Chillin' in Wanaka

I have been a week here in cosy Wanaka. It's much smaller than Queenstown and has a strong ski-village feeling with stunning lake/mountain views. Every morning people get up early and go to two of the nearest ski resorts Cardrona and Treble Cone. The first I already visited and wrote about in my last posting and yesterday I went to the latter. Treble Cone is the biggest ski resort in NZ but most of the skiable area are black back-country runs. It would a perfect place to go after heavy snowfall since there's so much terrain to find good powder. Unfortunately it hasn't been properly snowing here for couple of weeks so the backcountry tracks were already worn out. This combined with the fact that the terrain park isn't too special, I decided to rent skis for the day. It has been couple of years since I went skiing last time but as a kid I used to be the master of alpine skiing back in Finland in the local 102m-high mountain "Kasurila".



It's pretty expensive to go skiing/snowboarding for a day if you don't have a season pass and your own gear. I decided to make my skiing day as cheap as possible and hitchiked the 20km road up to the Treble Cone which turned out to be really easy. When buying the lift pass I was able to get the student discount for NZ & Australian students only, because I still had my Australian student card. On the mountain I met local guy Paul who worked as a lawyer/skiing instructor and ended up skiing with him the whole afternoon. He understood my situation since he had been a ski bum few years ago and gave me a ride back to Wanaka. Later on we went for "few" beers to a bar where his flatmate worked. Friendly bunch of people these Kiwis are.

I'm staying two more nights here before continuing my travels towards Christchurch and eventually on next week to Sydney. I'm missing the surf...