Through the mountains

Once we left the coast road we turned inland and drove several more hours through the southern alps to reach Marlborough and the wine region. The drive through the mountains was almost as nice as the coast drive. We followed this river through a gorge and saw almost nothing and nobody except sheep and cattle for hours. It did give Betty a chance to walk across the longest swing bridge in New Zealand. I really wanted to try it but who would have taken the pictures, right? It was probably 100 feet above the river. It takes a special sort of person to live out here in this isolation but if you are willing and don't get lonely, what a life. I can also tell you that in 2-3 hours we only saw one kayaker on this river. You could just go for miles and see no one.

Franz Josef Glacier

Late afternoon at the Franz Josef Glacier on the west coast of New Zealand's south island. We drove here after getting off the TranzAlpine train at Greymouth. It took about 2 1/2 hours but the drive was beautiful and really gave us a chance to see this part of NZ up close. It is an incredible combination of high mountain peaks, rainforest, farmland and ocean, all right next to each other. Although we had planned to hike to the bottom of the glacier the next morning (you can get to within about 100 meters depending on conditions) we decided to press on to the north. It was a good thing that we left early because the coast drive was so incredible that it took us about 8 hours to get from the glacier to our next stop here in Marlborough.

Blogger's Breakfast

One of the best times to post is early in the morning - assuming we have wireless internet, which has been a big assumption in both Australia and NZ. But we have it this morning so a little snack and of course some champagne (from Cloudy Bay which is right down the road) makes it that much more enjoyable.

Ah to be a teenager

Most of one car on the train was filled with a group of backpackers that were just young kids. I walked through the car a couple times to get to the open viewing car in the rear of the train. Not only were these kids not looking at the scenery, they had actually pulled the blinds because the sunlight was interfering with the screens on their laptops/mobiles. In this picture they have the blinds drawn and are playing cards. The were happy to have me take their picture but when I asked about their lack of interest in what was passing outside they looked at me like I had three heads.

Tranzalpine Rail

Scenes taken from the train passing across the southern alps in New zealand from Christchurch on the east coast to Greymouth on the west coast.

Great ocean what?

With no offense to Australia, we just drove up the western coast of the south island of New Zealand and it was spectacular. We can't understand how this drive is not even mentioned as being something to try to do. It was absolutely the best ocean drive we have done. If you want to check the location we drove from Franz Josef to Westport but these pictures are all from the section between Greymouth and Westport. We stopped so many times it took forever.

Life goes on

Only a few blocks from the red zone people were exercising and having a ball in the city's beautiful parks, and right across the street from the worst hit area these two girls took a secnd to give us a wave on the way home from school.

More Christchurch

A few more pictures.

Christchurch

We were in Christchurch briefly two days ago and walked down to the city center. A beautiful city that is more like a ghost town now. Most of the city center is cordoned off with military roadblocks but you can see from these pictures the damage to the older buildings near the perimeter of the red zone. As is common, you have a building that was completely destroyed next to one that seems to have no damage at all. The older buildings seem to have fared the worst. None of these pictures are of the cathedral which is in the center of town and not visible from where we were allowed. The picture of the cafe shows what looked to be a beautiful street of restaurants on a small river running through the city, all deserted now. We had been hoping to have dinner there.

Near the beach at Punakaiki

Crazy beautiful. This is a farm that just sits between mountain and forest on one side, and beautiful beaches and ocean on the other. We can only hope the sheep are just for wool and the cows are just for milk because then they are really lucky animals living right here!

Beautiful drive down the west coast of the south island

Whataroa, on the way to the Franz Josef glacier. We knew this area was sparsely populated but this is insane - just nature -and in the past 2 hours driving we have passed maybe 100 structures, mostly farmhouses.

Breakfast on the TranzAlpine train

Oh, yeah. Just rode over the Canterbury plain, a steady flat rise past farms and lots of sheep and cows. Heading to the highest point on the ride, Arthur's Pass.

Clear skies in Christchurch

Early morning leaving the lodge for the TranzAlpine train to Greymouth. This little lodge was outstanding. Brand new, mod and styling with a little kitchen and living room - impressive, and close to the train station. This is supposed to be one of the greatest train rides in the world, but If you take the train in clouds and rain, you can't see much. Weather here is very changeable and hard to predict, so we have been watching and high-tailed it to the south island as soon as we saw the break in weather.

Waiheke Island

Imagine an island with
- beautiful white sand beaches and blue ocean, with or without surf,
take your pick
- mountains and rolling hills revealing seriously stunning views at
nearly every turn
- vineyards and farms all over, with about 30 wineries (oh yeah, that
does mean fabulous food at every turn as well!)
- sheep, cows, horses rambling around the hills
- tropical foliage (palms, flowers, green everywhere) mixed in with so
many little microclimates on the island you go from rainforest-like to
grazing hills to vineyards and olive groves within a few minutes
- and you can drive around it and experience most of it in a day.
But I would have loved to stay longer to hike the trails and linger
longer everywhere we stopped!
That is Waiheke.  Just a 40 minute ferry from Auckland.  Part of the
Hauraki Gulf islands between Auckland and the Coromandel Peninsula and
dotted with little islands all over the place.  It was a bit overcast
while we were there so the pictures won't do it justice but trust me it was seriously beautiful.

For our nephew Will

Will, these are all giant Leggo constructions that were on display at the Sydney Aquarium. They are enormous and most amazing of all the thing that looks like a painting as part of the Moby Dick scene is also all done in Leggos. There was also a 22 foot shark. Wouldn't you love to work on these?

Bridge Walk Sydney

No I didn't even think about doing it. I tried to encourage Betty but we ran out of time. I will say that almost any time I looked at the bridge I could see groups of people going up and down - see the picture below. The whole climb takes about three hours and over 2 million people have done it. You can even go at night although it must not be as popular since it's cheaper than the day climb.

Nature Betty

They grow their spiders big here. This one was at the Botanic Gardens. Looked big enough to eat one of those bats.

Manly Beach

We took the ferry from Sydney Harbor to Manly Beach where we had a fun afternoon biking and naturally ending with a beer. A beautiful, small beach town just a short hop from Sydney. They were having some of the biggest waves we saw on our entire trip. Our bike ride went way up to some bluffs looking all the way back to Sydney and as you can see the weather was great.

Culture vultures

A day at a) the amazing acquarium here, b) the Annie Liebovitz retrospective and then c) a night at the opera - we saw Carmen. About 3+ hours of "toreador hm hmm hm hm hm hmm hmmmm. Hmmm hm hmm hm. Hmmm hm hmm hm" and so on. We loved it it though I confess to fighting back a nap during the last 15 minutes. Then we raced out dodging raindrops to find a place that would feed us at 11 pm. We succeeded.

Air New Zealand lounge

I actually turned this down even though they had grated cheese, onions, sauerkraut etc. But there was also plenty of champagne. Is 9:30am too early for a hotdog? There were plenty of takers.

So we begin the last leg

Just arrived in Auckland to pouring rain but our goodbye breakfast in Sydney had to include a little Vegemite on our toast. Tastes like brown salt. Of course our last day was really capped off by my emergency root canal. How fun, but how lucky. Really, it could have been China, or god forbid INDIA!!!

Yoga

Match the yoga pose to the picture. Hey, it's an attempt at exercise!

Sydney at night

From our hotel room.

Bats and more bats

A portion of the Royal Botanical Gardens is infested with bats. There are about 4,000 of them and they are BIG and NOISY. Since they are killing the trees they are about to start a program to force the bats to "relocate" using some sort of loud noise. Pretty gross and creepy unless you are a bat lover.