Good Morning England,

How are you all doing? Well as you would expect our days have been full to the brim with mainly driving, however we have had and exciting couple of days,we should add some cold and wet couple of days. Last time we posted a message we were in Rotorua, we since made it through to Mount Ruapehu, which is located centrally on the North Island (this is where they filmed Mordor for Lord of the Rings)

We stayed here for the evening with the hope of doing some skiing in the morning, with our friends we managed to find a cheap chalet. We woke up early and headed towards the slopes, renting all our equipment with lift pass for no more the 50quid each. Getting to the top of the mountain we left our friends to do some snow boarding, whilst Amy and I went further up to check out the harder slopes. The weather was absolutely terrible, freezing cold rain that felt like bullets on your face, with a huge wind chill factor, Amy and I were soaked before we even got off the ski lift to complete our first run.

The snow was slushy and rocks were starting to show there way through, Amy still managed to look so smooth going down the mountain, where as I looked like a 3 legged blind donkey on ski's (lets just say it took me a while to warm up) The snow plough position was the preffered choice for me. After a couple of hours of skiing Amy and I decided to do one more run before a break, whilst on the ski lift the rain turned to a blizzard. Amy and the blind 3 legged donkey made it down the slopes to the cafe, at this point we were virtually soaked through. We headed for the restaurantwhere to our delight service was quick, very quick infact, and we had some outstanding tables to choose from. In then dawned on us that the mountain was being closed down due to the servere weather, this was confirmed when there were only 3 cars left in the public car park, one of them ours.

The snow settled very quickly, and we started to drive down the steep roads of the mountain, we passed cars on the way that had sliiped off the road or were putting chains on their wheels. We managed to drive half way down and joined a queue of traffic, the snow had built up so much withing 45 minutes it was impoosible to drive on. (I haven't got a clue how we managed to get down the mountain in a Honda FIT, automatic)

Four hours, a snow plough and some very helpful people we got down the mountain very slowly. The town at the bottom of the mountain had also been snowed in, so we had no choice but pay for an expensive room.

We woke up this morning and snow trap had made national news, snow like they had yesterday is highly unusual (I told Amy not to wish for better snow to ski on) The had managed to clear a way out of the town, which we followed out to a main road to Wellington. Where we are tonight and we have planned to catch the ferry to the south island tomorrow where we await our next funny disaster.