Warrumbungle National Park

2/25/2007

Today was a big travel day from the Blue Mountains to Warrumbungle National Park. Australia is nice, but it's so big that it takes a lot of driving to get from one place to the next. Many people don't realize that Australia is about the size of the United States. That's part of the reason I like NZ so much. It's basically Australia compressed into the size of a state. Anyways, we eventually made it to Warrumbungle and set up our tents. There were kangaroos everywhere, which was awesome. We had enough time to do a good 2 hour hike. Basically we went uphill and then downhill as we walked around a small mountain. There were some great views.





Our path was blocked by this spider, so we had to take a detour.

And those kangaroos...


After the hike we made dinner, played cards, and went to sleep. It was really windy during the night. We probably shouldn't have put our tent in a wide open area, heh.

Blue Mountains

2/23/2007 - 2/24/2007

This morning we had a 2.5 hour drive in our new rental van to a place called the Blue Mountains. We stopped in a town for lunch, and then some of us rented mountain bikes to check out a trail. First we had to ride from the town to the trail entrance. There were some really steep sections that I got serious speed on, but for every steep downhill there is a steep uphill, which is a bit more work. I've got a lot of training to do before my bike trip this summer. More on that later. Unfortunately, after the 45 minutes it took us to get to the trail entrance, some dark, ominous clouds rolled in. I've lived in Florida long enough to know that riding a metal bike on top of a mountain ridge with a thunderstorm approaching is pretty stupid, so we turned back. Philip and I biked pretty hard to get back to town, and fortunately we found a good shelter before it started pissing down rain. Lindsay took a nice spill and scraped up her knee and elbow, however. Here is a photo of the view from the beginning of the trail that we didn't get to go on, and the second photo is of a cool flower.



After the storm passed, we rode to a place called Echo Point to check out the Three Sisters, which are 3 big rocks of significance to the Aborigines. Here are a few photos of the great views.




After the returning the bikes, we went to the local IMAX theater to see a movie called The Edge, which was about the Blue Mountains. The IMAX cinematography was spectacular, and the movie discussed this ancient tree species called The Wollemi Pine, which dates back to the age of the dinosaurs and was recently discovered to still be living in the area. Exactly where the small number of these trees are located is a secret, and the camera crew had to be blindfolded while they were taken to the location in a helicopter.

After the movie we drove to a town called Black Heath where we stayed the night at the Scout Den. The Scout Den had a cricket field, basketball courts, and tennis courts. We didn't get a chance to play any sports, but I did get to see some cricket being played the following morning.

The next morning we drove an hour and a half to a place called Sheep Dip to do some canyoning, which basically involves traversing down a canyon. Sometimes we were walking on land, and other times we were going through water (cold water, that is). It was a ton of fun, especially the parts where we had to jump a few meters down into the mysterious black water. Pictures might do a better job explaining what we actually did (I got the pictures from Lindsay's camera since mine isn't waterproof).







After the canyoning we set up camp at a site nearby. There were massive termite as well as kangaroos all over the place. Here are some photos.

Goodbye NZ, G'day Australia!

2/20/2007 - 2/22/2007

After doing a few last minute things in Christchurch this morning, we flew out of New Zealand at 3:45 pm on a 3 hour flight to Sydney, Australia. I was sad to leave NZ, but I guess there might be worse places to go than Australia, eh? I got to see The Prestige for a second time on the airplane, and if you haven't seen that movie I would highly recommend it.


After picking up our bags and going through customs, we sat around a bit until we heard a loud roar coming around the corner. It was our airport shuttle service, a group of guys driving Harley-Davidsons. Each of us got to ride on our own personal Harley with a driver. We rode all around Sydney on our way to our accommodation at Manly Beach. It was awesome. Those bikes are incredibly powerful. I'm not a huge fan of motorcycles because of all the stories I hear from my dad in the ER, but it was fun to do once in my life. There were a light of great sights along the way. We even saw the world's largest ocean liner The Queen Mary II along with another massive ship The Queen Elizabeth in the Sydney harbor, which apparently is a very historic event. People were everywhere to witness it. Here are some pictures.

Helicopters filled the sky above the harbor.



Our accommodations we were 2 giant apartments across from the beach. Each had 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, kitchen, dining room, living room, etc. It was a nice break from camping all the time. Below is a picture of the place. After we got situated, we just walked around the town and got some dinner.

The next morning I got up really early (there was a 2 hour time change), and I went out for a run by the beach with a couple other guys. It was 6:30 am, and the town was already bustling. It seemed like everyone in Manly Beach was out either exercising near the beach or going to work. A little later I had to start working on the class material for my SCUBA diving certification. Philip was also doing the certification, and basically all we had to do was work on the chapter reviews in the textbook. It's pretty basic. After lunch I went with Andy, Philip, and Garner to rent surf boards. I haven't done a lot of surfing, bu I was able to catch some waves and get up a few times, which I was excited about. It was a lot of fun.

Manly Beach is very beautiful, and the town is quite pleasant. Here are some pictures.



I actually went into the city with Andy and Garner on our third day in Sydney. To get there we had to take a 30 minute ferry from Manly Beach to Sydney, which was pretty scenic. Here are some pictures I took from the boat.

We walked around the city for a little while and then went to the Sydney Opera House, which is beautiful as you can see from the pictures above. I thought about going to see a show, but there weren't any playing tonight in the main theater. I'm not really interested in theater, so seeing a show in the main theater would have been the only reason for me to go. I was really tired after going to the opera house for some reason, so I took the ferry back to Manly. I did some email and uploaded a few pictures, and then I just relaxed for the evening. Here is a photo of Sydney from the opera house.

Christchurch

2/18/2007 - 2/19/2007

Today we had about a 6 hour drive to the city of Christchurch. The drive was pretty uneventful, but we did pass by some incredibly blue lakes. Take a look at the pictures. We first saw the color in some man-made ponds on several farms. I figured it was some type of chemical creating the color, but when we saw the huge lakes with the same color I realized that it truly was the natural color.




When we got into Christchurch, we checked in at the YMCA, which was different from the American YMCAs. This YMCA was an accommodation but also had a weight area, climbing wall, and squash courts. It was already pretty late when we got in, so we just had dinner and walked around a bit before going to bed.

In the morning on the following day, we rented some rock climbing shoes at a local outdoor store and then drove 20 minutes out of town to get to a real rock wall to do some climbing. It was a sweet spot. It seemed to be on somebody's farm land, so nobody was there. Apparently one of the Polytech schools (kind of like a trade school) had set up several routes, so Adam just set up the ropes for those lines. We started at the top of the wall and then rappelled down, which was fun. Then we did some climbing. It was a lot of fun. One of the routes was really tough. It took me a while before I could get it. I had to stray from the standard route to get up, which created a large angle between my rope and the belay rope. When I fell off the rock with this angle, I ended up swinging really hard into another part of the rock. Fortunately, I was able to keep control my body during the swing and hit the rock with my feet. A couple other people in my group weren't as fortunate and will probably have some nice bruises. Heh... Here are a few pictures.

After climbing Eli and I played some squash at the YMCA. Neither of us had played squash before, so we really didn't understand the rules. I've seen it on TV before, but I basically just applied racquetball rules while considering the tin to come up with my own rules. It was fun. That ball is really weird, however. And if the YMCA happens to read this, those racquets were asymmetrical before we played with them (or were they?).

Sadly, it was our last night in New Zealand. We had a picnic dinner with Dimitry's kebabs in a garden. Kebabs are my favorite things to eat for lunch. I don't understand why I've never seen kebab stands in the US. It's just chicken (or whatever), lettuce, onions, tomato, hummus, tabbouleh, and sauce inside a Turkish bread wrap. Very tasty. Here is a nice group picture.



Here are a couple random shots of Christchurch. We didn't have a lot of time to explore the city, so I can't really say much about it.