KangarooTale.com

Tuesday, 4th August

Hello from Queenstown! It’s a fab little town surrounded by snow capped mountains. It’s got lots of bars (with cosy fires), cafes and restaurants and sells itself as the adventure capital of the world. Also home to the worst hostel in the world – Pinewood Lodge. It smells really bad and is freezing. The whole place just needs to be levelled. So, we have been spending as much time as possible away from the smelly hostel.

photo credit: Adamina

Yesterday, we rented the most horrendous snow gear (think binman/burglar outfits) and we headed off to the slopes of Coronet Peak for some skiing. Had a fantastic time. I was a bit of a ‘menace on the slopes’, as Orla put it, for the first few hours. Fell over on the pully lift thing and the girl had to stop the lift while I recovered and tried to stand up again – very difficult cause I was in tears laughing! After eventually getting upright again, I skiied right back into the pully lift, nearly taking out an innocent child. Again, lift had to be stopped, hysterical laughter, before Orla dragged me away from the danger zone before I caused more havoc. After that though I improved no end, with the help of 2 lessons and even mastered the ‘magic carpet’ onto the green slope. It was so much fun. I’m converted now – skiing holidays here I come!

photo credit: Ted Percival

Today, Orla persuaded me to go on the ’shotover jet’ – a thrill jetboat ride along the shotover river. I very nearly chickened out, but plucked up all my courage and got on the boat. I was so glad I did it – It was fantastic! Speeding our way along the river, closely missing rocks. So much fun!

photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

So, we’ve another day here. Heading on the gondola tommorrow (cable car up side of very steep mountain). We’re having a buffet dinner at the top, followed by a New Zealand Haka show, so looking forward to that.