Farewell to Oz

 Wow. We’ve been in Australia for nearly a week and I haven’t posted a thing! We’ve been busy, and several of the days have been travel days, so…anyway, here we are about ready to leave and I thought I’d catch up.

We realized the day before we left New Zealand that we hadn’t reserved anywhere to stay in Sydney. Oops. Luckily there’s a Hilton and right outside the Hilton is a tram that takes you directly to the waterfront and the Opera House and the equally iconic bridge.

We ate dinner with a view of the Opera House, the bridge, and a young man who was determined to ward off the seagulls with a furled umbrella. Dinner and a show.

This is not a trip for big cities. Honestly, I don’t feel like it’s worth spending a lot of time in a big city unless it’s Paris or Rome or London. A modern city is a modern city. So we left Sydney the next day to head for Cairns (pronounced more like “Cannes”) and landed in the tropics for the first time this trip. It’s very confusing to me that the weather gets more tropical as you head north…and this was the furthest north and thus the closest to the Equator of the whole trip. Cairns is lovely. We had an AirBnB reserved on the Esplanade (the road closest to the marina). We had lunch, did our grocery shopping, and then headed over - and realized it was kind of mildewy and musty. This happens in a tropical climate without central air. The condo had two cooling units, neither of which was on, and none of the fans were running. We tried to make the best of it but David’s allergies were definitely worse so we decamped that night for the Cairns Hilton. The only room we could get was on the top floor which got us access to the executive lounge. That got us free breakfast and this view.

Not too shabby.

We went to Cairns so we could snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef. We took a 90-minute boat ride from Cairns out to the reef, where we disembarked onto a pontoon, which is really a bigger boat anchored at the reef. 

I was just about as dubious as I look. They have a roped-off area for snorkeling. I wish I had amazing pictures to show you. I do not. The GoPro didn’t work. Sigh.  I have a few shots from the underwater observatory. 

They also had helicopter rides, “semi-submersible” rides, and a “snorkel safari” with a marine biologist. We skipped the helicopter and submersible and went on the safari, which was fascinating. Turns out that the Great Barrier Reef is actually thousands of reefs, most of which are not accessible. We saw fascinating and gorgeous corals and colorful fish. I can’t do it justice. Definitely one of the best parts of an amazing trip.

Unfortunately it turned out that David was just coughing and sneezing from allergies. He had a cold. He soldiered on for our next adventure on the Kuranda Scenic Railway. The railroad was originally constructed to carry men flocking to the mountains of Australia for the gold rush. It’s a narrow-gauge railroad from Cairns to Kuranda. It’s a beautiful trip through a gorge with a few magnificent waterfalls.

Once we got to Kuranda, we walked along the main drag and went to the Koala Gardens. Yes, ok, it was a zoo. It was still our only chance to see koalas, kangaroos, and wallabies. Plus a few others.

That’s a freshwater crocodile, which is apparently much less dangerous than the saltwater crocodile. Good to know.

The next day we flew to Adelaide and for the first time had to contend with weigh restrictions on carry-on baggage. All the international carriers we’ve flown have weight restrictions and until that trip none had enforced them. It took a lot of recombobulating to get our carry-on baggage under 7 kilos per person, and we had to check our roll-aboard bags…but we did it! 

Adelaide is much bigger than I expected. By the time we retrieved all our checked bags, got the rental car, and found our way to the condo, it was well past lunchtime - and indeed most restaurants were closed between lunch and dinner. We found a place downtown that turned out to be a few blocks from the Jam Factory, a community arts center that includes a glass-blowing studio, so of course we had to pay a visit. 

The next morning David went to have coffee with Clare Belfrage, a glass artist he’s worked with, and I happily spent the morning on the beach. We took a walk in the afternoon, had dinner, and then spent the next day tasting wine in the Barossa Valley and shopping for opals in Adelaide.

Oz gave us a gorgeous sunset for our last night.

It’s been an unbelievably amazing trip - and it’s not quite over. We leave tomorrow afternoon and will spend two days in Kauai before we finally head home. I am looking forward to my own bed, my own kitchen…and will sorely miss the friendly people, the amazing scenery, and the wondrous things we have seen.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

 I can’t believe our time in New Zealand is over! On the other hand, I’m sitting in the Queenstown airport waiting to board a flight to Sydney, so…

We landed in Auckland on February 4th. It’s now February 27th. I have no idea how many miles we drove - I meant to check the odometer when we dropped off the car and forgot. We’ve learned a lot of lessons about road trips since our very first drive across the US in 1982. We keep the driving days short and break them up with sightseeing stops and/or lunch. That worked well for us through New Zealand. David adjusted very well to driving on the left side of the road. I didn’t adjust quite so well to riding in the passenger seat. I often felt that we were going off the road on to the shoulder or that people we were in the path of a head-on collision. That’s why he did all the driving.

To catch up on the last few days: on Sunday we left Christchurch and headed for Dunedin to visit friends. We stopped at a petroglyph site along the way.

We got into Christchurch, had a lovely dinner at Nick and Allison’s, and took a tiki tour around Dunedin Harbor. “Tiki tour” is Kiwi-speak for a sightseeing trip with no fixed destination. We ended up on Baldwin Street, which is officially the steepest street in the world.

Trick shot. David is standing straight up. The street is - not.

On Monday we went on a nature tour. We saw gorgeous landscape, lots of different kinds of birds, sea lions, fur seal pups, and no penguins. The yellow-eyed penguins live on the farm. It’s molting season, thought, and they don’t venture far out of their nesting boxes when they’re molting. We did see a 19th-century limekiln and the mosaic floor of the Dunedin railroad station.

Also a giant petrel and two albatross (albatrosses?) which were too far away to register on the phone cameras. I haven’t downloaded the pictures from the “real” camera yet.

We left Dunedin on Tuesday and drove to Te Anau where we had a tiny house next to some sheep, cows, and alpacas (see previous entry). We also had a wood-fired hot tub that we could soak in while we looked at the Milky Way. 

On Wednesday (yesterday! I’m catching up!) we drove to Milford Sound, which is not actually a sound. It’s a fjord and part of the Fjordlands National Park. We took a two-hour boat trip around the fjord. It’s not the first time during this trip that I’ve found myself without words to describe what we were seeing.

We drove back to Te Anau and our neighbors the sheep.

Before we settled in to the hot tub we had to recombombulate - unload everything from the car and redistribute it to fit in our suitcases so we were ready for our flight.

It did all fit, I promise.

Off to Sydney tonight and then to Cairns tomorrow to snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef! I’m sad to leave New Zealand and still excited for the remaining adventures.

Here Comes the Sun

 It’s a sunny Wednesday morning and we are again in the countryside in a little cottage near Te Anau.

There’s no WiFi and we have a few bars of LTE; I’m surprised I can get online at all and I’m not going to push my luck. I’ll post something more complete from the airport tomorrow - it’s our last full day in New Zealand. Sigh.

To tide you over, here are some photos from our most recent expedition in Dunedin on Monday. Fur seal pups and sea lions!

Today we’re off for a boat trip in Milford Sound. We’re pining for the fjords.

Saturday In The Park

Wow, it’s Saturday and my last post was Wednesday! I know it says Tuesday but it was Wednesday in New Zealand, honest.

Thursday we were supposed to go swimming with dolphins. We drove from Christchurch over the mountains to a charming coastal town named Akaroa. It’s very French - at least if France sat on the edge of an extinct volcano. The view from lunch.

We checked in at Black Cat cruises, got outfitted in in wet suits and dive boots, and boarded the boat. We saw dolpins! They’re Hector’s dolphins, found only in New Zealand. They’re the smallest dolphins known.

They did not stick around the boat enough for us to actually get in the water. We went swimming with dolphins in the Florida Keys years ago at a research and rehabilitation facility where the dolphins were in an enclosure. These are wild animals and they did not want to play with us. First the whale watch and then the dolphins - we’re not doing well with the cetaceans on this trip! The ride was gorgeous anyway. I spent most of the trip standing at the bow - less likely to get seasick that way.

We did see New Zealand fur seals with pups!

We went back to Christchurch and went back to Manu for dinner because it was sooo good the first time. This time we sat at the bar and had a lovely time with the barman who not only flambéd my drink but also lit some cinnamon as well! Sorry, no video, just pictures of the drinks.

We walked back to the apartment along the river and had a quiet evening. Yesterday we packed up the car and headed for Aoraki Mt Cook, a National Park in the heart of the Southern Alps. There are no words to describe what it looks like.

The top photo includes my cocktail from dinner last night at the aptly named Panorama Restaurant. 

The National Park sits within the largest Dark Sky preserve in New Zealand. We didn’t sign up in time to get in to the astronomer talk so we had to look by ourselves. That was OK.

This was the view this morning.

We ate breakfast and headed off for a boat ride in Lake Tasman, which sits at the end of the Tasman Glacier and thus contains icebergs. 

We hiked back out to the car park and the bus brought us back to the hotel. We found lunch at the Edmund Hillary Café (he climbed Mt Cook before he tackled Everest) and then headed back out to try and hike to a  waterfall. Most of the hiking here is very challenging - steep, long, icy, technical - and the easier hikes are generally very crowded. David suggested we try bushwhacking toward a waterfall we’d seen from the road. We got a little closer and then I decided it wasn’t worth the risk of falling and twisting an ankle on the stones. We did get close enough to see more of the waterfall than before.

It was worth it, and I’m glad we headed back when we did. We came back, showered, changed, and went to the bar for a snack and a glass of wine. Now back in the room waiting for our dinner reservation at the Panorama Room (why not?). Tomorrow is a driving day to Dunedin to visit friends.