Worldy Travels

Photos: Australia, finally!

nlook — Thu, 1 Apr 2010 12:21:00 GMT

Australia, finally!

nlook — Thu, 1 Apr 2010 12:16:00 GMT

4/2/2010 12:10 AM

Well. Ha. It has been a very fun past few days, but there have still been a few timing issues that have stuck with us. I’ll recap chronologically, from when I left off on Tuesday, 3/30...

We spent the rest of the day on the streets of Sydney, walking to various shops, etc. We didn’t buy much of anything, but I did manage to pick up a cool pair of Quicksilver board shorts. I brought two with me, but one has a hole in the bottom, and the other has a lingering sulfur smell that I’m hoping will go away. So … in the meantime … a new pair of boardshorts were in order. What sold me on this pair was that they have new “technology” in them so they are very soft and don’t get too heavy or irritable when they’re soaked with water --- perfect for surfing. Wicked deal. Jess also got a pair of cute Roxy boardshorts. We’re not exactly matching, but we’re definitely more stylish now.

I also spent some time trying to track down a camera repair shop. My camera isn’t broken, but we’ve noticed that there is a crazy amount of dust inside; so much, that it’s putting smudge marks on some of our pictures. Normally, it wouldn’t be worth the $140 it costs to fix it, but this is the only camera that will fit in the water proof case, and we’re going to the Great Barrier Reef … so dang it, it’s getting fixed. At any rate, we didn’t find a shop that would do it … so that was put on hold for now.

That was pretty much it for the day. We got back to the hostel in the evening time, and set out to make a bit of dinner. I joined Jess in the kitchen after about 20 minutes, and saw the look of horror and disgust on her face. After looking at the kitchen, it didn’t take long to see why. The entire kitchen was dirty as all hell. It was like a hundred 18 year old kids just cooked a dozen different meals for the first time and didn’t clean up after themselves. Absolutely disgusting. On top of that, there were almost no utensils or pots/pans. Jess had spent the entire past 20 minutes waiting for an available pot to use for our pasta, and empty plates that she could clean for us to use. Once we finally got everything cooked, we had to make room at one of the only two “picnic tables” by pushing away some stupid kid’s dirty dishes he left behind. This is a radically different experience than the YHA. At the YHAs we’ve been staying at, there is ample space, ample amounts of utensils / pots / pans, and they are quite clean. We’ve had a few dirty kitchens, but all of those pale in comparison to this mess. We made a point to mention it to the staff, and they were very much aware of the problem. They blame it on the lack of space, but I think it’s more the mentality of the young and immature kids that stay here.

Anyway, we had enough of the hostel and decided to head out for a nice bar. We ended up at Zeta Bar at the Hilton. We probably over compensated a bit by going from dirty hostel, to way posh bar. In fact, they gave Jess a hard time at the front door with her flip flops she had on. After a little bit of selling by Jess, they finally let us in, but made sure to keep Jess’s feet out of sight by putting us in a “booth” behind some curtains. Haha. It was actually kind of nice because it was a bit of a VIP booth. No complaints from us. About 2 hours and a few glasses of wine later, we were done, and turned in for the night.

The following day (yesterday) was our Blue Mountain Tour. The Blue Mountains aren’t actually blue; they just appear that way when the light hits it right because of all the eucalyptus trees. Anyway, we started out getting to some campgrounds an hour outside of Sydney where we were able to find some wild grey kangaroos. None of the roos we found were brave enough to pick a fight with me (word must be getting around Oz about my latest roo smackdown); these ones were quite peaceful. Just munching on a bunch of grass. One of the female kangaroos actually had a little joey inside her pouch. It was quite cute. The little guy had his head sticking out, and when his mom bent down to eat grass, he popped his head outside and munched on the grass as well. Ha. He ended up getting really excited and almost jumped out of the pouch; he had both arms and legs out of the pouch, but his mom did a good job keeping him inside. That was a really neat experience watching the mom and her little joey play around.

After that, we made our first stop on the Blue Mountains at some waterfall trail. We expected the day to be overcast and rainy in Sydney, but we thought that once we got to the mountains, it’d be all cleared up … but no. It was foggy / cloudy as ever, and even colder and more drizzly than in Sydney. Doh! Ah well, can’t control too much of the weather --- just gotta leave that up to better timing-luck next time. Not long after we took off on the trail, we got to the first waterfall. Not much to talk about there; it was a very beautiful waterfall, but we’ve seen dozens. However, the landscape of these mountains is quite neat. The cliffs are very clearly layered, and various shades of red, orange and brown. When you aren’t looking at the cliff sides, you’re starring off at hundreds of kilometers of Australian “bush”; it looks a lot like a jungle. And as you’re walking through it, it has a very jungle-like feel to it. Big ferns, and vines, etc. The rain also helps egg on that jungle effect. Cool deal. Anyway, halfway down the train, our guide stopped at a certain rock. On the rock, there were three different circles; one red, white and yellow. Apparently, this wasn’t placed there on purpose; these were natural occurrences in the rock, and it’s what the aboriginals use for painting. You just drop a bit of water on these circles, rub with your finger, and sure enough you have very good paint. Way cool. The guide made sure to demonstrate, and, of course, without any attempt to volunteer, he picked me as one of his subjects. Ha. I ended up with this paint on my face for the next three hours because there was no place to wash my face off. Great fun.

The guide also made sure to point out dozens of Funnel Web Spider webs. These guys are deadlier than black widows, and actually cause a couple of deaths each year in Australia. They’re generally in the bush, but they’re also found occasionally in Sydney – hiding in shoes, clothes, etc. Basically, don’t leave your window open at night and you’ll be alright. Hah, hopefully that just goes for inland, and not the coast. Don’t know how we’ll manage to keep everything shut when we’re camping, yikes!

After the waterfall trek, we went back to the van for a lunch. It was prepared by them --- salad, sandwich making materials, etc. Pretty standard, and definitely hit the spot after the walk.

Then we made our way to more Blue Mountains. This one was a different bush hike that went down by an old mining trail. We slowly worked our way down this path to the bottom of the valley. At one point, we were supposed to be able to see the “Three Sisters”. However, due to the clouds, no such luck. It did clear at a couple other spots along the way, and we kind of got a glimpse, but nothing too good. Not a big deal; it’s just three rocks in the distance with an accompanying aboriginal story about some medicine man / wizard who turned his three daughters into stone to save them from a demon creature, and then turned himself into an animal to get away from the same creature, but dropped (and subsequently lost) his morphing stick in the process --- thus forever leaving his daughters in stone, and himself as a bird. Hah --- wicked --- sounds like it was inspired by peyote.

The really cool part about this hike, though, was that once we got to the bottom of the valley, we took a train ride back to the top … in fact, it was the STEEPEST train ride in the world! 57 degree incline at one point. Awesome. Now we’ve been on the steepest train, AND the steepest cog wheel. Sweet!

We got back to Sydney around 6pm, and spent the rest of the time on the internet, and sending some documents back home. We had plans to make dinner for ourselves at the hostel, but after the previous night’s debacle, neither of us was too keen on that idea. We decided to swing by the YHA around the corner and perhaps leech off their kitchen. However, once there, we got sucked into some great live acoustic music. It was basically this kid and his guitar, covering dozens of songs from the Eagles to Jack Johnson. He was also handing out drink tickets to anyone that could guess the artist. In addition to that, the YHA had $5 pizza and beer! What a deal. Jess and I shared the pizza and beer ($5 for our whole dinner) and then listened to some free music. We even managed to win a couple drink tickets in the process. To redeem the tickets, we had to go down to the bar downstairs. No problem. Off we went ... where we won a couple more drink tickets from the same musician (he moved his gig down there later in the night). However, we got tired pretty quick and were in bed in no time (looong day that had started at 6:30am).

Today was finally our first REAL day in Sydney / Australia: beach day + harbor cruise. Awesome. It was an excellent day, and so close to being the “best” day … but there were a couple hitches.

We managed to get up reasonably early and go for a morning jog through Darling Harbour. I made a little detour and ran my camera by a repair shop to get it fixed. Thankfully, the guy was able to get it fixed and now my camera is taking pictures as clear as new. Awesome. After the run, we ran back to the hostel, made a quick egg and toast breakfast, and then headed for the beach. The kitchen wasn’t too messy in the morning, but somehow some rejects managed to leave behind their plates on one of the tables.

Before long, we were off to Bondi (pronounced Bond-Eye) Beach. This is the popular Sydney beach to go to (I suppose it’s like Huntington Beach in Orange County). It was a short bus ride there, and then FINALLY we saw the glorious blue-ish/green-ish water and golden sand. The sky was nearly cloud free, and the sun was crazy hot. A perfect day for the beach indeed. We made our way onto the sand, found a great spot to lay out, and then proceeded to battle with the high winds whipping sand in our faces for the next two hours. Hah. It was a small price to pay, though, for finally making it to the beach on such a nice day. I even got a little beach jog in. After a couple hours, we packed up, and headed along the boardwalk / sidewalk to another beach just 30 minutes away. The walk was quite scenic. Passed by a few bluffs, and tons of scenic coastline. The water looked like Maui, but the coastline looked like Laguna Beach, except more intricate sand stone, rather than rocks. Really neat stuff.

We got to the other beach (Bourke?) before long, and then grabbed a very healthy couple of chicken and salmon sandwiches. Another hour on the beach, and then we had to make our way back to the hostel for our dinner cruise that evening. We hadn’t planned on doing a dinner cruise, but we decided that we needed to see the harbor by night, and we needed a delicious dinner --- so we went for the upgrade. :)

The bus ride back to the hostel nearly put us to sleep … or perhaps it was the draining sun that had been beating on us all day. Needless to say, both of us were exhausted; but nothing a coffee couldn’t fix. We then got back to the hostel, quickly got ready, and headed out for the cruise.

The cruise was wonderful. It was much like other dinner cruises we’ve been on (delicious meal, great sights), but we were in Sydney! Passing by the Opera House and famous “bridge” never got tiring. We stepped outside for a few photos, and then, starring at the Opera House for the nth time, it hit us, “Holy @#$% we’re in Sydney, Australia!!” We’ve seen the Opera House on TV/movies numerous times, and we’ve always talked about going to Australia, but here we were! Wowsers. I guess it “finally” hit us because we’d spent so much of the preceding week getting our trip organized and running around on tours. This was the first time we were able to just relax and take it all in. Wonderful.

A couple hours after the cruise departed, we were docked, and back on land. Our plan to wrap up this near perfect day was to go to Level 47 for a drink or two --- this was a highly recommended restaurant / cocktail lounge courtesy of Chrissy. However, we forgot to look up where it was. No worries … there were dozens of cabbies around … … … none of which knew what we were talking about. One guy had an idea where it may me, but suggested we swing by the nearby Four Seasons hotel to ask the concierge. We did so, and she informed us that the restaurant had closed the day before! What!? No way … I had just called them yesterday. Also, she said that it was Level 41, not 47. Hmmm … fishy. So I asked her to call the restaurant. Sure enough, today was their last day … ever. They were closing up shop after tonight. And no, it was not an April Fools prank! So we asked if drinks were still possible, but no dice … dinner was over and they were closing down for the night, and forever. Noooooo!!! We’d made such a big deal about going to this place. Chrissy told us the view was AMAZING, and encouraged us to not go to their website to avoid spoiling the surprise view … just go to the restaurant and be blown away. And now … they were closed!? Hmmm … I found all this very weird because when I called yesterday to inquire about dinner, the lady on the phone made no mention of them closing the following day. However, the concierge swore she knew what she was talking about --- and she did just call Level 41. We asked if there was anything else around the area, but she said that most places at the top of sky rises were closed for the night, and we were essentially out of luck. Doh doh! Ahhh well, it was still a great day.

We decided to call it a night and take a cab back to the hostel. Walking out of the Four Seasons, a very eager valet man ran up to us and politely asked to hail a cab for us. Sure thing man! So, he did, and then asked where we were going ; it was kind of embarrassing to tell the Four Seasons valet guy who just hailed us a cab that we were going to the “Wake Up!” hostel, hah, but, we did … he gave us only the slightest of odd looks, and then told the cabby where to go. The cab driver had never heard of the place (nor would he have if he usually frequented the Four Seasons), but we got there pretty quickly and then were done for the night.

Jess is now asleep, and I’ve spent the past couple hours updating our receipts, doing our budgets, and writing in this journal. We’re still fairly well on track here. However, we do still have 6 weeks left, ha. We’re not even at the half way point of our trip! Crazy! … but, keeping track of our receipts has definitely allowed us to keep our budget on track. So, I’m sure all will be well.

OH … AND … I checked into Level 47, and despite what the concierge said, it IS called Level 47 and they are NOT closing tomorrow. She was right in the fact that there is a Level 41, but there is also a Level 47, which also goes by the name of the Summit Restaurant. How could a Four Seasons concierge not know of this? And what’s more annoying is that they stay open during the week “until late.” How unhelpful of her --- I’d expect better from someone like that.

Sleep time.

Photos: Sydney, beneath clouds and rain

nlook — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:20:00 GMT

Sydney, beneath clouds and rain

nlook — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:14:00 GMT

3/30/2010 2:11 PM

Wow … holy crap this has been a process getting all of our trip booked and figured out. We’ve done some sightseeing stuff in Melb/Sydney, but it seems like all of our time in Oz has been spent at Peterpans Adventure Travel (at least on four separate occasions) figuring everything out. It was all supposed to be booked by the time we got into Sydney (yesterday morning), but the girl in Melb missed a couple things (booked us on a tour that doesn’t exist anymore; booked us on a bus that leaves after we get back from a tour; and some other dealies), so we spent a couple hours last night, and then a couple more this morning getting it all put together. HOWEVER … FINALLY … we’re all “booked” and can finally begin our Amazing Oz Adventure. Luckily, it was raining yesterday afternoon, and is supposed to be raining all day today, so we’re not missing any amazing beach weather. Right now, we’re just getting a little organized, and will head out shopping shortly. But here’s a recap from the train ride on …

The train ride was fun because it was a train ride, but we happened to sit in front of a very fat loud couple that munched on smelly food for the first hour, and then easily fell asleep and snored ALL NIGHT LONG. A train official even came by at one point and asked the guy to change positions so he didn’t snore; that worked for all of 30 minutes, until the loud @#$%er started again. It wasn’t even the “white noise” kind of snoring; it was the kind where you know he has sleep apnea, stops breathing, and then lets out a giantly loud snort (sounding kinda like Homer Simpson when he takes a bite of a donut or hamburger) … every 10-30 seconds. Ugh. Ahh well, we managed to get some hours of sleep here and there, and made it to Sydney in no time. Thankfully, the train station ended up being right across from our hostel … and when we checked into our hostel at 7am, they randomly had our room ready for us, so we were able to grab a quick nap before we hit the city.

The hostel is actually pretty cool. It’s a bit on the young side (clientele wise), but it’s pretty “chic.” Lots of colors and modern decor, and they do a good job trying to be trendy. There’s a nice wide open lounge area when you walk in, and they have a big flat screen playing the news. There’s a café attached to the hostel which serves really cheap (and pretty delicious) meals, and they even have a bar with $3.50 beers from 8pm-9pm. Wicked deal.

After our three hour nap, we got up to catch a free city tour operated by the hostel. It took us to all the places we wanted to visit in the city, and it included a free beer at the end as well! Deal! We started off just walking the streets, and eventually made our way to Darling Harbour. The city is pretty much just a city, so not worth talking about too much, but it is cool being in another big city where people have strange accents.

Once we got to Darling Harbour, we broke away for lunch, and that’s where Jess and I lost the group. Doh! Not a big deal; we managed to finish the tour on our own. We stopped by the Opera House … amazing to see because it’s the Sydney Opera House, but to be honest, that’s really the height of the amazement, ha. It’s not as white as the pictures, and … well … it’s an opera house. Neither of us are into opera, so it wasn’t worth catching a show --- just snapped a few pics and headed onwards. We almost did a ferry cruise of the harbor, but at that time, it was getting rainy and we were hoping to do the cruise in better weather. So … what do you do in a city when it’s raining? … you go shopping, I guess. Hah --- Jess made sure to point us in the right direction of the big mall we walked through on our walking tour.

The mall was quite different than any other mall --- lots of diagonal hallways, forks in the road, tiny ceilings, etc. Oh, and about two dozen shoe stores, all of which we stopped in. Hah. It was fun, but tiring. After a couple hours, we relaxed on a Starbucks couch with a couple coffees.

On our way back to the hostel, we swung by Peterpans to get “almost done” with our traveling plans. Then we made it back to our hostel (walking past an angry probably-schizophrenic old man) around 7:30pm. We grabbed a delicious $21 dinner, and then $3.50 happy hour beers until we were all tuckered out around 10pm. There was a bit of an issue with getting the bill sorted out with the drinks. Long story short, when I gave them my card to pay for drinks, I told them to keep it open to which they responded it’s a $30 minimum. To me, that means that if I’m going to close out on my card, I need to spend $30, otherwise pay cash. To them, that meant that regardless of how many drinks we bought, they were going to charge us a minimum of $30. The guy was a real dick about it, but he eventually let us pay cash (only $21.30), and we were good to go.

Today we were supposed to head out to the beaches and have a lovely beach day. Unfortunately, it’s raining like crazy (today and tomorrow), but it’ll clear up on Thurs and Fri, so we’ll be sure to catch some nice sand and surf at Bondi beach before we’re done here. Instead, we spent our entire morning at Peterpan getting all the travel finalized (now, with tickets in hand, we never have to go back there again!), and then grabbed a lunch at the hostel, and are finishing up chatting with Jess’s parents (I think they’re reviewing bungee jumping pictures right now, hah). We’ll soon be on our way … probably back to shopping but maybe to a zoo or something.

Photos: Penguins, wine, and planning chaos

nlook — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:19:00 GMT

Penguins, wine, and planning chaos

nlook — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:13:00 GMT

3/28/2010 10:00 AM

Wow – time is just flying by here in Oz. Our first two days (yesterday and the day before, not including the night we arrived) were jam packed with stuff, and last night we spent planning out the rest of our time here. It was a bit of a headache, but I think we’re all squared away. But here are some of the highlights so far.

On Friday morning, we grabbed a cab right from the YHA to our hotel/hostel that we’ve been staying at the past two nights. It was fairly close by, so it allowed us enough time to get checked in at the hotel and grab a quick breakfast before we headed off on our 12 hour adventure with kangaroos and penguins. We booked this 12pm-to-midnight deal where we visit a wildlife sanctuary, a farm, a koala sanctuary, grab some dinner, visit the baby penguin chick habitat, and then head to the beach for the “penguin parade.”

The wildlife sanctuary was pretty neat. They had a wombat, a koala, some dingos, an emu, some lizards, four kangaroos, and a bunch of wallabies. It was definitely an authentic Australian animal experience. We started off at the lizards, then moved over to the koalas, then the dingos, etc. … it was pretty uneventful, until we got to feed the wallabies and kangaroos. That was pretty sweet. We bought a packet of dry food, and you just pour it in your hands and these little wallabies hop over to you and gently eat out of the palm of your hand. The wallabies were only about 2-to-3 feet tall, quite cute. The kangaroos did much of the same, except they ate much quicker and a bit more slobbery. It was about at this point when my Australian wildlife experience got really authentic. Jess fed this one alpha kangaroo character, and I was standing a few feet away with the rest of the food. Jess came over to me worried that the kangaroo was going to attack her because after she finished feeing him, he just kept starring at her, slowly hopping in her direction. I thought nothing of it; he was probably just a hungry kangaroo. So I walked over to the guy, poured some food in my hand, and he gobbled it up. No big deal. But he moved in for more food, and I pulled the bag away; then he stood up, grabbed my arm, leaned back on his tail … and before he could finish launching a massive kangaroo kick at me, I stepped outside and pushed him to the ground … a total ninja move. He did manage to get the kick off … but he didn’t land it too well so it didn’t hurt; it did, however, manage to cut a tare in my shorts --- bastard! After that, there was really no place to go, other than past this angry kangaroo; the only other way, was by a dozen little wallabies, one of which was vomiting profusely all over the place --- hahaha. It was quite hilarious. So, we chucked the food, which distracted the kangaroo, and then booked it out of the forest. Awesome times, ha. Jess told the keeper what happened, and I guess this isn’t the first time that roo has gotten aggressive; she said something about giving him a “timeout”; I think I’d go for something more of a “turning him into a hamburger” type of punishment.

Needless to say, the wild life sanctuary was pretty fun. After that, it was off to the oldest farm in Australia, where we got to see a sheep shearing show! That was actually a pretty neat experience. This older Australian farmer guy came out and gave a bit of a talk on the history, yes, the history, of sheep sheering, and even gave a few stats on “world records” for sheep sheering. He kept bringing up this one “bloke” who I guess was the master sheerer of sheep for decades and decades, until the electronic shaver came out. The farmer guy telling the story even used to enter sheep sheering contests himself. Hah. Wicked. The show was pretty neat; basically, a guy sheering a sheep for a few minutes. For some reason I thought this fluffy sheep would just sit there “bahhing” while someone sheered him. But it was more of a farmer manhandling and wrestling the sheep all over the floor, sheering the wool one bit at a time, with the sheep trying to escape at every possible second. Hah. Quite fun to watch, actually.

Then, we headed to the koala sanctuary. That was neat, but it was very rushed (traffic put us behind schedule). Basically, you walk through the gift shop, into a forest, and then along this boardwalk where there are about 5 koalas sleeping in the trees. They could’ve all been stuffed animals for all we knew; they just hung out there sleeping. However, one guy got up to scratch, so we managed to get that on video. Woohoo! Koala scratches!! So exciting.

After that we grabbed some mediocre pizza dinner, and then headed for the penguins. The first stop was where all the baby chicks were waiting for their parents to return. The deal is, the parents head out into the ocean before sunrise, spend all day fishing, and then come back after the sunsets to feed the chicks. We got there just before sunset, so we didn’t get to see the feeding, but we did get to see a bunch of little excited penguin chicks waiting for their parents to return; they were quite cute. We spent maybe 20 minutes walking around there, and then headed to the actual site of the penguin parade. This “parade” is so routine, that they set up bleacher seats for people to sit and watch the penguins come in from the shore … and they have massive lights on the beach so we can see the little guys come in from the ocean. Ha. I imagine this would look very bizarre from the penguin’s point of view, but it was really cool from ours. We got front row seats, and just waited and waited and waited … eventually, we saw a group (they call it a “raft”) of about 8 penguins swimming into shore. Once they hit shore, they sort of stood there, looking around for about 5 minutes. Then they made a mad dash for the sand dunes behind us. After that, two more guys came in, but they kept running back into the ocean, waiting for more penguins. It’s funny … they have to move in groups of around four or five --- for safety reasons. So if one or two come in by themselves, they’ll wait for more, and then join up. It’s quite cute to see them get all organized, and chase after one another trying to join a group.

After we saw about 30 or 40 little guys come in from the ocean, we headed back along the boardwalk which crosses the sand dunes, and we could watch the penguins walk back to their homes, and preen each other, etc. That part was really cool because they walk so close to the board walk you could literally reach through the fence and grab one. At one point, Jess and I were standing above this penguin, not more than one foot from him. I so wanted to grab him and run away … what a souvenir that would have been! Especially considering no video or photos are allowed the entire time.

Around 10:00 we headed back to the bus (grabbed a couple postcards along the way), and made the 90 minute journey back to Melbourne. Before we left, however, the bus driver had to look under the bus for penguins; these guys have been known to hang out underneath buses and cars.

We got back around 11:45, and went straight to bed --- long day.

Yesterday was also quite a long, but fun, day. We booked ourselves on a 7-8 hour winery tour through the Yarra Valley. It was quite the deal because, although we only stopped by four wineries, you could taste every wine on their list if you wanted to, which would have added up to over 60 tastings! Hah. They also threw in lunch at one of the wineries.

The ride in was uneventful, but they gave us some cool history on the region. Basically, in the late 1800s, the Dutch made this valley a very well known boutique wine region. They won lots of Parisian wine awards, and became huge exporters to Europe before the Great Depression. Then once the GD hit, no one could afford the wine, and basically everybody closed up shop. The region laid “dead” until the 70s, when rich Aussies rolled in to make more wine. But it wasn’t until Moet and Chandon came in in the mid-1980s to buy out a winery that they would use to hit their Asian market. Since that day, the region has exploded in wineries and vineyards. Kind of a neat history of that region.

All the wines were good, but none were really THAT good where we had to buy a bottle. We did two wineries, then grabbed a delicious lunch. I had some salmon risotto deal, and Jess had the lamb and potato meal. Both were amazing; and we got a “free” glass of wine with it as well. Then we did some more tasting there, and hit two other wineries. Hah --- naturally, we were quite enjoying our afternoon.

Before long, we were back in the city. It was at this point when we finally decided to get our act together and figure out what we were going to do with the rest of our time in Oz. We had heard about a place called “Peterpans Adventure Travel.” They help you book everything; wicked. So we swung by there, but basically it was some 20 year old girl trying to sell us on all these cool college kid party type tours; all the pamphlets looked like they were made by some 19 year old frat kid. Hah. Nice. We did manage to grab some good suggestions from her, but nothing was booked. We left there, grabbed some dinner on the way home, and then dominated the two free internet computers at the hostel for the rest of the night (probably around 4-5 hours). Absolute insanity. We tried to plan dozens of different iterations of our original plan, but basically everything was being shot down by this dang Grand Prix. Also, “Easter Week” is coming up, which books up next week like crazy, and then school gets out for the high schools / colleges, and that floods pretty much everywhere we’re trying to go on this trip. Unlike NZ, our timing for OZ has been pretty poor. But oh well, we managed to figure out a plan. And while we did that, we chatted up a couple locals near the computers who were very friendly and gave us some great advice on what to do. One thing I’m remise about is that we’re here from the 25th-28th (the exact date of the Grand Prix), but are totally going to miss the WCT surfing competition at Bells Beach on the 30th. Noooooo!! Had we known this in advance, we probably would have started in Adelaide, and then made our way over here. Ahh well, this trip has been pretty successful so far.

At any rate, here’s our great plan for Oz: we take an overnight train to Sydney tonight, spend a few nights there. Then hopefully take a hop-on, hop-off bus from Sydney to Airlie Beach. We’ll stop off at Byron Bay, Brisbane, Fraser Island, Whitsunday, etc. (all the major stops) along the way. Then once we get to Airlie Beach, we’ll be renting a camper for at least two weeks, and slowly make our way up to Cairns. Once in Cairns, we’ll do a one or two night live aboard boat and dive the great barrier reef. That should take us right up until about the middle of May, and then, back home to the real world.

So … that’s the “plan”; it’ll be fun to see how this all plays out! Ha.

Now it’s about 10:45am, and time to get our day started. Probably going to catch an AFL game (Australian rules Football --- supposed to be absolute nonsense), and then catch the train.

Photos: Onwards, to the land down under ...

nlook — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:19:00 GMT

Onwards, to the land down under...

nlook — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:11:00 GMT

3/25/2010 10:09 AM

Off to Melbourne this morning. Woohoo. Trying to write a quick something before heading out the door …

The rest of our day on 3/23 we pretty relaxing. After a little nap, we made our way to one of those real restaurant places, and I finally got to taste some prime New Zealand lamb. Dang that was good! It wasn’t a lamb shank, nor a chop … not really sure what it was … just a bunch of chunks of lamb with bits of sweet potato and some sauce. But holy crap it was amazing. The lamb was super tender … didn’t even really taste like “lamb,” just great.

That was pretty much it for our night. We did, however, swing by a sweets shop on our way back to the hostel. They had dozens of different kinds of licorice; for some reason I wanted some nice authentic black licorice. Unfortunately, the one I chose was nothing like I wanted it to be. Doh!

Yesterday was a great day. We started out by returning our car. When we returned it, however, they were very keen on having us fill out this accident report for that “hit and run” someone did to us in the parking lot at Fox Glacier. We regret reporting the incident now because even though it wasn’t our fault, they charged us $100 NZ. We should be getting that money back as soon as the insurance deals with it all, however. But it’s just another hassle to keep on top of. Stupid car rentals places. Oh, and on top of that, they charged us $40 for some “administration” fee for our ticket. Now … that is one we can dispute heavily b/c nowhere in the contract does it say they can do that; they can only charge $40 for unpaid traffic or parking fines, and as of now, we have every intention of fighting the traffic fine. Bastards!

Anyway, by the time we finished with all that stuff, it was about 1:30pm, and we hadn’t eating a thing; so we hopped on the shuttle back to town, and swung by Fergburger. This place had been recommended to us by a few people. It’s basically a place that serves giant delicious hamburgers. Perfect. We both went for the original, and dang was that thing tasty (and huge). It’s also the first time I’ve had a burger where the bun covers the patty the whole time you’re eating it – score. Not sure if there was anything really special about it; just a delicious burger; but it definitely hit the spot. However, the fries were a different story. They’d probably be tasty all on their own, but everywhere in NZ adds probably 1 cup of salt to each batch of fries --- so it basically tastes like you’re eating a salt stick. OK at first … but unbearable a few fries into it.

Afterwards, we headed up to the gondola ride that we pushed to today. We also booked three “luge rides.” …

Well right now we’re sitting at the airport waiting for our flight to Christchurch, and then Melbourne. However, I have no idea if what I’m typing is showing up on the screen, because the screen is broken. I think I left it in a good spot last time I wrote though, so this should be showing up. Ha. Anyway, back to yesterday …

We got to the gondola place around 2:30pm, and boarded a quick trip to the top of the mountain. The view from up there was amazing. You’re about 500m above Queenstown, which sits right beside a beautiful greenish / blue lake Behind the lake are dozens of snowcapped mountains. We took a photo that looked like a postcard … or perhaps like one of those fake photos where you jut insert yourself. But man was it freezing cold when we got to the top. We headed right indoors to grab a “long black” (NZ for coffee) and a latte. After that, we stepped back out into the cold, and headed for the chairlift that would take us to the luge spot. However, on our way, we passed by “The Ledge” bungee jumping. They have a bungee jump on this mountain that is a 47m drop, but 400m above the city. Wicked! Also, you had to take a running start to jump off this platform, so it’s a little more intense then just taking a standing leap. However, bungee jumping is crazy expensive, so as much as we wanted to (and would have if we had the money) we couldn’t bring ourselves to but two tickets. Doh – next time.

The chair lift to the top of the luge stuff was even colder than when we got off the gondola. And if we thought that was cold, we were in for a treat with the luge ride down because with the wind whipping at our fingers, I’m surprised we didn’t get frost bite. Good thing we’re headed to warm Australia --- also, we just checked the weather in Brisbane, and it’s mid 80s all week … niiiiiice.

We had a blast on the luge ride; they even took our photos at the finish line. We didn’t know they were doing that at first, so we made sure to make funny faces for the second and third time --- hahahhaha … Jess’s face was freaking hilarious the second time around; she looked like a “special” 5 year old that just won a race against herself. Glorious photo.

We definitely had to buy that photo, along with one that they snapped of us on the chairlift riding up; we didn’t know they were taking a photo, and that picture just shows how ridiculously cold we were.

We bought a couple souvenirs on our way down, and then headed to the main street to do a bit of shopping. Naturally, we gravitated towards the Quicksilver store, where Jess almost bought a Quicksilver NZ sweatshirt, but we later opted for a “design your sown shirt.” It’s much more personal, and much more fun to have a shirt like that. We had every intention of making our own dinner for that night, but we stopped by a really neat bar / restaurant on the wharf. We had a couple beers, looked at the menu, and just couldn’t resist ordering some food (rather than walking all the way to the grocery store, picking stuff out, walking all the way back to the hostel, making it, cleaning up, etc.) Oh well, our last night in Queenstown, why not “go big” for only $15/pp. The dinner was delicious --- exactly what Jess had been craving all trip long. And the beer was quite good too. It was the first real hoppy beer I’d had on the south island; and naturally I found it the night before we leave! Ha. Ahh well; it’s a big brand so they might have it in Australia. (Mac’s Hop Rocker).

When we got back to the hostel, we finished getting our first week in Australia organized, booked our Melbourne stay, and then headed to the room to pack --- oh man, what a disaster!! The room was about 10x10, and there were clothes and suitcases in every square inch of the room. Haha. Such a daunting task. It took us about 2 hours to get it all sorted, but we got it done nonetheless. Then it was a quick shower and off to bed.

This morning was a fairly successful morning. We got out of the door in time to catch the bus. And we even had time to swing by town to pick up Jess’s sweatshirt from the custom shirt store. Now we’re at the airport, boarding our plane in about one hour. I just walked to the bathroom and passed by a group of officials / family members standing around someone on a stretcher. They were holding a red sheet up to shield people form watching, but it looks like they were doing some sort of reviving thing. I heard the person make a few sounds, kinda sounded like they were having a seizure or struggling or something. When I walked into a store, I asked the lady behind the counter and she said that the person had a heart attack, but they got her breathing again. Then they wheeled her out of the airport and that was the last of it. Kinda a weird experience --- I hope that person is ok, but it definitely weirded me out a bit. However, I’m sure Mike sees stuff 100 times worse on a daily basis, so … I suppose I’ll just wish the best and move on. They family didn’t look too worried anyway, so maybe that’s a good sign.

Oh, when we got into the airport, we were stopped to fill out a quick “tourism” survey on or stay in Queenstown. Jess immediately said no, but me (being the sucker for random approaching people that I am) said sure, and we got two free drinks out of the deal too. Score. It only took about 15 minutes and it was basically me rating our trip to Queenstown. Easy stuff. And … well … that’s about it. Just waiting for this plane to arrive.

Hopefully all this got jotted down ok…

3/26/2010 12:03 AM

Awesome, everything I wrote blind at the airport showed up! Ha. Save for tons of spelling errors. Anyway, the trek to Melbourne was a little rough, but not too bad. We had a small twin engine prop plane that took us from Queenstown to Christchurch. Dang that thing was loud; when we took off I couldn’t hear anything but propellers. It got a little better once we got to altitude, but by then, poor Jessie wasn’t feel too hot. We had crazy up and down turbulence on take off, so that wasn’t good. But luckily the flight was only 40 mins. We were on the ground in no time, and then the guy sitting across the aisle from us began loudly vomiting (gargling would be a good description of the noise) into his vomit bag. Arguably one of the grossest things we’ve experience on the trip so far (next to the sulfur and gannet smells). Hah – yuck. That didn’t help Jess’s motion sick situation much, but we didn’t stick around there too long.

Our flight to Melbourne was much better. Only 3.5 hours long, and quite smooth. Air New Zealand is by far my favorite airline. All their planes are new (or newly renovated). The seats are very comfy, and they all have wicked up to date electronic TVs behind the seats w/games, movies, TV shows, etc. Really cool. And we always seem to get a meal. Even on this short 3.5 hour flight, we got a delicious beef pastry thing with a risotto salad and ice cream for dessert. Sweet deal. Jess and I watched a couple shows on the plane, and then before we knew it, we were descending. And wow was that a cool descent into Melbourne. The coast looked absolutely gorgeous. Huge golden beaches, a bunch of intricate bays, really neat.

We got through customs in no time, and boarded a “sky bus” to take us to the hostel. We were very surprised at how warm the weather was. Definitely shorts and t-shirt weather; even after sundown. However, the air was very smoky because they have some crazy fires going on north of Melbourne.

We found the hostel OK, checked in, grabbed some Thai food, booked a Penguin Parade experience for tomorrow and a wine tour for Saturday … and … that’s it so far.

Kinda tired … will write more when there’s something more exciting happening.

Oh … but … WE’RE IN AUSTRALIA!!! Finally. Man we’ve wanted to see this country for a while now, and I can’t believe we’re actually here. Hope it lives up to all the hype I’ve built around it in my head!

Photos: If everyone else jumped off a bridge ... would you?

nlook — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:18:00 GMT

If everyone else jumped off a bridge ... would you?

nlook — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:55:00 GMT

3/23/2010 2:43 PM

I’m getting quite lazy at making these journal updates now --- it’s been three and a half days since the last one --- but I think that’s mainly because not a whole lot has happened in the past few days.

On the 20th (our first full day in Christchurch), we had planned on swimming with some tiny dolphins. All was well and good with that (bookings, etc.) but we ended up deciding against it the morning of. First, it was a little pricey, and we would have to drive ourselves 90-120 minutes to get there. The longer the day rolled on, the more choppy the waves were going to get, the water was cold … meh … lots of little excuses just adding up. We can swim with the dolphins anywhere, it was really a matter of seeing these tiny NZ dolphins, but then we also read that they were “some of the smallest” dolphins in the world; not necessarily THE smallest dolphins in the world. So, come 9am when we got up, we decided to have a more relaxing day, slow the pace up a bit, save a bit of money, and just tramp around the city for the day.

Our first order of business for the day was to get some groceries and make our own dinner that night. Last night’s dinner wasn’t too expensive (just split a medium pizza, which was amazingly delicious btw – need to remember the ingredients to make later on…?), but it was time to cut back a bit on meals. So, off to the Pak’n Save for groceries, and then we swung by Denny’s for a cheap breakfast. And it actually was really cheap; probably our cheapest meal of the trip. $11 for two reasonably sized breakfasts (eggs, toast, hash browns, etc.) and two coffees. Wicked deal. After that we headed for the downtown to do a bit of shopping. I was on a mission to get some plastic Havaianna sandals, and Jess was on a mission to just do any sort of shopping. :)

The city was, well, just another city. The drive towards the downtown reminded me a lot of London, Ontario. Probably a mix of the tall trees, older architecture, big parks, etc. But the downtown area itself was much like what we had experienced elsewhere. Lots of shops, shopping, cafes, etc. After wandering around for a few blocks, we stumbled across a neat marketplace. It was a big cement square with dozens of tents set up with a mix of hippies and foreigners selling cheap stuff. We looked around there for a bit, but didn’t really find anything worth while. However, we did successfully get a delicious bratwurst with onions and mustard. Daaaang that was good. Kinda made us feel a bit nauseous later on, but totally worth it, ha. Then we managed to find my sandals, wander around a bit more, and then headed back to the hostel.

We really didn’t do much for the rest of the day. Played around on the net for a bit, made our dinner (I think we’ve found a cheap and delicious way of making Indian food --- jars of the premade sauce, with rice and chicken, amazing). Then we Jess watched the Eclipse trailer once or twice a few times (haha). After that, we did a bit more research on Australia (thinking of doing a hop-on/hop-off bus deal), and then made it an early night.

The next day (Sunday the 21st) we were off to Dunedin (pronounced “duh nee din” but we say “dune din” --- ha, it’s become a funny inside joke with us … for no other reason that to just pronounce it wrong on purpose). The drive down there was quick, and perhaps that explains why we got a speeding ticket. Doh! Now, I don’t really think it was warranted. There have been many times driving when I would have deserved a speeding ticket, but that wasn’t one of them. We had been driving 100km/h for a couple hours, then got into a town where it went down to 80 km/h, and then a small stretch where it was 50 km/h, and that’s where I got nabbed doing 82 km/h. First of all, there’s no reason to be doing 50 km/h … the difference between 50 and 80 on that stretch of road was nil. It was wide, lots of space, great road condition, straight, blah blah blah. It was just 50 for no other reason that the city wanted to catch speeders (or so I like to think). In fact, right after that stretch of road, it went right back up to 80 km/h. Stupid. Anyway, the cop was nice enough. Asking me if there’s any reason I was speeding. I suppose I could’ve made something up, but I don’t really think he would’ve cared --- he looked like the kind of person that became a cop b/c they were bullied in high school and like to have authority. He did the routine breathalyzer (standard procedure for NZ police stops) and then he wrote us a ticket. When he found out I was a foreigner, I think he picked up on the fact that I wasn’t going to pay it, and pretty much said I didn’t have to, “Now, just write the authorities about the situation, and they’ll contact you if you need to pay anything. You can’t pay oversees with a credit card; you need to do it in person with cash. If you don’t pay it, it’s not like we’re going to come knocking at your door in California, but, you may have troubles if you ever try to come back into this country again.” Ha. Ok, so basically I don’t have to pay it. Sweet.

Before long we made it to Dunedin. It was too late for the Chocolate factory, so we decided to push that to the next day --- that was better anyway because it was Sunday and they do shortened tours on Sundays. We checked into our hostel and immediately regretted booking the place. It was “alright,” but it was very old and very creepy. Tiny corridors, random furniture and decorations, creepy old fireplace and dresser in our room. Ha. It was definitely not one of the nicer places we’ve been. Even the city itself had an old creepy feel to it. It was big enough, but I don’t know, there was something about the place.

With our chocolate factory fail, we decided to do something with the day, and headed for Baldwin Street --- the supposed steepest street in the world. When we got there, we decided not to take our rental car up the street; the street was VERY steep, and our car had enough troubles getting around the mountain inclines. Kinda doubt this guy would’ve been able to chug up that hill without breaking. So, we just did the obligatory walk to the top, snapped a few photos, and then got back in the car and went back to the hostel. Ha. Woohoo --- extreme Dunedin excitement! Come to think of it, while the street was steep, I’m pretty sure some streets in Laguna Beach would give it a run for its money as the “steepest street in the world.”

Back at the hostel, we made our dinner, played a few games of Jumbline and then went to bed.

The next day (yesterday, the 22nd), we were off to Queenstown. However, we made sure to swing by the Cadbury Chocolate Factory for an amazing Cadbury World Chocolate Factory Tour Experience! Jess was thrilled. When we checked in, however, they told us it was some Maori public holiday, and they would be operating shortened tours as a result (no manufacturing stuff), doh!! Ahh well, it ended up being fun anyway. We got a bunch of chocolates, and then watched a 15 minute video on the history of the factory. Then we stepped into the manufacturing building, walked up a silo where they had a chocolate waterfall at that stop, then got to taste some more chocolate, watched a video on how they made some more chocolate, and then got a couple more pieces of chocolate on our way out. The whole time, the tour lady was asking trivia questions about the history of Cadbury and generally chocolate, and handed out chocolate prizes. Oh, and the chocolate waterfall was something like 50 tons of chocolate falling about 10 feet into a vat. Chocolate was spraying everywhere (you’d get it on your clothes if you didn’t step back), and all of the railings were covered in chocolate due to the spray. Hah --- it was quite the chocolatey experience. Jess was quite pleased with it all, especially after finding a Crème Brule Cadbury chocolate bar in the gift shop. Chocolate factory tour = win!

Then we motored our way to Queenstown. It was just a 3 ½ hour drive, and was pretty scenic through farmland, past sheep, etc. Much like the north island driving. Somewhere along the way we brought up the infamous topic of bungee jumping. It was invented in Queenstown, so naturally, would we do it? Before leaving on the trip, we said “of course!” --- it was a bit of a no brainer. But as the trip dragged on, we never really talked about it. We looked into it once, very briefly, but that was the end of it. It had kinda become a dead issue. On our drive to Queenstown, however, we had to talk about it. The first thing Jess said was “Ok, but not today.” “No way! Of course. Maybe tomorrow.” Then somehow that led into typing “Bungy” into the GPS, and before long, TomTom put as smack dab at AJ Hackett’s Bungy, right at the site of the first ever commercial bungee jump, the Kawarau Bridge. I still didn’t believe we were actually going to do it that day --- I mean, we had no idea if they were still doing any more jumps that day (it was 4:30pm when we got there). But sure enough, we walked to the front desk and they said, “Yep! You’d be our last ones of the day!” Haha --- you start thinking, “Last ones, oh no; is it a bad thing to go last? Do the operators get all tired and forget how to tie the ropes? Do they get lazy? Will they remember to adjust the rope for a tandem jump because they’ve been doing singles all day?” We stepped outside and took a look at the bridge, and watched a few people jump. Meh, it didn’t look that bad. It was only 43m high, and you’re over a river. It was a bit windy, but whatever, seemed doable. So we went back inside, bought our tickets, got weighed, got a harness on, and in the span of about 5 minutes, we were all tied up and told, “Ok, now step onto the platform.” Hah … WTF!! I thought we were going to get some debriefing; just 5 minutes ago we hadn’t really decided whether or not we were going to do it, and now we’re all strapped in being told to step to the edge. That’s kinda when the nerves kicked in, but it really wasn’t that bad. We were doing a tandem jump, so we just had to hold onto each other’s belt, and then jump. The ropes did the rest. Pretty simple. When we stepped on the ledge, Jess started saying, “No no no; nope; not doing it.” Haha. The only comforting thing I could think to say was, “Oh come on. It’s not bad.” Then came the countdown, “1, 2, 3 … jump!” To which Jess responded “no no no! I’m not ready yet.” Ha --- the operator then said in a fairly stern voice, “Listen, when I say jump, you have to jump. There’s a bit of debris in the river and so there’s a small window in which you can jump.” Not sure if that was comforting or not, but being “scolded” (not really) just kinda made you think “shit, sorry, we’ll jump this time; promise.” So then again, “1, 2, 3 … jump!” Somehow we managed to jump fairly well in synch. And WOW!!! What a feeling!!! I was looking out at another bridge when we jumped, but your naturally tendency is to look down when you’re jumping. All I remember is the ground rushing towards your face, and this insanely awesome feeling of weightlessness for about 2-3 seconds. So crazy. Then you feel the gentle tug of the rope, slow you down, and then a big rush to your upper body, and then you just bounce around for a bit. Before long, you’re lowered toward the river, where two guys come by in a boat to pull you in. Then … it’s over. You’re lying on the bottom of a boat, staring up at a bridge 43m above you, from where you just jumped. Haha. Suuuuuch an amazing rush!! We wanted to do it again (and for about 1/3 of the price, you could have), but we were literally the last jump of the day, and they wouldn’t let us do it again. Ahh well, the feeling of “I can do anything now” lasted for the rest of the day. Jess and I decided that we’re both becoming adrenaline junkies. On our way to the hostel, we stopped off for a celebratory beer and talked about all the other crazy cool things we need to do (hang gliding, sky diving, shark cage diving, etc.). Hah. So cool.

We got into Queenstown around 7pm, just in time to get ready for the night. We had plans to meet up with some friends we made on St. Patty’s day. They were all on different trips around NZ, but were part of this “Magic Bus,” which is basically a hop-on/hop-off bus. Quite the fun bunch; we met them at some college pub type place for a few drinks. We got home somewhere around 2am, at some cheese and crackers, and then passed out. What a fun day. Probably one of our top 5 days yet.

Phew. Finally all caught up to today.

Queenstown itself is quite the neat city. It reminds me a lot of a little ski village. Lots of cool shops, and cafes. It’s right on a huge lake, and it’s surround by big mountains on all sides. Also, everything seems relatively new (or at least, updated frequently). It’s probably the coolest town we’ve been to on the south island. Definitely one of my favorites of the trip. And … being the adrenadline capital of the world, there’s TONS to do here. Unfortunately, the one major activity we wanted to do in NZ (zorbing) cannot be done here. I suppose it’s not much of an adrenaline rush (you’re in a plastic ball and you roll down a hill at about 20 km/h, kinda slow, but kinda fun) … but there also aren’t a lot of places to roll down hills here (just huge mountain sides) … maybe we should roll down mountains instead of hills --- that’d be quite the adrenaline rush!

At any rate, we’ve found plenty to keep ourselves busy over the next 48 hours. This morning we booked a jet boat ride, and a gondola / luge deal. Another fun activity to do here would be a day trip to Milford Sounds. The cheapest one is $145/person, and it’s just a boat ride through the sounds. Not too exhilarating, but supposedly gorgeous. However, the weather in Milford Sounds has been disatorous over the past few days. The people that went on Saturday/Sunday said it was cold, rainy, windy and way too cloudy to really see anything. And the people who went on Monday either got turned around due to flooding / avalanche / trees falling on the road … or the “lucky few” who got there early, ended up being stuck there in huts for the night because no one could get 120 people out of there in time w/all the roads down. Yikes. We actually wouldn’t be able to get there today if we wanted to … so maybe tomorrow … but honestly, we don’t really want to throw away $290 NZ if the weather is going to be miserable. Plus, I really don’t think we can top that Abel Tasman or Bay of Islands experience.

After our bookings, we grabbed some brunch, and then went to the jet boat. It’s basically a feel fast tiny speed boat that sips through 42km of lakes and rivers. The whole ride is 1 hour long, and your whipping through the water like crazy. It was crazy cool. The boat was very fast and maneuverable; felt the like the guy could do pinpoint turns. We did tons of 360s, lots of “near misses” with trees and the shore, and at times we were zipping along 1 foot of water! Insane! The captain said the boat technically can drive in 2-inches of water (needs 1m though to get started), and I believe it. In fact, at times it felt like we were in less than a foot of water. Very cool indeed. The only downside was that it was quite chilly, and the water spray made it feel arctic.

Now we’re back at the hostel, unwinding, and have just pushed our gondola ride to tomorrow. We’re a bit tired from yesterday (well, mainly from last night), so we’ll probably spend the rest of our day just relaxing and getting organized for Australia. I think tonight we’re finally going to get to taste some famous NZ lamb shank; perhaps even some green lipped mussels we’ve been hearing good things about. But for now, a bit of a nap is in order.

Photos: St. Patty's Day, glaciers, and another big city

nlook — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:46:00 GMT

St. Patty's Day, glaciers, and another big city

nlook — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:43:00 GMT

3/19/2010 7:08 PM

It’s been a few days since I’ve been able to write anything down, mainly because our computer broke. Lame! Not quite sure what happened, but it worked fine the morning of the 17th, and then by nighttime, the screen was cracked. Luckily, it’s just the screen … and now that we’re in Christchurch (and they don’t lock up the computer towers), we’re able to plug the hostel’s monitor cable into our netbook and use it just fine. I think we’ll probably have to keep doing this as we move about our travels; there doesn’t seem like an easy way to return this to Costco and get it fixed. Ahh well, it’s far from the worst thing that can go wrong.

So, I’ll start back when we left Abel Tasman. We had a nice breakfast at a local café, then booked it to Greymouth (the biggest city on the west coast of NZ’s south island) --- we had a 6pm brewery / dinner experience at the south island’s oldest (or maybe NZ’s oldest?) brewery, Monteiths. The drive down was twisty and windy through the southern alps of NZ, but uneventful for the most part. It was pretty scenic, but you can only be impressed with driving through mountains to a certain point, and I think we hit that point about 15 minutes into the 4 hour drive, ha. [Funny side note … Jess just sat down next to me to handwrite in her journal and asks, “So what did we do on the 8th?” Haha. Her procrastination is adorable.] On the way to Greymouth, we made a last minute decision to stop by Punakaike --- we were up in the air on the decision, but talking to a local during a 5 minute gas stop was enough to convince us. There are blowholes there, and they call them the Pancake blowholes, or something. Basically, “something happened” and it created these cool rock formations that look like hundreds of stacks of pancakes; then throughout “sometime,” holes were carved in the formations and it made some cool blowholes. By the time we got there, it was around 4pm, and high tide (the best / only time to view the blowholes) was at 12:30pm. Doh! It’s really hard to time things like that when you’re trying to squeeze it in. But oh well; still neat to look at.

We got into Greymouth (someone said the place is as exciting as the name makes it sound, and they were right) at 5:30pm, dropped our bags off, and headed for the brewery tour. The tour itself was OK … felt like it was kinda rushed, but the tasting part was neat. They had 7 different brews, and then at the end we could pour a tasting glass of our favorite one. Not quite enough beer to get you buzzed, but enough to get you started (it was St. Patty’s day after all). We made friends with a German guy (from Cologne) and a British guy, as well as a couple girls from the States. After the tour, Jess and I had our “free” dinner, included with the tour, and then went next door to the Irish pub. It wasn’t long before our brewery tour friends met up with us, and away the night went. They place was your typical dimly lit Irish pub … awesome. The coolest part was the 3-to-4 piece Irish band that was playing. I think my favorite instrument was the rusted shovel --- no joke. The guy used a coin to make scratching sounds … basically just for tempo … but it looked hilarious. In short time we made more friends with some local Kiwis. One of the guys’ wife was actually Canadian (from Ottawa) … random. We had a great time chatting it up with them. By the end of it, we were invited to stay at their place (a no go for us b/c we couldn’t cancel our YHA room), and then they invited us to swing by the next night for a drink at their place. Unfortunately, our next day got a little flipped around and we didn’t get back into town until late, so we just swung by this morning to leave a note thanking them for the invite (yep, somehow we managed to remember the verbal directions they gave us to their house, “at the junction, go right, right, right. It’ll look like you’re driving into the woods, but my house is in there --- I built it myself.” Ha. Wicked. )

Anyway, we tried switching bars (to the only other bar in town), but there were not many people there, and they were playing Lady Ga Ga instead of Irish songs. So back to the Irish pub, and then back to the YHA for sleep.

It’s worth saying how unbelievably small thetown is. It’s the “biggest town on the west coast of NZ’s south island,” but there are only two bars in town. Also, only one gas station. You’d have to drive just outside of the main strip for the other one … but still … crazy small town for being the biggest town.

We got up the next morning (yesterday) at 9am and tried to book our 12:30pm tour at the Franz Joseph glacier. The lady at the YHA told us we would have no problem booking that in the morning, but naturally, when we tried, all tours for that glacier were booked for the day. The backup plan was the Fox glacier, which is 30 minutes further. It’s supposed to be the same as the Franz Joseph, but Fox is just not as popular. Oh well. We booked the 1:35 tour, rushed out the door to make it, got stuck in a 20 minute line at the gas station (2 of the 8 pumps were open), and then rushed back to the YHA to cancel our 1:30 tour b/c there was no way we’d make it with that gas station delay. Doh! Luckily we could switch to the 2:30 tour and jetted for the 3 hour drive to the glacier.

Our random last minute change-ups ended out working in our favor because we happened to be the last group of the day with only two other people going. They normally take groups of 16, so the 4 of us were able to move much faster and go much further than a “normal” half-day hike would have. The glacier itself was quite a sight. It’s a giant mass of ice in-between two huge mountains. It actually looks like frozen water rushing through a valley. It was any where from 2-5 C, so it didn’t really feel like we were near a glacier, but I guess that’s how glaciers work --- they melt at the base, but are constantly regenerating themselves at the top … which results in a constant flow of ice year after year. The hike to get to the glacier was very uphill, and took about 45 mins. When we got to the glacier, we had to strap-on our crampons (metal spikes) so that we could walk on the ice easily. Within 20 minutes, we were well onto the glacier, and walking across pre-carved paths and stairs. It was quite an experience being on such a huge block of ice. It was also quite “dangerous.” We were with a guide, so they obviously knew what they were doing, but to the layperson, a wrong step would mean a long fall through the ice. Or (as has happened in very recent years), if you go to places that the guide avoids, you may be crushed by a 50 ton block of ice, or be swept away by a sudden surge of water, or be crushed by a 10 ton boulder from above. Awesome.

On a normal day hike, we would’ve stopped at a certain spot and had a chat about the glacier. But our guide was cool, and our group was fast, so we made it to a spot that only the full-day hikes get to. It was a little hole in the ice (3m long?) that made for a good slide. At the bottom of the slide, there was a small cave we could walk through. The slide was pretty fun --- if you didn’t use your crampons, you went quite fast … although, hitting your elbows on the ice hurts. The small cave was even cooler. It was anywhere from 18-36 inches wide, and it winded around 4 or 5 different 45 degree corners. You could walk in about 10 feet, before it was too narrow to go any further. By that point, it was too narrow to easily turn around, so you had to back peddle. What was cool about the cave was that due to “blah blah blah” the only band of light that can make it through the ice is blue. So the ice cave was entirely blue. So cool! I guess there are bigger caves that look “electric blue,” but are not artificially lit in any way. Wicked. We spent a lot of time in this spot, taking tons of pictures and having a blast. At one point, our guide went into the cave, and realized that there was a point in the cave where you could look up through the ice. That point was too far to reach normally, so he gave me his axe to chop a way through. I got to the narrow point, axe in hand, but was a little too past my comfort level to chop ice inside of an (at that point) unexplored ice cave. What’s more … the guide was past his comfort level too. Haha. Soooo … that was the end of it. All in all, an amazing glacier experience. Next time, we’ll definitely have to do a heli-drop to the top of the glacier. From there, you can ice climb and get to those wicked electric blue ice caves.

That was pretty much the extent of our day. The drive back was quick so we could maximize daylight driving time, but we didn’t get back until 9:30pm --- most places were closed by then, so a delicious Big Mac and Fries did the trick.

This morning, we slept in. Check out was at 10am, and we didn’t get up until 10:10. At 10:12, there was a loud knock at the door, so we got out of there quick. We grabbed a quick breakfast and stopped by a jade gallery on our way out. The west coast of the south island is known for its jade. The gallery was cool but a bit over priced. NZ $150 for something that can be found 50% less in souvenir shops. Lame. After that, we stopped by our friends’ place from the night before, and then booked it to Christchurch.

The drive through Arthur’s Pass was much easier than expected. You’re traversing across the southern alps, but it’s basically through flatland valleys the whole way. This got us into Christchurch in no time.

We quickly checked into the YHA, and then grabbed a bite to eat. We spent some more time unpacking, grabbed a nice Italian dinner, then spent the rest of our night trying to figure out the rest of our trip, and also getting caught up on e-mails. Now it’s way past our bedtime … gotta get up to swim with some tiny dolphins tomorrow.

Photos: Amazing Abel Tasman

nlook — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:46:00 GMT

Amazing Abel Tasman

nlook — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:41:00 GMT

3/17/2010 8:22 AM

Abel Tasman was well worth the effort to get there. We got up at 5:15am, and were out of Picton by 5:40. We asked about a dozen people how long it would take. Most responses ranged from 2:30 to 3:30, but the retard feminist hippie lady at our hostel said “4 hours if you drive ‘our speed,’ but probably 4:30 for you.” She made plenty of comments to Jess about giving her a “shovel and bag” because I booked the trek so early. Lame. And then her equally feminist hippie mom came over and joined in on the stupidity, saying “I make that drive ALL the time and I can tell you that it takes 4 hours; but if you think that you can make it in less, even though you’ve never done it before, then by all means.” Idiots. I wouldn’t trust a hippie for anything except directions to the closest hippie music circle. At any rate, we chose to leave by 5:30 to split the difference between 2:30 and 3:30. Sure enough, we made excellent time and were in Abel Tasman by 8:15, just 2 hours and 35 minutes later. Stupid hippies. If we had internet connection at this hostel, I would totally have e-mailed them just to rub it in. Oh … and our GPS stopped working half the way there. Bu yeah! ;p

Anyway, most of the drive up was in the dark, so we didn’t see much. But when dawn finally broke, we were right by the ocean, except the tide was so far out, that we were looking at a sandy plain that stretched out about 500m, with little pools of water scattered all over. We later came to find out that the tide rises and falls each day by 4m. Craziness.

We checked in at our pre-booked kayak spot and were told that we’d do the trip in reverse --- water taxi / walk first, then kayak in the afternoon. The water taxi ride was neat, just a wicked speed boat ride. We swung by “split apple rock,” which has appeared on dozens of NZ tourism pamphlets. It’s a spherical rock that has split right down the middle and looks like a split apple. The sun had just risen so we got a lot of really cool silhouette type shots. Then we got dropped off at a dock, way up the coast line. From there, we made a 2 hour trek south towards the kayak pickup point. The walk was 1) awesome, 2) typical. It’s really hard to appreciate these forest walks when you just do them in short bursts of a few hours. It all kind of melds together. And while it’s beautiful nature, it’s more or less the same all over. The difference with this walk though was that it was along the coast line. However, it was high tide, so we were literally walking right next to the water. Had it been low tide, we would have been walking past dozens of sandy beaches. Anyway, it was a great morning exercise. Jess even led the way! We made pretty good time, and stopped for lunch at a little bay called Anchorage. Dang … talk about breathtaking. The sand was a golden color. The water was crystal clear and a teal-blue. It was also super clam, with waves were anywhere from 1-to-5 inches, just trickling into the shore. And we were in this little protected bay surrounded by amazing greenery. The sky was absolutely clear and a brilliant blue, and the temperature was about 75F. What an amazing day, and what an amazing spot to have lunch on the beach. We packed ourselves some PB&J sandwiches, and fruit, and had about 20 minutes to put that down before we had to leave to meet up with the kayaks. It was a quick lunch, but really relaxing. The water, however, was about 68F, and we didn’t work up enough sweat on the walk to have that be refreshing. Legs in was as far as we went.

After lunch, we met up with the kayaks just 20 minutes away. These were legit, tandem kayaks. Every other time we’ve rented kayaks, they’ve been cheapy plastic ones, but these were sleek and fully equipped with dry bins for our bags, bungees to hold our water bottles, a rudder with foot-steering peddles, and we wore splash guard things so we looked like real kayakers. Awesome. We got a bit of instruction, and then pushed out from the 50 foot long cove we were standing in. It wasn’t until halfway between the launching spot and our first island that I turned around and was blown away by Abel Tasman. The scenery here is absolutely stunning. First, the conditions were perfect. Perfect air temperature, clear blue skies, just a slight breeze, and calm waters. But most importantly, the place was just beautiful. Much like the bay of islands, there were a few islands scattered throughout this bay, but it has been so well preserved, and there are so few people, that it probably looks like it did hundreds of years ago. Full of forests and golden sandy beaches, all surrounded by this jade-colored water. Actually, the water in most of NZ so far has been this same amazing color. It’s unlike the Pacific in Cali, or even the Atlantic in Florida – it’s not blue, it’s not tropical green, it’s this cool looking NZ jade color.

Our stopping point as this island that’s known to be home to NZ Fur Seals (oh, and we saw a couple tiny penguins along the way, ha). Sure enough, we saw a mixture of moms, dads and pups. The pups were the cutest; they would poke their head out between the rocks, and then disappear back into the rocks, or into the water. Apparently, there’s a time of year (and we were actually right in that time) where the pups start to venture out from their moms. They get really curious with the kayaks that they have been known to jump right onto the kayak, stare at the kayaker, and then jump back into the water. Hah. Unfortunately that didn’t happen to us, but damn that would be a cool experience! Our guide had it happen to her a few times. We continued around the island to the southern side, and from there we stopped paddling and let the current float us along the side of the island. We were about 50 feet from shore, and could hear the most amazing birdsong. Neither of us are bird people, and when the guide kept telling us that we’d hear really beautiful birdsong, we (or at least I) rolled our eyes, who cares. But wow, it was quite incredible. The songs were so neat, and there was a mixture of three or four birds all doing different ones. We coasted like that for about 30 minutes --- arguably the most relaxing thing I’ve experience in nature, ever. We cleared the island, and passed by a cool sand bar that jetted out about 200 feet from the island. During low tide, the whole sand bar is exposed (it was still under 2-5 feet of water when we passed at partial-low tide), and people have weddings on it. Pretty nice.

Getting around to the other side of the island, we got to try our driving skills and navigate through a couple of turns in these mini-rock formations. That was fun, and we almost made it without bumping, hah. We came around the east side of the island and looked back out at the shore line, and you could see five times more beach than you could when we left. In the 2 hours we had been gone, the water had receded so much, and had exposed tons of more golden sand. That was a very cool sight.

We made our way to the final island (passing by a couple more little penguins along the way --- they look like ducks at first, but then when you get close to them, they get scared and dive into the water, and that’s when you see them in all their penguin-like awesomeness). The guide took us to a spot on the island where we could drive our kayaks onto the sand, and then have a little rest with juice and cookies. It was a little protected part of the island (like a mini version of Anchorage from earlier), but it was ten times more amazing because we were the only ones there. It was at this island that we got a look at the sand for the first time … and it’s a weirdly textured sand. It’s a golden sand color, but it’s almost like tiny pebbles … very coarse. Very soft to walk on, yet it doesn’t kick up any clouds so the water stays crystal clear. Pretty neat stuff. After our rest, we made our way back to the point where we took the water taxi in the morning. When we took the water taxi out, we had to use a loading ramp from the road into the water. By the time we got our kayaks onto the sand, the tide had gone out about 600 feet, and we needed a tractor to take us back to the road. Haha. Oh … we also had a bit of a race back. I think Jess and I would’ve won, but some dodgy aussies ran their kayaks into us … booooo!

So … that was our Abel Tasman experience, and we couldn’t be happier with it. It blew away all of our expectations.

We made our way back to the hostel, got showered, and then headed out for our (third?) “real” dinner of the trip. I got some Thai rice sea food dish, and Jess got some risotto and spinach dish. Both were extremely delicious. Probably in part because we were starving by this point, but at any rate, it was well worth the money. It was 6:30pm by the time we finished lunch, and we almost passed out at the table (without wine) b/c we were so tired. We managed to make it back to the hostel in time to play a few games of Jumbline and have a couple glasses of wine, and then passed out exactly at 9pm. It’s now 9am the next day, and time to get our day started.

Photos: Wine, wine and more wine

nlook — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:45:00 GMT

Wine, wine and more wine

nlook — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:37:00 GMT

3/15/2010 10:00 PM

We had an early morning this morning to catch our 8:35am ferry to the south island. It wasn’t that bad, a little bit of rushing (and just a couple alarm snoozes), but we made it work. The ferry was great. You’d think that going from the north to the south island, you would travel north to south, but you actually travel east to west. We essentially passed through the split of NZ. For some reason, I thought the geography of the split would make the waters calm, but they weren’t – poor Jessie. There was about a 45 minute horrible period where we had some big swells, and that’s when it really hit her. But we quickly moved to the more stable part of the boat, she put her head down, and then we arrived.

While Jess was sleeping, I was able to use the iSite on board to book some stuff for tomorrow. We have an 8:30am guided kayak tour along the Abel Tasman coast – supposed to be amazing – and then we’ve organized a bit of a self-guided walk with a water taxi return. This whole experience tomorrow is supposed to be one of the most beautiful parts of NZ, so we’re expecting some nice pictures. We even have a good chance of hanging out with some NZ fur seals. Wicked. The 8:30am part of the trip is going to suck, mainly b/c we had an early morning today, but what’s worse is that it’s about a 3 hour drive from where we are. So … that puts our alarm clock at about 5am, haha. Just enough time for two snoozes and a car load.

When we got into Picton off the ferry, we picked up the car, parked it at the hostel, and jumped right in the wine tasting tour bus. At first it was just five of us, but we eventually met up with a bigger group. It was a pretty standard affair. The region is really known for the Sauvignon Blancs, so we tried tons of those, but also some other delicious whites. The only reds in the region are Pinot Noirs, and one Italian kind. Those were just “ok” (so far, no reds compare to Cali reds), but the white wines have been great. Of course, we hit 6 wineries, and with anywhere from 6 to 8 tastings at each winery, everything was tasting great by the end of it. Tons of fun. We met some nice people along the way as well. Two girls from the UK on a four month trek to South Africa, India, Vietnam, Thailand and NZ (crazy). Another UK girl living in Auckland. And then an older single woman from Valencia, CA – she was a little on the “quirky” side, but gave us some good fish and chips recommendations. Oh … and the best part (for Jessie), was that the trip ended at a boutique chocolate factory. We only got to taste one kind, but it was delicious (and also $22.50 for 250 grams, yikes). Jess managed to sneak in another tasting, but that was the extent of it … doh.

We had an early fish and chips dinner. It was very tasty. NZ is known for their fish and chips. In fact, it’s probably the most cliché meal here in NZ, and they definitely know how to do it right. Maybe it’s the fish, or maybe it’s the batter … whatever it is, it’s delicious.

Afterwards, we got back to the hostel, played some Jumbline, made our breakfast and lunch for tomorrow (well, Jess did), and I chatted up a nice guy from the UK. He was probably in his mid 50s or 60s. Very fun to talk to. He seemed to be a huge history buff, but we also talked a lot about traveling. It was quite refreshing to have such an extensive and enjoyable conversation with a complete stranger. Not that Jess and I don’t have great conversations … it was just nice to chat up someone completely random, and have the conversation be so fun. It started with him telling me that his dad was in the RAF. Once I heard that, I wanted to hear whatever else he had to say. I love anybody connected to anything military or “elite” English stuff.

Anyway, we’re now back in our room (playing a bit more Jumbline), and will hit the sheets shortly. If we fall asleep right this second, we’ll get 6 hours and 35 minutes of sleep (plus our additional snoozes, ha).

Photos: Gannets and Wellington

nlook — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:45:00 GMT

Gannets and Wellington

nlook — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:35:00 GMT

3/14/2010 8:03 PM

Well today was our last (and most likely warmest) day in NZ. We’re in Wellington right now, but headed to the northern part of the southern island tomorrow (Picton). And then, it’s 11 days of driving south down New Zealand. While it’ll be cold, everybody has been saying that it’s the most beautiful part of NZ, so I’m sure it’ll all be worth the chill. In the meantime, here’s a bit of recap on the past couple days.

Yesterday, we got up bright and early to check out of the hostel and head to Cape Kidnappers for our Gannet Beach Adventures. Gannets are some sort of seagull creature. Actually, I think they’re part of the Booby family of birds, but whatever; they’re just pretty looking seagulls with a funny call. At any rate, Cape Kidnappers had NZ’s (and the world’s?) largest land colony of these birds. So, naturally, we had to check it out. The trek to the birds was a 9km tractor ride along the beach. It was pretty cool at that, because you’re on a tractor on the beach and they point out a bunch of cool things along the way. But the other neat part was that we happened to do this during NZ’s “Sea Week.” That meant that along the way, we stopped every once in a while to pick up trash. Kind of a fun gig; definitely got a lot of trash off the beach, but we also managed to pick up a couple neat shells.

We finally got to Cape Kidnappers, and then started the 30 minute hike to the top where the colony lives. The view from the top was spectacular; absolutely amazing. The birds themselves were pretty neat as well. We saw tons of chicks feed from their mom’s by shoving their heads inside their mom’s beak as the mom regurgitated food into her throat. Crazy. We also saw a couple gannets battle it out. Awesome. The way back along the beach was just the same as the drive up, except we got stuck in the sand a couple of times. The whole time you’re driving in a mixture of sand and waves (and rock / boulders). Naturally, this can lead to soft patches of sand, and sure enough the tractor will get stuck. Fun times. Oh, a cool side note is the name Cape Kidnappers. Back in the mid-1700s, Captain James Cook was moored in the cape and some local Maoris kidnapped a Tahitian salve of his, so … it became known as Cape Kidnappers.

We got back at 1pm, and were starving. Before we hit the 4 hour drive south to Wellington, we stopped by Subway for a bite to eat; it’s not the same as home (no oil or vinegar? … wtf). Four hours later, we were in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. You wouldn’t really know this by driving into the city. Much of the drive was uneventful but fun-to-drive back country. Ten minutes from our destination, we were still pretty much on a two lane highway in the country. Then, you turn a bend, and there’s the city. Hah. It seemed like it came out of nowhere. The city’s also pretty small. In fact, we happened to run into one of the guys who was on the wine tour with us in Napier --- small world, small city.

The YHA we tried to book was $99/night with no private bathroom. So for an extra $15, we booked a stay at the Mercure Hotel with our own bathroom, TV, and free breakfast! What a steal. There’s something about hotel rooms that makes the stay more comfortable. It’s definitely no American-style hotel (no ice machine; a little dungeon feel to it as well), but the room size was wonderful. Tons of space to spread out our things and get settled in.

After a couple beers in the lobby, we headed out for a nice Indian dinner. These have been the most successful meals in NZ for us (even more than kebabs!). After dinner, it was off to The Malthouse. It was some boutiquey wine / beer “pub,” and was exactly what we were looking for. Well … at least exactly what I was looking for --- they had dozens upon dozens of different beers. All styles, and pretty much all regions (including Paso Robles, CA). Sweet. I tried a New Zealander IPA that hit pretty close to home (Hopewired by 8-wire brewery, or something). Basically, I’m going to create a checklist of beers from themalthouse.co.nz and live by it.

That was pretty much it for our first day in Wellington. Although, we did catch a bit of the movie The Red Dragon on TV --- satellite TV!!

Today was one of our most successful and relaxing. We had our free breakfast in the morning (so glad we didn’t pay for it; it was pretty lame), then ran a bunch of errands: fixed the hubcap situation, booked our entire south island hostel stays, got in contact w/our parents and others, and did some more internet related errands. After that, it was 2pm, and we --- well, Jess --- spent a couple hours shopping. By 4pm we were ready for a couple more beers … so back to The Malthouse, then on to a Kebab dinner (worst ones yet).

Now, we’re back at the hotel and just finished repacking everything for the ferry ride tomorrow. Holy crap; just realized it’s quarter to 9. Yikes. Gotta get showered and then maybe head out for the night.

Photos: Winetasting

nlook — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:55:00 GMT

Winetasting

nlook — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:39:00 GMT

3/12/2010 10:01 PM

We got up this morning around 8:45. Our goal was to get a good run in before the wine tour we had planned. We were planning on doing this run at Ocean Beach (supposedly a really pretty beach in the area), but it was too far away, so we just ran along the boulevard in front of our hostel. Just a quick 5k run, but it was the first real exercise we’d done on this trip, so it was great. Smartly, we loaded up on food once we got back to the hostel to build a good base for wine tasting.

We booked ourselves on a four winery tour (“plus cheese board”) through the Hawkes Bay Region. This is the oldest wine region in NZ (just about 100 years old), and so we rightly started at the oldest winery in all of New Zealand. Every wine there was delicious --- a good way to start the tour. An interesting note about this vineyard is that they use sheep to sheer their crops. I guess there’s a time when the grape is too sour for the sheep’s liking, but the leaves are just perfect. So they let the sheep roam throughout the vineyard and they trim the leaves back to expose the grapes to the sun. Gotta love that Kiwi ingenuity.

From there we went to two other wineries that were just as good. Actually, the third one of the day was the best. We tasted ten different wines, and all were excellent. Of course, too expensive to buy … but great nonetheless. For a little break, we took a detour to the highest point in the Hawkes Bay region. Pretty neat sight, but once you’ve seen a few highest points, you’ve pretty much seen them all.

Then it was on to our last winery --- another good one. All in all, we tasted about 26 different wines. Plus, we got a lot of history about the vineyards and the region itself. Including a cheese board, this whole experience was US $45/person --- not too bad. One interesting note about the region is that it was once (in 1931) covered with water. Then, they had a massive earthquake, and then land literally rose from the sea about 10 feet. Now, there is land where there used to be sea, and it’s hugely noticeable. They had old pictures of the area where the ocean used to be, but now no longer exists. Freaking crazy. After the quake, they said the whole area smelled like dead fish for months because of how quickly the seabed rose. Dang. Intense.

After the wineries, we got back to the hostel, took a quick nap, planned more of the trip, made some dinner, and are now playing Jumbline before bed. We gotta hit the sheets pretty soon here b/c tomorrow will be another early day (off to see the Gannets), and then we have a long drive to Wellington.

Photos: From sulfur to wine

nlook — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:55:00 GMT

From sulfur to wine

nlook — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:35:00 GMT

3/11/2010 6:44 PM

Right now we’re relaxing at our hostel in Napier, but I still have to fill in what we did yesterday in Rotorua.

We started the day reasonably early, getting to the Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland around 9:30am. The geyser erupts daily at 10:15am, so we wanted to make sure to get that in. The whole drive up Jess and I kept talking about how amazing it was that this geyser is so well timed … EVERY day at 10:15am. Wow – does it account for daylight savings? Or do they just print new brochures in the winter time?? We’d soon find out, that while this is a real geyser and it would normally erupt on its own every 48-72 hours, the park sprinkles a bit of some soapy substance into it every day at 10:15 so that everybody can have a look at the amazing geyser. Quite nice of them, but it sort of ruins the whole “awesome nature” experience. Oh well. It was still neat to see water shoot out of the ground to about 15m or so.

While waiting for the geyser, we checked out the mud pools. Those were pretty intense. It was a “pond” of sorts, with huge mud banks and mud bars throughout. The mud would be bubbling the whole time, and every once in a while, mud would shoot up anywhere from 6” to a couple feet. That was a really cool experience b/c I’ve never even heard of something like that --- seems right out of a movie or foreign planet. The worst part though was the smell. It smelled like rotting bacon mixed with sulfur. Steam was rising out of the mud pools, and every once in a while a cloud would roll by … lame. In fact, the whole park smelled like that. After the geyser and mud pools, we spent about 75 minutes walking past wicked sulfur pools and sulfur vents. They were various colors (red, purple, yellow green, white), and looked really neat (again, like some foreign planet’s landscape), but again … that horrid smell of sulfur would roll by in a cloud. We actually started getting quite nauseous after a while, so we decided to leave. We had seen the whole park by that point, but even if we hadn’t, we couldn’t handle any more. Plus, we were getting late for our next awesome adventure … mud pool dip with a sulfur bath – ha, no joke.

Hells Gate is another thermal park that has a separate “spa” area for bathing in the mud and sulfur pools. We didn’t realize what we were getting ourselves into when we signed up, and we almost bailed after our experience at the “wonderland,” but we figured what the heck; we’re here so we may as well do it. It actually turned out to be pretty neat. We got to sit in a mud “tub” and plaster our arms and faces with the mud. They were even nice enough to take our picture, covered in mud. After that, we had an extremely cold shower and then dipped in the sulfur bath. The bath wasn’t as intense smelling as the rest of the park (or what we experienced at the “wonderland”); in fact, it was actually quite nice. Though, you could definitely detect a bit of sulfur. Or perhaps it reeked of sulfur and we were just so numb to the smell at that point? Oh well … it’s good for your skin at least. ;)

We didn’t spend too much time at the rest of the park. It was similar to Waiotapu, and we were sick of smelling the gas, so we just went to the wood carving tent, carved us some cool designs into a piece of wood, checked out the hot water falls, and then jetted out of there. The hot water falls were actually kinda neat. The Maori considered the hot water falls (and the nearby sulfur lake) very sacred. They would use it for medicinal purposes, baptize newborn males in it, and use it after battle to heal their wounds and wash away all the “tapu” of war (or something). Quite neat. The waterfall itself was more of a water stream that ran down some rocks, but knowing the history behind it made it cool. We didn’t make it to the sulfur lake, but I’m sure our lives are complete w/o seeing that. No one is allowed to bath in the lake these days (they do, however, pump the water from there into the sulfur bath we took earlier), but the Maori still use it occasionally. Supposedly it heals most skin ailments and even helps alleviate arthritis.

Anyway, we made our way back to town to get ready for the Maori dinner. The bus picked us up at 6pm, and we got there around 6:30. The whole way, our bus driver was telling us Maori words we could use later, and then we picked a “chief.” I guess the intent of this night is to actually recreate what it would be like if we (the bus passengers) were an actual Maori tribe, visiting another Maori tribe for the first time. We needed a chief because that chief would participate in some “greeting” that involved the other tribe challenging our chiefs, waiving sticks around, making their eyes big and sticking out their tongues (“mimic wild animals” they said), and doing a bunch of other really crazy tribal stuff. That part of the night was quite different than anything we’d ever experienced. Definitely no luau, ha, but it was a lot of fun watching it all play out. Then we walked through a traditional Maori village, got introduced to some games and culture, and then watched the tribe perform song and dance routines of their history, etc. (much more like a luau). FINALLY we got to the dinner part – dang we were hungry. They had chicken, lamb, fish, two kinds of potatoes, carrots, bread, macaroni salad … my plate was overflowing by the end of the buffet table. Pretty tasty too. We sat at a table with about 20 other people, but we happened to sit right across from an older couple from northern Ontario. We made quick friends with them once we matched up our shared Canadian heritage … and they were quite taken aback by our “story” and why we were travelling, and then they bought us a bottle of wine to share. So nice – gotta love Canadians. By the end of the night we were fat and happy, and that made for a solid sleep.

Our plan for the next day (today) was to originally check out Tongariro and do the alpine crossing. It has been consistently rated by hiking magazines as one of the top ten best day hikes in the world. And everybody that does it loves it, and most people say it was a “life changing experience.” It was also where Lord of the Rings was mainly filmed. Not that we cared much for the latter, but the rest of it was a huge pull on us to do this trek. But after looking into it, we decided against it. The hike would be a solid 7-8 hours (average time without stopping is 5-6 hours). The weather forecast was “good,” but you had to call at 6:30am the morning of to make sure they were still on. I guess there was a troublesome cloud formation rolling in. Anyway, the bus left at 7am, and it was an hour away. So that meant, we’d have to get up really early, drive really far, and then perhaps turn back. This would also require a lot of packing lunches, etc. the night before. All of that would have been worth it … except, when I looked at pictures, it literally looked like we’d be walking past rocks and boulders (and a couple “cool” lakes) for 7 hours. Meh. I’d be down to do it just for the experience, and perhaps if we were going to be in NZ longer it would have been worth it, but I wasn’t so sold on it that I wanted to convince Jess it’d be worth it. And neither of us were really sold on the idea of walking through a rocky, dusty landscape for 7 hours.

Instead, we canceled the following night’s stay in Rotorua, and booked an earlier night’s stay at our hostel in Napier. This would allow us to have a leisurely morning (quite the nice break from our usual rushing out the door), and leisurely drive to Napier, and then a leisurely day doing … whatever. Nice. And that’s exactly what we’ve done so far.
We left Rotorua around 10:30, and got into Napier around 2pm. The hostel is water front (100m away?), and is pretty much par for the YHA course. We had a nice lunch nearby and then checked out a cool wine store. They sell hundreds of boutique wines from all over the world (and region … Napier / Hawkes Bay is the oldest wine region in NZ), and we were even allowed to taste four different kinds. Quite good. One of the wines, in fact, was too good not to buy. Afterward, we checked out an iSite to plan our two days here. Tomorrow, we’re hoping to have a beach morning, and then do an afternoon winery tour. The next day, we’re planning on a morning with the gannets tour, and then most likely we’ll head on our way towards Wellington by the afternoon. Not too sure if we’ll make it to Wellington … but we’ll figure that out soon enough.

For now, we’re just enjoying this slow day, and will probably cook up some shrimp pasta in a few minutes. Oh, and we gotta get this stuff booked before it’s too late.

Photos: Caving with glowworms and then on to Sulfur City

nlook — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:53:00 GMT

Caving with glowworms and then on to Sulfur City

nlook — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:33:00 GMT

3/10/2010 5:03 PM

Right now we’re in our hostel in Rotorua, almost at the end of our jam packed day of thermal activity and Maori stuff. But I haven’t written anything about yesterday yet …

We left our suite in Whitianga in the early morning, and managed to make it to the Waitomo Caves by noon. It’s a good thing we got there when we did --- our plan was to do the trio cave tour (2 hour cave walk + amazing dry cave + amazing glow worm cave). If we had’ve gotten there a bit later, we wouldn’t have been able to do all three. Sweet. However, in retrospect, doing all three was a bit much caving, and we totally missed out on black water tubing – doh!

The first cave was a two hour walk. It was pretty well marked and laid out, and the guide was very informative telling us all the cool cave facts. We saw a bit of glow worms and a bunch of stalactites / stalagmites. At one point, the guide even turned off the lights so we could experience 100% total darkness. Pretty cool, although I swear I could still see the hand in front of my face (“lies” as Jess would say, ha).

While we were waiting to go to our next cave, we did a quick 30 minute walk through some forest. This walk felt like we were back in Costa Rica. It was “muy verde” and very jungle-like. Part of the hike even took us through a small cave, around a couple waterfalls, wicked. The whole place had a sort of fairytale air to it.

The next cave was a dry cave, so no glowworms. But the cave formations inside this cave were ridiculous. They had lights strategically placed throughout the whole cave, so it all lit up in a really amazing way.

The last cave was the actual “glowworm cave.” It started out much like the rest of the cave experiences, but in the end we got into a small boat in near pitch black darkness, and slowly and quietly wound down a path that was lit by literally millions (or so it seemed) of glowworms. Craziness! It seriously felt like we were looking at the night sky (not LA/Toronto light polluted night sky, but middle of no where, can see the milky way night sky). Absolutely insane. I think that’s actually the intent of the glowworms as well. The lights attract bugs that they catch to feed on, and when they’re all clustered, it looks like the night sky, so bugs think they’re flying into the sky. Coolio.

After that last cave, we had enough caving. I think in a couple weeks, we’ll be ready to try cave tubing. You basically ride in the pitch black darkness on a rubber doughnut. Sweet. Anyway, by this time of the day, we had barely eaten. We had a decent breakfast, but by the time we got to the caves, we had no time to sit and eat b/c the tours started immediately. Crap. Luckily, we had a decent amount of trail mix and peas to snack on.

Two and a half hours later, we arrived in Rotorua. We kept saying the whole way “oh man; can’t wait to hunker down in one town for three nights.” Then, when we stepped out of the car, we realized that the whole town smells like sulfur. Haha. Doh!! This is a very geothermally active area, so all that creates a lot of delicious sulfuric gas. It’s not TOO unpleasant, but it sure would be nice to sleep without waking up to the smell of rotting eggs.

Our hostel is pretty decent. So far, the one in Auckland has been the “worst,” and even that one wasn’t too bad. Here, at least we have an ensuite (own bathroom w/shower). For dinner, we ran out to get Indian food, and then madly planned our first full day here. We decided on doing 1) geyser / geothermal park, 2) hells gate geothermal park / mud / sulfur baths, and 3) traditional Maori dinner and cultural experience.

Time to take a break from journaling right now … gotta get ready for the Maori dinner.

Photos: Hottub in the sand

nlook — Mon, 8 Mar 2010 10:50:00 GMT