On to New Zealand

I had been told that New Zealand has beautiful scenery and it does but it also has wonderful, friendly people, and fun cities. No bats! We flew from Sydney and landed  in Christchurch on the south island. On the day we arrived, our group of 40 was divided into smaller groups and each group was taken to a private home for a home hosted dinner.  This is the couple who entertained us. They, and others, host these dinners for tourist groups as a fund raiser for various charities.  Our hosts were very gracious, made us feel really welcome, kept the conversations flowing and served us the best food we had on the entire trip.  I'm sure this personal interaction is one of the reasons I have come away with such a positive feeling about NZ.

 I didn't appreciate how near NZ is to Antarctica but on our second day we visited The Antarctic Center.  The vehicle below is the type used to travel around Antarctica and we were taken on a drive to demonstrate what it can do. It can go pretty much straight up and down steep hills, crawl over huge obsticals, bump along at a ponderous pace and get you where you're going eventually.  It is the most uncomfortable vehicle I have ever ridden in.  I really preferred the hot air balloon.

 We had some free time to tour Christchurch on our own.  The city suffered two major earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 and there where still signs of the damage done.  One large church is still being rebuilt.  From one side it looks perfect but when you walk around it you see massive damage at the back. 

 As we were having lunch at an outdoor restaurant we saw black cars pull up and several men (looking like US secret service) standing around. Eventually, we saw the Prime Minister arriving to tour the museum next door to where we were as part of some event that day.  You can see her head beside the blond lady, who I believe is the mayor of Christchurch.  The PM is a young woman who is pregnant with her first baby.  Evidently during the campaign a couple of years ago she was challenged on the fact that she was young, married, and might become pregnant. She still won the election and seems to be handling the job very well based on some articles I read in local papers.  Did I mention that I really, really like New Zealand??

Sorry this picture is out of sequence.

a view from the top

This will be my last blog about Sydney. It'a a great city and we had fun there. As I mentioned earlier I did not climb the bridge to see the view but I did go up in the Sydney Tower with some friends to enjoy the view.  Here are some of my favorite shots.

 Sydney has a wonderful waterfront area. This is a broad view from the tower. Our hotel was close to the waterfront area and we walked there several times. Great restaurants and shops. One evening we spent way too much time in the Sydney Hard Rock Cafe because my friend discovered that the restaurant had quite a collection on display of clothes worn by famous musicians.  By the time she finished taking pictures of it all I though we were going to get kicked out. They tend to want you to buy something not just roam around.

This fountain was along our walk on the waterfront.  It's hard to understand what it looked like from a picture but the water swirled from the outer edges inward in a beautiful spiral and you could walk down between the levels of water.  Quite extraordinary.

more Sydney sights

Sydney is a great city and we had a lot of fun there. One amazing building was the Queen Victoria Building, a block long and five or more stories high it was originally build as a municipal building but now houses lots and lots of shops and restaurants.

 Inside there were still many features from when it was built in the early 1900s. This huge suspended clock was stunning.

 The spiral staircase did not entice me. Happily there were escalators.

 The Chinese New Year was being celebrated while we were there. Australia gets lots of Chinese tourists so there were lots of signs and displays announcing the "year of the dog".  Much cuter that if it had been the year of the rat.

 This display of dogs suspended from very fancy balloons made me laughl, especially this dachsund because my son drew a picture for me two Christmases ago of a dachsund suspended by balloons.  I think they stole his idea. And speaking of my son, he likes to wear bowties, so I decided to buy one for him at a shop in the QV building that had ties on display. I was informed by an only silghtly condescending sales clerk that their ties ranged in price from $500 to $2,000. Needless to say he will not be getting a tie as a souvenir.

Sydney sights

After Cairns we spent a few days in Sydney.  The Sydney Opera House is an amazing building and, as is usually true with things architectural, I took way too many pictures of it.  Here are a few shots from a distance and close up.

 A few intrepid people in our group did the bridge walk where they climbed up to the highest point on this bridge, saw the views, then came back down again. I opted to go up in the Sydney tower instead. Much easier. 

I digress

I'm taking a brief break from my trip review to give a theater review. This evening a friend and I attended "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" at IPFW Department of Theater.  It was a musical, performed by eight theater majors - one sophomore, four juniors, one senior and two freshmen - and they did an excellent job.  Great singing and convincing acting, even when playing the senior citizen parts. The play follows the progression of life from dating through marriage, children, divorce, and death. The scene at the funeral home where two old aquaintences reconnect is one of my favorites.  I also enjoyed "Single Man Drought", "Scared Straight","Always a Bridesmaid" and "Sex and the Married Couple". That last was a bittersweet look at all the interruptions children can come up with when all the parents want to to is get into bed together before they're too exhausted to care.

more strange beasties

 Most of our sightings of wild birds and beasts were in a wilderness reserve in Australia where these pictures were taken and another later in New Zealand. The above picture is an emu or close cousin.  In New Zealand wingless birds evolved because they didn't have any predators to fly away from.

 We watched a not quite "Crocodile Dundee" but very entertaining show as the man in this picture 'played with' the crocodile. Sorry about the blurry picture.  It wouldn't hold still.

 Another wingless bird. Not sure what it is but I know it's not a penguin. We did see some of those in NZ.

We saw kangaroos in the wild during the balloon ride but this is the only closeup shot I got. Not the best pose. We couldn't take pictures of Kiwis in NZ because they are nocturnal and very light sensitive. They look like fuzzy, fast moving footballs with long narrow beaks.

Bats, busses and boats

 The first few days in Australia we stayed in Cairns (pronounced 'cans') and discovered that there are lots and lots of bats there.  I think they were called Fox Eared Bats.  All I know for sure is that many of them hung around in the tree outside our hotel bedroom window (see the black blobs in the above picture). They flew around at dusk eating lots of insects (good) and would start chirping loudly about 3am (not so good).
A lot of our traveling was done by bus, see our fearless leader above, but we also had 11 plane flights.

We took a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef.  I was only slightly concerned to see this 3 person limit sign on the only obvious life boat.

 We got on a smaller glass-bottom boat to cruise around the reef. Sadly the water was cloudy and I couldn't get good pictures. I was tempted to try snorkeling but the man in charge said the water was too rough for anyone who wasn't a strong swimmer (even with a life vest). Ah well, perhaps I'll try it first in a pool.

This is a view of the boat we took from Cairns to the reef.  Very nice with lunch served and snacks available.  Choppy water going back because a storm was blowing in.  Exciting, but not nice for several passengers (not me) who suffered from sea sickness.