It is a pleasure to be wearing shorts again now that we are in Australia. We met up with Adrienne and Tim (and two of Adrienne's friends) in Brisbane, then went to visit a longtime friend of mine for three days while Adrienne sat her final exams. My friend lives in Yamba beside the wide Clarence River, about three hours drive south of Brisbane, in sugar cane country. We spent an enjoyable three days pottering around museums, beaches and nearby towns. We saw wallabys, kangaroos, hundreds of fruit bats hanging from the branches of a stand of trees, dolphins in the [View Full Entry]

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Today we visited the Waitomo caves to see the cave-dwelling glow worms. This is a very special trip where guided groups walks down a series of stairways passing though a number of chambers into the limestone cave and there board a boat. The guide then pulls the boat along fixed lines in total darkness except for the glow worms attached to the ceiling of the cave. The glow worms give off a bright blue bio luminesence that attracts mosquitoes and small moths into the caves. They become entangled in the glow worm's mucus fishing lines and are eaten by the worms. [View Full Entry]

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We spent a day in Hawkes Bay exploring the heart of wine country. We visited the Silky Chocolate Factory, a small factory outside Napier where they make chocolates the same way our son Ian does but with one or two mechanical aids like a wheel to keep the molten chocolate moving and an agitater to shake any air bubbles out of the molds. It was difficult to chose what to sample from the shop but, being in N.Z., we chose dark chocolate kiwi birds with a kiwi fruit filling. In the evening we treated outselves to a wine tour. The first [View Full Entry]

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From Rotorua to Napier we drove down the Thermal Highway offering many opportunities to see the results of the volcanic and geothermal activity of New Zealand. We stopped to walk a most interesting and informative self-guided tour along the Waimangu Volcanic Valley where sulphurous fumes spew out of vents in the rocks in numerous locations. On June 10, 1886, a line of craters from the northern end of Tarawera all the way to the Waimangu Valley was formed by violent erruption. All plant, animal and bird life was destroyed but in the intervening years lush plant life has returned to all [View Full Entry]

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Russell in the Bay Of Islands is now a nice little town but at the turn of the 19th century it was a shore station for whalers. Whaling was a greasy, smelly and dangerous occupation and when members of the crew got to shore they liked to drink, fight, and generally let off steam so Russell, or Kororareka as it was known then, gained a reputation as the Hell-hole of the Pacific. Manganui lay further north. Captain Butler had run away to sea when he was 14, preferring a life at sea to following his reverend father's and grandfather's footsteps, and [View Full Entry]

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A steady wind blows wisps of mist across the hillside and plays hide-and-seek with the lighthouse at Cape Reinga on the tip of the north island. Grey and gloomy, it is easy to see why the Maori named this Reinga, meaning underworld. The continuous sigh of the surf, where Tasman Sea meets Pacific Ocean, could easily conceal the snuffling sounds of the spirits of the dead as they descend the root-steps of the ancient Kahika tree to the water and make their final journey to their distand homeland, Hawaiki. The lighthouse first warned sailors of the rocky shores in 1941 [View Full Entry]

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We are off again. We are headed to Brisbane to attend Adrienne's graduation and decided this would be a good time to fulfill a promise made to ourselves 27 years ago to spend more time in New Zealand the next time we were in the area. So here we are. We rented a camper van in Auckland and headed north. Having spent the last 12 hours on a full flight from Los Angeles, we headed for the Waiwera Thermal pools, just 30 minutes north of Auckland, where we luxuriated in the private spa and each had a massage before dinner. We [View Full Entry]

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We awoke on Saturday morning to find this trawler high and dry on the rocks just off H dock in Port Sidney. As the crowd gathered sipping on the morning coffee, I opined that the skipper who parked her on the rocks must have either "been drunk, had no charts, or could not read charts". The old salt standing next to me sporting a shaggy grey beard and wearing a snug T-shirt emphasising his love of beer, said he was completely sober when he put her on the rocks. Fortunately no one was hurt, but the perils of trying to sail [View Full Entry]

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We were afraid that the sleeper train from Zagreb to Prague was a misnomer as we had no sooner got into bed when the Slovinian passport control officer was knocking at the door followed 5 minutes later by the customs officer asking if we had any alcohol or cigarettes to declare. Luckily she did not ask if we had any bananas (our breakfast). We did manage to sleep thereafter as there were no more official interruptions as we progressed through Austria and on into the Czech Republic. The Golden Wheel, our hotel in Prague, is a small boutique located at the [View Full Entry]

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We spent three rainy days in the safe but noisy harbour of Rab waiting for the storm, which packed winds of 35-40 knots gusting to 60 knots, to pass. From Rab we sailed north to Krk and on to Cres in brisk, cool winds and while these northern towns are interesting they do not have the extensive historical remains that we found on the Dalmation coast in Trogir, Dubrovnik, and Zadar, etc. The weather settled down to the hot Mediterranean weather we have come to expect and we sailed in perfect conditions on our last day from Cres to Pula. We [View Full Entry]

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