Moose on the Move!

Thursay morning (3rd March) began very early. At least very early by our standards. We were up by at least 6am, for anyone who knows us, 6am is very early. Jochen and Helgi very kindly drove us in to the airport in Victoria where we had a bit of breakfast before our flight. Mmmmmmmm, airport breakfast's are lovely :) It was quite sad to say "Goodbye" and the Dous trait of bursting into tears at any slightly emotional event was once again evident.

The 50 min flight to Kelowna in BC took us over spectacular snow capped mountains and Elke went mad with the digital camera. Despite having seen this sort of thing on television before, seeing it for real was still a breath taking experience. Chris was not so keen on the turbulance associated with flying over mountains and claims that this is why he was short of breath.

We spent a little bit of time in the Kelowna airport (not a very exciting place) waiting for our shuttle bus to take us to our resort. Yes, it is our resort...we have now claimed it as our own :)

The bus trip took us past the shore of Lake Kalamalka, a stunning sight. Picture this - still waters iced over in some places and cristal clear reflections of the hills on the far side. Beautiful.

We were a little concerned by the apparent lack of snow in the area. However, as if by magic, no sooner had we entered Silver Star Park, the snow was thick on the ground. Snow is great.

We arrived and checked into our backpackers called the "SameSun Hostel". It is quite a neat place with a big common room, ski in/ski out and an outdoor hot tub ! Feel free to check out the link above and take the virtual tour of the Hostel.

The village is just a short stroll from the hostel, so we immediately headed down there to see if we could sign up for an afternoon ski lesson.

The village itself is mostly made up of one main street with a few stores, resturants and a couple of pubs, all of which are painted in various bold colours. There are turquoise walls, yellow window sills, blue trim, green, orange, pink and so on. It really looks like something out of a christmas story and when the road is covered in a layer of snow, as it is now, it is spectacular!

Ski Dazzle apparently was the place to hire skiing equipment so we headed in there to investigate (although we figured that seeing as how this was going to be our first time skiing we were unlikely to be dazzling anyone). A Discovery package proved to be the way to go, for $149 (plus tax... it is always plus tax) we could get three days of gear hire, lift passes and lessons. Yay!

So with that organised we decided to spend our afternoon tubing. What is tubing? WELL... tubing (at the appropriately named Tube Town)involves being towed up a steep snowy hill by mechanical lift, being dumped off at the top, waiting in line for your turn and then racing flat-strap down a steep snowy hill, all while riding inside a large truck innertube. Snow is great. We spent three hours doing this and it didn't even start to get boring. If ever you get the chance... take it!

We decided to splurge a little on dinner that night and and went to a place called 'Clementine's', funnily enough on Main Street. It was a faboulous evening with flaming prawns at the table and the most amazing cheesecake for desert.

Friday morning we rocked up to the rental shop to get our gear organised for our first Skiing lesson!! We arrived a few minutes later than we had hoped and got stuck behind a group of about a million school kids. We got through eventually and were kitted out with the gear we needed. Ski boots are very heavy. Ski poles are quite long. Skis are both long and heavy. It all comes together quite nicely once you have them attached to your feet but trying to navigate through a hoard of excited kids while carrying this gear in your arms can be a trial. We did make it outside for our ten o'clock lesson without too many injuries.

There were only four of us in the group which was great because it meant more of a chance to get assistance from our instructor. We started off scooting up and down main street trying to get our balance on flat ground and then learnt about stopping by creating a wedge shape with our skis in the snow. The both of us were smiling continuously at this point, we kept looking at each other and mouthing 'we're skiing'.

From there we progressed to the 'Magic Carpet' - not as exciting as it sounds. It is essentially a small slope for beginners to try out their new found skills in a safe environment and so that they don't spend all day trying to climb back up the hill (a tricky thing to do when your skis keep wnating to slide backwards) there is a converor belt type thing that runs back up the middle of the slpoe that you literally ski onto at the bottom and off again at the top. Neat.

We spent the remained of the lesson in this little area and by the end we were able to make sloppy turns on our way down the hill and mostly avoid any obsticles. This is quite strange... the beginner's area is not really very beginner friendly. Firtsly, to get to it you have to ski across one of the major tracks leading into town, then it it quite small and is fenced all around with orange 'stay out' fencing. There is very little room to come to a gentle stop at the bottom and if you were to not stop and accidentally slide out eh opening at the bottom of the run you may well find your self shooting off down one of the Green runs on the hill. As a last little excitment-adder there are lots of large trees growing out of the run. Let's just say that you learn how to turn and how to stop fairly quickly!

After a lunch break and a change of boots for Elke (the ones she had originally were a size too small and made all the toes of her right foot go numb and the bottom half of her leg feel like fire - fun!) we headed back to the magic carpet to practise some more. Both of us came a cropper many times but luckily, other than a grazed thumb and a bit of a bump on the head for Chris, we came away unscathed. So our skiing career seemed to be off to a good, if somewhat wobbly, start.