Last Day In NZ!!!

Hello everyone,

Sorry that I haven't been able to update this in a while, but I've been super busy! I'll give you a brief run-down on some of the cool things that've been going on.

Arthur's Pass: We took the alpine train through the Southern Alps to arrive at the little village of Arthur's Pass! The ride was lovely. We got to see clear blue rivers and snowy mountain tops. When we arrived at the village we all went on different tramping paths. Two of them, Devil's Punchbowl, and Bridal Veil Falls, had nice views of some big waterfalls. Also, we saw some kea, which are the only alpine parrots. They're cheeky little guys, and are said to be as smart as a 7 year old child. Often they try to pick the rubber off of cars. One little kea tried to steal Nick's lunch bag, but lost that battle.

Class Stuff: We finally wrapped up our herbivory research by presenting our data. We only had enough data analyzed to report on gri lit from two sites. We found, that remnant sites had more herbivory than the resotred sites, as we predicted. Everyone who came to listen to us seemed pretty interested.
We also wrapped up some of the weta work we'd been doing. Lincoln University had some wetas that they'd caught, and we were going to release them into Riccarton Bush (a remnant bush in the middle of the city). First, we had to measure them, I.D. them, put reflection tape on their legs (so we can see them in the dark, since they are nocturnal), and get DNA from them, so that their species type can be identified. I helped with the DNA part, which involved holding cutting off part of the weta's foot. Later that night we went out to the bush, released the wetas, and took turns tracking them in the dark, which turned out to be a quite difficult task.

Saturday:
Some of my classmates took a weekend trip to Hamner springs, others took a weekend hiking trip somewhere, some spent their day in Christchurch, and others went on a Lord of the Rings tour. I did the last of those things, even though I've never read any of the LOTR books, and only saw the second movie. Everyone told me that the trip was worth going on anyways for the beautiful scenery. Anyways, if you didn't know, the LOTR movies were filmed in NZ and much of the Two Towers was fimed in the Cantabury area. We took out a crazy all-terrain vehicle that drove through some crazy rivers, resulting in a very bumpy ride. One of the places that we visited was Edoras. If you like LOTR you know what I'm talking about, maybe? In the end it turned out to be a pretty amazing adventure. Now I'll have to watch the movies and pick out the places that I've been to.

TODAY: Some of us are going to have brunch at a cafe on the Avon River in Christchurch and then heading into Lyttelton to do some hiking.

We head out tomorrow morning!
Hilary