Hi, everyone! While at first, I wasn’t thinking I’d be getting up to much this week… I did quite a bit! I think the most notable moments were seeing some really cool birds at Matakauri Park and then finally seeing glow worms here in Queenstown! Since birds and glowworms are the highlights of the week, I decided to title this post a spin on “the early bird gets the worm.” For me, the night owl gets the glow-worm!

Queenstown Gardens

After my blog post last week, I ended up going down to Queenstown Gardens to properly explore it. I have been many times before, but I usually walk along the trail that goes near the water. There are a couple of interior trails, too, that I finally checked out.

Lots of birds at Queenstown Gardens! And lots of rose bushes, too. And cool trees.

It’s a nice spot to read, or to just hang out.

There were some interesting plants that I found. The bees love the flowers and plants here. A little bee actually bopped me on the nose at one point. It didn’t sting – it just smacked me right in the nose haha.

I’ve been wanting to snap a picture of these bees for ages. They’re so massive!

Matakauri Park

I had passed Matakauri Park when I walked down to a nearby gorge a few weeks back. While my original intention was to go take pictures of goats and sheep, my plan got derailed. As I was walking along the footpath, I wandered into the park and decided to just stick with it.

There were a few ducks that I was walking behind that were getting really stressed out by my presence. I tried to pass them by, but they persistently marched along the trail – quickening their pace. Sometimes, I’d get sidetracked by a cool bird and the ducks would finally make some headway… but then I’d start walking again and they’d try to run away. Because it was a mom & dad duck, they were very intent on protecting their chicklings from me. “I’m not going to hurt you!” I said at one point. They didn’t understand me. I was actually a little offended that they thought I would try to hurt them. Me?! They really should have just moved off the path and waited until I passed them. It would have avoided a lot of unnecessary stress in their lives haha.

When walking along, I also saw a beautiful green bird.

I saw some other birds that were shades of green, too. One of them was more olive-y. A couple MAY have been the same green bird as above, but I’m not sure.

Otherwise, my favorite moment of the day was seeing a couple of tūī. I haven’t seen tūī much since my time in Wellington, so it was a delight to be reunited with them once again. And to snap some cool pictures!

Yay, tūī!

I bet by the time I leave New Zealand, I’ll have transformed into a bit of a birdwatcher. I’m already excited to try to see the albatross near Dunedin.

Work Christmas Party

Even though I’ve only been working at this job for a little over a month now, I was able to attend the annual Christmas party. We wrapped up work early and met outside to play some games. We got divided into teams and had to run around town doing a bunch of challenges. It was a fun time. Some people were a lot more into it than others. Surprisingly, I can be a little competitive so I was in it to win it. Our team (the pink team) did not win, sadly.

After we finished the game, we went to Winnie’s which is a nearby pizza restaurant/pub. We got pizza and fries, then there was a speech, and then there was dancing. I was at the party from 4.30pm until 11.30pm. For me… that is a long time to be in the presence of large groups of people haha. I had fun, though. It was nice to chat with my coworkers and get to know more of them. I danced a lot. I love dancing!

Some people got pretty wasted. And others stayed until 4am, even though they worked the next day. Wild!

While I’m not embarrassed by my sobriety, I don’t usually bring it up unless someone asks “do you not drink?” I think a lot more of my coworkers now know I don’t drink/drug.

Sober or not, it seemed everyone had a good time at the party.

Glowworm Gully

During my early days in Queenstown, I had stumbled upon a place called Glowworm Gully on GoogleMaps. It was only a half hour walk from my accommodation but for whatever reason, I just haven’t gone to check it out until the other night. I am not the biggest fan of inclines so I think that may have had something to do with it haha. I was under the impression it would have been a steep hike to get to the spot. It really wasn’t.

Apparently, the track that diverts towards Glowworm Gully is permanently closed due to iffy conditions (whoops!). The track runs pretty close to a waterfall. I think as a result, it can be wet and dangerous, especially in the winter months. I decided to check it out and see if it felt dangerous or not. Most of the track was fine but once I’d gotten to the gully, I realized why it was closed. The area surrounding the track was pretty steep and it had some slippery spots since it was right by the waterfall.

I wasn’t sure if I would even see any glowworms. I didn’t know if they were only around certain times of the year, or what the deal was.

As soon as I sat down and turned off my headtorch, I saw them. Three bright glowworms opposite the path. There was a waterfall and a creek separating me from the glowworms. They must have been thirty feet away and yet I could still see their glow. They looked like stars in the sky.

I was surprised I didn’t have to adjust to the darkness AT ALL before seeing the glowworms. The longer I sat, the more I started to see other fainter glowworms. There were dozens in the area. The three main glowworms spots were actually clusters of a few glowworms.

I was surprised to find that if I looked directly at the glowworms, they seemed to disappear. If I moved my eyes slightly to the right or left of their location, they appeared brighter. The same thing can be true of the aurora at times. I’m not sure why that is exactly? Perhaps our peripherals are better at picking up light?

I sat in the dark for maybe half an hour, watching as other glowworms came into view. At one point, I closed my eyes and meditated, listening to the sounds of the waterfall. With my eyes closed, I allowed my eyes to adjust further to the darkness. Once I opened my eyes again, it felt kind of creepy. Your mind plays tricks on you in the dark and here I was in the middle of the woods, alone.

Finally, I decided to move on but as I turned to leave, I realized there were some more glowworms even closer to me, on my side of the creek. Cool! I carefully walked up to the spot and got as close as I could. Even still, it was a steep area with a lot of dense shrubbery between the glowworm and me.

Considering I was only a few feet away, I could clearly see the glow of the worm as I looked at it, unlike the ones across the creek. It was almost a faint blue or a cyan glow. It seemed to be living in the hollow space of some moss.

If I’m remembering this right – the glow we see from glowworms aren’t actually the worms themselves. It’s like a sticky trap that the glow worms set in order to catch their prey. Weird!

I snapped a couple of pictures of the nearby glowworm and then began my descent towards town. Occasionally, I switched off my headtorch and stood still, looking around to see if there were any other glowworms. I would spot some farther off in the distance every now and then, until…

Maybe two minutes from the street, and the very entrance of the main trail, I saw the largest and closest cluster of glowworms I had seen yet. How amazing! They were at the perfect height and the only thing blocking me from them was a thin creek. Glowworms seem to like wet, mossy areas.

This cluster gave me the best pictures out of the bunch. I was really surprised to see them at the very start of the trail. I will definitely be going back and visiting them in the future!

I also wanted to mention that seeing these glowworms reminded me of seeing dismalites in Alabama. Dismalites are sort of the American version of glowworms. I had gone on a tour to see them years and years ago. It’s pretty neat that now in New Zealand, I don’t even technically have to go on a tour. I can go visit them any time I want (unless they move, I guess?) without the time constraint of a tour.

However, I will be going on a proper glowworm tour while in New Zealand. There are two really popular areas for glowworms – one is near Te Anau (which I might visit in early January) and the other is Waitomo. The difference between these tours and the glowworms I had seen the other night is that there are supposedly HEAPS and HEAPS of glowworms. The tours take you into a cave where the glowworms thrive. I will absolutely pay $100 to experience that.

And lastly – I wanted to mention that sometimes, pictures just do not do Real Life justice. To the naked eye, the glow worms had such a bright glow. Especially the ones in the large cluster. My phone camera just can’t pick up on them in the same way. It’s funny to compare it to the aurora – which always seems to pick up the colors/light even better than in real life. Why would that be?!

Miscellaneous

One thing I keep forgetting to mention is that there has been a boiling notice for water for months here in Queenstown. There was an outbreak of a “crpytosporidium” parasite and some people were getting sick. I have been drinking boiled water or water from a safe filtration system they have set up down the street. Anyway, as of yesterday, tap water is finally safe to drink again! Yahoo!

I kind of have been jumping between two roles at my job currently. One of them is the sales & marketing job, but the other has been training with the hostel manager at our staff accommodation every Monday. I will be covering her while she is on holiday for five weeks. I make that switch as of Monday. Anyway, funny story about this… There is a very, very old safe in the office at the hostel. It has been there since the previous owners had it and they left it behind. Every now and again, Emily tries to plug in numbers to see if she can open it. She’s been doing this for a year. While I was working on the laptop, Emily was looking around the room and saw an old painting of New Zealand. She pulled it down and asked out loud, “is this Queenstown?” She looked at the back of the painting to see if it said where it was from. Sure enough, the back of the painting had the code to the safe. We could not believe it. When it worked and she had opened the safe, we were both cheering and screaming. It was really exciting and so cool that I was able to witness her crack the code after she had tried for an entire year. Unfortunately, there was nothing inside the safe except for some old keys and name badges. Damn! We were speculating there would be a dead body or maybe a bunch of cash.

Have I mentioned that with my job, I actually get a MONTH OFF of work? PAID? Oh, New Zealand… Love you. For years now, I’ve been planning to go see the 2024 solar eclipse with my parents. I mentioned it to my boss my first week of work and she said it wouldn’t be a problem since April usually isn’t too busy. After my performance review at the end of my first month working, I brought it up again and she said I was all good to request the leave. My leave is approved and I have bought tickets to go home for three weeks in April! Yay! It’s really nice that I don’t have to wait as long to see my family as when I was in Australia. And I was able to pay for the plane tickets with my New Zealand money, which is cool, too.

Another exciting thing is that I literally just found out that I get paid for public holidays and I don’t even have to work them. YES! This means I get a four day weekend over Christmas and also a three day weekend for New Years. I have been chatting with one of my Canadian friends Jay and we are talking about going camping down near Dunedin for two nights over Christmas. For New Years, I think I’ll go to Te Anau for a night or two and go on one of the glowworm tours there. I really, really wanted to go to Stewart Island but it would be pretty pricy and rushed to get down there and back in four days. I will leave that for April because once I’m back from the states, I still have another week off.

I also recently talked to someone who was visiting Queenstown who literally has been LIVING. IN. ANTARCTICA for the past year. He’s from Minneapolis. I was asking him a million questions because I always thought you had to have all sorts of crazy degrees/specialties in order to do something like that. He started off washing dishes. Sooooo, I will definitely try to live in Antarctica at some point in the years to come. That would be wild! He said he would see the aurora once a week down there in the winter months!!!

And finally… thank you to everyone who has been supporting my new book! I think thirteen or fourteen people have bought it already. If you enjoy it, please do share it with other people. I understand there was a minor issue with the formatting on the first version. I’ve updated and republished it and seems the issue is fine now. A hardcover version is available now, too!

Art of the Week

I am definitely getting into this new theme. Not much to mention about it. I hope you enjoy!

Reflections

Overall, it has been a great week. I’m not really feeling stressed out or anxious. I am a little fixated on trying to see the southern lights again, but I’m trying to let go of that fixation. I will absolutely see them again, it’s just a matter of when. Solar activity has been calm lately, which works out well because it has been really cloudy the last few days. It is supposed to rain all afternoon and evening.

It’s Saturday here. Since I’m stuck inside, I won’t be doing much. I have been slowly working on a new book on and off since June called The Death of Duncan Lee. It will be very different from Eclipse Me. It’s coming along. / The Death of Duncan Lee is about a hard-working college graduate who unexpectedly dies at his university’s graduation party. Duncan then enters a surreal, Alice in Wonderland-esque Limbo where he meets two other spirits. As is tradition in Limbo, the trio try to escape Limbo in order to pass over to the Afterlife. / I worked on it a little bit today.

I’ll get sushi tonight, maybe work on a drawing, and then otherwise will just watch some episodes from season three of Search Party.

If the weather cooperates, I will DEFINITELY be going to Arrowtown tomorrow. Finally!

That’s all for now.

Until next time, I’m sending you all my love. xx