Sydney and HOME!

We got home yesterday and jumped right in to sorting the mail and doing 5 loads of laundry. I have no idea how we managed to stay awake over 35 hours. What I do know is we crashed pretty hard, sleeping 14 hours! I almost missed my 1:30 PM massage.

So here are the final photos. We spent spent 5 days in Sydney which was a big change from hiking and touring New Zealand. This is a huge city. We especially enjoyed the 2 activities I booked ahead: a Sydney Bridge climb and an opera at the Sydney Opera House (of course). We also squeezed in a tour of the facility.

Here it is, the Sydney Harbour with the skyline, Opera House and the bridge we climbed.

This is what we must have looked like as we climbed the bridge. We had perfect weather, great views

We spent most of one day just touring this amazing place, eating at one of the restaurants there, seeing the opera and enjoying the views.

I was quite surprised to learn the Opera House is not white. It looks beige in person but changes with the light conditions. Check out this close up of the tiles covering the building.

It was tough not to throw in a marsupial pic but this sleepy little koala at the wildlife center is so cute.

Bondi Beach is the Sydney hot spot for water sports and family getaways. The clouds look ominous but it was about 85 degrees and quite humid. Lots of surfers here.

This tower is a landmark over the Westfield shopping mall in the heart of downtown. I wonder when they are building a tower at Vancouver Mall?

 What is John doing? What all of the Aussies do, watching cricket and drinking beer. This is certainly the most boring game on earth, even worse than baseball. A "test" lasts 5 days!

We spent a few hours at the Royal Botanic Gardens, 83 hectares with lovely plants and huge trees. John especially liked this eucalyptus.

St Mary's Cathedral is in the CBD by Hyde Park. We didn't see or tour many churches so I thought I would include this.

As of today, we have 636 page views for the blog. Thanks for following along on our adventure. We hope to see you soon to catch up on what you have been up to while we were away.

John and Jennifer

Grand Traverse Hike (Greenstone and Routeburn Tracks)

Tomorrow we leave NZ for 5 days in Sydney. It's hard to believe our travels are ending soon


This post is about our last hike in New Zealand. Our final tally is somewhere around 175 miles in our 11 weeks here. The Grand Traverse connects 2 hikes and totals over 40 miles. We took the luxury approach having a guided walk and staying in lodges over the 6 day adventure. It all started with yet another heli ride! A tree was ready to fall over the road so the company flew us to the track start.

View from the helicopter at track start. This is where the Greenstone River enters Lake Wakipitu.

The trail often had massive tree root systems and/or rocks.

Meet our 3 guides (Heather, Joe and Tony) They entertained us with crazy challenges. This one required crawling under the table, back to the top without touching the floor.

Earland Falls on the Routeburn section.

Dining room at one of our lodges. Ensuite rooms, 3 hot meals, beats huts or camping!

3 course gourmet dinners. This was a salmon starter dish.

Beautiful scenery at every corner.

View of the Routeburn Valley after crossing the Harris Saddle. We had fantastic weather this day.

Harris Lake near the Harris Saddle.

Routeburn Falls. Our final lodge was near these falls.

Flowers and Birds

I have wanted to share some photos of the amazing plant and bird life here but I keep getting caught up in the gorgeous scenery. Today I am doing a post compiling shots of birds and flowers. The next post will be about our "Grand Traverse" hike.

This bird was at Zealandia, a conservation area in Wellington where the habitat is clear of predators to allow threatened species to recover. It's working!

This flightless bird, the weka, is fairly common. They like to scavenge around picnic areas.

I think this is a southland robin. There are 2 types of this bird and several other small ones that look similar. All are very friendly as they like to get the insects you kick up when walking.

Mt Cook Lilly, a rare alpine flower.

One of many types of alpine daisies.

We saw this Pukeko at the Kiwi Birdlife Park in Queenstown. We also saw kiwis but they are nocturnal so the viewing was in a very dark room with no photos allowed.

The Tui has a fascinating call. It reminds me of R2 D2! They woke us each morning in Wellington.

Kaka is a kind of parrot. This one frequents the B&B for treats.

Wood pigeons are the second largest pigeon in the world.

Oyster catchers at Ulva Island, just of Stewart Island.

Forest Orchids

A night to remember!

After touring the Southland, we caught the one hour ferry to cross the Foveaux Strait to Stewart Island, the third, smaller and most southerly island of New Zealand. The permanent population is 350 with hiking and birding the main tourist activities.


We had a very exciting but scary adventure led by our B&B host. He offered to take us, 2 other guests and 2 of his visiting relatives to a very remote peninsula only accessible by boat. He hired a water taxi to drop us on the beach then we spent hours working our way along the coastline. We scrambled over rocks, squeezed through rock chasms, waded in marine pools filled with all sorts of marine life. We ended with dinner and a bonfire with champagne, whiskey, beer and stories about the Maori village once located there.


We returned to the pick up spot at 9 PM to meet the boat but high winds and huge waves prevented us from getting picked up. Our host guided us to a nearby cave for shelter until the weather improved. This turned out to be a bad choice as the tide was rising and we became trapped in the cave. It turned dark and the 7 of us had to huddle for warmth until the tide receded. Fortunately, no water came in the cave and we all stayed relatively warm. At 4:30 Am, we managed to get out and go to the other side of the peninsula where the waves were smaller. The water taxi rescued us there. The poor taxi owner had been on foot looking for us all night.



Our adventure along the coastline included some very interesting vegetation and marine life.

This was where I bailed out. It required wading and the tide was coming in. The group turned around right after they reached the point and saw how high the tide looked.

Room with a view? The sunset was lovely but high tide was still nearly 4 hours away. The sea was rough and we were stuck here. At high tide, the waves were lapping at the rocks you see.

Overnight in a cave is a tough way to get this shot!

Our next adventure, after 3 hours sleep, was to drive to Tuatapere for our 3 day hike at Humpridge. We decided to skip the first day which had a 12 mile 3000' gain. Instead we hired a helicopter to take us to the first night's lodge. the next day we had a 3000' down which may have been harder than going up. Here are the shots from Humpridge.

 

 

 

 

 

On to the Southland

We have been on the move and often with limited Internet access. This post is about our travels to the Southland which is the south end of the south island. Only 1 million people live on the south island but very few live in this area. The scenery is fantastic. We drove for miles without seeing a car or any people, just lots of sheep.

Nugget Point in the Catlins. There is also a lighthouse here.



Rare, yellow eyed penguins coming ashore at Curio Bay where they nest.



This is a petrified forest estimated to be 160 million years old. It is only visible at low tide.

McLean Falls is accessible by a beautiful, short forest hike. We are always surprised at how many people we encounter in these remote locations since we see so few cars on the road.

Invercargill is a big city (50,000) near the tip of the south island. We came through on the way to catch the ferry at Bluff. Since we had time, we went through an excellent museum that included a small section about Burt Munro. He is famous for building the fastest Indian, a motorcycle. His story was made into a movie. A few blocks from the museum is the E Hayes hardware store that has a large motorcycle collection on display.





Photo Update, Summer Weather, finally...

It's New Year's Eve and we have a decent Internet connection so I am making some time for photo posting. Tonight Queenstown's population will quadruple and party city will be on full blast. We already see 2 band venues set up along the waterfront where the fireworks will be. I was confirming the fireworks logistics with a police officer I met at our condo complex. He and several other officers are here on loan from Dunedin (4 hours away) to help manage the festivities. Yikes!!

A look at Queenstown from the top of the gondola. This is the "jumping off point" for parasailing, mountain biking and the luge. Of coursed there is a bungy jump, too.

My sister, mother and brother-in-law on our jet boat ride before my mother decided she had enough but there were still 30 more minutes to go. Oops! Here we go again with a 360 degree spin. Wahoo!

I never met these people before but they let me take their picture at 10 AM eating the famous Ferburger. Folks get up early and stay up late to stand in long lines for this. We have passed on it.

Food options here are definitely at the top of the rating scale. We had a 7 course dinner with wine pairings at the Amisfield Winery. This was John's pinot poached pear with hokey pokey and house made sorbet. We did the "trust the chef" option and had some pretty unexpected food. We liked the squid fried in its own ink. When it was served it looked charcoal black burnt.