Well we are quite well settled in now. We have moved up to the lodge in Wanaka and pretty much gotten ourselves set up. The first few days here were a bit of a shock with the hardest frosts I have ever seen. The ice was about 1/2 an inch thick and covered everything!
We managed to pick up a pretty sweet car to get up the mountain and can I just say how happy I am that we managed to get something with AWD and good brakes, airbags etc.. the trip up the mountain is quite terrifying! Used to the cushy sealed roads in Victorian ski resorts with all that nice gaurd railing and blizzard marker poles, we find ourselves driving up a loose gravel track just inches from a sheer drop over the side. No railings, not even a tree to break your fall! There was a story in the paper the other day about a tourist from Melbourne going over the side, he was lucky, after a 30m plunge, the car hit a single lone boulder on the hillside which prevented it from falling further.
The lodge is starting to feel a bit more like home, it is a pretty big place as you will see from the picture below, and in the first week or so it did feel a bit empty with just the two of us in it.
It is a lot nicer now though, we have found some people to share long term, an English and an Irish girl working in town, and an English couple here to ski for the season. We have also got a friendly couple in the dorm room at the moment so the place is full of friendly travellers and we are starting to be a bit more social! Yes, as i write this, I am still a tad hung over from our outing to the pub last night.
We also have managed to get some work here to help pay the bills, my flat is still vacant in Melbourne so the mortgage beast is calling. We walked into a luxury resort enquiring about work. Two days later we got a phone call for a quick interview, but as we were just about to head up the mountain, we dropped by in our ski gear! No worries, anything goes in Wanaka. We walked in and the boss basically said you start Monday, I already have put you in the roster. And here was I trying to update my CV! OK so it is not exactly glamorous, we are making beds and cleaning toilets, and the pay is not quite what we are used to, but it will get us by till we move on and give us plenty of time up the mountain for doing stuff like this!!!
Yep, it really is that breathtaking.
We were up skiing the other day and some smart ass in a private jet basically buzzed the ski field, can't have been more than 50ft off the ground! Ripped down the ski slope then took off across the mountaintops doing barrel rolls all the way! It scared the absolute crap out of all the skiers on the mountain, including me!!
Cardrona is a smallish mountain, but pretty nice and has a good range of different runs, and the view is spectacular. When it is clear you can see both Queenstown and Wanaka which is very cool, although the other day there was a big inversion layer for the whole week, it was perfect weather on the mountain but both towns were blanketed in a sea of fog for the whole week. It was a bit dreary at home, but made for a rather interesting view of the mountain peaks rising up out of the mist.
Basically i think that the sign really sums up the whole place best.....
