Missing...

After a little bit of shuffing around due to Qantas rescheduling our flight by over 8 hours, we're back, and a little stunned to be back, especially to the land of rum-pa-pa-pum and "buy a car for Christmas."

Some things we already miss about NZ/AUS:

- Tipping as a novelty (and really "Insures Prompt Service")
- Christmas at the height of summer ("air conditioners make great holiday gifts!")
- "No worries!" "How are you going?"
- Less than 5% of the population walking around with their eyes glued to their phones
- Eggs On Toast
- Only seeing 3 Starbucks in 3 weeks
- Thorough, actual briefings to people sitting in airplane exit rows.
- Fewer commercials...but...
- Seeing George Clooney in coffee commercials
- High CD % rates
- All NZ scenery

And only a few things to leave behind:
- Standard hotel check-out times at 10am (11am for high-end business hotels)
- Internet usage measured by MBs with overage charges
- $80 fill-ups, $40 breakfasts and $18 burgers
- a lot of work to be done re: attitude toward animals and pets

Bridge Climb

We had to leave Sydney a little earlier than originally planned, due to some flight changes, but we did keep our appointment with the Sydney Harbour Bridge. 

We were fortunate to be in a small group of four (us and another couple - groups are typically about 14-15 people) so we had plenty of time for everyone to stop and get commentary and admire the view as we climbed.

It was a perfect day - sunny and a little breezy - VERY breezy at the top

The Bridge is exactly the same height as the Nevis Bungy Jump (see "Christina Screams Like a Girl" earlier this month).  Coincidence??? I think not.

You can see our hotel in the background of this shot....second tall building left of the xway, looks like it has a big window at the center top.

Bubbly Trip

It has been a good Champagne trip for us.  Almost everywhere we've gone, we've stumbled on some good bottles (by "stumbled" I mean "frequently looked for and found." The actual stumbling came later).

From discovering a halfway-decent sparkling wine maker in Marlborough (No. 1 Cuvee - French winemaker from Champagne relocated to New Zealand) -

- to finding this nice bottle at a dark little unlikely wine bar down an alley in Queenstown



where the young bartender pulled out the rest of their stash from the cooler for our perusal:

On Lizard Island, besides the obvious attractions of having their "house" Champagne be Louis Roederer (which means as much as we wanted within the definition of "all-inclusive") the crack staff there took time out to schedule a lesson to teach me how to sabre a bottle.

All in all, some great choices...so much for our resolution to eat pub food and drink beer throughout.

We Are...

..."here" being at the edge of a cliff on the 3 km walk from Bronte to Bondi Beach in Sydney.  Great views, beautiful water, interesting people watching.

Or maybe this is more recognizable as Sydney?



We are climbing this today:

Catching Up - Haast

Finally have some broadband Internet connections so can add a few photos and videos.

On the west coast of New Zealand is an area called Haast, named for a German geologist (Julius von Haast) who explored the area, named the Franz Josef glacier, taught at the university and was knighted.  There is a Haast Pass, and a town named Haast. 

Ken thought it would be brilliant to play Rammstein's "Du Hast" while we drove through.  I agreed (you don't have to watch the whole thing...nothing exciting happened, we just don't have video editing software with us).

Thanksgiving - No Thanks

When we got to Lizard Island, it was us, lots of Aussies, a couple French, a few Italians, a few Brits and a few Scots. 

Since yesterday, though, we are being invaded by Americans taking advantage of the Thanksgiving week. Either sour, furtive looking couples, or families with shuffling, disinterested teenagers mad to be away from their friends and Facebook. They are so competitive – desperately afraid  that someone will have some kind of experience or sign up for some activity that they won’t have or didn’t do and are frantically signing up for everything in sight.  Saw one family where the dad was grilling the dive staff saying “we haven’t all been together in a while, so snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef was just the thing to do as a family” – my God, haven’t these people heard of Monopoly or jigsaw puzzles?

Reefs

Our second day at Lizard Island was beautiful – sunny, picture perfect. We immediately headed for the beach in front of our suite, and snorkeled around the point – amazing! Giant clams, 4-5 feet long, all living, as well as smaller burrowing clams, embedded in rock, with their bright teal and purple and blue mouths opening and closing. Fields of colorful coral, blue starfish, waving anemones. We took the waterproof camera to give it a “dry run” (pun intended) before we went on a full-day dive trip the next day. Later, we hiked to a ridge right above where we were snorkeling to see it from above.

The following day we were among a horde of folks going on the full-day trip to the Outer Reef, one of the reasons Lizard Island is so popular. Only an hour going out by boat (a rough hour, though, where I spent most of the time looking at the horizon from the back of the boat). We stopped at two sites that day – No Name Reef, and then Cod Hole. Apparently Lizard Island is allowed to go there twice a week, and live-aboards only once a week, so the sites are unspoiled. Ken and about 10 people went diving, and I and about a dozen people went snorkeling. Both were utterly amazing. The colors! The fish! The vegetation! Really, words cannot describe. Unfortunately, we learned that morning that our new camera bit the dust. Luckily, the resort was filming throughout, above and underwater so we will have some stills and video to share later.

If I could snorkel like this all the time, I wouldn’t ever have to learn how to dive.