Oi

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A few of you have emailed wondering where we are. Sorry for the delay. We can't blame the computers here. We've just been having too much fun in Sydney. We'll try to put up entries a bit more frequently in the future.

We left an area of New Zealand that had more wildlife than people (and we're not sure into which category we put the tourists) to the largest city in Oceania.

Our final destination in New Zealand was the Milford Sound - tauted as being one of the most beautiful places in the world and listed on the World Heritage list. The poor weather in Tongariro is totally forgiven because we hit the weather jackpot in Milford. In an area known for it's rainfall (one tour guide told us that it rains 300 days a year, another said 200, and the final one said 250 - anyway it rains a lot), we hit a beautiful sunny day, but since it had just rained, all of the waterfalls were flowing. We took in the views from two vantage points - first on a bus and boat tour with tons of other tourists and then with a much a smaller group of tourists on an early morning kayak trip. Floating around between the rock cliffs and 160m waterfalls makes you feel incredibly small.

Milford locals are really conflicted about their lovely destination. Milford's had some great writeups in travel guides and literature. It's become a must-see natural destination, but it's not nearly as big as the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone (not being American-centric here, these are just the landmarks that we're familiar with for comparison). As they discuss expanding the hotel and building a new road, people fear that the increased traffic that brings tourist dollars and world recognition also ruins the very thing that the tourists are coming to see.

After kayaking, we headed back to Queenstown for some final Montieth's and a cranberry sauce (instead of tomato), brie, and chicken pizza - a N.Z. favorite recommended by Jaime and Anna Kate. We got in some souvenir shopping (reminding ourselves that Asia will be cheaper for this kind of thing) and said goodbye to N.Z. - 1 country down.

The ride from the airport was really strange. Our belief that the driver was going in circles was confirmed when we later realized that he took 20 minutes to drive from the Holiday Inn to our hostel - a mere 1 block away. We're staying in King's Cross, the only place we've seen that succeeds as both the red-light district and the trendiest neighborhood in town. It's incredibly hard to tell which girls are hookers without knowing how much they paid for their short skirts and spike heels. Our hipness was challenged when we were turned away from a club because we weren't dressed appropriately (what can you expect when we're traveling for 7 months out of a single backpack).

For some reason our timing has been incredibly off here. In an evening stroll, we found the city's entire population leaving the park after the Sydney Festival's jazz night. After reading about another event and fireworks, we returned the following night to the park, but found ourselves standing alone in an empty field(ok, so there was one creepy guy wearing a black cloak) - we had the wrong location. Apparently, there is more than one park in this large city. Oh well. We were able to wander through Tony Oursler's very cool Blue Invasion again.

The drizzly rain that has hung around for the past three days may have dampened our trip to Bondi Beach a bit, but we've spent hours and hours just wandering through the city stopping at a few museums, markets, and the occassional pub or two. And of course, we took the obligatory photo in front of the opera house and harbor bridge.

After New Zealand, we're a bit bussed out, and we found a pretty good rental car deal, so we're setting out this morning for a drive up the eastern coast. Hopefully, the weather will clear a bit so we can get in some beach time in Byron Bay.

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