Finally, some skiing

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Post from Ryan:

So…what’s today? Where was I yesterday? What town am I even in today? I seem to rarely know anymore. But to start the week we finally enjoyed a few American delicacies that we have been craving (see picture), Mmmmmm Dr. Pepper. Unfortunately though we have been having this undying urge for Cheese-Its and they don’t exist here. And now to our week…

Wednesday July 5th: We drove to Wanaka after glacier exploring in Franz Josef (see last post), and searched high and low for a hostel or somewhere to stay in the general vicinity of Wanaka. Unfortunately for us it is the school holidays here and everyone is down in this area skiing right now, so everything was booked. It’s like trying to find a cheap room in Tahoe at the last minute on Christmas vacation (ha!). So, we ended up at this campground type place, like a KOA or something, in a cold ass cabin with a small heater smartly placed underneath the window. Now, as I am sure we have mentioned before, New Zealanders are not ones for insulation of any sort, so all the heat went straight out the window. It was a cold few nights. We
pulled the bed closer to the heater to try and stay warm. But the really fun part of the place was taking a shower or even the joy of using the bathroom late at night. The outside bathrooms were so cold…they were open-air type with a cold wind blowing through. A real summer campground not really fit for winter use, but it was packed. Cheapest place in Wanaka though, and our cheapest place yet, so we were happy with it besides freezing our asses off.

Thursday July 6th: We went skiing at Treble Cone outside of Wanaka. Interesting place. Seems like it would be a good mountain if it had some more snow. There were two chair lifts and about 3 groomed runs. The rest of the mountain was hard skied out bumps, exposed rocks, bush, and ice. As bad as it sounds I can see how it would be awesome with some more snow. And we aren’t complaining, because we had a great time, just stating the facts… Plus, it’s July and we’re skiing! How great is that! Jealous?? The fun part was the road to the ski resort. It was a 6 or 7 kilometer unpaved road straight up the mountain with hairpin switchbacks, no guard rails and one lane wide in places. Basically, the road resembled a hiking trail with switchbacks every 300 yards…plus the dirt road kind of added to that affect. Was a killer on the breaks on the way down, our breaks gave out and we had to pull over and rest the car (poor Turbo, that’s the cars name). So I could see this being a pretty fun road on a powder day, if people in Reno fear Mt. Rose highway they should try this out. After skiing we went back to Wanaka and ate dinner, had some drinks, and went back to our ice cave. Pretty boring I know.

Friday July 7th: We left Wanaka and drove to Queenstown, learning our lesson from Wanaka we had a place booked in advance. A beautiful drive along a river through a canyon through the Southern Alps, which finally climbed a summit before descending into the valley, brought us to Queenstown, which is nestled between Lake Wakatipu and the Southern Alps. When we got to Queenstown we walked around and did some sightseeing down at the waterfront. They are proud to have the last coal-fired steamer in the southern hemisphere…woohoo! Impressed? Anyway, went out on Friday night and played some pool, then went to a bar with a good DJ and some dancing.

Saturday July 8th: Decided not to go skiing/snowboarding since the weather was crappy and didn’t want to waste our money. Instead we drove to Glenorchy, a town just NW of Queenstown that was supposed to be a scenic drive. But, with the wind, rain, clouds and all around horribleness of the day, it wasn’t very scenic, just a waste of gas and an expensive lunch in a small town. But, we did go to a store there selling products made out of possum hides and furs. That was interesting. Some lucky individual may get a teddy bear made out of a dead possum died purple (could you wish to be so lucky?), or a possum tail guaranteed NOT to be road kill (think we bought them? You’ll have to wait and see won’t you). Scary little shop. Saturday night we watched the All Black play Australia in Rugby, then called it a night. GO ALL BLACKS.

Sunday July 8th: Once again, crappy weather, was pretty windy,
so no skiing for us. Instead we went on a hike up Queenstown hill. It was a beautiful hike through a pine forest (which looked just like a Tahoe forest which made me a little homesick actually), and up to the top of the hill, which rendered beautiful views of the Southern Alps, Queenstown, and Lake Wakatipu. After the hike we went back into Queenstown and tourist shopped all we could handle and went to a movie to see Pirates of the Caribbean, which was pretty good.

Monday July 9th: Woke up and went skiing at the Remarkables not too far outside of Queenstown. Again, not a lot of snow, but had a good time here. The road was pretty crazy though. Once again, unpaved. It was 16 km of hairpin switchbacks, brake-killing grades, and non-guardrailed dropoffs. They have a shuttle that takes people up there form the bottom of the hill, I can see why. 20 bucks though…no free shuttles here. The good thing about this place was that the road was muddy on the way down from melted frost, so instead of using my brakes, I used the mud! Bonus! Anyway, good day of skiing, and would be even greater when the place has more snow. After riding we drove 2 hours to Fiordland to just outside the town of Manapouri to stay at this cool place where we had our own cabin with a wood stove and bunk beds and our own kitchen. It was like summer camp. We drank what was left of our duty free gin and played Uno and Dominos. Ryan won.

Tuesday July 10th: Woke up with a bit of a hangover. It was pouring down rain when we woke up. We drove to Te Anau just 20 km north and found out pretty quickly that we were not going to be seeing any sights of Fiordland with the weather in the state that it was and would be for the next few days. So, we decided to leave Fiordland because we really didn’t know what to do with ourselves there with bad weather. You can only play Uno for so long… So we headed for Invercargil in the very south of the south island to wait out the storm…where it is surprisingly sunny and beautiful. There is a Conservation Park to visit where we are going searching for penguins and
sea lions tomorrow. We will head back to Fiordland tomorrow night and hopefully stay at our summer camp retreat again and try to see the sights on Thursday with our hopefully better weather.

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