Happy New Year

WarPo Productions releases its first blockbuster film, "Exploring Aotearoa/New Zealand," just in time for the Solstice/Xmas season. As VIP audience members, you have been given free viewing rights to this epic story. Here are some of the initial reviews...

"This puts Peter Jackson to shame, his Middle Earth does not compare. This is a shoo-in for an oscar. And of course I like the idea of having a more equal role relative to those dreadful hobbits."

— Gollum

" There are some pretty stunning roots and trunks in here, but the Kauri are a bit stocky if you ask me. I am nominating myself for "best looking flora in an action adventure story."

— Treebeard the Ent

To download and view this stunning new masterpiece, right click (or control click on the link below). It will download to your regular download locale. It will take a couple of hours, plus or minus depending on the speed of your internet. It is about 700 mb, 25% of the size of a feature film. Once it is done, double click to watch it.  Watch it in full screen with good audio.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10677927/Aotearoa.m4v

Feathered Friends

There are no native mammals in New Zealand, though sadly a number of introduced species (possums, stoats, rats, etc.) have been wreaking havoc in the forests and killing birds and eating their eggs. Still, big efforts are being made to control their populations and they are mostly nocturnal. You rarely see mammals in the day. But there are lots of wonderful and unique birds. Here are some of the pictures we have taken with a little insight into our view of them (anthropomorphasized of course). A number of these pictures were taken on a wonderful day in which we rented kayaks and headed out into the Okorito Swamp, the largest coastal estuary in New Zealand on the west coast of the South Island. It was a spectacular day with the Southern Alps in the background. We wandered from the outlet through the mud flats and up into the rainforest.

Tui: “I am New Zealand!”

Wherever and whenever I hear the Tui (the bizarre and beautiful series of calls that sound like a happy creaky rusty iron gate closing), I will think of New Zealand. A friendly, beautiful bird that flits about sucking nectar from flowering trees (this is the one web picture as despite seeing lots of Tuis, we have no good photo of one. Everything else below is one of our photos.)

Spoonbills: Dressed to Kill

Watching spoonbills siphon mud through their bills is like watching the avian version of a guy on a beach with a metal detector searching for spare change.

Kototuku (White Heron): The Predator

Sleek, quick and flexible, fish do not stand a chance.

Kea (Mountain Parrot): Major Mischief— the Smart Aleck

Reputedly the smartest bird in the world and smarter than a monkey. When bored, likes to amuse oneself by breaking into cars, destroying rubber objects such as windshield wipers, stealing shiny objects (sunglasses), etc. Very personable and approachable but don’t be fooled!

Torea (Pied Oyster Catcher): The Temperamental Comic

It always takes two to tangle and they are not low key (they hang out in pairs). They will send you a laughable call one moment and “call you out” the next one if you do not get with the plan or get to close.

Red Billed Gull: The Thief

Prettier than some of their cousins, but no less skilled when it comes to food theft.

Parekareka (Spotted Shag): The Sensitive Stylist

They won’t let you close and they show off numbers of elegant positions as they perch and dry their wings.

Kereru (New Zealand Pigeon): Royalty

They love to perch high above you with royal elegance and colours.

Weka: The Rascal

On first blush they resemble a duck, but then they seem like a wild chicken. Oh my, the lengths they will go to as they try and sneak some food from your pot. Persistent, but not the sharpest tack in the pile.

Birds of the Field:

There are lots of little ones flitting about, mostly worried that you could be a threat.

The Moa: Lost and Found

The amazing flightless bird that ruled the land until the Maori wiped them out for food several hundred years ago before the Europeans arrived. We found these in a sculpture garden.

"Doom"sday

Our string of good weather, good luck and spectacular New Zealand scenery is about to be put to the ultimate test as we head out across the alpine grassland (tussock) on our final mission with Evan and Leah… to ascend Mount Doom (Mt. Ngauruhoe for all of you non Lord of the Rings fans). Could we do as well as Frodo and Sam and conquer this mountain? [I know, we are not supposed to try to “conquer” mountains in this post-modern world, but leave it aside, this is the mountain that has come to represent absolute evil in the universe (Hollywood). It needs to be conquered!].

 

Day 1, Friday, December 2: There had been some clouds on the horizon (not literally as it is a bright sunny day). The weather report had been ominous such that we had tried to shift reservations earlier in the week to a day earlier… But the campsites were booked. But now the latest weather says this afternoon will be showers, but tomorrow, the ascent day, will be fine, with a storm scheduled to roll in late on the third day (hopefully after we arrive at our hut). Day 1 is a simple four-hour traverse of the grasslands to our homey campsite by the hut. The mountain looms clearly above us, the scenery magnificent. The evening rain rolls in, less than we expect. Early to bed and all is set for the morning ascent.

Saturday, December 3: Early rise, no shine. Still, we can see the first ridge and the clouds on the peak are predicted to lift. Mist is in the air. A good early start (for us)… But not early enough to miss the hordes, the 500 plus people who start to tramp by us up the trail from their day hike drop off nearby (have you ever seen a remote mountain parking lot up a gravel road that had multiple lanes for tour bus drop offs?). They are doing this very famous 20 km alpine crossing (with a 2400 foot ascent), not counting our side trip up the peak… Most have only light daypacks so they are endlessly passing.

All shapes, ages and sizes zip and lumber by… those decked out in full gear, the Kiwis with shorts (even in cold weather), the jocks with a t shirt and shorts and nothing else, the woman limping with a reconstructed duct tape shoe, and the 10 year old with a prosthetic leg... Oh my god. Didn’t they read the multiple large trailhead warning signs… “Are you prepared? This is a dangerous high altitude crossing with unpredictable weather…” The approaches to Mt. Doom are not for the faint hearted or ill equipped, but here are a bunch of them. Frodo and Sam did not have to put up with this sort of crowd… This is not our idea of a romantic alpine peak ascent. Strike 1 for the mountain!

The track starts up and the low plants and mosses give way to black lava fields and steep slopes. The clouds settle in, the rain jackets come out, the mist thickens and the ridge envelopes with fog. Up we go with the hordes, bothered but feeling strong after three weeks of tramping elsewhere.

More rock, more lava, more black, more people…

To the ridge… more clouds, less visibility, more rain. No reason to go for the summit… what would we see beyond our hand? Strike 2 for the mountain…

But we can still get across the ridges and craters to our hut for the night. The clever WarPoTay trip planner has forseen possible bad weather and planned a route with a second opportunity at the peak the next day, we can conquer the mountain yet!… Up to the next ridge… more rain, wind, cold, fog… then a short brightening, a limited lifting... 

Would the clouds rise and give us a full view? Would the weather clear?... We stop for lunch to wait as the final hordes pass, wet and desperate to get off the ridges. Eureka, the lower crater clears for a minute… woomp… then driving rain, wind, climbing through scree across the most exposed ridge.

Pictures cease for fear of a drenched camera. Over the top and down to the hut… A tiny hut by NZ standards, crammed with people who are drenched and shivering. The camp site is a mud puddle and the new weather posting: Today- “occasional showers; Tomorrow: “heavy falls”; Following Day: “Rain”. Strike 3 for the mountain and we are out.

We abandon our conquest… two unplanned hours out to the day hike car park. A friendly New Zealander ferries us back to our car and by late evening we are warm in our Hamilton beds.

Sunday, December 4: We wake up dry as the rain pours down. A good decision but the mountain wins. We plot a return in the “Fall” with Shane and Chaiti. We have not measured up to Frodo and Sam!

A Well-Received Performance

Thanks to the Underwater Network at the University of Wellington for providing the digital recordings and vocalization translation below. Recordings were made off Kaikoura, New Zealand, November 25, 2011. Pictures are courtesy of A. Warner and Encounter Kaikoura.

The Performance Set

“Papahu, Papahu, wake up! Wake up the sleeping half of your noggin. It’s time. We can see the white pod on the horizon. Its full of quadrapuses and on a beautiful day like this, they will do a great show! Wake up!!”

“Ugh, wha?”...

“Wake up! The pod is coming!”

“Oh Terehu, I’m not sure I am up for a show, it’s a lazy morning, I might just prefer to nap… zzzz…”

“Papahu, you have to wake up! This is the only chance for a show for ten days now that the Council put on the summer participation quotas.”

“Oh, let me sleep, I was dreaming about mating with a couple of the beauts over in the next pod.”

“You can mate as much as you want the rest of the day but this is your only chance for 10 days to see the quadrapuses perform! This is special! And you might not get a nice day like this one again for a while. Remember yesterday?”

“What?... Yesterday?”

“I was chatting with Tupoupou and he had the quota ticket to watch the show yesterday. The seas were a bit rough but the pod came out anyway. The only problem was that almost none of the quadrapuses went in the water. They all stood on the edge of the pod and threw up into the water. It was gross. Tupoupou tried to get a bad weather postponement ticket as a result but the Council said no way. With a 1000 of us out here, none of us would ever get a turn if there were bad weather postponements given there is a limit of 100 of us participating each day.”

“Ok, ok, I am awake, where do we need to swim to to get the best view?”

“Oh my, Papahu, can’t you remember anything? We all agreed to the plan last evening that will get the best show. Don’t blow it.”

“Plan? What plan?”

The Pod

“Alright, I will repeat it one more time… We want to make sure the quadrapuses don’t just jump off the pod, swim around a lot, get tired and go home. That’s what happens if we go in and swim by them right away. I know it is a lot of fun to swim around the poor wretches but if we do that at the start, they tire and go home in a half hour. With a little planning we can draw out the show for an hour, and one day last week a group got them to perform for an hour and a half! So here is what we all agreed to do. We all swim out front together and get spotted. We linger right near them as the pod slows down so the black quadrapuses jump off the back of the pod and start swimming and performing. But, here is the trick!! You are not allowed to swim near them. Instead, back off out of sight and just listen, so they cannot see us. After a while they will go back on the pod and it will go looking for us again. We repeat the same process and we get to watch them jump off the pod again and then pile back on a little later when they can’t find us. Watching the on/off part is so cute. It is one of the best parts and we get to watch it multiple times this way. Now the third time they jump off, that is your first chance to swim around them and watch it all close up. By then they are real motivated to see us and they do their best show. Finally we need to pull away so that they can return to their pod and rest up for one more performance. If we all follow this plan, we get four shows for the price of one! Got it!”

“Ok, ok, yeah I do remember it all now. I’m game.”

“So we are all here in formation, jump to your spot, it’s the big double bodied white pod that is coming. Swim!... They see us… remember, don’t get too near them.”

…The double bodied white pod approaches, and 16 black skinned quadrapuses slide off the back into the water. They make a range of grunts, groans and squeaks to no avail. They head back to the pod. It moves on a bit and they slide off again with more splashing and vocalizations. But in their view, their performance again is unnoticed…

 A Performing Quadrapus

“Terehu, you’re right, they are pretty funny. Why do they swim like that? What a clumsy mess of tentacles. How come they are so awkward? And the noises… They sound like a bunch of sick seals.”

“Papahu, the fun has just begun! I must say it was really hard to keep away from them. I was laughing so hard I almost forgot to breathe. Ok, so here comes the pod again and this time we get to swim all around them when they slide off the pod. Follow me. I saw four really funny looking quadrapuses who were somewhat away from the rest of them. They were squeaking real loud and one of them has a whole lot of fur all over his head. He is really cute.”

…The quadrapuses slide off the pod once again, and to their pleasure and satisfaction, the audience appears and the quality of the performance improves…

“Check out the quartet. The big old one is awkwardly turning in circles as I swim around him. He is so slow. I was swimming around the outside, covering five times as much water as he while he was pivoting in the centre, and he still could not even come close to keeping up. And the noises coming from them, oh my.”

“Terehu, you cannot expect a lot from them, they are just quadrapuses and they do not seem to have much training, skill or sophistication. But they are amusing.”

“Oh, look at that one… She is trying to dive.. Ooops she only got three feet under and she floated back up like a swamped jellyfish. Ha ha. Lets swim real close by and see if we can get her to do it again… There you go, she did it twice. Wow!”

“Papahu, how come they have brightly coloured blow holes and feet, yellow, blue and green?”

Brightly Coloured Quadrapus Blowhole

“I am not sure, some think that they use the bright colours to attract the opposite sex. It is weird though, I have never seen them mate in the water.”

“Oops, the pod horn sounded and they are all headed back to the pod. With a bit of luck we can get one more performance out of them Papahu.”

The pod approaches the group again and once more the black quadrapuses slide off and begin the show…

“I think they are tiring Terehu. They are making less noises and they keep putting their heads out of the water and looking toward the pod. We have to keep swimming around them or they will quit on us.”

“Yea Papahu, the third performance was the best. But look over there. See the slim one. She swims better than the rest of them and has pretty big fins for her size. I think she has a bit of dolphin spirit in her. She is a pleasure to watch.”

I agree Terehu, she is smooth… Well, that’s it, they are all headed off back to the pod and then to their homes. Thanks for sharing the fun with me. I am headed off to find one of those beauts.

Editor’s Note: For quadrapuses interested in a behind the scenes look at the performance, go to http://www.dolphinencounter.co.nz/kaikoura/Dolphin_Welcome/. You could be a performing quadrapus someday too. It is an amazing and unforgettable experience.

The Audience Shows Its Appreciation

In the Footsteps of Hillary

First there was Tom Fyfe, the first person (and a New Zealander) to climb Mt. Cook, the highest peak in New Zealand, in 1894…

Then there was Sir Edmund Hillary, who climbed Mt. Ollivier as his very first Mountain, which is adjacent to Mt. Cook, and then within a few years Mt Cook itself in 1948…

And then there was G. Point and her trusty companions who climbed Mt. Albion in November 2011 (we decided against attempting the higher Mt. Cook this time)…

Well the comparisons are inappropriate other than it was a bit of a challenge for us and we were slightly on our edges. After three incredible weeks of back country trips, getting progressively higher into the Southern Alps as we went (more on that later… I am so far behind with the blog that I decided to start in the now and go back over time), we arrived at the mountaineering centre of a country which is very big on mountains and mountaineering —Aroki/Mt. Cook. The only significant overnight tramp we could do in the area without crampons and ice axes was to Mueller Hut, just a few meters in the shadow of Mt. Albion. (when Hillary did it there was not a track in good shape for much of the way).

To start, we awoke in our valley campground to a blustery day of wind, sun and mist. As we started our steep ascent, the wind escalated further. As we went up the steep ridge, so did the wind, and then on the steep snowfield, things got wilder. After four hours of climbing, we crested the ridge and whop, the wind blew us back. We took off our packs and bent forward to crawl around the corner to see what was ahead and if this was doable. Happily, the corner was the worst and we could in fact finish the last 500 meters without turning back. In short order our dear hut showed itself shining in the sunlight amidst more than a meter of snow.

Though unheated, it was very welcome. We found a very friendly and interesting volunteer hut warden inside, who made us welcome. Folks from a mountaineering school and a guided trek turned up for a great sociable evening as we shouted to each other above the howling winds, which were now at 80 km. We grimly read the history of another hut posted on the wall that had blown off a nearby mountain with 4 people inside some years ago. Check out the latches on the door at Mueller Hut— to stop them from blowing off…

Oh, and also check out the washroom facilities, literally, freezing our bums off.

As the evening wore on, snow blew in with the wind, and we all huddled around the short wave radio to hear the nightly shortwave broadcast of the weather with the hut check in from the Valley floor (it felt like old time radio with everyone hanging on every weather word). Would the snow and winds continue? Could we get down through the steep snowfields in the morning? Would the snowfields freeze making a non-crampon descent impossible? The weather prediction was snow and more wind… Yipes. Get to bed…

The alpine guide with another group told us to take his extra climbing pole when he found out that I did not have one for the descent. He and his group started off at 7 am to beat the snow accumulations, and we were only a half hour behind at 7:30, with the benefit of following the little that was left of their footsteps (that is impressive for notorious late starters, but fear is a good motivator). Indeed it had snowed through the night, but it was wet and not accumulating as much as it might have. As we took off, the wind dropped (hurrah) and the snow was still soft for footsteps, though blowing in quickly. Our nerves turned to mirth as we hit the top of the snow field and realized the soft snow was slow enough and perfect for sliding and boot skiing down without getting out of control… Fun was had… a five hour ascent was finished in half that time, though the lower half found us in rain rather than snow. Happily drenched we arrived at the car and shelter, recognizing that we had reached just within the limits of our skills and capabilities in fine style.

And since we hear Nova Scotia is getting snow these days, please smile and know we got our dose of a good winter storm.

Sea Friends: A Passionate Maverick

I am a sucker for any good place to snorkel so after combing the guidebooks for the best NZ locale, we set off for the marine reserve around Goat Island. The snorkeling was great, though cold, despite our wet suits. Lots of big fish (metre long snapper gliding by your nose) in an assortment of colours and shapes gliding around the kelp beds and reefs. In fact the underwater plants and rocks seemed quite similar to the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, but the fish were way different, bigger and far more plentiful. Unfortunately we did not spring to rent an underwater camera so the pictures are only in our memories. But beyond the fish was the gentleman we stumbled into in the process of renting our snorkel gear. We were driving into the reserve with lots of places to choose as a rental locale. The little sign “Seafriends” at the head of a treed driveway seemed most intriguing (good intuition). In fact it was a marine education centre run by Dr. J.Anthoni, and his family for the past 25 years.

3000 school kids a year come through and beyond our 2 hour snorkel, we spent at least that much time talking with him about his mission and passion in life— to educate the world about the importance of caring for and protecting coastal areas. He is an amateur scientist who has taken thousands of underwater photos over twenty five years of marine life and changing conditions in the area, which he uses to educate and advocate for change at scientific and policy levels while doing the education. His message is that coastal life is not specifically imperiled by over-fishing (though management is necessary) or in particular need of marine reserves, rather it needs people, agriculture and industry on land to stump dumping its pollutants into marine waters.

 Dr. Anthoni

With little help from anyone, he has built this Marine Education Centre, which includes small aquariums, neat graphics and passionate conversation. Classes, rotate across three activities in a day: snorkeling, discovering creatures on the rocky shore, and spending time in the Education Centre where they learn the concepts behind their experiences on the coast (not a bad experiential process for an informal educator no wonder the classes keep coming back). 

Antonio prides himself on being a maverick and aims to prove the scientific establishment wrong in a number of cases. It was humbling to spend time with one person who has spent a lifetime fighting for a cause. Here and there across New Zealand, there seem to be numbers of somewhat eccentric folks working for a better world. This country seems to give them space to flourish.

Waikaremoana: A Place Worth Fighting In and For

Waikaremoana is one of the most remote and well preserved locales on the North Island. Just ask Ginny’s stomach about the 2 hours of gravel road with a hairpin turn every 50 metres. It was up there on the infamous roads list with our legendary Himalyan Roads of past adventures. Happily, we were behind the wheel, not a crazy Indian, and also there was almost no other traffic (no Indian trucks or busses). Well there was the one crazy van hurtling around a corner but. Waikaremoana has always been remote and so was the hiding place of the last of the Maori guerillas who fought the British in the late 19^th century. In the 1970s it was a battle of a different sort in which the good guys (the environmentalists) won and preserved the forests forever from logging, transforming it into a large, remote national park. We thank them and benefited from their courage. Here are a few photos and captions for our 4 day, 60 km tramp around the lake and through the forest. More words do not seem necessary.

Mr. Agility (there was a bit of mud)...

An amazing, mystical NZ Beech Forest...

Don't tell Peter Jackson but we found Treebeard 

and interviewed him, quite a wise old Ent.