Equine Therapy in Cardrona Valley

---

---

If you were staying at a four-star hotel and the fire alarm went off, and someone in their pajamas raced into your room and ordered you to get out...what would be your reaction? This is the very interesting predicament that we found ourselves in last weekend, except in this instance, Jeremy and I were the ones in our pajamas, given the authority to enter guest rooms on the ninth and tenth floors of our hotel and escort people out.

It was a rather humorous night. We (miraculously) both had the evening off, and were in our room watching a movie at about 10pm. The alarm sounded, and we waited a moment or two to see if it would click right back off. No such luck. Wearily we got up and joined the exiting masses on the seventh floor (there is a tall hill behind our hotel and exits on the seventh and eighth floors). We gathered with our co-workers who were working that evening and found out that there was indeed an actual fire, started from a toaster in the staff room. One of the receptionists appeared with a huge set of master keys and distributed one to each staff member - including pajama-clad Jeremy and I - and ordered us to go inside, open doors, and make sure everyone was out.

Having been given NO training whatsoever for any type of procedure like this, I found myself and a Swedish waiter named Bjorn (who was working his very first shift) racing up to the ninth floor and making sure everyone was out. Did I get a few strange looks? You betcha. Jeremy even found one of our reception managers, an Indian guy named Jayraj, buried under his sheets trying to block out the siren. "Sir, you have to get out!" Jeremy called.

(Picture in your mind a very thick Inidan accent here): "No, it is me, Jayraj. I stay here. I sleep."

"What? Jayraj? You gotta get out, dude. You can't stay here." And Jeremy fairly dragged our very unconcerned manager out of his room. Bjorn and I didn't have nearly the same excitement on the ninth floor, but hey...we were all cracking up by the time the fire department showed up and the screeching alarm finally stopped. The fire was never really a major threat and did no damage at all except irritate everybody. Ah, how we love this hotel. Ha!!

Living and working at a hotel is interesting, to say the least. At times we feel a little institutionalized...often we'll go all day without ever setting foot outside the hotel. Jeremy has been working five mornings a week, from about 5am-noon, while I find myself working the bar in the evenings from 4pm-11pm. We have a few hours off together during the afternoons, but it's definitely not an ideal schedule. On the flip side, we are finally in our permanent room (which has an AMAZING view of the lake and mountains), we get free meals, and we have the world's shortest commute to work (down the hall, down the elevator), so there are advantages. But to say that Rydges Hotel is dysfunctional would be quite the compliment. It is the proverbial "black sheep" of the hotel chain, the one that is falling apart and in desperate need of renovation and good management. It's a running joke just how, well, BAD everything is here. I've worked in a lot of restaurants and resorts back home and can honestly say I've never seen anything quite so disorganized and mismanaged.

But hey, it makes for some good laughs. For instance (and I kid you not), Jeremy spent the better part of two entire shifts pulling every single expired bottle of Heineken out of the mini-bar fridges in each of the 250 hotel rooms here. Why did he do this? Logic would lead you to conclude that we would throwing out the expired beer, right? No, not at Rydges. They pulled it out of the mini-bars so we could SELL it in the bar (for a mere $8.50 EACH, by the way). I looked at our manager like she was insane. I actually thought they were joking at first. So the guests can't have expired products in their rooms, yet we can SELL it behind the bar to them, and that makes it...what, LESS expired? This is the four-star hotel we are working at. Every day brings some sort of ridiculous adventure.

But, (thank God), we won't be here forever...we're pretty much sitting tight for a couple months, getting some money back in our pathetic bank account, and moving on. There are no Kiwis on staff here...everyone we work with is Brazilian, Aussie, British, Italian, Swedish, Scottish, Spanish, or Japanese...and I'm sure I missed a couple nationalities in there too. Our top three favorite topics for discussion are:

1. How dysfunctional the hotel is
2. How bad the food in this country is
3. How much we all miss our dogs back home (we're not the only ones that left a dog behind!)

On that note, we both (me in particular) had a terrible time with homesickness this week. I turned on the TV in the bar two days ago and almost burst into tears when I saw the Honda Classic on the sports channel (a golf tournament from Palm Beach Gardens, for those unfamiliar with it...I used to work on that very golf course a couple years back). I've also been listening to inordinate amounts of country music on the satellite radio at the bar (though the hotel has been swamped with Americans this week, so no one minds). It's hard to believe it, but we've been gone for nearly five months. In some ways, it feels like it's flown by; in other ways, it feels like years since we've been in Florida. New Zealand is one of those places I would highly recommend to anybody to come and visit - it is truly spectacular with its natural beauty. But as far as LIVING here...it's definitely not what we were expecting.

Everything is shockingly expensive, for starters...the next time you go get your oil changed for $19.99, think of us down here who are stuck paying NINETY DOLLARS for a basic oil change! We went out for one medium pizza and one order of chicken wings and spent nearly FIFTY dollars, and didn't even have any drinks! Alcohol...forget about it! A bottle of Absolut vodka will set you back $62. Local wine that is literally grown ten miles from here will run you $30-$50 a bottle (yet you can buy a bottle of Aussie wine for $10 - explain THAT to me!). The lone movie theater in town will set you back $15.50 (though it is totally worth it just to see the two-minute "what to do in the event of an earthquake" warning that flashes across the screen during the previews). And anything fun? Wanna go white-water rafting or take a helicopter ride? You'd better be willing to dish out hundreds and hundreds of dollars for any type of outdoor activity.

Which is why I was thrilled when I found a horse-trekking company about forty-five minutes from here, in a tiny gold-mining town called Cardrona, that offered a 2-hour horse trek for a very reasonable price. As I have been having MASSIVE horse withdrawals and have been moaning for weeks about the need to be in the saddle again, we decided today to join their afternoon ride. And are we glad we did!! We arrived at the stables and discovered an entire herd of Appaloosas (a spotted breed of horse). The funniest part was the dogs on the ranch were Dalmatians...guess the owner has a thing for spotted animals ha! Our Kiwi guide was a lovely girl named Carly, and we were joined by one other tourist from Wyoming who was also an experienced rider. We tore it up for two hours along the riverside and up over the crest of some spectacular hills in the Cardrona Valley. There was not a cloud in the sky and the temperature was pushing 90 degrees - one last heat wave before autumn settles in! Jeremy did a great job of keeping up with us as we flew across the wide open fields to our hearts' content. Never in my life have I ridden somewhere so open and hilly and just incredibly beautiful. It was just the break we needed after all the hard work we've been doing for the past six weeks.

On our way back from Cardrona (which, by the way, is the nuttiest road you'll ever see in your life. It climbs up and over the Crown Mountain Range between here and Wanaka, and has more hairpins turns and switchbacks than you can imagine. Ever ridden Test Track at Epcot? Think of 30 miles of that, and you'll start to get the picture. The first time we drove it, I was terrified. Now it's a blast - it's like your own personal roller coaster track!)...anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yes, on our way back to Queenstown, we stopped for a quick bite in Arrowtown, a gorgeous little mining town we'd stopped at back in January (where they filmed the Ford of Brunien scene from LOTR)...Jeremy found a cafe there that makes gluten-free mince pies, so we chowed down on a couple and then hit up the tiny gelateria for some fig-and-pistachio ice cream - yum!! Sat down on the riverbank under the sizzling hot sun and relished the beautiful afternoon and our saddle-soreness. It was a very, very good day!

Yesterday we got another huge boost when our new friends from the local congregation here invited us to a picnic at a local lake. There we had some decent food for a change, relaxed by the lakeside and drank great wine, tried our hand at rugby and cricket, and made tons and tons of new friends. One guy, Andrew, even invited us over to his place and made homemade nectarine crumble, from nectarines fresh off the tree in his backyard. We shared travel stories and some more good wine and left his house feeling fantastic. The perfect cure for homesickness!! If I'd written this blog a few days ago, you would've sworn we were miserable and ready to pull the plug and come home early. But these past two days were just what we needed to get our spirits back up and keep us going.

So technically, summer is over now, though they're predicting a fairly lingering summer season this year. But in just five weeks, Arrowtown has its annual autumn leaves festival, so we have a feeling that the fall with creep up on us quicker than anticipated. Having lived in Florida all our lives and never experienced the change of seasons, we find ourselves looking forward to it with unprecedented enthusiasm! All our new friends here are heavy into skiing and snow-boarding (as this is THE premier ski destination in the southern hemisphere, from what we're told!), so if we're still around here in the winter, I'm sure we'll get our chance to experience some winter sports. (Jeremy, by the way, has been in snow ONCE his entire life). So despite the occasional battle with homesickness and the weariness of living in a hotel room, we're staying optimistic. It is a beautiful town and our new friends are fantastic, so if all goes well, we should be sticking around here for a while longer...

---

Photos

Moke Lake
Yes, that is a man with a baby in the lake that is 48 degrees year-round. INSANE!!!!!!!!

Comments

[jessie totilas]

Glad to hear your still having fun. Enjoy your amazing trip and let's ride when you get back.