We're back!

We are happy to be back home again, but sad that this is our last blog entry.  It's been a lot of fun!

here's some of our favorite pictures from our travels

Copland Track

We completed a 2 day, 36k (22 mile) hike on a trail called the Copland Track.  We loved doing this hike because it was a good challenge for us, the scenery was beautiful and untouched, the river was so clean we were able to drink from it, there were some thermal pools at the end of it that were the best reward after a long 8 hour day of trekking, the hut we stayed in overnight was really nice, and we made friends with some German and French travelers who were staying at the hut with us.  It was a beautiful sunny day on our first day, and we had lunch next to a beautiful turquoise freezing cold river.  The second day was very wet and rainy, and we had a lot of deep rushing streams to cross.  We were soaked from head to toe for the entire 18k back to our car.  It was overall a unique experience. 

There were two scary swing bridges like this one on the hike.  You can see from the picture that there were 4 cables that served a walkway, which made for a bouncy, swinging crossing.  We had to cross one at a time, and it took a few minutes to get all the way across.  It was fun!  

Ice Climbing

We went ice climbing on the Fox Glacier.  It was a unique experience, it’s not everyday you get to do something like that.

I loved seeing the glacier so up close, actually getting to be on it and explore, rather than just looking at it from a distance. 

Walking around on a glacier was pretty cool, and climbing it was even better. 

There was a pale blue tint to the ice and you could see and hear the trickling of the melting water run-off.  We had to be careful not to fall into any of the holes in the ice because they were so deep that when you tried to look down them, you couldn’t even see the bottom. 

A cave that had formed in the glacier

We learned pretty quickly, and were climbing some challenging stuff by the end of the day.  Here's Jeff at the top of his climb.

using an ice pic is fun!

A shallow pool of melted glacier water that had been colored by some of the minerals in the glacier.... pretty amazing

The glacier from farther away.  It looks pretty dirty!

New Zealand- South Island

There was this pretty cool low lying fog over the lake that we camped by, which we woke up to one morning and we had to get a picture of.  It's pretty hard for us not to take a picture of almost everything we see in New Zealand because everywhere you look is some picturesque scene.  It's so common here that you start to take it for granted after a while.

The water here is so amazingly clean and clear.  And it's so reflective, that you can see the mountains more clearly in the reflection than when you actually look directly at the mountains. 

There are these alpine parrots called Keas that are really interesting (or cheeky as they say here).  They are pretty large birds, and 2 of them ran up to us, jumped on our car, and tried to bite it everywhere they could.  I thought it was crazy enough that there are parrots that live in snowy, cold, mountainous areas, and even crazier that they were attacking our car.

 the Milford Sound

We took a cruise through the Milford Sound and saw lots of steep, jagged, snow topped mountains jutting out from the water.

From the boat, we saw a big group of New Zealand fur seals napping on the rocks.

We were so amazed at the light blue color of the water, and the ice bergs and glaciers at Mt Cook National Park.

you can see some of the icebergs floating in the background

probably not a good idea to try to ride an iceberg

This is the type of view we see from the car quite often as we drive around the south island.

 Lake Tekapo

New Zealand- North Island

We drove the ‘Forgotten Highway’ and saw lots of nice green hills and sheep

Mt. Taranaki

I liked the contrast of the smooth white snow and the black rough volcanic rock that we saw on our hike through the mountains at Tongariro National Park. 

In Rotorua, we rafted the Kaituna River, a class 5 with a 20 foot waterfall!  

It was also cool because of our unique setting, there was a sacred sort of feel to this place.  It was a narrow, winding river in a canyon surrounded by ferns, and the water was clear, yet colored with shades of emerald. 

We had so much fun!

This is a slideshow of us going down the waterfall:

We went Zorbing!  We dove head first into a large plastic ball that was filled with a little bit of warm water, and then they pushed the ball down a hill, with us inside of it rolling around and giggling the whole way down.  When we got to the bottom of the hill we had to slide out a small opening, and we came out dripping wet and still giggling.  It was silly fun, and we loved every second of it!  This is a video of the zorb ball rolling down hill.  

Tasmania

We did it! We completed our Australian tour!  It only took us about 3 months :)

We had a great time driving around Tasmania in our campervan taking in the damp, green, sheep filled scenery, stopping at lots of small, pleasant towns and farms.  We went to a dairy farm for some cheese, a berry farm for Devonshire Tea (scones with cream and jam- very delicious), a vineyard for some wine, and we even went to a pub on a farm.  We did some really nice hikes too.  After our hike to a place called Wineglass Bay, we made friends with a wallaby who I think would have jumped in our van and became our pet if we invited her to.  She kept sneaking up closer and closer to us and hung around watching us for about a half hour or so until we left.  Incidentally, a few nights later, we did have a big black possum jump in our van and it did not want to come out. Other marsupials we encountered were the wombat and the tasmanian devil.  We saw the chubby little wombat eating some grass near our campground and it didn't seem to mind us getting up close.  And since the tasmanian devil is endangered, we had little chance of spotting one while out on a hike, so we went to a conservation center to see them.  They make some of the most entertaining growling noises; they are so ferociously adorable.  Overall, it was a great trip around Tasmania.

This is what we toured around in.  I thought it was funny that it had a huge picture of a tasmanian devil on it.

This is what much of our scenery looked like during our drive around Tasmania

We went to a pub on a farm that had beer drinking pigs

That same farm also had ponies, but they weren't beer drinking ponies,  just regular ponies

We hiked to Wineglass Bay  

A wallaby on the beach

a wombat

a tasmanian devil

hiking Cradle Mountain National Park

hiking to the waterfalls at Mount Field National Park

Victoria

We did the Great Ocean Road drive along the south coast of Victoria, and we thought it was very beautiful-  lots of rocky, untouched coastline.  It would have been nice to go for a swim, except it's the middle of winter here.  

We liked Melbourne because it reminded us a bit of Seattle, and we felt so at home in the cool, rainy weather.  We spent some time at the Museum of Melbourne, checked out the University of Melbourne, and enjoyed all the great pubs, cafes, and shops.  

views from the Victoria coast

Melbourne

Sydney

Sydney is a fun city, and we kept ourselves plenty busy walking around seeing everything there.  The famous opera house was our first stop.  We also walked around the Darling Harbor, the markets, the Maritime Museum, and we went for a lovely ferry ride to Manly Beach that had great views of the city.

the harbor bridge

we had nice views from the boat

the opera house