Quad Biking, on Snowy Hills...Awesome!

We spent our first day in Christchurch by wondering around in the city. We're trying to get to know this place a little bit and it's a relieve to find out that the food price were not as expensive as Queenstown. For $5, you can get a decent meal already. By day two, my body was aching for more exciting thing to do. I missed out on riding snowmobile in Queenstown, so I tried to do that in Christchurch, but no place offered that kind of activity. Then we settled down with quad biking. The place to do quad biking was not in Christchurch itself but in a small town called Hanmer Spring. If you think Queenstown is small, you should see this place. You can walk from the end of the central town to the other end in five minutes. Omigosh!

Took two hour to get there, and when we arrived, the quad biking won't start until another 3 hours. Nice! What can I do in this place now? We tried to get ourselves warm first, so we went to a local bakery and stayed there as long as we could. It was raining too and I thought they're going to cancell the quad biking trip today but when the time came and the woman from the quad bike company picked us up from the information centre, we soon find out that nothing stop her from going quad biking. Even if there's hail storm at that time, she'll still going. She brought us back to her place and from there we drove another 15-20 minutes to the hills area.

The lady's name is Karima and together with her husband, she owns the quad bike company. She's 40 years old but she looks 30, best part of all, she is retired and doing this quad biking thing just as a retirement activity. She was working in an oil company in middle east, and this kind of job always pays a fortune. Long story short, she spent most of her salary she earned on this company because she was totally addicted to quad biking since the first time she rode one and wanted to do something fun when she retired. Karima also told us that we came on the coldest time ever. It hasn't been this cold in New Zealand for ages, in fact, last year was so warm they didn't open the ski area. Thank God, we came on the right time. It will totally defeat the purpose of coming to New Zealand during winter time if I can't go skiing at all. Karima was helped by a boy named William. William's from London has worked for her for ages and he was really good at what he's doing. He rode a funny looking car (forgot what kind of car it was) and his job were preparing our snacks and taking our pictures. Our own personal photographer? This activity couldn't get any better than that!

Karima briefed us quickly about what we're going to do and she let us tried the bike for a few minutes to get our body get used to it. Just for Fun fact: This is the same kind of bike that Ozzy Osbourne fell off from. Riding this bike, we need to move our body with the bike rhythm, don't be too stiff or you'll fall from the bike when it climbs the hill. The bike itself won't topple down, but you will if you're not flexible. After we feel confident with the bike, our journey began.

It was raining and I only wear one layer of socks. I had to wriggle my toes every now and then just to check that I haven't got frostbite. Apparantely, we're going to the river too and I'm thinking, are they nuts? It's freezing cold in here. I don't mind going to the river in summer, but in winter? Well, we were wearing water proof jackets and pants, but...still....

By the end of the day, I only wet about 15 centimetres of my jeans and all my toes are still in their place. It was really really fun, the rain didn't dampen our spirit. Karima and William guided us really well. They themselves are passionate about quad biking, so you really feel the difference if someone does something with passion or does something just for the sake of...money, maybe? We saw so many breathtaking sceneries, sometimes we saw a cow or two passing by. We covered a lot of area on the hills because there were only two of us on that tour so we don't have to wait for too long when the time to cross the river came. There were 12 people the day before and yesterday was snowing hard. Today we got rain, but the snow from yesterday still remain. I've never seen something so beautiful, my snow adventure holiday turned out better than I expected. Going inside the river was tricky but fun and my bike was once stuck inside a deep snow, Karima and William had to pull it out.

Then we had picnic too. William has prepared some sandwiches and biscuits for us. Imagine, we had picnic...on the snow field! This is the best activity we've done so far. We even get to choose between coffee, tea or hot chocolate and we ate all the food using the back of William's funny looking car as a table. William is only 15 years old, but...man...he is as responsible as an adult (even some adults are not very responsible). Several times during the trip to the hills, he warned Carima that the rope to tie the bike was loose. I've never seen a 15 year old behaving like that before. To think that he prepared our meal too....wow! Now, why can't my brother behave like that when he was 15?

After that, we had fun throwing snow balls to each other. According to Karima, we are lucky today because you can form a ball with the snow. Sometimes the snow is too soft you can't form anything with it. I don't know much about snow but I just love the fact that I finally get to be in the snow war!

We did some more round around the hills then we head back to where we left Karima's 4WD. This trip ended too soon. If only we had more time, but we had to catch our shuttle back to Christchurch in time or spending the night in Hanmer Spring, which I'm not so looking forward to it.

We sped on the way back to the central town and after quickly took the quad bike gear off, William escorted us back to the shuttle stop. Karima came a few minutes later, handed in the disc with our biking adventure pictures in it. This day has been fun. I credited the whole thing to God (for creating the whole breathtaking views and sceneries), Karima (for guiding us so well) and William (for preparing the snacks, doing other bits and pieces and taking our pictures, you're a champ, man!). One thing for sure, I have to come back one day and doing it again....in summer!