Catching up.

True to form, it's been a while since my last blog post.  Sorry.  But this always happens when I've been off on good adventures, and this time I certainly have!  Work has been keeping me busy with lots of people in town, and silly questions seem to be coming out of the woodwork lately.  Like this one:

A middle-aged lady from the US comes up to the counter and starts asking about all the tracks to do in the area.  She's planning for her next trip to NZ and is getting really excited about the possibilities for going on a Great Walk or two.  She looks at me and says, "I know this may be a weird question, but I travel by myself and I just wonder...do people get murdered on these tracks?"  Wait, wait, wait, rewind.  People murdered in Fiordland, the nicest place on earth?  "No, no, you don't have to worry about that here.  Everyone's just happy to be out there," I tell her.  Her response: "Oh good, because I'm from America and in America we have to be careful."  Apparently it went right over her head that I have an American "accent", even though we'd been talking for a good ten minutes at that point...and please, tell me where in the States people get murdered on a hike?

Or the one that takes the cake:

In the Fiordland NATIONAL PARK Visitor Centre: "So is there like a national park here?"  DOH.

Needless to say, customers have been keeping us entertained.  Time off has too.  One day early in the month Anja and I went for a little walk on the Circle Track, in Manapouri (a 20-minute drive, or in my case, 1-hour bike ride south of Te Anau).  The steep track led to a cliff edge and this lovely view:

A few days later, I went out as one of the DOC staff members on a special day hike up to Lake Orbell, in the Murchison Mountains (the Murchies, as the locals call them).  The special thing about the Murchies is that it was in this range that Dr. Geoffrey Orbell rediscovered the takahe, one of New Zealand's native flightless birds.  They were thought to be extinct until Orbell's discovery in 1948 - since then, DOC have been running an intensive breeding/recovery program to try to bring the birds' numbers back up.  We're currently at around 160 birds in the entire world, 60 or so of which live in the Murchies around Lake Orbell, in the appropriately named Takahe Valley.  Here's a map:

The track led steeply up through the forest to the valley, which was moody in the clouds:

We tracked a couple pairs of birds and used a caller to see if we'd get any response - in the end we heard two pairs calling back to us, but since they were hiding out in the trees, we didn't actually see any.  Would've been nice, but it was a great trip either way.

The next week I went up Gertrude Saddle with Pi'ilani and Matteo, two friends from Te Anau.  This time we had much better weather (last time I went it was all cloudy) and the view from the top was phenomenal, as always.  Check it out - the water in the distance is Milford Sound.

 Last week I went up to Queenstown to join Cory and his parents Rick and Gina for a fun little weekend.  We played frisbee golf, ate good food, played cards in the park, and went to the Classic Hits Winery Tour concert at the Waitiri Creek Winery a bit north of Queenstown.  Concert day couldn't have been better: it was clear and sunny and beautiful and we got to sit outside listening to great music and sipping great wine.  One of my new favorite groups from the show is Anika, Boh & Hollie, a trio of Kiwi girls with great voices and harmony.  But of course, the highlight was Fat Freddy's Drop, probably the most well-known Kiwi band ever.  I'd heard of them before ever coming here, on recommendation from a friend who'd studied abroad in NZ and told me that if I ever got here, I had to make sure I went to a Fat Freddy's concert.  His recommendation was spot on - what a great time.

One evening we also went to see Django Unchained (and I'll give you one guess who got to pick the film, ahemcory).  True to Tarantino's directing style, there were some over-exaggerated shoot-outs with blood flying everywhere and painting the walls red....not quite my style, but it did have some great actors and a few redeeming funny lines.  The film's been quite controversial for its violent scenes and free use of the N word - I can see now why Tarantino decided to delay the film's release, which was originally scheduled for the same time as the school shootings in Pennsylvania.  But it did win two Oscars last night, so they did something right - especially Christoph Waltz who won for best supporting actor.  He really was phenomenal!

Now later today, I'm heading out to help with a vegetation survey near Milford Sound.  I couldn't be more excited!  We'll get to camp out in a gorgeous spot for a couple days and do some important work - this is part of an ongoing study of deer browsing on vegetation as an indicator of deer numbers and ranges (at least that's the general gist of it).  I'll get more of a specific idea in the next couple days and update you when I get back.  Oh, and did I mention we get to go out in a chopper too?  This is too cool.  Here's where I'll be:

All photography copyright Kendall DeLyser.