What Went Down In Queenstown

-View of the mountains from Lake Wakatipu-

I’ve made it back to Dunedin and started another week of work after my excursion to Queenstown. Overall, it was a beautiful place with a ski town feel and since it was on the shore of the Wakatipu Lake, it reminded me a lot of Tahoe. It was pretty busy and there were a lot (relatively speaking) of Americans and Australians visiting there as well. Friday morning I was initially worried that I might have to cancel my trip because there had been a lot of snow in the central area of the country. I heard on the radio that several roads were closed, but wasn’t sure if they applied to me. However, I stopped in the lab and got the bus company phone number and was told that all routes were running as scheduled. The walk to the bus station wasn’t that bad—besides drizzling rain—since I was traveling light and it was about a block away from the Octagon, which totals about a 15-20 minute walk. The trip did start out with a funny omen: as the bus was pulling out of the station the driver didn’t gauge how tight he was making the turn past an elevated curb and ran the bus up on it scrapping off the top layer of concrete and denting the radiator. Besides that though, the trip out was pretty uneventful. The bus was full and sitting behind me were a group of about eight other Americans but they seemed to be younger than me (they were also on the same bus I took back Sunday). I sat next to a young Australian woman who was working in the Dunedin for the week and we talked for awhile, which was interesting.

The scenery leaving Dunedin was nice and enlightening as to what was beyond the edge of town. Heading inland, once you cross the hills that surround the city, it becomes largely flat. We stopped at several towns on the plains that were pretty small with only a few stores and several of those that usually catered to farm supplies. Once we had made it farther west to rolling hills, the sun broke through the clouds for a bit; it was a surreal scene as it lit and cast shadows between the grass-covered hills that had very few trees but intermittent scrub. Once it started to get dark and we were getting nearer to Queenstown, it began to snow again. However, the snow didn’t seem to be accumulating very well and had stopped by the time we got there. (On a side note: I’m under the impression that fairly isolated stretches of road will be closed for not a lot of snow since I didn’t see any snow on the ground [besides high on the mountains] the whole way.) The bus dropped me off within a five minute walk from the hostel and I was only there for about fifteen minutes before the three others that were coming made it in. They had rented a car to drive from Christchurch and said that the roads were fine for them in general, however there were some spots that were slick. We walked around town for a bit, got some dinner and went out to some local spots. Considering that we were in a ski town most restaurants and bars were reasonably priced, which I found surprising.

-The main drag through town-

-Part of the lake shore-

Saturday morning I realized how stunning the scenery around the town was. It was right on the shore of the lake (which was very large) and all around the lake were mountains. Two of us went out before the others were up; we walked around, took some pictures, and had breakfast. It felt like Queenstown was just a bit colder than Dunedin, and I think it was about 41 degrees for most of Saturday. Once everyone met up, we decided to take a gondola up one of the ridges that boarded the town (and also to take a couple luge rides on pretty elaborate track they had at the top). Afterwards, we walked around and hiked up part of a track on the western side of the town. By this point it was getting later in the day and dusk was coming in.

-The western shore of town--A hotel beneath the mountains heading west out of town-

-The gondola-

I had to catch the bus back early Sunday morning, so I didn’t stay out too late Saturday night. However, a couple places we went had some interesting Fourth of July touches which were pretty neat. The ride back Sunday seemed to go by pretty quickly (considering I slept most of the way) but we did have a slight delay when the bus blew a tire about thirty minutes from Dunedin. Luckily, there was another bus about fifteen minutes behind us coming from the airport that had to stop in Dunedin and we were able to get on it. Sunday evening was spent doing laundry and gearing up for another week.

Some good work related news: I found some microarray data from a paper Chris (another graduate student here and my go-to guy) gave me that sheds some interesting light on my overall thesis project. Work will also pick up this week because I will begin harvesting tissue for RNA extraction/cDNA synthesis and PCR. I’ve also made quite a lot of progress on establishing the bisulfite sequencing protocol.

-The following pictures were all taken from the top of the ridge overlooking the town-