Day 30 Home at Last

Two back-to-back red eye flights, but we lived through it

Days 28 & 29 The Not So Routine Trip Home

Welcome to Camp Northrup.

This grainy picture is the area of the Honolulu airport where we are camped out for the afternoon and not by choice or design. We are in between back-to-back overnight flights. The floor is a map of the island.

Our flight from New Zealand only got 147 miles out over the Pacific before it had to turn around and go back to the airport. Cockpit computer problems.  By the time they replaced the computer and got back in the air, we had missed our flight to San Francisco. Our only choice is another overnight flight.

Day 27 Exploring Auckland

We couldn't do high tea at the Sky City Tower because it was already booked. But we went over there to investigate because Patrice swore she saw something fall off it. When we got over there we discovered that they let people sky jump off the top in a super bungy jump sort of thing.  A 1000 foot drop! We got there just in time to see a guy hurtling to the landing pad and screaming his head off.

We spent the afternoon at the Volvo Ocean Race Park. Auckland is the halfway stop for the their around the world race. More pictures later. 

We finished off the day with dinner back at the tower.

Day 26 Taupo to Auckland

I start the day with a 5K run in the Taupo countryside,  Other than the double-trailer logging truck that breezes by within a foot of me, nobody else is on this gravel road at 6:15a..  Then we jump in the car for the 3 hour drive to Auckland. We return the car and catch the bus into the CBD.

Since we're near the harbor, we take the ferry across it to find a little French bistro.


The fast ferry ride over to Devonport is cheap and only takes 11 minutes.  Over there you can find a plethora of sidewalk cafes without the hustle and bustle of Auckland's CBD.

We have always been fans of serendipity. This little bistro was excellent.












We are lying in bed and hear a series of bangs and booms coming from what seems to be upstairs. We open the curtains and look out our window and there are fireworks.  Sorry, couldn't get a good picture of that but here is view of the Skytower outside our window.  We are planning to do "high tea" there tomorrow.

It's hard to believe we start the journey home tomorrow night.

Day 25 Exploring Taupo and Vicinity

Taupo is arguably the place where Kiwi's come to play.  There are lots of natural wonders here with the biggest lake in NZ (Lake Taupo), a big waterfall (Huka Falls) and so many geothermal steam vents that the town gets it's power and heat from all the steam.


 There's so much going on here that it has drawn people to create other points of interest here.  One of those is Lava Glass created by Lyndon Other's glass blowing studio. He has a great set-up to blow glass and talk to tourist's at the same time.
You can't see it from the picture, but he actually has a little bleacher to pack in the tourists and tour buses that visit his studio in peak season. Why couldn't we do a "map-making" demonstration at the Map Shop?

 In addition to his studio and well-stocked Gallery, he has also created a blown glass garden stocked with a 1000 pieces of his work.  It opened just last year with a ceremony by NZ's Prime Minister. It looked to us like he makes good money off booking it for weddings in its amphitheater.
And yes, this is where we got a souvenir for our trip.






After lunch, we visited Huka Falls; named after the Maori word for foam.  It's the foam that turns the water that beautiful shade of aqua.











Later that afternoon, we strolled along Lake Taupo, had an early dinner and packed up for our long drive back to Auckland. This picture shows yet another Maori carving. I had no idea how much the Maori culture was woven into every day life in NZ. Many places show signs in English and Maori.
  Two days in Auckland and we will begin our journey home.

Day 24 The drive down to Taupo and the Alpaca Farm

In Otorohanga, we were very close to the Waitomo caves. They are famous for the glowworms that inhabit the ceilings and walls of the cave.  We descended into the cave then boarded a boat in almost total darkness. The effect was pretty cool. It reminded me of a scene from the movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne.  I joked that they could have achieved the same effect by recessing 1000's of green LED's into the rock.





This section of NZ is famous for its karst topography. That means the landscape is full of well rounded hills and outcroppings. Here is an example along the road to Taupo...











  Distances in New Zealand are deceiving. Things that appear close on a map are much farther when you factor in winding 2-lane roads. So just getting to Taupo took us almost half a day. But when we arrived we were greeted by Jack the farm dog / greeting committee. We were shown to our comfortable cabin with a view of the sheep and alpacas.

We went into Taupo for dinner at Dixie Brown's and noticed the McDonalds in town. It's the only Micky D's I have ever seen with a DC3 for a playground

Day 23 and the Raglan Surf Beach

Raglan is on the Tasman Sea and is famous for black sand and surfing. We drove about an hour west to the coast. Here on the North Island, if you're not on an expressway, then you're on a curvy two lane highway.
We stopped in town for lunch where we heard a table of girls talking about surfing. As we checked out I told them I would have to erase that from my bucket list because I was too old.  They strongly disagreed so maybe on my next trip to Hawaii....

We made our way back to the Kamahi Cottage for a look at the sunset and an early dinner.

Day 22 Rotarua NZ

We left Hamilton for Rotarua, known for it's volcanic vents and hot springs.

While not as pretty as the some of the vents in Yellowstone, they are every bit as steamy and smell of sulfur. Rotarua is actually a town on a lake. Like something on a movie, there are holes in the ground in random places (usually in a small park) where steam comes out.  Here are two examples, some are prettier than others.
The other thing that Rotarua has going for it is it's beautiful lake. Here's a picture of the lake and a nice shaded trail we hiked along its shore. The lake has a very high sulphur content making parts of it look like a pale blue-white.


We arrived at our next B&B called Kamahi; which is 14km outside of Otorohanga, which is to say somewhere north of East Jesus. Although it's out in the sticks, it's an extremely peaceful place. Our cottage sits on a hill with a view over hills that lets you see for miles and miles. It's on a working sheep and cattle farm covering over a square kilometer of land with 1200 cattle and I don't know how many sheep.
More pix later... my internet connection is pretty shakey out here.

Day 21 New Zealand's Hamilton and Cambridge and a dip of Serendipity

Our first stop was Hamilton to visit another map store; The Map and Chart Shop. The owner, Murray was very friendly and offered us some advice on mounting maps to wood blocks.

There's a famous Botanical Garden in Hamilton with various sub-gardens. This first one is an English Tudor Garden. It has only been open a month.

The next garden is a Maori Garden patterned after the indigenous people of New Zealand.

Next came our dip of serendipity. On the way from Hamilton to Cambridge we stopped at this little cafe.. I love soft ice cream and I love raspberries. But I never thought I would see a way to combine them. They do that here. They took a big scoop of fresh raspberries and dropped it in the soft serve machine. The result was pure heaven.
That's our little blue rental car in the carpark.





We actually like the town of Cambridge better than Hamilton. Here's their Art Deco clock tower and the restaurant across the street is Nash's where we have just had the best meal of the trip.

Day 20 The All Day Trip to New Zealand from Northern Australia

For some reason, it never occurred to us (or our travel agent) to fly directly from Cairns to Auckland. It would have added almost a full day to our trip.

We also learned a lesson about international trips.  We know to allow a full 2 hours prior to departure for an international flight. But the Aussies threw us a curveball.  They run you through an exit procedure PRIOR to security. We hadn't anticipated that. In the US, you just leave. Not in Australia. Or any other country we could remember.  It added about 30 minutes to our trip from check-in to the departure gate. We were still on time, but it made us cut it much closer than we usually do.

It all worked out and we got to Auckland on time. Even though it was late, we stopped at the Vodafone booth in the International terminal and bought a SIM card for my phone for New Zealand.

Day 19 Exploring Port Douglas

By now the heat is really getting to me. The A/C in our room at the B&B has stopped working and it was one very hot night.  What makes up for all this is the adventure of being in a new place and getting know the people of Australia. Our B&B hosts, Pam and John Burden are truly fascinating people with a long and storied career in movies, television and newpapers.  Pam worked with a number of A-List stars and John had a number of positions with the NY Times.  When you sit down over drinks and have a long conversation with folks like these you get to understand the country and its psyche at a whole new level. The time we spent with them is the highlight of our trip, at least so far.
All good trips have to come to an end and our visit to Mossman and Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef was no exception.. sort of. Pam let's us know she's driving down to Cairns the same morning to do a radio show. Even after we left we got to hear her on the car radio as we were leaving town.

By the time we got to Cairns, we were ready for some R&R from our R&R. In other words we just wanted some down time.  So we explored the Esplanade and had a great and leisurely lunch.  Then back to our room for the all-day journey from Cairns to Auckland.

Day 18 The Mossman Gorge and Port Douglas

By now, I think we have seen just about every Aussie tropical animal that's willing to show itself in this heat.  It's been 34 to 35 degrees for the last few days. That's 93 to 95 degrees with 90 percent humidity. The kookaburras sounding off first thing in the morning reminded us we were in the warm tropics   It's great for lizards, spiders and crocs but all the other animals are sleeping on the forest floor in this kind of heat.

So we took this shady walk through the Mossman Gorge. Luckily it was a great path and there were lots of nice things to see, like this giant spider and a pretty waterfall.

It seems that cane toads are a real nuisance in this part of Australia. As you can see they race them in the bars and they organize contests for kids to see how many they can catch.






In the afternoon we explored Port Douglas and learned how to interpret parking signs. 2P means you can park there for free for 2 hours. When we asked about it at the local information desk, we were told we could ignore the 2 hour part since it is the low season and no Aussie in there right mind would be visiting here in this heat. Next we had a leisurely lunch at a great restaurant called Salsa. It was beautiful visit. But most shops and eateries we wide open. For some reason, maybe due to the price of electricity, the A/C was shut off.  It made for some very hot eating and shopping.

Day 17 The Daintree Rain Forest and Cape Tribulation

Our entire day was devoted to exploring the Daintree tropical rain forest. We were fortunate to have Nicholas Fox as our guide to the Daintree. We started out with a walkabout in the forest over a 2K boardwalk. Due to the heat, we didn't see as many animals as we'd hoped but I have included some pix for the ones we saw. Can you find the Boyd's Forest Dragon in the picture on the right?  It was cool to see him running upright on his two hind legs.

From there we went to see Cape Tribulation, where the rain forest meets the Coral Sea.

Again we saw signs about the dreaded jellyfish stingers.  Who knew that vinegar to reduce the sting.

We stopped for a great lunch at the Daintree Teahouse and ended the day with a river cruise where we saw this guy sunning himself

Day 16 - Great Barrier Reef

We went on a 60 foot catamaran out to Low Island. It's the third one down on this dock with the gray sail cover.

We got out to the island, which is less than halfway out to the outer reef. And it gave Patrice a chance to get off the boat and out to the island and snorkel in shallower waters. They supplied lycra full body suits to prevent dangerous and painful jellyfish stings.

Meanwhile, on the way back they raised the sails with electric winchs and let me ham-it-up at the wheel.  Believe me, the boat was on electronic auto-pilot  at the time

Day 15 Brisbane to Cairns

The rain finally let up as we made our way to Cairns. We rented a little Toyatoa Corolla there and drove to our B&B in Mossman, just north of Port Douglas. The B&B was a little hard to find. We either missed some info on the directions or they were never given to us. No problem, we called the owner and she literally walked us into her B&B.
It overlooks the Mossman Gorge. Here's the view from the breakfast terrace.




It is really hot here 95 degrees and 80 per cent humidity...

Day 14 Patrice Cuddles a Koala

It's an hour boat ride up a rain swollen river but we finally get to the Lone Pines Koala Reserve..

It's the largest koala sanctuary in the world! There are 130 koalas. I took a selfie with a friendly kangaroo!

Day 13 Wet Day in Brisbane

We knew the weather from the hurricane was going to make it a very rainly day.  The news reports had some people kinda spooked about the weather. Here's a note on one shop's door.
We could either sit and mope at our B&B or get wet and revel in it. We took the latter and focused on inside activities.

So we went to a museum on the third floor of this building, Brisbane's Town Hall and saw an exhibit of clothes from 1940s and 50s movies.

Next we went up in the clock tower which was a lot of fun.

Day 12 Sydney to Brisbane

We left Sydney in the morning and arrived in Brisbane to rain. Little did we know we were just in time to feel the effects of Cyclone (Hurricane) Marcia. She is a Category 5 hurricane about to hit the coast  150 miles north of Brisbane.  Hurricanes in this part of the world stir up in late summer. And just like the US, they tend to turn toward the upper latitudes  when    they hit land. Which in our case is south toward Brisbane.
I will post a picture of our quaint little B&B later today from under an umbrella....
OK, I cheated a little and scraped it off their site. But it does look like this, only not so sunny. It was built in 1880.

More on our rain dodging strategies tomorrow.

Day 11 Last Day in Sydney

Today was the day to wrap up and see the last few places we didn't want to miss before we leave for Brisbane.
We had just one day to take in Paddy's Market (arguably the best prices in Sydney), Darling Harbor, Chinatown and a cabaret-style show in the basement of the Opera House called Club Swizzle.
As we were leaving the Opera House on our last night, they had it lit up in red presumably for the Chinese New Year.

Day 10 The Taronga Zoo

I have to confess I didn't think a visit to another urban zoo made sense. But we heard so much about it, I just had to see it.  What makes this zoo cool is it's location. We have never seen a zoo with such a pretty backdrop. It's located on a hill on the other side of the harbor. You take one of Sydney's efficient speedy fast ferries to get there. Where else can you see giraffes with the skyline as a background.



We talked to an interesting lady with flaming hair on the ferry over to the zoo

. She highly recommended the bird show. It was fantastic, better than any animal show I have seen any where, including Disney. Of course it doesn't hurt to have the Sydney harbor as a backdrop.
And last but not least were the lemurs.  We got a guided tour through their habitat.
After the zoo we checked out Manly beach.

It's about a 15 minute ride on the Fast Ferry. It was not named after the great bodies that inhabit the place. It's named after Robert Manly.









After dinner, we went to the Sydney Opera House. This is our only picture of the inside. As for the performance  of Vivaldi's Four Seasons,  they decided to jazz it up a bit so it was more like Vivaldi meets Yanni.