This was the view from the back of the hostel.
After Kaikoura and staying the night in Blenhiem the next stop was St Arnaud. St Arnaud is a tiny place with one restaurant and a petrol station and that is about it. Rainbow ski field is east of the town and that is where we were headed. We had to leave Blenheim quite early in the morning so that we could get to Rainbow in time to catch the shuttle up the hill to the ski field. Emma didn't want to drive up there, and for good reason. Many of the roads up to the ski fields are dirt or gravel with no barriers and very steep drop-offs. When they say chains are required they really mean it, no messing around. We didn't have any chains so Will and I were going to catch the shuttle. Emma and Jo decided they would rather hike than ski. As we pulled into the parking lot we saw the shuttle pulling away up the hill, we missed it by a matter of seconds. The parking lot was completely deserted except for one rather old car and two people putting chains on it. So we asked them if they wouldn't mind giving us a lift up. They said fine, and off we went. So it was a good job that we missed the bus because we saved ourselves $10 each!
Unfortunately the weather turned out to be as uncooperative as Mt. Hutt had been. Snow and strong wind meant that the skiing was quite unpleasant - I suppose I have really been spoiled living and skiing in the Rocky Mountains for the last few years. There was really only one lift open and one run (here is a map of the ski area). Will stuck with it much longer than I did, I gave up around 2pm. We warmed up in the cafeteria and then ended up getting a lift back down with the same couple that had driven us up.
Emma and Jo picked us up and shuttled us off to the hostel for nice hot showers and then a soak in the hot tub. The Yellow House, I think it was called, was one of the nicest hostels that we stayed in, and we had the entire place to ourselves.
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We had rather an entertaining evening that night. We were starved after our exertions in the cold and went to the only restaruant in the town (more of a village really), where we promptly got told that we couldn't eat unless we had a reservation. The others were just going to go and eat chips in the bar, but the 'new me' believes in asking for what I want (it usually ends up working, and for the rest of the trip I was designated the asker of all difficult questions!). So I talked nicely to the people and they let us sit down and fed us huge quanitities of food, and a bottle of wine. I remember having an after dinner sherry and then doing rather a lot of giggling on the way home! |
The following day we went for a really nice walk in the morning along the lake, again the scenery was spectacular. We spent quite a long time skipping stones across the lake (Will got about 20 or some huge number!).
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