A party and some glowworms!

Last weekend, I had my second visitor - Susan. Susan has been hooning all over NZ checking out the sights for a month or two and came back through Rotorua for a couple of days over the weekend. Unfortunately, we didn't have the greatest weather while she was here - it rained heaps (how surprising!) but we did do some cool stuff.
On Saturday night, one of the girls from work had a fantasy themed birthday party. Due to lack of inspiration and appropriate costuming, Susan and I went as witches. I thought it would probably be one of those parties where everyone reverts to their normal clothing half-way through the night so best not to go too overboard. I was so wrong! I don't think I've been to a costume party where people have gone to so much effort. There were smurfs, devils, porn stars, a gargoyle, a christmas tree, a little green man, money and even a chewbacca and a princess leia! It was fantastic! So here are a few photos.

Me, Susan and another witch (Gerty)

Money and a little green man

James Bond, Leia and Chewbacca

On Sunday, after we hauled our tired bodies out of bed, Susan and I drove over to Waitomo (about 2 hours west of Rotorua) to do a tour of some glow worm caves. It was such an awesome thing to do. We went on a tour called Spellbound that took us into some caves where we had a close up look at some glow worms, then we jumped on a boat, turned the lights out and got taken along a river in the pitch black so we could see the glow worms glow. It was so cool - after about 10-15 minutes your night vision gets so good that the glow worms seem brighter and brighter!

This is Susan outside the cave we went into.

And here's a picture of the glow worm threads that they use to catch food, and the worms glowing in the dark:

at last, a fungus!

I spent most of last week down in Dunedin, where my field sites are. I had a great time - Dunedin rocks! It's really pretty with lots of old buildings and houses perched precariously on hills. It's a bit bigger than Rotorua and full of students so it has a really nice feel. Dunedin weather is known for being a bit random - the first two days in the field we had 4-6 degrees with rain and hail, then the next two we had sun and 15 degrees! At least it didn't snow I guess...
I'm including a few pics of the fungus I'm studying, for those wondering what I'm doing in remotest NZ. The fungus causes damage to the wood of pine trees (the main plantation tree here) by cauing long flutes or cankers in the bark. And that means the wood loses its value.
This is what the trees look like when they are badly affected:

And here are a few pics of the fungus - tiny little red, grape-like fruiting bodies, each about the size of a pin-head.












Well, I couldn't have a blog without a few pics of fungus in somewhere.....

my first visitor!

I've been a bit slack lately about putting pics up on this site - mostly because I've been off doing fun things and enjoying myself. The weekend before last, I had my first visitor - my dad. He stayed with me for about a week which included one very action packed weekend. On saturday, we went to the Wai-O-Tapu geothermal doodad a bit south of Rotorua. We got up early (arghh, not on a Saturday!) in time to catch the Lady Knox Geyser which explodes every morning at 10:15.....












Weird for nature to be so precise, I thought, and how does it take daylight saving into account? Well, turns out, the eruption of the geyser is helped along a bit by some laundry soap..... But despite being a bit of a gimic, it is really quite impressive, shooting 20m or so into the air!

The rest of the Wai-O-Tapu park is quite different to the bubbling mud parks I've been to previously. This one isn't about bubbling mud and massive steam vents, instead it's full of brightly coloured lakes - coloured due to the different ions in them. There are some awesome colours - fluro green, orange, yellow, pinkish, blue. So, although there's not much in the way of cool bubbling mud, I think it is one of the better geothermal parks I've been too.


















One of the coolest bits, probably everyone's favourite, was the champagne pool which is green, with orange rock around the edge and heaps of little tiny bubbles popping up to the surface - bit like champagne really...









On Sunday, dad and I went to the beach - something I've been wanting to do for ages. We went to Mt Manganui - a beach-side town in ithe Bay of Plenty with a big mountain on a peninsula at the end. It was a bit cold and overcast, so no swimming, but we had lunch and walked around the base of the mountain (a good hour walk).

















We even managed to fit in a stop at Te Puke, the kiwi growing capital of NZ to see the big kiwi...

Happy Birthday Lucy!

Today it's Lucy's birthday, so I thought I'd embarass her by putting this photo up!

More mud...

Just some more random pictures of cool geothermal stuff. I took these at Hell's Gate which is a geothermal park just outside Rotorua. One of the interesting things about Hell's Gate is that it

was given this english name by George Bernard Shaw when he visited because it freaked him out so much (it was as close to Hell as he ever wanted to come). In Maori it's called Tikitere. Anyway, the geothermal stuff still spins me out - lakes of bubbling mud which are 115 degrees, steam vents, sulfur pools. It's all so bizzare. And often set in the middle of a pine forest or town or something equally random.

Like this, the biggest hot water waterfall in the southern hemisphere, randomly set in the middle of the forest....It has an average temperature of 40 degrees celcius - would be very nice to stand under I think!

At Hell's Gate there are heaps of little bubbling mud pools, and there's even a mini volcano (it comes up to my waist) which explodes every now and then!
There are mud baths you can have here too - would be kind of fun I think (a good thing to do with visitors!)