Snowboarding Turoa, New Zealand

Keeping up with the Kardash.... Damn you, and your brainwashing Kim! What I meant to say is keeping up with the snowboarding theme of last week. I had a mini adventure and it was amazing. I set off for a blissful two days snowboarding in Turoa, Mt Ruapehu with my lovely pals from the Queen’s Ferry Hotel.

Road trips are never complete without an endless supply of lollies, and singing that will put you in the category of the worst karaoke bars in Auckland. Lou had a great idea that there would be a girl's car and a boy's car – because girls are much prettier than smelly boys, and as my dear friend Beyonce says, they run the world!

Our road trip down consisted of blasting Wet, Wet, Wet “Love is all Around”, and Patience, from Ireland, got addicted to Pineapple lumps. Her verdict was that they sort of tasted like toffee. We ooohed and ahhhed at all the new born animals, reminding us that winter is almost over, and we can look forward to some warm spring riding down the mountain.

We met the boys at the bach, and headed to the pub to watch the rugby (NZ lost to the Wallabies – let’s hope this is all part of the strategy to lure them in to a false sense of security for the rugby world cup). We sat down and had some pub grub, and the waitress sent over a mysterious tray of shots, and said that they were “shots of appreciation”. I was slightly concerned that we were going to get raped and murdered that night – but ended up shooting it back anyway. We asked the waitress (after we’d drank them) who they were from, and our mind was slightly put at ease when she pointed to the good looking bar tender.

Well I am not sure if you read about my sober month, but that really did change my perspective on drinking, and Lou and I went back to the bach even before the rugby was over! I didn’t want to ruin my day snowboarding by being hung-over.

Patience, Karim, and Jo however had a few more “shots of appreciation” and when we got up at 7.30 the next morning to hit the slopes – they were nowhere to be seen. Fanatically Lou rang them to see if our prediction of a possible rape, and murder came true, but it turns out they went a house party at the hot bar tender’s house with the only drug of persuasion being alcohol.

Paddy (Lou’s boyfriend) was a beginner, so Lou stayed down the bottom for a bit. While Dave (the owner of Queen’s Ferry) and I went up the chair lift. New Zealand snow is nothing compared to Canadian snow that is for sure. In Canadian snow, you feel like you are floating on soft powder, in New Zealand you are lucky to have slush to move around, because most of the time it’s icy as! One more embarrassing moment was falling over in an icy patch and sliding about 20meters down the hill on my bum, because there was absolutely no snow to dig your board into.

One triumph though was doing a 360 spin right in front of Dave. I must have look rather pleased with myself, because Dave commented, “either you are really happy, or you have just weed your pants.”   

That night we played Pictionary, a game that brings out all sides of human nature. Lou and Paddy tested their relationship, while Patience and I battled Dave and Karim for first place. I am not going to say who won because I am a sore loser!

The next day, Patience and Karim come with us, we improved on the day before, and I even managed to do a few jumps! Although by the end of the day my legs were putting up a protest to co-operate! They were not happy with the torture I had put them through, and they were screaming enough is enough.

The roadtrip back was over shadowed by going back to our lives in the real world. Patience slept most of the way which left Lou and I to our antics. We stopped to pick daffodils by the side of the road, sang out of key, and judged people as we drove through Hamilton.

A lovely weekend away, thanks guys! J