Category Archives: New Zealand

Christchurch once again

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 A fairly uneventful drive north took us to Christchurch. I say “uneventful” if you don’t include almost driving head on into a fleeing eagle eventful. Talk about gutsy. This thing just sat on the road and stared into the distance as I bore down on it at 100km/h. This sharply reduced to about 30km/h when I realised it wasn’t going to budge until the last moment, at which point it took off and flew along in front of me so I couldn’t accelerate. Then it looped over the van to land on the road where it had been before. I hope the view was worth it.

 Two more games of minigolf were played in the afternoon once we reached the city. One venue had two different courses – an indoor “3D” course which made full use of the funky glasses provided, and an outdoor Gold Rush course with some excellent mechanical effects. Both had a Wild West theme, so if you can’t stand piped country music, I’d recommend avoiding them. Likewise if you get headaches with 3D glasses, say away from the indoor course.

I won the 3D golf, while Lou did her best to embarass me outdoors. The indoor fairways are deep carpetting, so putting along them was a little strange compared to the courses we’d been used to.

 I did manage to get a cheer on the second hole outdoors. There’s an option to use a ramp to get your ball close to the hole and our “privae” rules state that any funky features have to be used if they’re present or suffer a stroke penalty. Lou took four shots to get her ball over the ramp. I took one shot, chipped the ball off the tee and landed it in the single deepest area of water on the course – more than a club’s-length away from the shore.

Just great.

I did manage to get it back without getting wet, though. That earned me another cheer from the assembled throng.

Overall, a very tricky course but richly featured. Watch out for the water traps and explosions, though!

 Later on we had a cine-fest and went to see both Over The Hedge (superb, it out-PIXARs PIXAR) and Click (not bad but a typically schmaltzy ending) before parking up in our now-usual spot and makig ourselves almost sick on stupidly cheap KFC.

We managed almost four hours’ sleep before the alarm went off at 2:30am, waking us in time to see England barely scrape a 1-0 win against poor opposition. I wish I’d stayed up for the Portugal/Holland game afterwards. At least that sounded entertaining. Posted by Picasa

Arrowtown, Wanaka and Fairlie

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 Time to start the journey back up to Christchurch. Given the weather, we thought it best to make a fairly early start and take it easy, though the drive can be accomplished in a day if needed.

We packed up… OK, we chucked everything onto the bed in the back of the van… and set off for Wanaka where we’d decided to have lunch. Lou made me drive past Have A Shot (twice) even though I wanted to whack a few golf balls at the TV screen again. Maybe next time.

 Lunch was… tomato soup. Again. Twice in half a day! We then bought some bread and fed the ducks on the lakeside. These were very friendly ducks, even moreso than the ones in Rotorua. I think this is the first time I’ve ever had ducks take bread out of my hand. It took a while for them to gather, but as soon as they spotted one of their number getting fed, they flocked in. As did the seagulls. And sparrows. No eagles, though. I did spot two sat by the side of the road, eyeing us up as we drove past later on.

Reading the local paper, I spotted something else I like about Kiwis. They don’t really give two hoots about “language” the same way we do back home. Insisting programs on TV are on after a certain time in the day, just because someone says a word that some old granny has decided is “rude”. We really should wake up and realise that life’s too short to get worked up about pathetic things like that. The quote that got me ticking over about this was an interview with a local guy who runs the snow patrol on one of the peaks. Apparently, when he started the job, he was “a shit skiier”. Even the super soaraway Sun would have popped an asterisk in there.

 A second example jumped out as us from the radio when we left Wanaka. It was an advert for a local glaziers. Essentially, it was four people breaking a window and saying “oh, bugger”, followed by an announcer asking if you’d ever had one of those “oh, bugger” moments. This is the kind of thing that would have had Mary Whitehouse in fits, yet the Kiwis regard it as just another funny advert. Mind you, I come from a country that was trying to have the latest Australian tourism advert banned from television only a few weeks ago. The tagline: “So where the bloody hell are you?”

Little things like that sum up the Kiwi lifestyle quite well. Why find things to get worked up about? Who really gets upset at a choice of words that aren’t aimed to insult. This is a country which invented throwing yourself off bridges with elastic tied to your feet – they have better ways to spend their time than complaining about people’s phrasing. Also than teaching them to spell judging by far too many shop signs, but I’ll let that slip.

 Oh, another thing I found out was that virtually all Kiwi travel insurance policies include cover for what the UK would class as “dangerous pastimes”. You don’t need to seek extra cover (and fork out more money) for pursuits such as rafting, bungy jumping, snowboarding, mountain biking… the assumption is that Kiwis will go and perform such acts of lunacy anyway so they’re included as part of the policy. I checked several policies before I left the UK and one of them even had a premium for bamboo rafting. I mean, come on. The river doesn’t even move at walking pace and it’s barely deep enough to drown a sparrow in. It would make more sense to charge extra for swimming at the beach.

As the weather was closing in and the sun dropping, we opted to stop partway north. Again, we tried Tekapo but the campervan park was inaccessible without chains. We continued for a while and reached Fairlie where we set up camp for the night. Lou made herself welcome in the kitchen making dinner and it was nice to see a sign inviting us to make full use of the washing up liquid and tea towels. Most parks don’t supply these, believe it or not. Lou, therefore, started spraying washing up liquid around with mad abandon to ensure all our stuff was nice and clean. Then the chap who’s liquid she’d been using by mistake took it off her and moved his box of stuff back into his van.

Whoops. Posted by Picasa

Snow and fireworks

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 Much better weather today with excellent visibility. However, this was partly due to less snow the night before so the snow blowers were on on the lower slopes. Lou didn’t bother getting the bus up today – her knee was still rather banged up and she was limping – so I handed her board and boots in when I got there.

The views from the upper slopes were magnificent today, so I took a few more snaps. Another morning lesson with Brett, the same chap as Wednesday, followed by lunch and then the afternoon zooming around on the powder making a complete tit of myself but having loads of fun in the process.

 It was a shame when it came time to return my hire kit and head back into town. I’d really enjoyed myself and was just reaching the point where my muscles had given up complaining about all the work they were being made to do. With any luck, I’ll make it back down again for the end of the season. Fingers crossed!

Today was also the start of the Queenstown Winter Festival, a week-long party to celebrate the start of the season. Today, the Cardrona runs opened and tomorrow The Remarkables ski park would join in. Add to that the best/worst snow they’ve had in ten years (depending on whether you’re boarding/skiing or driving) and they were really looking forward to it this year. Last year was a damp squib in all respects with awful rain for the first couple of weeks.

 The festival’s a very “local” affair, involving businesses and organisations including schools. It starts with a free party on the waterfront with a huge stage, two hours or so of free bands and an impressive fireworks display. As the week goes on, there are other parties, parades, sporting events and so on. Basically, it’s a cracking way to start your snowy season and it’s the last week before the kids break up for holidays, so they get to have a lot of fun decorating floats and making masks and so on as they impatiently wait for the school gates to close.

 Lou had started to come down with an evil cold, so we didn’t enjoy the street stuff as much as we could. Instead, we sat in Pog Mahone’s drinking and eating some delicious tomoato soup until the fireworks were due to start and then nipped outside to watch them. Not the world’s biggest display, but certainly impressive. All were launched from a boat floating in the harbour and I’m amazed the thing didn’t sink. It even took Lou’s mind off her sniffles for ten minutes or so! Posted by Picasa

More snowy fun

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Another day on the mountain, though the visibility was “poor” according to the rather polite board on arrival. The signpost which went up later in the day to say that the Greengates area was closed due to “Poopy Visibility” was closer to the mark.

We set off later than yesterday as we both only had one class to attend, and there’s the option of morning or afternoon. To try and give Lou’s knee a chance to sort itself out, we caught the bus at 10:30 after a bit of a walk around town, but to no avail. She could barely bend it to get her bindings on. One day wasted for her and things don’t seem too good for it being better by tomorrow. Lou hopped on the first bus back at 1:30 and I gave the slopes a chance.

Thankfully they cleared slightly by 2:00 so I joined my class and we messed about for two hours, being shown how to do things that none of us were capable of by a very helpful instructor. Helpful, but not miracle-worker. I still have a long way to go before I’m rotating on heel while going downhill. At least on purpose.

I got to the top of the M1 run just as the lift shut down and made it back in time to get the second last bus. Another early night after dinner, I feel. You wouldn’t think sliding down a hill could be so exhausting but my muscles loved me for treating them to a hot shower when I got back.

The Battle of Wounded Knee

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 Today I froze my beard. Solid. It’s a very weird sensation. You can sort of feel the hairs tightening as the ice forms on each hair and they join together.

Winding back the clock, the day had started early as we went to the nearest pub (“47”) to watch the England game. Sod’s Law dictated that this would be the first one worth seeing as we had to miss the last 20 minutes to ensure we caught the bus up to the skipark. Sure enough, 1-1 when we left and I heard it finished 2-2. Gah.

 The bus was only $15 return per person and left from over the road. After 30 minutes or so, we were collecting our passes, boards, boots and separating for classes. Lou’s an utter novice having only been on a board once before – and that was the other week on Mount Dobson with Pam & Rob. I was judged to be in grade 4 (there are 6 grades) so headed up the chairlifts while Lou used the “magic carpet” and slid down the practise slope on her hands and knees for a few hours.

Every other time I’ve been snowboarding, the temperatures have been either t-shirt weather or just around freezing. Today, at the top of Coronet’s Express Way, the wind chill and stirred powder must have dropped it to around -10 degrees Celcius. Visibility at times was more something I’d heard about and experienced in the past than something I was actually enjoying.

 The last run of the day especially was utterly new for me. I couldn’t even see the snow I was boarding on at times. The whole world was one big optical illusion. I could sort of feel my board moving, and I could hear it, but nothing seemed to be happening. Then I’d look up and an orange flag was approaching, fairly quickly. Then I’d look down and the “ground” was stationary. Then the flag was closer. At other times I’d catch a quick glance of the surface and I was moving sideways compared to how I felt I was going.

It made my head hurt. Or maybe that was falling backwards and cracking my skull on an icy run earlier.

 All in all, a great day. Even the lunch wasn’t expensive – another new experience for a ski resort. Everyone was really friendly.

Except.

The skier who ploughed into Lou and clobbered her knee. It’s got a nasty gouge in it, and it’s a rather bright red colour. Of course, typical skiier, no apology. She just sorted herself out and buggered off. This is the difference between skiiers and boarders. Boarders do stupid things, but if they hurt someone they bloody apologise. Also, if someone’s a skiier there’s more chance of them being French which is another reason to treat them with disdain.

But I digress.

We got back at a nice hour, nodding off on the coach, and ate far too much food and necked mulled wine I got from the supermarket. A spa bath and sauna to soothe aching muscles (and knee), and then some more beer in front of the telly.

More tomorrow. Yay! Posted by Picasa