When we headed on to Arrowtown (so small a town that my blog software doesn't include it on the list; it's about 15 km out of Queenstown), Karen was very excited to plan our next morning out together, no kids or hubbies, in the little outlet shops there. Now I am as thrilled as the next person to visit a good outlet shop, but I wasn't really sure what significance this had to me. Oh, how naive I was! I had yet to be exposed to the MOST WONDERFUL merino wool in the WHOLE WORLD: Icebreaker! (Listen to the singing of [View Full Entry]

---

---

Once again, catching up post-facto on our New Zealand trip. One of the great things we did during our time in New Zealand was meeting up with our dear friends Karen and Dave HAnderson, and their 2 great kids Noah and Ana. After mozying around the south island and up to Milford Sound, we arranged to rendezvous with them up in a mutually agreed-upon town, Queenstown. They, too, had rented a caravan, and were old pros at this game, since they are currently spending the year camping around Australia. We had arranged to meet "somewhere, sometime" in the western part of [View Full Entry]

---

---

For those who are keeping up on this blog in realtime, please join me as we take a step back to New Zealand, as I am hoping to get myself caught up on that part of our travels. For anyone visiting New Zealand, or even talking about New Zealand, the many sights within Fiordland National Park on the South Island are sure to be mentioned as highlights. This is where I most wanted to go in all of our travels to Oceania, in particular Milford Sound, which is the "next fjord north" from my November 9th NZ entry ("In which we [View Full Entry]

---

---

... watched him throw up dinner to his little chicks. Such a good dad! But I'm ahead of myself. I'm sitting in a little internet kiosk at our camping ground in Dunedin, New Zealand (southeast coast of South Island) as we're finishing Day Two of the Big Honkin' Motorhome Experience. Once again internet is somewhat limited; I have to pay by the minute and I can easily run out of $2 coins just catching up on my internet stuff. Thus, I"m going to type real fast and we'll see what comes out... To quickly sew up Australia: we had so much [View Full Entry]

---

---

...because, after all, he was born for this. This was the day we began our 12-day caravan tour. I'm going to pick up the pace a bit (I'm writing this way after the fact and I'd like to catch up a bit) so here are some highlights of the route Christchurch - Oamaru - Dunedin - Balclutha - Gore - Clinton - Lumsden - Manapouri (which is sort of a J-shaped route, going south along the east coast, then crossing over to the west coast) * We unwittingly rented the giantest motor home available in New Zealand. (We needed the space [View Full Entry]

---

---

From Sydney we got on a plane to New Zealand, one of my favorite countries ever ever ever. We started on the South Island, and landed in Christchurch, which we had heard is "more British than Britain" and I am inclined to believe it. (I also heard the phrase "better than Britain," too, and I'm inclined to believe, that, too!) The first day we visited the International Antarctic Centre, which tries to be a big draw for those interested in Antartic stuff, and anyone who knows me knows that I am one of those people. It was slightly cheesy, but along [View Full Entry]

---

---

We bid a very fond farewell to Green Island and headed down for a few days in Sydney. We arrived in town late that night, and Steve took advantage of his early-to-rise habit by walking our neighborhood and finding us the perfect coffee shop in which to have breakfast. A loyal bunch, we Trautmans, and we ended up having breakfast there nearly every day in Sydney. Highlights of Sydney: *Walking around town during the day of The Melbourne Cup. This is the "race that stops the nation," perhaps similar to our Kentucky derby (if you're a horse person) or the Super [View Full Entry]

---

---

After our Reef adventure we decided to see a little more of the Australian landscape. We were in northern Queensland (northeast coastal area) and wanted to visit the Atherton Tableland. It is from there (50’s era Atherton Motel, home of the rare 24-hour internet access!) where I posted a blog entry last month. After circling counterclockwise from up north Daintree National Park, Mossman Gorge, down to Antherton, then Yungaburra, and Crater Lake, we decided we really wanted another day out at the Reef. We had planned on a day in Yungaburra, but it really is a very small town that is [View Full Entry]

---

---

This is just a quick posting as it's the first time I've had internet access in a week and am trying to keep from glueing myself to the laptop. We've finished a week starting in the northern coastal town of Cairns (where we boated out to the Reef), then drove up to the Daintree National Park, and today visited Mossman Gorge (and later had our best meal of the trip in a whistle-stop cafe in Mossman) and have finished the day in a totally 50's era motor hotel in the Atherton Tablelands. We've been in Australia for a week now and [View Full Entry]

---

---

We arrived in Cairns, Australia, after 44 hours of not altogether pleasant travel (Guatemala City, Dallas, Los Angeles -whoops, delay-, Brisbane - whoops, missed plane - Cairns - WHEW). But, as I kept reminding myself, it was FREE travel so I dare not complain! The first few days were all about getting over jet lag, which, when you think about it, isn’t so bad because you’re only 3 hours off home time, plus one day. The one day makes no difference, so we were quite happy not to feel so dragged down by jet lag. Culture shock, however, was another thing. [View Full Entry]

---

---