If I were a journalist

Ohakune: 358km/222 miles south of Auckland and a popular skiing destination due to the awesome Mount Ruapehu, it’s probably most famously known as being Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings.

We took the long and expensive route down there; train. 

It was glorious. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve been on a train in New Zealand, which is depressing considering I used to take them weekly when I was in the UK, and it is my favourite mode of transport. 

I went to my greatest efforts to prepare a picnic for our journey. I bought all our favourite foods, making a special trip to Christian’s favourite cheese deli (C’est Fromage) before work on Thursday and went to a deli/bakery called Zarbo before our train left at 7:30AM to grab croissants, pain au chocolat and bread, fresh from the oven. If was an award on the train for best picnic, we would have won! 

The train wormed it way through some pretty scenary and we took advantage of the outside viewing decks to grab some pictures. Particularly as we went over the rather epic viaduct, though it was impossible to capture the scale from the train, sadly! 

Christian and I spent the journey talking, looking out of the window, going outside to the viewing platform, eating and being amused at all the old people on the train. We got to Ohakune at 2:30PM (half an hour late), where one of the B&B owners picked us up from the train station. A lot of the accommodation is very ski focused (chalets and the like), but I choose what I hoped would be a friendly and cosy bed & breakfast (Penguins B&B). It turned out to be perfect! Run by 2 gay guys, the place was homely and though mildly dodgy in the decor, was delightfully cosy. They had a nice guest living room with a roaring open fire and a kitchen where we could make as much tea or coffee as we liked. 

Once we’d settled in we took a walk around town, which was tiny, of course. Most of the afternoon was spent being all cosy in front of the fire and relaxing after our early start. We headed out for dinner in town that evening. Another open fire in the restaurant! It was all cold and blustery outside - so good. 

We choose to eat at a place called The Bearing Point (which has no website to link to, boo).

I had a delicious steak and chips, with an epic pistachio and chocolate wonton pudding. Accompanied by one of my favourite cocktails; russian mule. Perfect! 

We walked back to the B&B and topped the night off with some wine in front of the telly. Earlier on the locals had predicted it would snow and finally at about 10PM it started snowing huge flakes! Christian was so excited, he hasn’t seen snow in 10 years. 

It was wonderful. We dashed outside and frolicked around, taking lots of random pictures. 

When we returned to the living room new guests had arrived, who joined us for a chat. A nice couple, Australian originally and well travelled. They were rather hilarious and interesting actually, I liked them. 

The next morning Christian dragged me out of bed at 8AM to play in the snow, much to my annoyance (as I was desperate for a lie in), because he was convinced the snow would melt before we got out there. Eventually I caved and we walked into town to buy thick waterproof gloves so we could play in the snow. 

We proceeded to have a snowball fight, build a snow man and generally enjoy the joys of snow. 

Here’s our dodgy snowman, with a cigar instead of a mouth. 

Once we’d exhausted ourselves in the snow I took a shower, had brunch in town, whilst watching the various motorbikers on their bikes and then decided to head up the mountain to check out the snow.

That morning the traffic was horrendous, with queues from the mountain reaching the town, so we decided to wait it out a while. 

We took a shuttle up the mountain ($20 return, per person - bargain if you ask me!) and found there was still a bit of a traffic jam. So we got to look out at the snowy view in the meantime, which was very pretty. 

Once on the mountain we got sightseeing passes and took the ski lift, whilst I tried not to slip on the icy snow. 

Trying to prevent snow blindness by wearing sunglasses over the top of my glasses. In the end Christian ended up wearing them 

Trying to dig out gigantic pieces of snow/ice

Once we’d finished with the snow we headed back to the B&B to curl up on the sofa, before dinner time. I insisted we watch the superbly gruesome Fear Factor, much to Christian’s chagrin. In the end I absorbed myself in latest Dan Brown trash, whilst Christian became absorbed in a French movie that he had to abandon half way through because it was time for dinner. 

We walked to the Junction this time, a trendy spot, full of the skiing crowd, with lots of bars to boot. We browsed the busy bars and restaurants, peering through the windows, trying to figure out where to eat. We settled on the Powderhorn, where we were told it could be anything up to a 45 minute wait for a table. In the meantime we grabbed a drink and propped up the bar. It turned out to be a short wait before they seated us and I made a hearty order of BBQ Ribs. The waitress pointed out that the ribs didn’t come with anything else, I told her that would be perfectly fine and scoffed 3 hearty racks. 

Christian and I decided we don’t eat puddings enough, often opting for starters instead. Thus coming to the conclusion we need more sweet and savoury, rather than just savoury and savoury. So, as we did the night before, we ordered something disgustingly sweet. I went for a creme brulee with rhubarb compote, accompanied by a ginger biscuit. 

Rather embarrassingly I got caught, by the manager, wrapping my ginger biscuits in a napkin for later - he came over to tell us that the DJ was due shortly and as we were sat at the table situated within the DJ booth we needed to move. So we swapped to some bar stools over looking the busy crowd scene, where we people watched for a while, as we finished off the last of our bottle of wine. 

The next morning we were up horrendously early again (8:30AM), though Christian let me have a bit more of a lie in. Thankfully I’d drunk enough water to stave off the dreaded red wine head. I ate some toast and pottered around, packing up my things. We popped to the supermarket, bought more food for our trip and then got ready to catch our train at 1PM. We had a rather intense, though agreeable, debate with one of our hosts - a fabulously over the top liberal. 

Before long it was time to head to the train station, where we caught our train back to Auckland. Our excellent host dropped us off again - what a service! 

Our seats weren’t so prime in their location; surrounded by annoying children, so Christian and I swapped our iPods. He wore the headphones to my iPod, whilst I picked what music he listened to and visa versa. It was funny listening to what each other choose and kept us amused for a few hours. 

We spent some of our time outside on the viewing platform, enjoying the view and the countryside whizzing by. At one point, as the train neared Auckland, we were parallel to the motorway, so we decided to wave at a passing car who jovially shoved their arm out of the sunroof and waved enthusiastically. 

We arrived into Auckland 45 minutes later than scheduled (ha!), where we joined the scrum of people for their bags. The disorganisation of the NZ train system knows no bounds and neither does the opportunity for thieves. 

And so came the end of our adventure.