Hanmer and Kaikoura

Hanmer Springs

We took our first trip with our new car last weekend to Hanmer Springs! It was so nice! It is only about 2 hours from Christchurch and they are known for their hot springs! The drive was fine but still a little nervous about driving on the left.  We took a hike up to a beautiful waterfall and were the only ones there.  Afterwards we went back to take a dip in the hot springs.  They had about 10 pools some of which were heated natural mineral pools.  It was very refreshing! we drove back the next day and enjoyed the hills and mountains in the background.

Kaikoura

Today I just got back from a fieldtrip to kaikoura with my wildlife biology class.  It was so much fun and definitely the best fieldtrip I have been on.  We drove up there on Friday and the sunset over the mountains was amazing.  We stayed in a marine research station right on the ocean with mountains right across from us.  The next morning we woke up and were dropped off in different areas along the coast to observe whichever animal species we picked for our research project.  We were observing 2 different coastal bird species, the pied shag and first fronted tern.  We had some luck at first watching the terns but they were just sitting there and not eating, which is what we wanted to see.  It was still awesome to just sit on the rocky coast and look at lots of different animals all day.  They have lots of seal colonies there and you can walk right up to them, but they bark if you get too close.  There was one seal even chilling on the side of the parking lot.  Later in the day we drove to another location to try to spot our other bird species.  When we got there we looked off into the distance with a telescope and saw about 100 dolphins jumping out of the water and feeding! We found our birds and were lucky that they were so active to watch. All in all I learned that watching animals in the wild can take alot of time and they never do what you want them to when you want them to.  Also our teacher is great and I learned alot about New Zealand wildlife and got to see most of them in person.