Wellington on first sight appeared quite pretty with all the houses lit up on the hills and the last rays of sun disappearing into the night. Roger gets in from Oz tomorrow so Steve and I have a bit of time to get our bearings and go through the usual rigmarole of accommodation hunting. The lodge we stayed in for the 1st night was fine apart from the weirdo that was the manager, I swear he could hear everything we were saying and I think he had a problem with me...

Up nice and early we had a yummy porridge with apple and cinnamon, all fired up for the day of boarding and tumbles!! We booked a progressive package so we could get on the bigger slopes but as it turns out we were probably a bit too eager as we were no way ready to go down proper gradients when we haven't quite got the grip of turning yet, we had the lesson which re-capped on what we'd learnt the day before and were left to our own devices to get our skills (ha)...

We've borrowed some ski trousers which are nice and warm and give a tiny bit more protection for the copious amount of times we're due to fall on our asses! Not being the typical snowboarding freaks we didn't get up the mountain until gone 12 (most people are up there by 9am) we had only planned on getting the snowboards and teaching ourselves but as it turned out there were some really good deals for beginners which included your board rental, lesson and lift pa...

We got hold of Rene on his birthday and have joined him in Methven which is about 1.5hrs from Christchurch, and a nice comfortable drive in our new car! Methven is the village at the bottom of Mount Hutt which is the main mountain to ski/snowboard close to Christchurch during the winter months. It's bloody cold here so we're chuffed to have our new coats and jeans to keep us warm! We had a few drinks with Rene for his birthday and have arranged to go up the moun...

We had a few hiccups to overcome before boarding the plane to New Zealand. We hadn't printed off our visas, this shouldn't have been a problem but when the staff at the airport kept giving us conflicting answers as to where we could print them off (as ever I got quite panicky and Steve told me to pack it in) after a while we overcame the hic and managed to check in. Next stop was changing some money and Travelex wanted $10 commission and then gave us a $10 off vo...