After being back home for Christmas, our travels took us to New Zealand. Melis and I landed in Auckland and met Elia at the airport, hopped in the car and headed north to a small town called Paihia in the Bay of Islands region. It was quite a scenic drive which took about two hours. The next day we decided to head across the island and down the west coast because it was a bit more scenic. After about a 6 hour drive we finally arrived at our next stop in Orewa. Not too much going on there, which was fine because it was just a rest stop on our way to Rotorura. There are lots of pictures of Rotorura because we took a Gondola up to the top of a hill where we could look out to Lake Rotorura and the town. There was also a luge track that wound down to the bottom and you took a chairlift back to the top. Elia and I did a couple of runs down it. The way it works is, you sit on a small sled that has wheels on the bottom and you go down a flat concrete tack that has lots of turn and dips in it on the way to the bottom. In the pictures you can see the huge rain storm making its way across the lake. The intense rain hit us just moments after we finished our last run and made our way undercover!
After leaving Rotorura the next morning, we headed down the highway to Taupo. Along the way we stopped at a place called the Wai-o-Tapu thermal reserve. This place was amazing! It had all kinds of geothermal pools, hot springs, and minerals that you can see in the rocks....we spent a good 4 hours walking through the different trails they had there and took lots of pictures! After all that walking we went further down the road to a bunch of hot spring pools and just relaxed for a while taking in the mountain scenery. It was very relaxing!
Once in Taupo we didn`t do much of anything, just took a quick look around the city then all crashed for the night!
From Taupo we went about 2 hours to Waitomo for some black water rafting. Black water rafting is basically grabbing an inner tube, going into a cave and floating down a river through a pitch dark cave. In these caves are glow worms that illuminate, and are like millions of stars along the roof of the cave. It was a great time but there aren`t any pictures of it because we couldn`t take the camera in the water with us!
From Waitomo it was back to Auckland to end our 7 day quick tour around the North Island of New Zealand, and head off to Melbourne.
Click here for the pictures of New Zealand
Melbourne:
During our time in Melbourne there were two things that we wanted to do: watch some of the Australian Open Tennis and drive the Great Ocean Road.
We managed to do both!!
On our third day in Melbourne we rented a car and headed south to the Great Ocean Road, one of the most scenic drives in the world. We had 400Km to drive to our accommodations that night but after stopping what seemed like every 10Km, and taking 300+ pictures along this stretch, it took us almost 10 hours!! (But don`t worry, we didn`t upload all the pictures!) After driving back to Melbourne the next day we didn`t have much time to just hang out because we were on our way to spend a full day watching the Australian Open. Just as we were about to leave the open, we caught a doubles match involving the number 1 seed Canadian Daniel Nestor and his partner play. It was fun because there were other Canadians there to support him so we were all just hanging out cheering for him. And afterwords we managed to get some autographs....it was a great day! The next day it was time to head back to the Sunshine Coast, which was good because the weather was getting a bit unbearable, hitting 43C the day we were at the Open!
Click here for the pictures of Melbourne
Click here for the pictures of The Great Ocean Road
Click here for the pictures of the Australian Open Tennis
Frasier Island:
During Elia`s visit to the Sunshine Coast he wanted to take a trip up to Frasier Island a huge island made entirely of sand. (Melis has blogged about it previously). There are no roads and the only way to drive around is by using a 4WD truck and to drive along the beach. It was a great day checking out the island and having a swim in the largest of the 48 fresh water lakes on the island. It was quite warm and the water was crystal clear!
There are also a couple of pictures from another hike we did to the kondillia falls (which we have previously blogged about) but this time we hiked down to the bottom of the falls which we weren`t able to do last time we went there because they were repairing the stairs.
That was about it for Elia's holiday (hope he enjoyed it!) and about a week after he left Melis and I headed up to Cairns to check out the Great Barrier Reef.
Click here for pictures of Frasier Island
Cairns (and Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation):
After a lengthy conversation with our travel agent Melis and I booked a week long trip up to tropical Northern Queensland. Once we arrived at the airport in Cairns we went to pick up our rental car and it turned out that we got upgraded to a convertible `sports car`!! It was awesom! We immediately got in the car and dropped the top and after about an hour of driving we were just baking in the sun!!
We stayed 3 nights in a small town just north of Cairns called Port Douglas. It was a great little town with old houses and one main street with lots of shops and restaurants. After finding our accommodations we drove about 20 minutes up the road to a small town called Mossman. We did a walk through the Mossman Gorge, and took a swim in the Mossman River, which is a large fast flowing river that comes down from the mountains. It was a great walk but extremely hot and humid, almost to the point where it was tough to breath. Swimming in the river was colder than expected, but oddly refreshing. Once you got used to the temperature!
Our next day we headed further north to a place called the Daintree Discovery Centre. The discovery centre was a walk through the World Heritage Daintree Rain Forest. The walkway wound its way along the jungle floor and you could also walk up to the top of the canopy and look out above all the trees. It was a really interesting place and we learned a lot about the different trees and animals that inhabit the rain forest. Again due to the heat and humidity (and mosquitoes!) we had to cut the visit short and return another day to see the rest of it.
The next day we made our way back down to Cairns where we had a day tour planned. The tour started in a very small town called Freshwater, where we took a scenic train up a mountain to another town called Kuranda. Along the train ride we stopped at a lookout to check out the Barron Falls which were spectacular! After the train ride we walked around the town of Kuranda to check out some of the markets and shops while waiting for the bus to take us to our next stop, Rainforestation Wildlife Centre. At Rainforestation, we had a some activities lined up. First up was a walk through their wildlife park where we saw the usual koala`s, crocodiles, kangaroos etc. and then we watched a local aboriginal tribe, the Pamagirri, demonstrate the art of spear throwing, didgeridoo playing, and boomerang throwing. I tried the boomerang throwing, but I threw it too hard and it didn`t exactly come right back to me!!! After that we watched some aboriginal cultural dancing. Once the performance was done we took a ride on the `aqua ducks`. An aqua duck is an amphibious bus that drives along the land then goes into a small lake for this part of the tour. These aqua ducks are left over from WW2 and are put to use in this park. They have about 6 of the 1500 that are still left over and being used today.
After leaving Rainforestation, we took a cable car almost 8km, that hovered above the rain forest and crossed over the Barron River. It provided us with some amazing views of Cairns in the distance, and the surrounding small towns. It was a fantastic tour and I would highly recommend you do it if you are in the area!!
Click here for pictures from Port Douglas
Click here for pictures from Mossman Gorge
Click here for pictures from the Daintree Discovery center
Click here for pictures from the Kuranda Tour
The next day following our Kuranda Tour we were back on the road again, this time heading up to Cape Tribulation, a very small town north of Port Douglas. Just before we took a cable ferry across the Daintree River, we decided to do a crocodile tour so we pulled into one of the many little tour operators on the highway and took a 1 hour cruise up and down the river. We managed to see 4 Crocs, a baby that was about 1m long, a male teenager who was probably about 2.5m long and the BIG dominate male of that section of the river, `Scarface`, who was sunning himself on the bank of a canal that was off the main river. He was a monster at almost 5m long (about 20ft), but we couldn`t get close enough to him to get a good picture because the boat couldn`t fit down the canal. But that was probably just as well!!
Cape Tribulation is in the heart of the Daintree Rainforest, and it's the only place in the world where TWO World Hearitage sites meet (the Daintree Rainforest, and the Great Barrier Reef). Cape Tribulation was incredible. Our accommodation was a small cabin in amongst some of the oldest trees in the rain forest. It was again sweltering hot and humid so we headed to the pool. Along the pathway down to the pool we saw many HUGE spiders and wondered what other wildlife we were going to see...that was about it thankfully! It was pretty neat to be swimming in the jungle; it was peaceful and quiet with the only sounds coming from frogs and birds! There was a beach there as well but they advised against swimming since crocodiles could be in the area, and it was also jellyfish season so we decided to stick to the pool!
After a great time in Cape 'Trib' we were again on the road for a 2 hour drive back to Cairns where we spent our last 3 nights.
Click here for pictures of the Crocodile Cruise
Click here for pictures of Cape Tribulation
Once back in Cairns we had a day to wonder around and check out the city; not a bad place but after being in Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation, Cairns seemed kind of boring!! Again the city is on the water but due to the threat of crocs and jellyfish you couldn`t swim in the ocean, so we just walked through the shops and small malls. While wondering around we found a small underwater photography store that rented out underwater digital cameras which we were definitely going to need for our snorkel trip the next day, so we rented one!
Green Island was our destination for our snorkel tour, we hopped on a boat for about an hour's ride to the island which is right on the Reef. As soon as we arrived we were booked for a semi-submersible boat tour. Basically, it's a boat that has a glass hull so we can sit underwater as we toured around different parts of the Reef (a view similar to that of a scuba diver). This was really neat and we saw heaps of fish, a couple of turtles, some sting rays, and giant clams! The half hour tour went by so fast, but it was a lot of fun! After lunch we had about 3 hours left to snorkel around the reef, so we got into our stinger suits (to protect us from jellyfish stings and sunburn which is probably most important!) and started to explore the Reef. We had so much fun watching all the different kinds of fish, seeing all different colours of coral that the 3 hours went by waaayyyy to fast and we were just in time to catch the ferry back into Cairns.
That pretty much finished off our trip, and we would both love to go back again...maybe a different time of year when its not mid to high 40C with the humidity!!
Click here for pictures of Cairns
Click here for pictures of Green Island
Click here for our underwater pictures
