Uphill battle

My last experiment is O-V-E-R! Fantastic! Still need to dissect all those fish, but hey, another mile stone has past! Emily and I took a long weekend and headed up to Wanaka for a night. Stopped and got my fav, Black Ridge 2001 ReislingWe went to an excellent Mexican restaurant (hard to come by here) and stayed at a backpackers (with a couple of drunk German girls waking us up at 3am....probably my 2nd worse stay at a backpackers). Sunday we walked around town picking up some last minute things for tramping (because I packed at last minute and forgot some important items...I am NOT a last-minute packer!) and hitting the gift shops. Then into the hills for our first overnight tramp to Meg Hut. The first hour uphill was good, the 2nd hour uphill was hard and the 3rd hour up those damn hills was grueling! Every time I came over the top of a hill and saw another one I wanted to curse (and did)! Both Emily and I had the thought "This is miserable" going through our minds at different times...good thing we could commiserate and make each other laugh. I also find hiking here to be a bit boring, cause there isn't much for wildlife to see. Took quite a few photos of cows and sheep though! lol After reaching a top of the saddle, we had a short walk across and then a steep decent down to the hut...which we had to take slow cause our legs and knees were sore. The hut was great...5 others were there. We had a good dinner, read and were asleep early. Then, of course, up early since it took us so long to hike in, we needed to get going to be back in Dunedin for a lecture by a lab visitor. Breakfast, back up that very steep hill, and the walk back down wasn't as bad but after a couple hours the leg muscles for going down hill were knackered! Stopped at a cheesery to top up our lunch and again, back for that real fruit ice cream...just can't pass it up! Took a couple days to recuperate! I'll be ready to chose a less hilly tramp next time and won't trust Rachel in her advice on which ones are easy! Check out the photos!

Emily is here!

So Emily arrived 2 weeks ago. She's here as a research assistant in our lab for 4 months and staying with Rachel and I, sleeping on the pull-out couch. The day after she arrived, I took her on an overnight field trip cause I had to go back to Ohau to get more fish - the first time there wasn't successful cause of the wind and I kept rescheduling the return trip due to wind. It was still fairly windy but the direction of wind was good so we got all the fish I needed. We camped and went on a short hike - check out the new photo album. Else I've been working alot...how the rest of 2010 will go for me. All done with fieldwork, only a couple more days left of my experiment and heaps of dissecting and molecular work to get to! But heading to friends tonight for Mexican and a soak in the hot tub!