It’s hard to leave the sun, but on Wednesday the 25th of August, the High Five Crew, being Vanessa Chan, Duncan Mainland and myself left the beautiful warm weather of Whistler to the cold snowy world down under of New Zealand. Some might think we’re crazy and to be honest, I sometimes think we are. We snowboard over 150 days a year but that just isn’t enough, we need more!
Photo by Vanessa Chan
We said goodbye to our last beautiful sunset in the Vancouver and took to the sky for 14 hours. We co-incidentally met up with Paul Lalonde at the airport who ended up being a great forth wheel of the trip.
Paul and Duncan sat together watching movies while Vanessa and myself slept through most of the flight. For me, there’s something about being on a plane that makes me just pass out. I can’t explain why. Sometimes I even pass out before the plane takes off. It’s the weirdest thing but for a traveling snowboarder it’s great.
Photo by Vanessa Chan
Once in Auckland, I got the great news from Queenstown tourism that they were going to be comping us 4 nights. We didn’t really know what to expect and I was just happy to get some free nights in a nice hotel.
The flight to Queenstown was pretty smooth and the view from the plane was awesome.
We got to see Cardrona Snow Field from a bird’s view, which is one of the hills we’ll be riding.
It was pretty cool.
Photo by Duncan Mainland
Photo by Vanessa Chan
Anyways, we got to Queenstown without any problems and Apex car rentals had a car waiting for us at a sweet deal.
Photo by Vanessa Chan
We we’re stoked on our Wingroad. Well that is until we couldn’t fit all our bags in the station wagon. Now what!?!
Photo by Vanessa Chan
Maybe we should have rented an SUV instead. Duncan’s tetris skills really paid off and somehow got us all in. It was possibly one of the worst drives of my life. We were stuffed tighter than a sardine can. Vanessa had 3 bags in the front with her, my chest was practically touching the steering wheel and Duncan and Paul were closer than two star crossed lovers would have been if they hadn’t killed themselves.
Photo by Vanessa Chan
But we made it to the free hotel and found out that we were staying at the very nice, very posh, Heritage villa in Queenstown.
Photo by Vanessa
Let me tell you, Queenstown really spoiled us. Maybe they didn’t realize that we’re snowboarders. This place is incredible. After we checked in to the villa, and while we were running around in the place freaking out about how nice the place was, a hotel staff knocked on the door. I thought we were getting evicted, maybe they had made a mistake checking us into such a nice place. But instead he came with cookies and a welcoming letter. This is what the letter said:
Photo by Vanessa Chan
Seriously this is probably the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. Sorry, it’s not a hotel, it’s a Villa. When I win the loto, I’ll be buying a Villa like this.
Photo by Vanessa Chan