Caples Greenstone

Last week I rented a car and drove to Fiordland with Sunmi, who was visiting for a few days. I picked her up from the airport Wednesday afternoon and we drove to Te Anau, a sleepy town that serves as a base for exploring further into Fiordland. We took a short walk around Lake Te Anau and visited the Wildlife Park, then crashed in a backpackers. We woke up early the next morning and bought hut passes and picked up provisions for our trek. The Kepler track still had snow covering the alpine section, so we decided to walk on the Caples and Greenstone tracks instead. We started the walk from the "Divide," a car park on the road to Milford Sound, as opposed to the carpark on Gleenstone Road where most trampers begin at the other end of the circuit. This allowed us to walk for an hour on the famous Routebourn track before bearing off on the Caples track. We encountered some deep mud pools and then a steep and rocky climb to the McKellar Saddle, where we had excellent views. We descended to Upper Caples hut, cooked up our first dinner of couscous and courgettes, then hit the hay. The next day we finished off the Caples track, following the river gradually downhill to the convergence of the Greenstone and Caples rivers. We had a great lunch at the convergence, with an awesome view of the long valley we had just walked down. In the afternoon we headed up along the Greenstone River. The track was a bit of a roller coaster, going up and down the side of the gorge carved by the river. There were some neat places to stop and gaze at the turquoise water. When we reached the Greenstone Hut in the late afternoon, the sun was out in full force and we sat on the porch of the hut, taking in the rays and the views and chatting to some students from Auckland who had just finished their studies. For our second dinner we had some rice pilaf and chocolate, and at dusk I did a little poi surrounded by snow-capped peaks, which was pretty awesome. It rained during the night and all the next day for our walk to the McKellar hut further up the Greenstone Valley. Stomping through mud, wading through streams, and in general moving at a brisk pace, we arrived at McKellar just about as the rain was ending. We changed into dry clothes, ate a lot of tortillas and pita, and played gin rummy into the evening, when two guys and a girl from Purdue arrived and claimed they were going to reach the Glenorchy car park, 30k away, that night. Crazy Americans--I wonder if they made it. In the evening the sunset was spectacular, and the old adage proved true as the next day dawned a sailor's delight, with clear skies and a crispness in the air. On our walk back to the carpark we met an Argentinian man who had cycled from Auckland and was attempting to reach Glenorchy by the next day to catch a bus. He was traveling on the Greenstone track, as it was the shortest route as the crow flies, but I imagine the track was a real challenge with his bicycle. We took a short side trip to the top of Key Summit, where we had breathtaking views of glaciers, valleys, and jagged peaks.

Reaching the car around noon, we stuffed ourselves with our remaining provisions and headed west along the Milford road. The weather was amazing for Fiordland, warm and sunny, and we took advantage by stopping often to gawk at our surroundings. We got a decent view of Milford Sound at the end of the road but to really experience the Sound you definitely need to go kayaking, take a cruise, or do the Milford track. Satisfied with our survey of Fiordland for this trip, we drove back through the Milford tunnel to Te Anau and then Dunedin on Sunday evening. Sunmi stayed until Wednesday, so she had a couple days to check out Dunedin while I worked in the lab. Tuesday evening we walked up Mt Cargill and flew my kite from the summit. It got stuck in the radio tower when we were trying to reel it in, but I was able to rescue it by climbing over the barbed wire and a short ways up a metal ladder.

The next few weeks will be filled with work as well as adventures. I have one week to get the results I need for the COMBIO meeting Dec 6-10 in Christchurch, where I am giving a presentation in the student speaker competition. When I return from the meeting I'll have to find a place to store my stuff for the next couple months, as I'll be in the U.S. for the holidays and med school interviews. Then it will be off on my bicycle journey from Dunedin to at least Hokitika on the West Coast. I've got to make it at least that far because that's where my flight leaves to go back to Maryland.

Happy Thanksgiving!

One year in New Zealand

I've now been in New Zealand for one year. It's been a great growing experience for me. In the lab I've learned an incredible amount and decided on a path to pursue in my biomedical research career. I've tried new hobbies, explored new places, made some good friends. I've even begun to embrace the Kiwi culture, despite trying my best to maintain my American-ness during my first several months here.

Next month is the Combio Meeting in Christchurch, the largest biology/biochemistry meeting in New Zealand. I've been selected as the Otago representative for the student speaker competition, which is very exciting. There were only two candidates in the Otago competition on Friday (the other was a PhD student working on honeybee genetics), but I came away with the W. Should be a fun and informative meeting, and when I return I will embark on an approximately 11-day cycle journey from Dunedin to Hokitika, where I'll fly home from. More details on that later, but I now have the necessary mountain bike, purchased for NZ$350 on TradeMe. The more immediate adventure is that Sunmi (Williams '08) is visiting New Zealand this coming week and we are planning a hiking trip on the Kepler track in Fiordland, possibly followed by exploration of Milford Sound.

Taking my geekiness to the next level

Halloween--another holiday that Kiwis have failed to appreciate completely. I saw a couple kids out trick-or-treating, but most people don't have candy ready by the door. Moms coordinate with each other and drive their kids around to the few homes with lollies available. The kids are definitely not going to get hundreds of pieces of candy per hour like I did. When Halloween rolled around each year, I was usually still working on the candy from last year's stash. This year in NZ I celebrated Halloween by attending a horror movie night. We watched Seven, Halloween, and Candyman, of which I though Seven was the best.

Also on Halloween I worked on the Habitat House, this time hanging gib (drywall). This is my favorite part of house construction because it requires a fair amount of spacial awareness to cut the pieces so that they fit to the walls and ceiling. It can be frustrating when a piece doesn't quite fit into place and you have to shave it off a few millimeters.

On Sunday I went to the movie theater to see Food, Inc. The main adviser to the filmmakers was Michael Pollan, and I've read a lot of stuff by him, so most of the information wasn't new. However, it was good to see pictures of industrial farming; in particular chicken coups. Farmers house thousands of chickens in one fully enclosed, dark,and remarkably unsanitary building. The chickens are so crowded they can barely move. But even if they weren't crowded, the chickens have been selected for to have massive breasts so they can only take a few steps before toppling over. Once the chickens are taken to the processing plant, you can see that the floor is covered with faeces and dead chickens. The movie also talked about beef processing and E. coli 0157:H7 outbreaks. There are only a dozen beef processing plants in the U.S. owned by four of five major corporations, and they are massive factory/assembly line operations. The workers have just one specific job like in an auto factory and are treated poorly and underpaid. When you eat a hamburger, you're literally eating meat from a thousand different cows, so it's now wonder that disease spreads quickly and it's tough to track down the origin of an outbreak.

I really like meat, but the number of reasons not to eat meat from factory farming are really overwhelming. If someone offers me meat at a dinner party I'll eat it, but I'm definitely not going to buy any from the supermarket on my own. I'm going to focus on fish and the occasional grass-fed organic beef and chicken you can get at a farmer's market.

I've made a DnaK rap and posted it on Youtube. Watch at your own risk.