Frigidly cold mountain adventure at Waimarino! 🧊 (place review + experience)

August 02, 2025

Place Review: Plateau Lodge

What was good about it:

I really liked the interior of the cabin that we booked. It was warm, cozy and inviting (and literally warm 'cause the heating was on hehe), and to be honest, if it weren't to be a temporary stay, I would gladly stay there forever. But sadly, we only got to experience this for about three days. However, one of the amenities and facilities was a communal kitchen that was basically open for the whole day. It was a useful feature that made it much more convenient to heat up our meals. It was quite near and accessible to the cabin that we booked.

Amenities and facilities: table tennis, communal kitchen, trampoline, on site massage room, walking distance to all villages, daily shuttles to ski areas and Tongariro Alpine Crossing.

we had too much fun with tennis. like, way too much fun.

At Mt. Ruapehu!!!

We booked a skiing lesson for all three of us at Whakapapa, a ski resort located at the mountain. There were lots of tourists roaming around the slippery snow, and of course I consider us as "tourists".

We got our tickets (in order to go through the gates), which is basically a link pass, from a ticket machine before heading on an escalator down to Happy Valley to rent the required ski gear for the lesson. We did this at least 45 minutes before the lesson had started so that we weren't late.

Us renting our gear~

And once we'd done that, we headed down to the area of the mountain where all the lessons were conducted. My mum and godmother were in the adult group, while I was with in the 11 year old group for first timers (for skiing). But unfortunately, no one had showed up so I had a one on one private session with Leonie Gerken Schofield, a British OLYMPIAN. Yes, if you search her name up, you will find her and some info about how she competed in the Beijing 2022 Olympics for skiing! She can also snowboard, she's such an admirable passionate snow-sports conductor!

got a photo with Leonie!!

Our skiing lesson was so fun! I learnt how to do snow ploughs, which is basically make a triangle with your legs, and snow ploughs are really important because it helps you stop when you're sliding down on the mountain, side stepping upwards, etc. I really enjoyed, and I'm planning to do it again!

We were all starving after that, so we took a snack break! I got a cheese burger, and they got chicken nuggets. Yum.

Our next session for sledding was at 1:00 pm. That's right, we did sledding! It was quite scary at first, but once I got the hang of it, it got progressively easier and fun.

secret photo Ninang took

I had way too much fun like in tennis. Help.

So did Mum

Our session ended at 2:00 pm, so the fun lasted for a while but not too long. I was kinda sad to say goodbye to our snowy trip down in Happy Valley. But we had one more thing left to do. Before doing that, we took a snack break, involving some brownies and coffee.

The brownie was marvellous. It had a fudgy and chewy texture, but not too soft. It may be a biased opinion because I have a deep love for those chocolatey food.

We were all tired, while I had a tiny bit more energy to do one more thing. Go on the gondola!

I was quite amazed by how Mum and Ninang still kept going despite being exhausted. It was remarkable. We all made our way to the encircling gondolas in the sharp, frigid Mt. Ruapehu air. We all went inside the cube-like thing one at a time, then Mum usually taking her photos, me blinded and at the same time basked in the warm sunlight.