Batemans Bay...
Stayed overnight in a white-trash style trailer at Batesman's Bay YHA. Not horribly bad once we got another light bulb. It was raining that afternoon and into the evening and the forecast for for heavier rain the next day. Fortunately forcasts are not always correct - we woke up to a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day!

We spent the morning at Pebbly Beach and Depot Beach. I really didn't expect much, but as soon as we arrived at Pebbly Beach we started feeding a couple of parrots and ended up having virtually a flock enveloping us - on our heads, shoulders and arms! Guess they're quite used to getting fed. At one point it was difficult for John to take a picture of a parrot on my head because another one of the parrots would fly onto his camera! The parrots were quite colorful - one species was mainly red and the other mainly green. Pictures to follow...

We took a trip to nearby Depot Beach and again I didn't expect much. It turned out to be quite beautiful. The water was quite clear and a lot warmer than it was in Tasmania. We decided to go snorkeling and I'm glad we did, even though I had to hold a finger onto the rubber nose piece of my mask the entire time. It had ripped. We saw a huge sting ray and got to follow it for a while. It was very close. It was like the ones we had seen at the Melbourne and Kerry Tarleton Aquariums. Very cool! I wouldn't have dreamed we would have seen one of these creatures here!

The rest of the trip to Sydney was uneventful except for the dramatic transition from rural driving to the frantic city driving in Sydney. We had really been in a big city since we left the US.

We checked in our hostel, Boomerang Backpackers, and decided to stay just a couple of nights and find someplace else. It was a bit run down and the street it was on was under major construction. Also, it didn't have internet and that's become pretty important, especically when we're in a city and have some time to catch up on our blogs.

Tomorrow Tom Jones arrives from the USA and we plan to pick him up at the airport. That'll be cool! We had a great time traveling with Thomas in New Zealnd, Eric in Tasmania and it'll be fun to have a third travelling companion again in Australia.

Tom's will also be bringing a PC for me. After seeing other people bring PCs along on there world travels and realizing that we might cut internet costs by doing a lot of the work offline, I decided to purchase a PC. The neat thing was that a friend of mine, Tony, was willing to research PCs, buy one for me, configure it and then send it to Tom to bring to us.

Return to Australia Mainland - Melbourne...
Our friend Eric took us to the Hobart Botanical Gardens and then drove us to the Hobart airport to fly from Tasmania back to the mainland of Australia. We're going to miss his sharp wit, race car driving style and his ability to get us into water cold enough to freeze a polar bear!

Rest of the day was spent settling into the hostel, doing laundry, dinner, making plane and hostel reservations and, as you can see, answering email and updating our blogs on the Internet.

Fields National Park...
We decided to take a two day trip starting with Fields National Park. Just before the park we visited a Wildlife Reserve. It was neat that we were almost the only people there. Very peaceful. We bought some animal feed and hand fed some of the kangaroos. They didn't bite, but when they got excited about the food they would wrap their clawed fingers tightly around your hand to make sure you didn't leave before they finished their repast.

There was a lookout over a natural pond that hosted a family of duck-billed platypuses. They were not too hard to see but difficult to photograph. I managed to get one clear photo of it after about 15-minutes of watching it.

We had a great lunch at a funky, small Celtic cafe. The lunch was freshly cooked spinach and chicken pastry things. John will probably have the correct name... along with an excellent salad. We had a multilayered banana pudding, whip cream, chocolate dessert.

After lunch we entered the park and took a walk through the rain forest to two waterfalls, Russells Falls and Horseshoe falls. It was quite beautiful. I'm starting to realize that each rain forest is quite unique. You really can't say, "if you've seen one rain forest, you've seen them all!" On the way back we saw a wallabee slightly off the trail and took some photographs.

Our second hike was around the Dobson Lake. We came to find out that the term "around" did not necessarily mean "all the way" around even though we forced the issue and bushwacked our way all the way around. We were in search of more duck-billed playpuses, but found none. It was still quite beautiful.

After the park visit, and a Magnum Ego ice cream bar (a meal in itself!) we headed to the "Chalets" at StrathGordon (sp.) to stay overnight. The "Chalet" turned out to be motel-like rooms in a facility that had been build for housing construction workers for a large dam that we would visit the next day. It was still very nice for us because they actually supplied things like, towels... and hand towels ... and wash cloths... and shampoo, conditoner, soap... Wow! This place was first class compared to our backpacker haunts!

We took a night walk outside the hotel and saw some of the local wallabees and had a few drinks before turning in.

Bruny Island, Tasmania...
We decided to do a day trip as our first jaunt from Hobart to Bruny Island. We got up early and were ready at 7:30 am for Eric to pick us up. We were greeted with the news that the ferry that we would be taking us across to the island had a gap of 2-hours and the next one departed at 9:30 am. Ugh, we really didn't need to get up that early... Well, we were certain that we wouldn't miss the ferry!

The island is quite large and varied. The first region we explored was the isthmus between the upper and lower parts of the island. Stairs leading to the top of a large sand dune gave a great view of the isthmus. On the beach, sadly, we found a dead fairy penguin. We also found a floundering, stranded baby skate. John attempted to rescue it by bringing it back into the deeper water, but on a return from our walk the poor thing appeared to have become beached again. Not a good day for these particular animals.

Further down the road the trees and bushes took on a golden tone that was quite strange. On scanning the horizon we found two plumes of smoke in the distance that were creating brown clouds that caused the golden light. There must have been a couple of fairly large forest fires on the mainland. We never did find out where they were. A ways further down the road we returned to normal lighting conditions.

Trip to Tasmania...
The word frantic doesn't even start to cover us trying to get things done before leaving for Tasmania. The last snafu was they couldn't find John's drivers license at the checkout desk. They had taken it as collateral instead of a key deposit. Finally, just as the shuttle to the airport arrived, they found it filed under his middle name.

The 1-hour flight to Tasmania was pleasant and uneventful. It was on a budget Australina carrier called Jetstar.

John's friend, Eric, was at the terminal to pick us up. He had rented a 4-seat Hyundai Getz to use during the time of our stay. We went for coffee, spent a little while on the Internet and then he took us on a drive up to the top of Mount Wellington, which has rather spectacular views of Hobart and the surrounding region. It was a neat introduction to Hobart and Tasmania. Dinner was at an excellent Thai restaurant. We spent the evening drinking wine, talking and planning our journey at Eric's classy apartment. Afterwards John and I managed to find our way walking back to our hostel after only a few wrong turns.

In Melbourne, Leaving for Tasmania...
This trip is going by so fast! Sorry about the sporatic nature of posting entries. We're moving around so much it's hard to take care of travel planning, doing what we've planned, burning photos to disk to clear memory cards and everything else. Every city and every hostel there's something new to learn.

I'm plan to post short entries for the missing days and fill in more information later.

We're heading to Hobart, Tasmania today about noon. I have the typical travel stuff to do before we leave, book the shuttle to the airport, call a rental car company to find out more information and make a reservation for a car for a month, go to the post office to mail CDs to cousin Ric, oh yeah, and some breakfast!

Catlins to Christchurch...
Stopped at the Moerera (sp?) boulders. Thomas's birthday! - coming out of the egg photos of Thomas.

Catlins, Nugget Point and beyond...
We got up quite early to make it to the Cathedral Rocks during low tide. It was about an hours drive and the gate was closed. Walked 2-km to the rocks and were able to walk through the cave / natural tunnel just before the tide took it over.

Stopped at McLean falls, abandoned railroad tunnel, went to Cannibal bay. Back to Fernlea. Cannibal Bay later in the evening and photographed sea lions.

From Te Anau to the Catlins...
Watching a set up for filming a Castrol Oil ad in Gore with historic planes, cars and period costumes. Saw one of only two still flyable, twin engine Dehavalind (sp?) Dragonfly airplanes.

Arrived at Fernlea hostel. Note on the door, "Chris, go on in, names on your rooms, back later."

Walked to lighthouse. Viewed Yellow-eyed Penguins.

Milford Sound...
Got up early, leaving about 8am to make the journey to Milford Sound. The weather was the best we have had in Queenstown as we left. The trip out of Queenstown was quite beautiful.

We made it to Te Anau, stopped for PB & Js for lunch and continued the most dramatic part of the journey from Te Anau to Milford sound. It passes through a spectacular, glacially carved valley, through a manmade 1-mile long tunnel drilled through a mountain to a steeply descending pass down to Milford Sound. The tunnel has a traffic light that allows traffic to flow in one direction only for 15-minutes and then switches to the other direction. We only waited a few minutes for the light to change from red to green.

It was sunny in Milford Sound, which is amazing. The Sound gets 21-feet of rain a year. It had been raining for the four days previous. We lucked out! We took the Red Boat cruise from Milford through the fjord-like seaway to the Tasman sea and then returned. Because of the extreme depth of the fjord (it actually is a fjord, not a sound), the 100-passenger boat could come up very close to the rock walls. It came close enough to a waterfall that the people on the bow got quite soaked from the spray! We also saw 10-12 seals sunning on the the rocks.

One of the views from the cruise is of glaciers in the upper mountains. No matter where you look the scenery is spectacular!

On the way back to Te Anau we stopped by "The Chasm". It is a waterfall that descends into a grotto of rocks and fallen trees. The walk to it is through a rain forest that is unworldly.

On our return to the parking lot we found a Kea, a wild parrot, chewing the rubber from around the side windows. It had taken chunks out from three of the side windows. They are quite active and funny, when they're not destroying your car, and pick up rocks or bottle caps with their beaks and toss them around.

We stayed in Te Anau for night, making tacos for dinner.

Queenstown - rain yet again!
The brakes on the car had gotten really bad, so I called the company I rented it from and they said to bring it into a shop. They gave me the name of the shop and we brought it in and they put new brake pads on the right hand front wheels. They were actually a lot faster at fixing it than I expected. It only took about 1 1/2-hours! We walked 2-miles into town while they were working on it and got to walk the two miles back in the pouring rain.

At the Internet again, as you may have guessed. We may go out to the original bungy jumping bridge to water the leapers, if the weather cooperates. It seems like all the adrenaline sports have increased quite a bit in price since I was last here in 2001. Due to that, and the fact that my knee is still swelled a bit, I think I'm going to refrain from off the bridge plunges at this point in time.

Queenstown ... another rainy day!
It's been raining/sprinkling since we arrived in Queenstown. This morning was another Internet catchup time, sending photos to my cousin to post. After lunch I rented a full suspension mountain bike and set out to try one of the trail systems the bike shop people had suggested.

Directions are a bit brief here and signage is sorely lacking. Luckily I remembered the name of the road before the parking area where the trail was supposed to begin. We pulled into a gravel parking area that had single sign which said, "track". That was it. The name of the place was supposed to be "Seven Mile Reserve". We continued down the road until we got to "Twelve Mile Delta" and decided the previous one must have been it.

At the "track" head it was sprinkling, as usual in Q-Town. I had my monkey fur jacket on and a rain parka stuffed in my pack in case it got worse. I would say I biked about 5-10% of the track and walked or carried the bike the rest of it. It was very steep, narrow, wet and included a set of wooden stairs, which I found out later no one can make it up (I carried my bike up), but they're not so bad coming down (not that I would try it!). It was quite beautiful and interesting. Part of the trail goes right next to the lake shore. At one point I biked onto a pier from the trail and nearly got blown over from the wind. Part of the trail was in a evergreen forest.

Call me chicken for only doing 5-10%, but boy, have I got a bunch of excuses!
* I've never ridden a full suspension mountain bike before
* I've never ridden a bike with the front brake lever on the right (dangerous when you're used to it being on the left!)
* My knee had just recovered enough for me to consider biking
* I hadn't been on a mountain biked in over three months
* I had never seen the trail before
* I was biking alone
* The trail was wet and slippery
I guess I am the cautious type...

I came out from the trail an hour earlier than expected. I started heading towards town, which was about 4-miles away on a paved road. About halfway there it started raining a lot harder and I pulled over under a large tree and waited to flag John down who was coming to pick me up in the car. Unfortunately he didn't see me and I saw him go by and waited but he didn't return since he hadn't seen me. I biked two miles in the pouring rain to meet up with him at the "track" parking lot. It was a little uncomfortable, but the monkey fur and rain parka keep my upper body warm.

I'm really glad I did it. I just wish the weather had been a bit better.

Queenstown ...
We had breakfast, and since it was overcast, we headed to the Internet Cafe to work on editing and burning pictures to disk. That took until after lunch. After lunch we headed to Deerpark Heights to visit some of the sites where Lord of the Rings was filmed. I'm really glad we did, because it provided beautiful overlooks of Queenstown, the lake next to it and views of the Remarkable mountain range. The landscape definetly looked "LOTR" like, but it was a bit difficult to exactly pin down scene sites from the movie. The guide book and maps weren't the best in the world, to put it mildly. It was also a game park, so we bought some animal type feed and feed horses, goats, deer and whatever else we ran across.

Dinner was leftover Thai Curry and then we headed to the cinema. This was the first cinema we've been to since leaving the US. We saw the movie Aon Flux. I had low expectations, but just let it flow and enjoyed it quite a bit.

I'm at the Internet Cafe again, catching up on my blogs. Except for old Fiji entries, I'm caught up! Yippee! Going to do some culling on the photos I took today as well.

New Zealand is such a beautiful country and an easy one for an American to travel in. I don't know as I'll encounter any amazing, soulwrenching experiences, but I'm sure I'll have opportunities later on in other more exotic countries. For now I'm just enjoying it. I guess it's a little like having dessert before the main course. I'm hoping the pictures convey more of what I'm experiencing than the words, since all I can write seems to be "beautiful, gorgeous" or "awesome".

From Franz Josef to Queenstown...
We packed up and headed on towards Queenstown. The drive down there is quite beautiful. We took a detour to see a scenic view of the Fox Glacier. It seems quite similar to the Franz Josef.

We stopped at a crystal clear stream about halfway down, skipping stones, taking pictures and having some food. We also had a few photo stops at two of the awesome lakes on the way down, Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea.

We had a lunch stop at the Green Room in Wanaka at a restaurant that served quite good food.

The mountain high entry down into Queenstown is quite impressive! It was during the downhill ride that we first noticed that our right front brake drum pad may have worn through. It sounds more like a metal lathe than a brake. Still debating whether to talk to the rental company or just take it easy and try to make it last until Christchurch.

In Queenstown we unloaded our stuff, went to the supermarket and bought the fixings for a Thai Curry dinner. I had purchased most of the stuff previously, but needed the fresh vegetables and all. I cooked, Thomas and John cut up the veges, and we made curry enough for the three of us, plus a friend, plus dinner for the next night with lots of curry leftover. I've never learned how to make a small amount of Thai Curry. But that's OK, I could eat it every night!

We found an Internet Cafe and started catching up on our blogs and answering emails.

An aside on backpacker traveling stuff...
Although on a holiday, there is still work that has to be done. Everytime we move it's a routine of repacking, calling ahead to find a place for the next nights lodging, packing the cooler, getting ice, buying gas and maybe a trip to the grocery store. Amazingly, I've been able to find a room for three people since John and I have been traveling with Thomas, although sometimes it's required calling 6-8 different places.

Hostel accommodations and services vary quite a lot. It takes a bit of getting used to, even in an English speaking country as familiar as New Zealand. Some hostels supply towels with a room, some charge $1 a day if you want to use their towels, some have regular single beds, some have bunk beds, sometimes the bed is made for you, other times they just have the folded up sheets on the bed, some have a hand towel in the bathroom for drying you hands, some have none, some of our rooms had a sink in the room, others did not, most require a $10 to $20 returnable key deposit, others do not, most have at least showers, some have bathtubs as well, some have a spa, one even had a sauna!, other don't even seem to have hot water.

I'm been trying to learn basic security habits for when we travel to more sketchy countries, but it isn't always easy! Some doors lock when you close them, others you have to set a button so they will lock automatically - which you could also set so it doesn't lock automatically, others require you to use a key to lock them, which makes it difficult if everyone in the room doesn't have a key. One multifloor hostel required you to use your key to get to the floor of the room you were staying on. In short, there are a lot of ways to leave the door open, both accidently, or because you don't have a key for every person. We're trying to get this thing down, but so far we've had several opportunities where an unscrupulous person could have taken things from our unlocked room, either while we were asleep of when we had mistakenly left the room unlocked.

Franz Josef Glacier...
John decided to take a 1/2 day hike onto the glacier itself though one of the local companies. My knee was still swollen, so Thomas and I decided to drive to the Franz Josef park and just hike up to the glacier, not onto it. Check out John's journal to get info on his glacier trek.

Thomas and I had a good walk up to the glacier. It was a sunny day and good for photos. We may have seen John's group further up on the glacier. I'll be posting some photos of the people on glacier hikes that I took from below the glacier. The Franz Josef is supposedly one of two glaciers in the world where the glacier actually comes down to the treeline. It never ceases to amaze me that in New Zealand you can be swimming with seals one day and climbing on a glacier the next.

After John returned from his glacier hike, we had lunch and headed for the place where we could get a $90 scenic helicopter flight. The three of us took the flight in a Hughes 500C helicopter. It was quite clear, but also quite windy. The helicopter hugged the trees to avoid the extreme winds that were present higher up. It was an great flight and the first helicopter flight for both John and Thomas. The view from the front seat of a helicopter is quite spectacular. You even have visibility below your feet through the plexiglas bubble! I was next to the full length plexiglas door and more visibility than one needs. Wish we could have gone higher and stayed up longer, but it was still awesome experience.

That evening we made dinner and watched some American TV shows that are shown in New Zealand, Desperate Housewives and Invasion.

Pancake Rocks...
It was a clear, sunny day, so we decided to backtrack to the Pancake Rocks and also explore another place slightly further north, the Truman Track.

The walk through the Pancakes rocks was spectacular! The waves coming into the shoreline at that section of the coastline are enormous. But their power and size are further emphasized by the formations they encounter at Pancake Rocks. I think you'll just have to wait for the photos and videos to appear on the web site to get any idea of what I'm talking about.

After the Pancake Rocks we took the Truman track down to a rugged beach that had unusual formations and crashing surf. John thought he could make it to another area down the beach by waiting for the waves to retreat and running in between. I've got a video. It's quite funny, he did a good job!

We headed south back through Greymouth towards Franz Josef. On the way we stopped at a recreation site by a beautiful river coming out of the mountains. A small outfit there offered short, scenic helicopter flights for $90/person. We decided to see what was available when we got to Franz Josef before we commited to anything.

We found the Montrose Backpacker, unloaded our stuff and made dinner.

From Nelson to Greymouth...
The next morning Thomas joined us for the rest of our journey in New Zealand. We headed southwest abd planned to visit the Pancake Rocks on our way to Greymouth. The weather started out very nice, but we encountered rain as we hit the coast. We took a detour to visit a seal colony at Cape Foulwind. So named either a) because of the foul weather that frequents this area, or b) for the smell of the seal colony. The weather was foul, chilling rain and strong wind, but we make the walk to see the colony and it was well worth it. There were at least 80 seals that I counted and probably a lot more that I didn't see. A mixture of females and pups.

Their constant activity is fascinating! Some of the females were nursing their pups. Other pups were awkwardly moving all over the place on their flippers. Four adventurous pups tried to enter the surf, which was huge! I shot a video of four of them attempting to go into the water, then getting hit by a large wave and three of the four immediately retreating back onto the rocks. I assume the fourth made it out to the deeper water.

We decided to head to Greymouth and not stop at Pancake Rocks, hoping to visit them in better weather the next day. We stayed at the Neptune hostel. It was a very clean and nice fish themed hotel.

Swim with the seals...
Started driving to Kaiteriteri,to met the guide to take us on a trip to swim with the seals in Abel Tasman Park. We took a wrong turn, backtracked, stopped at visitor center and got the right directions. They even called ahead for us to inform the tour company we'd be a bit late!

Our tour guide was John "The Walrus". He was a really cool older guy with a Santa Claus beard. He was a born story teller. There was one other participant besides John and I, a woman, joined us for the trip.

We took a very fast (225-HP outboard engine) water taxi and made a few stops along the way for John "The Walrus" to point out features and share stories. "Split-apple" rock is like it's named, a rock dramatically split in two. John told us the Maori tale of how the rock came to be split in the conflict between a water god and a land god. We later stopped to view a replica of one of the traditional Maori rowing boats, now manned by Maori guides as the helmsman and the cockswan and tourists for the rowers. You have to pay to get the privilege to row! Looked kinda fun.

We finally arrived at Turtle Island where we were supposed to swim with the seals. It was no problem finding them. We saw about 20 or or so, some on the shore, others in the water. We donned our wet suits and snorkeling gear and swam to them. They came to join us. The seals were most active when we elected to grab a breath and dive under for as long as we could hold our breath. There were usually two or three of them swimming close to us during the entire hour we were there! I had some problems with my gear, a faulty snorkel, a not well-fitting mask and then my wet suit was just a bit too small, but it was still an amazing experience. John was the best in diving and interacting with the seals. One of the seals did a complete out of the water leap about 3-feet from John's head! The water was quite clear and quite chilly. We finally had to leave our wild friends and head back to the boat.

We landed at the beach, grabbed a bite to eat and John told us stories and did two puppet shows, one with a Tuatara (lizard) puppet and the other with a rat and a stoats puppet. He sang a song for the interaction between the rat and the stoat that was quite funny! Both puppet shows were both quite entertaining.

We had a fast trip back on this gorgeous, sunny day along the awesome coast of Abel Tasman Park. Our final night of chealp Thai food and got ready to leave the next day.