Snow in June

Well, it's finally started snowing. After three or four days of gorgeous blue skies here in Queenstown, we woke to find the town looking as if it was encapsulated in a snow-globe and shaken vigourously. Ironically, this sudden flurry has prompted them to 'close the mountain', meaning we might not get to go skiing tomorrow. I love the expression 'close the mountain', as if you could close off anything that big. You'd need a pretty big sheet. Although having said that, the snow is so thick that you can't actually see it, so I guess it is closed.

Anyway, Jen and I are having heaps of fun in our cosy campervan, we got a portable DVD player with it so we stocked up on cheap films to keep us occupied in the evening, and we also bought a small selection of travel games. We wanted the classics - Connect 4, Battleships and Scrabble, but went to a low budget discount store to get them so we came away with 'Line Up Four', 'Sea Battle', and 'Form-A-Word'. But hey, they still do the job.

We arrived in Queenstown on Tuesday after a whistle stop tour of the south of New Zealand, right in the nick of time for Queenstowns annual Winter Festival which starts tomorrow with a large firework dispay. As part of the festival on Saturday night there is a Masquerade Ball at one of the big hotels here which Jen and I got tickets for yesterday, and there's a couple of gigs and some stand up comedy going on next week too, so it's all very exciting. And hopefully, we'll get to go skiing tomorrow, weather permitting. I've already fallen on my ass twice today, so it should be interesting. Better double check that travel insurance policy...

Kiwi fruits

I knew I was going to New Zealand when I went up to the bar in a pizza restaurant on our first night here. Different country means different beer and I didn't know what was what so I asked the barman for a pint of whatever he recommended. As he was pulling the pint he asked where I was from. "Scotland", I replied. He seemed unmoved by this but as he plonked the pint on the bar he said "Tell you what, Scotsman, this one's on me". I come from a country where beer is practically a currency, so I was pretty chuffed.

And that's not the only good thing about Christchurch, here on New Zealand's south island, far from it. It's a beautifully kept city, which has a very obvious English feel to it. The river that lazily meanders through the city center is called the Avon, and you can even go punting on it. Many of the older buildings wouldn't be out of place in Cambridge or York, and among the English place names paid tribute to in street names are Gloucester, Worcester, Manchester, Hereford, Durham and Oxford, amongst others. It's incredibly laid back, as I am assured most places in New Zealand are, and above all it's very easy to feel at home here.

Jen and I have hired a campervan to live in for this next adventure, Claire is going off to see if she can find some work on a farm somewhere, and we've got roughly seven weeks to explore both islands of New Zealand, which should be ample time. So on Friday we're heading out of Christchurch a few miles to the east to something called the Banks Peninsula, which was created by two volcanic eruptions some time in the past and is now home to the Francophile village of Akaroa. In the meantime, there's a glow in the dark mini golf course here that I have to check out, and I might pop back into that pizza restaurant...