Days 18 and 19 - Ticket to Ride

Day 18 - Ticket to Ride

Another day up at 6 to get to the airport for our flight to Adelaide for our train trip to Alice Springs. It's exhausting just writing about it.

The Flight was uneventful, up and down, an hour, but a half hour difference in time. So we picked up a half hour on you all.

We took a taxi and arrived at the train station with 2 hours to spare. The train is The Ghan after the Afghan Cameleers who first went out to Alice Springs. Who would think a train would have more strict rules for luggage than a plane - 20 kilo and that be all for any single bag. When we checked in Maddi had to take 1 1/2 kilo out of her suitcase, which gave her another thing to carry onto the train. Pat had her purse, large bag and camera bag plus the roll-on suitcase for carry on, Maddi her backpack, the item she took out of her suitcase, her camera and her roll on suitcase. Ring and Gilman Sherpas Inc. They are VERY strict about the weight allowance of checked baggage. Something about not having the trainmen hurt themselves!!!!!

We were booked in a twin compartment with washing facilities (toilet down the hall) and access to the lounge and dining cars, meals being extra. Since we had so much time to kill we decided to check out an upgrade. We upgraded to the Gold level, which is a compartment with an upper and lower bed, but en suite facilities and meals included. You only live once, right!!!

The compartment was small but compact, the "en suite" was very cleverly designed. The sink and toilet ware pull downs, so they stow flat one on top of the other. What fun flushing!!!!! The shower was the whole room, with the drain in the floor, (all hotels have the drain in the center of the bathroom floor). The lounge was lovely and the dining room very pretty but
food - not up to snuff for these New Yorkers. Everyone else on the train seemed to love it, so much for taste.

The views were okay, waiting for the Outback which we are to be in in the morning.

Repaired to the compartment after dinner and that was it for us. Once again, the night owls were done in by 9:30! Pat in the lower bunk and Maddi upstairs. Moving around with the suitcases and the upper bunk ladder made getting ready for bed a comedy of errors.

Day 19 - Alice's Restaurant

Today we slept in - 7AM. We awoke to the Outback, a huge expanse of short green trees and red earth. Along the way a cow or two and some birds. It was a vey relaxing 24 hours. We read, photographed out the window and got in several games of gin. We have a travel game we started 10 years ago. Then off the train in Alice Springs and went to the "resort" into which we were booked, dragged our suitcases up a flight of steps (no help it seems) and checked in. Not what we would call a resort, but we can deal with our travel agent later. Best thing is it is 70 degrees and sunny, way better than the weather down south.

Unloaded in our room and went for a walk to the centre of town. Went into several souvenir shops since that's about all there is to do, bought a few things and came back to the room. Since we have to get up very early again tomorrow, it will once again be an early night.

Day 17 - The Magic Bus

After a long and comfortable night's sleep, we are off to see the Blue Penguins, Koalas, and other native creatures near Melbourne on Phillips Island.

What a day!!! If this day is any indication of things to come, we are in for a great time in Australia.

Maddi and her Wallaby

Patricia and her Koala

First stop was an animal reserve where we saw the following: Koalas, Kookaburra, Emu, Wombat, Pukeko, Dingos, Cockatoos, wallabies , Tasmanian Devil, Barking Owl, Gray Heron, Cape Barren Goose. Upon arrival at the Reserve we were greeted by a gentleman with a snake, which Pat had wrapped around her. Cool. Pat also had the treat of petting the Koala, see picture on Facebook as well as here. We both petted a wallaby. Soft and furry and cute.

Our first kangaroo

Cute little Wallaby

From the reserve we went to the Koala Sanctuary where the Koalas are free (more or less) and you walk on a boardwalk and look in the trees for them. And they were there, balls of fur up in the trees. They sleep 20 hours a day high up in eucalyptus trees. We saw at least five of them.

Moving along down the island there was a visit to what looked like an old wild west town. There was a demonstration of herding dogs, sheep shearing and whip snapping. The sheep shearing was pretty interesting and there were several animals to photograph.

Next stop was an overview of an area of fur seals and penguins, of which there were none, but a beautiful view of blowholes, the sea and sunset.

Wonderful Shoreline - but no seals

Finally, the piece de resistance. It's called the Penguin Parade. At dark, the Little Penguins (Blues in New Zealand) come marching out of the sea to go to their burrows for a few days rest. They are the smallest penguins in the world, about 12 inches high and weigh about 2 pounds. They have blue backs and white bellies to protect them from predators. When they swim their blue backs camouflage them from flying predators and the white fronts make them blend with the sky when viewed from below. They are very social within their groups but not so much with people. There is no photography allowed because it disturbs the penguins. The guide told us that the penguin population in the area doubled when they stopped the flashing and clicking of cameras. One would need to use flash, which probably wouldn't work anyway, they are pretty far away when they come out of the water.

We waited sitting in stands at the beach. At first one or two penguins came out of the surf, stood at the edge of the beach near the water and seemed to be waiting. All of a sudden there were 10 or 15 more on the beach. (this happened in several spots along the water's edge) They gather together like a group hug and march off across the beach towards their burrows. They know which burrow is theirs and their mates are either with them or will be arriving soon. These little guys mate for life. Once they marched off the beach, we followed them from a boardwalk as they walked towards their burrows. It may have been one of the coolest experiences of our travels.

Off to Adelaide tomorrow and The Ghan, which is a train that runs from Adelaide to Darwin in the north. We are only taking it as far as Alice Springs and Uluru (Ayres Rock). We will be out of computer range for a day or two, but look for us at Uluru for some images of the rock at dawn.

Day 16 -Down Under

So begins our second leg of the journey. We reluctantly left New Zealand at the crack of dawn (the reluctance applies to both New Zealand AND the crack of dawn) and flew, once again, on a great airline New Zealand Air, to Melbourne. Shuttle bus took us to our hotel in the heart of downtown Melbourne. A little shabby but nice. The bathrooms seem to be the best part of all the places we have stayed so far, even the igloo in Arrowtown.

So we arrive and discover we are here for two nights. We were thinking we had to rush through Melbourne, but we didn't. For 2+ weeks we worried not about how may nights we were where. Time to take charge of our own stuff now. Anyway after the glorious countryside and small towns we acknowledge we really don't like big cities. After all we live in the best of them in the world. So what to do on the second day. The Melbourne information center is great. We picked up a few day tour brochures and booked a trip to see the Blue (or Little, as they call them) Penguins and Koalas at a reserve near the ocean with several stops along the way at different beaches, not to swim (it's quite cold here) but for some sites we will report on tomorrow. If we had realized we had two days here and no days in Adelaide, we probably would have split the difference and spent a day/night in each. (A note to trip planners: when you plan a trip 18 months in advance, check it a few months before you go so you remember where you are going in case you want to change something!!!!)

Tram 

Great Architecture

Of course we wandered around the city for several hours and found it to be very eclectic in it's architecture, some quite modern, some quite traditional, all quite nice. Too many people. Having come from NZ where there are no people, this was culture shock even for us New Yorkers, and all the young people wandering here and there, on the phone, on computers in the hot zones, rushing home from work or out for the evening.

Old Baths

Street Sculpture

Melbourne has a huge Chinatown, about a block from our hotel, we ate lunch there and took half of it back for tomorrow's dinner since we will be coming back from the penguins late. The room has a fridge and a microwave and plates and silverware. With that and the chopsticks we packed with our leftover "take away" we are all a set.

We were going to book an opera for the evening, they are doing La Boheme (Pat said that was a good one for opera novice Maddi), but we were exhausted so we went back to the room, got our computers, marched over to the free internet hotspot, posted our blog and, like many of our other days, were asleep by 9!!!! On the first trip back to the room we did find something that cities offer more than other places. There was a wonderful group set up on the street playing Gypsy Kings music. We listened until they packed up and it was as good as much concert music one might hear.

Great street music

Not the most exciting day of the trip but onward we go.

Oh, and the exchange rate sucks.

Day 14 & 15 -Shake Rattle and Roll

Our last two days are combined into one - not a long story in each. We left Lake Tekapo in pretty much the same weather we arrived, cold, overcast, rainy. This part of the trip is ending the same way it started. Thankfully the middle was sunny.

We headed toward Christchurch taking in the sites as we went, not much new to see, rolling hills, the balance of the 40 million sheep we had missed on our other days and no sun. There may not be much different on this ride but it is still beautiful. The thing about this country is not so much that it has beauty, several of the places remind one of Pennsylvania, Iceland etc, but that it never stops. It is a non stop run on changing terrain of continuous pretty. Pretty much an ooh and aah and wow country.

We stopped in Geraldine to see the "world's largest sweater" and a fabulous copy, in steel chips, of the Bayeaux Tapestry. The gentleman who designed and created it also is a puzzle maker, mostly math type puzzles, fascinating. We both bought his CD with the puzzles as well as the info on the Tapestry. The shop was called The Worlds Largest Jersey .... Coulda been a cow .... Was a sweater that they call a jumper anyway . His little tapestry is made of over 2 million of these tiny chips with the colored ones hand painted before application. You can make your own judgement about the sanity of it all.

Teeny Tiny chips for the mosaic

Earthquake Destruction

Driving on through the rain we finally got to Christchurch and before checking into the hotel did a short tour up the rim of the crater which created the harbor. Fog fog fog, mist, mist, mist, ugh ugh ugh. However, we ended up at She Chocalat for lunch and some of the best chocolate around. Then we drove through town and saw some of the rubble from the quake that might have devastated one building and left the one right next door completely unscathed.

The Hotel George is wonderful, best hotel in Christchurch we were told. Laundry facility and everything. Had we known we had laundry in every hotel we would have taken way fewer clothes and smaller suitcases. So the wet laundry from the day before was dried and we went out for a wonderful Japanese dinner.

Got to sleep in on our last day, but what a spectacular day it was. It started with some rocking and rolling during breakfast. Several seconds of aftershock. All of a sudden it sounded like a great wind and the room swerved a bit.

Akaroa front yard

Hector Dolphins

Hector Dolphin showing off

The sun shone brightly, temperature was warm and we drove out to Akaroa to do a dolphin boat tour. What a treat. The Hector dolphins is the smallest and most endangered of the dolphins. There they were romping and flipping and diving all around the boat out in the Pacific Ocean. And amongst the dolphins were the tiny blue penguin. Very shy creatures so we could not get very close but did manage to see four swimming around. Off in the distance was a trawler so there were dozens of birds in the water and in the sky, Royal Albatross (same as we saw in the reserve but here in the open), Giant Petrels, great brown birds flying and dipping, and makes and models of pelagic flyers, outstanding. After about an hour we had to return to the dock but on the way there were fur seals and cormorants (here called Shags) along the shore.

Seals in the Pacific

Royal Albatross

Upon returning, we met a member of PWP who lives in Christchurch, an American who came here a while ago and stayed. Nice to see someone from home so far away.

For our farewell dinner, we took Sally and John, our guides, to a lovely restaurant called Cookin' with Gas, which was delish. Back to the hotel, one more load of laundry and off to an early start to Australia.

Day -13 -Rain Drops

We arose early (what else) to a clear day and lo and behold we could actually see across the inlet to Dunedin. John 2 (the butler - and apparently our private butler since we were the lone residents in this huge house) was ready for us in the kitchen where we had breakfast and took off for parts north and west. To our surprise this hotsy totsy kitchen had no espresso machine or whipper so no flat white this morning.

We went into Dunedin and stopped at the steepest street in the world, Baldwin Street and took the mandatory photo. We opted out of a morning tour of the Cadbury chocolate factory so off we went. Guess what, it started to rain. We had been so lucky in the South Island, but it caught up to us.

Baldwin Street - Worlds Steepest

Moeraki Boulders

On the road to see the unexplained boulders at the beach at Moeraki (place to sit or daydream in Maori). No one quite knows why or how the boulders got on the beach but there they sit quite impressively. One theory is that they were ballast on Chinese ships hundreds of years ago ..... Who knows? So we tramped a bit through the wet sand and went on to our next port of call.

Glacial Lake Autumnal Color

There was a photo stop along the way at a turquoise glacial lake with golden autumnal colored trees around it. The color contrast was just lovely.

Sheeps

Driving north toward Mt Cook the weather got worse. There was no real hope that we would see the top but as we sat having coffee at the Heritage Lodge at Lake Tekapo the top peaked through the clouds, but that was it. The Heritage Lodge has an Alpine Center dedicated to Sir Edmund Hillary, who we all know(or should know) was the first to reach the top of Mt Everest. The area is a major mountain climbing area and we did see some incredible cloud/sun pattern in the sky (well where else?)

Amazing Sky

We drove on to our lodging for the night at Lake Tekapo, Peppers. Quite a lovely place. The area has a well know observatory which Pat signed up to go see but the weather was so bad that the trip was cancelled. The room was actually a town house with living room, dining room, full kitchen...fully equipped with everything but NAPKINS!!! Downstairs we had a GORGEOUS bathroom, bedroom and laundry facility. So let's do our laundry said we. This turned out to be a comedy of errors with endless wet cycles in our machine, saved by the evening fellow, getting the wrong clothes later that night, getting our clothes back several hours later, back to the wrong wet clothes delivered in the morning to bla bla bla.

It is the morning after, as this is being written so you will happy to know that the clothes are still not dry. We are driving this morning with a bag of damp clothes in the back.

Back to our evening, we ordered room service which was very good, watched NCIS LA and Law and Order SVU (fairly recent episodes too) and played cards. On to Christchurch.

Day 12 - Lullaby of Birdland

One of the odder things in the Castle

Castle Garden

We awoke to lousy weather at the castle, when we opened the 

   curtains, what was supposed to have a "royal" view of the valley and town of Dunedin, didn't even show the driveway, but we were in our toasty fire place heated room. We had a lovely breakfast, prepared by John 2, what we affectionately called our butler. Then John 1 (what we called our chauffeur) came to fetch us for the day. We are two of four at the Camp Estate House, an adjunct of Larnach Castle, and started our day by going to the Castle for a look see and a walk through the gardens which are now winterized. The castle has a wonderful history and had been beautifully restored. The butler was kind enough to print our Sunday NY Times puzzle for us. We like the butler and chauffeur thing.

Then it was down the mountain to Dunedin where we took a walk. We went to the Train Station, which is a lovely building in a country of particularly plain towns, and then up the hill to the Octagon, which was the first area of the city. When the town was founded Engineers drew a map of what the area looked like, but without the geographic hills and dales, and sent it to England to have the city designed, which they did without thought to these hills and valleys. Odd city, very very steep streets, one of which is in the book of records as the steepest street in the world.

Dunedin Train Station

Feeding Albatross

We wandered around a bit, had pizza for lunch and went on to the Albatross Reserve where we saw several babies, one being fed by a parent, not able to tell whether it was a mom or dad unless you see them together, or you look at their leg bands.

With a couple of hours to kill we had soup at the reserve and moved on down the road to see the Yellow Eyed Penguins. This was really exciting. The mom and daddy yellow eyes were just coming home from fishing, so we got to see them coming out of the water and walking to their little huts. They are very anti-social so we had to keep our distance. Cute little buggers with yellow eyes!!!!!!! We walked through underground trenches to where they were walking up the hills to their homes, and then back into the trenches under their paths so a couple walked over our heads, you could hear their claws on the wood. A bunch of fur seals were lounging on the grass. Very lazy. If they are not hungry they can just lay on the grass for days in the sun ( if there ever would be any).

Yellow Eyed Penguin (Patricia) 

After a long walk up the steps from the penguin beach we went back to the estate for our castle dinner. Four of us, the other two were a lovely couple from England, sat in the Castle's formal dining room and were served a lovely dinner. Butler, chauffeur, maid, what could be better. We were alone in the Camp Estate overnight, no other guests, so when they brought us back from dinner they locked us in. Felt a little like the Hound of the Baskervilles, with the fog and the wind howling but we survived to write this entry!

Another great sky

Since we cant match it we are off to Lake Tekapo for the soon to be last leg of our NZ journey.

Day 11 - Play Misty for Me

Day 11 - Play Misty for Me

We had an early rising on the boat since breakfast was at whatever time SHARP and there were very specific instructions about when to do what so they can keep everything running. It was by far the warmest night we have had so far. Teeny cabin + large radiator = heaven. It was dark when we got up, but that's the case every day. The sun doesn't come up until 7ish. The chef had a full buffet breakfast ready and then we went outside. It was so calm on the water they never put the sails up. There is something called the Sounds of Silence, it is done in Australia as well at Uluru Rock, where there is not a sound in the world, except maybe a bird or two (and the morons on the boat who don't understand what "please be quiet" means). With water like glass, not a breeze rustling, so peaceful and eerie at the same time. Stood for about 10 minutes listening to the silence.

Doubtful Sound

Beautiful Misty Scenery

When we got off the boat, bus, boat journey return, John was there to meet us and off we went for the next and soon to be last leg of our journey in NZ. The day was not nice weather wise. Lots of overcast sky and breezy cool temperatures so we headed east towards Dunedin and the yellow eyed penguins and albatrosses. We learned there are 40 million sheep in NZ and we saw every one of them. Finally got John to stop at the side of the road to take some up close and personal sheep shots; sheep, not the rolled and bailed kind (see left), We had a picnic lunch in the car and kept rocking and rolling. On straight to Dunedin for two nights instead of one - YAY a 2 night stay. - first in the trip.

One in millions (Patricia)

On a hill on the Otago Peninsula there is a castle. We were supposed to stay in it but there was no room. The result was we were ensconced at the Camp Estate. The Castle has an additional manor house, built for the overflow, where we had a room with a fireplace (gas but warm) and just beautiful - the Camp Estate.

We had dinner with John at a lovely little place in a town called Portobello and then up the foggy mountain to our estate. The wind howled all night but we were cozy in our down covered beds and fireplace warmed room.

Tomorrow we are off to see Dunedin, walk around a little, something we haven't done a lot of and see some wildlife in the wild.