Skipper's Canyon

Being winter and with no fresh snow for 8 weeks, and having guests here (thanks for the excuse, Jen, Bex and Carmen), we decided to take a drive through Skipper's Canyon. Skipper's Road is an historic road from back in the gold mining days - it winds through Skipper's Canyon from the Coronet Peak access road. It is strictly 4WD only, not open to rental cars, with signs that say things like "Vehicle Damage Possible" and "No turn around for 6km". It's a little scary in summer, so it made perfect sense to go through in winter.

The road was mostly alright.



The water falls didn't really fall so much anymore. They were roaring in summer!


The same waterfall/icicles from another angle - the icicles were about 40 feet in height! And probably about 30 feet in width. Quite breathtaking!


The second part of the road involves driving along a very narrow ledge with a sheer cliff below. This is the view out across to the tablelands on a not-so-steep part.

The historic Skipper's bridge. An awesome feat of engineering! It sways as you drive across it. And today with the ice on it, it also made cracking noises when we drove across it. Not exactly reassuring....

And last but not least, the view back up the canyon from just across the bridge. Did we mention it hasn't actually snowed for 8 weeks? So that snow down there has sat there for all of winter so far. We're pleased we wrapped up warm.

PS: As we write this, it's trying really hard to snow outside. We're expecting a few cm to fall overnight... fingers crossed!

Vanuatu

We had a fantastic time in Vanutatu over the past week. We did everything we wanted to do and a bit more while we were there - day spa massages, game fishing, 4wd buggying, snorkelling, sailing, kayaking, parasailing, horse riding, village visits... plus of course a bit of relaxing!

We stayed at Iririki Island Resort, which is a small island just off Port Vila (the capital). The staff were really friendly and helpful and the food and drink at each of the 3 restaurants was excellent. The buffet breakfast every morning was great - we both got slightly addicted to the local passionfruit and even went to the local markets three times to buy more! They are bright yellow or dark red and about twice the size of the purple ones we get here, with way more flavour.

(Iririki Waterfront "Fares" (pronounced "faa-ray" - meaning bungalow) at sunset from the wharf)

The location of the resort was great - a quick 5 minute ferry ride back to the mainland and we were at the pick up point for any of about 300 different day trips you could do. The only thing we were a little disappointed about was the lack of white sandy beaches - the only sandy beach on the island was about 100m long, and man-made. We've since been told that white sandy beaches on Vanuatu are few and far between - and not that great (if there is no coral, there are no fish, and, unlike where we were, not great snorkelling).

Which brings us to the snorkelling. We saw sooooo many fish, of all sizes and colours, including plenty of clown fish ("Nemo" fish!) - some of which were so tame they came right up to your hand to see if there was any food for them. We took a day trip to Hideaway Island, which boasts the best snorkelling on Efate (the main Island of Vanuatu) and we weren't disappointed - although we snorkelled at Iririki two days later and found it almost as good!

(Hideaway Island)

The highlight of our trip were the 4wd buggies. These are like 4wd go-carts, complete with rollcages, and had a top speed of around 90-100km/hour. There were particular places where our guide told us we had to go flat out or we'd get stuck - such as in the long tall grass he took us through. A little scary when you're losing sight of the guide and the buggies in front and behind you - at 90km/hr! It cuts the grass pretty effectively though! We definitely ended up worse off than the couples in either of the other two buggies. Greg must have found every mud puddle on the track, and went through them at high speed. The guide got off his bike, looked at us and cried with laughter... saying only one word: "CAMERA".

In the morning, on the same day we went on the buggies, we went horse riding. Andrea had never been on a horse before (with the exception of primary school gala day pony rides) so we decided it was as good a chance as any. The horses pretty much played "follow-the-leader" but she did manage to get hers up to a fast trot (not quite a canter!) a couple of times. The horse was called "Enana" and was a bit stroppy - Greg commented that they matched the horse to the rider quite well....

The resort had "Happy Hour" with half price cocktails, between 5 and 6 pm each night. It was really popular with all the guests - the staff handed out free bowls of banana chips (salty and deep fried, not like the ones here!) and there was often entertainment. The local tour operators made the most of the captive audience and came over to hand out "raffle prizes" which were usually 2-for-1 vouchers. We won a 2-for-1 voucher to go parasailing and decided to give it a go. It cost less for both of us to go up than it would have cost for both of us to go here in Queenstown - and a new perspective on the surrounding area was great!

(Andrea up above Port Vila)

(Greg took the camera up with him - this photo shows Iririki Island just to the right of the parasailing rope, and Port Vila in the background, to the left)

On the last day, Greg finally managed to book in a spot of game fishing. Unfortunately, the other guy on the charter only wanted to go for 6 hours, not 8, but they still managed some great strikes from a marlin or two (but failed to have a hook up) and he landed this beautiful Mahimahi, by casting a popper towards a navigation buoy.

All said and done, we had a great time away and are already talking about our next holiday! The last photo below, shows one of the three resort pools right on sunset. Which happened to coincide with happy hour - you can see why happy hour by the pool was so popular!

More videos!

Third Video: Andrea getting REALLY first tracks on an untouched slope

Fourth Video: The Grin says it all - Greg getting knee-deep

Opening Day at The Remarkables

This morning we were lying in bed trying to decide whether or not we could be bothered with the icy conditions and long queues usually associated with opening morning. We'd seen on the website that all the lifts were due to open on the first day, which is quite unusual, so after some umming and ahhing we decided to haul ourselves out of bed and head up to catch up with our friends.

Well, it turned out to be a good idea. The snow was soft, the queues were non existent and we were once more up above the inversion layer - basically a bluebird day.

We hit some untracked snow on our first run off the lift (under Alta, Jen!) and decided pretty quickly that we should head further afield and do some hiking to get more of the fresh stuff. Watching the long "ant trail" of people heading across to "the chutes" we decided to go in the other direction, for our tried and true powder stash up the back of Sugar Bowl.

First Video: Greg getting fresh tracks

We spent the next 2 hours hiking and re-hiking all our various little spots we came to know last year and had loads of fun. Hopefully the videos will all download for you - if anyone (eg on dialup) has any problems let us know and we'll send you a CD.

2nd Video: Andrea getting some almost-fresh tracks (going over Greg's tracks from the previous video)

Ho Hum, just another Saturday....

Up above the inversion layer! Taken from Coronet Peak looking out over a sea of cloud across to the Remarkables ski area.

Looking towards Cecil Peak and down towards Kingston. Queenstown is down under the thick fog (that's Queenstown Hill you can see poking through in front of Cecil Peak) and stayed that way all day. The inversion layer is normally typical of Wanaka in winter, where it's quite often colder below the clouds than above, but is quite unusual in Queenstown. It was 3-4°C up at the ski field this morning but didn't get above 2°C in most of Queenstown all day.

Opening Day!!!!!

We weren't that excited about opening day at Coronet Peak really. Well, not until we woke up this morning anyway! It's been great to get back on our skis and boards again (without having the hard work of walking up first!).

The day dawned a little overcast, and forecast to get worse, so we headed up bright and early (which also had the added benefit of a free glass of bubbles on the first chairs). We're pleased we did - they opened the chairs ahead of time (which NEVER happens) to try and help with the lift queues - which it did. We never thought we'd say it but NZSki finally seems to have figured out how to make Opening Day a success. They had blown fresh man-made snow on all the trails overnight, but turned off the snowmakers on the main trails so that you didn't get covered in snow on every run. The snow quality was great, the queues were non existent until mid morning and the staff were friendly and well trained (which is not the norm). So we were well impressed.

Greg under Greengates chair:

Andrea on her board, also under Greengates chair. Note the powder snow - which is also unusual for this time of year at Coronet Peak... which is dubbed "Concrete Peak" by the locals.

Greg and Andrea up the top of the chair

Queen's Birthday Weekend

We've never looked forward to a long weekend quite so much! The past few weeks have been quite busy, with Andrea involved in the orchestra for the local production of Les Miserables and Greg's work having dramas all of it's own.

Queen's Birthday weekend rolled around and we largely spent the 3 days catching up on sleep and sitting as close to the log burner as we could get. Although we didn't get as much snow as was forecast (just a few snow showers on Sunday morning), the temperatures have been bitterly cold. Things finally cleared out and warmed up a little for Monday (this morning) - a balmy 3 degrees when we left home at 11am. We decided that since we hadn't actually done it yet, we'd take the walk around Lake Hayes, which is known for it's reflections (especially in Autumn). It's been so cold that parts of the lake have frozen. And were still frozen at midday when we walked through!

We took a few photos of the scenery - this one being the one that worked out the best due to passing cloud etc.

We headed home after the walk and had a bite to eat and then promptly headed out again. Greg has been hoping since we arrived here to be able to say he walked across the road from our house (to the beach) and caught a fish. Well today it finally happened..... twice!

The photos of the fish itself didn't come out very well due to it's wriggly nature and the fact that we try to get most fish back into the lake as quickly as possible when we're releasing them. We'd estimate both Rainbow trout at 4 lb. A good eating size, if you're that way inclined.

The first photo shows the first run just after hookup... which took out half the line on Greg's reel in about 20 seconds flat.

The second shot shows the splash just after the fish jumped out in an attempt to shake the hook free (a manouevre that often succeeds if there is any slack in the line).