A brief respite

The "storm the size of Australia" that's currently spreading nasty weather over the country has brought snow to lake level and gale force winds for the past 24 hours. It cleared out briefly this morning, long enough for Greg to run out in his PJs and take a few photos! He's glad he did, as it's now just started snowing again.

Cecil Peak covered in snow, taken from the main guest bedroom upstairs. One of the benefits of living where we do is that the snow doesn't settle on the ground here very often due to living on the Peninsula and being surrounded on 3 sides by the lake. Because the lake is 8 degrees all year round it keeps the ground a bit warmer (the rest of Queenstown and Arrowtown has snow on the ground - and to be honest, scraping snow off the driveway gets boring pretty quickly!).


Ben Lomond and Bob's Peak up above the Gondola, taken from the deck outside the lounge.

Looking down towards Glenorchy - you can see the next front already charging up the lake towards us!

With snow forecast off and on for the next 5 days we're grateful for our woodburner. It's looking like a DVD weekend...

Tonga

Yesterday we got back from a week long holiday in Tonga. We stayed at Vakaloa Beach Resort which is on the north western side of Tongatapu (the main island), well away from the main city (Nuku'alofa) which wasn't the most pleasant of places. The market was interesting and there were a few nice restaurants but one day in town was more than enough!

The resort was fantastic, with a white sandy beach and us more often than not being the only ones on it.

Looking right from just out in front of our Fale (the restaurant is the building on the right hand side):

And looking left down the beach:

Through the trees from our Fale to the beach:

Looking back at the 3 beachfront Fales from the beach (we had the middle one):

When we booked, we saw that the website said we would possibly see whales from the beach, we expected them to be out on the horizon miles away. Not so. We could sit up in bed and watch the whales cruising past or even breaching (where they jump up out of the water and land with a big splash) just behind the surf break. This photo is taken from the restaurant one morning - not one of the closest whales but one of the few we were able to capture with a camera. Even big humpback whales move surprisingly fast when you're trying to snap a picture!

On Monday we spent the day on a kayak safari. We were picked up from our resort and driven to the far side of the island where breakfast on the beach had been prepared for us. There were only 2 of us, plus our guides and another member of their family so that whole table of food was for us. We didn't quite get through it!

We then set off kayaking towards a couple of outer islands. Our first leg was to a deserted island about 2km off the coast where we were given cold drinks and had a chance to walk around the island and explore things.

We then headed to the next island, only 10-15 minutes by kayak away, where we had lunch and had a couple of hours to relax and snorkel around a shipwreck close to the shore. A cyclone had blown the ship onto the edge of the drop off so for all you can see about 10m sticking up, it went about 100m down. The fish life was quite awesome.

Sunset at Vakaloa - this photo taken from the loungers outside our Fale.

We took a day long island tour around Tongatapu and learnt a lot about the island... and about Germany. Our guide, Hans, is a German married to a Tongan - there are a lot of mixed race couples in Tonga.

One stop was to a fresh water spring deep inside an underground cave - complete with stalactites and what we were assured were swallows and not bats... but we were less than convinced (fruit bats - flying foxes - are common on the island and are regarded as sacred.. we had a baby one living at the resort while we were there).

We also visited the Houma blow holes, which stretch for kilometres along the coast, with some blow holes producing columns of water up to 30 feet high. Again, not that easy to get photos of unfortunately, but here's a shot of Greg and the rest of the tour party standing on a lookout platform:

On the final night we attended the Tongan Feast at the resort, complete with Polynesian floor show. Andrea was thoroughly spoilt as the hosts had found out it was her birthday the day before and was taken up on stage and given a cake while everyone sang happy birthday. They also gave her a beautiful card and of course dragged her up later to dance with some of the local boys. Unfortunately Greg's shots of this didn't come out very well (Andrea is grateful) - it was quite dark. However Greg did get a great shot of the local girl performing the fire poi dance:

All over, we had a great holiday and managed to spend a good few days relaxing and taking it easy. The people were so friendly - we often had the owner's 4 year old daughter join us for dinner or lunch; she'd pull up a chair and put her plate on the table and start eating. It was great! Even if she did continuously beat Andrea at cards.

Powder Day

We had our friends Max and Fin and their little boy Morgan (2) staying with us over the past few days and on Saturday we all decided to head through to Cardrona for a day on the snow. The reports said a few cm of fresh snow overnight so we were pretty excited about getting up there for a day's boarding.

We decided to see just how much fresh snow had fallen in the back bowls (down towards Arrowtown from Cardrona - i.e. over the back of the ski field) and were rewarded with some of the best powder runs of our lives. Most of our hiking involves hiking up and then getting the reward of riding back down but yesterday we had to do the opposite (snowboard down, stop and then walk back up in the snow). The snow was so good that it required great willpower to stop - it was only the length of the walk back up that stopped us! After 3 hikes plus some time on piste with the others we headed home tired but VERY happy.

Sorry about the quality of the photos - we only took Andrea's phone up with us which doesn't have a very good camera.

Our 2 tracks in the snow

You can see the type of terrain and why it was so hard to stop:

Looking back up the hill

Greg at the bottom of one of the runs in between our two tracks

Greg's New Toy

After much patience on Greg's part, his new truck has finally turned up! Thankfully he is a very patient person so it wasn't at all hard on Andrea...

A tad frosty

Recently the newspapers have been reporting that it's been cold down here. Last Sunday was the third coldest day in Queenstown on record (for July, at least). We've now had 3 weeks straight of frosty mornings, and Queenstown got down to -7, with -9 and -13 in places like Arrowtown. Frosts day after day mean hoar frosts down here (frost in the morning that doesn't melt during the day, with a new frost on top the following morning). In some places the frost has built up to 8 inches thick and looks like snow. There is also still a bit of snow around in places from the fall to lake level over 2 weeks ago - which is pretty much unheard of. Our driveway has had permanent ice on it for nearly 2 weeks, making getting the car out of the garage a bit more interesting each morning!

Unfortunately there hasn't been any fresh snow to accompany the cold weather, but we're making the most of the sunshine during the day and getting out and doing some of the things that we'd normally do in spring. So yesterday we headed back up Mt Crichton to get a bit of fresh air and get out of the house. In the bush it's relatively warm, but in the clearings there's still a bit of snow around from 2 weeks ago, and the hoar frost has built up on top since then creating awesome ice crystals. Some of them are 2-3 inches long.

We continued on up to the lookout over Lake Dispute, which we've shown you all before: http://gregandandreajarvis.blogspot.com/2009/03/lake-dispute.html but this time around it's a little more impressive:

And now for something completely different...

Today we decided to make the most of SnowFarm's "Locals' give it a go day" and headed up to try Nordic Skiing, otherwise known as Cross-Country Skiing. The SnowFarm is the other side of the valley from Cardrona Ski Resort (on the sunny side!).

It was definitely different. We both tried "classic" x-country skiing where you are mostly kept in tracks on the snow (like train tracks). The skis are really light, with no metal rails, and a section in the middle of the skis with "grippy bits" that look like fish scales to help you push forward (and not slide backwards going up hill). It's definitely hard work but really rewarding (especially on the bits where you get to fly downhill without slowing down). Next time we won't be wearing thermals underneath our snow gear - it's hot work!

We managed to score a beautiful day, and the snow conditions were also close to perfect. The atmosphere up there was great, everyone was so friendly and helpful. Not too many people either, which is a pleasant change at this time of year (being Winter Festival and the beginning of both NZ and Australian School Holidays).

Here's Andrea with all the gear on, midway through our last run of the day

And a photo of the two of us, courtesy of Greg's ex-workmate Kane (from Element)

Mountain Road

On the way down the Remarkables Mountain Road on Sunday (4 days after Wednesday's snow to lake level):

Lake Hayes Estate in the foreground, looking towards Coronet Peak