Oz - The New South Whales Trail

So we arrived in Sydney the fourth of December and have since done may things. Here is run down of the New South Whales. In Sydney we searched for a car, and ended up with Princess... she is a rented Outlander with 4wd that cant be taken on any unsealed roads. But we figure unless we break down and there is no possible way of pushing or towing the car off this unsealed road... then we will be fine. We Started our trip with the Sydney Opera House and the Harbor Bridge. We only spent 3 days in Sydney though, after NZ it was a little crowded for us.

This is the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains an hr outside Sydney. We started the walk down the Giant Stairway, which consisted of 840 steps, through the rain forest at the bottom of the range, and up the Ferber steps that were another 1040 steps. It was great weather for it until a thunderstorm rolled in and soaked us within minutes. The small river we had to cross needless to say got bigger and we had to trudge across it.

This is me crossing the river... like a drowned rat... or a mouse

The next day we recuperated at the Jelonalan Caves. We went into three caves, these pictures were just a highlight. Apparently one of the men that found the caves lowered his 8yr old daughter down a cavern that he couldn't fit into with a rope and a candle. Pretty brave kid, no way would either of us do that.

This is Bald Rock in Bald Rock National Park. We walked up it for an amazing view. It is the largest granite rock in the southern hemisphere.

One of the many campsites we inhabited so far. Note : For the picture the camera is balanced on a tree branch. Tony is becoming an expert at it.

The Natural Bridge in Giraween National Park. We are wearing our matching fly prevention hats. Tony isn't wearing his face net, but maybe I will get lucky and get a picture to post.

The hike up this rock took a little more than an hour. From the top we could see everywhere.
Note: Granite is slippery when wet!!! On our way to the rock it rained for about 5 min. When we started climbing we noticed that when the rock was really wet our feet slipped a little. That is ok... except when there is nothing to stop your fall down a steep granite cliff about 200ft up. This picture is what we like to call "the place of death" where Tony slipped, landing on his belly, nearly spread eagle to prevent this fall from becoming something much worse.

Some of Australia's friendly marsupials seen in "the wild".

This is how we have been spending our nights. You can see Princess, much prettier than our last car but not as much charm. (but she does have air !!) The wildflowers below have all been out by the rain. Makes for a beautiful drive.

ITS A GIRL!!!

TO ALL THOSE WHO DIDN'T KNOW BIG SISTER WAS PREGNANT AND NOW SHE IS NOT. SHE HAD A BABY GIRL!!! HER NAME IS ALANA DIAN, SHE WAS 8 LB. 6OZ., 20 1/4", AND HEALTHY. Congratulations Laura, Ray, Adam, and Liam to your new addition!!!

Pictures.... http://picasaweb.google.com/spora0814/BabyAlana?authkey=sPU2doH7YiQ

The Town of Broken Hill is in the Middle of the OutBack NSW, where the temperatures average in the summer around 110 degrees. It was a good thing we decided to go there in the thick of summer. Outside of town there is a Cultural Hike you can take to explore the Aboriginal and White ancestry of the area. These are story poles, that where made by local artists that combined the ancestry of the Aboriginals their own Modern artistic flare. I think we took around 30 pictures at this one location, gotta love digital!

The town of Broken Hill is an Artistic Oasis, there are over 40 galleries in the area. The best of which is found atop this hill where the sunsets are amazing. The town had an international syposium and had 12 limstone sculptures created. The artists tried to include the areas history with a dose of their international background. This sculpture here is our favorite, and was done by a fellow from Mexico City. Can you see the Mexican influences?

And here we have Mundi Mundi lookout, it is one of the few places in the world where you can see the curvature of the Earth! Take a minute and soak in the wowness of it.....ok so we couldn't really get it all with the camera and so we decided to take a picture of us instead. As it turns out the town information center has this wonderful hadout about the area and in it is a panoramic view of the lookout. Woo hoo! At this spot if you look closely and have something flat to jundge the curve you can see the curvature.

NZ

Unfortunately we have no further pictures to post of New Zealand because we were silly and mailed them home before updating our blog. We are really bad at this. We can give a run down of highlights verbally however, if you are game to read it. Here we go:

After the Pancake rocks we moved further down the coast to Fox glacier, where we went on an all day hike across the glacier. It was amazing. It is one of the few glaciers in the world at the time that are growing. They cut out the steps with an ice pick as we moved along. We drank from a pure glacial pool and went through some glacial ice tunnels (tony is next to me throwing in all the "Glacial's", it is cute). We then headed south to Lake Wanaka. There we visited puzzle world (the only thing to do there if you went bungee jumping), and spent two hours in a maze. We ended up cheating to get out... so sad. When saying the name puzzle world you are required to sing it to the theme of Waynes World. Next we moved to Queenstown where we indulged in chocolate bliss every day (one day twice) at Patagonia's. Tony has turned into a chocolate fiend...who knew. We met up with a friend, Hampus, from Auckland and he and Tony went mountain biking. We made a quick drive to "middle earth" in Glenorchy, very pretty. We travelled south along the southern scenic route, stopping at Milford Sounds, penguin watching and sheep dodging, to the southern most point of the south island. Heading around the tip to the city of Dunedin to the Cadbury factory... again indulging in ridiculous amounts of chocolate. North to Moreaki Boulders where huge almost perfectly spherical boulders rested on the beach. The pictures are amazing, wish you could see them! We stayed here for a couple days and headed north to Omaru where we saw 200 blue penguins storm the beach. It was so cute, they were so tiny, and the babies came out of their nests to greet them and beg for food. We also saw about 28 of the rare yellow eyed penguin which is one of the rarest in the world! Very cool. Inland, stopping at the elephant rocks, that look like elephants, to the clay cliffs, reenacting the scenes from Indiana Jones. Back to the coast, for a nice Thanksgiving in Fairley. Then on to Christchurch where we sold our Chug :(, and :), making new friends at Stonehurst hostel, Brian, Stuart, Inga( thanks again for waiting up with us till 4am for the airport ride), Ana, and meeting up with Hampus once again...then on to OZ! (in a nut shell)

Fiji, Nacula and Kandavu

Again, tony roughing it. The beach is our view from our room.

This is the view on the way to Nacula. (i think)

We swam through this underwater passage to a whole cave system the Fijian tribes used to hide in during wars, obviously when they were not at the advantage.

This walk was called "the hill" ... oh your going to "the hill". It was about two hrs up but it gave a view of the whole island and the surrounding ones. It was hot as heck and not a cloud in sight.

Our plane to Kandavu, it sat about 6 people, including the pilot

The room below is our "private" Burre, not so private with flax and bamboo walls but it was great!! It tilted down just enough so that we had an ocean view laying in the bed... under the mesquito net. (always under the mesquito net)

This was the view from our porch/balcany

The resort was all spread out among the jungle so you could barely see where the other rooms were. There were about 13 people staying there, and you only saw them at dinner. It was amazing. This is where we met Andrea and Martin who we stayed with in Wellington. Low tide gave us a sand beach with a thin layer of warm water that you could lay in. The waterfall is in the village nearest the resort. You had to climb up a smaller waterfall to get to the cavern where this waterfall was. The water was freezing but you would barely notice. When you swam up to it it pushed you back so you really had to fight to get to it.

Our room mate

Fiji, Nadi and Waya

This is where we stayed our first night in Nadi Fiji, We had the entire dorm to ourselves. We took a boat the next day to Waya in the Yasawas.

This is the view from the boat out to Waya

This was our first "island resort", complete with outdoor dining and swimming pool.

The picture above is of the fijian village that we went to on Waya. The burres were made of tin or concrete, rarely the traditional flax and bamboo that the tourist ones were made out of.

Tony "roughing it"

Our home "Chugg"

So we are really bad at this game of "picture posting". Here is just a couple, its our "Chugg", complete with kitchen, recreational area/sofa, portable fridge/counter top/chopping table/nightstand, and bed. It screams down the road at a blazzing speed of 90km/h. Luckily everyone else drives slow, so it doesn't seem like we are.

First Set of Pictures

The one of us together is at the tip of the South Island Marbough Sounds. We took an eco tour to a reserve and this was the view from the top. We saw endangered birds, dolphins (tiny ones) and little blue penguins nesting.

The sunrise was taken the day we were on the Able Tasman Coastal Great Walk and had to cross the estuary before the tide came in. The other picture is of tony crossing the estuary in ankle deep freezing cold water just about 10 min after sunrise. The boat was our ride home from the walk, they just pulled it out of the water... and we were all still in it as it drove down the street to our car park.

The rocks above are the Pancake rocks. There was a coastline of these rocks with numerous blowholes. It was amazing to see!