Winter Celebrations
I thought I’d give Dave a rest and post something for a change. We’ve just returned from a week in New Zealand and had a great time. We were over for my Nana’s 90th birthday party, which was a great success. My aunt was down in NZ already as she usually spends July and August with her, and my parents flew down as well. Unfortunately Dale was not able to make it due to work commitments and was sorely missed - it’s not often that the Markwick Clan finds itself in the same place. My nana had a great time at the party - she’s not able to get around on her own these days so it was really nice for her to have her friends and family in one place. We had the party in a function room of a local hotel and they did an excellent job with the hors d’oeuvres and cakes. My aunt, mom and I went around a few hours beforehand to decorate the room with fresh cut flowers from my nana’s garden and we also brought along the many bouquets that were delivered to her earlier that day.
While we were in Christchurch David and I did a couple of day trips in the area – the first full day we drove around the Canterbury Plains, stopping to see a couple of rivers and gorges in the area and even made it half-way up the access road to Mt Hutt before we got too scared and turned around. Roads in NZ up in the mountains are very narrow, windy and steep and there are no guard rails. It would have been fine if we were in a better car but for the Christchurch portion of our trip I rented us a compact 2dw. There just wasn’t enough juice and traction for the road we were on.
The following day we drove over the Port Hills to Akaroa, a sleepy little village with a French heritage on the Banks Peninsula. We then drove along the Summit Road (again, narrow, windy, but not as steep) to Lyttleton and Sumner for some amazing views.
The morning after the party our 4wd truck was delivered and we headed down to Wanaka, about a 6 hour drive south and into the mountains in the interior. I booked us into a really nice hotel in Wanaka – the selling feature was a studio apartment so we could offset the cost of the room by cooking most of our own meals. The other selling feature was the hotel’s 9 hot pools!! We took ablutions on a daily basis.
We headed to Cardrona Ski Resort the following morning – Cardrona is an easier place to ski than Treble Cone so we thought we’d start there. It was quite windy and the snow conditions weren’t ideal, but Dave hadn’t been skiing in over 2 years (3 for me!) so we weren’t complaining.
The next day was a “day off”; we slept in, had a nice long breakfast, meandered through the mountains to Queenstown for some lunch, then back to the hotel for some hot tubbing. I made reservations for us at a nice restaurant that evening and we had an excellent 5 course set menu. All the dishes were interesting, but the dessert was my favourite – Devil’s Something-or-other (sorry, can’t remember the name) that was a scoop of strawberry pudding, a scoop of spicy chili ice cream (and was it spicy!) and a gooey, warm chocolate cake.
Our final day in Wanaka was a bit disappointing – the lifts were closed at Treble Cone due to high winds and it was raining so Cardrona wouldn’t have been any good either. So, we just hung around Wanaka, did a bit of shopping, visited a winery, and watched a couple of movies.
We woke up on our last day at 4:30am and were on the road as soon as possible in order to make it back to Christchurch with plenty of time to spare to catch our flight (you never know what sort of weather you’ll encounter in the mountains). Turns out it was a beautiful, sunny day so we arrived in Christchurch with hours to spare. One great thing about leaving so early was that when we hit Lake Pukaki at sunrise, it was breathtakingly beautiful. We had enough time once we got to Christchurch to head up the Port Hills again (slightly different spot this time) to get a view over Christchurch, and then over to Brighton Beach for some takeaway fish and chips – a Markwick family tradition. Then a brief stop in to my nana’s for our last goodbyes and we were on our way home.