This is us leaning off a walkway traversing the top of a volcanic plug some 100 feet above the ravine below. As you can see, we’re both clipped in to a safety wire so it’s not really all that dangerous. This particular moment came at the midpoint of our day’s activity, a zipline tour set in a block of old-growth forest near Rotorua. Some of the trees here are 1200 years old or more, and up to 150 feet high.

The zipline excursions are offered by Rotorua Canopy Tours as the fundraising arm of an initiative to restore the health of the forest by eradicating invasive species — in this case particularly rats, stoats, and possums. Because the native NZ species aren’t adapted to them, and because they have no natural predators here (believe it or not, the possum is now the apex predator) their numbers have grown unchecked and they have seriously decimated bird populations and even denuded the foliage from trees. In this particularly sensitive forest area the conservationists are working to control the rodent numbers, principally through the use of traps. As a result the native species have been recovering nicely, including this fern palm that Susannah snapped a photo of from the suspension bridge above.

This evening on the recommendation of one of Susannah’s former students, we headed to the Mitai Maori Village for dinner and a show. That is, they gave us demonstrations and teaching on Maori culture, and fed us a meal baked in a traditional hangi. This is a method of slow-cooking food under cover using heated volcanic rocks. The demonstrations included a lesson on how to make a peaceful greeting as a visitor, music, exercises with various traditional weapons, and ended with a haka.