Rotorua

I flew into Rotorua late-ish and spent the first night in a backpacker and felt like many people seem to be touring New Zealand without really seeing the place.  Everyone was jumping from one activity to the next, rafting, zorbing, jet boating, etc. It seemed as though they had a list of things to see and do; each had to be ticked off, but the worth came from the number of things rather than the actual activity.  That being said I waste countless hours going up and down snowy slopes, so what do I know. 

A good chunk of the next day was spent wandering around Rotorua looking at the hot springs in the area.  For those who don’t know Rotorua sits in the middle of the conveniently named Rotorua caldera and falls squarely in the middle of the Taupo Volcanic Zone (my general study area).   Essentially it’s in the middle of a volcano of similar nature to Yellowstone.   There’s a lot of hot water just under the surface as is evident by the steam coming out of the ground or storm drains.  Very few people are allowed to directly use this water.  There used to be a bunch of direct use, but it caused a significant draw down of features and boreholes were strictly enforced.

The end of the day found me hopping into a van full of undergraduate geology students and joining their field camp for the next several days.  I was sudo-TAing, mapping, and generally getting the lay of the land.  Apparently I ran into the most relaxed week of the trip, because there was a fair bit of swimming (we were mapping next to Blue Spring, which produces such optically clear water that the river actually appears blue; though it’s kind of hard to see in pictures and I'm too lazy to photoshop it) 

    

The last day with them we rafted Kaituna (famous for it’s 7m drop), mapped some hot springs,  and jumped off of a 7-8m bridge.  All that went swimmingly, but getting out of the water I somehow encountered a bit of metal that left a 1 cm long and ¼ cm deep gash on my knee.  I should have got stitches, but there wasn’t enough time before I needed to catch a bus to Wellington for Fulbright orientation.  Instead I cleaned it out to the best of my ability and steri-stripped it up (thanks WFR—Wellington hospital decided that I had done a good enough job that they’d rather not mess with it, though I did get a tetanus shot for my troubles.  Healing wonderfully).

Fulbright orientation was wonderful.  It provided a crash course to NZ history, botany, zoology, and cultural studies.   It’s really hard to sum up the week in a few words, but suffice it to say that I know much more about NZ than any other country (except of course the US).   One event of prominence was a stay at a marea, which is the Maori meeting hall.   Accompanying it was a history and cultural teachings of the Maori to the present.     While I cannot encapsulate a people in a few words, one thing that I really enjoyed was the structure of the marea the main beam represents the backbone and the rafters the ribs of a person.  It’s a really cool idea and I really enjoyed it. 

Waitangi day fell in the middle of the week and I spent it with a host family north of Wellington.  We (the couple, Leigh and Dale, Leigh’s parents, and their 5 yr and 7 mo old children) went walking around a preserve dedicated to the native flora and fauna of NZ.  I forgot my camera, but it was a great day.   I must say that I have only wonderful things to say about every Fulbrighter I’ve run into and I can only hope that someday I can open up my (non-existent) house to a kiwi coming to the states.  From orientation I was supposed to head into the field again, but there were some complications with the Phd student I was going to be following around, so instead I headed back to CHCH.