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 overflowi
ng 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 po
tato 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 Botswa
na 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 S
hotover 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!
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