We have been left to our own devices again today. Tibor is taking Tomi to a karate competition today and Dana and Mischa are cleaning their rental cottage. All offers of assistance from us to help them with the work were firmly rejected. I'm hoping that Dana wanted some mother-daughter time with Mischa and it wasn't that she'd heard about my poor cleaning skills!! After all, I was the only one at Te Wanaka who scored 4/10 for room cleaning!!
While there is a ski resort in the High Tatras, about 15 minutes from their house, it's very small and Dana thinks its poor value. She wanted us to go to a ski resort called Dolina in the low Tatras about an hour's drive east. So this is where we headed today.
We actually managed to get there all by ourselves without getting lost. A first!! We were hopeful of a good day as the morning had dawned fine and sunny. We were directed to a car park at the foot of the mountain and duly loaded ourselves on the bus. Arriving at one of the entries to the ski resort, we got off the bus, bought our tickets and were ready to get the chairlift when Graeme suddenly realised that he had left his backpack on the bus. Hmmm!! Small problem!
Fortunately, Graeme had taken all the important things out of the pack and there was only a few chocolate bars and some water left in it. Dana kept warning us that Slovakia was not NZ and we had to be careful with our belongings! At the time, I was uncharitably suspicious of Graeme's motives! All morning he had been talking about buying a new back pack. At last count we have 7 packs of all varying sizes and shapes and so I was understandably unenthusiastic about any further pack purchases. I thought maybe this was a sneaky way of getting a new pack. But to be fair, Graeme was very upset and keen to recover this one.
Hmmm! What to do? The only thing we could do was wait on the road and check each shuttle bus as it went by. After an 1.5hrs, Graeme was going to give up and make a claim on our insurance. I had a funny feeling and suggested that we wait for one last bus going up the hill and check if the pack had been given to a lost property office. When the bus finally arrived, I realised that it was the same one we had travelled up on. Getting on, we were disappointed to see that the pack was no longer in the luggage rack above our seat. Damn! Lost forever! But no....as I scanned the bus, I spied a black strap hanging down from a curtained off area behind the bus driver. Looking more closely I saw the DaKine label and realised it was our pack.
Now what to do? After speaking to all the bus drivers going up and down the mountain, so far, none of them spoke english. Trying to ask about our pack might cause some serious problems. We were not confidant that the driver would understand that this was our pack and we wanted it back. We really didn't want to start any sort of confrontation. So we confess that we chose to perform a sting operation!! While I distracted the driver asking for directions to the ticket office, Graeme reached up and pulled the pack down from behind the curtain and made off through the rear exit. Poor bus driver! He probably was going to do the right thing and was just safe keeping the lost pack until he got back to the bus terminus. And now it had been stolen from under his nose!! Hopefully he was not too distressed when he found out! We were certainly very pleased to have it back!!
With all the standing around at the bus stop, we were chilled to the bone. Unfortunately the sunny morning had clouded over and most of the mountain was covered in a deep freezing fog. After 2 runs down the mountain we were icicles!! Finding a nice restaurant at the top of the mountain we tucked into a hearty lunch while we thawed out. Dolina is Slovakia's largest resort and has some very modern and fast lifts. The terrain is pretty good too. However, they seem to be obsessed with snow making and despite the lovely powder snow off-piste, all the runs were covered in icy man made snow. It didn't take us long to hunt out some good snow through the trees and of course we had it to ourselves, as the Slovakians, followed the European trend and rarely ventured off the piste. Our favourite run for the day was under the big new 6 seater chairlift. Here's the film footage.
2/ Another area at Dolina
Mother, (Dana) was worried when we arrived home later than she expected. We explained that due to our late start this morning with the "pack drama" we skied right through until last lift. Nice to know that someone is looking after us!!
Another lovely night spent with the family and chatting with Dana and Tibor. We feel that we've been part of their family for ever. I wanted to take a picture of Mischa. But she is 12 (going on 22) and very self conscious about photographs! Tomi too, was very camera shy! I did manage to get a photo of Tomi and Tibor doing a crossword puzzle together. I had secretly taken a photo of Mischa tucked up on the couch in her pyjamas, but she vetoed use of the photo. I promised that I would delete the photo only if she promised to let me take another one tomorrow when she had "done her hair". Classic!!
3/ Tomi and Tibor and a crossword
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