….and some sheep thrown in for good measure…

Here I am, down about 45 degrees below the equator, sitting in the living room at my sister’s flat in Queenstown, watching the rain come down. It’s been raining in town pretty much since I got here, which kinda sucks for walking around town, but doesn’t really suck that much when the mountains are above the snow line. In fact, it’s pretty sweet. Heres a pic from the back yard of the place I’m staying in between rain showers.

Per usual procedure, I didn’t really have time to take any sort of breather after I arrived from the 28 hours of traveling that got me here. Luckily I slept a good portion of the 12 hour flight from LA to queenstown, so when I arrived and my sister handed me a sandwich and said “we’re playing paintball, no time for fighting jet lag” I stepped up to the plate.

We headed out past several herds of sheep into the wilds of new zealand and met up with guy in a trailer with a lot of guns and some coveralls for us. As you can expect, fun times were had by all. Did things get a little overboard after we finished the final game and started playing ‘drive by shooting’? I’ll leave that up to your judgement. This is what happens when nobody cares about their cars and has some extra paintballs.

I think the welts have faded by now, but the dents on the cars won’t be going away anytime soon.

After a quick nap, we went out for a night on the town, which I ended up calling a bit early in favor of skiing early on friday.

I am happy to say that my sister has been doing a great job on her goal of moving to New Zealand to learn to ski. We had a good time pushing some wet, concrete-like snow around Coronet Peak on friday, and she was doing great.

Even though the snow was pretty wet and heavy, I pulled out the powder sniffer and even found a couple good turns just inside the rope lines before the day was done.

Saturday I opted to go it alone since Ada was swingin chairs up at coronet. I caught a bus up an amazingly steep road to the Remarkables ski field.

Here’s a view from the bus on the way up the road.

The skiing was decent, but unfortunately only the lowest lift was operating when I arrived due to high winds. After cruising the one blue run off that lift a few times I decided it was time to put my legs to use going up instead of down and took a hike off the top of the lower lift to the top of the main lift. It was about 1/2 hour of hiking and I met up with a couple folks from the UK. Andy and Sarah were doing the same thing, and since they had actually skiied at the Remarks before, I latched on with them for a nice run down through some really nice bowls.

Here’s Andy about to sign a nice open face.

We split up around lunch time and I spent the rest of the day trying not to kill myself in the terrain park. It was a successful day, despite the killer winds and variable snow.

My legs are feeling those first two days, so I decided to take a breather today.

Alright, part of that was the fact that I was out until about 3am sampling such fine local brews as Tui, Monteiths (aka “Monty’s”), and Speights.

The beers are pretty good, some of them tend to be a little watered down, and I would be hard pressed to convince anyone in the states that a Tui is an Indian Pale Ale with the significant lack of bitterness. But, they’re all the ‘standard’ fare here and are head and shoulders above some of the finer american creations. I’d put them on par with a Sam Adams or something in that realm. Good, but not your ‘fine microbrewery’ fare.

Except for Monteiths Radler. That is a horrid, vile excuse for a beer. It’s supposed to have some sort of lime and lemon flavor to it, and quite frankly tastes like somebody threw up in your beer. It’s one of the most foul beers I’ve ever tasted, and it kinda makes me cringe whenever I smell them pouring one. Avoid it AT ALL COSTS.

Regardless of the beers here, I had more than a few last night, and with the rain that is pouring forth from the heavens today, I’m spending a nice day on the couch planning my next moves.

Speaking of next moves, here are some of the ideas floating around my brain. We’ll see what materializes as some of them are weather and motivation dependent.

• next two days are likely to be at Treble Cone or Ohau since Ada has work off
• Starting wednesday, I’m on a list for a Southern Lakes Heli Ski trip.
• Sometime in the next week, I’ll probably rent a car or maybe a sweet camper van and head up north a bit further to Christchurch area.
• Once up north, I’m thinking of checking out a couple of the ‘club fields’ which are smaller ski areas where you typically stay on site and it’s epic skiing from some crazy rope tows.
• My sis wants to check out the fjords down in Milford Sound, so we may do that after I get back from my solo travels.

Like a squirrel to a shiny object, I am also probably going to do anything else that catches my eye along the way. Good times will be had.

I also posted a few more pics up on facebook if you would like to check those out, link is here.