi-story, multi-media, and FREE Te Papa Museum in Wellington. The exhibits are so large and so jam-packed with interesting information, we spent the greater part of two days there.

The picture below is of the city of Wellington from the Botanic Gardens, which are reached by cable car and then enjoyed by walking downhill through the extensive collections.


4. Hiking the Northern Circuit. The huts are clean and well-equipped and the hut wardens are friendly and helpful...but more importantly, the scenery is spectacular - emerald green lakes, red craters, steaming thermal vents, lunar lava rock landscapes and more!







5. Getting a specially guided tour of the Ruapehu volcano mud flow (lahar) with the foremost vulcanologist in New Zealand and then being invited to stay high up on the volcano in a ski lodge that was closed for the season.


6. Diving and snorkeling at Poor Knight's Islands. Known as one of the best sub-tropical diving sites in the world, we were delighted to swim with scores of beautiful fish and rays. Michiel was also very excited to be using his diving certificate after a 6 year break.

7. Exploring White Island, an active volcanic island that had been mined for sulphur.

8. Visiting the colorful and aromatic geothermal areas of Wai-o-tapu and Orakei Korako near Rotorua. We were especially enchanted by the gurgling mud pots.





9. Having Michiel cook a lovely meal in a hangi, a traditional Maori underground oven that uses the geothermal steam from the earth to prepare tasty morsels.

Here are some examples of the fabulous Maori carvings and meeting houses.



10. The ease of traveling in New Zealand! With ever-present Holiday Parks(with uniformly good-to-excellent facilities) and fantastic visitor centers known as I-sites, which you can find in most towns, getting around New Zealand is simple and essentially worry-free.

As I said, this doesn't really even start to scratch the surface...but in the spirit of brevity, we hope that the pictures speak for themselves.

A Quick Dublin Visit

In all of my wisdom and internet searching, I thought that it would be cheaper to fly from the US to Europe via Dublin than directly to Amsterdam. That's how we ended up spending just over a day in Ireland. (As it turns out, flights within Europe now only allow you to check one piece of luggage per person and that piece cannot weigh more than 50 pounds. Most low-cost European air carriers charge so much money for the second piece of checked luggage that I'm not sure that we ended up saving any money with this routing...but we did have a nice day!)

Dublin and Ireland have been in the news quite often lately for the encouraging tales of the strength of its economy and the incredible growth and development of commerce and tourism that is happening there. We were expecting to see a city bursting with rich-looking, new buildings, gleaming streets and shiny, happy people. We didn't.

We did find a very busy city with lots of evidence of Polish and other Eastern European immigrants, who weren't particularly well-suited for the service industry as they don't smile easily and aren't terribly warm or friendly, and lots of interesting historic structures.

We tackled the task of attempting to see all that Dublin has to offer in one day by using an I-Walk podcast that we downloaded from the excellent Visit Dublin website. These electronic walking tours loaded onto our mp3 players were a good way to learn a bit about what we were seeing while covering lots of territory. (If you go, do the Guinness I-Walks; they are the best of the bunch.)

After walking more kilometers than we could keep track of, we opted to go to the Jameson Distillery for a tour. In the first couple of moments, the tour guide informed us that he was going to choose 4 volunteers from the group for a special tasting. I nudged Michiel and convinced him that this was the right time to not be shy. At the end of our very quick trip through the original storehouse, we came to the tasting room, where we all had the choice of a straight glass of whiskey, a glass on the rocks or a glass of whiskey mixed with cranberry juice or ginger ale (my favorite!). Michiel was, indeed, chosen as a special taster. He received 5 shot glasses filled with brown liquor. He was first asked to choose his favorite among three of the Irish whiskeys (all made by Jameson). Once he chose his favorite (Powers), he was asked to choose between the smoky tasting and harsher (only distilled 2 times) Scottish whisky (Scottish whisky is spelled without the "e") and the smooth Irish whiskey (distilled three times and the barley is not heated with the peat that gives Scottish whisky its smoky flavor. Finally, he was asked to compare the Irish whiskey to an American whiskey, which is distilled only once and is aged in a new wooden barrel.

Michiel (and all of the others, even the Scotsman) found the Irish whiskey to be the smoothest and tastiest of the bunch. The contestants ended up being some of the best-selling liquors in the world: Johnny Walker Red and Jack Daniels. Here is Michiel enjoying his privileges as a taster. (He even received a certificate to show that he is a certified Irish Whiskey taster.)

We couldn't call it a complete day without going to a real Irish pub and drinking the uncarbonated variety of Guinness sold in Ireland and listening to live Irish music.

I'll spare you the details of our poor hostel accommodation that had no water and end this little chapter by saying that we are now enjoying spring in the Netherlands. The grass and trees are green, the flowers are blooming, the newborn lambs are jumping and hay fever is again a regular phrase in my vocabulary.

South Florida

We are now in South Florida for a few more days before heading across the Atlantic. We are staying with my mom in Hollywood and spending lots of time getting our affairs back in order after being gone from the States for so long (i.e. taxes, bills, personal maintenance, appointments and interviews, and catching up on the blog).

While we are here, I (Sheri) am meeting with one half of the student group that I will be taking to Tanzania with me in July. I am again working for World Challenge Expeditions leading a group of high school students on a one-month trip with the primary goal being leadership development and team building. This year, the group will be made up of 4 students from an American school in Palm Beach, Florida and 4 students from a school in Northampton, England. It will be a small group to manage - especially since there will be 3 adults! I'll be sure to post the stories later in the summer.

Michiel and I are learning how to deal with heat and humidity again and are working on some "savage" tans. Though we find Southern Florida really depressing, with its never-ending parade of retail centers, frighteningly bad drivers and flat, monotonous landscapes, we've been entertaining ourselves with shuffleboard tournaments (WooHoo!), a day trip to some nice tropical botanic gardens, swimming and a trip to the Florida Keys. We ended up cutting our Keys trip short, though, because of the exceptionally high costs of camping ($52 for a private campground!!! and $31 for a State campground, which often are full), the unbearable heat and the ferocious biting insects. On the plus side, the snorkeling at the reef off the coast of Key Largo was wonderful and well worth the trip and the architecture of the homes in Key West was delightful to see.

Here are some highlights:

Sunset from our campsite: Bahia Honda State Park and Michiel amongst the mangroves at John Pennekamp Coral Reef SP

Key West homes

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens also features blown glass sculptures by Chihuly strategically placed throughout. The plant above (left) was, indeed, real - Michiel had to touch it to believe it.

This sculpture is a representation of the sun. The one on the right is a display of plants of Madagascar interspersed with glass tubes.

NOAA Volunteers

The Albatross IV

We haven't written in a LONG time and we're far behind! We are skipping over our 5 week trip to the North Island of New Zealand to share the details of our experiences as volunteers for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

We arrived at Woods Hole on Cape Cod on April 9 via bus from Boston. Woods Hole is the heart of a busy oceanic research hub – home to NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, the agency we are volunteering with), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Marine Biology Labs.

We had spent a full day in Boston exploring the Freedom Trail and walking the streets of the Back Bay, Charlestown and North End areas. We loved the blending of old and new, like the cemeteries from the 1700s sandwiched between more modern buildings or the historic meeting places of the Revolutionary War still standing amongst the skyscrapers. It’s a very attractive and pleasant city – even at this most unflattering time of the year (it is still winter here, as evidenced by the temperatures in the high 30s). I’m sure that when Spring finally comes that the city will be even lovelier. We finished the evening off with a mediocre Ethiopian meal in a very crowded restaurant.

The ship and the NOAA offices looked deserted on Easter evening, but we located the night watchman on board the ship (as well as a crew member who was carefully separating his satchel-full of herbal supplements and vitamins into daily packets. It felt a little bit like some elicit drug lair.)

We got a tour of the ship and found our berthing. We slept 3 to a room in single bunks and there is no co-mingling of gender. Each room had a mixture of day- and nightshift workers, so there were only ever 2 people at most sleeping in a “stateroom” at a time. A shared bathroom connected our stateroom to another bunkroom with 3 other scientists or volunteers.

The ship (the Albatross IV) is old and certainly the word “utilitarian” fits better than anything else. Since we are bottom trawling, the back deck is spacious and connected to a covered space used for weighing, measuring, sexing, and analyzing all species of fish pulled up from the randomly selected station. We were informed in an information session that surveys of the eastern seaboard from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina have been done since 1963 (the longest continuous stream of data of this kind anywhere in the world) Each survey’s chief scientist randomly selects about 100 stations in which to drag the ocean bottom with long nets. The net is pulled by the boat for 30 minutes – after which the contents are emptied onto tables for initial sorting.

After being sorted, the fish are then weighed, etc. All data is entered into a computer software program and the data is checked on board and then sent to the analysts back in Woods Hole, who use the information (combined with catch logs of commercial fishermen) to help create fishery policy.

Our first day was spent trying on foul weather gear – most of which we will wear whenever we are out on deck in this cold weather. We have rubber boots, jacket and pants and rubber gloves. We got a crash course in fish identification but were assured that we will be paired with experienced cutters and Watch Chiefs who will identify species until we can do it ourselves. They also slice open the fish to determine gender and remove otoliths (ear bones) to determine age (like the rings of a tree).

On the first afternoon at sea, we had a fire drill and an abandom ship drill, which requireed us to don an immersion suit (also lovingly known as the Gumby suit). Then, they did a test trawl to ensure that all of the gear was functioning properly (better to figure that out when close to port) and we were given instruction on the the software for collecting fish data.

the immersion suits

Michiel and I both worked the noon to midnight shift with 5 scientists (mostly they are actually lab technicians who work in the aging and maturity labs) and then we had 12 hours off to sleep and relax which included reading, watching movies or Direct TV, writing emails or exercising in a tiny room with broken equipment.

Over the course of the next couple of days, the weather began to deteriorate and the seas became choppier. Sailing comfort was also diminished because the boat often had to drive in circles or back and forth to find a half mile area with a bottom that wasn't so rocky that it would chew up the net as we had happen on the first tow of the survey. When the net got caught on the rocky bottom, we had to cut short the drag time and, depending on the length of time we were able to tow, we might have to re-tow the same station and, in the worst case scenarios, actually have to completely replace the net. The ship carries 4 nets, so only really bad luck would make all four nets completely irreparable.

So this morning, the boat was making many of us feel queasy. (I was secretly relieved that I wasn’t one of the people who got sick.) I tried taking some more medication (it was time for a new dose), eating more crackers and ginger tea (EVERYONE eats crackers in order to soak up the stomach acids created when you are feeling nauseous) and then going outside to the back deck, which was working great to help me feel better until a wave washed over the side of the boat and soaked my feet. Soon afterwards, we found smoother waters and more comfort for everyone - until the seas got progressively worse and the winds picked up to over 40 knots, which whipped the sea into a frenzy. We even ended up not processing one of the tows because it was simply too dangerous to be out on the back deck in the wind and waves breaking over the deck.

That night, feeling queasy and unable to even contemplate the hassle of trying to shower, I got into bed an tried to pad the bar on the side of my bunk. We spent much of that night getting thrown around. The watch on duty ended up not doing any tows because the seas were too rough (estimated 8-10 foot swells).

Afterwards, the seas remained choppy and the temperatures dropped as we continued north through the Gulf of Maine and further offshore into Canadian waters. We worked through the stations, freezing hands and feet in the process, but found some enjoyment in guessing which varieties of fish would show up in our sorting box and how big the tows would be.

Generally, we had about 1.5 hours between stations, but if we had to re-tow because of ripped nets or other problems, we could finish up with one session of fish processing and have just enough time to go to the bathroom before having to sort the next. Occasionally, we would have enough time between stations to watch a movie…but that seemed to only happen for the night shift. Depending on the size of the catch, sorting and processing time could range between 45 minutes to an hour and a half. The big catches were mostly made up of mackerel and Acadian redfish.

The FISH!

Mackerel and Longhorned Sculpin



Lumpfish and Acadian Redfish


Sea Raven and the ever-popular Shrimp and Lobster


Goosefish and Lots of Redfish

Most of our time on shift we spent playing cards, trying to read (it proved very difficult and tiring to focus on small words while the boat was rocking and heaving), doing Sudoku, making jokes, chatting, eating and napping…..pretty much the same thing we did off shift. I found the rocking of the boat to be very soporific and had a hard time staying awake even while on shift. Perhaps also due to the fact that I had stopped drinking coffee to reduce the acid in my stomach.

We felt like we had seen and done enough to sate our curiosity about bottom trawl surveys when week 2 started. The volunteer work is dull, tedious and cold and the software used to process tows is temperamental. We didn’t have much time to admire any new types of fish as the veterans were in a hurry to process fish and get back to doing more of the above-mentioned activities. We also didn’t find the full-time science/technician staff to be great at explaining things (like the diffences between species or why we do special sampling techniques on some fish at some stations and not others). We later learned that some real scientists join the surveys occasionally and we regretted that we hadn't had that kind of intellectual stimulation on our trip.

The most difficult part of the experience proved not to be the seasickness (those who spoke with me beforehand know that I was very worried about this possibility. It ended up being almost a non-issue, with only an hour here and there of discomfort.) but the boredom when we had to pull into a bay off the coast of Maine for nearly 4 days while a storm brewed off the coast. While we were anchored, the winds got up to 55 knots and the boat rocked from side to side. We heard that the ocean swells were over 25 feet, a very dangerous situation and one in which all boats are cautioned to return to shore. We were all very grateful about not being out in those kinds of seas, but were eager to get back to work once the seas calmed down.

On the last full day, we "surfed" back toward Cape Cod on 12 to 14 foot swells, which was a lot of fun and woke up right off the dock in Woods Hole. We were ecstatic to be back on land but discovered that it would take our bodies almost 4 days to no longer have the feeling of swaying or rocking (especially upon waking up).

Morale Cruise

After the icebreaker has done it's job and created a channel in the ice big enough for the supply vessel and the oil ship to pass trough, they leave to fulfill other contracts. The Coast Guard vessel takes over and keeps the channel from freezing over again. After many requests from the community, this year the NSF has requested the Coast Guard again to provide us with cruises on their ship. People were able to sign up for this (person number 666 to sign up was Satan, I didn't know he was on station) )and after a lottery were placed in either the first shift or the second or on the alternate list.

View from the Polar Star Coast Guard ship.

Sheri was on the alternate list and was lucky enough to have enough people not show up (there were some parties the night before and some people might have drunk a little too much to be able to get up early or stand the motion of a ship). I made it to the second shift.
The boat took us far into the channel (unfortunately not all the way to the ice edge/open water) and even did some real-live ice breaking. Along the way we saw lots of seals, some penguins and several minke wales. You can imagine how excited people were.

Minke wales and seal

Lovely view of castle Rock A Russian cruise ship