Queenstown Skiing in August

Not that long ago but what feels like another lifetime, Justin and I took a long weekend ski trip to Queenstown.  We left very early Saturday morning and rented a car in Queenstown.  We checked into our hotel and then made it to the slopes a little after noon.  We skied the first day at Coronet Peak and bought a twilight pass which was good from 12 until 9 pm.  We had a great afternoon of skiing and enjoyed skiing on a new type of terrain with no trees to mark the trails.  The snow wasn't the best but that didn't stop us!    We took a snack break while the ski area prepared for night skiing by grooming the main trails and turning on the lights.  We were pretty exhausted by this time so we only made a few runs after dark and headed back to the hotel.  

View from the lift at Coronet Peak

Selfie on the lift
The next day we took a guided wine tasting tour with Funny French Cars.  It was a private tour, just Justin, me, and the guide.  We visited about 5 different wineries throughout the Central Otago region just outside of Queenstown.  We had lunch at Wild Earth Wines where we had a tasting plate with 5 items and a matching wine tasting with each.  The food and wine were both delicious!  We had dinner at our favorite pizza place in Queenstown, Winnies.  

J & L on the Funny French Car wine tour

The famous Queenstown shotover jet boat from above

On Sunday, we decided to try out the other ski field near Queenstown, the Remarkables.  We had an interesting drive straight up the mountain on a dirt road with our tiny engined, manual car.  We made it however and enjoyed a wonderful day on the slopes with perfect weather and nice snow!  We headed back to the hotel around 4 and picked up a hitch-hiker in the parking lot.  She was just a harmless ski bum/waitress but entertained us on the way back to town.  We had dinner at Coyote Grill followed by a mulled wine at a local wine bar.  On the way home to satisfy our sweet tooth, we stopped at the famous Fergbaker (part of Fergburger) and had the most amazing Boston Creme donut (seriously, I still dream about it).  

Lindsay at the Remarkables

Lindsay skiing through the snow tunnel

The next morning we had brunch in town, did a little shopping, visited a few lookouts over the lake and then headed to the airport.  It was a great trip to snowy Queenstown!

The Earnslaw from a lookout above Queenstown

1 comments:

CrazyUncle said...

Skiing, drinking, mulling, Citroening, shopping, tunneling, donuting. Y'all had a whirlwind trip. I bet you are so glad you had all those experiences, and that you took the time to document them for us and yourselves through this blog.