Skiing in South Island

So we eventually got our week of Skiing in South Island. After 3 horrible days off with flu, I managed to drag myself in to work on the Thursday and Friday to start my new job in the ED of Middlemore hospital. Unfortunately I started on evening shifts so I was at work till gone 1am on Saturday morning before having to get up at 07:30 for our flight to Queenstown.
We woke up Saturday morning to the news that Christchurch had just been hit by a 7.1 Earthquake, luckily no fatalities had occurred although we have had reports of a lot of disruption with many buildings damaged and houses inhabitable. We arrived in Auckland airport to a very full airport as many people were trying to find out about their flights to Christchurch which had closed its airport. Luckily everything was running smoothly for flights to Queenstown.
We arrived in Queenstown late saturday morning, picked up the hire car then headed into the centre for lunch. It was a beautiful day that welcomed us to South Island and we spent the afternoon wandering around Queenstown before driving an hour through the Cadrona valley to Wanaka.
We woke up Sunday morning to a cloudy sky and unfortunately the reports stated all ski fields we closed due to gale force winds, not the greatest start to our ski holiday! However the day wasn't wasted as we got up and went to Puzzling world. Puzzling world has an amazing maze which is very complicated and took us a good hour to get around! After that you head in to the illusion rooms which as they'd suggest, really mess with your head!
After puzzling world we decided to head to Arrowtown for a bit of culture and New Zealand history (we didn't realise at the time that there we many Lord of the Rings film sites there so we'll have to visit the place again with Laura and Alex!) After Arrowtown we headed into Queenstown again before heading back to Wanaka for food and drinks in the evening.

Monday morning the weather was better, however due to the rain they had had overnight the snow in Treble cone was still very wet so they closed that ski field and we headed over to Cadrona. Cadrona is a nice small reasonable sized ski field between Wanaka and Queenstown which offers a good range of beginner to advanced runs. We had a great day playing in some of the chutes and enjoying a beer up the mountain. We finished our day skiing in the quaint Cadrona ale house with mulled wine for me and a beer for James.

Tuesday we found out that the Cadrona ski field will be closed for 3-4 days as they had problems with their sewage overflowing into the fresh water reservoir (luckily we didn't have anything other than bottle beers up the mountain, but their were reports people had got quite sick!) However Treble cone had re-opened so we headed there. We skiied at Treble cone for the next 3 days with the weather improving every day. We had some great days skiing the saddle basin (which is the more intermediate to advanced basin) in the saddle basin nowhere is off piste so you have a wide range of terrain and slope to ski over. On the final day up Treble cone we plucked up the courage to hike up to the summit for an amazing view of the Southern Alps - totally worth the effort, however the ski down was a little hairy as the snow was solid and icy and didn't really shift underfoot.
After every day we went for some apres ski both up and mountain and in Wanaka, and we found a lovely little bar with a roaring outdoor fire to chill out with a few beers. We had some lovely evenings in Wanaka with some good a food and a little too much wine and beer and on Thursday evening after a days skiing we headed over to Queenstown.

We arrived in Queenstown around 7pm that evening and headed straight in to town for some beers and good food. We decided to treat ourselves to a posh restaurant that we visited with Karen and Ian on their visit (proof food does taste better when you can actually see it- last time we were there it was during the live earth lights off) We followed our meal up with some more drinks then turned in for the night.
We woke up early on Friday morning to the prospect of blue sky skiing at Coronet Peak. Coronet peak is Queenstown's most popular ski field with the most advanced road (actually tarmac) and lift system. As promised it was a beautiful blue sky day and there are some beautiful groomed runs that (as long as there is no-one on it) you can just fly down - amazing. However as it is also South Island's lowest ski field a lot of the runs turned to mash potato around 3pm so we called it a day at 3.30 with some beers up the mountain. Overall a really great 5 days of skiing! That evening we had our best night in Queenstown with an amazing meal in the Botswana butchery followed by a late night in Queenstown visiting some lovely bars as well as the famous Minus 5 bar where you get given warm jackets and gloves and effectively go in to a big freezer where the whole bar is made up of Ice and you get served cocktails in glasses made of ice.

Saturday, feeling rather worse for wear we got up and headed up to the remarkables ski field, when we got up there we realised the weather was rubbish, the ski fields busy with beginners (being a lot more beginner field than Coronet Peak) and the black runs didn't have enough snow coverage, so after a coffee up the mountain we decided to head back down to Queenstown and do some fun activities. At lunch time we took the Shotover jet down the Shotover canyon. An exhilarating 45min trip around a winding canyon in a very fast jet with a couple of 360 spins in to get you completely soaked! We then headed to Queenstown gardens for a round of Frisbee golf. Queenstown gardens have an amazing free 18 basket course set up like a proper round of golf. Awesome fun, made better by the fact that I won!
We finished our stay in Queenstown with the amazing Fergburger and some beers in a pub watching the rugby.
Another amazing trip to New Zealands South Island!

Ruapehu and rafting

Our first weekend away with Andy and Emma was a good one!
We got off to an amazing start when I managed to finish work early at around 4.30pm and I waited with Emma at Middlemore hospital while Andy went to pick up James and Gemma in their newly purchased lemon (Van). After sitting for an hour in traffic getting approx 28k out of Auckland the Lemon gave its best shot at its first hill. As you can probably guessed, it failed! James heard gurgling from the engine and then noticed the radiator temperature was at maximum! So after sitting on the side of the road for 1 1/2 hours the AA came along and said that the car van wouldn't be going anywhere that night and that we would have to wait another 1 1/2 for a pick up! So at 9pm we eventually set off from Mt Eden in our Honda Civic! So at 01.30am we eventually arrived in Ohakune!

The next morning we awoke to nice weather and headed straight up the mountain - unfortunately we had to turn around and head to the other side of the mountain after learning that it was closed for high winds. By the time we made it to the other side, the weather had closed in and it was raining with poor visibility. So, we decided to hire out some snow boards, book some lessons and have a laugh - rather sickening Andy seemed to pick up snowboarding very quickly, and Gemma did not live up to her name of dizzy - she seemed steadier on a board than she does on her own 2 feet! That afternoon we were joined by some of Andy and Emma's friends from home, had some apres ski drink before heading back to the bach. After a few beers and some excellent Fajita's the post skiing games came out! A very amusing night was spent playing the big taboo, spoons, Laura's genius game of Queen capping the evening with Twister!

On Sunday the conditions were horrendous again (which we knew they would be) so we had booked to go white water rafting in Turangi. Making (we feel) the right decision we decided to split the rafts between a girls raft and a boys raft, after racing down the rapids and getting very wet (including a stupid 9m jump into the river) we warmed up with hot dogs before making our way back to Auckland

All in all a fantastic weekend. Cant wait for the next

Andy and Emma arrive

So this week was pretty busy, but also a lot of fun.
The week started with a lovely catch up with Gemma (a friend from Bristol who moved out here 2 years ago) Since Gem hadn't been for a while, we decided to head back to Waiwera spa pools, this time minus the massage from Roger! We spent a lovely evening chilling in the various thermal pools and go down the rather precarious water slides, then followed it up with dinner in the pub across the road.
Tuesday, after a day's work we went out for dinner at C.A.C, a tapas restaurant around the corner from our house with Liz (a girl I work with in HDU) and her partner, Tom, to celebrate that we both got on to the Auckland Anaesthetics training scheme.
Wednesday of that week Andy and Emma arrived. Andy and Emma are friends of friends who we got to know when we moved to New Zealand (Charlie and Kieran). Andy is due to start work in Auckland City hospital and Emma with me in Middlemore, so we offered to put them up in our spare room whilst they got themselves set up with an apartment, Car, phone and bank accounts. We spent a lovely evening getting to know each other with lasagne and plenty of New Zealand wine.
I had the day off on Thursday so I took Andy and Emma around Auckland whilst they sorted bank accounts, Tax number, phones and Medical registration.
Unfortunately I had to work the weekend but it was lovely coming home to a lovely meal and good company every evening (provided by James as well as are guests).
The next week was a fairly routine week with work while Andy and Em continued to get themselves sorted with a van and a flat, we did however have one lovely evening in a pub near in Newmarket meeting a few other new doctors who had just arrived.

A weekend in Auckland

After working the previous weekend (as unfortunately in this job, I work every other weekend) We had made the decision to head to Mt Ruapehu for the weekend to try and get some skiing in before the season ended. Unfortunately the weather forecast looked shocking so despite having already paid for our accommodation we decided to stick around Auckland instead.

We spent Friday evening chilling out in our house with some good food and wine, watching a DVD which was a welcome change to a 5 hour drive down to the mountain.

Saturday morning we got up after a lie in and headed north to Matakana (1hr North of Auckland on Highway 1) where they have a saturday farmers market and some lovely coffee shops with small nik-nak shops. We managed to get ourselves a lovely quilt for the cold winter days! After lunch in matakana we headed down to Waiwera, a thermal spa resort on the west coast, north of Auckland. There we indulged in a 1hr private spa and sauna session followed by 1hr full body massages, pure bliss! (even if James was massaged by a bloke called Roger - he didn't seem to mind!)
We spent the rest of the evening back at home relaxing after our massage

Sunday was a pretty lazy day, just getting out the house to go down to Mt Eden for a couple of hours for something to eat.

Overall a pretty relaxing weekend - just what we needed!