Found a nice lodge to stay in upon arrival here. More expensive then had been paying at $65 night between us but since not a lot else here and this is snow resort so prices will be higher we decided to stay here. Up next morning and headed to local shop to hire all gear (jacket, trousers, goggle, gloves etc) and board and boots. Managed to get all gear for $45 for the day!!!! That is unbeleivable price really is. We then headed up the 17km drive to the mountain range. You can literally drive the whole way up to where the ski lifts are and we parked up kitted up and headed over to lifts. We purchased our days lift pass for $85 and 10 mins later there we are at the top of the mountain snow boarding down!!! How awesome is that!! Just a day ago we were mountain biking in the forest mountain range now we are snow boarding in the mountain range here, not many places around where just a few hours drive achieves that!!! AWESOME! Had a real good day boarding and really wanted to stay and do some more for another day!! We decided to spend the night at same resort since we were knackered from day on the slopes and head all the way down south island to Queenstown. This way we could then come back up at a slower pace and if we still had time could get another days snow boarding in!! Yeah boy!!! Back at the lodge we found out there was a hot tub so we booked ourselves in for some of that action after a day on the mountains the hot jacuzzi was a welcome rest point. Thouroughly enjoyable time here and fingers crossed we get back for another days action on the slopes. Until then we had a big big drive ahead of us, next stop tomorrow would be Wellington to catch our ferry to the South Island.