Early to bed, early to rise…we were all up at 5:3oish this  morning, packed and headed off on our 8hr drive back up the South Island to ‘Hamner Springs’, about an hour north of Christchuch. Starbucks was closed, all the cafes were closed, so we ended up having the breakfast of champions…servo pies!

After a sleepy hour or so in the car we had a little navigation issue but all was returned when we switched seats

We arrived in ‘Hamner Springs’ at about 2ish for a much needed bathe in the Thermal Pools.
They were a lot busier then I imagined, in fact they were packed….old people everywhere. We quickly got changed and ran to the closest pool, Em moved over to a hotter pool and us boys stuck it out in the 35 degree pool, lucky we had Damo to keep away the oldies
Em finally got us to move to the hot pool and I am glad we did because by that time it had dropped another 3-4 degree’s outside.

All in all it was a really good experience only downsides would be the foul smelling sulfur coming from the pools and the old naked man in the change room drying his DT’s.

After that we headed back to our hotel, had beers got changed and headed back to the pub for some dinner, we would have stayed except Australia was playing New Zealand in the Rugby Union and the place was packed full of ‘All Black’ supports as you could imagine. So we got 3 packs of Apple Schnapps (poor take-away choice from the pub) and headed back for a night in getting drunk and watching ‘Dante’s Peak’ on VHS.

_B

This morning we headed off to have breakfast at the Skyline Restaurant that we had been looking up at all week, we were going to have the 7 course dinner previously in the week but time, money and mostly apathy ruled that out. The Gondola ride up was pretty freaky as we were already over the capacity weight and the attendants “no worries bro” attitude didn’t really help however we made it up in one piece to get some really good photos of Queenstown.

As Matt’s knee was still playing up he decided to sit today out and stayed back at the hotel…I can only imagine it was like my sick day on Wednesday.
Once we got to the peak it was back to the beginners run to get some training in before Damo and I headed up the chair lifts with my camera for some snow filed happy snaps. Continue reading →

My first full day on the mountain, and time to walk the walk.

A late breakfast almost caused us to miss the bus up the mountain but luckily there were too many people so they called a second bus for us. The trip is was quite quick as I was overjoyed with actually feeling good and about to spend a full day on the slopes….ahem I mean the mountains {your such a raciest Damien}

It was freakin busy when we got there…people were everywhere.  Finally got on the powder and we all headed for the ‘magic carpet ride’, it’s like an escalator built into the snow to take you up the slight slope they built for first timers (or just really shit skiers).

Quite a few hours of getting back use to it all and frustration and bruises for the others we retreated for some lunch.

Matt and Em left on the early bus at 2:30 because Matt had fallen and hurt his bung knee, the boys and I stayed on and took a level 3 lesson on boarding so Friday would be a little more enjoyable. The picture explaining the level seemed right (imagine toilet symbols snowboarding)….it turned out to be a little harder then first thought for Damo and Bryce but by then end we were all pretty happy with our new skills. Continue reading →

More vomiting today right up to 9am when up come the fish I ate yesterday….I think that was the culprit!
By this stage I was unable to keep down any fluids so Em went to the chemist and got me some stomach power stuff that helps you absorb fluids and I was on the mend….still too sick to head off on the first day of snowboarding however .

I ended up spending the entire day in the hotel room watching Sky TV, sipping water and eating dry toast…..very EXTREME!

The guys all got home at about 4pm all a little tired, sore and exhausted so we ducked out for some take-away pasta and had a quiet night in to recover.

_B

 As our ‘Shotover Jet’ ride was cancelled yesterday due to bad weather it was scheduled again for today at 11am…..however more extremely cold temps meant that they again would not be running the boats so we cancelled and decieded to have a relaxing day in QT instead.

First stop was lunch at ‘Speight’s Ale House’, a flashy pub with from what I was told “excellent food” and great beer.

I didn’t eat because I was feeling a little crappy because it turns out that Damo snores just as much as Matt does and I got zero sleep, I moved upstairs onto the couch at like 2am but an hour or so later woke up with an excuciating pain in my back, took me quite some time to actually get tired enough so that I could head back downstairs and ignore the snoring.

After lunch we managed to find a cheap place that could do all our gear and clothing hire as well as ski passes and bus tickets so not only did we save money we got everything from the one place.

Anyhow after we got all our gear we split up; Em, Matt & Bryce deceided to go ice skating and Damo and I went off for a drive around town.  I was feeling better around 2pm and got me some good ol english style ‘fish n chips’ from a place in town….and I tell you it tasted great.

Continue reading →