New Zealand!

Sorry for the delay in posting. The weather has been a wash, literally… torrential down poor for the last week and the forecast doesn’t have a bright future either. We had planned on doing a 2 day hike through Mt. Tongariro National Park, AKA Mt. Doom. Unfortunately, due to the rain we wouldn’t have seen much so we have forgone mostly all of our plans for the north island and decided to head south where the sun might shine. We did however stay a few nights with an awesome couple we met from Austin Texas (of all places) so we have caught up on sleep, laundry, and good company. Couch surfing rocks! Here are a few pics I took in the 5 minutes it was not raining with 60 mile per hour coastal winds. (They actually have wind warnings and we were up on a hill and the wind blew my foot a bit farther then I anticipated and yes I ate it, but the camera survived)

Final thoughts on Australia

Here are just some random fun facts that we learned while we were here. One… They have an entire sub-culture of extreme off roading. Most people get these crazy sooped up 4x4 vehicles with 4 spares, a snorkel (as most trucks have) and 2 entirely separate gas tanks and all sorts of other stuff. If I had to do it all over (and had the money) I think this is the best and most fun thing to do here. For every paved road there are 10 unpaved ones to explore. We have heard that you can go 3 days without seeing anyone at all! It is quite the adventure though because some of the roads are gnarly and all you see is abandon wrecks but along the way you will see truly indigenous tribes, which are becoming more rare.
3 months, a nice 4x4, and a good map would be the ideal way to do Australia. We met a father and son from Amsterdam who were doing just that. (dad, he reminded me of you so much). They were having a great time driving around. There are lots of special maps and guides to the best off roading experience.
Two… The culture over here is basically American. Canada is more European then Australia, but I think that it does have its quirks as any group of people do.
Three… Food, their pies are not gooey fruit filled goodness but rather meaty and cheesy. This is the most poplar thing to eat. They also love to drink their flavored milks- coffee, strawberry, vanilla, peppermint mocha, honey crisp. Random. After that fish and chips and kabobs are another fav, but its not like a skewer. They have a big chunk of meat on a vertical pole, it cooks from the outside, and they carve it away as they need it (for the Californian’s- its like the Mexican Pastor meat style BBQ thing but not as spicy.) One thing we tried that was “real Australian” was the condiment “Vegemite” You put it on toast or sandwiches. It tastes like salt and some kind of vinegar and celery a bit but for the most part it is gross. Apparently it’s basically concentrated flavored yeast. Yuck!
Three… O my road kill. We saw everything from a Koloa to kangaroo, to cows to a camels!
All in all the people were great, the beaches were the best I have ever seen. We need a few more months to see the rest at a not so rushed pace. Maybe next time!

On to New Zealand!

Funny story

Blaine needed some ice for the cooler so he went into a grocery store and asked for ice. The girl answered huh? Ice…? Blaine said a little slower. She was still very confused and said “I am sorry sir I don’t know what that is?”. ICE… I…C…E ice. O, auuuace she said (in her thick aussie accent), lol. Its funny how a little pronunciation difference can really throw someone for a loop.

Our great Koala encounter

Today Blaine and I saw some people pulled off the road looking into the trees. We stopped as well to see what all the fuss was about. And to our surprise there were lots of koalas hanging out in the tree tops. We had seen a few before this but they were almost too high up to even see. Blaine thought he’d seen a big one 100 yards down the road past where all the people were stopping so we went to try and find him. Well sure enough we did find him and he was only about 15 feet off the ground. The tree he was in took a bit of bush whacking to reach the base of, but the good thing was no one could see us or the koala, so we didn’t attract busloads of tourists. There was a pretty sturdy tree right next to his so what do you think we did? We climbed it of course. He wasn’t scared at all, in fact he posed for us for an hour! Blaine started getting so close to him and he seemed to be curious about the camera and would investigate with his cute little nose. He even let us pet him for a while. When I would reach out to him he would lean forward, close his eyes and bury his nose in his arm as I petted his head. He seemed to like it quite a bit. I doubt that he had ever even been petted before. We tried to approach some others but they would go up to high in the trees. When we pet him, it made him tired and he started falling asleep so we hopped down and let him rest. I am so glad I didn’t pay $40 to pet one in a zoo! This was much more exciting. There’s nothing better than spending an hour up in a tree with such a cute and cuddly creature. Blaine’s pictures are way better and he has an awesome video so check his blog out soon too.

The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road stretches along the southern coast of Australia. It is very similar to “Big Sur” in California and the Oregon coast as well. The main highlight of the drive is The 12 Apostles. At this pull off there are very different high vertical standing formations in the ocean. They are very picturesque. We stayed for quite a while, Blaine did some night shooting and then we cooked dinner in the parking lot.

Chasing light

My favorite shooting conditions are when there is a storm in the distance and evening light in the foreground. We got lucky enough to see a bit of a thunderstorm and a rainbow in this arid desert. The rainbow stuck around for about 150 kilometers of driving, which was quite nice. Blaine saw this really cool tree and we stopped the car just in time to capture the light hitting it just right. Of course we both tend to compete a little (me more than Blaine) for the best angle if we see the same composition and we just happen to have the same lens on our camera, but in this case we got very different cool images due to the scramble of exiting the car and grabbing something to shoot with. We were both pleased with our efforts. It’s always nice when we see things so differently and can then get twice as much cool stuff for our business. Blaine will hopefully have some time to post his photos as well. He has to drive most of the time because I am still a bit rough on the stick shift :)

Ayres Rock (Uluru)

They say that no mater how many times you view it, the rock never looks the same. We stayed 2 days in the heart of the Australian Outback. Uluru is quite a Big rock I might add. We had the opportunity to shoot it in the middle of the day, 2 sunsets, 2 nights and one sunrise. Here is what we saw. (Blaine has the night shots :)

The pretty desert

More spiders

I seem to be a magnet for these things and the mother of all desert spiders was IN THE VAN. I was snuggling up in my sleeping bag for the night when I looked up and saw it, on the inside wall of the Chubby! This thing was like 5 inches end to end, and just plain nasty! We had to make a game plan, because he was close to a big opening in the frame of the car so if he went in there it would be impossible to get out, and we would be sleeping in the tent… for the rest of the trip as far as I was concerned. Blaine grabbed a bucket and put it beneath it and then took a rag and smashed it to oblivion, or so he thought... Next, it falls into the bucket, and then started climbing out super fast. Blaine quickly grabbed the bucket and threw it outside to find that thing alive and well. Needless to say he finished it off and I took clothes, TP and anything else I could find to plug up ALL the wholes in the van.

Four by four - shmour by four

So, Blaine and I were looking at the map, and from the direction were going the only way to get to Kings Canyon (on a sealed road) was to travel about 250K out of the way, with a lot of backtracking. There is however a road that goes straight there… but it was closed 2 weeks ago due to rain and is 4x4 only. Well we decided to at least check it out. We talked to a girl at the info desk and she said it's 4x4, but other people had said we'd make it... so when we came up to the 4x4 road, we turned on just to see how bad it was. It didn’t look too bad, so we told ourselves if its gets too rough we’ll turn around. The road was 99K long and would cut off several hundred kilometers, therefore saving time and money. So we went for it. There were spots that were washed out by the rain and full of deep sand, but to avoid them, sometimes we could get off the road and drive through the bushes to avoid the super deep sand. Blaine walked one of the side-routes several times to make sure it would be ok. Then we gunned it... As we were bobbing up and down, a 4x4 full of Aborigines passed us, just shaking their heads. (one of only two cars we saw the whole time... besides the stuck and abandoned ones!) Anyway, after a long time and a few more obstacles, we came to the big one, the mother of all washouts! After 98K's on the dirt/sand, we were literally 1K from the asphalt. You could almost taste it. We couldn’t turn back now! There was no alternate route and no way around the sand at all, so our only option was to go for it (or turn around and drive the 98K's back to the pavement, then drive another 250K's to get to where we were only 1K away from at that point). I wasn’t too worried because if we did get stuck, we were close to the road, so someone could pull us out. And if there is a person who could get a low clearance campervan through about 50 yards of deep sand and ruts, it would be Blaine! I got out of the van to watch. It was pretty funny watching that thing bob up and down like a teeter totter. We made it! The asphalt was very welcomed at that point, and we both felt very achieved for cutting 2 hours off the drive in scorching heat. Score one for the Chubby!

Later we had talked to several people who said that when an Australian says the road is not passable except by 4x4 then you better heed it.

This is not where the story ends. The following day we were simply turning around and we got stuck! How random is that, I mean right next to the pavement.

The road we took was the "Ernest Giles" road with the dotted line-

Travel tip of the day

Don't under budget. Fuel here is really expensive! On average it's about $5 a gallon ($1.30 per litre), but we've seen it high as $1.90/litre which is like $7/gallon. All the random things are really expensive too, like food, chapstick, etc. (feels like theme park prices) So… I under budgeted well over twice what I had budgeted for both Australia and New Zealand. Oops

o my hot

I can honestly say that I have NEVER been more hot in my entire life! You can see the radiation burning off the road right in front of you and at times a mirage that stretches the whole length of the horizon. One minute we are surrounded by bright red earth and rich green brush and the next, it is barren all as far as you can see.
So, back to the hotness. Sometimes inside our van is like 115 F and in the sun… see for yourself!

The Outback

The sides of the highway are littered with Kangaroo carcasses. When you pass a somewhat “fresh one”, the stench lingers until you’re quite a ways beyond it. The kangaroos are way dumber then deer, because at least deer run away from your car. Kangaroos actually seem to run into your headlights when you beep!
But by far the worst smell is a cow carcass cooking on the hot asphalt... There are loose cattle wandering the outback, so they get hit too. So nasty!

Happy Snaps

Just a few to catch you up on the past few days.

On the road again…

We now have to book it from the countryside and coast into the Outback, to make it back in time to leave for New Zealand. Here are a few shots from our drive so far. The landscape changes so much within an hour or two.