Perth, North Island of New Zealand

After leaving Thailand our next destination was Perth in Western Australia. For those of you not familiar with Australia, Perth is about the only city in the entire state of Western Australia, and WA is almost half the country. Perth has to be the most isolated major city in the World. First of all it is about 2,500 miles to Sydney in the East. It is actually closer to Singapore in Asia, then the main city in it's own country. To the South is just the Southern Ocean, which doesn't see any land until you reach Antartica. To the north is seemingly endless uninhabitable land in the Australian outback, and to the west is about 5,000 miles of Ocean until you reach Africa. Again, my point is that it is a remote city, but the population is over 1 million people and it was quite nice. We got in around 9 PM the first night so didn't do anything until the next day which we spent walking around the downtown area, the waterfront and spending time in Kings Park, which is actually the largest city park in the world...yes bigger then Central Park in New York City. It is perched on a bluff just outside the CBD and provided great views of the skyline and Swan River. The following day we took the train to Fremantle as Perth itself is on the Swan River and not the Ocean. Freo as they call it is the main port town and is really a great seaside town. The downtown area felt like Hill Valley from Back to the Future, as it was really a neat town. There were street entertainers, markets, and a lot of bars and restaurants, and the weather was perfect that day. We found ourselves at the Little Creatures Brewary, suprinsingly, and enjoyed a couple of cold beers out on the deck right on the water. It was a huge microbrewary (does that make sense?) and it was bustling with people. After leaving Freo we stopped at Cottesloe Beach, which is the main beach in this area. The waters were again crystal clear blue, and we caught a great sunset there before heading back to the city.

Next on the list was a quick stop in Melbourne (just the airport) during a layover to pick up some camping equipment from Jonathan's parents to use while in New Zealand. The flight gave me more appreciation of how vast Australia really is, as it was a 4 hour flight over essentially nothing, then from Melbourne to Auckland, New Zealand was about another 4 hours, so it was a LONG day of traveling. Once in Auckland we met up with a friend of Jonathon's from the States named Mark. He's taking a 2 week vacation to tour around New Zealand with us for a little bit. Jon and I getting along great and everything, but it has been nice to have another person around.

We didn't spend much time in Auckland (part of it was actually catching up on some sleep too) before renting a car and starting the drive to different spots throughout the country. First we started out and drove around the Coromandel Penninsula which is just east of Auckland. It was a cloudy and extremely windy day, but some of the views of the mountians and water from the penninsula were still incredible. From there we continued further south towards Rotorua. We could smell the city of Rotorua from about 30 miles away as it reaks of dirty rotten eggs. It is a geothermal hotspot, and all around the city are heaps of geysers, boiling mud pools, hot springs, volcanoes, etc. The smell from these was overwhelming at times, but it was really fun to go around to the different parks and see all the activity created by the earth. The colors of some of these pools were remarkable too. One pool looked like a bright yellow highlighter which was caused by the high sulfur content. There were also bright blues, reds, and greens. We also went to a Maori night show which included some history of their culture, a performance of warriors, singing, dancing, and an AMAZING meal. This happened to be the Friday after Thanksgiving here, so it was probably still Thursday back home so it counted as our Thanksgiving meal. It included pork, stuffed chicken, potatoes, gravy, different salads, fresh seafood, and great desserts, so it actually did feel like a Thanksgiving meal. The end of the night show concluded with a geyser erupting at night which was lit up by lights, and looked really cool.

After leaving the smell of Rotorua and washing all our clothes and showering numerous times to try and rid ourselves of the smell...just kidding,it wasn't that bad, but we headed to the Waitomo Caves next to have an underground adventure. Wai means water, and tomo means hole in the Maori culture, which creates the name waterhole for the caves. We actually stopped at a different type of watering hole after our rafting too. The experience of climbing through the caves in a wetsuit and going from water to rocks repeatedly in pitch black dark where you can't see 6 inches in front of your face was extremely extreme. The only thing illuminating our patch was the lights on our helmets, which weren't used all the time, and the thousands and thousands of glow worms in the caves. It was quite a sight to see all of them dot the ceilings of these caves in a bright green light that looks like strands of christmas lights. In order to get into the cave alone we had to climb down a ladder that was sandwhiched between rocks with the hole no bigger than 18 inches across, I had to go down at an odd angle just to fit. There were also several other places along the trek through the cave where I thought I was going to get stuck. Many of these locations were appropriately named by the guides too. I'll leave the imagination to you, but there was ankle breaking alley, concussion rock, the bermuda triangle, constipation hole, and my personal favorite where we had to crawl through head first with our head lamps turned off was the re-birth canal. That was very tube like in shape about shoulder width wide, and I have no idea how long it was because I could not see A THING without my light on. The water was a warm 12 degrees C, or approximately 55 degrees F, but you didn't feel cold with the adrenaline working our way through these caves that involved climbing, squeezing, crawling, swimming, tubing, did I mention squeezing through small spaces?!? The only bummer with this trip was that we couldn't bring cameras down in the cave because of the affect the flash has on the glow worms.

After leaving the caves we began the drive to Wellington, which is the capital of New Zealand which is where we're at right now, and we'll only be here for a day or so before taking the ferry accross to the South Island to explore there too. It was a very scenic drive through that part of the North Island, and I'm really looking forward to the scenery of the South Island. We have already seen tons of sheep which seem to populate every grassland or empty space.