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.