Had a quiet couple of days in Dunedin, picked up a sore throat, endured the Bus Driver From Hell who seemed to think his job was to point out every single farm or sheep throughout the Central Otago Region throughout a five-hour journey in one monotonous tone, did the Speights brewery tour and then came back to Queenstown. We’re now in a huge YHA full of stupidly-rich Japanese kids that are indefinitely living here and have been reportedly skiing/snowboarding for the last three months!

We did our bit to keep up with the ski set by doing a tentative “starter day” that involved three hours of lessons. The Coronet Peak didn’t disappoint and it even started snowing when we reached the top. We both seemed to cope fine but Sue’s definitely the ski bunny out of the two of us. Her boundless enthusiasm even convinced us beginners to attempt the “novice” (ie steep slope) chair-lift track following our lessons. Fortunately no-one was killed as young Sue wasn’t quite as advanced as she thought and hurtled down on her arse through the advanced skiiers. The rest of us thought better of it and got back on the chair-lift down! More ski action tomorrow.