The long white cloud, continued

So yes, the Internet cafes in Queenstown wasn't that great. It was 1 NZD per 15 minutes and damn slow, so I wasn't inclined to spend a lot of time on it. Back to the story...

The rest of the week brought some more bad visibility. We all woke up late on Thursday – on Wednesday night Dave and Luke went out on a pub crawl, while I stayed up to watch the final big mountain stage of Le Tour de France – so we caught the late bus to the Remarkables on Thursday. It was more or less the same experience as the previous day.

In contrast, we woke up really early on Friday so that we could catch the bus heading to Treble Cone. The day got off to an interesting start when we ended up at different places due to Dave and Luke taking the wrong fork (the resort's runs weren't clearly marked at all). We eventually all met up again at the cafe when visibility went down to almost zero (the worst we experienced all week). It was interesting getting back down when you were a few feet from a ledge and couldn't see more than a foot in front of you. Anyway, it eventually cleared up later in the day and we had a great time boarding for a few hours before heading back to the hotel.

Our last day on the snow was Saturday and we decided to catch the early bus once more. It was back to the Remarkables, in time for the opening of the new board park called the Burton Stash. I actually managed to get in there before it was officially open by accident. It was a very nicely set up park, but I wasn't game enough to try any of the features. The powder in between sections was nice, though not long enough to really count. I think we all managed to hurt ourselves, too. For me it was the old bailing out of a funbox routine. I tried to slow down too late and caught an edge on the box then fell off at the end landing on my back on the moderately hard landing. The only thing bruised was my ego (and my back). The weather eventually turned bad again and we ended up heading back to the hotel early.

Dave and I bought a book each for the 8-hour bus trip to Christchurch the next day (I had finished American Gods the previous day – one of the best books I have ever read) then we all had some dinner and watched the Bledisloe Cup match at a bar. We headed home at halftime and slowly packed for the trip the next day. I stayed up to watch the penultimate stage of Le Tour de France and was slightly disappointed that Cadel Evans couldn't get the Yellow Jersey back.

The bus we paid for to get from Queenstown to Christchurch today was cheap, and we got what we paid for. It was rickety at best, and Dave didn't have any room to move his legs. Luckily, it was a mostly empty bus, and we were able to take up as much room as we needed. I started reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and I lent Dave American Gods to read, but most of the trip was taken up by us trying to catch up on some sleep.

We're now in Christchurch on our last night in New Zealand. I've decided to stay in while the boys are going to try to have a big night out. Our plans for tomorrow still aren't clear. Our flight leaves at 3:40pm, so we have time to do some sort of adventure activity, but we have yet to decide what to do. We're contemplating some skydiving, or perhaps some paragliding.

My best guess is that the next update will come from back home.