Country: Andorra.
City: Soldeu El Tarter.

It's ME!!! yip I spent Christmas day on the top of a mountain in Andorra , the snow had fallen just a couple of days before we arrived and it was beautiful!! Then the sun came out and it was sooo hot!! but as soon as you got to the very top it was damn cold i'll tell you. Mind you, you sure do work up a sweat skiing all the way to the bottom again! This was taken on one of the first days on the mountain when I was just learning. But as soon as I got the hang of it myself and my little brother Brian were zipping up and down the green, blue and eventually red slopes...we didn't dare go near the black on our first ever skiing trip!! Next time though!! ;-)

So let me tell you about our trip!! We started skiing the day after we arrived cos we were pretty tired and needed to acclimatise to the height and the cold as well...I was such a big kid getting on the chair lift was even exciting for me!! so we got up to the nursery slopes and tried on our ski's for the first time...I really thought it'd be easier the first time but I was sadly mistaken it was a lot more difficult then I imagined.

Anyway we had our ski school on the first day and they taught us how to snowplough...which is stop basically! and then we actually did ski...well move about 10 feet along and stop..which I managed to do successfully too. We were split into groups of average ability by the end of the day and myself and brother Brian (show below here on the right in the green hat) were put in the highest group which was great.

I met a girl who was staying in our chalet as well, Tony was her name and she was on her own but had ski'd before so the next day we went up earlier in the morning and practiced a bit more. She really helped me along and I was a lot better on the second day. Anyway we went off on the Green runs which are the easiest then during the week progressed to the Blue and finally Red runs by the Friday. The hardest following that are the Black runs which I didn't go down thankfully!!

But I was well impressed by making it down the Red runs without ..well too many falls!! :-) We flew down the end of a red run at one stage and you "shoosh" down the last bit...which means you bend down with your elbows in front of your knees and fly along at about 40mph a few inches off the ground!!!! Sooo much fun!! Here's the view from the very top of the mountain!

Well we did this Red run 3 times, the first time I managed it without falling! but the guy in front didn't and I managed to avoiding hitting him on the way 'James Bond style' by zipping around the side of him. Then the second time he was in front of me again and I was watching him so much that I didn't see the lump of ice until it was too late and so I had the most spectacular wipe-out at 40mph... I left both skis behind me in the snow and did some sort of multiple cartwheel tumbley thing and eventually landed with a face full of snow!!! it was very funny though!!!

I had such a laugh and got such a buzz that we went up and did it Again!!! This time I stayed skiing though and stayed well away from the dude who fell the first time!! We had so much fun it was just excellent! Myself and Brian did a test for a bronze medal at the end on the Saturday and passed that! so they said we could go for the silver medal as well which we also got!!! I absolutely loved it ... it was great. The week went really fast and then it was time to go home!! But it didn't end there because when I got home as the weather was so bad I had to fly out the same day to London to meet Sarah so that we could get our flight to the Dominican Republic in time on the 2nd of Jan.

So I got home at 12 noon on the 31st of December!!! Rushed home!! unpacked the ski gear, packed the summer gear and headed back out to the airport for the 5pm flight to Heathrow. I celebrated New Years with Sarah and then we flew out from Gatwick on the morning of the 2nd of Jan. We spent two weeks there and it was brilliant as well!!! You can check out the pics of my scuba diving on the Dominican Republic page too!! ;-)