I have been here in Queenstown for a week now. It sure is a lively little town with lots of tourists. There's a skiing season at the moment so the accomodations are pretty full. Heaps of people also come here to do some jumping of the cliffs, so if you want to do the most extreme bungy jumps or any other high priced activities, Queenstown is the place to go. The town is surrounded by snow-capped mountains and a lake so the views are again something too unrealistic. We don't praise the beautiful mountains all the time anymore so we came up with a new saying: Spoiled by the scenery.
Last Saturday I had this cultural evening with the british girls. This time I got to taste some long island ice tea, which of course I had tasted before. The special thing was that we were actually having this "tea" from actual ceramic teapot. Looked pretty funny when we were pouring drinks to each other. A later in the evening one of the girls lost her concentration a little bit and the lid of the teapot broke when it dropped to the floor, oh my. We continued the pub crawl to other bars as well and ended up being pretty 'tipsy' at the end of the evening. Had again really good fun.
In the beginning of this week I did some hiking around the Queenstown area and did a 5h "climb" to one of the mountains next to Queenstown. I couldn't make it to the summit since it's a winter and the track is pretty icy and snowy but I managed to find a really good viewpoint again without any tourists. I only saw a pack of (wild?) goats gazing on the track and I had to take a snowy detour since I don't know if those goats were aggressive or not. They had big horns though! I tried to scare them away by yelling them and waving a huge stick but they didn't seem to mind me at all. Stupid goats..
I hired a snowboard (Elan endless 161), pants and goggles from Wednesday to Friday and did some nice snowboarding around the Queenstown. There's couple of ski resorts near so you don't have to go to the same resort all the time. On Wednesday I went to the Coronet peak, which was pretty all right with many different kind of slopes. I went there with an Australian guy Andrew from Cairns. The terrain park at the coronet peak was quite a joke but they still had couple of nice rails for someone who enjoys riding them more than me.
On Thursday I went to the Remarkables, which has less slopes that Coronet peak. There was a lot of potential powder runs though and on a good day the Remarkables can probably offer really good powder riding. Unfortunately it had been sunny for the whole week so there wasn't too much powder to ride but atleast I got some tan on my whitish face. The park here was pretty nice and it felt good to try some boxes again. The superpipe was still under construction but the shape of it looked really good.
Yesterday on Friday I headed a little bit further to Cardrona which is actually more close to Wanaka than Queenstown. As soon as I got to the ski resort I noticed that this is a bit bigger than the previous resorts here and there was a really good looking park and two halfpipes. Unfortunately again they were still shaping the FIS-standard 150m superpipe but there was still a bit smaller pipe which was actually quite the same size than the pipe in my home ski resort in Finland. I did the most of the slopes once in the morning while they were still in good condition but I pretty much spent the rest of the day riding and hiking the half pipe. I really got into it again since the last time I was riding a pipe was over a year ago. On the evening I headed out with Andrew who had his last night here in Queenstown. What a great nightlife the Queenstown could offer again, great place. I said goodbyes to Andrew this morning and he invited me to visit him in Cairns which I'll do around September-October.
Today is Saturday and my last day in Queenstown. I'm heading out with Scottish Dave and English Matt who are pretty merry guys and actually just got wool handling(?) job near the Queenstown. Sounds hard work. Tomorrow morning I should head to Wanaka for another week which is going to include some more snowboarding. The weather forecast said it's gonna rain tomorrow and monday. Fingers crossed that it will be snowing at the mountains and we'll get some nice powder!
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