PS from Australia

More specifically from the Qantas First Class Lounge.

This place rivals the Terminal 5 First Class British Airways Lounge at Heathrow. It's actually a prettier 'room'. And the facial I just received was AWESOME. (Don't worry Jaeson. You are still going to love the BA Lounge.)

But I've gotta run now. I have to start working on that excel sheet to see where I have to send Michael to accrue enough miles to maintain his status. I'll drink a second glass of Veuve Clicquot while I do my calculations., though. First things first.

 

Last post from New Zealand

First of all, to answer the number one question about the last blog: Hokey Pokey is vanilla ice cream with bits of honeycomb toffee mixed in. Our Hokey Pokey ice cream was, in fact, that plus a generous bit of heaven.

Today, the weather was still unsettled. But we were treated to a trip out of the city. We headed west to the Waitakere Regional Park to see the rain forest. We got to see a kauri tree. (They were nearly felled to extinction by the lumber operations run by the early settlers and were saved mostly only by the lack of sophisticated equipment available at the time which limited accessibility to certain areas.)

 

Then we traveled on to the western coast to take in a bit of the 50km plus stretch of volcanic black sand beach at Muriwai. Apparently just three weeks ago the gannet birds had not returned yet from Australia to nest on the cliffs. But since then they have been showing up to stake out their nesting areas and to commence their adorable courtship and breeding rituals.

The stretch of black sand beach at Muriwai was striking and provided a good sample to add to our sand collection.

 

It’s especially sparkly sand and is supposedly very magnetic due to a significant iron ore content. I’ll have to test that out when we get home…which will be Monday. Tomorrow (Sunday) we leave the hotel at 5AM, fly to Sydney, then to Dallas and then to Miami arriving still on Sunday after doing the time warp thing over the dateline heading east. We’ll rest up there overnight before taking what will seem like a mere skip of a plane ride home.  Next travels? South Africa and Portugal…in less than 4 weeks. (We are making up for that ridiculously long 8 month hiatus before this trip.) Safe travels.

 

Auckland

Not much to write about for the past couple of days. Traveling here was not particularly noteworthy. And yesterday was full of professional meetings. By the time our 'free time' for dinner came around the weather (which had been unsuspectedly sunny and beautiful) had turned pretty bleak. So that Michael and I ended up just grabbing a bowl of soup at the nearby Irish Pub. We did get a  nice view back towards the city earlier in the day though:

 

Today's forecast included a 90% chance of rain/thundershowers. We walked along the waterfront where they have a couple of ex-Americas Cup yachts bobbing about but then were off to the War Memorial Museum. It's a great museum but unfortunately we ran through only a few selected exhibits (did you know that Kiwi birds lay eggs that are 1/4 the size of the actual bird?) on our way to the Maori Cultural Show. Given their Polynesian origins you can certainly see the similarities in their dances when compared to those we've seen in Hawaii or the Cook Islands. And the haka (war dance) must have been quite daunting if you were getting ready to fight them. Even the women looked pretty darn fierce.

No that's not a woman, I know. But that's pretty much the gist of the facial expressions in the dance...wide eyes and wagging tongues.

After that we rode up into the Sky Tower (in the first photo) for the view of the city from there. And then we were on our own for a late lunch. We went down to Princes Wharf and split some really wonderful shrimp and calamari. And then stopped in at Giapo's Gelateria in search of the local favorite ice cream flavor Hokey Pokey on the way back to the hotel.

The rain held off until just about then so we were REALLY lucky. The last group dinner is tonight with everyone else leaving tomorrow while we stay on until Sunday morning. What we end up doing tomorrow will be weather dependent. Fingers crossed that our luck holds and it clears again.

 

Wildlife and Fun Facts

This morning we headed out west to the Blue Mountains and the Waradah Cultural Center. Our first picture is of the Three Sisters rock formation that sticks up from the valley floor. Pretty rock. Pretty rock.

Then we spent some time in the cultural center itself to see a 30 minute presentation by some indigenous aboriginal people explaining part of their various traditions and demonstrating some of their traditional dances. Stopped for lunch in the little town of Luera where we had fabuous meat pies for lunch. And then on to the Featherdale Wildlife Park to see a vast array of Australian animals. Of course the biggest hits are always the koalas. Here’s the requisite photo of us beside one:

But here’s another much better picture of a koala on his own without our ugly mugs messing up his close up.

And we were also lucky enough to catch not only a glimpse of but an image of a wee joey:

BTW, kangaroo fun facts….did you know?

-        That females can store fertilized embryos for later use?

-        That they can also choose the sex of their offspring?

-        That they can alter the composition of their milk based on the age and needs of their joeys even when they have two totally different aged offspring nursing at the same time?

-        They can’t effectively move backwards – only forwards and then sideways if needed.

And while we are this little educational sidebar….I forgot to mention from the Great Barrier Reef part of the trip….did you know that all little Nemo clownfish are born male? And that if they lose the one female in their ‘family’ the next dominant male becomes a female? Guess they left that out of the Disney film.

Tonight we have our going away dinner here in Sydney as tomorrow we head off to New Zealand where we will be two time zones back closer to the U.S. but with two hours MORE between us time wise. (I'm so confused!)