Day 6 to 9 - Sestriere Update

We still high up in the Alps of Sestriere, and nothing much has changed; except for the fact that our skiing techniques were looking very fancy until the national Ski Clubs of Italy took over our empty low-season slopes.

Now, we in a professional skiers haven! Pro skiers as little as 3 years, all the way up to about 30 years old - swarm like bees down the slopes wearing their Italian coloured regional jackets; perfectly carving ice and making "WEE" noises when they casually ramp into the air off black slopes. Don't mind the 30 year olds, it's the kids! Ski next to them and all of a sudden you are reminded of how South African you really are.

Anyway, we'll give it to the Europeans for being brilliant at Skiing, because while they are privileged with the white Alps, we are privileged with sunny weather in Spring! Note: its -1 degrees and snowing in their Spring. The locals are wondering if their winter season will ever end. Families even brought their bucket and spade and beach chairs to the slopes today, and we witnessed a few snow castles (see picture below). We are very lucky, however, for their extended winter season.

Tomorrow is our last day of skiing, and then we are off to tour the rest of Italy by Euro Rail (train). We've ticked off every slope in Sestriere, Bruce got many thumbs up from PAT* as a result of his remarkable Skiing improvements - and so now it's time to move on to warmer & busier cities.

Next up: Venice.

* PAT - The Italian Ski Instructor who rescued Bruce with a Snow Mobile on his first day ever skiing.

Day 4 & 5 - Sestriere Ski Resort, Italy

Today we had to mission all the way to a town named Sestriere, thousands of meters up where we hoped there would still be snow for us to ski. We took a train from Torino to Oulx (7 Euro's each - the price of 1 beer) and then from there we waited for an hour to catch a bus all the way up to Sestriere (3 Euro's each). So many students that went to school in Oulx, and lived in Sestriere, were on our bus. We still hadn't seen any snow, but it was FREEZING - and so driving around the windy roads up the mountain created so much suspense... Was there snow?!

We arrived in SNOWING Sestriere, and a shuttle took us up to Palace Residence - the name of the place we will be staying at for 1 week. It's a very small town, the same shuttle driver and the market (Grocery Store) is only open for 2 hours a day. However, it is low season so it's mainly locals, a few tourists, and what seems to be Olympic skiers who are making use of the Spring snow.

On the first day we hired all our ski equipment and got our ski pass, but the lady who gave us our ski pass mumbled in Italian - obviously saying she's not going to activate it for today because the day is nearly over - and we confusingly agreed and hit the slopes! Bruce has never ski'd before so it was my responsibility to get him going, but because our ski passes didn't work (us not knowing why), we could only get up one ski lift as a friendly lift operator just let us through. This lift took us right up to the very top of the mountain in the clouds, and I started panicking as now Bruce had to somehow get down this mountain and he doesn't even know how to snow-plough* yet!

Realizing this was not going to happen, an Italian Pro Skier (PAT) stopped for us, noticing that we had a problem! I had to ski down with him so he could get his Snow Mobile to fetch Bruce. Yup, Bruce's first ski experience included a red slope, many wipe outs and Pat on a Snow Mobile to the rescue!

The funniest part was that on my way down, we came across a group of skiers who had all wiped out, scattered across the slopes. The Italian man and I stopped to help, and within a second I recognized that they were Afrikaans! YES it was a huge group of South Africans, and this Italian man was shocked that this slope was just bombarded with South African's - and all of us were obviously far too confident for our abilities on Day 1! Within an hour the Italian men had sorted all of us South Africans out, and showed us where the 'Baby Slopes' are for Day 2. We left the skiing for Day 2 - a new start, and hit the Grocery Store to buy food for our self catering apartment. We made pasta and went to bed.

On Day 2, we got Bruce going on the baby slopes, and within an hour he was doing LONG Blue Slopes! We waiting to come across Pat, the Italian, he'll be so impressed! It is so awesome that we can ski together now and every slope he gets better! It snowed a lot today so visibility was bad, but tomorrow the weather looks great.

Here are a few photo's.

Miss you guys,
Ash & Bruce.

* Snow-ploughing: A ski braking and turning technique taught to beginners.