Cheviot

Trip Start Jan 01, 2007
1
8
52
Trip End Ongoing


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Monday, February 12, 2007

Hello again,
after leaving the bland tourist mecca of christchurch, we headed an hour an a half north to rural Cheviot, for our first help exchange stay. We met Ellis (a lifelong kiwi), his finnish wife Sanna, and Sanna;s daughter Michelle. They took us to their ever so unhumble abode, a large home of hand-milled lumber highlighted by a gigantic stone firplace (could possibley fit a queen size bed in there), and two 9 meter high full logs supported the roof. The house is somehwhat close to being done and is very impressive. They put us in our own large bedroom, and were extremely hospitable. Not long after arriving we headed to Motenou beach for some fossil scoping out?!!? Motenou beach has amazing fossils! we saw hundreds of mollusc fossils from the eroding 100m high sedimentary wall next to the beach. We trekked down the beach further, and scoped out what was thought to be a marine dinosaur fossil vertibrae on the beach, it was huge Blokes hard at work
Blokes hard at work
 ! We checked further down the beach, and came upon two others, amazing! These buggers must of been 10 m long, ha! good as gold
This beach trip was just a preperation for our epic chopper expedition trip the next day, what!? The next day was spent on the phone for Ellis getting everything in place for the lift off the beach. The fossil was going to go with the fireplace in the 9 m high living room, righteo! Myself Eliis, and his large kiwi pal, Daniel managed to position the 570kg mudstone rock housing the 6 vertibrae and adjacent ribs onto a large net. We set up some smaller fossils into a second net as well. The chopper managed to pick them up all right and deliver them to the trailer positioned in the sheep field above the beach, everything went smooth, good as gold!
We rounded out our stay in Cheviot with visiting Ellis' dad's alpaca herd and eating plums, about 3 kg of them. 9 little plums in my mouth, 9 little plums in my mouth is what i was saying. Our stay with Sanna, Ellis and Michelle was great, gooday Cheviot
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