Merry Christmas!

From our house to yours, Carrie and John wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas this holiday season. As always, Google has had a themed logo all week, and the folks at Google have apparently enjoyed our blog so much that they made this year's theme in line with our adventures. As they say down under, Happy Chrissie, mate!

Home sweet home

After a loooooooooong journey with hardly any sleep, we are finally home. Much to our surprise, Santa had already stopped by and left a tree, decorations and a bunch of presents! How exciting! Merry Christmas to everybody. Keep reading, once we get all of our pictures posted on-line, we'll link to them here. We've got about 2,400 pictures from our 4 weeks abroad, so John needs to do some editing so that you're not all bored to tears. :) And after that, John will keep posting here for the rest of his sabbatical, so stay tuned for those TBD adventures.

The international flight RPG

Today we fly CNS -> BNE -> LAX -> SFO and get to experience the joys of 3 international connections! John's extensive time playing role playing games (Fable and Oblivion) prepared us for today's journey. Imagine that we have a precious item (let's call it two boxes of wine), our quest is to get that wine from Cairns to San Francisco. In Cairns, we check our two backpacks through to SFO but carry on our small bags and 2 boxes of wine. At the international transfer checkpoint, we find out Quantas does not allow carry-on's heavier than 7 kg (1 box is 11 kg), so we have to check in the wine. But Customs has to visually see any items that we claim tax credits on, so the guard at the front desk sends us 3 levels down to Customs. There, they see the boxes, stamp our invoice and send us on our merry way. Quantas' front desk issues us bag tags and fragile stickers, and directs us to "fragile" item luggage. Our boxed are swabbed for bomb residue there and added to the airplane. Then we are free to enter the international area, where (woot!) we get 30% of our wine cost back in tax refunds and credits! Finally, yet *another* security checkpoint at the gate for liquids and patdowns where they completely disassemble your bag and check every pocket. The guard gave up on John's backpack after 15 minutes though, because it seemed bottomless, and she realized she would never be able to reassemble it again. In LAX, we retrieved our bags for Customs on this side and find that at least one bottle of Sauvignon Blanc has broken, soaking the packing materials and destroying the cardboard box. It takes five airline workers and 3 different lines to get us a plastic bag to contain the remains, because of course, we still have another flight! Ah well, there is.a silver lining to the story. At least six bottles (all the reds for sure) have survived to LAX, none of our other stuff is wet because the wine was packed all separate, we are back home safely stateside, and we cleared Customs without having to pay any duty on our 12 bottles of wine! Yay! Just a few more hours until we are home in Campbell... (Updated 12/23 with how we repackaged the damaged wine box. Only 1 bottle broken, still not sure how it happened though.)

Kuranda tropical rainforest

It's our last day in Cairns, our last day in Australia, thankfully not our last day before work though. Carrie still has a few more days off and John still has a month of sabbatical. This morning, we boarded the SkyRail and spent 90 minutes skimming the canopy of the rainforest...watching beautiful white cockatoos soar above the treetops, and getting off the cablecar from time to time to walk around on the forest floor and see the flora and fauna up close. The ride ended in the town of Kuranda where we had time to shop and eat lunch before heading to Rainforestation. There we got to see lots of wildlife in their zoo, including a huge 15 foot saltwater croc named "Jack the Ripper" because he killed the four females they tried to mate with him. We also got to ride in an amphibious Army Duck vehicle to tour the park and waterways, see an Aboriginal dance performance, throw boomerangs, and see demonstrations of spear throwing and didgeridoo playing. It completed the entire checklist of "things to-do in Australia.". Afterwards, we boarded the Kuranda Scenic Railway to bring us back to Cairns, which a beautiful and very fun ride back. For less than $40US/pp, we upgraded to Gold Class service...a luxury car with armchairs instead of cramped benches, our own waitress, a free open bar for the entire 90 minute ride, a macadamia nut snack, a yummy cheese and fruit plate, and a bag of small souvenirs. What a deal! We couldn't believe that only one family of 3 people chose the upgraded service as well, considering how packed the other 11 economy class cars were...with no amenities! At any rate, early night for us, we are up at 3am tomorrow to begin the long journey home...will be about 28 hours of travel door to door. (Updated 12/23: Picture of us in the Gold Cabin on the Kuranda Scenic Skyrail)

Back on dry land

We got off the boat today at Cairns have another free day to decompress and do some shopping around town. Check out the picture to see our fellow passengers on the boat, a good bunch of folks. We made friends from China, Singapore, the UK, Brazil, Australia, and of course the states. We are back at Kewarra Beach Resort, this time in one of the beachfront bungalows (alas, not an upgrade, we actually reserved it this time). Our new digs are even more amazing than our stay at the resort last week. Our bungalow looks right out onto the ocean, and the beach comes right up to our front steps. We're getting our "land legs" back after 4 days of rocking on the boat and are enjoying the beach time.

Steve's Bommie

Today was our last on the dive boat. We did three more dives on Ribbon Reef 9 at Steve's Bommie and Flare Point. In total on this trip to Australia, we logged 12 dives and almost 7 hours of bottom time in the water on the Reef. It's been an incredible experience, one of the highlight's of today's dives was seeing a flame file shell, and a dusky nembrotha nudibranch. The dive team on the boat is so great that a dive master jumps in the water first and will mark places on the pinnacle with glow sticks or a flash light where there are cool things to see. In the picture (photo credit Taka Dive Australia) is the flame file shell which likes to sit on the bottom inside ledge of coral formations, impossible to find unless you know it's there and have a flash light to see in. The little white squiggly lines you see along its "lips" look like electricity and they actually flash/sizzle to attract fish in to get eaten. Other exotic things we saw today included a giant moray eel, a scorpion leaf fish, a yellow trumpetfish, and two really cool looking reef cuttlefish.

Bommies and Pixies

Today's dives included more sites along Ribbon Reef 10: Lighthouse Bommie, Pixie Pinnacle and Pixie Gardens. We started the day off at 7:15am for our dive brief at Lighthouse Bommie where we did a deep dive to 88 feet, about 40 feet deeper than John has ever been. This was a required dive for the Advanced Open Water Course which we both completed on board the dive boat. It was fun to do the class, just required some book work between our dives, but gets us to the next level of certification in the PADI dive system. We are extremely well taken care of on the dive boat, there's always a dive before breakfast, a dive or two before lunch, a couple dives before dinner, and sometimes a night dive. In addition to the amazing underwater views and warm 81F water, the dive luxuries provided really put the icing on the cake. When diving, we breathe completely dry air from the tank (prevents corrosion inside the tank) which can be hard on your mouth/throat when you're used to 50-80% humidity air. So on the dive deck, the dive crew always has glasses of water and orange wedges ready for you as you de-gear. Also, there are personalized dry towels available after every dive, and fresh water showers to rinse off the salt. It's a far cry from beach diving in Monterey in 50F water, and having to carry 50 pounds of lead weight plus 50 pounds of dive gear 200 yards to/from the beach. Both Lighthouse Bommie and Pixie Pinnacle are huge (60-70 foot) pillars of coral, which are amazing to dive and slow circle as you come up to the surface. They are teeming with wildlife, as you can see in the attached picture of Pixie Pinnacle. Today, the coolest thing we saw was a 7-foot long sea snake. It's incredible how it moves through the water, but John was pretty disconcerted as he remembers from the Discovery Channel that the Australian sea snake is the #1 most poisonous snake in the world...regardless of the fact that it's generally considered non-dangerous to humans. The sea snake we saw came within 4 feet of our group, not really paying any heed to us, but close enough to get our heart rates up pretty good.

Cod Hole

This morning, we were picked up and headed out to Cairns airport to meet our little twin prop Cessna to begin our trip with Mike Ball Dive Expeditions, on the 3-day Fly/Dive Cod Hole trip. The plane only had 10 seats, including those for pilot and co-pilot, and we flew that up the coast of Australia to Lizard Island. Cruising at about 1000 feet above sea level, we skimmed the Great Barrier Reef and had a great view of all the sites that we would be diving the upcoming week. At Lizard Island (so named because there are tons of giant lizards just cruising about the beaches), we boarded our home for the next 4 days, the Spoilsport dive boat. The crew of 12 was super friendly, and the other 26 passengers were a fun bunch. They wasted no time, we were on the boat for lunch at 11, and in the water diving at 1pm. First stop, the world famous "Cod Hole", where there are a bunch of friendly and enormous potato cod that hang out. In the picture that John took here, you can see one of the cod...for size reference, the little black and yellow damsel fish swimming over the cod's dorsal fin is about 8 inches long. These cod can grow to like 6-7 feet long and weigh several hundred pounds. We did three dives today, a normal dive at the cod hole, a drift dive at the cod hole (where you are dropped off in a small raft and then the tidal current carries you all the way back to the main dive boat), and a night dive at Challenger Bay. The night dive was intense, you can only see where your flash light is pointing...which is even crazier because there are a lot of big eyed trevally that patrol around Challenger Bay and they like to hunt by diver flash lights. Trevally are shaped like tuna, and are generally around 2-3 feet long. We'd be cruising around and if somebody lit up a small fish with their flashlight, it would only be a few seconds before half a dozen trevally swarmed and gobbled it up. Other fish we saw today included a school of barracuda, lots of parrot fish, a black tip reef shark, some big napolean maori wrasse, and the very cool looking flutefish.

Resort Day

First of all, we apologize to everybody reading our blog that we've been absent for several days. We have been on a dive boat on the outer reef for the last 4 days and have had no cell access to post. We didn't get to a computer in time to post a note about that before we left. But we're back now and have a few posts forthcoming. The Sunday before we got on the boat, we had a free day to enjoy Kewarra Beach Resort. It's still before the holiday rush travel season here in Australia, so we basically had the entire resort to ourselves. We tried each of the three beautiful fresh water pools, two of which are connected by a freshwater waterfall. When we got "bored" of the pools, we then made our way to the private white sand beach, where we had our choice of beach chairs...because there was nobody else to be seen on the quarter mile of sand in front of us. It's amazing walking around the resort, we feel like we're on a secluded tropical island somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The picture is of the view from our room, as you can see...we're in the middle of the tropical rainforest.

Michaelmas Cay

Today we took a sailboat out to the reef to do some snorkeling. The first stop was Michaelmas Cay, a famous island in the middle of the reef that is a bird sanctuary, has a beautiful white sand beach, and calm snorkeling just off the shore. We had a relaxing day floating on the waves finding cool things too look at. Among the things we saw in the water: a 3-foot black tip reef shark, two turtles, lots of parrotfish, an oriental sweetlips fish at a cleaning station, a small stingray and some medium sized jellyfish. Unlike the white-tip reef shark that we yesterday which have thin needle-like teeth and narrow jaws (for eating small fish whole), the black-tips have serrated teeth and wider jaws (for biting chunks out of larger animals...like people), so we gave it plenty of room even though it was so small. The sweetlips fish is cool looking, it has a mouth like Mick Jagger's. After Reef Teach, we knew when we saw the parrotfish to listen...because it has a parrot-like mouth that chomps down on the hard reef, making an interesting audible noise. When we saw the jellyfish though, we took that as our cue to exit the water. Stings are no fun, and much harder to avoid than a shark... Tomorrow, we have a free day, and are looking forward to doing some shopping in Cairns and relaxing by the pool and beach. Good on you, mate.

Flynn and Miln Reefs

Today was our first day out on the Great Barrier Reef. We hopped on a dive boat and headed out to three dive sites on Flynn and Miln Reefs (pieces of the greater reef)...Gordon's, Coral Gardens and Fish Town. It was a bit windy this morning, so the boat was getting bounced all over the place on the 90 minute journey out the Reef edge...we were very glad that we took our seasickness medication, as there were dozens of people on the backdack filling up little white bags with their breakfasts. The Reef met expectations. The water was WARM! About 80F, a far, far cry from the 50F water off the coast of Monterey that John got scuba certified at. Just a light 3mm wetsuit and minimal weights. Once we got to our dive sites however, the water was very calm. The day trip we were on led us on guided tours of all the dive sites with our own dive instructor, was a ton of fun. Among the normal tropical fish that you would expect to see (damsels, clown fish, parrot fish, etc), we saw a six foot moray eel, a four foot white tip reef shark (sharks are rarely spotted when diving), half a dozen blue spotted stingrays, some 5 foot long giant clams, and even a school of small barracuda! After wards, we stayed in Cairns to attend Reef Teach, an amazing class that taught us even more about the reef, in preparation for our snorkeling trip tomorrow and our liveabord dive boat next week. (Picture of Carrie having fun diving...although she's giving the wrong hand signal, thumbs up in scuba diving means "head to the surface." )

AYQ -> CNS

We've arrived in Cairns, a welcome respite from the blistering heat and pesky flies. It's gorgeous here, feels similar to Hawaii, but with more of a tropical rainforest feel. Our resort is amazing, it sits right on Kewarra Beach, 20 minutes north of the city. All the buildings are nestled right into the forest. We scored and got upgraded AGAIN!! This time to our own private bungalow set on the resort's private lagoon. (Updated 12/15/06 with picture of Cairns from the airplane on descent into the area.)

Uluru

This morning, we got up to get up close and personal with Uluru (Ayers Rock), what we came here to do. The past two days, we've seen and learned a lot about the Outback, which covers 70% of Australia's landmass. Animals out here are rarely seen in the blistering heat of the day, opting more for nighttime and underground travels, excepting the few birds that hunt in the daytime. Southern Australia used to be covered by a massive inland sea which deposited rock and sand sediments at the mouths of its rivers. These were compressed over time and geological forces eventually pushed them above ground and the sea emptied out into the ocean. Kata Tjuta is made of the rocky composite, and Uluru is made of sandstone...with some 1,500 feet above ground and an estimated 2-3 miles underground yet to be exposed. We walked the 7.5 miles around the base today at sunrise, and spent over 5 hours seeing the Rock up close and learning about the many Aboriginal Dreamtime stories associated with its features. We head out to the coast tomorrow with a greater (and spiritual) appreciation of the land of Australia. (Updated 12/15/06 with picture of us in front of Uluru after our hike.)

Kata Tjuta

We've left Sydney and flown out to Ayers Rock, or Uluru as it is known to its Aboriginal owners. First impressions...it's wicked hot here, 104F in the shade, pushing 120F in the hottest parts! But as they say in Arizona, it's a dry heat. We took a walk into the Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) rock formation this afternoon to get our first taste of the area (about 50 km from Uluru) and saw some awesome rock formations. The highlight of today was the Sounds of Silence dinner where we heard a didgeridoo and had dinner under the stars in the middle of the desert. We are quite knackered, especially considering we are scheduled for a 5:00am sunrise walk around Uluru (named Ayers Rock by William Goss in 1873 after his hometown governor in Southern Australia, Governor Ayers.). It helps that we're sacking out in our second room upgrade of the trip. The first was in Queenstown (to a suite with kitchen and laundry), this time was to a 4.5 star sister hotel with douuble the room size. Score! That's all for now. Oh yeah, no posting of pics until we get closer to civilization again. Cheerio. (Updated 12/15/06 with picture of John and Carrie in front of Kata Tjuta.)

Keep the comments coming

Thanks to everybody for leaving us all the comments so far, we love them and it keeps us posting regularly. If you do leave a comment, we go back and leave a response comment to almost all of them, so be sure to check back if you asked a question or something like that. Also, for those that may not have figured it out, there are three options for leaving a comment: as a registered Blogger user, as "Other", or anonymously. If you select "Other", it will allow you to optionally fill in your name so that it's easier for us to figure out who you are. (Pictured, an echidna at Featherdale, one of John's favorite Aussie creatures...like the platypus, this unusual mammal lays eggs and suckles its young. The echidna and platypus are the only members of a primitive group of mammals known as monotremes.)

Fuzzy wuzzy was a marsupial

It's our last day here in Sydney, and we wanted to see some more koalas, since they were so fun at Featherdale Wildlife Park. So we jumped on the train and headed to the northeast Sydney suburbs, where the Koala Park Sanctuary is located. Among other native Australian animals, they obviously have a bunch of koalas, which are free to roam about the park of their own free will. Many of them stay in the main koala area, because the park attendants regularly bring fresh eucalyptus branches there for the koalas to eat. The word "koala" means "does not drink water" in the aboriginal language, because koalas have a diet that consists 100% of eucalyptus leaves, they can get all the moisture they need from those without really ever needing to climb down to drink. They will drink water only when sick or in times of drought. Also, contrary to common misconception, koalas are actually marsupials (like wombats, kangaroos and wallabies) and not bears. Although koalas do spend up to 19 hours a day sleeping, the sanctuary does pick a few times throughout the day to have one of the awake koalas come out for visitors to pet, feed, "cuddle" and take pictures with. They are very, very soft, and smell pleasantly of eucalyptus.

Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb

After John got to do his elective activity of diving with sharks the other day, Carrie chose her elective activity today as the famous Bridge Climb on Sydney's Harbour Bridge. They get you all suited up in a blue & grey bridge climb suit, hat, sunglass holders, radio & harness and send you up in groups of 12 to climb the many stairs & ladders up to the very top of the bridge which is about 1200 feet above sea level. You walk right under the lanes of the bridge for a bit on just two planks of wood high above the water, climb up 5 sets of very precarious ladders and then there's pretty easy stairs (steep but easy enough) up to the top of the arch. The views are amazing as the fact you are climbing one of the most famous bridges in the world with traffic & trains whizzing by beneath you. All in all a very cool experience. This time, John assumed his role of photographer from the Pylon Lookout and captured some pictures of Carrie on the bridge. In the picture on the left, Carrie is the last one in the group, and you can see the traffic on the bridge cruising by below. Was another fun and active day, but we were both knackered from all the walking today and yesterday. This evening, on a suggestion, we headed to "Little Italy" for dinner, a section of Stanley St with 3 Italian restaurants. We found this quaint little place called Cafe SaSa and had the best meal we've had here in Sydney. Super super yummy with friendly and down to earth service. A nice way to end the day...

Sydney beaches

It's Saturday here, and it's hot and humid. We were told when those conditions coincide, Sydneysiders head to the beach. So we took the afternoon to head out to the coast. The adventure began with our transportation, as we navigated both the rail and the bus systems to make the 45 minute journey out to Bondi beach, no small feat for two suburban kids used to driving everywhere. But, we made it Bondi without any major mishaps, and got to check out Sydney's celebrity beach...see the surfers, the sunbathers, the flashy sportscars. Good stuff. From Bondi, we joined up with the coastal walking trail that meanders almost 4 miles down the coast where we ended up at Coogee beach. It was a pleasant 2 and a half hour walk along the coast line where we got to see most of Sydney's most popular beaches. Ending up in Coogee was nice, where we stopped for lunch, bummed around in the sand and had a smoothie before figuring out how to catch the bus back downtown. The most unusual thing about Sydney's beaches are their lifeguards, who are apparently sponsored by DHL (the delivery service), and run around in red and yellow beanies, much like the ones worn by the kids who work at Hot Dog on a Stick.

Hallelujah!

This evening, we headed over to the Sydney Opera House to watch the Sydney Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir perform Handel's Messiah, as part of their regular holiday lineup. The Opera House is just as amazing inside as the architecture is outside. The main concert hall is enormous, dominated by a huge pipe organ behind the stage, and aesthetically designed to be awe-inspiring to look at as well as being acoustically perfect. The concert included a core group of about 30 members of the orchestra, 4 vocal soloists, and the highlight being the 450 person choir backing the instrumentals. Was a very cool experience to take in a concert at one of the world's most famous venues, and certainly Sydney's most famous landmark. Afterwards, we headed over to the "Australian Hotel" to have a crocodile pizza for dinner (apparently another Sydney "must-do"). Croc tastes like chicken, albeit a little more rubbery and chewy. While eating dinner, we got to see a real-life bar fight in the streets. Wouldn't be an authentic Aussie bar without some good old fisticuffs, now would it?

Sharks!!!

Going to exotic locations is all about doing once in a lifetime activities. This afternoon, John jumped into a tank with a bunch of the local marinelife...giant loggerhead turtles, massive sting rays, various fish, and most notably...four 12 foot long gray nurse sharks. No cage, no weapons, just the sharks and some divers that hopefully don't look too much like food. Was an amazing time, the animals would swim right up to the divers, in one case, a shark literally buzzed John's head (pictured). The divers also got a better view of a lot of the fish, as there was a leopard shark hiding in a cave, really only visible to the divers who laid down on the floor of the tank. Carrie opted to play photographer for the day instead of getting her feet wet. Was a very fun experience, has us eagerly anticipating the Great Barrier Reef.

Sydney Olympic Village

Our activities today brought us through the Olympic village before boarding a jet ferry that cruised us back through the harbour to Circular Quay. The Olympic village was cool to check out...Sydney won their Olympic bid because they hosted the first "green" Olympics. The lighting towers around Telstra Stadium (stadium pictured, not the towers) all have enough solar panels on them to be self sufficient. They provide enough electricity back into the grid during the day to offset the power they use during the night. The roof of Telstra Stadium is designed to channel rain water back inside, where it is used to flush all the toilets throughout the complex. Maybe the most interesting thing are the poles you see pictured in the foreground...these include the names of all the volunteers from the Sydney Olympics, plus some special poles. There are video monitors in some of them that tell stories like the building of the village, the paralympic games, the torch, etc. Definitely a cool place to spend some time wandering around. From the Olympic village, we headed back across the water on a quick ferry that afforded us amazing views of the harbour, downtown, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Back in downtown, we caught dinner with a co-worker of Carrie's (Mike, in the Sydney office for 6 months). Was a good time. Mike reminded us that we should have AdSense running on the blog (because that's what Carrie and Mike do at Google). So you can thank him for the ads that are taking up blog real estate now. :) Shout-out to the Google AdSense and Blogger teams.

The Blue Mountains

From Featherdale, we jumped back on the Wonderbus (our bus tour company) to cruise down the road for our afternoon activity, the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains are a mountain range (or hills really, topping out at about 3,100 feet) so named because of the blue haze that forms above the treeline. When it's warm out, the eucalyptus trees in the forest evaporate both water (like all trees) but also eucalyptus oil, which refracts light and casts a blue color. The rock formation you see on the left side of the picture is the "Three Sisters", a famous rock formation in the Blue Mountains. Aboriginal legend has it that the witch doctor didn't want some rowdy boys marrying his three beautiful doctors, so he turned them into stone. But then the doctor was killed by said boys, and so was then unable to turn the sisters back into people again. Legend aside, the views were spectacular. The best way to describe it would be to imagine the Grand Canyon completely filled in with a tropical rainforest.

Featherdale Wildlife Park

This morning's activity was to head out to Featherdale Wildlife Park, one of the more famous parks in Australia, just outside the Sydney city limits. We had a great time there seeing all the exotic animals, but maybe even more exciting, is that we got to interact with a lot of them. In the picture, you can see John with a diamond backed python draped around his shoulders. We also had the chance to pet koalas and feed them eucalyptus leaves, and we got to hand feed kangaroos and wallabees. Other fun animals that were around included emus, crocodiles, many poisonous spiders and reptiles, dingos, wombats, bats, tons of birds, tasmanian devils, porcupines, penguins...the list is endless. Lots of fun.

Picture problems

Sorry the last two posts don't have any pictures. Blogger is misbehaving with the internet cafe here in Sydney and won't let us post pictures right now. We're working on it. (Updated 12/7/06: Picture problem fixed for now. And funny sign picture added, because it's the closest thing we have to represent this post.)

Sydney

Today was our first day in Sydney, and boy, was it a doozy! We walked from our hotel up through "The Rocks" to reach the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The Rocks is the old convict neighborhood, but is now a pretty nice area on the waterfront. We checked out the Pylon Lookout, one of the tours at either end of the bridge, to see the incredible 360 degrees of Sydney and the harbourways. It was a gorgeous day out, and we could see for miles. Had a great view of the boat traffic coming and going, the Opera House, downtown, and all the climbers going up and down the Sydney Bridge Climb. We're still undecided about whether or not to go on the climb. It was $9/pp to see the views from the pylon. It's $189 to get the same views on the bridge climb, but you can't take your camera with you there. People keep saying it's "so worth it" though. We'll see. After checking out the bridge, we jumped on the Sydney Explorer bus and cruised all over the city to get an overview of the sites. We jumped out of the bus to check out Circular Quay, the Opera House, Milson's Point (north of the bridge, with great views looking back at Sydney), Anzac War Memorial, the Sydney Fish Market (not quite like the Seattle one, alas), and the Sydney Aquarium. The aquarium was the highlight of all the stops, where we got a chance to see tons of local marinelife up close and personal, including seals, sharks, giant manta rays, and a huge saltwater crocodile! Afterwards, we grabbed a drink and a bite to eat back at Darling Harbour, right next to the aquarium, and enjoyed the people watching. Was a lot of walking today, we're pretty knackered. Tomorrow, we're off to the Blue Mountains bright and early! (Updated 12/7/06: Picture of Carrie holding the Sydney Opera House in the palm of her hand.)

ZQN -> CHC -> SYD

So we've arrived in Sydney, after a long day of travelling. Despite the fact that Qantas has a direct flight from Queenstown into Sydney, our travel agent booked us on a connection through Christchurch. The good news, we get to see a bit of another city in New Zealand. Bad news, including the 4 hour layover, it added some 7 hours to our trip. Ugh! Good thing we brought lots of reading material. And since we gain time travelling west, we got into Sydney at a reasonable hour and were able to walk down to Darling Harbour to grab a drink and a bite to eat. We did notice lots of teenagers walking around in tuxedos and formal dresses...prom season maybe? Also lots of the after-work crowd, lots of suits around. And we heard Australia was casual everywhere... (Updated 12/7/06: First sight of Australia mainland from the airplane.)

Wine tasting

It's our last day in New Zealand, and we've pretty much had our share of adventuring. So we decided what better way to spend our last day than to drive out into the country to do some winetasting? Afterall, everybody keeps telling us that driving into the countryside is a "must-do." Well, if John's going to risk our lives driving on the wrong side of the road, might as well do it in style. When we called down to the Concierge this morning to inquire about rental cars, we had the choice of a Mazda compact, or shiny new BMW Z4 for only $20 more. That's like 50 cents in American dollars. :) Easy choice. We had a good amount of fun zooming around under the beautiful blue skies and trying not to crash into anything. We really liked the wines at Amisfield and Peregrine, both less than 30 minutes from Queenstown. We lingered at Amisfield a bit to chat with the girl in the tasting room who was from Chicago but extended her 4 month trip in Queenstown to 4 years. A stop for lunch at Waitiri was amazing. Waitiri is a tiny little winery housed in an old church, but they have an incredible kitchen and served us sumptuous platter of antipasti...fresh bread, cheeses, sausages, marinated vegetables. Yum! Was a very relaxed ending to our stay here in New Zealand. Tomorrow, we are off to Sydney, Australia, hopping through Christchurch to get there. We're super excited to see someplace new. Less so to pack our backpacks again. lol. Cheers, mates!

Middle Earth...Lord of the Rings

Today we fully validated our Tourist Visas by going on a Lord of the Rings tour around the Wakatipu Basin. Our driver, an actual extra from the second movie, piloted the Land Rover all around the area to show us scenes that were used in the LOTR movies, and give us interesting details about the making of. In the picture, you can see the Remarkable Mountain range behind us, which is used in several places in the movies, but most notably as Mordor. The smaller hill just in front of the large Remarkable Mountain range is used in the famous battle scene with the Riders from Rohan, where Aragorn is dragged by his horse over the cliff and into the river below. Our driver also showed off the capabilities of the Land Rover by driving it up and down steep grades, on a sideways 45 degree angle, and even through the river! Other fun things from the tour included a pause for a spot of English tea, and a chance to do some gold panning in the river, where we were able to actually find a speck of gold using the traditional panning techniques.

Jet boating

This afternoon, after a brief rest from our crazy adventures in the canyon, we signed up with Shotover Jet to go jetboating in Shotover Canyon. Jetboating is a very unique experience. The closest analogy of the boat is a giant jetski, its jet propulsion system is similar but it's much larger, and it seats 15 people. The drivers are all just a touch insane, as they fly through the narrow canyon at speeds up to 70 kph, deliberating buzzing the cliffsides by mere inches, power sliding around corners, and doing the Shotover Jet's "signature" 360-spin. The spins are tons of fun, as the entire boat gets whipped around in a tight circle, splashing everyone inside. Maybe the most impressive thing in the boats is the creature comforts...they of course provide everyone with splash jackets and life vests so that you don't get *too* wet, but every row of seats comes equipped with heated handlebars! Certainly encourages everyone to hold on as the cold water comes splashing in. (Updated 12/6/06: Video from the Shotover Jet fixed.)

Canyoning

After a couple days rest from the beating we took in the water while riverboarding, the water levels around the area are back to being safe enough to get back in. So this morning we headed over to the 12 Mile campground area just outside of Queenstown to do some canyoning. The sun finally broke through this morning and we were lucky enough to get some warm weather, finally, for another cold water activity. Canyoning involves hiking up a trail and then coming back down via the fast moving snowmelt that rushes through the canyon. There's a good amount of scampering over wet and slippery rocks, some rappelling from tricky cliffs, a zipline to get across the canyon to access the fun stuff, some swimming/riding of the rapids, some sliding down rock slides and waterfalls in the rapids, and a few thrilling (scary) jumps into waterfalls, whirlpools and bubbling water. In the picture, you can see John giving the thumbs up before leaping off a 25 foot cliff into the water below. To give some concept of that height, it's like jumping off the roof of a 2-story house. If it's not obvious from the picture, Carrie's look is meant to express, "you must be kidding me, right?" Good fun.

Walter Peak Station

We jumped on the TSS Earnslaw this evening and cruised across Lake Wakatipu over to the Walter Peak Station, an active sheep farm. The TSS Earnslaw is an authentic coal-fueled steamship that is hand-fed coal, at the rate of 1 ton per hour, reaching a top speed of 13 knots. The engine room is completely exposed, allowing visitors to watch the turbines and the crew feeding the boilers. We had a great buffet dinner over at Walter Peak station, and had a chance to watch a hilarious sheep shearing demonstration by a local shepherd, Lindsay. He had some funny wisecracks, including his explanation of where sheep shearing started. It's apparently from the British isles, because a sheep with its wool is called "wooly," an English name (Wally), and a sheep without its wall is called "shorn,", an Irish name (Sean). Get it? lol.

Milford Sound

Today's adventure was heading out to Milford Sound. We hopped on a tour bus from Queenstown for the 4 hour drive out to Milford Sound with stops at Te Anau and other small towns and scenic vistas along the way. The weather was terrible, with snow showers hitting us in the mountain pass and making the roads kind of sketchy. But the skies broke just as we rolled into the sound and the sun glistened upon the water in the gorgeous fjord. And gorgeous is no understatement, the sheer cliffs plummet at 70-80 degrees into the crystal clear water. Alpine trees cover every inch of the mountains and waterfalls come cascading down from everywhere, thanks to the generous amount of rainfall in the past week. It was an incredible experience as our clipper ship cruised us around the Sound, stopping to check out seals and penguins that were sunning on the rocks. We were able to go all the way out to the mouth where it empties into the Tasman Seas. Totally worth the 8 hour round trip journey on the tour bus.

Ice bar!

As mentioned in the previous post, we went to Minus-5, the ice bar. And yes, it was cold, but yes, it was pretty sweet. As you can see in the picture, the entire wall behind us is made from ice, as is the bench, as are the ice sculptures beside us. Was a fun time with some yummy drinks and cool parkas.

Brrr, it's cold in here...

...there must be some some Toros in the atmosphere. So today was a cold one. It's about 55F here, pouring rain in Queenstown and we are totally NOT dressed for the weather. We are packed more appropriately for Uluru or Cairns, Australia where it's about 90F currently. After a mix-up this morning, we went with our second choice activity and took the gondola up to the peak which overlooks Queenstown and the look, the views were incredible. It's hard to describe just how picturesque the lake looks nestled into the mountains, it almost makes Lake Tahoe look like a pond. But what everybody says is true, you can't really appreciate it until you get here. We rode the luge at the top of the gondola and had a fun time flying around the curves while getting drenched in the rain. After a quick lunch back at the hotel, we headed off to go river boarding. The rain got heavier, the sun got more scarce, and we were informed that the snowmelt water temperature in the river was 50F today, flowing at 350 tons/second. River boarding is similiar to river rafting....that is river rafting when are thrown out of the raft and forced to fend for yourself, but add a boogie board. We had our layers of wetsuit, our helmets and our boards and they let us loose on a high flowing class III-IV river. This was a pretty intense, exhilarating, literally breath losing scary experience. You literally get pounded by waves all while trying to stay on your board, breathe and not get sucked into a whirlpool. Within 5 seconds of being out there I was more tired than I was when I did my triathlon. Luckily neither John nor I got sucked down into a whirlpool - but others were not so lucky. I think we can say it was a fun time...and it was...however it was probably one of the most challenging things both mentally and physically we have ever done. We're off to the Minus-5 bar tonight, a bar made entirely of ice...the walls, the bar, even the glasses! So yeah, it's been a cold day.

AKL -> QNS

As beautiful as Waiheke Island was, we were excited this morning to move on to Queenstown where we will be for 7 days. Since we're traveling with backpacks, it's totally non-trivial to pull one and two pieces of clothing out for a day without undoing the entire pack. In Queenstown, we will finally be able to completely unpack for the week and live out of a dresser/closet. Gene overwhelmed our palettes again this morning with an amazing breakfast. We woke up to fresh brewed coffee and tea, and homemade croissants and boysenberry jam. The croissants were so incredible, we could have eaten a dozen of those alone. Then came the second course, a berry compote with homemade muesli and yogurt. When we thought we were totally sated, Liz brought out Gene's third course, an egg, ham, bacon and cheese frittata with an accompanying plum sauce. Holy cow. Needless to say, that breakfast at 7:30am tied us over the Auckland to Queenstown flight and hotel check-in and we finally decided we should eat something at around 3:30pm, even though we still weren't really all that hungry. We've spent the day putzing around Queenstown, which we love on first impressions. The flight in was a little hairy, as the plane buzzes the mountain tops and then banks a sharp u-turn to drop into the valley before threading two mountain ranges and landing on an elevated runway that appears to suddenly jump out of the valley floor. People have said that Queenstown is super crowded (compared to the NZ countryside), kind of "fake" and built-up. To us, it feels like a mountain town, a lot like Breckenridge. And really, what's not to love about that? Lots of backpackers around, we felt like just another young couple backpacking their way around at the grocery store and filling the pack with a week's worth of eats to go with our suite, which the Heritage Queenstown was nice enough to upgrade us to for free. Speaking of groceries, the store had the obligatory Vegemite, which we passed on. But, per request, we did pick up a pack of TimTam's, the "most irresistable chocolate biscuit". They were tasty for sure.

Waiheke Island

This will be my third try posting this entry...we've been having Blackberry/gmail problems the past two days. Bugger! We spent our first day in New Zealand on Waiheke Island with a winetasting tour. First stop was Stony Ridge (named after the Stony Ridge mountain ridge it sits on) vineyards, where we sampled a great Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough and some of their signature wines while taking in the expansive vistas overlooking meadows and farmland. From there we headed over to Mudbrick (named after the bricks made from mud the winery is made from), where we tasted their unique 06 Reserve Chardonnay which bursted with a butterscotch finish and sampled their yummy marinated olives. The last winery of the day was Kennedy Point, owned and run by Susan - a native New Yorker - who made us feel at home, the winery having a very similar feel to many of our favorites in Sonoma County. We enjoyed the 05 Syrah, her olive and avocado oils, a very delicious dukkah (some nut/seed mixture thing) and home made honey. The tour ended at Te Whau (pronounced "tee foe") Restaurant where we had some incredibly fresh local seafood and produce before heading back to our B&B, Te Whau Lodge. After an afternoon spent resting, we joined our hosts, Gene and Liz, and another couple from Canada, Brian and Catherine for dinner. Liz brought out pre-dinner canapes - chicken/veal pate, olive tapanade bruschetta, goat cheese and caramelized onion pastries - with a great bottle of Chardonnay to whet our appetites. Dinner was no less amazing, where Gene suggested a perfectly paired local 05 Syrah to go with the lamb and rosemary potato entry. We lingered at the table after dinner over dessert (ricotta mascarpone with fresh berries) and tea to chat with Gene, Liz, Brian and Catherine until it got late and time to turn in for the night. It now being Monday night here, we're certainly looking forward to sleeping in a bed for the first time since Friday night!

We've arrived!

After a hop through LAX and a 12 hour flight across the pond, we have arrived in New Zealand safe and sound. Despite the weather forecast, it's a beautiful day here in Auckland. Mostly sunny skies and 15C, whatever that converts into. More later, we are off to Waiheke Island for the day to do some winetasting. Cheerio! (Updated 11/28/06: Picture of sunrise over Auckland just prior to landing.)

Which way to swirl?

There's an urban legend (or at least a rumor from my elementary school playground days) that toilets swirl the other way in the Southern Hemisphere due to gravity or earth spin or magic toilet elves or something. I've been advised by many people on how exactly to prove or disprove this theory. Some have said it's impossible to do with toilets in general because they are engineered to have a specific swirl pattern, and that engineered swirl over-rides environmental conditions. Some have said that toilets in Oz/NZ are so high-powered that it's almost as if they have jet propulsion, so there's no swirl at all. So I was advised to try the experiment with a sink or a bath tub. Well, those pictures aren't very compelling, I've decided. So for our current purposes, we'll stick with toilet pictures until I am stumped down under (lol). Here, I present a Northern Hemisphere toilet swirling counter-clockwise.

How to fit 28 days into a backpack

Well, the time for packing had to come eventually. After a pleasant couple of days spent gorging ourselves over the Thanksgiving holiday at Carrie's parents' house in Auburn, we came home to the uneviable task of packing for 28 days. And trying to fit it all into one backpack a piece in the spirit of "travelling light." The picture on the left shows what went into my pack and carry-on, just under 60 pounds worth of clothes and gear. Carrie's spread was somewhat less because her clothes are smaller and she isn't gear-obsessed, but she also has a smaller pack. Managed to get it all in. Now we spend the next 24 hours waiting with baited breath before we leave. Hoping that we remember anything we forgot before we actually leave. Oh, and scarfing down tasty Thanksgiving leftovers. Yum.

Inbox: 0 messages

At this time next week, we'll either be crossing the international date line, or on Waiheke Island in New Zealand, depending on how you count the time. If you don't adjust for the timezone, we never actually see this time next week, we lose this day in flight. If you adjust for the timezone, we'll have landed and spent a whole day winetasting already, we can't wait, we're so excited! I've got three working days left in the office before I'm off on sabbatical for two months. I've transitioned all my responsibilities off to my coverage, and my inbox and all of my folders are completely empty for the first time since I first started working. It's a crazy and liberating feeling. w00t! lol.

Welcome to our blog!

Welcome to our little corner of the web where we plan to post updates from our trip to the South Pacific. I'm normally anti-blog because I feel like it's for people who don't know how to post web pages, but this turns out to be the easiest way to keep our friends and family at home updated about things going on with our trip. We're going to be gone for a month, and lots of people have expressed interest in our trip, we're certainly super excited. We're flying into Auckland from the States, spending a week in Queenstown, a week in Sydney, a few days in Uluru, and then over a week in Cairns, diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Keep checking in for updates, we expect to start posting here regularly in about a week when we leave for New Zealand. Please leave us comments on the blog, it'll keep us motivated to keep posting. :) Cheers!