Northland travels

Oystercatcher at sunset
Camping near Cape Marie Van Dieman, west of Cape Reinga
Tree hugger
almost to Cape Reinga light
Mt. Ngauruhoe (filmed for the Lord of the Rings movies as Mt Doom)

Hello and greetings from Taihape (say Tie-Happy) in New Zealand. We are asparagus pickers now - nothing to get TOO excited about but it will help us break even on our costs! We will write more about asparagus picking later (although we may not have easy internet access in a few days b/c they are taking the computer away to give back to its owner).

Anyway- what is more exciting is what we were up to this past week. We have posted some photos (in both the julie and jay links) to show you a bit of our time in the northland (the bit of land north of auckland). We went on a great backpacking trip around the tip of the northland - called cape reinga. Man, did it rain on us. But I think we still had a lot of fun and it was GORGEOUS. When we got picked up from the cape, the guy who picked us up found out that we had backgrounds in biology and asked us if we wanted to see this bankrupt fish farm. He called up a kiwi guy and this nice fellow came over and gave us a tour of this UNREAL facility. Jay and I had never seen anything like it - what a mess. I can't believe the place even managed to prpduce a single fish because they were trying to raise kingfish (i am guessing something like salmon, i.e., a saltwater fish that is a predator and sucks down oxygen and food) in a facility that was built for tilapa (freshwater bottom feeder that has minimal life support requirements!). I could have told them they were going to go broke. They are out about 6 mil :(
We also spent a day in the giant kauri forest. The two of us have a thing for BIG trees and boy did we get that. They can't compare to redwoods, but hey - they are huge for little ol' NZ! They estimate that one of the trees we saw was 2000 years old. Can you even fathom that? I tried, but failed. Unfortunately they chopped down what must be close to 99% of these ancient forests.

Jay went surfing with his new board (he got a dirt cheap used board and wetsuit here). The waves were huge so he wasn't as successful as he hoped....but he looked great to me! We have so many more stories to tell, but it will have to wait until we are not rushing to get back out into the field to pick asparagus.

OK - write us emails! We miss everyone!