Coffs Harbor, NSW, AU
The Australian East Coast Adventure continues!!
After recovering from the surfboard chafing…
…yes, chafing. From surfboards.
We decided to embark on our next genuine Aussie backpacker experience:
We went fruit picking.
Surf’s Up!
Coffs Harbor, NSW, AU
Our Australian East Coast Adventure continues!!
Ok, we all know why Greg says he’s from San Francisco right?
So what he didn’t mention was that this habit started when he was in at the Coast Guard Academy and the following conversation inevitably followed from meeting a new person at school:
That was anti-climatic
Blue Mountains, NSW, AU
Sydney is…
Well…
…Anti-climatic.
A Teaspoon of Concrete
Mt. Aspiring National Park, NZ
[fgallery id=7 w=450 h=385 t=0 title=”Mount Aspiring Descent”]
After a week of enjoying the excellent company and stunning views provided by living on a mountain surrounded by glaciers and waterfalls from, most importantly, behind the protective barrier of a New Zealand hut, the day finally came for us to depart. Unfortunately no one decided to tell the rain.
Now seems an opportune moment to discuss a little saying, a philosophy if you will, that we’ve found is said down here when things get a little tough:
“Take a teaspoon of concrete and harden up!”
With that little nugget of Kiwi wisdom we depart our shelter and remember that “Kiwi Moderate” cliff face we crawled up a few days ago?
Now it’s a waterfall…and our only way down:
A Hut Warden’s Life
French Ridge hut
Mt. Aspiring National Park, NZ
Notices posted on the kitchen wall of French Ridge hut:
Seriously, we freaking love these people.
By now we’ve mentioned it enough that you’re probably asking “Hey guys? What are these huts and wardens and whatnot you keep talking about?”
Continue reading “A Hut Warden’s Life”
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Kiwi Moderate
Mt. Aspiring National Park, NZ
Another aspect of friendship is the joint lexicon a group develops over time. Shared experiences become stories, stories become jokes, jokes become catchphrases and so on until it gets to the point where simply mentioning the last name of a high school teacher will bring smirks, smiles or groans of anguish from the right circle of people while making absolutely no sense to anyone else.
The longer one stays with a given group, the more detailed this secret language becomes. By extrapolation, one can easily concede that in 11+ years of exclusive relationship (8+ of actual marriage) quite an expansive vocabulary would develop. We bring this up, dear friends, to issue you fair warning:
If either of us ever describe an activity you are about to join us on as “Kiwi moderate” run away quickly.
Kiwi Killers
Helensville, NZ
There is an invading force that is, right now as we write this, entrenched in the sovereign territory of New Zealand.
Estimates vary widely but everyone seems to think there are AT LEAST seven invaders for every man, woman and child of this nation. Yes, that would be a force 30 million strong and growing by the day.
Not happy to simply live here in a land known for its beauty and kind hearted peoples, these soulless devils are pillaging the land and actually killing the natives in their own homes. Likely, at this very moment a mother is watching powerlessly as her innocent offspring is ruthlessly murdered by this merciless horde.
We are speaking, of course, of possums. Evil, dirty, disease-ridden, kiwi-killing possums.
Continue reading “Kiwi Killers”
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It’s the smell!
Auckland, New Zealand
Auckland just smells good.
Being people who grew up in cities, we got used to the smells that are a normal part of urban life: car exhaust, cleaning chemicals, in San Francisco the smell of cable car brakes is fairly common. Millions upon millions of people living closely together are going to generate smells. Most of them are not overly pleasant.
Auckland hasn’t yet hit that people to landmass ratio and there is an abundance of vegetation throughout the city. So as we walked around it was not unusual to stop suddenly, look at each other while sniffing the air and say, “wow, that smells amazing!”
Like we said, it was early spring when we arrived and while it was way too cold for Tiffany to think anything it its right mind would grow, apparently no one had told the Kiwi plants that.
Pirates!
Tongatapu, Tonga
The capital island is all-in-all not as cool as Vava’u. But hey, it ain’t bad and they got the awesome fried rice we mentioned in our last post, not to mention the royal estate.
And goats! Goats they’ve got.
Back on the Surface
Vava’u, Tonga
Like we said, Vava’u is a cruising paradise and there are just some things you need a boat for:
Just in case you thought the water was nothing but frolicking baby whales and amazing coral, we found out that Tonga waters also play host to hundreds of jellyfish that “come up” at night.