Round the World

We have now finally made it to South East Asia, where we will be spending the majority of our travel time. We had been looking forward to this piece of our trip as it was probably going to be a bit more challenging and also more enlightening. We started off with our late night flight out of Sydney airport on Gulf Air. It was an overnight flight, and consequently we arrived in Singapore at 4:40 a.m. There are more people that you think awake at this insane hour. After finding a hostel that would take us at 7:00 in the morning, we set out on the MRT (Mass Railway Transit) to find our crappy little hostel, and the heat and humidity hit us hard. We were not used to the heat or the humidity for that matter after travelling in Australia and New Zealand for 2 months. Our clothes were instantly wet as we stepped outside. We have gotten into the habit of showering 3 times a day to curb the smell.

Once we settled into Singapore, we were able to try some of the local cuisine from the nearby food stalls. This was quite a cultural experience, as we were not completely sure what was in the food, and we were surrounded by locals in the stifling heat. As we continued our on tour through some of the major sights in Singapore, we encountered many friendly Singaporeans. They were eager to help us if we were lost, or even if we were not. We were able to visit the famous Raffles Hotel, which is a huge white complex (not just a hotel) built in the late 1800s by some Armenian immigrants. It gave us a little history of the building of the Singapore itself at the museum upstairs. We also had the opportunity to visit Sentosa island just a few kilometers south of Singapore itself. The best part was taking a cable car over from Singapore in order to get a bird's eye view of the area. On Sentosa, there was an amusement park feel, and we couldn't leave without trying one of the attractions. John's choice was the "luge", which was actually going down a semi-steep concrete path in a plastic cart with a brake. It was a pretty quick trip, but fun nonetheless. Also on Sentosa, was the southernmost point on the Asian continent, so that was pretty cool to be there even though we hadn't been hardly anywhere north of it!

I'll save on shampoo now!

The next day John decided that he needed a haircut. There was an Indian barber that would do it for just 5 Singapore dollars, so why not? John thought the best cut for travelling might be a buzz cut. As for you Texans, that's a burr. As all his blond hair was coming off, I was wondering if he might look a little funny, but it's a new "militaryish" look for him one could say. He can look very mean with that haircut if he wants to!

Our last activity was a Night Safari at the Singapore zoo. It sounds a bit corny, but it was actually very good. We saw lot of big animals, and it was a clever setup. Since it is nighttime, we couldn't see the cages, and in some instances there wasn't cages at all. There were moats separating us from the animals. We were joined on our Night Safari by a fellow traveller from Belgian named Herman. I told him about the "Herman the Worm" story, and he thought that was pretty amusing.

As for now, we have entered into Malaysia, and are enjoying the laid-back beach life so far. For now, selamat jalan.

Nadine

Unless you're willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won't happen. Phillip Adams (Australian)

As Nadine and I headed east on the train headed towards Melbourne on Nadine's birthday (September 1st in case you forgot), we were uncertain of what to expect of our encounter with the Bennett family. Upon walking into their living room and seeing a chocolate cake with a candle on top, we knew that our time together was going to be great.

We spent the weekend mostly relaxing with the fun Bennett bunch. To really be welcomed by/into the Bennett family, we went to a "barbie" put together by Chris, brother, uncle, family comedian. We spent the evening quizzing each other Aussie words and their American equivalents. Be careful talking about "rooting" for your favorite team in Australia, you will get some interesting looks.

We visited the normal sites, museums, parks, cultural places you wouldn't find in New Mexico, but what made our time in Melbourne great was the Bennett family. We met each other through a fellow educator, Joy C., who had switched places with the Bennetts early in the 90's in a teacher exchange. They offered to put us up for awhile and share a part of their life with us.

Big waves in front of the museum, no sharks

Terry took us to an Aussie Rules Football game between his team, Richmond, and West Coast. Unfortunately, his team lost by almost 100 points. I played basketball with David for an evening in his basketball league. It was great to run up and down the court. We didn't lose by the same margin as Richmond. We spent a night playing cards with Louisa (Lou), James (Jam), Anthony (Ant), and Kathy (Kat). Anthony, being the dealer, some how won. A little fishy. Rachel and I had some major battles over chess, the 12 year old came close to beating me, but not quite. Jess was ever the entertainer.

Rachel, Cathy, Jess, Big Terry, Cool Guy, Cool Girl

Nadine and I also had the pleasure of meeting one of Nadine's old class mates from Skutt High School in Omaha, Terry Packer. According to Nadine, he still looks the same other than the fact that he is 10 years older and an engineer living in Australia.

Due to the fact that we spent so much time with the Bennetts, a good thing, we only had 2 days in Sydney. It is kind of working due to the fact that the weather has been raining and our last day in Australia is set to be, well, raining. We plan on spending our last day in Australia on a whirlwind tour of Sydney, Opera House, Harbour Bridge, Skytower, and maybe a few other places we can fit in.

Nemo! Nemo! Where are you Nemo?

Hard to believe but we are already a third of the way through our Around the World trip and are passing from our stage of easy traveling in English speaking countries and a solid tourist infrastructure to foreign languages and possibly some more difficult traveling in third world countries for 5 months.

Chocolate makes life worth living. - Cathy Bennett

Life is good and we are both in good health and excited for another challenge.

JW

[/b]Don't wait or worry about tomorrow, just keep focused on what's happening today. -excerpt from Be A Dreamer

Since our last entry, Nadine and I had spent over a week in Cairns and the surrounding area enjoying some much needed warm weather. We are now in Melbourne and home of the Australian Football League Grand Final. Our Super Bowl. We flew from Cairns to Adelaide.

With several days in Adelaide, we explored multiple sites within the city center. Two of our favorite spots were Haigh's Factory and the Sushi King, both food related. Sushi King became a home away from hostel home by the fact that we ate there three times over 5 days. "Why eat sushi before going to South East Asia?" The sushi here was good and inexpensive. Plus, if you buy 3 rolls, you receive a free drink! Need I say more?

Secondly, probably one of our most anticipated activities was a tour of the Haigh's Chocolate Factory. This tour had a huge circle in our guidebook. We lined up like all of the other female chocolate afficionados and listened to our host talk about production of the coco bean while our minds were wandering to the free chocolate we were going to be tasting. I must admit that I personally dreamed of having a diving board on the edge of a pool of chocolate that we could optionally jump into at the end of the tour to most completely enjoy the warm liquid chocolate. The pool and diving board were unfortunately absent, but the free chocolate wasn't. We savored each bite as if we were professional chocolate judges. "Yes Nadine, that was a much more quality chocolate than that Hersheys bar we tried yesterday." To further our chocolate judging abilities, we bought several chocolate bars and truffles and sat outside carefully tasting each one. Our final decision, they were ALL great. Haigh's chocolate is not sold abroad, they use no advertising, no celebrity endorsers, just word of mouth over blog entries like this. Thus, we had to send a small box of pure joy for our parents. If you live close to Odessa or Omaha, you might consider visiting our parents to check on them and make sure they are doing alright and if, maybe, by some chance, they have some quality Australian chocolate lying around.

The one activity we were definitely going to participate in was visiting the wineries of the Barossa Valley, a valley renowned for its wine. After a few days exploring Adelaide, we set out north. Luckily, our bus driver notified us along the way of a wine and gourment food festival, creatively called Gourmet, coinciding with our visit to the valley. He let us know that the little hostel we wanted to stay at had been full 5 days ago. He suggested we try the Caravan Park in Tununda. Right on cue, we got the very last short trailer in the park, high living standards for any resident of New Mexico.

Once lodging had taken care of itself, we began walking towards Para Road, home of 4 wineries within walking or staggering distance, depending on your wine capacity. You can imagine us two backpackers sauntering on into the first winery with our t-shirt and zip-off pants and thinking to ourselves, "can we really just walk in and try all of the free wine we want?" As we saddled up to the testing bar, I casually looked at the list of wines we were able to taste, and calmly asked to try their finest Shiraz wine. And just like that, the girl handed me a glass with wine, and it was free. At that point, we both started quickly tasting several white, rose, and red wines and commenting to each other and the girl behind the bar how well you could truly savour that oak, vanilla, or fruity flavor in the wine. At the end of the bar was a large spittoon, to spit out all of the wine not pleasing to your own personal palate. Personally, how foolish was it to actually use the spittoon. After our last winery visit, we had the task of walking home in the cool stiff breeze in our aforementioned t-shirts, but feeling quite warm, chattering and laughing all the way down to our miniature mobile home at the caravan park. This is a walk the locals must see daily and call by a specific name, there goes the Para Road walk, those two.

As any traveler has while traveling, they have bright ideas from time to time, and yes, we both had one suggesting that we rent bikes and visit wineries outside the confines of walking. The next morning, after checking out of our short mobile home, we rented our mountain bikes with semi-flat tires and ungreased chains, and set off to our first winery on the map. The combination of our bikes less than robust condition, hills, and having had 4 winery tours under our belt the previous day, riding proved to be difficult. But being the adventerous and thrifty travellers we are, we continued on across paved and dirt roads, fields full of sheep, until we reached our first goal, the winery. We continued this track until the end of the early afternoon. We had visited another 5 wineries and had 4 bottles of savoury wine in our backpack. We had a long ride back with similar conditions as the previous day, lots of laughing, joking, smiling, all while on top of a bike and riding along the main intercity road. We reached our bags safely, boarded the bus, and headed back to Adelaide. The entire Barossa Valley wine tasting tour proved to be a great grape of a time, or as best as I can remember.

A goal we've had on this around the world trip is to volunteer and give back in some way for all that we have been receiving along the way. Nadine researched organizations, contacted people, and finally set up a volunteer experience on Kangaroo Island. We were volunteering with WWOOF as wwoofers. WWOOF is an acroynm for Willing Workers On Organic Farms. In a wwoofing situation, we as a couple, volunteered our services, manual labor usually, for half a day while our hosts provided us with food and a place to stay. We were fortunate enough to set up a wwoofing experience with Dean and Judy Johnson from American River on Kangaroo Island. We jumped on a bus down to the coast, hopped a ferry, rode on another shuttle, and we were there, at Muston Heights B@B. Dean welcomed us at the gate and drove us up the winding driveway past wallabies to their cozy little home. We were to be up the next morning ready for some work.

Next morning, we readied ourselves for a day of work. At the very early hour of 8:30 (5 in the afternoon local Texas time), we started our first half day of work. I kept busy outside mowing grass and pulling weeds, while Nadine did some gardening and inside cleaning. For us, it was great to be helping someone out, but more importantly, meeting authentic Aussies in their native environment of home and their farm. After we finished our morning work, we had time to visit the thriving town of American River, which is not actually on a river, but an inlet of the sea. The town is named after a few Americans built a boat on this inlet 200 years ago. After mailing two bottles of wine back to the States, we hiked a nice, lenghty nature trail back to the Muston Heights B&B.

Next day we worked the entire day mowing, cleaning, and setting some rock down for their garden so we could earn a full day to explore Kangaroo Island the next day.

Our destination on our free day was Kangaroo Island and all of its furry treasures and some not so furry. Originally Kangaroo Island earned its name from a large number of British and French sailors who found an overwhelming number of kangaroos on the island.

Reaching further back in history, the word kangaroo is an Aboriginal word. When Captain Cook initially interacted with the Aboriginals, he asked what the name of the hopping marsupial was, he misunderstood their response. They answered kangaroo. From then on, the British called the kangaroo, a, well, kangaroo. The word kangaroo in the Aboriginal language doesn't refer to the animal, but actually means "I don't know." Thus, when the Aboriginals were asked what that animal was, they said "I don't know," and the explorers took it to be the name for the kangaroo. They really messed that one up. That takes us back to an important lesson, communication is the key.

With a day to spare and a car at our disposal, Nadine and I immediately drove halfway through idyllic red ochre roads to a Koala Park. It was here that we walked around staring at the groggy koalas hanging out in the eucalyptus trees. We counted 10 in total, Nadine spotting 9 of them. That was an impressive sight. We continued on to Flinders Chase National Park. We were walking up to the Visitors Center looking at a sign that told you to remember to know your license plate number for your park pass, when I spotted a small, red kangaroo just chillin' in the sun. He blended right into the scenery! He did not seem disturbed by our presence, so we snapped a few pics and stared at him for a while in disbelief.

"John, are there really kangaroos on Kangaroo Island?"

I'm holding up The Remarkables

From the rangers station, we drove down to Admiral's Arch seal colony. Here we found hundreds of New Zealand seals, I do hope they have their visas in order, lying on the beach, swimming, eating and fighting. All the while, the tide was coming in with huge waves crashing against the rocks. This time of the season, the seals have just given birth a couple of months ago and baby seals are suckling.

Up the coast is the location of the Remarkables. A set of rocks that shot up from the ocean as magma and have taken on some unique forms from erosion over thousands of years. This place rendered several great photo opportunities.

Time dictated we return to American River before the sun came down and we would be more likely to hit something in the Johnson's car. At the end of the day, we had seen some koalas, a porcupine, kangaroo, 2 tiger snakes (very poisonous, Nadine shouldn't have been playing with them), large lizard, and hundreds of humans.

Our hosts Judy and Dean are some great people and have had some great life experiences. Both are close to my parents age and keep a very busy work schedule farming, cleaning, flying, cooking, maintaining a B&B, washing, and everything in between. Dean also flies planes. On a weekly basis he flies back and forth between Adelaide and Kangaroo Island. Over our time with them, Judy put together some great meals. During the evening, we sat around the fire laughing, talking, and watching tv. There was an English version of the Amazing Race that had travelled to Kangaroo Island and Dean helped fly a few teams around the island and across to the mainland. There were also feautured just a month ago on a television show called, Postcards. It's a show that features interesting parts of Southern Australia. http://www.postcards.sa.com.au/ Click on the title Kangaroo Island Flights and that is there place.

The entire experience of working, sharing, and being with them as a wwoofer was very rewarding. We would do it again in a heartbeat. When it came time to return to Adelaide, we had the unique opportunity of going by Dean's plane. The flight over afforded a fantastic view of Kangaroo Island and the coast line. Dean allowed me to take control of the plane for a bit and maintain the plane level with the horizon. It was also at this point that Dean took control of the plane back and performed a little roller coaster move, pull back on the controls and following it with a dip of the plane which left Nadine screaming and also blaming me for that maneuver.

Answers to last weeks questions

1) Cyclones only happen in the Southern hemisphere while hurricanes take place in the Northern hemisphere. 1A) Makes you wonder why Iowa State is called the Cyclones. I know Nate must be scratching is head about that one.

2) Nadine and I actually saw one of these in the wild recently.

Questions for this week

1) How many of the worlds most deadliest snakes are found in Australia?

2) How many of these did Nadine and I see so far in Australia?

Photos will be added to this entry shortly.

Cheers
JW

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy. -Benjamin Franklin[i]

A plane has transported us from New Zealand and Lord of the Rings to the massive country of kangaroos, every animal in the world that will kill you immediately, and where everyone adds "[i]ie" to the end of every word. "How about some brekkie this morning? Ah crockie! There isn't any bread left!"

Our time here in Cairns, Australia has one definitive characteristic that is different from New Zealand, it's warm!!! I really do enjoy a little warm weather and I can be in 70 degree solidarity with everyone back in Texas and the rest of the States suffering from the heat wave. I feel your pain, on the beach.

This also marks the point where we are not returning back to school, teenagers, psychological tests, papers to be graded, yet we are continuing our responsibility to travel around the world for another 7 months. We will be thinking of y'all as we sit on a beach reading a good or bad book. Someone has to do it. Crockie, we've been traveling for 2 months already. Time, she is passing by quickly. Alright, enough about the fact we aren't "working," what have we been doing?

There is one thing every person that visits Northern Queensland must do, and that is to visit the Great Barrier Reef! After a few days relaxing, we boarded our sea going vessel, the Super Cat, to transport us to "The Reef". We climbed on the boat that was jam packed with 110 other enthusiastic snorkellers and divers. The ride out to the reef took a little over an hour and the combination of wind, waves, and a rolling Super Cat, sea sickness came to those not able to focus on the horizon. Neither one of us succombed to sea sickness, because we were to busy talking to Deb and Krista on the deck of our super feline. Deb and Krista are two Canadian kindergarten teachers we've run into three times now. So we chatted about the wind, the need of a wetsuit, waves, and the probability of actually running into a great white shark.

Upon reaching the reef, we gladly jumped into the water with a massive, and I do mean massive set of coral under our fins. Nadine and I proceeded to search, discover, and take in this incredible mass of coral reef along with a few of its buddies swimming around. Unfortunately, we never did find Nemo. He must have been busy with interviews for a sequel. We only spent 30 minutes in the water. As we were snorkelling, we were being cooled by cool water and wind passing below and over us. In addition to that, clouds hanging over our dive spot (I really think they began following us as soon as we left the wharf), and Cyclone Larry caused the water to be cloudy. When the sun actually hit the water, it lit up the entire reef full of thousands of colors. Quite impressive.

After our dive, we enjoyed a little gastronomical delight prepared by "Frenchie," the onboard chef for an hour with a Belgian couple, before we continued on to our second sight. At the second sight, we were accompangied by clouds and few of their closest friends. As a result, the colors of the reef and fish weren't as bright. The waves were quite a bit larger and threw us around like New Mexicans at a rodeo. From there we rode back to shore, and as you might have guessed, as soon as we were a decent distance from the reef, the sun revealed itself. Stupid sun! We really don't need the sun. The experience was great, and we were both really felt fortunate to see such an amazing natural wonder.

After the dive, we both decided to visit the tropical Tablelands on a 2 day tour. Bart, our tour guide, picked us up nice and early and ready to take on the day. The beginning of the first day, we visited the Cathedral Fig Tree, which is over 500 years old. What's unique about the tree is that a fig tree has an unique story. When a bird injests a fig and later poops it out on top of a leaf on another tree. What happens is that the fig tree starts growing on top of the tree that it landed on. Over years, the tree grows up and its roots grow down, covering the original host tree, looking for the ground and water. Seeing one of the trees makes you want to climb it and swing around like a kid.

After the fig tree, we passed by a few volcanic crater lakes and made our way to the Millaa Millaa Falls. As the most photographed falls in Australia, according to Bart, it was a nice little place to photograph AND swim. Swimming in this little pond with the falls pounding on top of rocks is only for those who have a carpe diem spirit. Nadine and I were the only ones to partake and we had to psych ourselves up to swim in the ice cold water. Once again, carpe diemish. We swam around for a good 5 minutes to the waterfall, under the waterfall, and back to shore feeling quite rejuvenated and awake. We also saw a platypus in a creek close to town of Yungaburra....tiny little bugger.

Next day, we enjoyed the country side with some mountain biking and an afternoon of canoeing on Lake Tinaroo. Lake Tinaroo is located over a former town, and people dive to search the houses laying at the bottom of the lake. We continued up a tributary where we did a little face painting with the red ochre rock. Simply wet it, rub it against another rock, and you have a red paint. We reverted back to our time in preschool. On our way out, we were lucky enough to see the timid and shy tree kangaroo. He didn't feel like leaving his tree branches to socialize, but we did see him.

One thing that we have discovered here in Australia is, FOOD! Cadbury chocolate is made here, delicious. There is a type of cookie, or biscuit for non-Americans, called Tim-Tam. Every flavor is awesome. Best cookie I have tried, other than Tracy's chocolate chip cookies of course. The third food I have come to enjoy are hamburgers with the lot. Now what is the lot? Here ya go. In addition to your regular meat, there is a toasted bun, lettuce, tomatoe, onion, the Ozzies add carrot, fried egg, bacon, some type of "special" sauce, pineapple, and for those of you who like beets, they add beets. I have passed on the beets.

Our time here in Cairns, Northern Queensland, is coming to an end, and tomorrow we are flying across the country to Adelaide and the wine country. We are not going to drink and drive, we promise. Instead, we are going to drink and ride a bike. Much safer.

Boots and Hailey, I hope you have a great first day of school.

Congrats to the older Pepper twin for correctly stating the title of this blog before I had even written to it.

It's not a contest to see who can put the most comments on the blog, all it shows us is the person that is our best friend. Nothing big. No pressure. Enjoy the blog, share it with others, but read in moderation please.

Two questions for everyone if you have made it this far in the blog.

Question #1 - What is the difference between a cyclone and a hurricane? Also, why are they called the Iowa State Cyclones?

Question #2 - What is special about the amethystine python?

Answers will be revealed next week. Oh the anticipation.

Peace
John and Nadine

Caterpillar: and who are you?
Alice: I hardly know, sir, just as present at least. I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Always in the big woods, when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place, there will be, along with feelings of curiousity and excitement, a little nagging dread. It is an ancient fear of the unknown and it is your first bond with the wilderness you're going into. What you are doing is exploring. You are undertaking the first experience, not of the place, but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of essential loneliness; for nobody can discover the world for anyone else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes a common ground and bond, and we cease to be alone. - Wendell Berry

Greetings all from Christchurch, New Zealand! We have been quite busy driving around the South Island on the left side of the road. We have seen, this is a rough estimate, 20 million of the 40 million sheep in New Zealand. A few were being chased by a few eager male human Kiwis. They said that the "baaahhh" from the sheep means "more." Today is our last day in New Zealand as tomorrow we head to Australia and warm weather.

From Lake Tekapo, Nadine and I headed further south to the town of Wanaka. Our sole goal here was to ski, ski, and then a little more skiing. Nadine had been suffering from a 2 year dry snow spell. We had two ski fields to choose from, Cardrona and Treble Cone. From eager pushing by a wild haired Aussie, we decided to go to the Cardrona Ski Fields first. This was a good choice too. Cardrona turned out to be the easier of the two places.

As we drove to the mountain after having had picked up a Japanese snowboarder hitching a ride, we climbed the steep "35 minute from the bottom to the top" dirt road with no safe barriers to prevent our long fall. It was here that we realized a 4X4 vehicle would be nice compared to our little go kart. BUT, the view from the top was amazing. Nadine and I spent the morning and afternoon tearing up some major green and blue routes on the mountain. It was good for Nadine to be back on skis and good for me not to fall the first day. Now for an American or European, when you think of a place to ski, you think of long ski trails lined with trees that you can ride for a long while. That is not the reality in New Zealand. In New Zealand, the ski trails are short and you have to avoid rocks sticking up out of the snow. Those prove to be more dangerous than the snowboarders flying by. It was a great chance for Nadine to hit the slopes, and a sort of a warm-up for a more challenging day.

The next day, we drove to Treble Cone Ski Resort. Same thing, drive small car up steep dirt road for spectacular views along the way. What was great about this place is that if you purchased a 15 pack of Speights Beer, there was a coupon on the packaging that allowed you to get two ski lift tickets for the price of one. Great deal, plus the beer! Good thing that one of us got in free, that person being me, because this place proved to be more difficult than the previous day. After two runs on greens that had me falling all over, I called it a morning and spent it with some hot cocoa, a camera, some crazy green birds and spectactular views. While I was sipping on some hot drink, Nadine had the freedom to run around all of the runs. She immediately headed over to the blues and blacks. She became so excited, she almost went out of bounds on the other side of the mountain. Fortunately she composed herself and decided to stay on the trails. We finished the afternoon with a couple more runs together on some kiddy runs and greens, and Nadine had had her skiing fix for a "wee" bit. She really wants to get back to the slopes of Colorado.

After our four days in the Wanaka area, we quickly drove to see Queenstown, "capital of extreme sports" in the country that is "home to all extreme sports." If you wanted to use the word "extreme" for any part of the U.S., you could use it with New Mexico and the fact that they use green chile on all dishes. Cereal included. Now that is extreme! I would like to see anyone from Queenstown try a little green chile on their Weet-Bix in the morning. Wowzers. After our quick visit to Queenstown, we continued our circular driving route up the western coast. Along our way, we passed the impressively calm and dark blue Lake Hawea. A lake similar to this back home would have been built up years ago and full of people. We saw one single boat the entire time.

Our first stop along the Western coast was the town, and they are all towns on the South Island, with the exception of Christchurch with its whooping population of 320,000, of Fox Glacier. It has this name due to the fact that, well, it's at the bottom of a rather large glacier. You could call this the glacier district, because 25 kilometers north is the Franz Josef Glacier. What makes these two glaciers so unique and spectacular is that they have advanced so close to the sea. Both glaciers average about a meter, 3 feet, of downhill descent everyday. On a good day, they may move as much as 15 feet. Imagine this scenario - driving along a two-lane road and seeing a vast sea to your left and a humungous mountain capped in snow on your right and in the ridge of that mountain, a big ol' glacier just hanging out. That is New Zealand for you, full of jaw dropping shots.

The first glacier we visited was the southern Fox Glacier. We hiked through the valley to the terminal face of the glacier. You were miniscule compared to the glacier. It was here that you felt like a Pepper at a dance full of WNBA basketball players. Think of the bright side though, if you were throwing a party, you would have an unlimited amount of ice. Barry! Can you climb up the valley and get some more ice. No dirt this time though.

The following day, we travelled north to the Franz Josef Glacier. The Maori legend states that this glacier was created when a girl lost her man when he fell climbing the local peaks and died. She searched for him at the top of the mountain and her resulting tears the loss of her lover froze and created the glacier. I can't actually vouch for that, because when we drove up, there was a full gale wind storm smacking us in the face. So I didn't actually see her at the top. Honestly, the wind was strong enough that we were able to lean into wind and not fall over. Eventually, I ran to the terminal face, took a few pictures, did NOT pee into the wind, and ran back to the car where Nadine was waiting. Both glaciers were still quite spectacular.

From the glacier district, we traveled north to the small town of Punakaiki. It's here that you find another unique geographical anomoly, pancake rocks and blowholes. Not two items you associate with breakfast. What has happened is that the limestone at this point have been eroded over time and looks like stacks of skinny pancakes. When the high tide comes in, the water rushes in and explodes out of blowholes similar to geysers. It is a sight to take in. I felt like a kid at Disneyland running from spot to spot trying to catch the "money shot." It was so good that we first took it in the evening, like it so much, went back in the morning to watch the show again.

Our final noteworthy experience was in the city of Kaikoura on the eastern coast. It doesn't take long to travel from coast to coast. Maori tradition holds that the demigod Maui sat on his boat, the southern island, at the point where the penisula of Kaikoura rests and fished up the northern island, where we decided to hike the peninsula. There were two routes you could choose, hike along the top or walk along the beach. We went with the hike along the ridge that provided excellent views, and on the way back we returned via the beach. This is where it gets interesting. We passed a small point along the beach where we saw a colony of seals, no relation to the singer Seal. Upon our return we had to pass a small and wet jetty. As the tide was coming in, you had to time it perfectly to reach the next high and dry rock. As Nadine panicked and scared of having return to the hostel wet or dead, we turned around and did something much safer. We climbed up a grass cliff to get to the top. We did return home safely and the nerves still intact.

I already have named our first entry from Australia. I will not reveal it until week, but it is does have its origin from Dumb and Dumber, the greatest movie of all time. Hope all are well and enjoying the blog. I have to note that the top commenter of the blog is a New Mexican, Jeremy Pepper. You may not be able to win with stamps, but you can win by total comments. Keep up the good work buddy.

Peace from Kiwiland

John and Nadine