We self-scheduled a trip to Australia to see Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef, to connect with a Backroads group hiking trip on New Zealand's South Island.
Our longest flight to date, and maybe ever ... 15 hours nonstop from Dallas to Sydney!
We're having a great time in Sydney. This is their summer, but yesterday's and today's temperatures have been warmer than is typical -- in the mid-90's! Thank goodness it's been mostly cloudy. We arrived Wednesday morning and after unpacking we walked around the Royal Botanic Gardens which are across the street from our hotel. For dinner we took a 25 minute cab ride to Bondi Beach to have dinner on the shore. It was great!
On Thursday we took a one hour guided tour of the Sydney Opera House which is a five minute walk from our hotel. It's magnificent, both outside ...
... and inside.
We had breakfast at this outdoor cafe underneath the Opera House, looking directly out at the harbor.
Then we walked to the Historic Rocks Area which has restaurants, cafes and boutique type shops. We also spent time in the Museum of Contemporary Art. This photo was taken from that area.
Today we took a ferry across the harbor to the Taronga Zoo. What a great place! It's on the side of a hill so you take a cable car or a bus from the harbor up to the entrance. It's a beautiful zoo with beautiful views ...
... and we had that view from where we were sitting for this outstanding outdoor bird show.
The elephants were very active in their water hole.
We especially loved seeing the typical Australian animals like kangaroos, koalas and wallabies.
We had a front-row seat from our hotel room window for Sydney’s iconic New Year’s Eve celebration ... what a spectacle. The desk clerk advised us strongly to stay in, rather than go out with the 3 million other people who started gathering in dozens of ticketed and unticketed assembly areas early in the morning. He said “if you don’t want to watch from your room, I’ll be happy to go up and watch from your room!” It was incredible.
From Sydney, we flew three hours north to Cairns, to spend a few days at the Thala Beach Nature Reserve in the Great Barrier Reef area. While we sipped fruity drinks on the lounge terrace waiting for our room to be ready, we noticed a number of parrots in the trees around us. Can you spot this one? They're all over the place.
Beyond the trees, the terrace also offered a spectacular view of the Coral Sea.
We very much enjoyed our time at the Great Barrier Reef. I really had no idea how much area the reefs cover, especially the outer reefs where we visited. There are LOTs of them, covering an area of thousands of square miles. After taking a boat out to a floating platform several miles offshore, we took this semisubmersible boat for a tour of a small part of a reef.
It was a skinny boat where you sat two across on benches with windows to your side.
We didn't know that the colors of the coral are at their best at night lighted by special lights. So the coral themselves were not all that impressive!
What was more impressive was the view of the reefs from the 45-minute helicopter ride that we took from the platform back to shore.
This photo from the helicopter shows the platform we visited, where people either snorkeled, scuba-dived or did the semisubmersible boat. We flew close over the reefs which went on for miles. Really interesting.
The day after our Great Barrier Reef exploration, we hiked and took a Land Rover through the Daintree Rainforest with a very informative guide. He does just small groups, so there were only 6 of us. It was totally fascinating.
The species of tree in the center of this photo exists today as it did 300 million years ago, and only in this rainforest.
The Daintree Rainforest has 17 different zones, going almost from sea level up several thousand feet to the top of the barrier mountain range that separates it and the coast from the Australian Outback. This is a view back toward the coast from pretty high on the slopes of that range.
Largest ferns we have ever seen!
Oldest ferns on the planet ... also unchanged in 300 million years!
We were so lucky every day with the weather. The mornings were always somewhat threatening but fine when we were at the Reef and Rainforest excursions, but by the time we returned to our bungalow at the Nature Reserve, we could watch the storms coming at us and then it would rain like heck.
We left at 3:15am to fly to New Zealand. We were ready to get out of the steamy tropical weather. There was no direct flight, so between the plane change, distance, and three hour time difference between AU and NZ, we didn't get to Christchurch until 4:30 in the afternoon. We'll have a relaxing few days here in Christchurch before we meet up with our hiking group on Sunday morning. I just hope we'll be able to keep up ok!
We've had such a nice time in Christchurch, New Zealand on our own these last few days. We absolutely loved the Botanical Garden. Really the best we've ever seen. We took lots of photos ... these are a very small sample.
We also visited the International Antarctic Center. Christchurch is the staging base to support the Antarctic bases maintained by the U.S., New Zealand and some other countries. The Antarctic Center chronicles the history of Antarctic exploration and its geography, climate and native fauna. We took a ride on this special vehicle on a track behind the Center that included some severe grades and crossing of "crevasses" that were several feet wide. Sadly, it broke down out there and we had to walk back several hundred yards to the Center ... at least that happened in sunny New Zealand, not Antarctica!
We did a guided tour of Christchurch as well as lots of exploring on our own. It was our favorite activity here. We also visited the Christchurch Art Gallery (meh -- all contemporary/modern art) and used the hop-on/hop-off tram to sightsee and get around town. We also enjoyed a few very good restaurants.
We met our Backroads hiking group and drove west from Christchurch across New Zealand's sheep country to Arthur's Pass Wilderness Lodge.
On the way, we stopped for a hike in the rolling green hills at Kira Tawhiti which are dotted with huge limestone boulders. The area is considered a sacred site by local Maori.
Our favorite program at this Wilderness Lodge was a tour of its sheep farm (a 'small' one with 'only' 3,000 sheep).
The tour included a demonstration of how the sheep are shorn by hand
and how the dogs herd the sheep. It was so interesting.
From our base in Arthur's Pass, we enjoyed a great hike through alpine forests to a peak with a great view.
The next morning, we left Arthur's Pass Wilderness Lodge, for a morning hike with mountains towering around us to the summit of Arthur's Pass.
From Arthur's Pass, we headed west until a stop for lunch at Kapitea Ridge Lodge, in the middle of nowhere but overlooking the dramatic west coast of the South Island. The gardens of the Lodge were absolutely beautiful!
Maybe the largest fiddlehead fern we've ever seen!
After spending the night at the five-star Te Wanoui Forest Retreat, situated next to some glacial hot pools, we visited the Franz Josef Glacier.
Over the past century, the glacier has receded to higher elevations that can no longer be safely reached on foot. We were able to get this close by hiking up a long trail that changes course continually and must be carefully maintained for safety.
Franz Josef is one of the few glaciers in the world that descends into temperate rain forest. Here, from the trail you can see the glacial outfall coming down through the rain forest.
We then proceeded to the Lake Moeraki Wilderness Lodge, deep in the temperate rain forest. The Lodge is completely off the grid, generating its own electricity from a homemade hydroelectric generator powered by a small spillway in a creek that feeds the small Lake Moeraki. Even so, it's a very upscale place, with a great kitchen! We did a lot of guided hiking on the property, which was founded and is run by one of New Zealand's leading conservationists. This photo illustrates the typical dense vegetation and moss/lichen-covered rocks along the trails in the temperate rain forests. The lichen is everywhere, and indicates very high air quality.
On one of our nature walks on the property, the manager showed us the resident eels in the creek ... big, hungry, carnivorous and overall creepy!
From the Lodge, we hiked on extremely well-maintained trails (typical in New Zealand) through the rain forest ...
... to desolate, windswept Munro Beach on the Tasman Sea ...
... where we looked for small pieces of New Zealand's native jade. (A few people found a few small pieces -- but no big 'Eureka!')
We enjoyed the last legs of the trips in lakes areas. This is Lake Wanaka. There are several HUGE lakes that go on for miles and are 1,000 feet deep as they were carved out by glaciers thousands of years ago.
From our lakeside hotel, we were able to take long walks along the shoreline on mostly shaded paths like this.
The path led to a vineyard and winery, with this view from a bench overlooking the vineyard, the lake and snow capped mountains in the background. It was beautiful. We enjoyed wine tastings after we could tear ourselves away from the view.
We also hiked six miles around this spectacular gorge...
... where bungee jumping was actually invented from this bridge. We did NOT do it ... but two of our companions did and we have the video (sadly, it's too big for this blog).
We ended our trip in Queenstown, a really fun town in the heart of mountains and lakes that offer endless opportunities for outdoor recreation. We took a cable car up from the city center to a peak that offered this spectacular view of the town.
Queenstown had a gourmet pizza place that we liked so much, we wrote the ingredients down from the pizzas we had and make them at home every now and then. A great, casual meal to complete a wonderful trip!
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