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.

Not every meal is some high-brow experience

Mrs. Lambert can regrettably testify to that, (quesadillas and fries at the pirate bar in Shenzhen - seriously sorry but I was on fire). Chris we are really sorry you weren't here for some of the greats and we think of you often as we know how you would have preferred the better chow. You did not miss much tonight in Sydney, but you did miss the table fries. We had never heard of this concept or marveled at its execution but we are now converts. Really! We miss having you with us with the great weather and food, a marked departure from our time in China unfortunately. But we had a great time with you! Table fries for all.