Exploring East Cape

On our day off yesterday (Tuesday), Matt and I slept in a bit, then headed off to explore East Cape, the easternmost portion of New Zealand, which forms the eastern side of the Bay of Plenty. Opotiki is basically the last town of any size for several hundred kilometres. East Cape is incredibly rugged, remote, and made up of predominantly Maori settlements with very few amenities of any kind. It is also ridiculously beautiful. We drove 120km from Opotiki, to Whanaparaoa, at Cape Runaway, which is the place where the first Maori canoes from Hawaiiki, the Homeland, landed in New Zealand in 1350 A.D. The road, a state highway, was incredibly hairy, and I was glad to have Matt do the driving. At many points, the highway was reduced to a single lane by slips (landslides) and at one point the entire highway was inaccessible, and all traffic was diverted onto a gravel logging track for a few kms. One and a half lanes, no guard rails, and a sheer cliff over one side. Exciting, to say the least!~

(Click on photos to enlarge)

 A New Zealand detour...

But we were very glad to have gone, because the scenery we saw was incredible. Here's some photos:

 Beautiful Maori cemetery by the sea. 

 A not uncommon sight around Opotiki and East Cape: a shaggy mountain horse tied up to graze on the side of the road (or in this case, in an undeveloped park). Also not unusual is to see people riding their horse to town, or along the highway. Yesterday we saw two guys, one on horseback, and the other on his bike, holding onto his friend's stirrup and being pulled along by the horse!

 Matt, making friends.

 We found some great tidepools, among these crazily shaped rocks. The were absolutely packed with sea snails and limpets, but none of the photos of them came out well.

 The beautiful old Anglican church where we ate our picnic lunch. The church sits on a promontory that juts out into the ocean, and the views were amazing. The red archway over the door is traditional Maori carving.

 One of several paua shells we found on the beach. The beaches here are covered in incredibly shaped driftwood, and all kinds of shells we've never seen before, from paua to perfectly round clams, to incredibly intricate sea snail shells.

 Agapantha flower and pohutukawa tree in front of Cape Runaway.

 Whangaparaoa, the site where the Maori first came ashore in New Zealand.

Lyn had told us how to get to a secret little surf cove just north of Opotiki, which you access by driving down a tiny winding lane and parking in an empty cattle paddock, then hiking down to the beach. We stopped there at the end of the day, just before getting home. There was no surf, but that didn't matter, because it looked like this: 

We're so lucky to have well-versed locals advising us where to go see cool things. What average tourists would ever have gotten to go here?

We ended the day by coming back down the highway and stopping at the settlement of Opape, to see the beach where Lyn and Kate were married, and to take in the view from Lyn's tribe's Marae.

I feel so very blessed to have seen everything we saw yesterday. Seeing East Cape and all of these places felt like a religious experience in many ways. There is so much history and culture there, and just outright beauty. We got to go places where very few tourists ever go, and I am very grateful to have had that privilege.

White Island (Whakaari)

Matt and I had two days off on Monday and Tuesday, and our hosts encouraged us to make the most of them- which we did! Lyn & Kate strongly recommended that we visit White Island, an active marine volcano that is about 45 km offshore in the Bay of Plenty, and which you can take a boat out to, as part of an organized tour. We have the advantage that Lyn & Kate own a small tour company, so they were able to get us a 10% discount on the slightly hefty cost of the tour- but it was worth every penny. We drove into Whakatane early on Monday morning and signed our lives away (lots of liability when stepping onto a live volcano), and boarded the boat for the 1.5 hour voyage to White Island. The Maori name is Whakaari, meaning "that which is lifted up." Captain Cook gave it the name White Island due to the constant vapor cloud around it from the huge hydrogen sulfate vents in the crater. Here's a good photo of it with its plume, taken yesterday:

(Click on photos to enlarge)

The trip out was 27 nautical miles, through 2.5 metre seas. The swell didn't bother me until we hit some crosswinds in the last half hour that made the boat really rocky. At that point I got super queasy if I wasn't right up on the bow- I spent almost the entire journey all the way forward on the top deck.
The day was fabulously sunny and clear, and we were lucky in that the winds had shifted so that all the steam was blown up and away from the landing site, whereas usually the steam is pushed right down into the front of the crater, and you start breathing the sulfurous fumes right away.

We were all issued hard hats and gas masks on the boat, and then made the tricky landing at the jankety concrete wharf. The crew said it was one of the trickier landings they had done in awhile. The boat anchored offshore a bit, and then we went ashore 6 at a time in the inflatable tender. The skipper would keep the tender out of the way as a set of waves came in, crashing on the pier, and then would dart in between sets, and everyone on board would scramble up the old ladders and get ashore as quick as possible before the next waves came in. Exciting!

The color difference in the water is due to the sulfates in a creek that emptied into the ocean here. The tide is coming in at this point- when the tide is on its way out, there is no color difference because all the minerals are carried out to sea.

We split into two groups for the hike around the island. The guides were great and very knowledgeable, and we really did get our money's worth. Here is our experience in pictures:

That's me at the very left, hiking into the main crater.

 The other half of the group, on one of the mounds of debris thrown up by the last eruption (July of 2000)

Matt in front of a big fumerole. The steam was bellowing out of there at an incredible rate, and it sounded like a jet engine. 

The gas masks were used when the steam came our direction, as it was all thick with hydrogen sulfate, which reeks of rotten eggs. Every once and awhile we would get a big gulp of it accidentally, and the guides had the cure: a big box of lollies (hard candies). Sucking on a lolly clears up the throat hacking and coughing that results from breathing in the steam. 

 Me in front of the acidic lake in the main crater. Its current pH is -5. Very, very, very acidic!

 More bubbling mud pots!

 Matt and a caved-in sulfur mound. 

 We were given pure sulfur to taste- because it is absolutely tasteless. It only gets stinky when combined with hydrogen. 

The sides of the crater everywhere were venting and steaming.

 The lake in the crater. 

We were taught the fun trick of cleaning 10c pieces in one of creeks of acidic runoff!

 An old anchor by the wharf. The corrosive power of the air and water on the island is very intense. We had to scrub our boots in salt water before getting back onto the boat, and the guides who come out every day never wear shoes with metal grommets, because they rust away in just a few weeks. 

View from inside the old sulfur works, a mining operation that failed on a number of counts and was the victim of multiple eruptions, landslips, and other hazards of working on top of a volcano. 

 Statue of Lady Wairaka (probably spelling that wrong) at the harbour mouth at Whakatane. At the time when several Maori canoes came ashore here, it was tapu (taboo) for a woman to helm a canoe. While the men were ashore, a storm came up and the canoes were in danger of swamping, so she yelled something to the effect of "I can paddle like a man" and took up a paddle and got the women and children to safety. "Whakatane" is part of the sentence she shouted, so that was the name given to the town, harbour and river. In the background is Whale Island, which is now a wildlife sanctuary where kiwis have just been reintroduced.

 On the much smoother boat ride home. 

Whakatane harbour mouth and town. Look at the color of the water!

We ended the day by stopping at the West End at Ohope Beach, where Matt got his first New Zealand surf!

Perfect, perfect waves.

Lambs and Sunshine

Written and posted 10:25 PM Saturday, October 2, 2010

Today dawned clear and gorgeous, a beautiful day to be a farmer in New Zealand! 

We are working two full days, today and tomorrow, so that we will have Monday and Tuesday off. This was at Lyn & Kate's suggestion, as the weather is supposed to be great all four days and they want us to go exploring while the sun is out. We spent the first half of the day today over the back of the hills here, “doing up” the lambs at two different sections of Lyn’s family’s farm. Not for those of weak constitution, this involved “docking” the lambs’ tails by putting super-tight rubber bands around the base of their tails, to make them deaden and fall off. 

 I never thought I'd post a photo of a lamb's nether regions on my blog, but this is part of our work here...

For the boy lambies, it also meant having the same procedure done on their testicles, to turn them into wool sheep rather than breeding rams. They also all got their ears punched (the sheep version of branding), the goriest part of the procedure, and inoculated against a form of kidney disease. 

We were deeply involved in the whole procedure from the start, with Don, Lyn’s father, directing us all as we went. Kate was kind enough to be the photographer for a little while, so here is the evidence of one of our first ventures into animal husbandry (in spite of what sounds like a form of torture for the lambs, this method is in fact one of the most humane ways to dock lambs, and once past the in-the-mud-and-sheep-sh*t, a-little-bit-of-blood aspect, we all had a great time. I hope it doesn’t reflect badly that we were all grinning while wrestling the lambs into position and getting them “done up”- we did do a lot of sympathetic snuggling of the lambs and some groaning as they scootched around on their sore hinds ends afterwards and looked at us as if to say "but it hurts!"): 

This is me catching one of the littlest ones and wrangling it into position (isn't this an event at American rodeos?)

Matt did a lot of the wrestling with the larger lambs. Doesn't he look good?

Our first batch. These are Suffolks, with the black faces. 

The second batch, Romneys and Cheviots. Two of these lambs escaped into the field and we never could catch them...

Lyn and lambie sharing a joke. 

We also drenched the Suffolk ewes, meaning they were given an anti-worm medicine. My job was to mark with chalk the wool of the ewes who had been treated.

Finally let back out to pasture. Sheep can graze under kiwifruit until a certain stage in the spring, when the new growth on the vines becomes to tempting for the woolies. 

We really had a grand time, and Matt and I really loved being involved in this aspect of farming, and the graciousness with which we were included. Lyn and Kate and Don are all wonderful hosts, and there was no “stand back and watch” part of learning for us- we were given tasks right away and got right in with the sheep from the start. Our hosts have confidence in us and trust us to do a good job, which in turn helps us to do a good job! By the time we had done both sets of lambs, we were absolutely knackered, famished, and covered in mud, sheep poo, and a little bit of lamb blood from the ear punching, but it was definitely a job well done, and despite the nature of the job, we all fell in love with the little lambs, and Matt and I would both love to be involved in this chore again. It’s not that we love binding the tails and balls of little wooly creatures- definitely not. It’s that working with animals is something that is very new to us, and any intimidation we have had around them has gone out the window because we are expected to be a part of it immediately, and our hosts have already imparted on us so much knowledge about how to herd sheep (“if you’re not making ridiculous noises, you’re not doing it right,” says Kate), how to hold them still for shots or whatever (under the joints, on the hocks, of front and back legs- see photos), and what they need in order to stay healthy.

We spent the afternoon working on the homestead, clearing and weeding (me) and cutting down a dead cherry tree (Matt). Part of our work today included making dinner as well, which was a nice chance to share our cooking skills with Lyn and Kate. 

I'm not sure you can see it in the photos, but we’ve both invested in proper wellies, or gumboots, as they’re called here- an essential for working on the NZ farm. I am also incredibly glad I went to the trouble of bringing my wide brimmed hat all the way to New Zealand- it’s a lifesaver in the harsh sun here (I already have more freckles than I’ve ever had in my life). Kate and Lyn have a couple bins of work clothes, so we are well outfitted for our lifestyle here. Here is one final photo of our New Zealand farmer alter egos (complete with the drenching feeder):