This travel log was written solely for the purpose of providing the trip participants better means to remember this trip after their memories begin to fade. Therefore, if you like it-we will be happy for you, if you don't like it-don't come to us with a lawsuit for mental hardship! :-)
Email Address for Comments/Questions:
76244.1411@compuserve.com (Robert Pederslie)
We actually experienced three seasons all in one week! It was Winter time in New Zealand, and it snowed while we were skiing. Then, in Sydney, we experienced wonderful sunny Spring weather, and we were able to bask in the warm sunshine while lunching at an outdoor cafe overlooking the Opera House. Finally, it was time to head back home to Singapore, where there is a perennial Summer of hot, humid weather.
Friday night, July 30, Robert and I kissed Tiggra and Teddy goodbye, then left to catch a red-eye flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. We decided to have dinner at the Changi Airport in Singapore after we checked in. Bad mistake! Apparently, the Swenson's restaurant at the airport was a very popular hangout with the locals, and it was jam-packed. Then I remembered my colleague telling me that she loved to take her family to the Airport for family outings.
For the first time in my life, I actually slept more than Robert on the Air New Zealand flight. We must had been in a great mood, since we had such a good time even at the Auckland Airport during our 2 hour stopover. It was a nice new airport, and you could see faraway mountains. We even 'wowed' over the nice, clean bathrooms. Boy, we must have been away from real civilization for too long! It was a drizzly morning at Auckland, and it certainly reminded us of Washington State weather. For some strange reason, our flight from Singapore to Auckland was mostly filled by Caucasians, but the connecting flight to Christchurch was full of Japanese tourists. By the time we arrived at Christchurch, it was already dusk. Since the drive to Queenstown was an 8-hour one, we had decided to stay at Christchurch that night. What a thrill it was to pick up the rental car from Avis Rentacar...we hadn't driven for so long! It was actually quite cold at Christchurch, but we didn't mind at all. We were really enjoying the cold, crisp air.
Christchurch is definitely a very sleepy town even though it is already the largest city on the South Island of New Zealand. It basically resembled a very large suburb. Our hotel, the Noah, was situated right next to the Avon River. It was very cozy. We were pretty tired from the flight, so we just had dinner downstairs at the Brogues Restaurant. It turned out to be a very good dinner! The highlight was the Chocolate Fondue! Mmmmmm..... Needless to say, we headed straight to bed after pigging out at dinner. It was so nice to snuggle in bed once again. Singapore's weather is definitely not made for snuggling.
Couldn't believe that we actually slept for nearly 11 hours straight! I guess the cold weather really helped. We immediately started on our journey to Queenstown, where we had planned to do some skiing. Along the way, we saw lots of tall hedges that the farmers had planted. The hedges were big and tall, and were trimmed very nicely. The wind must be very severe there. Robert and I couldn't believe how similar New Zealand was compared to Washington State. They had lots of nice tall evergreen trees, and mountains everywhere. Beautiful! New Zealanders all seemed to like to 'hug' the shoulder when they drove, but we didn't think that driving partially on the shoulder was particularly comfortable. Once we were cruising behind this pretty fast car, and Robert was busy turning up the music on the radio, when all of a sudden we saw this cop car approach us from the other way. The policeman flashed his lights at the car in front of us, then flashed his lights at us. Rats! Busted! So we pulled our car over to the shoulder to wait for the cop to turn around, but the other car decided to pull into a side street, and he was nearly out of sight. I guess we were really lucky, because the cop decided to go past our car to locate the other one. We didn't know if we were supposed to sit and wait there, but we decided to act dumb and started driving off slowly but SURELY. It worked! Hee Hee! So after that, we decided to set the cruise control on and 'hug' the shoulder to show that we were being 'submissive'. Good thing...we saw quite a few cop cars after that. The cop cars there looked really strange and ancient, and it was difficult to pick them out from the distance. For some reason, New Zealanders did not build lots of roads and houses right by the ocean. Even though the road from Christchurch to Queenstown mainly ran along the coast, we only saw the ocean a few times.
We decided to stop at one of the numerous Tea-Rooms along the way for lunch. New Zealanders religiously take their tea or coffee breaks, so the guide book said. The tea-room offered various meat pies, and anemic looking sandwiches. Robert and I settled on Fish and Chips, and I also had this very thin milk shake. I should have known about the thin shakes when the lady asked me whether I wanted any ice cream in my shake. I was like....'Duh.... aren't all milk shakes made with ice cream anyway?' When the fish and chips came, Robert went up to the counter to ask for ketchup. When that didn't work, he tried to ask for catsup instead. Then he found out that 'tomato sauce' was the closest thing they had. And you had to buy these by the package. One jelly-sized package with squeezable tomato sauce was 30 cents. We splurged and got two packages of tomato sauce for our chips. No one seemed to stay at the tea rooms for long. They would just come in, eat and then run. We were probably the only ones who stayed in the tea room for such a long time.
Queenstown was quite a lively place, and in a beautiful setting as well. Our room at the ParkRoyal Queenstown Hotel overlooked Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables Mountains. What a beautiful view it was! The town of Queenstown was filled with shops and restaurants. Sweater shops were my favorite. I was really tempted to buy this really beautiful cream colored mohair sweater (with lining even!), but figured that it would be a real waste as I won't be able to wear it for over a year! In any case, when I finally went into the store to check on the sweater, somebody else had already bought it! Oh well! It would be very difficult to justify the cost of the sweater anyway (NZ$470! That's about US$275!), although it was the most beautiful sweater that I've seen, and I'm definitely a sweater freak! It was cold and crisp at Queenstown that day, but there was actually a group of youngsters who rented mopeds to whiz around the lake. Looked real fun, but I was sure that they were freezing to death.
After buying a few skiing essentials at the Ski Shops, we went to the Stonewall Cafe for dinner. One thing that we noticed about New Zealand cuisine was that they usually served up to five vegetables with your meal. And if they served you a salad, you could have it with your meal or as an appetizer. New Zealand meal portions were pretty huge, and we didn't mind at all.
We got up bright and early the next morning to go skiing at the Remarkables Ski Area. The ski area was only about 30 minutes away from the hotel, and you had to drive up this very steep, narrow, and winding gravel road for 19 Km (that's about 12 miles) to get there. Since there were no guardrails whatsoever, we just hoped that we wouldn't come face to face with these shuttle buses that would come down the mountain at top speeds. Since the mountains looked awfully barren, we weren't so sure that they would have snow at the Remarkables, especially since they didn't have snow-making facilities. But as we rounded to the other side of the mountain, we saw the ski area. It was quite a small one, which was quite a disappointment, but it had pretty good views. We then found out that New Zealand had a pretty terrible ski season so far due to the lack of snow. Bummer! Needless to say, I fell down GOOD when we were getting off our first chair lift. I blamed it on the rental skis, and that the boots were too tight. Right... As a matter of fact, my butt was still hurting after 3 weeks! Well, I figured...No pain, no gain. It started to snow a bit right before lunchtime. Yay! But after lunch, it turned into semi-wet snow, so we decided to call it a day soon after that. Since we had not skied or exercised much, we were pretty tired after that, plus it was raining in town. So we decided to try out the hotel restaurant for dinner that evening. It was really nice. They had great big portions of soup. Robert had this Hungarian Goulash that was very yummy. And for dessert, we tried out New Zealand's national dessert, Pavlova. It was basically a meringue, foamy and sweet. I rather liked it, but I think Robert preferred something a bit more substantial.
The other major ski area in Queenstown was called Coronet Peak. We decided to try it the next day. This ski area was only about 15 minutes away from town. Since it snowed up in the mountains the night before, we had to put our chains on the rental car half way up the mountain. Poor Robert had never seen chains like the ones we had, but he put them on within 15 minutes. I was just busy sitting in the car contemplating about the skiing and getting nervous about it (as I normally do right before skiing).
The view from Coronet Peak was beautiful. We could see the Remarkable Mountains from it. But again, it was quite a small ski area, with most of the runs being intermediate and expert runs. For beginner runs, they only had one handle tow and one poma lift. We tried both for warm-up. The handle tow was better than a plain rope tow, at least it had a handle on it. But it basically ripped my arms off when I first got on it. Then I lost my poles. Rats! And I fell down AGAIN (#$%&!) while trying to rescue them. I should have just left them there like this other woman did. Turned out the operator ran up the hill to give her back her poles. Anyway, after that, we decided to try the poma lift. It was a strange looking contraption. You put this thing that looked like a disc between your legs, and it gently pulled you up the hill. Not bad. Robert did it, and yelled to me that it was much better than the handle tow. But when I tried to go, I forgot one very important piece of advice. Don't sit on the disc. Well, I did, and down I went. But at least that time it didn't hurt. Well, finally I got up to the top of this one pretty short trail, but the entire trail was so iced over, it felt like ice skating. That was no fun.
Oh well, I decided to send Robert up to one of the intermediate runs (at least they had a regular chair lift) to check it out. He eventually came back down, and said that it wasn't too bad, but that they were making snow, and that most of the mountain was enclosed in fog, but at least there was some snow. Okay, I figured that I'd give it a shot. Did the M1 trail. It was quite a nice long trail, but a bit steeper than I would have preferred in one part. But I got down in one piece even though I couldn't see 15 feet in front of me sometimes! It was actually pretty dangerous because there were a lot of people on the slopes even though it was a Tuesday. Guess that everybody was waiting for some snow! Next came my favorite part of the day...Lunch! We had a nice lunch at the Brasserie there. There was even a guy singing at the stage. He was actually quite terrible. |
