New Zealand Ski Trip 2014 - Part 3

So this is pretty late, but hopefully I remembered most of it :)

Day 5 
My brother didn't ski day 4 because he was sick, and then we decided to take Day 5 off so he and I think my sister? could recuperate a bit. We pretty much lazed around for the morning, heading off to Devil Burger at around 11:30am. Devil Burger is one of the recommended burger places in Queenstown, with the main being Fergburger (looking at least a half hour wait no matter the time of day). I forgot to take a photo of our food but I remember I got the daily special which was crazy - blue vein cheese sauce and rocket is all I can remember but oh so good.

tbh the mascot in real life wasn't that hot

hm look at those stylish ski jackets out and about town 

After lunch, we decided to go to a couple of the - I'm not really sure what to call them - attractions around town. First up, we went to Odyssey Sensory Maze. I've been to one in Queensland when I was younger, and this one was quite - small in comparison. If you haven't been to one before, basically it's a bunch of rooms, each with special features. For example, in this maze the first room was filled with gym balls (which were pretty fun to bounce and climb around on), another filled with balloons (hello static) and another was some sort of indoor garden with really weird ground (you're walking barefeet through these). There were also a couple of optical illusion rooms - and a mirror maze (of course!).

Just the entrance since I couldn't take any photos inside :(

 Each room was quite small, and even though we tried to take as long as we could, I think we spent about half an hour inside. And it was around $20 per person (cheaper for the following visits), but I don't think it was that good of a maze. If you haven't been in a sensory maze before, please don't base your first experience of them off this. But if you're bored and have cash to splash - go ahead.

dun. DUN. DUN.

 Next up, we decided to visit the local horror house - Fear Factory! So, I really hate scary stuff. I don't watch scary movies or like, do scary things in general I suppose. I've been through the horror house up at Dreamworld a couple times and I'm not at all eager to go through another. But Nicole said she'd do it if I did it, and I could tell she really wanted to do it *sigh*. The things I do.. But it was fun, because we went super slow - like so slow - and kept a mildly light banter on throughout the walk so we didn't get spooked out too much.

Yes, I am very scared

 I don't think we really screamed at all, maybe a couple of AHH and lots of flinches, but we really shuffled through the whole house. Being at the end of the line, you get those creepy ghouls touching your neck and all that shiz, but I just hunched down and squirmed instead of screaming and pushing everyone along faster. I even said once 'Somebody's touching my neck' but I don't think anyone noticed.. At one part, Nam was wondering 'Which way do we go?' and Linh and I heard this creepy voice to our right wheezing out 'thissss wayyyy, thisss wayyy' (yeah, they were definitely trying to hurry us along). There was also this instant when one of the actors was spraying water onto us, and I  told Nicole that that was her daily shower done, and she jokingly called out for more - and yeah, he showered us again.. It was a relief to get out, even if we weren't crazily scared.

Creep Nicole is creepy

After the haunted house, we ended up on the shore-side and so went on a walk around the Queenstown Gardens (Queenstown Garden Walk for those who were wondering the name of the track ^^). The lake is beautiful so um, I'm just going to leave some pictures here.

Sorry for some wonky photos :/

Day 6
Last day of skiing! It snowed on Day 5, so we had some wonderful fresh snow AND we were also skiing at the Remarkables for the last day! The Remarkables was a further drive and a lot more windy - it was actually quite a scary drive. The car we had wasn't the best for it, especially coming down...
Anyway - fresh tracks! Remarks only had about 5 lifts running (that may have been all of them) including this new one that Nicole was excited about. Unfortunately... idk all the mountains in New Zealand are small? The new one went straight to the peak but everything open was blue or green runs pretty much. The Shadow Basin Chair which leads to all the black runs was open, but only had one run open (blue) - and it was snowing the whole day, so the long chair lift ride was not worth it. After trying out a couple of the runs, Nicole and I managed to make a smooth circuit on the Sugar Bowl Chair, riding off piste or through the terrain park for the upper part, before cutting into (I think it must be) Gotham City which developed some mean ass moguls - and because it was snowing, you can't see a metre in front because everything's just white, so we were really able to work hard there. That was pretty much the only bit where we got warm - the off-piste area being smooth and just full of wonderful soft snow was not challenging at all.

White for miles

done done done the last day :) :(
(next to buy: cool reflective goggles)

Sorry it's blurry but I couldn't use flash on the drive down - dangerous
look at that edge of nothingness :/

Day 7
Glorious sleep-in (we had to get up extra early for Remarks), we spent most of the morning shopping (I got a new jacket!) and eating :3 We dropped by Fergbaker again for some on the go lunch,
Just a very chilled day while we waited around for our flight.

Nicole with her cake cake from Fergbaker

Nicole discovers 2048, look at that grumpy face ^^
(I have a progression of photos, and in each one she steadily gets more unhappy ^^)

And then we were home - last day we didn't really do much.
Oh, our car battery also died so we were stuck in the carpark for about an hour (thankfully, someone else's battery had also died so the service car was in the area).
And then we were home.

Thanks for reading this series! I'll try to write the Buller trip up around exam time whenever I'm procrastinating. Click on to read Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them.

faithfully,
Mai