this is the whole shabang set to music! pretty much unedited montage of all the photos we took : the first one is "australia: 3 weeks in 10 mins or less" and the second one is "new zealand: 7 days in 6 mins." ***PLAYBACK: click the white triangle on the bottom right of the video screen. a bar will come up. click on "HQ" - the playback quality is better *** a note on the music: while we were at woodford we totally fell for the artists: kate miller-heidke and wild marmalade. they provide the soundtracks for these and we HIGHLY recommend you look into them : you can see some other shorts, including an awesome aussie rap! what!! on youtube. search: tuckermisra for the videos on youtube or follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/user/tuckermisra we had a ... read more

we had to get up around eight to make the drive to greymouth from franz josef. this stretch was pretty easy and straight. there's a town on the way called: hokitika (think that's the right spelling). definitely worth the stop for food and souvenirs. we basically bought everything in hokitika and it was way cheaper than in greymouth or aukland. greymouth is a good size and very walkable. we milled about while waiting on the train to come in. it was about two hours late. now i was really excited about this part of the trip. i l-o-v-e trains. that part of my old soul is just calmed by them and it's just nice to watch the world go by like that. all the materials i had read promised me stunning scenery and that i would ... read more

the next morning it was up bright and early and off to milford sound for our overnight boat trip. we headed out of queenstown and were on our way! then we stopped for some ridiculous add on train ride. then we stopped again in a random housing development. then again for some other random reason. basically what probably could have been done in a couple of hours was stretched to seven (yes, this is our reflection on tours in Australia and NZ - tours are for people who think life is a journey and would like to spend more time getting to their destination; they are not for people like us who want to spend more time at the destination). anyhow, we had a slightly bitter driver who's commentary reflected the waning tourist economy and missed ... read more

We woke up in the morning to the beautiful view outside our room (THANK YOU POINTS!). after a quick morning flight we arrived in sydney! was SUPER excited to get on a subway and they have these cool double decker cars that reminded me of the magic bus in the harry potter movies so i was mentally pissing my pants with excitement tee hee. our hotel overlooked hyde park and from the pool at the top of the building you had a great view of the city : sydney was our last stop in australia and i was a bit travel weary, but i finally wasn't sick. when we got to the hotel i decided to take a nap and susan went off on one of her walking adventures By this point in our trip, we ... read more

So we flew Tiger airways from alice springs to melbourne because the tix were 1/2 the price of qantas. If you think your life is worth $130 then feel free to save it and fly Tiger. This was hands down the sketchiest plane I have ever been on - I was sure it was gonna fall out of the sky - and it definitely didn't feel like the pilot knew how to fly a plane.Then, the "terminal" was this gated-in fire hazard with those rotating bar exits like you find in subways and toilets that were only maybe 2 steps up from portapotties. (I (Susan) thought it was worse than the New Delhi airport 15 years ago!) Also cabs in melbourne are unregulated and totally take ridiculous routes from the airport so avoid them and take ... read more