G'Day Mates!

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Thursday 12-23 / Friday 12-24
Back to Queenstown for a couple days to do laundry, pack our stuff and catch up on the internet. Was hoping I could magically find the bottoms to my zip-off pants once we got back to the hostel but, sadly, no such luck. Fortunately, Nick found a way for us to watch American tv online internationally. We were able to catch up on a few Simpsons & Daily Show episodes. Ah how I’ve missed them! The Simpsons “Fight Before Christmas” was a brilliant episode! While I’m updating the blog, Nick is taking his routine nap – since we’ve been sleeping so much on the trails, he really can’t stay awake for too many hours at a time anymore (he knows it’s true).

Our last night in Queenstown was spent, thanks to Nick, on top of Ben’s Peak. We took the gondola up the mountain for a spectacular view of the city, where we had a very posh Christmas Eve dinner overlooking Queenstown. We then got to watch Kiwi Haka – a show of traditional Maori song and dance. They needed audience participation, so Nick volunteered to be the “audience chief” to whom the Maori warriors directed their challenge and ultimately welcoming dance. It was very beautiful but Nick needs to work on his haka face – he wasn’t nearly as scary looking as the actual Maori warrors.

Saturday 12-25
Our Christmas day was spent traveling to three different airports & flying back in time. In leaving NZ, we’ll no longer be living in the future, but slowly, country by country, be traveling back to PST. We went from Queenstown to Auckland, where we spent a very slow moving 4 hours before we caught our flight into Sydney. The highlight, however, was Nick’s generosity in buying me a new Swatch watch at the duty free! I am so excited about my new beautiful watch! I catch myself looking admiringly at it, as I assume other women do diamond rings. In return, as a thank you, he got a couple chai tea lattes. I think it was fair trade, right?

The downside is that I now I have Nick’s cold (thanks honey!) [Nick Note: Oh I see give a watch and it’s great, give a cold not so much] and with that was unable to equalize during the plane’s descent. Goddamn it that was painful! So I’ve torn another ear drum – yay! Let’s hope I don’t get an ear infection on top of the cold. Ugh.

Arrived in Sydney late evening and we’re staying at a woman’s house in Waterloo just south of City Center. We found her place through airbnb.com – I highly recommend it; it’s been great! We stay in her flat, have our own room, tv, free wi-fi, she’s close to the train, parks, restaurants & she being a local has given us great sight seeing tips. For dinner we went to a great Turkish restaurant, filled with locals on Christmas day, can’t go wrong! There was belly dancing & the BEST hummus I’ve ever had. I nearly licked the plate clean! While walking around at dusk we saw dozens of flying foxes passing overhead! I was so excited! I’ve never seen fruit bats in the wild before! It’s amazing to see bats fill the skies instead of birds. We REALLY like Sydney & it’s only the first night!

Sunday 12-26
My dogs are tired! We walked all over the central part of Sydney today and my feet are killing me! Concrete is not as forgiving as soft forest floor. Anyway, we started our day at the opera house & then continued on to the Government Building. This used to be the residence of the British Governor of New South Wales, which is now used not as a residence, but as a ceremonial office space for the governor of Sydney. We were the only 2 people there, so we got a private tour and some political history lessons; it was great. It stopped raining and we were able to wander around the Royal Botanical Gardens, which are huge! While we were there, we were inundated with the amount of bird life in the park – Australia is a far cry from the quiet forests of South Island NZ. There are birds everywhere here and tons of them! We saw hoards of lorikeets, flocks of white ibises, and crowds of sulfur crested cockatoos. It almost felt like the Aquarium of the Pacific (minus the ibises). It is quite a striking different between seeing and hearing all of these birds and the utter silence we experienced outdoors in NZ. Kind of sad for NZ. The cool thing about the botanical gardens is that it houses the largest bat colony in Sydney – well at least that’s very cool to me.

Anyhoo, after gardens & birds, we visited Mrs. Macquerie’s Chair, which is a large stone chair carved out of rock that sits at the edge of Sydney Harbor, where a long ago wife to Sydney’s Governor Macquerie used to sit and watch the boats go by. That’s exactly what we did today, seeing as how Boxing Day is the kick-off for a major Sydney to Tasmania yacht race. There were tons of boats & spectators in Sydney Harbor today. We had a delicious rib eye sandwich lunch in The Rocks – the old convict neighborhood of Sydney. Apparently the eastern side of Sydney was settled as the aristocratic neighborhood and the western side was reserved for the convicts, where there were a lot of boulders and rocks and didn’t make for a very nice place to live. Hence the name. Most surprisingly, Sydney is still designed that way: the eastern part of the city is the posh area and the western side has the poorer neighborhoods. Old habits die hard I suppose. There are some beautiful old buildings in The Rocks and old cobblestone streets; sadly most of it’s all mall space now, though. We walked across the Harbor Bridge to get a nice of view of Sydney and then we rounded out the day at the Sydney Aquarium. Try as we might, we could not entice the platypus to come out of its hiding place :o( So we still haven’t seen one of those. But I did get to see wobegongs and dugongs for the first time, which was really cool! I have to admit, I wasn’t all that impressed with this aquarium. Long Beach may be smaller, but there’s a lot that’s better. Although, this one did have giant replica animals made out of Legos…so we got some good Lego pictures for Nick’s nephew, Tomas. :o) We went home & had Turkish take-out again – man this food is good! And chatted with our host lady all night about her travels around the world & the convict-family history in Australia; it was great. It’s sooo much nicer to stay with a local resident than to be isolated in a hotel room. We are LOVING Sydney. Tomorrow morning we head back to the aquarium first thing in the morning (we made a deal with one of the ticket window staff) to try and see the platypus when they wake up to feed. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Monday 12-27
My very first monotreme!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We got to see the platypus! It was a little female, only about 30cm long and she was cute! She only came out for about 5 minutes but it was enough. Nearly blind, she swam back and forth across her exhibit, feeling for food with her electromagnetic senses. They don’t have set feeding times for the platypus, as it lives with its food. There are tiny shrimp and fish that live & perpetuate themselves in the little mangrove exhibit with the platypus. We were told she really only comes out to eat at the beginning and end of the day, so we were lucky to get a good look at her. She even hung out in front of us for a while, skimming the surface of the water for food – she was so cute and furry! Especially without the venomous spines of the male – you could really cuddle up to these crazy things!

After the aquarium, we headed over to the Australian Wildlife World. I wasn’t sure if it would be better to go here, which is a small facility right next to the aquarium, or to the more famous Taronga Zoo across the harbor. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Wildlife World except that we got a deal on admission having gone to the aquarium. But let me tell you: if anyone has plans to go to Sydney, go to the Australian Wildlife World! You can definitely skip the aquarium and maybe even the zoo, since every big city has a zoo. But this facility was AMAZING! Truly worth a visit. As its name implies, it focuses only on Australian species – so it’s kind of like a mini zoo where you get to see all the cool Aussie animals without having to tramp through the outback. It was awesome! Just from a facilities and educational stand point, this place was phenomenal – one of the best animal viewing facilities I’ve ever been to (David Bader, have I got some ideas for you!). We saw lots of venomous insects and spiders (which was good b/c I recognized one of the ant that later fell on me from a tree to be one that spits acid at you – so luckily I found him and brushes him off quickly. Though I still haven’t identified which spider bit me on the leg. I don’t think it was venomous, as the sore doesn’t hurt, it just won’t heal). [Nick Note: Australia seems to have the “most deadly” of everything, spider, snakes, crocs, jellyfish. We have been seeing al kinds of wildlife and each time wonder, “Is this a deadly firefly we’re looking at.”] We saw 6 of the most venomous snakes in the world! We saw a 7 meter crocodile! We saw ghost bats; a new bat for me! We saw our SECOND monotreme, rounding out the earth’s collection, with the spiny echidna and – la pièce de résistance – we got to pet a koala and get out picture taken with him! I was sooo excited for Nick to get close to a koala – he really likes them! We then got to stand a couple feet away from kangaroos while they were feeding. We saw a wombat and we saw a kookaburra (I seriously had no idea they were just big kingfishers) and a cassowary with giant claws on its feet! Overall, it was a tremendous place to go and I highly recommend it if you’re in Sydney. It was my favorite place in the whole city. After that, we headed into Chinatown and had what was referred to as “Hong Kong style Emperor’s Cream Puffs.” I have no idea if this is a real thing or just something that a bakery in Sydney has made famous b/c they’re delicious. But we saw a huge long line of Asians waiting outside a tiny hole in the wall place. So of course we figured these people must know something we don’t. And, since a crowd creates a crowd, we joined the line and waited for our turn to try said cream puffs. Which turned out to be small, balls of fried dough, kind of like donut holes, but with only the outside cooked, so the inside was a very sweet, warm, creamy batter. Not too bad but maybe not really worth the wait in line. After that, we walked around town for a while more; saw St. Mary’s Church and Hyde Park. Sydney is definitely a very nice, walkable city. Out of all the places we’ve visited so far, this is really the only one we could see ourselves coming back to revisit.

Tuesday 12-28
For our last day in Sydney, we were expecting hot, sunny weather – a perfect day to head over to the beach. But, even though it finally stopped raining, we still had an overcast day. So we went up into the Sydney Tower, their tallest building, looks kind of like Seattle’s Space Needle. We got a beautiful 360° view of the city and the harbor. I didn’t realize how much we had walked around the city already! Next we crossed our fingers for better weather and headed over to Manly Beach – so named due to the “manly stature” of the aborigines that lived on the beach when Captain Cook first came to town. Needless to say, I was hoping to see some hot, Aussie beefcakes, but no such luck. Although it was fun to see all the appropriately named shops: Manly Nail Salon, Manly Hair Salon, Manly Cafe, Manly Surf Shop, Manly Museum of Art (was it just paintings of big brawny men?), etc. No wimps in this town!

We went to the Manly Aquarium – boring! A ridiculously lackluster facility with terrible interpretation staff. Although they had rescued a one-armed green sea turtle that was on display and we got to see some giant cuttlefish battle it out via color change! We headed over to manly Beach to have a relaxing day in the sun, but no sooner had we gotten there than the sun went away. It stayed cloudy all day but that probably didn’t matter anyway, as the water was really cold. Nick walked over to the water and within a split second immediately turned around. That was all the info I needed to learn how cold it was – having fled the unfairly cold waters of Southern California, we were expecting warm Aussie waters! Oh well. We hung out on the beach and Nick tried to join some of the beach volleyball players, but they weren’t having any of it. Kind of sucked, it would have been nice for him to play. So we watched the surfing classes instead. The poor guys were eating it in the water! Of all the places to learn to surf, I don’t think I’d ever want to do it in Australia – not with all the things in the water that can kill you. As it is, once we get to Cairns, we’ll have to be careful of box jellies (world’s deadliest jellyfish here we come!).

Warning: “Aussie style burgers” are scary. We stopped at a restaurant that touted they had such things and were looking forward to a nice, big juicy cheeseburger. Unfortunately, we are still unsure of what we got. 1st: It took 30 minutes for a frickin’ burger; warning sign there. 2nd: It was disgusting; seriously unpalatable. I’ve never left a burger uneaten on my plate before. Aside form the tasteless bread & cheese, the patty was frighteningly unrecognizable. It was a processed, pre-packaged patty for sure. Perfect circle shape with edges (why a circle should have edges, I don’t know). No sign of ground beef in it whatsoever, seriously, it was hard to tell if it was really beef or if we got the wrong order (like some kind of yucky veggie burger alternative?) – it looked more processed than a chicken McNugget and even though they’re gross to think about, at least a chicken nugget tastes good for all its chemical origins. So if anyone has been to Australia and had this experience, please help me shed some light on what we ate, because I really don’t think it was safely made from a cow…

After the ferry ride back to Sydney, we were jonesing for a movie. We haven’t been to a movie in so long! So we swallowed the discounted $10 ticket price ($8 off the normal price I might add) and went to go see “The King’s Speech.” A very good film if you get the chance to go see it.

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Comments

[Kathy]

comments
So cool that you got to see a platypus! I just skimmed your blog this morning. I'll read it more carefully later. Love, Kathy

[anonymous]

I want to pet a koala! And see a platypus!