Monday morning, a few minutes after midnight I woke up because my bed was shaking. A lot. I sleep on the lower bunk and even though the top is empty, my brain immediately thought "Someone is doing something inapproproate on that bed". Until I completely woke up, I pictured the shaking-camper-cliché. What can I say, appearently I am dirty minded.
When I completely regained conscience, the place was still quaking and I quickly ruled out adult activities, drugs and drunkenness. By the time I actually realized that it was a real, actual earthquake, it was almost over. For some reason I was not even scared or freaked out, just thrilled to experience it first-hand. Just a few days ago I thought that it would be really cool to experience a little one, just to know what it feels like. At that time I also didn't know how big it was and what damage it had caused. I also have to admit that no one actually did the safety procedures we were told to do. It always sounds so obvious and easy when you hear it, but if you are woken by an earthquake, it's hard to actually act on it. Anyways, I was in a lower bunk, which already is one of the safest places you could be, and it wasn't strong enough here to cause damage.
The many aftershakes were a bit annoying, since they woke me again a couple of times. We felt little trembles till the middle of the week and apperently, there still are little quakes in the same area.
In the morining, I scared my friends and family with the newspaper articles. I think they were a lot more worried about the situation than me or the people here. Here, everyone just thought it was kind of cool, and they said it was stronger than the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Well, the people of Kaikoura aren't too chuffed about it, probably, and I as well as other people I know would have loved to go whale watching there.
The whole week, apart from wednesday, we worked on Cobden Island near Greymouth. We mostly weeded blackberry, gorse, willow, lupin, and other bad stuffs. I got to cut down big thorny gorse bushes again, which was awesome. I still find thorns in my skin.
You have probably heard that there was this supermoon, which also ment higher tides than usual. That kind of caught us off guard a couple of times. It's an island with drains through it, in order to increase the Whitebait-numbers. We went to plant on the other side of a little, not even ankle-high creek, and when we tried to go back a few hours later, the water was well over knee-hight. We had to take off our boots and socks. Another hour or so later, we would have had to wade though a hip-high river.
On Wednesday, we planted for a charming lady who received us with sweets, coffee, tea and home-made chocolate cake because it was raining in the morning. Needless to say, we worked extra hard. She even had vegan espresso-chocolate. Heavenly...
We finished work early on Friday and went to Greymouth where I had to say goodbye to two people that I had had a lot of fun with over the last few weeks. It's always sad to know that you'll most likely never see these people again that you spent every minute with. Then I jumped on the bus to Hokitika.
It's basically just motels and Jade sellers. Many people in town carve that famous green stone as a hobby and sell it by the roadside.
I found one store with a different kind of rock: NZ Ruby Rock. That was honestly one of my most memorable New Zealand-experiences.
From the outside it looked dark and closed. There was a sign saying "Open", though, and I was kind of curious and had time to spare. When I entered, I saw that there were two old men in there, talking, but one of them quickly left after spotting the potentional customer. I felt kind of bad for disturbing the conversation and I knew I wouldn't buy any vintage-looking yet pretty ruby-earrings so I tried to subtly leave. The man in his seventies seemed thrilled that a young person had stepped into the store and asked me if I maybe just wanted to learn something, and that he didn't even want to try and sell me anything if I didn't want to buy it. For some reason I stayed and let him tell me about his art at first, then his family and eventually the entire story of his life.
Appearently he was the only gemcutter working with this very rare stone that he called ruby rock, It's New Zealand only precious stone and can only be found there, at the west coast of the South Island. It contains Ruby, Sapphire and Tourmaline crystals in emerald green mother rock, Fuchsite. It's pretty!
After watching a couple videos of him and his work, his daughter's music videos and his young grandchildren singing, I decided I had to leave if I didn't want to stay the night. When I left, he gave me a yellow sapphire - for free! So yeah, I am now the proud owner of a small precious stone.
Our teamleader gave me some tips in advance and told me what to do: Go to the gorge and the museum. The museum was, unfortunately closed since the building was deemed unsafe and the gorge is 33 kilometers away from the town, which is a bit too far to walk. There is a shuttle, but that's just crazy expensive, so I decided to hire a bike. The guy at the shop seemed a bit worried when I told him what I wanted to do, but it was alright, at least the ride there. On my way back, I there was wind from the sea, so very adverse. That made it a lot harder! I also didn't have proper pants, so my butt got really sore after some time, and my pants got caught in the chain, even though I tried rolling them up. The gorge was worth it all, you could say it was gorge-ous!
I went further up the road and took a little walk as well.
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| I thought these pipes looked a bit like binoculars |
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| For some reason, there were a bunch of bees around on the pebbles. Just on the ground. |
And I met a Llama.
At night, I went to the glow worm dell, which was amazing, like a bunch of stars. It's not a cave, It's just a part of the forest, so you need to go when it's dark. The later the better, I guess. If you go after midnight, it will be completely dark and there won't be that many people around. After my 70k bike tour, I was a bit too tired to wait that long, but I still saw them good enough at 10.
On sunday, I walked around in town for a bit and looked at the jade shops. Then I took a walk at the beautiful beach. Sadly, it's still too cold to actually go swimming and have a pleasant experience.
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| You don't see it on the pictures, but the sand is a bit shimmery, so when the sun shines on it, the beachi glitters golden! |
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| Some of these stones could be jade! If you look closely and are lucky, you could find some yourself. |
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