Mom & Becca's Visit

After months of anticipation, and the longest plane ride of their lives, two of my favorite people finally made it to Australia to visit in late November.  My little cousin, Becca, (who gets an extra shout out for having a rough year but still finding the time and money to make the trip) and my Mom arrived on the fourteen hour flight from LAX at 8am on a Tuesday morning and we thrust them into adventure mode from the get go.  That first day we walked them around the city, showed them the Opera House, chilled in the Rocks while they climbed the Harbor Bridge (Mom surprisingly being far braver on the climb than my cousin who routinely hikes all kinds of treacherous rock formations in Arizona) and then we all went to dinner in Darling Harbour, where we enjoyed laughs over our ‘communal drink’.

The next morning Mom, Becca & I set off for Taronga Zoo, and the ferry ride Mom was so excited for, while Alex headed to Bondi Beach for a surfing lesson.  The Zoo was fun; my favorite part was at the children’s petting zoo area where Mom & Becca were terrified of this smiley emu (who was clearly not vicious given that he was in the petting zoo but that was all the closer they would get for the photo) . 

Peacocks roam freely around the zoo and this one had been somewhat cornered by unattended small children resulting in this gorgeous shot.

While we girls were having fun at Taronga, Alex was mastering his surf moves.  He looks like such a natural!

I can’t in good conscience write this post without telling you about our pseudo-stalker night, even knowing how ridiculous it is going to sound.  After Taronga, we stopped for some drinks before picking up a bottle of wine and joining Alex back at our hotel, where we all sat out on the balcony reflecting on our day.  Mom was pretty quiet then randomly pointed out that there was a hunky shirtless guy walking around the apartment across the street.  Becca said she wished we had binoculars to which Alex responded that she had a camera with zoom.  It wasn’t long after that suggestion before we were unabashedly stalker-style checking this guy out on Becca’s camera.  Clearly I was long overdue for some girl time!  Props to Alex, who was a trooper through it all though he noted regularly that he was having ‘no part in this’ and that we were weird. 

SMIZE!

The next day, after struggling to catch a taxi, we lugged ourselves and all our baggage (which was no small feat given the amount of stuff we had collectively) to the train for the two hour trip to the mountains outside of Sydney.  Alex & I visited Katoomba previously and were excited to share the beauty with Mom & Becca.  We had a perfect, cool sunny day for hiking and we made the most of it.  We walked around the valley, checked out the gorgeous waterfalls, posed in the faux mountain cable car (after checking out the real cable car and being like NO WAY – literally a 52 degree incline the mountain on a decrepit track, see the photo below).  And, despite Mom’s disclaimer that she is a ’50 year old with a heart condition’, she survived (seriously, does this woman look like she was going to have any problem keeping up with us – I was more worried about me keeping up with them?!).

The next day we caught the train back from Katoomba then hopped on a flight to Adelaide, where my Mom’s cousin Rod, and his gf Liz, live.  They were once again amazingly generous, picking us up, driving us around, feeding us delicious meals and letting us stay at their home while we were there.

We were up early the following morning because Mom, Becca & I were booked on an all-day tour of Kangaroo Island.  There were tons of highlights that day; the Sea Lions at Seal Bay, the kangaroos in the wild, the Remarkable Rocks, a gorgeous sunset on the ferry ride home but none more so than our driver, Kieran, and his crazy tales. 

He spoke in a soft mild mannered voice that didn’t fit a man of his size or beardiness and he peppered his tour commentary with hilarious sexual anatomy factoids about the local wildlife gained via his wife, the local librarian (who clearly has too much time on her hands at work).  Though originally from Colorado, Kieran had been on KI for nearly twenty years and, when he wasn’t driving around tours, he was rescuing baby kangaroos from the pouches of road kill and raising them in his home (sounds totally normal, right?).  He had some crazy stories about the kangaroos he’d raised, but the one about Rupert takes the cake.  Rupert apparently loved TV so he continued coming back to the house, even after he was released into the wild, to lie on the couch and watch television, much to the chagrin of his ‘parents’ who sometimes have to fight him for the couch.  In case you were wondering how he gets in, Rupert knows how to open the door (those little paws are deft!).  Haha, I know you all think I am pulling your leg, believe me, we had our doubts too until Kieran showed us video on his phone – Rupert is for real and, as unbelievable as it sounds, there is indeed a TV-addicted kangaroo living in the wild somewhere on KI. 

Despite the photos I’ve posted of me & Alex & his parents all cuddling koalas, it is illegal to hold koalas in some regions Australia.  I had originally thought there wasn’t anywhere we were traveling with my family that they would get to experience the joy of cuddling one, but, fortunately for them, I was wrong.  Our last day in Adelaide, we wandered around the city then headed over to the Cleland Wildlife Sanctuary where we were able to pet kangaroos, cuddle a koala and interact with curious emus.  In the emu enclosure one of the emus took a liking to Alex and was never far from his side – it was hilarious (he even snuck up on me while I was trying to take a photo).  We also fed the cutest baby kangaroo – we could have spent all day with the little fella if we didn’t have a flight to catch.  

After our late night flight to Melbourne, we picked up our rental car and holed up in an airport motel so we could get an early start exploring the famous Great Ocean Road early the next morning.  I think we would all agree this was the most disappointing leg of my family’s visit (you'd have thought we'd have learned our lesson from the Styche family visit but alas we did not).  The little bit of the GOR that actually runs along the Ocean was closed for a road race so we had to take a narrow, windy inland road that made all of us girls super car sick, and the sites like Bells Beach and the Twelve Apostles were cold and little fun to visit that day.  But we visited them anyway then continued on our way towards the Grampians, a national park set in the mountains outside of Melbourne. 

Sick of driving, car sick and disappointed by the day, we hoped to stop at the end of the GOR but couldn’t find sufficient accommodation so, despite our desire to get out of the car hours earlier, we made it all the way into the mountains before we stopped for the night.  Finally we pulled into a ‘major town’, or so it appeared on the map, and I invited everyone to keep their eyes out for a place to stop for the night.  Alex was driving and abruptly pulled into a motel with a long driveway along a field full of kangaroos.  Becca was impressed and told him good job for picking the place with kangaroos.  Alex just laughed and said that after the day we’d had, he picked the place ‘cause it had a sign for a bar.   And thus began the night we jokingly called ‘roos and booze’; a night well deserved after the day we’d all had. 

I wish I could say our road trip luck improved but the next day wasn’t much better.  It was cold and rainy with a low lying fog that cloaked all the sites we’d driven so far to see.  And, with the memory of the previous day’s carsickness fresh in all the girls’ minds, we opted not to even try driving the windy roads up to the nearest hiking trail and instead headed back to Melbourne to get an extra half day of exploring in there. 

First up in Melbourne was the Firefighter Museum, where we were treated to quite a tour by the aging docent on duty.  He took us through the museum room-by-room, item-by-item and then the adjacent working firehouse, allowing us to stop for photos all along the way.  It was $18 well spent as it took up the bulk of our afternoon, but I feel like I now know more than I will ever need to about the history of the Australian Fire Brigade. 

The next day we took a souvenir trip to the Victoria Market, which Alex & I enjoyed so much on our first trip to the city with his parents.  Mom & Becca loaded up on trinkets for friends and family back home and then we went down to the CBD for a late lunch and walk along the river before heading up into the Eureka Tower for a sunset view of the city. 

The highlight of the day, for me anyways, was when Becca approached the weird dude outside of the train station, who we’d eyed from across the street holding a sign that said ‘Free Hugs’, after he’d put the sign down, actually saying to him ‘you look like you’re on break but I’d like my free hug’.  I don’t know if it’s as funny if you weren’t there, I’ve gotten lots of weird looks when I tell some of these random stories from Australia, but I thought it was absolutely hilarious. 

And boom, that was it for their trip.  Ten days flew by in the blink of an eye, even with all the photos and fun memories of an awesome visit, the time passed too quickly and the next morning we were up at 4am to walk them to the bus station so they could catch a ride to the airport and begin their journey home. 

North Island of New Zealand – another gorgeous week of adventure!

Still fresh with awe from our time on the South Island, we arrived in Auckland for another busy week of exploring.  We scored with the friendliest shuttle driver from the airport who, on our way into the city, took a detour by Mount Eden to show us the view of the city and its surrounding harbor. 

From up there it looked impressive but when we got to the city it was much less so.  We were only there for a day and a half but we didn’t find much to do and, despite there being numerous restaurants in the area where we stayed, none of them really appealed to us so we wandered around for hours before settling on subpar Asian food.  Alex did, however, get the biggest cup of coffee ever at the café across the street from our YHA.  It literally came in a soup bowl and here you can see how shocked he was with the amount of caffeine he was about to consume… 

By far the lowlight of Auckland, for me, was the gorgeous Tuesday afternoon we wasted indoors watching the Bears lose their Monday Night Football matchup against the San Francisco 49ers.  As if the loss itself wasn’t bad enough, the 49ers are Alex’s team so he cheered against me the whole time then gloated for the rest of the day after they won.  It wasn’t all bad though.  Because football isn’t popular at all over there, and it was like 2 o’clock on a Tuesday, we had an entire room all to ourselves with a massive projection screen that took up like a whole wall – awesome way to watch a game (though not one where your team gets spanked).

The next day we rented a car and headed south to the ‘Shire’.  As many of you probably already know, Lord of the Rings was filmed entirely in New Zealand and, much to my chagrin, Alex bought a book with all the film locations so we could check them out in person.  Unlike some of the other locations, the Shire still had the full set on location (because they just finished filming the first Hobbit movie) and you could go on tours of it.  I was feeling pretty nerdy as we drove down the small country road on our way there but this was one of the few things Alex really wanted to do in NZ so I went with it.  Haha, I had nothing to worry about though because we showed up and there were all kinds of nerds on-hand wearing their LOTR gear, drinking fake Hobbit beer and playing some weird medieval-esque Hobbit games while awaiting their tours.  The tours turned out to be pretty expensive for what it was, basically just a drive onto some farmer’s property (like I’ve never seen a field before?!) where there were two Hobbit doors set up, so we passed and took free photos of the rolling hills on our drive that look like they were straight out of the movie anyway.   

The next stop on our adventure was Rotorua, home to the North Island’s famous hot springs.  The North Island is comprised mostly of volcanoes and the water around Rotorua is so hot it’s literally boiling in the ground.  The whole town smells like sulfur but the natural wonder of the hot springs was incredible.  We walked through the local park and got a glimpse of them but that was nothing compared to our trip to the geothermal park outside of town called Wai-O-Tapu.  First we saw boiling mud pools, then a geyser explosion, and finally colorful, steaming hot springs (the minerals in the water determined the color of the water and there was everything from slime green to bright orange).  We spent half a day there oohing and aaahing everything in sight. 

 

Then we continued our drive south to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.  The week we were there the Hobbit movie was having its world premiere in Wellington so the city renamed itself the ‘Middle of Middle Earth’ and Hobbit mania was in full swing.  Pretty much every advertisement and store window in the whole town had something to do with the movie, people were rocking Hobbit ears everywhere you looked and there was even a Hobbit Fair downtown. 

Hobbit nerdiness aside, Wellington was awesome.  It was by far the best city in New Zealand, reminding me a lot of San Francisco, and we made the most of our brief time there.  We wandered around checking out the city and its architecture, visited Victoria Lookout for a gorgeous view of the city, spent one whole day at the Te Papa museum, a huge free public wonder right on the bay with five stories of cultural and environmental history of NZ, and of course went to Weta Cave (for those of you non-LOTR fans, Weta is Peter Jackson’s studio where the special effects for movies like LOTR and the Hobbit come to life and I have to admit, it was pretty awesome). 

 

The main outdoor activity we wanted to do on the North Island was hike the Alpine Crossing, an eight hour hike through Tongariro National Park that is hyped as one of the Top Ten day walks in the world.  But, once again, we were foiled by Mother Nature.  As I mentioned, the island is comprised of tons of active volcanoes but none had gone off in like fifteen years so naturally, two days before we were slated to hike the Crossing, Mount Tongariro erupted and they closed the hiking trail for the week.  It was quite disappointing but we’ve become good at rolling with the punches so we hiked to the Tama Lakes in a different area of the park instead.   It was another beautiful day outdoors in New Zealand, our last of the trip, and we were treated to more stunning views and a gorgeous waterfall on our walk.

We flew out the next day but first we had one final adventure planned – cave tubing in Waiotomo!  Waiotomo is famous for its labyrinth of caves and underground waterways and the whole town’s economy is centered around the various ways you can explore them; there’s cave tubing, abseiling, glow worm tours and more.  We booked ourselves on the first cave tubing trip of the day (since we had to leave by 1pm in time to drive back to Auckland to catch our flight) and I really never gave much thought as to what we signed up for.  Bright and early the next morning, dressed in a pretty thick wetsuit sitting underground in the dark listening to our guides warn us about the spiders and bugs we could encounter, I began to have my doubts but it ended up being awesome.  Our safety helmets had lights but we turned them off as we sat in our tubes drifting down the stream in the cave looking at the ceiling aglow like a night sky from the thousands of glow worms.  We looked ridiculous and it was COLD down there but we all just floated along in awe, knowing we’d probably never see anything like it again.

Hah, don’t let this look on Alex’s face fool you, he was geeked out too. 

 

Check out the underground waterslide!

After a long day, and an utterly luxurious flight on Emirates Airline (believe it or not, the cheapest flight we could find), we were back in Sydney with one day to spare before my family’s arrival.  The twelve weeks of non-stop travel since we left Cairns was starting to take its toll and, as excited as I was to see my Mom and cousin, I was equally pumped to get to Melbourne, unpack my backpack and settle into the last leg of our trip.  But first ten days of action-packed family fun time lay ahead of us…  More on that soon!