What I did on my holiday - December 9th

Today it was my turn for a morning off. What to do on my morning off? There is an entire island to explore with beaches, two summits (the North and South Summit), and lots of bush containing friendly birds? I lay in bed for a moment mulling over the endless possibilities. Please don’t be disappointed in me when I tell you that the big highlight of my morning off was finally taking a shower and doing some laundry.

The shower:

We’re limited to a shower a week here (yes, we do wash between showers) to make sure that we don’t run out of water. First we heat up a big pot of water on the stove until it boils, then pour it into one of our big 20 litre buckets and top it up with cold water. Back in the shower shed you put the hose from the shower deep into the bucket, hop into the shower and start dancing on the pumps. It’s not a smooth flow of water, more a series of squirts, but after no showers for a week it is heaven.

I then heated up more water to wash my clothes, in yet another set of buckets. These are the buckets into which we packed all of our gear back at DoC base on the main Chatham Island. The buckets have a million and one uses on Rangatira with shower and washing machine being the least of them. We also store our clothes in these buckets and stand on them to look into nests that we’re just not quite tall enough to see into etc.

Recycling on the island

While hand-washing my clothes on the deck of the hut, I noticed a couple of Chatham Island skinks sun-bathing. Skinks are poikilothermic, which is what we used to call “cold blooded” and they need to bask in the sun to warm themselves up enough to allow them to go off foraging for the day. These are the only lizard species found on the Chatham Islands and have only survived in areas without introduced mammalian predators.

A skink enjoying the sunshine:

With my work done I followed the skinks example and spent the rest of the morning basking in the sun, reading. Bliss.