3 weeks into OZ and we finally update...oops

Well, we've been in the great expans of East Coast Australia for 3 weeks and am now just getting to an update. Traveling here hasn't been as easy as NZ because we're going by Greyhound and staying at hostels along the way. Our 1st few days in Cairns were hot, but relaxing after we got some winter clothes shipped back home (for a small fortune!). We took our 3 day dive trip out the Great Barrier Reef and completed our Advanced Diving course. We did 11 dives, including 2 night dives and saw tons of marine life. Got a start to our summer in the tropics with rain storms and muggy nights, but it was a good start. From Cairns we traveled down a few hours to Townsville and took a ferry over to Magnetic Island for a few nights. There we got to know the local tropical wildlife sounds of birds and bats constant through the night! We also finally saw exotic fauna in the wild...koalas! Even pet one while on a hike! After a few relaxing days on the beach there we headed back to the mainland and went south to Airlie Bewach. A party beach town with an awesome salt water "lagoon" to swim in. Like in Cairns, there isn't a good beach to swim at in these places so they make these man-made swimming lagoons that are sparkling clean with sandy beaches and shady grass areas. Nice when it's 100 degrees out!

From Airlie Beach we went south a little more to Rockhampton--and crossed the Tropic of Capricorn there. We only stayed here to visit some caves 15km north of town, but there was no transportation to the caves, so we were sorely dissapointed and spent the day in the sweltering heat roaming the botanic gardens before hoping on the next bus south.

We rode the bus all night and just to be let off at 5am "near" where we wanted to go--The Australia Zoo. Only problem was that "near" was 15kms away, Crikey! So off we went....walking. We walked for an hour and then got breakfast at a small gas station place, walked for a little more and found a nice park type place to nap on a picnic table, walked for a little more and by then it was getting hot and we had walked 8kms. 2kms later we hit the nearest town and knew we could get a bus from there. The next bus wasn't for an hour but the guy told us we could walk, it was only 3kms to the zoo! We decided to wait! Got breakfast and finally made it there at 10am. It was a fun day seeing the crocs, feeding the elephants, seeing the tigers and all the Steve memorabelia. Not a bad day....LONG, but fun. A bus picked us up from the zoo (luckily!) and took us straight on to Brisbane, only about an hour and a half away. Brisbane turned out to be a pretty awesome big city so we decided to stay about 10 days here. After 3 days we met up with some friends from the ski field and it turned out they were headed up the coast to a beach villa for the week and they invited us along....awesome! So it was back out of the hostels and up the coast...straight through the town we walked to! And from the highway to the town it was a 10 minute drive. What took us almost 3 hours to walk was a short buzz in the car! We spend three awesome nights on the coast just chillin and hanging out in luxury before coming back to Brisbane. Since we had pre-paid for a week at the hostel we got an extension for the nights we were gone and are finishing them up here. It's been fun, we've walked a TON but it's super hot and we're ready to go. The hostel isn't the greatest (diiiirty, cramped kitchen!) but we have a 4 person room with a private bathroom so it's bearable. There's only so much you can do on the cheap in a big city and we've done it. In 2 days we'll move on down to Surfers Paradise for 2 nights at a (free) Holiday Inn which is a super nice hotel there and we'll recharge and relax in the air-con until we move on again in a few days.

In all, Australia has had it's awesome moments, but it's super expensive. Things here cost so much more than in the states and we're eating through our $$ like a kid at Christmas. Only 3 more weeks until we get back to California and we can't wait. It's sad we missed Thanksgiving, but at least we got to talk to our families and "share" in the festivities over the phone. At least we'll be home for the Holidays. Check back soon for pictures :)

Goodbye New Zealand...Hello Australia!!!

So here we are, our last full day in New Zealand. We've been here almost 5 months and have had a blast. Since our last post we have been quite busy. We left off in Christchurch and our anniversary. From Christchurch we traveled down the east coast of the South Island finding a few nice places to stop off along the way. We went inland a bit to Lakes Pukaki and Tekapo where the views are amazing, however, the weather didn't cooperate with us. From lake Pukaki one is supposed to see Mt Cook (highest point in NZ). All we saw were clouds, not to mention that the wind made it way too cold to even cook breakfast! From there we traveled back out to the coast and went through NZ's largest college town, Dunedin. While there we took a tour of the Cadbury chocolate factory and scored enough free chocolate to last us for the rest of our trip. We moved on to the Catlins Conservation Park in the south east corner of the south island. We found a nice place to camp on the beach, only to have it storm and hail that night. We woke up to calmer weather and decided to head to Invercargill and Bluff. This ended up being one of our longer driving days as we drove through Invercargill all the way to Fiordland National Park on the west coast. Once again, the weather didn't cooperate. All of our beautiful views included solid cloud cover and rain! A little put down by the weather we drove inland to Queenstown where we spent a couple of days in a hostel (warm showers and a kitchen). The weather cleared up and we had a couple of great days. After recharging our batteries, we headed north up the west coast to check out NZ's famous glaciers, Fox and Franz Joseph. They ended up being quite different from our ideas of calving Alaska glaciers. Instead of terminating in a lake or ocean, these glaciers only had a small stream running from them, and the ice was the color of rock! We stayed close by for the night and then continued north to Greymouth where we met up with 3 other Americans who we worked with on the mountain. They managed to find an american football while they were travelling, so we spent a sun filled afternoon throwing the football in a local park and writing post cards. That evening we took a tour of the Monteiths Brewery. It was short and informative, with multiple tastings at the end. We "camped" in the parking lot that night and the next morning traveled the remainder of the west coast and ended up in Abel Tasman National Park where we were lucky to have a day of nice weather. We spent an extra day around the Nelson area, where we booked our ferry crossing for the next morning. We made our early morning ferry crossing after spending two weeks in the South Island, most of it sleeping in the back of the car! Our crossing was quite interesting with rather rough seas in Cook Straight. Ashely was quite fine while I was a bit seasick, and spent quite a bit of the time outside getting sprayed with cold seawater! Back on the north island with most of the day ahead of us still, we traveled up to Napier on the east coast in order to take advantage of the one nice day of weather that was being forcasted for the next day. We woke up to sunshine and birds singing, and took off to taste some of the local wines. We spent the rest of the day and the next in the Napier area enjoying a bit of the city. From there we went to New Zealand's most sun-filled city, Gisborne, where it managed to rain the entire time we were there! I guess bad weather just follows us. While in Gisborne we posted the car for sale online, and decided to spend an extra day in Auckland to make sure that we had plenty of time to sell it. We decided to cut out a trip around the north islands northeastern tip and cut straight across to the Bay of Plenty. We spent a day here and then traveled to the Coromandel Peninsula. Coromandel is home to the famous Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove. At Hot Water Beach we dug a nice hole in the sand and let the superheated water (140 degrees F) seep up. Luckily our hole was positioned perfectly so that one end had cold water and the other hot, so as to make it the perfect temperature! From there it was straight to Auckland to get ready to sell the car and minimize our gear down to one backpack each. We printed out flyers and went to all the local hostels to post them on their bulletin boards. After about 2 days we had a couple coming from Australia look at the car and make us an offer of $1500 NZD which was exactly what we paid for it. So we basically managed to get a free rental for almost a month! Since then we've just been staying with friends of friends in the Auckland area and are now getting ready to fly out. We're moving to a hotel out close to the airport tonight since our flight leaves at 6:45 am. So that's about it for now. We'll be in Cairns for a few days before our dive boat leaves on its 3 day dive trip to the Great Barrier Reef! Hopefully we'll get an update out soon after we're in Australia!