On Friday I went up in the gondola in the afternoon – scored some gorgeous views over Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu.
Very very cold though... to warm up, went for Mexican with Paula and Neri (Australian dorm-mate). That was very fun and very filling!
Early bedtime as I was so knackered and STILL sore from skiing...
Paula and I headed up to Remarkables on Saturday morning. There was a bit of a queue for the bus but to be honest I am so used to this by now I didn't care that much! Paula however is much more used to skiing in Europe and regaled me with tales of being able to ski to her hotel.... wow. As a complete ski novice I find this idea amazing.
We got there at 9ish, got our hire stuff together and went for coffee/breakfast for Paula (don't worry, I didn't skip breakfast – the bus passengers would not have been safe otherwise.) Paula kindly came with me to watch me do my turns down the steep baby slope, said I was looking good, then went off to whoosh about on some red runs. When she reappeared later I was feeling much more confident and even starting to pick up some speed without freaking out! She said I'd be OK up on the green run (remember, this is the one I'm really scared of after basically falling down it for 5 minutes, completely out of control). Nervously I headed towards the chairlift and flopped onto it – it's quite a fast one and knocks you over if you're not careful. But I did enjoy the ride up over the beautiful scenery. The weather was a bit grey and snowy when we arrived but soon brightened up into one of the most gorgeous days ever. Skilifts are rather lovely and peaceful to be on, magical airy awesomeness indeed as David told me!
At the other end they slowed it down for me to wobble my way off, and I anxiously and verrrrryyyyy sllooowwwwllllyyyy did my turns down the slope – I didn't fall over once because I was going so slowly! Paula said I was looking good and very in control, but she still went up with me one more time before leaving me to go and ski on more scary runs herself. On the second landing I was unprepared to leave the chairlift and for a horrible moment found myself being carried away with it, before I jumped off and promptly fell over.
I practised my runs down about 4 or 5 times before meeting Paula for lunch (a rather squashed peanut butter and banana sandwich for me) and another coffee before heading out to my lesson. I felt far more prepared for this one, and Dan, a fellow Brit from Worcester, was the best instructor I've had so far! My group was pretty small – there were only 4 of us so it made the whole lesson a lot better and easier to follow. We spent 2 hours thinking mainly about our feet and how to turn: Dan made us do lots of scary things like ski down holding our poles in front of us (an imaginary G&T balanced on them, as an added incentive to keep the poles level) to make sure we weren't moving our upper bodies and that our turns were only coming from the feet. I found it quite hard not to have poles; I miss the “security” you get from flailing them around when trying vainly to stop.
We also skiied down with the poles held out by our sides like aeroplanes – my main problem, apparently, is not leaning forwards. You have to keep your weight on the front of the skis to control them. This is completely counter-intuitive; you want to lean back so you don't fall down the slope, but if you do you lose control of the skis and fall anyway. I also look down at my skis too much just to check they aren't getting away from me... Dan told me that there was nothing down there and ordered me to look at the beautiful view instead. I tried!
After 2 hours we were all far more confident, and I rewarded myself by going up in the lift for one last beautiful ski down. It was a lovely afternoon and I finally realised why people pay a lot of money to whizz around mountains with slippy boards attached to their feet. You get a fantastic sense of freedom, and it's beautiful. Also you feel rather smug watching yourself improve as a skier – I am disgustingly proud of myself for only falling over 5 times! (or maybe it was 10..)
Headed home for a sauna and shower before getting ready to go out! Paula and I went for some awesome pizza at Winnie's– gluten-free base for me –
and then went to World Bar for some drinks out of teapots, as recommended by Georgina... brilliant fun. We met several of my dorm-mates, most of whom are on Kiwi Experience (a sort of party tour bus where you pay a lot of money to spend most of your time on a bus with 20 or so young party animals, and do organised tours of various cities, stasying in affiliated hostels like Base and Nomads. Apparently great fun but being peer-pressured to go out drinking every single night is really not my cuppa tea. Freshers week was enough!)
We moved on to Buffalo for a drink there as well, but the evening slowly degenerated into watching the dorm-mates quite graphically and inventively eat each other's faces. Paula and I started to feel really old and boring so decided to head home!! Still managed to stay out past midnight though so rather proud of myself. (yes I am pathetic... but I'd rather go out with people I actually know....oh who am I kidding – I hate going out. I'd rather have a massive dinner party and get everyone too tipsy on wine to stand up. That way you can actually hear the conversation, and you get food as well! winner)
This morning I woke up at 7 because most of the dorm-mates were getting up to catch their Kiwi Experience bus at 7.30, and had to put the light on so they could hungoverly crawl about and pack properly. They'd obviously been too busy to pack the night before, what with the drinking, having Italian showers, and preparatively eating breath mints...
I stayed in bed until 8 – a lie-in!! - before eating breakfast, crawling about packing, and going to meet Paula for a coffee and ginger hot choc at Patagonia again. This is the view from the window..
Yum yum. Have managed to rack up 9 stamps on my loyalty card there so I gave that to Paula so she could claim her 10th hot choc free! (She is in Q'town til September with this job.)
Grabbed lunch at Fergburger – a lamb burger this time, mmmmm. Was excessively diverted by this letter:
I then returned to Nomads, put my bag on grunting like Serena Williams, staggered off to the bus stop and fell onto my bus to the airport. Once there everything continued to go smoothly, apart from my bag being slightly too heavy (26kg???!!) Moved the requisite 3kg, mainly in the form of textbooks, over to my smaller rucksack and went to sit down and write all this babble. I don't know how you haven't fallen asleep yet with all this boring minutiae of my daily travel life. SNORE.
Now on the plane in my window seat – boom – hoping we get wine.
See you in Auckland! Going to slog through some more of Tristam Shandy.
Addendum - here are some token plane window pics. Notice how much warmer Auckland looks than Queenstown.....
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