Month: September 2019

Fiordland, my new favorite word

I’m sure it would be considered demeaning, but I amuse myself by saying Fiordland in a Swedish Chef voice. Fiordland, bork, bork, bork. We’ve spent the past couple days in Te Anau – with driving trips up towards the Milford Sound (and naturally Fiordland National Park). This area has very steep (granite?) cliffs, and gets a bunch of rain. So there’s already hundreds of waterfalls, and hundreds more pop up when it rains. We took a boat tour, and took a bunch of short hikes today – absolutely beautiful (and hard to capture the scope with a camera – but we tried).

But going back (Sara has already posted some of these pics…) we left Christchurch and ended up in Franz Josef for two nights. This is “glacier country” and we hiked to visit both main glaciers here. Awesome to see, but sad to see how much they’ve receded in the past decade. From there, we ended up in Wanaka for a night – a very relaxed ski town. On that drive we got some great landscape captures with Lake Wanaka providing mirror reflections of the mountains. Side note: my nephew was the first to catch the Mission Impossible reference for Lake Wanaka. After that we spent two nights in Queenstown which itself is a hub for outdoor adventure (and trying to sell things to tourists!). But again, on a beautiful lake with mountains surrounding.

Speaking of which – that’s a recurring theme here – beautiful lakes with mountains surrounding them. And waterfalls. If you love waterfalls you need to come to New Zealand. It reminds us of a mix of the Pacific Northwest though with the mountains of southwest Colorado (San Juan Mts). Water is abundant on our hikes – and the forests show it with ferns and mosses everywhere. But the mountains are gnarly rock and jut out of nowhere.

As for lord of the rings, we’ve visited a few places (although not intentionally – I had to pull up this map). Our whole trip is on the south island, which includes four filming locations (north island has five). Mount Sunday (Edoras), Kawarau Gorge (Anduin River), Paradise (Isengard), and Twizel (Gondor). Of those, the only one we’ll completely miss is Mount Sunday – it’s in the middle of nowhere. We drove through Twizel and the Kawarau Gorge. Paradise is a bit difficult – we’ve certainly not been there (and it’s hard to get to), but we’ve circumnavigated it by being in Queenstown and Milford Sound. Clear as mud? Well – the locations aren’t as obvious as you might think.

Anyhow, enjoy the pics…

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#foxglacier #newzealand #glacier

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How ya travelin’?

The title goes back to the first couple days we were in Brisbane. We had just eaten at a BBQ joint, and one of the staff came out an asked “How ya travelin?” – unfortunately for Sara he was facing her. Our faces likely immediately displayed confusion – first we wondered if we heard him correctly. Then we started wondering if we were really supposed to tell him ‘well, by plane, then by car, and we walked here’ – no that can’t be right. After a few awkward seconds, and us probably going “uhh…” – he said – “Was everything ok?” – whew – “Yes, it was great!”. Looking it up, and in retrospect, it’s obvious he was just saying “How’s it going” – although in Australia the popular phrase is “How are you going?”, which all means – “Are you/is everything ok?”.

But, the answer to the literal question, is we’re travelin’ great. We made the road trip down from Sydney to Melbourne, and then west past that out to the Great Ocean Road – and had a great time. We managed to catch all the “weird” Australian wildlife we expected – Kangaroos, Wombats, Wallabies, Koalas, Echidnas, Parrots, Kookaburras, Ibises, Cockatoos, Emus, Black Swans, Lorikeets (small correction, I called them parakeets in my last post). Other than feeding the Kangaroos (which were super gentle – and soft!) the Koalas and Wombats (basically – giant guinea pigs) were our favorites. I guess technically we missed the platypus and some penguins, but it’s a big country! And of course the landscape, both countryside and oceanfront were beautiful.

Australia really surprised us – we didn’t expect to like it as much as we did. Given the time, we’d definitely come back and visit again. But as so happens in most of my posts we landed in New Zealand yesterday. We’ve got 14 days to road trip around the south island – starting in Christchurch – and feel like we’ll fall in love. They’re very strict about making sure you have a flight back out when you come visit – hah! Stopped at a pub last night and sampled some of the local craft beers – they’re doing a great job – even had New Englang IPAs and Milkshake IPAs – woohoo! Except for being surrounded by an ocean, the landscape (and people) remind us of Colorado. The guys sitting at the table next to us last night had a sister living in Denver, and we chatted for a bit. They were excited to visit there some day!

Of course, barely any mammals in NZ, so pictures will probably be all landscape. But hey, you take what you get. Speaking of pics..here’s some more from Australia…

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#twelveapostles #australia #greatoceanroad #travel

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Roos!

Sydney was a cool city – but if this trip has taught us anything about ourselves (or reaffirmed it), we like nature better than cities. We’re now on the drive between Sydney and Melbourne, which has been amazing.

Our first stop was to Depot Beach – and it couldn’t have been better. When we walked up to the house there were kangaroos in the back yard munching. We got out some bird feed for them (later picked up rabbit feed at the store), and the congregated around and gently ate out of our hands. Of course, the bird feed quickly attracted a BUNCH of parakeets too. Colorful and boisterous, though also pretty pushy bunch those parakeets. Later, some King Parrots also showed up.

Once we had our fill of feeding the wildlife, we took the short stroll down to the beach for sunset, and Sara noticed a fin in the water. Pretty soon we noticed about a dozen fins in the water – the dolphins were swimming right at the beach down the hill. We sat there for about an hour watching them, and trying to get some good pictures. What an amazing welcome to our home for 2 nights! Being the thrifty people we are, this also saved us from booking a dolphin watching tour in the nearby town 🙂

Now we’re back on the road, with a quick night in Metung (surrounded by water), and on our way to Wilsons Promontory National Park, where Sara promises Kuala and Wombat sightings.

Internet has been rough in Australia – none in Depot Beach, very slow here. We were spoiled in Malaysia with gigabit fiber most places! So we’re getting pics posted as possible – they’ll show up eventually!

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#depotbeach #australia #kangaroo #wildlife #travel #beach

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Off to a strange land…

I’d apologize for being a little lazy in my posting – but then again, I’m the one on vacation, so no apologies! We had an amazing relaxing time on Gili Meno, and then I thought I’d update after I had the conveniences of a wifi connection in Brisbane for 5 days. But after waking on Gili Meno at 5am, and arriving in Brisbane at 1am, followed by anther day of broken sleep, and me getting a head cold/flu (fortunately Sara escaped that), we’re now on the road between Brisbane and Sydney and you’re finally getting an update 🙂

First of all, it was almost culture/price shock arriving in Brisbane. It’s what we’re used to from the United States, but after a few weeks in Malaysia and Indonesia, $10 for a meal seems like a fortune. That could buy me 2-5 meals! Nonetheless, after mentally adjusting for the prices, Brisbane was a really cool place. Everyone was friendly – like asking if we needed help while staring at Google maps (even for just a few moments), or making sure we knew how to use the city’s rental bikes (a great system), or changing our car reservation when we realized we didn’t need it until the day we left the city. Just genuinely good people.

But also super relaxed. We stayed in the Central Business District, but were nearby the botanic gardens, which is connected to a river walk – that you can wander for miles on both sides of the river. It’s certainly a city where people like to spend a lot of their time outside. Lots of people hanging around with the friends in the parks, concerts & picnics at the parks, local markets (crafts/farmers markets), climbing along the cliffs on one side of the river, and of course lots of people biking and running.

It probably helps that we had wonderful “spring” weather there – sunny mid 70s day, mid 50s night (it is subtropical in Brisbane), but we really enjoyed our time there. On several occasions Sara said “I could live here”.

Of course, we’ve moved on. We’ve had two days of driving and adventure along the coast down towards Sydney, and we arrive there tomorrow afternoon. Yesterday we did a 18km trek around Lamington National Park – with lots of waterfalls, and today did some more coastal exploration (Port Macquarie was nice). Onto pics (mostly catching up Indonesia)…

So then my favorite section…

  • “No Junk Mail” – this is perhaps the most amazing thing in Australia. Wandering around Brisbane, this sign was placed on most mailboxes. I wish we could do this!
  • Kangaroo’s – Haven’t seen any yet
  • Koala’s – Haven’t seen any yet
  • Wallaby – Yes, we had a glimpse of one.
  • Brush tailed possum – Yes, we saw several!
  • Laughing kookaburra – Haven’t seen, but heard. OMG – you have to click and hear these things. (not my video