South Island Skiing

To finish off our time with Pete and Diane, we flew down to Christchurch in the South Island for a long weekend of skiing at Mt Hutt, along with their friends Jacquie and Richard. This was the first time either of us had skied outside - we'd only had lessons at indoor snow centres up to this point - and we were really excited about getting out on real snow.

We rushed from the airport and just made it in time for a couple of hours skiing in the afternoon. The weather was gorgeous: clear blue skies (above the cloud) and warm. Hot even! A slightly hair-raising drive up the unpaved road to the base car park did nothing to dampen our spirits.

To be honest, I found it initially a bit frustrating, as I seemed to have regressed from the level of skill I'd achieved before. Rach got back into it much more easily, and the first afternoon went well for her. The next day (after a late start due to rain) I got into the swing of things and had a great lesson in the afternoon.

Roaming the car park were these fantastic Keas. They're a type of parrot with beautiful green iridescent feathers and red under-wings. Careful though, they like to eat bits of cars, like rubber!

Really looking forward to the next day, you can imagine my disappointment to awake today to find out that the mountain had been closed for the day! From our motel in Methven, down in the Canterbury plain, the conditions looked absolutely perfect, but what we couldn't see were the high winds making the chair lifts unsafe to operate. Grrr! We heard that the nearby Mt Cheeseman ski field was open, so we drove up into the mountains towards Arthur's Pass, only to find, just as we arrived, that the weather was turning dangerously windy there too!

As the wind howled and the snow fell, the drive back down from Mt Cheeseman was even more nerve-wracking than the road up to Mt Hutt, but as we got back down to the plain the weather greatly improved and we decided to take a walk along the Rakaia river from Rakaia gorge.

This is when we realised why people here talk about the South Island being the "real NZ" and why everyone we met traveling raved about New Zealand. Although we loved the North Island, the scenery was breathtaking, and we didn't even really have to go out of our way to see it - just a few minutes walk from where the car was parked.

Rob