Adventure Around the World

New Zealand was a great way to finish up the international portion of our trip (here we come Hawaii!!). While we have both been excited to get home, New Zealand presented us with so many things we wanted to see and do, that we barely even remembered what we're missing in the US (I am craving some Xmas music and cheer). After long debates, (some might prefer the term "arguments",) we decided to spend time on both the North and South Island.

We were warned in Australia that the Kiwis are "crazy", and in the extreme-sport sense of the word, we would have to agree. There are hundreds of things that you can pay for to defy death in this country where bungee and base jumping originated. And of course, Leslie and I hoped to take advantage of a few of them (and that's not even counting the drives through winding mountain passes)! Imagine the possibilities offered in a land where adventure sport guides don't have the threat of lawsuits influencing their decisions... yes, it's quite exciting.

On the North Island, we flew into Auckland, but went straight to Waitomo Caves for the glowworm caves that we had heard so much about. There, we spent the day bundled in wetsuits, rapelling into a cave, where we tubed down the black water (so aptly named since you're in the pitch black) marvelling at the thousands of bioluminescently-endowed magots on the cave ceilings, and then rock climbing back out. A pretty amazing experience, and it definitely sounds better using the word "glowworm" instead of "magot". We, or I should say "I", then went to experience Miori culture and view geysers and boiling mud pools in Rotorua, while Leslie slept in the car in a parking lot.

The next day we flew down to the South Island to partake in some high adreneline sports and a four day roadtrip taking in the scenic views. We went directly to the Franz Joseph glacier on the west coast, dressed in our winter gear and crampons (obviously borrowed), and went mountaineering on the ice. We saw amazing ice landscapes, crevasses and did some adventurous hiking. Our guide was quite a character, a glacier expert/ballet dancer who was definitely sporting some purple thong underwear for our hike. And though he was very skilled, after lunch as we were hiking around the glacier and climbing up a cave, while he leaned out to secure a hand rope for us to follow him, he took a 13 foot fall, including a hard hit to the head and an ice pick to the hand. That basically ended our day of mountaineering, but we have PLENTY of amazing pictures (as well as some gross mental ones). We then drove to Lake Wanaka, where Leslie attempted to satisfy her adreniline craving by skydiving, only to find out that the weather was not on her side. Instead, we spent about 5 hours at Puzzling World, where we raced through the life size maze (despite a rough start, I beat Leslie by a strong 3 minutes), went to various optical illusion rooms, and spent hours trying to work through various games in the cafe. After various attempts by the "puzzle professionals" to help us with certain puzzles, we caved in and requested hints, finished up, and headed back on the road up to Christchurch where a plane took us back to Auckland for our flight back to the US.

While we definitely enjoyed the adventure sports New Zealand had to offer (dodging birds on the highway included, I must apologize to the one bird less fortunate, but survival of the fittest stupid bird!), the scenery was even more amazing: snow capped mountains, glittering ponds and hills covered in sheep. It was almost surreal in its magestic beauty. Choosing New Zealand as the setting for sci-fi "Lord of the Rings" definitely didn't require a stretch of the imagination.

The last 10 days of our trip will be spent in Hawaii, back in the good old US of A. As Hawaii is part of the US, and as we are already way behind in updating the blog as it is, and furthermore as it is beginning to take on the feelings associated with homework, we have decided to leave that portion of the trip up to your imagination...

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! And Happy New Years! We look forward to communicating with you all by phone in the future!

Congratulations! You have read the novel that is our blog. You have passed the friendship test and will be quizzed at a later date!

The trip to Australia started out a little rough, with an 8 hour layover in New Zealand where we were exhaustively questioned in customs (who wouldn't think 12 countries in 80 days is sketchy?) and had our hiking boots washed for us by Quarantine. But thanks to the Air New Zealand Lounge, we spent the time reading free magazines, eating free food, and posting the Korea update on free internet. Yes, we are begining to realize that we have low funds and are entering "expensive" countries once again.

So we landed in Sydney and I fell in love - as I imagined I would. We arrived in Sydney late at night, and having had no sleep the night before on the plane (the movie selection was quite enticing), Meridith called it an early night while I met up with some fellow American travellers whom we had met earlier in China. During the days, we mixed sightseeing with just relaxing in the sun. We toured the Sydney Opera House, wandered around "The Rocks" area where Sydney was founded, sunbathed, hiked and burned on the beaches, and visited the local markets, of course. We also took in a day of soccer, watching the Australian women's team tie China, cheering on the Sydney FC team as it beat Melbourne and getting IDed for beer in a country where the drinking age is 18 (Mer was jealous they didn't stop her). After 5 hours, it was enough for even the most avid soccer fan.

For our evening entertainment, we attempted a "night lights" tour of Sydney Harbour, only to be drenched in a downpour getting there in time for our pre-paid tickets (just proof that planning ahead only leads to trouble), freezing the entire ride, and wondering if the lightning storm could electrecute boat passengers. It was... an expeience. We gave each other one night off (from each other that is), where I went to a choral performance at the Sydney Opera House and Mer dined on pizza at the beach. The Australian Girls Choir turned out to be a glorified recital and it was pretty funny being wedged between parents who were constantly searching for their daughters in the sea of hundreds of girls. And with a popular bar directly below our hotel room, nights out were convenient entertainment (considering that Mer and I have different expectations of a "night out").

After our 4 days in Sydney, we rented a car and started the 3 day journey down to Melbourne. (Yes, I too worried about Mer driving, let alone it being on the opposite side of the road and from the opposite side of the car. Thankfully, the extra insurance we paid for ended up being needless.) The highlights of the drive were Hyams Beach (which has the whitest sand in the world), Pebbley Beach (with kangaroos resting in the shaded areas), and Buchan Caves (an alienesque world of limestone stalagtites and stalagmites). Best of all were the wildlife sightings including kangaroos (the equivalent here of deer in New Jersey), wombats, giant lizards, tye-dye looking birds, big squirting sea blobs that looked like rocks (yes, that biology degree served Mer well), and a variety of interesting roadkill.

The most exciting part of the road trip were our small town adventures. (We thought Mendham was small, but Australia completely redefines the meaning of "small town".) By small, we're talking slow-down-on-the-highway-for-20-seconds-and-you've-just-passed-through-the-center-of-town. It did provide for interesting rest stops though. One night we spent about an hour driving around the town trying to find a hotel that was still open for business (it was 9 pm), finally questioning the locals that were still up and about (all two of them), and resorting to calling an after-hours number. The next night, learning from our previous night's adventure, we stopped before 8:00, only to discover, when questioning the attendant at the gas station, that the "town" written so boldly on our map consisted of what basically came down to the gas station, a tavern, and the rooms for rent above the tavern that came with a complimentary can of insecticide. Needless to say, we ended up hurrying to a hotel in the next "town", where we were greeted with a "have you eaten yet, because Chooky's is going to close in about 10 minutes?" Ahhh, yes... small towns. We practically peeled into the empty parking spaces in front of Chooky's and delighted in our choice of menu items that could be cooked on the one remaining burner that was still ignited. Yum.

Finally arriving in Melbourne, we met up with our friend from elementary school in northern California, Jessika, who has been teaching there for about 3 years. It was great to again have a place to stay and even though it had been over 10 years since we'd seen each other, the old camp songs and stories had not been forgotten. While Jessika was finishing up her school year (yeah - Christmas in summer is a hard notion to understand. "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" isn't the same when you're in a tank top), Mer and I took advantage of the absence of a check-out time and explored a little of the city. With Jessika on summer vacation, we spent the days picnicing at the beach, wine tasting in the vinyards (I have a nose for picking out "an essence of orange and perhaps a mild oak" while Meridith prefered the grape juice to the actual wine), watching the "Penguin Parade" where we got a "Discovery Channel"-like look at some frisky birds, and going out with Jess's Aussie friends.

With a few days of prepatory driving under Mer's belt, we set out to New Zealand to tour both the north and south island in record time.

Okay, I think I can officially claim that we are way behind on blogging. But since none of you can complain to us in person, you'll have to deal with it :) So I'll take you now back about 17 days to when we actually first arrived in Japan. Mer's friend, Josh, left his job to travel in Japan for two months so we joined up and spent 10 days visting Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima and Nikko together. It was definitely a whirlwind train tour, where I gained full appreciation for my iPod.

We spent our first 4 days in Tokyo visiting a Hokusai art exhibit (of the "36 Views of Mt Fuji" fame - where we waited in line for 2 hours to then crawl through the museum in the most orderly line I've ever seen), tasting the culinary delights (including fermented bean paste and fried bird cartilige as well as tons of more-appealing dishes), playing with Sony's cutting edge technology, shopping for heated toilet seats as experienced in our hotel (unfortunately we return home empty handed - this particular luxury is quite expensive) and shielding our eyes from the neon lights. Tokyo was very fashionable, with a few styles I questioned but grew accustomed to: knee socks with high heels, micro mini skirts (or shorts of the Daisy Duke variety for the boys) as a part of school uniforms, and hair gelled in ways I would have thought only a team of professional stylists could create. Of course we remained in our well-worn jeans (a nice way of putting it) and fleeces. We discussed these clothing trends, as well as every other item of Japanese culture that surprised us, with Josh's Japanese friend, Gon. Gon showed us the Tokyo nightlife (with bars on the 7th floor of buildings, you definitely need a "tour guide") and planted the suggestion of karoke in our minds - later to be satisfied by a 2 hour sing-fest in Hiroshima.

We then took the bullet train to Kyoto and visted a multitude of Zen gardens/temples with amazing fall colors (including the Golden Temple, with gold foil covering the entire building), and made friends with traditional Japanese women in kimonos whom we spent the day with. As they were leaving, we learned they had rented the kimonos and had to hurry back to return them on time. So much for authenticity, but dang my pictures look nice! While in Kyoto we also took a day trip to Nara, a small town with historic temples and pagodas, where we took a tour with Yoko, a local woman. And no trip to Japan would be complete without stalking geisha. And although Josh thought any woman in a kimono was a geisha, our attmepts were unsuccessful. Other nightly activities consisted of intense Yahtzee games lasting well into the wee hours and arguing over whether we should spend 100 Yen to heat our room for 2 hours. We definitely appreciated Josh's patience with our bickering and celebration when one of us rolled Yahtzee. For "not being a game person", he certainly got into it.

We also confronted the language barrier in amusing ways. The highlight of these "confrontations" was in the 100 Yen Store (the equivalent of the dollar store in the US), where Meridith purchased a little container of hand lotion, as identified by the picture of hands on the tube and the fact that it was placed with the other lotions. A few uses into the cream, however, she started to notice that it didn't do much to relieve dry, itchy skin, but instead, to her horror, began to dye her hands white. Yes, it was hand whitening cream rather than hand lotion, as confirmed by a bilingual local. And while the bleach didn't do much to improve the condition of her skin, she was left with a lasting reminder of her experiences in Japan. Josh and I were both rather amused and had to commemorate the realization with photos of course.

On our way from Kyoto to Hiroshima, we stopped in Himeji, which claims the most important castle in Japan. After wandering through the amazing castle, dreaming of the Samurai times and taking plenty of pictures, we jumped back on the train to Hiroshima. In Hiroshima, the spirit of our touring changed slightly and we visited the A-Bomb Dome (one of a few buildings left in the same condition it was the day after the bombing), the Children's Peace Museum (where a little girl thought that if she folded 1,000 paper cranes, her leukemia from the radiation generated by the bomb would be cured - while she died before completing the 1,000 cranes, millions of visitors have continued the tradition in hopes of a nuclear-free world), and the Atomic Bomb Museum. I will definitely say that Japanese museums are extremely easy for English speaking tourists, as well as surprising in how much responsibility they take for past events (learning about world history through international eyes has definitely been interesting). Additionally, Hiroshima brought back some painful memories for Mer - not regarding the A bomb, but pertaining to roach bombs. After waking up with small insect bites (that did swell to some amusing sizes), Meridith re-lived her 2001 horror of "the bedbugs that would not die". This incident was nothing like the last, so instead of causing her intense pain, it was more about my mental anguish in hearing her recount the 2001 story for 4 days straight - but don't worry, we both survived.

During our day in Hiroshima, we also took a side trip to Miyajima where we saw the famous "floating red tori" which welcomed ships from the bay, avoided the food-hungry "friendly" deer, and visited some more temples. Once we had thoroughly explored Miyajima, we took a 6 hour train ride up to Nikko, a small historic town northwest of Tokyo. (We had hoped to spend a day hiking Mount Fuji but it didn't work out. We only got the quick glimpses from the bullet train.) After getting into Nikko after dark, we met an amazingly nice local man who spent 30 minutes directing us to our hotel (thank you - we would have surely ended up sleeping on a street corner without you). The next morning, we spent our 4 hours in Nikko running from one temple to the next, only to come to the conclusion that we should have just stayed in Tokyo the night before (I may only be speaking for myself here). We then raced back to Tokyo to make our plane bound for New Zealand.