New Zealand Nature Blog

This week two US students trapped in New Zealand's South Island wilderness by a snowstorm, trekked back out to safety after surviving their nine-day ordeal by rationing their meager supplies to a biscuit and jelly per day. "I believe when you go into the bush you take your life into your own hands and need to be prepared to handle whatever conditions occur,"  said 21 year old  Alec Brown . "We could have been more prepared, but in the end we were prepared enough to walk ourselves out." We disagree.

The NASA Discovery crew spent the equivalent of 365 days in space on a range of missions including launching satellites, working on the Hubble Telescope and carrying materials to the international space station in orbit 400km above Earth. The space station travels at 28,000km/h orbiting the planet six times a day - so one can only assume they were quite capable of handling the 100 metre Abseil (rappel) into Waitomo’s Lost World Cave. 

Nelsons Blue Lake at the top of New Zealand's South Island has some of the clearest water in the world, a study has found. The water is considered almost as "optically clear" as distilled water. Niwa aquatic optics specialist Rob Davies-Colley said it was highly significant that the clarity of the water in the lake was close to pure water.

Smarter than the Average Monkey

The New Zealand Kea, the world's only alpine parrot is known as the 'Clown of the Alps' to South Islanders; and has recently been heralded as the world’s smartest bird (its intelligence rivals a monkey’s) says the Institute of Cognitive Biology in Vienna.