Some last photos of NZ

Time is moving fast, and so are we. 

In preparation for the great escape from beautiful NZ I did a lot of tramping. 

First a 2 day tour with our friend Johannes, through a river to a cosy hut, and back out through beautiful forest and crazy landscapes.

Then my friend Renske, aka Josie Smith, came over from California, and despite massive rainfall all over NZ we managed to do 3 tramps in relative dry conditions, not counting the 647 river crossings. 

beware the carnivorous snail

last visit to Hoki, my favourite NZ town

geographers paradise

burning marshmallows with kiwi dad & two sons who we were staying with in the hut

more fantastic erosion features

end of the world?

disappointing geological feature: the pinnacles. Not worth wet feet

watching royalties with the wuppy Thomas brought back.

Now we are selling all our stuff on trademe and getting on with the bureaucracy of moving continents. At the same time nearly all my friends/colleagues are moving as well so it’s constant goodbye’s. Sad.

30 May is our departure from friendly kiwiland. Kiwis assume one must be happy to be going "home" and are a bit baffled at my despair of going back to the Netherlands. I think they don't realize that for them, going back home means going back to one of the friendliest, nicest and spectacularest (yes that is a word ...) countries in the world, whereas for me/us it means going back to overpopulation, denatured land and arrogance. Yeah, still not quite 100% settled into the idea, although Thomas brought back wonderful experiences from Wageningen. Let's see.

Easter tramp with indecisive/inconsistent colleague

Colleague wanted to go on a tramp with us. Colleague also has knee-issue and said “I can’t carry a tent, and I probably shouldn’t do very steep tracks.” Instead of choosing from the 5 existing options, colleague kept offering new options, making the choice harder, not easier. As we were watching the weather colleague said “it’ll be windy, we probably shouldn’t go up the tops”. 

Finally 12 hours before take-off we decide on a track, not too steep, to a hut, in a valley.

On the day itself colleague wants to go up a steep track, carry a tent, and camp out on a ridgetop. Thomas and me are a bit too kiwi and say “sure”, so up we go.

Well, we were alright, but it was blasting cold foggy wind and a completely sleepless night in the flapping tent with rain coming up from underneath. Colleague made up for some of it by making delicious dessert involving custard, chocolate and dehydrated bananas. Oh, and the views the next day. Bloody NZ stop being so beautiful. 

Spot the tents

steep track indeed. Or camera on an angle

interesting geological feature

cooked breakfast ... in the fog. Colleague slept until fog had disappeared

A different world altogether

Kiwi-ski

About a month ago some ski-crazed colleagues dragged me, and to a lesser extent Thomas, onto the pistes.

As with everything in NZ, skiing is a small scale affair. Nice and cosy. Hollering winds and wet snow. Blinding sunlight and wide vistas over empty country. Five excited “girls” dressed in complementing colours, two guys who went for a hike up a glacier instead. 

My colleague Fiona, who had about the same amount of snow experience as I do, with the exception of it being much more recent (10 days ago versus 10 years ago), took me for some easy runs down and soon the feeling was back in my legs. With the same amount of “Wooooh! Aaaaaah!”as ten years back I stumbled down the hills. Fiona’s comment “I’ve never seen you this lively!”. It is good to go out with your nice colleagues once in a while and show each other your less sciencey self. 

Kayaking Akaroa – in search of dolphins

cute little doggie ... he didn't come with us in the kayak

Last week Thomas brother and sister-in-law, Andre and Johanna, arrived in Christchurch. They are now touring the North Island, but before they had sufficiently slept off their jetlag we took them on an adventure.

Thomas had bought kayaking tickets and thought it would be fun to go kayaking all together. When he told his brother of this wonderful idea, there was a slight hesitation as apparently Johanna isn’t very fond of boarding floating objects on water. However, in the land of the bungee-jump, everybody has to push themselves to the limit (or at least give it a try ... no pressure!)

The weather wasn’t very bright, but at least it didn’t rain. The kayak lady succeeded in assuring us that the kayaks could not flip over. We bought fantastic baguette sandwiches from the local “boucherie” (remember, this is the French town), put on our raincoats and paddled out.

As it turned out kayaking does not make you seasick as long as you keep paddling. After some minutes getting used to it all the happy couple yelled at us “this is fun!!”, and so we continued paddling.
We found a little beach and ate our sandwiches, looked for pretty shells and saved the kayaks from being swept away by large waves a couple of times.

Then came the actual purpose of the trip: dolphins! The lady had told us to make noise and sing, and use two “magic rocks” to make clicking sounds under water to attract the dolphins. This resulted in wet arms and sore vocal cords, but no dolphins. So in the end we just slowly paddled back and smoothly landed back onto the beach. Everything was wet, but it had been a really fun day.

All Blacks!!!

As you probably all know, together with the rest of New Zealand we were heavily infected with rugby-fever over the last weeks. I followed the scores of the group games when still in the US, watched a few matches in Aussie, and Thomas and me watched all NZ games over the last weeks here in Chch. Originally Chch was supposed to host a few of the games as well, but after the February earthquake this was deemed unwise. To cheer the people up All Black captain Richie McCaw showed up multiple times to encourage us (Thomas got to see a lot of him when he was still working in the emergency centre), and they set up a “fanzone” in Hagley park, with big screens and “events” around it (concerts etc.). This sounds all great, but it is still early spring here and with most of the games being rather late in the evening (to accommodate those few Europeans who wanted to watch), it called for thermal underwear, wooly hats and thermos’es(?) of tea.

But oh! How well behaved kiwi sports fans are! Nobody lynched the 3 Argentineans in the quarter finals, nor the 1 Aussie during the semifinals, nor the 12 French at the final. All was peaceful. Perhaps because the game itself is so violent but fair?

It is interesting that although we watched with a lot of friends/colleagues/partners of colleagues and friends, NOBODY really knew the exact rules. It is obvious that the ball has to be scored over that far line and/or through those poles, but we haven’t yet figured out when the ball is out in which way and when this results in either a throw-in or a scrum, or when penalties are warranted. Nevertheless with some basic understanding of the game it is already really entertaining. And it helps when the surrounding kiwis know the rules and boooh or waaah and you get an general sense of whether the game is progressing well or not.

So for the final we went to the fanzone again, met up with my crazy Argentinean colleague and his family, and took along Charles, a guy I met in Egypt 2 years ago, who has ever since been travelling the world and is now in NZ for a few months (I know. It is hard to even be around him because I am so jealous of his epic world travels). There was a large crowd and several big screens and a good atmosphere. It was very intense the last half hour, and the relief and joy were great when the final whistle was blown. We encountered a lot of crazy people on our walk back home, but it was great to see the kiwis so happy about something that means so much to them.

As for us, we will now have to start following the national league to get our weekly rugby fix.


Here is the haka seen from our picknick blanket in the park:

From the fieldnotes of a soil scientist – Dance the night away

Tuesday March 1 2011

After the usual mess of getting all the gear in all the cars and all the people together for take-off, one car left to the first fieldsite, and the other car went to do extreme shopping. There was more discussion about the shopping than about the fieldwork, as everyone had a different theory as to where to get the most groceries in earthquake ravaged supermarkets.

We drove out of Christchurch and I was frantically trying to be positive, enthousiastic and in charge. Just before we entered the no-radio-zone the radio was playing “Dance the night away”, such an unfitting song for fieldwork but I decided I would use it to lift up my spirits during the worst of it. “Right now tomorrow's lookin' bright - Just like the sunny mornin' light”

In my car were Kate who is doing her research on my sites, the Dutch researcher Mark, the Dutch intern (who as you may have noticed remains unnamed for privacy) and the technician Chris. We found the first site, started working and finished all in good time with help from Ian and Brian (another technician) who arrived later. As we drove to our bach it started raining.

Wednesday March 2
I didn’t really sleep, but just lay listening to the pounding rain. I forced myself to hum “right now tomorrow’s looking bright”. It’s my 31st birthday, and in retrospect I wish I hadn’t planned fieldwork. I unpacked the cake I baked in the middle of the night before leaving, and sleepily the others congratulated me.

In the field it was wet and miserable. Because we were 7 people, we split up and tried to do more plots simultaneously. I ended up alone in a few plots a couple of times, slamming the soil corer with my hammer and compulsively singing “I JUST WANT TO DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY”.

Because it was wet and miserable, Chris and me decided to head out early. Ian and Kate were still at another site. We stopped briefly at the one spot with mobile reception in the wide vincinity to call home. Thomas started working in the city centre, entering data from damage reports around the suburbs. He said the city was unrecognizable and the damage heartbreaking. I felt sad and no swaying senorita could cure that.

In the bach, Mark and me tried to make the best of the early finish by discussing papers, experiments, future collaborations and some wilder theories. When Ian and Kate got home, Ian asked how our day had been. I replied we had left early and although it looked as if we were relaxing with tea and cookies, we had actually discussed work. He stared at me in amazement, started muttering, sat down, took a deep breath, and said in a grave and angry voice: “Nina, LISTEN. You CANNOT allow yourself to have days like this. We are ALREADY running behind schedule with the measurements, we CANNOT afford to do all the work next year, you NEED to pull this through or we WILL NOT be able to do ANYTHING with the data we have so far.” I stared at him. WTF was he saying. He could not just have said I don’t work hard enough. It must be a joke. I was about to smile over his silly joke, when Chris violently, in a very un-Chris like manner, retorted “Ian! We’ve worked really hard. You can’t ask us to work harder under such circumstances. I think we’ve done really well. The weather will clear tomorrow and we’ll catch up then with what we couldn’t do today”. Realizing Ian was serious, I chimed in “I thought we would use the national database for those data? I thought the measurements weren’t all that important anyway? I think it is way more important to get the samples. We do what we can” and only to myself I whimpered “it’s my birthday! Why is he so mean to me on my birthday…”.
Ian realized Chris and me had good points, and he said we were right. That settled the matter, but I remained angry.

Thursday March 3
Sunshine. Oh glorious sunshine.
We climbed an incredibly steep ridge that was covered in wasp nests. I (and probably all the others) was extremely worried about Kate, who just confessed to us she is pregnant. Apart from being responsible for a failed research-project I would be responsible for the miscarriage after she was bitten by millions of wasps, fell down the ridge and was run over by a milk tanker. Luckily nothing happened, although the intern got bitten 5 times and both her legs got very swollen.

Mark and me did most of the soil cores together. Or rather, I did the coring, and together we commented on the soils. We also gossiped about Ian. Apparently Ian had been bossing Mark about on one of the plots, and so Mark commented that although Ian is a nice guy and very intelligent, he also behaves rather weird sometimes. I was glad I’m not the only one to be under Ian’s follies and that Mark and I could share some typical Dutch down-to-earth observations about him.

Friday March 4
Ian, Kate and Mark went back to Christchurch-England-the Netherlands. Can’t say I was sad to see Ian go.

It rained again. After the sampling we drove to Hokitika and checked into a backpackers there. The owner had to tell me how worried he’d been about his family in Chch with the earthquake, and all the other guests hungrily asked me whether I had had much damage and how I had survived. Stupid catastrophe tourists. I was also informed of a pole on the sidewalk, that trembled everytime there was an aftershock in Chch. And that some lunatic had predicted the alpine fault to rupture next week.

Saturday March 5
Today we were in this plot at the foot of a steep slope, again basically on top of the alpine fault, when we heard a loud “CRACK, CRACK, CRAAAAAAAAACK, WHHOOOOOOOMPH”. After the first crack I realized a large, large tree was coming down (out of nowhere, it wasn’t windy or anything), and I jumped up and was ready to run, only I didn’t know where the tree was and in which direction it was falling in. Then I realized it was probably, hopefully, further away. Yet I tried to calculate, how tall a tree from how far upslope could still crash us here … We all made some remarks such as “wooah, large tree, hmm, haa”, but only later in the car confessed to each other we had all been in intense adrenaline rush.

Chris noticed “Nina, remember that day Ian was so pissed off about us not working hard enough? Have you noticed we get a lot more done as soon as Ian leaves??”

Sunday March 6
A long day, had to climb another insanely steep hill through thick bush, and at the end of the day still a 4 hour drive to Haast, where we arrived well into the deep of the night. All were grumpy.

Monday March 7
The lodge where we’re staying is owned by 2 geologists, one from Canada even! I talked to the guy and he said “after years of working throughout Africa, we just wanted to settle down somewhere quiet”. I remarked that “geologically speaking, this is far from being quiet”. But as any real geologist he supposed the alpine earthquake would wait another 100 or so years.

It was finally dry again after more rainy days, so we were re-sorting and drying all our gear in the morning, as all the tourists from the lodge were going off on their sightseeing. Everyone wanted to know what we were doing. One annoying Australian first tried to trick me into making political statements about dairy farming (“oh, forest soils, hmm. What do you think about NZ dairy?” well, I think it is entirely different from what I do, you idiot). Then he said “well, I suppose you guys only go out when the weather is fine eh!” I could bite off his head. Instead I vaguely waved about me and said “we’ve just worked for a week in continuous rain”.

Tuesday march 8
The whole day I thought it was Wednesday already. Bugger.

The Westcoast is soo incredibly beautiful, yet when we drive to another fieldsite again I wish I would not have to be here.

The intern and me had a good long talk during the work today. It’s nice to be reminded what it was like being 23, although I don’t envy her indecisiveness. What to do with life … She asked me how I had decided to do a PhD and a postdoc, and I realized it had all been coincidence really. Then she wanted to know what I would do after this postdoc. And I realized I still don’t have a plan really. Travel. Not have children. Another postdoc? Not sure if I can bear more soil samples in this lifetime.

Wednesday March 9
We are so tired and worn down. Chris mentioned his neck troubles have gone “at least a month back” in recovery. I can hardly lift my teacup and when we walk back to the car after a day sampling my knee and hip joints protest against the 30kg backpack. Brian has knee problems as well and the intern is still swollen from various insect bites. Chris asked me today if I don’t cause myself RSI with all the hammering. I’m certain I do, but what is the alternative. When we get home I’ll just blame Ian. We all blame Ian for everything now. We run out of bread, we forget the extra sample bags, the shotgun starts to fall apart, the sandfly bites, it’s all Ian’s fault.

Thursday March 10
Chris invented the idea of the “supplejack race” (Supplejack is a vine that can grow in dense tangles through the forest which makes it impossible to penetrate). You have to wear a pack of at least 20 kg, with a crowbar sticking out, and then cross a supplejack forest patch as fast as you can. We’d be worldchampions. I once nearly sat down and cried when I was looking by myself for the next plot and realized I was surrounded from all sites by a maze of supplejack. It reminds me of a movie in which the hero has to use wild acrobatics to go through a room of moving laserbeams to get to a jewel or something. You look ahead and try to decide under, over or along which tangles you have to go. It usually works for a while until a vine catches the crowbar sticking out of my pack and I nearly hang myself.
Moved back to Hokitika. In our room we discover real wineglasses. Me: “OMG! We don’t have to drink wine from teacups tonight!” Chris: “No, but we might have to drink our tea out of wineglasses”. In the meantime Brian admires one of the glasses “mmm, this glass is from a good year”.

Friday March 11
It’s hard to believe this is the last day for now.

I realize I’ve hurt myself with every single piece of equipment. Obviously I hit myself with the hammer a couple of times. I also had the soil corer fall onto my finger which hurt a lot. Despite knowing I shouldn’t allow myself to handle knives, I managed to cut through a sample bag, my pants and my skin once. I had the crowbar bump into my head and scratching deeply into my chest. I cut my fingers with a nail and with the metal measuring tape.

11 days of fieldwork in a row is too much. It’s all Ian’s’ fault.