More kiwi's!

About two weeks ago, me and Natasha went to the kiwi island again! Natasha was with me to show me the burrows that I didn't do last time (aka a lot of them!). From next month on I'm supposed to go to the island on my own and find all the burrows myself. That's a challenge! Since there was no catch week, this time we took the bus up north to Auckland. It was a night bus which was supposed to arrive at 5:30 in the morning, so prepare for a short night! In the evening, Tim gave us a ride to the bus stop in Palmy so we didn't have to struggle with our luggage. We hopped on the bus and found 2 seats next to each other in the upper part of the double decker, so that was nice. I prepared for a long journey, but time flew! Guess I was lucky. In no time we were in Auckland. As soon as we arrived, the waiting begun. We had to do some shopping, but no supermarket was open yet, and our taxi to the bay would be there at 11:30. After an hour of sitting at the bus stop we found out that the McDonalds was already open, that means breakfast time! (Don't worry, no french fries for breakfast this Mac sold american pancakes and english breakfast!). After eating those yummy things the supermarket was finally open, so we bought everything we needed (which was a lot) and went to find a place to sit. There I decided that I was hungry again, so I bought a subway chicken teriyaki roll which was yum :D After a while, the taxi finally came, and after a 1 hour drive we arrived at the bay where the boat would come. We put all the bags onto the boat and headed towards our dear kiwi island! It was really nice to see it from the boat this time, since I could recognise things that I didn't know yet last trip. When we came onto the island, we were being greeted by some (wild?) donkeys that live there. There were two little ones, which were really cute to see. We stayed in the same hut as last time, so it was nice to be back in a known place. It was already late, so we had dinner and after some chatting we went to bed. It was going to be a tiring but really nice week! Every day the program was more or less the same, rising around 8 and leaving at 9, although I usually left somewhat later xD Before I left, Natasha explained to me which burrows I was supposed to do (aka putting a hot water bottle in there and get it out after 1.5 hours and measuring the size of the burrow). The rest of the morning and afternoon I walked through the hills and forests of the island, looking for all the burrows and asking for directions if I couldn't find one :p The searching could be tiring from time to time, but it was really nice to see the forest and the hills again. In the evening, all the bags I collected went on the table so I could count all the ticks that were on there. Usually, the bags had no ticks or no more than around 40, but one bag had 1140 ticks! Can you believe it? :O My skin still itches if I think of it... We put the ticks in small ziplock bags so we could return them to their respective burrows. All the days everything went alright, except for one night, where I couldn't finish the burrows before dark. I was in a place that I didn't know that well yet, and the track there is quite confusing. Luckily I had a torch with me for emergencies like this, because it was really pitch black there. At first I tried to follow the tags there, but they were so confusing that I lost them. Then I tried to find the closest burrow by GPS, but due to the bad reception in forests I walked about 10 meters from it without being able to find it. I became a little bit scared, so I tried to call Natasha. Luckily she picked up the phone quickly, and she instructed me to find a GPS point at the base of the hill, where the tags were less confusing. From that point on I was able to follow the tags again. While walking through the dark forest, I could see tiny little blue lights all around me. Thinking of pictures I'd seen before I figured they should be glow worms. I took a closer look and I could see a worm sitting in a wall of dirt. It was really awesome to see and I even managed to take a picture! After some time I managed to get out of the forest, where the tags stopped, but where I knew my way well enough to find the hut again with only my torch. After this adventure I managed to eat 3 plates of the delicious noodle sir-fry Natasha made that night! Omnomnom. After this awesome week on the island, me and Natasha went back again, first the boat trip, then the taxi and then the bus again. This time the bus arrived at 4:30 in the morning, and Tim was extremely nice because he picked us up! After arriving back home, we went to sleep immediately after all the adventures.