Call us suckers for punishment but less than one month after enduring a 24 hour flight from the UK we were back at Sydney International for an early flight to Queenstown on New Zealand’s South Island. With a strong tail wind we shaved 45 minutes off the journey time! We picked up the hire car and headed straight up the mountains to Wanaka. Fiona had booked a fantastic 3 bedroom house minutes from the town centre and we arrived shortly before the Harvey family descended. The first evening was spent getting supplies, skis and boots and trying to get the kids to bed.

Emily, Dylan and Molly were booked into the creche on the ski fields at Cardrona, but getting them there was a whole other matter. The resort was a 45 minute drive from Wanaka, the last part up a steep, winding unsealed road. By the time we’d done breakfast, loaded the cars, strapped in the kids, got up the mountain, unloaded the car, unloaded the kids, checked into the creche and got ourselves lift passes and food it was gone midday. Only 4 hours until the creche closed! It was a beautifully sunny but windy day and we strapped on the skis and hit the slopes with great excitement. An hour later we’d pretty much skied the resort. There were only 3 lifts, and 2 of them ended up at the same place. Thankfully the lift queues were short, as we had quickly found our confidence and were skiing top to bottom in minutes. We soon worked out a few favourites and even tackled some rocky blacks before conditions got quite icy and we called it a day.

The next day we managed to get up the mountain by 11.30, despite having to stop half way to fit snow chains. Conditions were very different - a big dump of snow and deep powder in places, but absolutely no visibility. It was like skiing in a different resort, which was probably a good thing seeing how small the resort was. We stuck to our favourite blue/black run to start with, pretty much skiing blind. Great fun, and we virtually had the resort to ourselves. It was much the same on Friday but the sun came out briefly for one amazing run in bright sunshine and calf deep powder. Fantastic!

We were getting good at the morning routine and got up the mountain by 10.30am on Saturday to find bright sunshine and clear skies. We also found that everyone in New Zealand had heard of the big dump over the last couple of days and had come out in force to make tracks in the fresh powder. Add on the New Zealand Winter Games events and the resort was heaving. We were spending 30 minutes in the lift queue for a 5 minute run down a crowded slope. So frustrating! We ended up mucking around with little jumps or gullies trying to stretch out the time before we rejoined the queue. We resorted to a long lunch in a rather nice café, washed down with plenty of mulled wine, and enjoying some kid-free time. We had one more run before giving up on the lifts and taking Emily out in the snow for a play.

Evenings at the house at Wanaka were initially quite exhausting trying to get the kids fed, bathed and put to bed in time for us to cook, eat and relax. Some nights we weren’t eating until gone 10pm then crashing soon after. Again with practice we got better at the routine until we were a well oiled machine. Towards the end of the week we even had time for an abridged game of Trivial Pursuit one night and a homemade and hilarious Pictionary competition another night.

After battling with the queues on the Saturday we decided to take a day off on Sunday and visited Puzzling World instead. We’d heard a lot about this place and had seen numerous pictures on Getjealous, so we were looking forward to seeing it for ourselves. Sadly the rain kept us from enjoying the Great Maze, but we had a lot of fun inside looking at the optical illusions and crazy sloping rooms. The kids (and grown-ups) had a great time playing with all the toys and puzzles in the café while we all had lunch. Sadly the excursion ended abruptly when Emily fell off a bench hitting her nose on the concrete. Lots of blood but thankfully nothing broken!

Monday was our last day on the slopes - and my birthday. We planned to go hard and ski all day, hoping the weekend crowds would have cleared. We had a good day, but there was still too much waiting around so we had a lazy lunch of lamb shanks and more mulled wine before heading out for one last session. We’d just skied down to the first lift when everything stopped. We waited patiently for 30 minutes, but eventually everyone began walking back up to the resort. We followed suit and joined the trail of disgruntled skiers and boarders winding their way back up a track to the main road. Thankfully the resort had sent down buses to carry us back up to the top, but we’d lost a good hour and a half skiing. Just time for one last non-stop top to bottom race before it was time to pick up the kids. So disappointing!

That night one of the girls from the creche came to babysit and we went out for drinks and dinner at a fancy restaurant in town. It was a lovely meal, made all the more special by the waiter bringing me a candle in a slice of blue cheese. A perfect end to a great trip.