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Last weekend Grant (from school) and I went down to Snow Park for the Burton NZ Open Snowboarding Competition, which hosted the top boarders in the world (minus Shawn White, who usually comes, but didn't this year.) Snow Park is located between Queenstown and Wanika, which is about 6.5 hours from Christchurch. Grant used to live in Queenstown and has been to the comp before, and managed to score a press pass. I posted some pictures here that aren't my best ones, but show the surrounding area and show how close we were to the action.
It was great to do a big road trip again, I've been jonesing for one for a while.
In proper road trip fashion, we left after school drove there in the dark, slept in the dark, and woke up surrounded by huge mountains and a lake. Esmo made it up the mountain that day w/o a problem. We shot the slope style comp until early afternoon, and even though it was a beautiful day, they cancelled the slope finals and the quarter pipe comp for that evening due to high winds...it was so windy tripods were nearly being pushed over. Left there, went to Q'town and met up with Grant's brother. That night we went bowling with some of their friends. It was the only bowling alley in Q'town and it was a whopping 7 lanes wide. One of the guys knew the manager, so we played after hours on all of the lanes.
Next day (Sat.) it was raining, everything was cancelled. We went to a bakery where I had my first pie. Pies in NZ are a national staple, but they're not fruit pies, they're small meat pies. Beef is usually the main flavor, but I had a couple of chicken ones that were pretty good. Basically, they're like chicken pot pies.
On Sunday, the road to the top of the mtn. was questionable, so we hitched a ride up...left Esmo at the bottom with the lights on (had to jump it when we left.) They were running the half pipe comp and we got to shoot it from right at the edge. These are the photos posted.
Driving back that day in the light was incredible. Just huge mountains and glacial lakes, which makes for an awesome ending to a great trip.
Came across the fanciest public toilets I've seen in some time, while we were in Queenstown. They have light up buttons and magnetic locks. Queenstown also has some of the most money in NZ too, so that might have something to do with it. 
