Business Time

Hello again, now for some pictures and the latest tales from the North Island. Field work has been going well, I've finished all of mine up (me being Zion), as far as I think. got a lot of great data, spent a lot of time mapping and surveying an active fault running through the eastern farm country of the North Island, besides the fun with mud and GPS equipment, we also made a lot of good friends too, the people here are probably the best part, they are very friendly and hospitalitly seems to be the main theme around here, though, based on the picture below I guess that is not surprising, who wouldn't want to welcome these fine young lads in for a cup of tea.



Did I mention the field work was great, well I guess if you minus the daily rain showers, which you can tell by his expression, Eric is more than fond of.

But despite the rain, the area had some beauty too, morning fog was common before it started raining.

We made some friends too, here is the first farm family we stayed with (notice the fault scarp running through their back yard), they invited us to stay with them for several days during our first week of field work, Eric and I were both thrown back by how generous they, and everyone else in the area seemed to be. It was a good time, there son was 12 and had a lot of questions for us. The first morning we were there Eric had an experience he couldn't stop talking about, we got to ride in the back of the truck around the farm while the steers were shifted between paddocks, and Eric was amazed by how well Sam, the sheep dog, could corral up the entire heard and move them into the next paddock. This was Eric's first farm experience, sadly we never were able to convince any of the farmers owning planes or helicopters to get us up into the air, but we were offered a 4-wheeler at one point.

Besides the farming adventures, Eric and I were fed some Delicious home cooked meals while we stayed there, beef, potatoes, and beer goes down well after an 11 hour day of field work.

Speaking of field work, this is actual proof that we are really actually doing work here, not just going around in a van all day talking about how it is a pretty MANtastic life.

We came back to Wellington for a few days to fix the GPS equipment, it was giving us problems which we got fixed, then we went back north to the Dannevirke area again, this time though, we were invited to stay at a catholic monastery with benedictine monks (who also happen to have the fault scarp running right in front front of their monastery). They set us up with our own little cabin, the "Honey House", out behind the Monastery. We had our own little place, probably so we didn't smell up the rest of the place, or have to wake up at 4 AM with everyone else. They fed us too, though this time there wasn't any beer involved.

All in all the rain and clouds did clear up now and then, got some good days and some great view of the mountains in the background. I realized the place is a lot like if you took the farm country of Wisconsin and put it into the scenery of Colorado, so not too bad.

Oh, and I thought I would leave you with one of those "pretty pictures" again. Eric is doing well with the standard kiwi attire of short shorts and gumboots. More to come soon, next stop-South Island.