Take 4 sailors without boats, a bottle of wine, a ukulele without a tuner, a fervent desire to celebrate the holidays and way too much free time and what do you get?
Hi-larity.
KGB ukulele Christmas 2012
It’s time again for another foray into our tiki-style Christmas carol extravaganza!
This time with a little help / good natured tomfoolery from our friends Rod & Elizabeth, who we just happened to stumble across during a visit back to California…
(hey, what!? We all happened to both be back in CA at the same time? As we already told you all, in the sailing world it was just a matter of time and proximity.)
They were even nice enough to teach us that cold war Christmas classic…
Australia lied to us
The Great Ocean Road, VIC, AU
Australia has a lot of coastline. It ranges from swampy marshes, to beautiful beaches, to craggy cliffs and everything in between. Victoria, in the southeastern part of the country, has miles of land that meets water. One of the most celebrated of those regions is the Great Ocean Road. We first heard about it in a travel magazine a few years ago, and Tiffany thought it looked gorgeous so we decided to check it out (via wine country of course! We’ll post more about that soon.)
Little did we know that this was…a thing…that one does. Drive the Great Ocean Road that is. It’s a thing…that Australians ask…if you’ve done. So consequently….
Life Achievement Unlocked:
Drive The Great Ocean Road.
(Hey, who are we to say it’s not epic?)
Dumb ‘Roos
Snowy Mountains, NSW, AU
In Australia, they don’t call it a “bull bar.” They call it a “roo bar”
And it seems like every vehicle over here has one.
And we wonder where they got the idea for Mad Max…
The first thing we did on our great Australian overland excursion was to (inadvertently!!) find out why this is so:
Calling Home
Mt Kosciuszko, NSW, AU
Today we cover two interesting and mostly unrelated facts.
1) Though literally miles from anywhere even slightly resembling civilization, Mt Kosciuszko is probably the only member of the 7 summits that has mobile phone reception.
Yep, up there. Best coverage in the area.
2) Greg’s self confidence most likely comes from his mother’s side of the family.
The last mountain we were on top of in the southern hemisphere had less cell phone coverage but more snarky commentary.
Greg and Tiffany are traveling around the world on sailing yachts and keep a video blog of their (mis)adventures. If sailing to Tahiti on a 44 ft sailboat, 3-day delays for wine tastings, getting pooped on by seagulls, opening coconuts with dull machetes, sailing past tornadoes and ukulele Christmas carols are for you, then check them out atwww.CoastGuardCouple.com!
Related posts:
Self-propelled ski lift
Jindabyne, NSW, AU
Having developed a bit of confidence learning the fine art of falling down hills with spikes attached to our feet and discovering how much we actually kinda liked trudging over frozen tundra…
…we decided it would make a lot more sense just to drag our snowbaords to the top of a mountain and slide down that way.
Vegemite and firearms
Jindabyne, NSW, AU
Being as Australia isn’t exactly known for its alpine ski industry pretty much no one outside the natives typically makes it to the slopes here.
The upside of this is that working at a ski resort in Australia enabled us to meet one of our main goals for our time down under: we spent 3 months working and living with actual Australians. As opposed to our previous job where we spent the majority of our time around European cowgirls; here for three months we were immersed in a, granted atypical but nonetheless genuine, Aussie cultural experience.
This, inevitability, led to the conversation on Vegemite.
Because Vegemite in Australia is a lot like guns in America.
Australian snow is cold…and hard.
Jindabyne, NSW, AU
Greg loves video editing.
So easy to make something look really awesome that, in truth, went so very, very, VERY wrong…
The doctor recommended stitches but Tiffany convinced him to go with medical tape first. She still has the scar.
Chairlift PLZ!
Jindabyne, NSW, AU
Travel is all about learning about other cultures right? How other people do things differently from us and how that works out for them.
Like snow…in August.
For example, Australians don’t really believe in chairlifts at their ski resorts and when Americans show up it provides a source of much amusement to them.
Working for a bed
Pittwater, NSW, AU
Living for free as volunteer crew on someone else’s yacht sounds all well and good while you’ve got a boat to live on but we are often asked what we do when we’re between yachts.
Our first few months in Australia are a good example. After we left our work with the racing stable there was about a month before we found a job “sailing” in New Zealand and after that about another month before we decided the best way to celebrate the 4th of July was to get trapped in a genuine Australian blizzard. Both of these situations were the same: too short a time to find a temporary position but too long to want to pay for a hotel in a country with a high cost of living. So we had to answer the question –
What does a sailor do for a cheap night’s rest down under?