Long time no post

Fans, friends and family sorry it has been so long since our last post. Although some of you seem to think we are casually traveling New Zealand we have actually been super busy with nerdy geology. I (Eric) left Zion to his own devices on the North Island while I took the ferry South yet again to begin my work at the OceanaGold Globe-Progress mine located in glorious Reefton New Zealand. Reefton is home to about 1000 people and for most is just a stop on the way to the West Coast, however it is worth a stop the people there are wonderful and the wilderness is spectacular.
While I was working my way South Zion stayed in the Wellington area to finish an Electron Micro Probe Analysis of volcanic tephras portion of his project, see nerdy picture below:

During this time our fearless advisor Christine Siddoway came to visit us yet again. By visit I mean make sure that we are actually working. Christine spent a few days on North Island with Zion, then flew to the West Coast where I met her for a few glorious days of field work.




After two days of work on the coast a fierce weather system moved in with lashing rain so we returned to Reefton for another look at the rocks there. At this point Zion met up with us having hitchhiked from Picton where the ferry arrives. The photo below is from his hitchhiking adventure with a beautiful view of the rainy/snowy Southern Alps.



After reuniting with Zion Christine had head back to Colorado leaving us all alone to finish up our work here over the next month. Since Christine Departed Zion and I have been gathering data for my research on the West Coast just north of Greymouth. We have been fortunate to have some gorgeous weather here although it is known as an extremely rainy area.
The following photos are from my coastal field sites on the beach here on the West Coast.



Life on the West Coast includes fantastic sunsets when its not raining….



Living in a van on a tight budget sometimes means that the food options are not always ideal. Desparately in need of trip to grocery store we setteled for tuna, salt, oregano, and ketchup sandwiches as a snack one day YUM.


In addition to great rocks there are also fascinating tidal pools and lots of angry seals.



Lastly, I need to say a special hello to my Grandma Nini and her friend Babs who I hear are blog fans back in Mystic CT.

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.

just a quick update, sorry no pictures

This is Eric writing and I justed wanted to let everyone know what we have been up to. We returned to Wellington from the Hawke's Bay area (Zion's field sites) on Sunday. Zion has been VERY busy sorting out all the info he gathered while we were up there as well as fixing our GPS survey system which died on us. I attended the AUSIMM confernce in Wellington mon-wed. The conference was for australian based mining and exploration companies who are interested in New Zealand's mineral deposits. There were a number of people there with knowledge of my research area which also happens to contain some gold deposits. The conference was great, interseting talks, met some very helpful people, and had some delicious food.

Today (thursday) Zion is preparing some samples for microprobe analysis and hopefully we will be heading back up north towards the Hawke's Bay region for another week of field work. Last week we stayed with a farming family who happened to live almost on top of the fault line that Zion is researching. This week we are hoping to stay at Monestary that is also located right next to the fault. We should be back in Wellington again by next thursday and Christine our advisor will be back to check our progress soon after that.

The next post will have pictures, I promise