Rachael, Dave and JJ come to visit

It turns out that Jeremy (our nephew) is the bringer of snow. On the night he was born (last July) we had the biggest snow fall to lake level that Queenstown had seen in years.

This is our house on the morning of July the 5th, 2008. JJ was born the night before.

And here are Andrea and Jen in our backyard with the snowman we all built. We named the snowman Jeremy.

The snow season this year started with a bang, but after that there had been very little snow for 8 weeks. Until the day before JJ showed up - when we received almost half a metre of snow up on the fields, in about 24 hours. Not that we were complaining! The weather cleared out just in time for their flight to land, and stayed clear for the weekend, and packed in again on the evening after they flew out.

While they were here, we tried to help JJ experience lots of fun things.

Like swings and slides. This is the playground down by the little beach we wakeboard off. It turns out Jeremy prefers to be upside down on swings.

At the top of the slide, showing off the jumper that Gran (Louise Houltham) made for him. Sorry Aunty Jen, he had dispensed with the beanie by then!

Jeremy also discovered that he likes ribs.

On their last afternoon here, Dave and Jeremy came for a walk with the two of us along the beach. It was the coldest we've ever seen the beach - the sand had frozen! It was like walking on concrete - quite a bizarre feeling.

And of course we took him up to the snow. He wasn't so sure - everything was just so different to what he's used to. But he loved the chair lift!

And last but not least a picture of Aunty Andrea holding JJ in the carpark before we took off to hike for some fresh powder snow. Sorry about abandoning you guys for an hour or so, Rach and Dave.... but on powder days we have no friends... or relatives.

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!