Change of Plans

The beauty of the way we are traveling is that we can change our plans as we see fit. Leaving SFO with a one way ticket to New Zealand as our only purchase, we have had the freedom to make decisions as we go. Our first major change occurred this week when we scrapped our original plan of renting an RV and driving up the east coast of Australia to take the OZ Experience bus. We bought a 30 day pass that will drive us up the coast and drop us in the places we want to go. We can stay as long or as little as we like in each place and by doing so we will save a couple thousand dollars by not doing the RV (not to mention our sanity!).
So...Monday morning we hopped on our bus at 6:15am for our 13 hour drive up to Byron Bay. We arrived in town that night and were pretty wiped out from the drive, so we cooked dinner at our hostel and hung out with the people there. The next morning we woke up and took a walk to the lighthouse. Along the way we saw more dolphins playing in the surf along with a bunch of surfers.

Along the path we came to the eastern most point in Australia.

We have been unlucky with the weather and this morning was no exception. It started raining while we were on our way to the lighthouse, which was ok because we arrived to see this...

We attempted to spend the day at the beach but it rained. We spent about an hour playing in the waves in the rain but then the surf got a bit rough so we headed back and spent the rest of the day with the folks at the hostel. This morning we woke and headed to Surfer's Paradise in an attempt to chase the sun. No such luck yet though.

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Location:Byron Bay

Sydney: Days 1-4

Day 1:
We arrived Monday night in Sydney to pouring rain and here we thought we were leaving that all behind in New Zealand!


We hopped in a cab to Becky's apartment on Bondi Beach (she's a friend from SF that has been living here for about 3 years). We were greeted with a familiar face, a bottle of wine and Thai food. It could not have been any better.

Day 2:
Nelly and I hopped on the bus to downtown Sydney and did some exploring. We found a free 2.5 hour walking tour of the city that took us to all of the highlights. It was a great tour because it did not just explain the history or the obvious, but also some quirky things, like what Australians nickname their money (a yellow $50 bill is called a pineapple and the red $20 bill is called a lobster). We ended the tour in the Botanic Gardens which has a really bad fruit bat problem right now. Those suckers are huge and I will let Nelly explain his encounter with them.




After our trip around the city we met up with Becky when she got off of work for drink and Trivia Tuesday. We won the prize for 3rd to last place. Apparently you need to know a lot about Australian sport, music and candy to do well. We had a great time though with Becky and some of her friends.

Apparently we stayed out past Nelly's bed time.

Day 3:
I woke up to this. Becky lives right on Bondi Beach (consistently named one of the top 10 beaches in the world) and the views from her place are amazing.


We then headed back downtown to meet Becky for lunch and then to have a closer look at some of the sights we had seen during the previous day's tour.

We then met Becky for a drink at the Opera House and watched the sunset.

And finished the night with our first encounter with a kangaroo...on a pizza at the Australian Hotel. It was actually really good...tasted just like steak.


Day 4:
We spent the day yesterday at the beach. It started with a 2.5 hour hike along the coast to all of the neighboring beaches.

Check out this rugby pitch!

We then just spent the day reading and relaxing at Bondi.

Bondi graffiti.

This is from the roof of Becky's building. Notice the lack of sky rise hotels!

To say the least, we are loving Australia!

Location:Sydney

Farewell New Zealand

It's hard to believe that our four weeks in New Zealand have come and gone! We spent our last two nights in Kaikoura, a fun little beach town on the east coast, known for its marine life.


So we figured we'd get the full experience and hop on a ferry out into the Pacific Ocean to get a better view of the dolphins. It did not disappoint! As we started out into the water, an albatross and its giant wingspan decided to join us and fly along in the boat's wind stream. Shortly thereafter we noticed some dolphins playing in the distance, and as we made our way closer, we discovered that they were not just playing amongst themselves, but with a giant sperm whale! It was an awesome sight, but without a license to whale watch we had to continue our journey out into deeper water...and all of a sudden dolphins were everywhere!

So I figured why not go for an even closer look?

About 15 others and I slipped into the water on four different occasions to play with the dolphins. To attract their attention, we kicked our flippers and tried to make interesting noises. I (of course) decided go sing. The song of choice? A derivation of Smashmouth's All Star: "Hey now, you're a dolphin, get your show on, come play!" Apparently dolphins are huge Smashmouth fans because I frequently had 1-4 dolphins swimming circles around me at an arm's length! What a terrific experience! As the time for our trip ran short, we headed back to the boat and started to make for shore...but the dolphins weren't done playing! They swam with us for a ways, almost directly beneath the boat.

And put on a bit of a show!

Of course the whales didn't want to miss out on all the fun, so a humpback whale cruised alongside for awhile.

It was a fantastic experience and a great way to spend our last day in NZ!

It's been an AMAZING month and both Kelly and I hope to return to this beautiful country sometime in the not-so-distant future!

Next stop: Sydney!

Location:New Zealand

Planes, Ferries, Automobiles (and bikes!)

We have been having so much fun the past few days! After leaving the Franz Josef Glacier we headed up the coast to Nelson where we spent the night before heading back up to the North Island for a day. The next morning we woke up and headed to Picton in order to catch a flight to Wellington. We had a bit of time to kill, so we went exploring on the beach first.


 

Then we headed to the airport to catch our flight. The ferry from Picton to Wellington takes over 3 hours each way and because we were only going for one day we decided to take a 15 minute flight there and the ferry back.

This is our death trap...I mean plane. It sat 13 including the pilot and copilot.



I was pretty freaked out the whole time, but I have to admit that the scenery was unbelievable.




When we would fly over the clouds, I was noticing rainbows reflecting on the tops so I wanted to get a picture of it. This is what I wound up with. So cool!


Once we checked into our hostel, we headed out the Te Papa National Museum before it closed and then went on a food crawl in the Cuba district. The closest thing we could think of to compare it to would be Telegraph Ave in Berkeley.


We had appetizers at one place, pizza at another and pavlova at the 3rd (which did not compare to the one we had at Hopper's at all).
The next morning we woke up and headed on a 2 hour bus tour of the city. Because we had to catch the ferry that afternoon we did not have a lot of time to explore the city, so we thought the touristy bus trip would be the best use of our time. Here we are on the top of Mt. Victoria.

And at Old St. Paul's. 

Then we headed to catch the ferry that would take us back to Picton through Cook's Straight. This is the back of the boat...Nelly asked why it smelled like a petting zoo. Look closely.




We then made the quick drive into Blenheim where we have been for the past few days. Yesterday we took a bike trip wine tasting through the Marlborough region which is famous for the Sauvignon Blancs. It had poured the night before but we got lucky with beautiful weather.



There were two other couples our age we met and spent the day with, both from Australia. We watched the couple on the left get engaged in one of the vineyards so we had quite the day and night celebrating with them!


After our bike trip we all met up later in town for dinner, quite sore I might add from 7 hours of bike riding! We had a great time with them and hope to meet up when we are in Australia. This photo is from the restaurant where we met for pre dinner drinks.


And that brings us to today where we are headed down the east coast to Kaikora for the remainder of our time here before we head to Australia on Monday. I can't believe our time here in New Zealand is almost over and that we have been gone nearly a month.

Location:Picton, Wellington and Blenheim

Ice, Ice Baby

After leaving the beer tasting, we did some backtracking and headed down to the Franz Josef Glacier which is one of 3 warm climate glaciers in the world (the second was just a bit south and the 3rd is in Argentina). Our group of 30 trekkers was split into 3 groups and Nelly and I joined the fastest, fittest group (ha!). We had to hike about 10 minutes through the rainforest to a clearing that appeared to be at the base of the glacier. It seemed so odd having go hike through a rainforest to reach a glacier.

It is quite an illusion though as we still had to walk 2.3km to reach the base. The ice mass stretches between two large mountains and its jagged surface
makes its way down to a river of melted ice powered by a waterfall in a cave running beneath the glacier.

After making our way there we put our crampons on (spikes for our boots) and began our ascent up the glacier.

Our guide created stairs in the ice for us with an axe he carried to make it easier for us to traverse.

After all of our bungee experience I thought I could rock this ice wall too.

Fortunately the guide stopped me ;)

My favorite photo of the day...I love the reflection in his glasses.

Location:Franz Josef Glacier