Alisha and I pose at the sign!!
I’ve been looking forward to this for ages, since December to be precise haha!! Had another fab couple of days!! It was Christmas yesterday 25th June!! We had a fun evening opening up secret santa presents! Best ever Christmas, no build up, no commercialised crap and it never cost me a penny!! Wine, group hugs and a sing song!! I never made it a late night as I had some snowboarding to look forward to the next day.
I got out my bed at 7.30am ahhh!! I opened up the motel, made up my lunch, packed my bags and got ready and when Richard came in to take over at 9am off I went!! Was quite a hike to get to the place where I hitch from but the excitement helped me along the way, I was almost skipping haha! Since it was day one of Wanaka’s ski fields opening I was expecting to see lots of hitchers but no, just me!! Didn’t have to walk for long until my friend from town Jodie passed, her boyfriend was driving the camper, I also knew him from the supermarket, Wanaka really is a small place, everyone knows everyone!! They stopped and I hopped in, Wanaka was like Aberdeen in summer, blanket of fog!! The cloud is just sitting in the basin above the lake but half way to Cardrona (Cardrona is a small village) it disappeared and there was blue skies and we had a great view of the mountains, SNOW capped mountains!!
We turned off at Cardrona to head up the mountain, argh what a scary road!! Steep road, constant hairpins, the road was covered in gravel and sheer drops with no barriers!! At least the road wasn’t covered in snow but when it is snow chains have to be fitted. We made it though and the view was spectacular!! We were more than double the height above the clouds!! Beautiful blue sky and sunshine!! We headed straight for the chairlift and of course I fell off up the top. Without thinking I strapped the wrong foot in so ended up coming off Goofy at the top!! It has been around 4 years I think since I’ve been away boarding properly, apart from that it was the odd day up Glenshee. I’ve fairly lost my confidence, the place was really quiet though, no queuing and wide empty pistes!!
On the way up we watched some dude on ski’s jumping off a kicker, land backwards, took the next kicker backwards and did an upside down flip thing!! FANTASTIC!! Brendan had only had a couple of hours at a snow dome before and Jodie was pretty good so she was sorting us out and giving us tips!! More like constantly on at us but it was needed!! I need to push myself, I’m just scared of hurting myself!
We stopped for a quick coffee and I met my crazy friend Melissa (busted fingers Melissa!) who is working in rentals and Victoria who was up for the day, she will be snowboarding at Treble Cone for the season but since it doesn’t open until tomorrow she couldn’t wait to get up any mountain!! Headed back up after that and my riding started improving wooo, it’s great up at ‘Cardies’ I know alot of the staff, the lifties etc so it’s a very friendly environment! By around 3pm I was done, just as well Jodie needed to leave then to get to work on time. I was starting to ache!!
It was so nice to get my boots off and back in the camper until we tried to drive off haha, lights left on, dead battery!! A couple of people tried to help out with no avail, we got a tow to the start of the road which was all downhill so Brenden tried to coast it but we were sliding out at every corner, with sheer drops Jodie and I made him pull in and we got help from the dude on the mountain!! Got home, got my feet up and then had a lovely hot shower!! I only have one bruise up so far but I’m sure over the next couple of days more will appear!! I twisted my knee twice, hurt my already bruised ribs and that’s about it. It’s never a good day boarding unless something hurts!!!
I never took many pics, only when we were waiting to get the camper going!! I was having too much fun and didn’t stop much to get a chance to!! I’m up there for the next 3 months so I’ll get some to you soon!!
I’m looking after the motel tomorrow while my house mate Laurens heads off to Treble Cone, I somehow think It’s going to hurt when I get out my bed so maybe having tomorrow off is a good thing!!
WoooHoooo Snow!!!
It’s been a week since I wrote all that and I still haven’t posted it up!! Well since then I’ve been up to Cardrona another three times!! The school kids have two weeks holiday now so I wanted to make the most of it!!
Last Monday I decided to go for a walk around by the lake, I was out for a couple of hours, it was totally breath taking and very peaceful. I found a really nice spot just to sit and chill out, the only noise was the birds singing. It was lovely and sunny with clear skies.
I really should have been up the mountain but I was still aching from Friday!! When I got back a parcel had arrived for me, I already knew what it was as I was expecting it!! Dairy Milk and Wispa!! My friend Anita posted me out some ‘proper’ chocolate since the chocolate here is gross!! They don’t make it the same!! Anita is the girl I met when I arrived in Christchurch. I munched into a Wispa immediately and it was amazing!!
On Tuesday I was terribly lazy, I didn’t do anything until my yoga class in the evening. I really enjoyed it, I’ve got 3 weeks of yoga booked, it’s a 6 class winter sport warm up. I got another parcel on Tuesday...guess what....Wispa’s!! Oh happy days haha!! Katy sent some of my post out to me and popped some Wispa’s in the envelope too. Chocolate overload, I love it!!
I headed up the hill on Wednesday, I hitched up and a couple of Germans and a Czech girl in a camper came to my aid!! After chatting to Hannah from Czech it worked out she works with my mad friend Melissa! Small world! I had a great day, the conditions were great and blue skies, my riding improved a little so with big smiles I hitched back to town. Some lady picked me and another two hitchers up, it works out the guy who I was in the back with (Ricky) is a friend of Essex Hanna-Jade who I worked at the hostel with!! Everyone knows everyone in Wanaka!!
On Thursday the weather up the hill was dreadful, another two successful hitches, some dude with his kids on the way up and a French/English couple who now live in Noosa in OZ, I really enjoyed yapping to her, she gave me some decent tips on my OZ experience which is yet to come!! More Yoga that night and again it was excellent, it’s tough as she really concentrates on the core and I’m unfit haha, I followed it up by having some wine at ‘party central’ after!!
On Friday I headed up the mountain again!! I had planned to meet Hanna-Jade and Alisha in town and on our way passing the hitching spot we spotted Melissa and Mark so much to the annoyance of the front of hitching queue we told them to hop in!!
There was a dump of snow on the Thursday evening and the road to the bottom of the mountain was a bit dodge but we made it. We had to split up and hitch from the bottom of the hill though as Alisha’s tyre wouldn’t have made the journey. You really need to see this road to believe it haha it’s bloody scary!! Sheer drops with no barriers, one wrong move and you’re toast! Hitched no probs and met the girls up the mountain. It was a great giggle, Hanna-Jade took her first ever chairlift on her board, she was in the middle, I was to the right and Alisha to her left, Alisha and I both came off quite easily but Hanna clipped my, sent me tumbling into Alisha who in turn landed on top of me haha. Huge pile up!! I met up with Victoria, who greeted me by pushing me over!! Melissa who was a boarding virgin who looked like she’d done it a million times before and Kate who also came piling off the chairlift!! Again my riding improved woo. We headed back early as I needed to be in for cover in the Motel at 5.
Well I had already written all that last week but just never got round to uploading it onto my blog page!! I’m being harassed by a few people to pull the finger out and get up to date so here goes!!
Thursday 15th JULY!
EARTHQUAKE HIT'S WANAKA!!!
Well, as most of you will have heard on the news we had an earthquake last night!! It was around 9.20pm and I was cleaning up after dinner so standing, Laurens was on his computer and just shouted over earthquake!! I wandered what he was blithering on about but then I felt it!! It was the strangest feeling, I thought earthquakes would kinda shake you like up and downy ways. It pushes you side to side, I felt as if I was swaying on a boat in rough seas! The pictures on the wall started to slide and it was all so surreal! A few of the motel guests came outside, it lasted for around 30-40 seconds and seemed really quite strong.
Instantly started texting all my friends!! The gang at Hedditch were all in bed (recovering from pub Olympics) and they ‘gathered’ at the top of the stairs. The hostel where I used to work was evacuated, it’s -2 out there so not pleasant if you’re not all wrapped up! I texted my friend in Queenstown which is around 50 miles from here and they felt it too, people were running out of restaurants!! I called the owner of the motel, she was really pleased I’d experienced something like that and that her kids were all awake to feel it too!! The last big one like that was in 2003! Instantly on the news it was a breaking story and lots of different reports about sizes and tsunami risk to Oz and the Pacific islands.
We’re all really excited about it over here, it was pretty awesome!! There were a couple of after shocks and the Motel owner felt another this morning but I must have been asleep!
It apparently reached 7.8 on the Ricta scale (or however it’s spelt!) the only thing that saved a catastrophe was the fact it was a few miles down, if it was shallow an Earthquake of that magnitude would have been pretty destructive!! It’s probably all we’re going to talk about for the next week here!
The planet isn’t as stable as I thought it was!! You need to experience something like that!!
The only other thing of interest I have been up to was competing in the Wanaka Olympics!! The Pub Olypics!! My god what a crazy night, thank goodness it wasn’t last night we had the EQ!! We were in teams of 10, it was the usual party crowd for our team and we were called the Far Q’s!! Lots of silly things like speed darts, speed pool. Run round the block all taped together, the Wanaka people just going about their normal lives in cars and walking past must have thought what the hell is going on!! 150 odd people all running around the place in T shirts with jugs of water!! No one managed to keep the group together and no one seemed to know where to run too, the aim was for the team with the most water in the jugs won that round. Of course we sabotaged other teams and knocked the jugs out their hands, ripped up the tape that was holding them together haha!!
Another one was a dance off, our team just ended up having a massive pile up on the dance floor! Walk the plank where we had to have feet taped to huge wooden planks and walk about the bar! Bowling, huge big tyre we could fit into and be rolled down into things. It was a crazy night, We won a few rounds but people were bribing the judges with money so they ‘bought’ more points. I don’t quite remember the end of the night, it was an absolute riot though haha!!
That’s all I really have to report on, been keeping away from the ski field these last two weeks as the kids are on holiday and hogging the place. Should all be back to normal from Monday though!!
Catch up with you all soon, hope you enjoyed the read!! Here are some more scenic pictures I took the other day. I sat out on a wooden jetty on Lake Wanaka, it was completely silent with only the noise of the birds!! I could have easily sat there all day!!
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