Before I left New Zealand, I went ahead and booked a flight from Melbourne to Sydney, because at $50, it was cheaper than a bus, and I heard there wasn't much to see it Canberra, which is basically the only thing between Melbourne and Sydney. But the flights were much cheaper on tuesdays and wednesdays, so unless I wanted to pay a lot more, my choice was either to fly out that next wednesday (3/7), leaving only 4 days in Melbourne, or fly out the following week, resulting in 10-11 days in Melbourne. I think ideally, I would've liked to have spent about 6 or 7 days there, but decided 4 was better than 10.
I probably should've checked the weather forecast before deciding to spend just 4 days in Melbourne, but instead I checked after, only to find out that it was supposed to rain all 4 days. Sure enough, when I woke up on saturday morning, it was raining, so I just hung out at the hostel for a while, enjoying some slow, but free wifi (slow internet is quite common in NZ/Oz; free internet, not so much). Karrie Czaykowska, who some of you know (a friend from Newport for those who don't) lived in Melbourne for a while, so she was nice enough to put me in touch with some of her friends that still lived there, and they were nice enough to show me around and let me tag along while I was there.
On saturday afternoon (after a little mixup where I went the wrong way on the tram), I met a few of Karrie's friends just north of of the city center in an area called Fitzroy, which, like much of Melbourne, contains a lot of very cool cafes and shops, many of which are located on laneways (aka alleys), without much signage. The whole area had a bit of a hipster vibe. It was still raining on and off, so rather than spend much time outside checking out the city, we opted to settle inside a cool pub at the Napier hotel, which I would've never stumbled across otherwise and seemed to be more of a local spot. There I sampled a few of Australia's local beers and what I believe to be my first time having kangaroo, which I thought was really good, but that might've had more to do with the culinary skills of the folks at the Napier than with the inherent qualities of kangaroo meat. I didn't have my camera with me, so when I went google image searching for pictures of the Napier, I realized that their 'roo fillet is apparently somewhat renowned, according to one self-proclaimed Melbourne "foodie." No arguments from me, that 'roo was tasty!
Thanks to Ian Lewis and Rachael Blackman for putting up with an American tourist on a day where otherwise I probably would've just sat in a hostel and watched it rain but instead got to check out a cool spot off the beaten path.
Day 42 - Sunday, March 4
On Sunday, once again it was supposed to rain, but it was very nice Sunday morning, so I walked up to Queen Victoria Market (Vic Market for short). It was a pretty large market with hundreds of vendors selling all sorts of crap - handbags, belts, cheap clothes, and various other nicknacks, but part of it contained a lot of fruit and veggie stands and meat and fish counters, which were about the only place I've been yet in NZ or Oz where things seemed cheap. The market was filled with people and a bit crazy, definitely worth checking out if you're ever in Melbourne.
From there, I headed to Flinders St. and Fed Square, where I was meeting another of Karrie's friend's, Evelyn, who was kind enough to spend much of her sunday showing me around. A pic of St. Paul's Cathedral and the city center from the Flinders St. train station:
Since the weather was so (unexpectedly) nice, we headed south to St. Kilda and checked out the beach there, some of the cool restaurants and shops, and Luna Park (which seemed a bit like NY's Coney Island). Apparently there's also a Luna Park in Sydney with the same creepy clown mouth entrance.
It was Melbourne's food and wine festival while I was there, so we headed back towards the city and met up with Ian again and few others and got some food and drinks along the banks of the Yarra river. From there, we walked along the Yarra for a bit, including crossing the Aboriginal bridge, from which we had a pretty cool view of the city:
And then Ian and I headed to Double Happiness, a cool and cozy bar on an alleyway without much/any signage, where we capped off another great day in Melbourne with some quite tasty bourbon cocktails - probably the first proper cocktail I've had since leaving the states. The view from the outside:
Monday, again the weather called for rain, but again it was quite nice when I left the hostel, so I decided to check out some more of the city. I headed south to the Shrine of Remembrance, a veteran's memorial that provides nice views of the city skyline.
And then I headed down to the botanic gardens, where I managed to spend about 4 hours wandering around, checking it all out, and taking too many photos. It was definitely a cool spot worth checking out, and free, which is always nice.
Having seen a lot of the city over the previous 3 days, and hearing good things about a couple of the day trips to nearby destinations I decided to use my last day in Melbourne to take a day trip. The two most popular are to the Great Ocean Road, southwest of Melbourne and to Phillip Island, southeast of Melbourne. I definitely want to see the The Great Ocean Road at some point, but after all the awesome coastal scenery in New Zealand, and getting spoiled a bit by the incredible coastal roads in California, I decided to head to Phillip Island, which is famous for the ability to see and interact with wildlife, including kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, and probably most famously, the Phillip Island penguin parade.
The first stop was at the wildlife conservatory, where we had the opportunity to feed kanagaroos and wallabies that were just out roaming around in the park, and to get up close and personal with some koalas. Here's some photos, followed by a couple of videos. After this stop, I was pretty much convinced I needed a pet wallaby.
If you look closely you can see thousands of seals on the far islands to the left side of the photo. Okay, not really, but there are actually thousands of seals on those islands. At the Nobbies, there were a few penguins out and about, waiting on their loved ones to return from a day or two of fishing out at sea. I don't think this little guy was all too happy about me sticking my camera underneath the boardwalk:
And then we headed to the famous penguin parade, which is where, just after sunset, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 penguins exit the ocean and waddle up the beach in large groups (parade-like) to head to their burrows to deliver all the fish they've caught throughout the day. It is quite an amazing thing to take in. Unfortunately, there are strict rules prohibiting all cameras. (It used to be just a prohibition on using flash, but due to the incompetence of others and their inability to properly disable their flash, they had to change the rule to no cameras at all, flash or no flash). So once again I've turned to my friend google to find some pictures of the parade:
And here's a 3-minute video about the penguin parade in case you're REALLY curious/bored/love cute little penguins:
A post about Melbourne would be remiss without mentioning my discovery of BreadTop, a delicious asian bakery chain with locations throughout the city (hopefully throughout Australia). I visited 4 different locations between monday and tuesday, including multiple stops at the one closest to my hostel and sampled a few items, but nothing was quite as good as the blueberry bun, which I ate so many of, I lost count.
I made it to Australia, and I haven't lost my passport or contracted rabies yet, so that's good. I still haven't booked a flight out of Australia yet, so nothing is definite, but I thought I'd just give you guys some idea of my plan for Australia.
Australia is a huge country, so to properly see all of it would take several months at least. Though I don't really have anywhere to be until Thanksgiving I really didn't want to spend that long in Australia for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it is quite expensive relative to most other countries I'm planning to visit.
So the plan this time around is to spend about a month in Oz and just to see Melbourne and Sydney and then take the Greyhound bus up the east coast from Sydney to Cairns and hit some of the popular tourist spots along the way, including Byron Bay, Brisbane, Fraser Island, the Whitsundays, the Great Barrier Reef and Cape Tribulation.
I've heard great things about the Outback, Ayers Rock, Adelaide, the Great Ocean Road, Perth, Broome, Tasmania, Kakadu National forest, and all the great undisturbed spots along the western and southern coast. But I think a lot of that would be perfect to see with a car, camping gear and a good friend or two, none of which are part of my current situation. So I think I'm going to have to save that for another trip - hopefully one when the US dollar is a little stronger compared to the Aussie dollar.
I know what all of you are thinking: Rob, what are you doing in Kaikoura, you said you were doing the Zephyr pass, which ends in Christchurch, and doesn't go to Kaikoura. Actually, I'm fairly certain no one is thinking that. But if you were obsessively keeping tabs on me, the KEX pass I bought starts in Auckland and ends in Christchurch, which means it would miss one stop on the main circuit, Kaikoura, an old whaling town on the northeast coast of the south island. Kaikoura is considered one of the best spots in the world for whale watching because it is so close to the antarctic and the ocean floor drops off to extreme depths just off the coast, making it home to a lot of whales, particularly sperm whales. It is probably more famous among KEX passengers for the ability to swim with hundreds of dolphins. So I decided to go check it out, and I was able to add Kaikoura to my pass for $20 and then just had to figure out a way to get back to Christchurch for my flight to Australia.
Unfortunately, Kaikoura is quite far from Queenstown. So basically I spent all day Wednesday on a bus. We got on the bus in Queenstown at 8am and got off the bus at the hostel in Kaikoura at 8pm. Here's a couple of pictures from a hill on the Kaikoura peninsula right after we arrived looking back towards the mainland:
Dolphin Swim Take 2 - As you may recall, I tried to do a dolphin swim during my first couple of days in New Zealand up in the Bay of Islands, but we ended up not being able to get in the water due to the rough seas. Read about it here. So after hearing really good things about the dolphin swim in Kaikoura, I decided to give it a try. Apparently just after sunrise is when they are most active, so it is the best time to swim with them. So the folks at Encounter Kaikoura offer a swim that requires meeting at their shop at 530am. I woke up at 430 to give me time to get down there by 530 (it's a bit of a walk). Just as I was about to leave the hostel, the wind picked up and it started raining pretty hard - obviously not good. We walked down there in the rain anyway only to be told that it had been cancelled. But when I got to the counter, they did have one slot left for the next morning at 530, which would be the last possible chance for me to do it because I was flying to Australia later that next day.
It rained most of the rest of the day, but it stopped briefly for a while and I headed to the end of the peninsula where there was a seal colony. Unfortunately not very many seals were out, but I did come across this guy taking a nap on some seaweed, and I don't think he was all that thrilled when I accidentally woke him up from his slumber.
Dolphin Swim Take 3 - I was up at 430 again to try once more to swim with dolphins. This time when we got down to the shop, they warned us that the seas were still very rough from the storm, but the swim was going forward. We actually got on the boats before sunrise and got to watch the sunrise as we headed out to look for the dolphins. It was the prettiest sunrise I've ever seen. Granted, I could probably count on two hands the number of sunrises I've seen. As most of you probably already know, I'm not exactly a morning person. The pictures don't do it justice.
The dolphins in Kaikoura are generally found in groups of 100-500 that are referred to as superpods. We found a group of about 150-200 and jumped into the very cold water (~60 F). It was an amazing experience. Unlike swimming with dolphins in like Sea World or something, these dolphins are completely wild, but dolphins are naturally curious and playful, so even though they are never fed or otherwise enticed to swim around with people, they just like doing it. It was a really awesome experience. Dolphins were all around us, swimming at us, swimming by us, swimming in circles around us. It was amazing. I could literally reach out and touch them. And they were so interactive. It's really hard to describe what a cool experience it was. Definitely one of the highlights of my trip. After about 45 mins in the water, at which point my hands and feet started to feel a bit numb, we got back on the boat and then took some pictures from the boat. Unlike the bottlenose dolphins in the bay of islands and that are more common in US, and which can be quite large, these were dusky dolphins, which are a bit smaller and tend to be a bit more acrobatic. So they do a lot of jumping around in the water. While I still suffered from an inadequate camera and poor photography skills, I did manage to get a couple photos with the dolphins jumping out of the water:
It was hard to capture in the pictures how many dolphins were out there because at any one point, only like a 1/3 would be at the surface, and with so many of them, they were spread out over a fairly large area, but there's a couple of photos in the picasa album where if you look at it full size you can see how many little dorsal fins there are in the water. On the way back, we had gorgeous views of the snowy peaks that are just west of the Kaikoura peninsula:
Between the sunrise and the dolphins it was an amazing morning! Almost enough to turn me into a morning person. Almost.
After the swim, I grabbed a bus to Christchurch, which was still in a complete state of disrepair after a massive earthquake in February 2011 destroyed a large part of the city and killed a lot of people. What used to be the main downtown area was a total ghost town. It was kind of eerie. After checking out what was left of the city for a bit, I grabbed another bus to the airport and flew over to Melbourne. I finally got checked into my hostel at about 1am Melbourne time (3am New Zealand time). After the 23-hour day, even the top bunk of a dorm bed felt mighty nice.
Queenstown likes to claim that it's the adventure capital of the world (/southern hemisphere). A bold claim for a small town, but it does offer the ability to do all sorts of bungee jumping, canyon swings, downhill mountain biking, sky diving, luging, whitewater rafting/boarding, and so on and so forth. There's definitely plenty of ways to get an adrenaline fix.
It seems many people come to New Zealand intending to do both a bungee jump and a sky dive. While other destinations are more popular for sky diving, Queenstown is definitely the most popular spot for bungee jumping, as there are many different ones to do, and it is home to the original commercial bungee jump (the Kawaru bridge bungee) and to the highest in Australasia (the Nevis bungee) at 134m (~440ft).
I skydived in San Diego this past summer, and while it was an awesome experience, I didn't have any burning desire to do it again, especially given the cost. However, I definitely wanted to do a bungee, and had heard that if I was going to do just one, it should definitely be the Nevis. But I also liked the idea of being able land in the water, which is available at the Kawaru bridge. So I decided to do both, which was available as a combo (and thus at a greater discount). I elected to do the bridge first, because I figured if I did the higher one first, the lower one (43m) would seem a bit disappointing.
About midday Saturday, I headed over to the pickup for the bridge bungee, and out to the bridge. There is a lookout right beside the bridge for spectators. I didn't want to pay $80 for pictures and video, which I thought was absurd, especially given the fact that the bungee jump itself was only a little more than that (~120). So I scoped out the crowd and picked out someone with a decent camera (assuming that meant they would know how to operate one), who spoke english, and who had a friend jumping, so I knew they'd be sticking around for a bit until I jumped. Then I headed up to the bridge and waited my turn and watched several people jump and hit the water. And before each person went, the guy in charge would ask them if they wanted to touch the water. So when I got there and told him I wanted to get as much of my body into the water as possible he said "sorry bro," and went on to explain that because my weight was what it was, I had to use a certain bungee cord, and I was on the light side of the weight range for that cord, and so I wouldn't be able to hit the water and for liability reasons they couldn't let me jump with the cord for the lighter weight group. I had heard before that it was more adjustable than just picking which cord and that they could get most people to hit the water, but this guy didn't seem very concerned. Definitely a little frustrating since that was the whole reason I was doing that jump. But anyway, headed to ledge, which was a bit freaky. Here's the view from the ledge:
After a couple of seconds with toes on the edge, I looked over at my chosen camera operator who seemed to have things under control, and then made a nice big swan dive off the edge. It truly is an amazing experience just jumping off a ledge like that and free falling towards the ground. As predicted, I didn't hit the water, but it was still pretty awesome - quite a rush. Headed back to the top, got my camera from the operator, and found...... 1 picture of me mid-air, which may or may not be during the free fall, and about a 3 second video of me hanging at the end of the cord after the jump was over before I got picked up by the boat crew at the bottom. Huh?! Hard to fathom how that was what I ended up with on the camera. I think maybe she got paid off by the bungee company so that I would be more inclined to overpay for their picture and video offering. But I stuck to my guns and left with only this one photo (and a free tshirt) as evidence that I jumped:
That night, a bunch of people were doing a bar crawl that included a drink at each of 6 bars, of which one was the Ice Bar, a bar in which virtually everything is made of ice - the bar, the walls, the cups/glasses, the tables, the chairs and it is decorated with various ice sculptures. The bar crawl started and ended at good ol' World Bar. Some pictures:
More pictures in the picasa album and lots more pictures in this Facebook album
The night ended with one hell of a burger that ranks right up there with the best I've had - definitely safe to say it's the best one I've had after midnight. It was "The Big Al" from Fergburger, which is a bit of a New Zealand icon. I actually stopped at Fergburger 3 different nights while in Queenstown, and didn't have a camera on me any of them, so Google image search to the rescue again. After the setbacks at the bridge bungee, the burger might've been the highlight of the day.
Sunday, I was scheduled to do the Nevis bungee. And after the bungee the day before (setbacks and all) and talking to some folks who had already done it, I was pretty excited. The jump point is from a cable car suspended about 140m over the middle of a canyon.
After a few seconds taking in the view from the ledge, I was off. The drop is so far that you actually free fall for about 7 seconds. Words really can't describe how awesome it was. I definitely can't remember a bigger adrenaline rush than making that jump. Just absolutely amazing. This time they wanted 100+ for pics and video - that's just ridiculous. I would've paid to jump again before giving into that sort of price gouging, but here's a video with some cool views from the ledge, and other people jumping. And let's be honest, I could've shown you a video of just about anyone jumping, and you wouldn't been able to tell it wasn't me anyway.
Monday, I was planning to do the full-day hike up to the Ben Lomond summit, which is accessible from Queenstown. Luckily the weather was gorgeous on Monday, and it was an amazing hike. The first part of the hike was a pretty strenuous hike straight up the hill that doubles as the hill for downhill mountain biking and luging. A view of Queenstown from the top of the hill:
When you reach the top of that hill, on the backside of the hill, you finally have a clear view of Ben Lomond summit. I was a bit surprised how far away it still seemed because I was pretty well worn out after climbing the first hill, but I forged onward:
When you get to the saddle, it's a pretty amazing view of the snowy peaks of the southern alps. Here's a pic from the track on the way up to the summit from the saddle:
Getting to the top was definitely quite a workout and I was pretty exhausted when I got there, but it was absolutely worth it. The views from the summit (really, the whole way from the saddle to the summit) were stunning. My pictures really don't do it justice. Here's one of Queenstown (and Lake Wakatipu) from the summit:
Lots more pictures of the views along the hike in the picasa album.
After the hike, the hostel I was staying in was organizing another bar crawl. So about 25 of us went and checked out 4 new bars where we were pretty much the only people there, and eventually ended up at good ol' World Bar. I ended the night at Fergburger again, but this time decided I wasn't hungry enough for the Big Al, so I went with the Bombay Chicken (see menu above), which was also delicious.
Day 37 - Tuesday, February 28
After another late night, I slept in. I had planned to go out to the beach for a bit on Tuesday after someone told me the previous day that the weather was supposed to be even nicer on Tuesday than it had been on Monday. But by the time I woke up, the clouds had settled in. So I spent the day doing laundry instead. I hadn't done laundry since I arrived in New Zealand, so it was much needed.
The first night in Queenstown is generally a big party night because the group tends to go different directions from Queenstown, so it's sort of the last night with the whole group together. We started the night with a "Jager Train," which was impressive:
But still not quite as impressive as the flaming dr. pepper train we had at Touche in Austin after Molly and Anup's rehearsal dinner. I actually had a video on my old phone before I went swimming with it on the 4th of July last year. So I'll just have to borrow this video, but imagine about 3 times as many shots and more awesomeness.
I had pretty much already decided that I wasn't going to do anything on Wednesday. A combination of mediocre weather and quite a hangover made it even easier to do nothing all day but sit around, upload some photos and try to catch up a bit on the blog. I didn't go out that night either because I had to be on a bus at 730 the next morning for a day trip to Milford Sound.
Day 32 - Thursday, February 23
The whole southwest corner of the South Island is a national park known as Fjordland. Among the many fjords there, the one that is generally considered the most beautiful is Milford Sound. Yes it is misnamed, as it is a fjord, not a sound. (Don't know the difference? Google is your friend.)
When I woke up, it was raining pretty hard in Queenstown, but Milford is something like 300km (~185 miles) from Queenstown and on the other side of the southern alps, so many people had pointed out that the weather in Queenstown is often not indicative of the weather in Milford. However, Thursday was not one of those days. And with the rain, comes lots and lots of clouds, which tend to cover up the majestic peaks rising right up out of the water for which Milford Sound is known. One silver lining was that with lots of rain, comes rather active waterfalls, which is another highlight of the Milford Sound area. There was definitely no shortage of waterfalls. Our bus driver did his best to sell it as a unique opportunity to see Milford with it looking very "mystic," among other synonyms. So here are some of my photos of Milford, looking very "mystic" (i.e., dark and cloudy).
Back in Queenstown it was another fun night out, which once again consisted of a good portion of the evening at World Bar.
Day 33 - Friday, February 24
Another day of just relaxing, taking it easy, and nursing a hangover. Spent some time trying to figure out plans for Australia and getting the blog updated. Went out again. This time, checked out a few more of the bars in town, but ultimately ended up back at good ol' World Bar.
