For the last week we have been driving around the Queenstown area in New Zealand.  About three years ago we were meant to visit this area as part of a cruise ship experience.  Unfortunately the cruise was the worst holiday experience of my life, a ship full of over 65’s, a buffet at every meal and a vodka list that started and ended with Smirnoff.  We entertained ourselves by smuggling wine and cheese on board the ship after each lovely port call, but in the end this was not enough and we jumped ship and flew home before we started the North Island.

So we took the opportunity of a couple of weeks with no work to jump on the plane and do the shortest International trip you can do from Melbourne.  The scenery is amazing, I have been trying not to clog my Instagram feed with landscape photo’s that do not do any justice to reality.  The ‘experiences’ horse riding and paragliding are cheap, easy to book and fantastic.  The food has so far been surprisingly bad, not sure wether that is because I was expecting greatness or because Melbs is so good…

Back to the skiing, so far we have visited Cardrona, The Remarkables and Treble Cone ski fields, and discovered that we like the beginner slopes.

At the Remarkables this means taking the escalator to the beginners lift.  Initially Will balked at taking the kiddies conveyor belt but after tossing up the other option …. the big boy lift with a big sign that said “NO BEGINNER RUNS FROM THIS LIFT” he sucked it up and got on the conveyor belt with me.  Taking the lift to the beginner runs, we could see all the intermediate runs and were pretty happy to join the other confused people at the top trying to figure out the run map.  We are fairly good intermediate skiers but we prefer minimal to no stress… really we are lazy.  With this in mind we head off, turn the wrong way and end up on the intermediate runs which are icy!! Whoops.

The Remarkables are a stunning ski field, the view from the top is straight between two Mountains and across Queenstown nestled below.  The drive up to the top has lots of stop off points to take photo’s and try to capture the view.  The good points are the view, the bad points are the slightly old infrastructure (lifts pause regularly and leave you enjoying the breeze halfway up the hill) and dodgy signposting that can result in you taking a wrong turn very easily!!!

Last week we went to visit a friend at Treble Cone, I’m glad we visited for coffee and didn’t take ski’s.  The runs looked more suited to paragliding take off points, which incidentally was what we were doing up there.  Narrow and steep… On the good side the butter chicken pies were great.  Driving to Treble Cone, the views are amazing across Mt Aspiring National Park.

 

Our favourite ski field of the holiday was Cardrona, great big wide open runs a beginners paradise.  On the negative, the food is awful and there is only red wine at the base!!!!  Easily fixed by taking your own packed lunch and a hip flask 🙂