Life on the island has been pretty exciting the last couple of months. For those of you who aren’t following the official San Diego Zoo blog at this link: http://blogs.sandiegozoo.org/author/steph-walden/, you may not know that kiwi are crazy birds! My supervisor Sarah seems to think we’ll finish this research to become more confused and mystified by kiwi than when we started! They apparently started breeding 1.5 months earlier than last…
My 3rd time off the island began rather uncertainly. Rose, the volunteer from California, needed a ride to a town where she could form a plan and maybe catch a bus. I needed the internet to try to figure out my plan for our time off, and Rose did the same. Neither of us had solid ideas of where we wanted to go. End result? Steph and Rose travel together!…
I know I haven’t posted in awhile, as my mother keeps reminding me. However, NZ doesn’t want backpackers to keep in touch. Free internet is pretty much impossible to come by. McD’s is my best bet, so I’ve been drinking a bit of tea lately. $2.60 tea for 50MB of internet. When that runs out, I can refresh for a new 50MB. It does get old. Since I last posted,…
Since I’ve been here I’ve picked up on a couple of similarities between Alaska and New Zealand. 1. Scenery (mostly the South Island) – I feel like living in AK has slightly dulled my ability to experience the “wow factor.” The areas I’ve driven through are beautiful, but I can say I feel like I’ve seen similar places before. Maybe I should live in a flat, boring place for awhile….
I’m back in Picton Wellington after a teaser tour of the South Island. I hopped on the ferry and headed north earlier today; Sarah and I will be headed back to the kiwi island Wednesday. Though the journey by ferry to Picton was shrouded in rain and fog, the skies opened up for the end of my stay there. I stayed at the super cozy Sequoia Lodge, which provides chocolate…
Since I’ve been in NZ, I’ve had about 8 days on the kiwi island (May 27-June 3) and 12 days of travel. Don’t get me wrong, work – which I’ll share more about later – is fun. Radio telemetry is like hide and seek by using radio frequencies. Enough about that for right now, though. I should not have come to the South Island on my first time off. Being…
Finally. A beginning to my long overdue blog about my adventure in the Southern Hemisphere! I’ve been down in New Zealand for about 2.5 weeks now, and life has been a whirlwind. The adventure to get here in the first place was something else. I worked for Outdoor Adventures pretty much to the bitter end of my time in Fairbanks. The new crew was headed out on a staff training…