Tarita Catalina: NEW ZEALAND 2012

New Zealand. What a magical place. From the moment we arrived in the airport, we picked up our monster of a rental van, had the tunes blasting and made our way into Queenstown. Even the drive from the Airport to Queenstown is like seeing a starry night sky for the first time. You forget about such beauties of the world.

Even when we were up on the slope having the time of our life trying to snowboard, we were constantly distracted by the views and we would end up just sitting in the snow and looking out. and then we'd realise we should probably be snowboarding.

From Left: Me, Alex and Nyssa.

Our heads were literally in the clouds. And yes Benny, this time i am actually using that word appropriately. They were close enough to touch.

The ski resorts are amazing. One of the days we were there, Treble Cone got 1 metre of snow and we were all waiting at the bottom of the lift for the avalanche checker peoples to give us the all clear to go up. We had no idea what we were in for. Riding powder is like a whole other thing. You've got to lean heaps back to keep the front of your board up so you don't just go deeper in the snow and get stuck. My poor little back leg got so tired that every five seconds so i would sit and make giant snow angels for a bit, then contemplate digging my board out. Fun fun!!! (its cause my board is a park board, means extra work)

Cardrona was my favourite though. After that day at Treble Cone, it got closed due to wind and avalanches so we went up Cardrona for the first time of the year.

The Park= Oh. My. God.

Boxes on boxes on boxes. Rails on rails on rails. Weird things where you could jump over fences on the rails. Or you could jump up on to giant black round things and slide along and drop off. Different jump with heaps of pop or ones you just coast over. And then there were just giant kickers.

There Olympic teams, including Australia were all there as well, pushing us off the lifts and hogging the race coarse. Cause i sooo wanted to race them.

It was a little icy in some spots but sometimes if you want beautiful sunny days, that's the price you pay.
Here's a quick little original video of the terrain park:

and here's a much better video:

unfortunately we didn't get to go to snow park because it was closed the whole time we were there. :(

But oh gosh it was really the hardest week and a bit of my life. Snowboarding all day and partying all night (and really sick ATM so that is semi true, but all worth it). Did i mention our place had a spa?

Queenstown itself is awesome.

Yeah it probably wouldn't be the best place to live (Wanaka is more for the whole community thing) but its just this town with the biggest attitude and its so beautiful.

The attitude that it gets from all the tourists stopping in: Party the hardest while you can. Because everyone that stops by Queenstown is only ever there for two weeks tops unless your working or living there. which is few compared to the tourists. These are people that just wanna come in and let loose and then go home to their jobs in the real world. and i say real world because the life we adopted while we were in Queenstown didnt seem real (probably because we were off our heads most the time).

Oh yes we had a few of these "no we didn't all accidentally blink at once, we're just so tired and drunk to open our eyes" moments.

and a few "riding mechanical bull" moments,

and just general happy moments really.

This is just Benny. Wearing my helmet and pouring some scotch in our room. The usual.

Some of us most definitely fell in love with Queenstown and one little person in particular (Miss Bat Shit Cray) fell in love with World Bar.

Apart from having a massive party scene for the small size this town is, its got the best of the best things that if you lived with all the time, would become ordinary, like Fergburger.

Now everyone goes on and on about Fergburger but personally, I think the little ice cream shop next door is where its at.

So anyway, about time i introduced the beautiful crew of our 2012 New Zealand Ski Trip.

Andy

The top dog.

Alex.

Bat Shit Crazy.

Nyssa.

Totes cutsie snow bunny.

Shaff.

Random and hilarious.

and

Benny.

Rude.

I strongly advise that if you see any of these random hooligans around the streets, raspberry them in the face immediately.

raspberry 1 |rāsp|

noun

1. obtain snow within grasp and connect snow with face of said raspberrier until such frozen water element is choking said person.

But seriously, thanks go out to the crew for making it the awesome time it was and to Queenstown for being such an awesome place. Even though our crew was smaller and our itinerary was completely different, it just made it an even more unique trip to last time. The trip was something to never be forgotten and definitely going back. Again.