Road To Victoria

Day 240

"Come To Australia
You might accidentally get killed
Your blood is bound to be spilled
With fear your pants will be filled
Because you might accidentally get killed"

Funny, in New Zealand it was no problem to write entries every 5-6 days and even then I couldn't really fill them with anything interesting. Here in Oz, its so different. I really should have written another entry on Sunday after Blue Mountains because past 5 days have just been so full of new, funny and interesting stuff.

So back to Saturday 21st and Blue Mountain tour. For uneducated folk, Blue Mountains are part of Great Dividing Range just 70km from Sydney. They get their name from oily mist that trees there evaporate which let's through every color but blue, which it scatters around, thus making landscape blueish.

Apart from pretty crap weather, this tour turned out to be really great and fun. Mostly thanks to our hilarious tour guide Hoops(27-year old girl from Manly). She was still quite fresh guide and thus much more authentic and enthusiastic than most other tour guides I have encountered...and she was cute as well :-) Turned out that she also has finnish friend and so we had lot to chat about during drive since I took the shotgun seat next to her.

One thing we talked about was how Australia intentionally creates completely wrong image to countries overseas. For example, ask any Finn about their assumptions of Australia and their answer is: "It's always very hot there. And they have lot of shark attacks." That statement is so not true. Average summer in Sydney for example is about 25 degrees and rainfall every second day. And Australia has only 5-8 shark attacks per year which is next to nothing compared how many tourists visit Oz each year and how full this country's beaches are all the time. Australia deliberately creates this false image of itself to keep tourists coming. I just read a headline in Finnish newspaper the other week how people of Sydney are terrified at their beaches because one Bullshark attacked 2 people inside a week. Ok, I was at Manly beach last week when shark alarm went off. Reluctantly everyone walked out of the water but 10 minutes later people got bored and went back in again...so much for fear of sharks here.

Back to tour. Hoops also had hilarious way to tell stories during tour, always tuning them down to mundane level so everyone could actually understand them and also adding bit of humor to each story. Here are some of the things I learned about Kangaroos for example:

1. Male kangaroo pulls his testicles inside his body when it starts fighting with another male.

2. Female kangaroo is pregnant 100% of her lifetime. She can turn her embryo "off" if she wants to and turn it back "on" later.

3. Female kangaroo can actually choose the sex of the baby before giving birth.

4. Female can squirt 3 different type of milk from her nipples. She can even choose what kind of milk comes from each nipple.

5. Male kangaroos have so sharp claws that they can puncture each other's eyes in fight. That why kangaroos pull their head back when fighting which in essence makes it look like bitch fight(Hoops' words, not mine!)

Ok, so back to Blue Mountains. As it apparently was common, it was very cloudy there. Mountains are after all 1000m above sea level. Luckily there were few gaps among clouds so we were able to see famous landmarks such as Three Sisters here,

Otherwise it was more or less cloudy which in fact made Blue Mountains look quite pretty in totally different way. Take a look at these pics.

On Sunday I came back to Sydney for 1 night before embarking on 3-day tour to Melbourne. On Monday morning I said goodbye's to beautiful Sydney, but definetly not final farewells. I will come back hehe. So, I climb to tour bus very early on Monday morning and who is sitting on front seat again...Hoops :-) Apparently she was assisting guide on the tour learning to do the tour on her own later on. Our actual guide was Lawrence, quite a good performer as I will later explain.

Our first stop of the day was Canberra, capital of Australia. Now, everyone has always had quite bad things to say about Canberra. I just figured that since I love this country so much, I just cannot do full circle around it without seeing the actual capital city as well. Luckily we stayed in Canberra only for few hours, which was quite enough.

Canberra is funny place. It's completely artificial town. It even has huge lake in middle which is also artificial. Why? I guess most people know that when Australia was formed Sydney and Melbourne couldn't decide which was to become capital so they decided to build a capital city inland between Sydney and Melbourne. City was designed and built from scratch, there wasn't anything were Canberra now stands when it was designed. Bill Bryson describes Canberra as one big park from where there seems to be no escape. Here is pic of hill lookout just outside city.

In Canberra we visited Parliament House and sat for a while inside Senate listening some senator making a speech about "Identification of documentation" or "Documentation of identification" or...whatever :-) Here is Parliament house from outside

In Parliament House I got to see painting of my personal favourite Prime Minister of Australia, Harold Holt.

Why? Ok, I'm going to bore you again with story. Harold Holt was Prime Minister some decades ago. On his vacation he went to beach in Victoria and headed to sea for swim...and disappeared. They found his clothes nicely folded in beach but he was never seen again and his body was never found. About 10 years later they decided to build a memorial for Harold Holt in Melbourne, any guess what it was and still is?

A public swimming pool! I love this country :-D

After Canberra we headed towards Australia's tallest mountain and only ski resort, Mount Kosciuzky, height 2228m. Not that there was snow now, they apparently get snow during midwinter enough to run the ski resort for 3 months. We arrived there quite late and had quite a wild night with this custom made shot-tray(thats Hoops btw second from left).

On following day we set out to climb to the roof of Australia. Climb was made easy with chair lift that took us all the way to 1900 meters. Walk was then only 6.5km with 300m elevation. Nothing compared to some of the climbs I did in New Zealand where elevation was over 1000m. Views weren't really that impressive on top but come on! I reached highest point of entire continent, thats something. Here is pic of first 5 on the top. From left: Claudia, Greg, Hoops, Me and Jana.

So after climb we headed down to Victoria and crossed state border. Wohoo, my 5th State in Australia has been reached now. Only 2 more to go. Road was through this National Park with quite amazing views again.

We drove for quite long time until we reached south coast and small holiday town called Lake Entrance. We just barely were able to see sunset at the beach.

On final day we were suppose to visit yet another National Park on road to Melbourne but apparently that park was closed because of bushfires so we took alternative plan and headed to Phillip Island, famous for it's Penguin Parade(more about that later on). Just before Phillip Island we stopped at small place where it was possible to feed native Australian animals such as...

...wallabies...

...goats...

...kangaroos...

...emus...

...and sharks :-)

After feeding it was Phillip Island and penguins. Phillip Island is famous for it's daily event called Penguin Parade. That happens during sunset when hundreds of penguins come out from ocean and into their dwellings on protected beach. What makes this a parade is that all the penguins do it same time. So you have chance to watch 500 penguins marching like an army across the beach. Well, we weren't there on sunset but still we were able to see few penguins who were too lazy that do to go into ocean.

All good things must come to an end. It was great tour mostly because of nice people we had on tour. Unfortunately end left little bitter taste. When we got to Melbourne, our tour guide Lawrence, asked us to fill out feedback forms. After we handed them over his behaviour changed. He was suppose to drop us off to our accomodations in Melbourne but instead he dumped us to Melbourne Central station and said: "Take a tram. Ask driver where you need to get off". Err, not very cool getting left in the middle of the city with heavy backpacks during worst traffic hour.

Other thing, he told us that he has arranged dinner for all of us at Hotel Espy in Ackland Street and that he would come there as well for few drinks. First of all Hotel Espy wasn't in Ackland street, it was in Esplanade. Everyone had problems finding it. Second, Lawrence never showed up nor was there any kind of table reservation for us. Pretty rude ending to otherwise nice trip, just left bitter taste to it. Anyway we were still able to get table and raise couple of drinks before saying goodbye(sniff) and moving on in our own adventures.

Now I'm in Melbourne for just 2 nights and tomorrow heading to Tasmania, land of the inbreeds hehe. First impression of Melbourne? Dont know really...this is so different from all other big towns in Australia. It isn't as beautiful as Sydney and it isn't as appealing as Perth. I need little bit more time after Tasmania here to figure out this town.

Back in Sydney

Day 234

"Redback, Funnel-Web, Blue-ringed octopus
Tiapan, Tigersnake and a Box jellyfish
Big shark just waiting for you to go swimming
At Bondi Beach

Come to Australia
You might accidentally get killed"


Here we go again! Little over 4 months ago I ended my Australia tour 2008 in Sydney. It was only fitting that in 2009 it continues from there. I wanted to see entire Australia so in order to keep circle intact, I had to start from Sydney again.

Ok, that wasn't only reason to come to Sydney again. Other reason was that last time I felt like I only scratched the surface of this beautiful city and missed couple of things I really wanted to see/do. One was Blue Mountains, where I am going tomorrow for 2 days, and second was world-famous harbour bridge climb. Here is the bridge at night btw.

This harbour bridge climb is truly epic. First of all check-in hall has pictures on the wall of all the celebrities at the bridge summit who have done the climb. There are pictures of Will Smith, Jodie Foster, Matt Damon, Michael Caine, Robert De Niro, Bruce Springsteen, etc.

Unfortunately we couldn't bring our cameras up there. In fact we couldn't take anything up there which might have chance to fall down. So only pics I have are the ones our guide took and they are on CD atm. Otherwise it was quite an epic experience. That bridge is huge! Funny detail how they built it btw...they started to build the bridge from both ends and met at the middle. Bridge was built between 1925-1932 so there was no computers to help calculations. Imagine what kind of wizardry it required to have those 2 ends meet in the middle at precise pre-calculated location. Amazing work if you ask me...New Zealand couldn't have pulled it off ;-D

After climb I was quite exhausted so what better way to fill my stomach and quench my thirst than with Kangaroo Pizza and pint of Little Creatures Pale Ale(voted as the best Pale Ale in entire world!)

Australia...this country doesn't stop to surprise me. Last night I went to Botanical Gardens at sunset to take some night photos of Opera House and generally just walk around. Then I stumble on huge open air cinema built across bay to Opera House. What a setting! Big screen and Opera House+Harbour Bridge on backround. I immediately noticed that this was no ordinary screening since everyone entering inside gates was dressed to kill. So...me as backpacker snuck back behind the fence, up the hill and found spot where I was able to see screen between bushes. Movie turned out to be Tenderness(starring Russell Crowe) and apparently it was film's first ever screening to any audience! Director and writer was there but not Russell. So there I sat on grass for nearly 2h to see the film which btw was surprisingly good!

Today it was yet another hot and sunny day so I dragged my ass to Circular Quay and into ferry to Manly Beach, Sydney's 2nd most famous beach after Bondi.

After sunbating for about an hour I jump into ocean and manage to get within knee depth when all the sudden big alarm sounds from beach speakers:

"Attention everyone in water. There has been shark sighting nearby so shark alarm went off, we advice to stay out of the water for now!"

Eh...sweet! So Mr.Sharky hasn't given up hope to catch some Finnish meat this summer. Unfortunately no attack came, even though I was very hopeful since couple of surfers ignored the warning and went out anyway.

Tomorrow I'm off to Blue Mountains for 2 days. On sunday back to Sydney and on monday journey moves on...

Going back to Oz

Day 230

"We're off to see the wizard
the wonderful wizard of Oz"

Tomorrow I'm going back to Oz! Honestly I can't wait to see my favourite country again. It's been over 4 months now and I already miss Oz more than Finland. Besides, 84 days in New Zealand is really starting to be enough.

Before summing up this country, let's rewind few days to Wellington. I passed through Wellington earlier with Tuulia and Sami on Christmas Day. Since my flight was set to depart from Auckland, I traveled through Wellington again. This time I decided to stay few days and say hi to Tommi(former co-worker) who had settled to Wellington for 2 years. As it turned out, weather in Wellngton was God awful. It poured rain without a stop for 2 days so there really wasn't anything to do. I tried to catch couple of gaps to walk up the hill of Mount Victoria and to find LOTR filming locations. Apparently, it wasn't that hard :)

After walking little while I stumbled these 4 geeks re-enacting scene from Fellowship Of The Ring at precise location where it was originally shot.

Also went up to Botanical Gardens with Cable Car, one of the major Wellington icons. But as you can see, there weren't any good views cause of rain.

Last evening in Wellington we had quite funny Finnish gathering. Grand total of 7 finns having dinner together at local Indian Restaurant.

It's funny how small world is. As we were chatting there I heard one of the finns say "Unioninkatu" so I asked where in Unioninkatu they lived. It turned out that couple lives in same building as I :) Small world really...

Now I'm back in Auckland again after 1-night side trip to New Plymouth. West coast of North Island was only area I had not seen yet here so I stopped there for 1 night. Hehe, again less is said about New Plymouth the better. In short: gang infested, rundown little township.

So New Zealand...NZ is very high on people's list of "dream holiday destinations". After 84 days here I think I can form pretty clear picture what this country is about. New Zealand is extremely pretty on the outside, but more or less rotten from the inside. There are no attractive cities in New Zealand what's worse, there is major security issue.

All towns seem to have some form of gang culture going on, it's nothing big and certainly nothing too organised but none the less...teenage gangs mostly 15-20 year olds flock the streets after shops go down with their pimped cars. And if they happen to see tourist alone walking by they more than often start barking to them trying to scare tourist for their own pathetic little amusement. Not once did I feel scared, I more or less felt like I'm in kindergarden watching grown-ups make fool of themselfs. Really pathetic.

What else? There are lot of small issues that I found so wrong here. First of all 90% of commercial breaks in TV are filled by "educational videos" educating citizens to drink less, drink responsibly, not drink and driving, road safety, fire safety, earthquake safety, beach safety etc. etc. Watching TV here makes me feel like all New Zealanders are bunch of morons who need to see this stuff on TV or otherwise whole country would be in chaos. Oh, and even with all this educational crap, people still get themselfs killed here on the roads and beaches more than in Australia for example. Just month ago one of New Zealand's brightest stars in Rugby died when he went swimming near Auckland and torrent took him. What is wrong with Kiwis?!

I guess it's a bit unfair to make comparison between New Zealand and Australia but I can't help it. In paper these 2 countries are fairly similar, but they are so different from one another. Even traveling scene here is completely different. I guess it's pretty clear I like Australia so much more. All the problems I pointed out above are non-existent in Australia. That country can offer 1000 more ways to get yourself killed yet, people can take care of themselfs there without constant educational commercials. I think overall New Zealand is prettier, but lacks soul completely.

Ok, so this is only an opinion by one person. I have met lot of people in New Zealand who say they like New Zealand more than Oz. Mostly I have been hearing this opinion from females. Only way to form your own opinion is to travel both these countries ;-)

Enough with the rant now, lets move on to positive stuff. What were the highlights of New Zealand? As I started to think this through I realised I have to divide North and South Island experiences because these 2 islands are so different. Why? South Island is like Australia's east coast. It's themepark with gorgeous sceneries but filled with tourists. North Island feels like authentic New Zealand and has much better atmosphere and vibe.

North Islands highlights:

1. Tongariro Crossing. Anyone visiting NZ needs to do this day walk. What makes this so great is how the scenery changes multiple times. First you are walking in valley next to mountain, then you climb up rocky mountain, then you are inside crater, then...There was just so many different amazing landscapes.

2. Bay Of Island. Great place little off the major tourist track. Very beautiful with relaxed atmosphere.

3. Tauranga&Mount Maunganui. Easily best town in NZ. Scenery in Mount Maunganui was breathtaking and vibe on the Esplanade bars in Tauranga was very comfortable.

South Island highlights:

1. Mount Cook. Easily my favourite spot in South Island. Scenery there was just stunning and it lacked all the annoying partying teenagers which most other locations in South Island had.

2. Abel Tasman National Park. Yes, it was gorgeous. Bit repetitive scenery but still great. Good thing was that it too was little out of the beaten track.

3. Arthur's Pass. Again, this out-of-the-way place became my favourite(hehe, see the pattern here?). I was blessed with gorgeous views on top of Avalance Peak.

Why not Fiordland? Hmm, I thought about it long and hard. It was beautiful place but I guess the constant rain ruined it a bit for me. If weather would been there similar that it was in Mount Cook for example it might have maded into top 3.

Now I'll finish this long entry. I might have forgotten something but doesn't matter. Tomorrow I'm finally going back to Oz, yay! But where in Oz am I going...hmmm...any bets?

Abel Tasman...again

Day 223

"Freedom is mine. The earth is still.
I feel the wind. I breathe again.
And the sky clears"


Sun, blue sky, clear turqoise water, sandy beaches, warm weather...these are not generally how someone would describe New Zealand but this country certainly has it all. Snowcapped mountain peaks in middle of summer as well as...picture perfect paradise beaches. This is Abel Tasman National Park.

I visited Abel Tasman quickly before, on December 26th when I passed it with Tuulia and Sami quickly. Since it was only 3h detour as I was heading back to North Island, I decided to spend another 3 days there and really try to see the area fully.

So I arrived to Motueka and to my horror, I had booked bed for myself in a frigging hippie hostel in Motueka! Now, I have a simple message to all hippies, smoking weed does NOT make you better singer after 23:00 when someone exhausted from day's walk is trying to sleep. V*tun nuotiokitaristit sanon mina per...Er, sorry about the Finnish. Hostel had some group of hippies smoking dope in the evening and at around 23:00 someone gets an idea to get guitar out of their trunk and start playign/singing so badly(of course they all thought he was great!) that I wished Simon Cowell(or even Jone Nikula) would have been there to render some honest judgement.

Anyway, I didn't arrive to Motueka to spend time in hostel, I came to Abel Tasman. Most popular activity by far in there is sea kayaking. I decided to skip that just because I got my life's worth of sea kayaking done in Tonga, first circle around Ofu and then Uoleva. So instead kayaking I took the cheaper option, walking. Abel Tasman has one big walk, its one of New Zealands Great Walks called Abel Tasman Coastal Track, length 45km and designated as 3-day walk. Well, what makes Abel Tasman park so different and easily accessible with it's water taxi system. People can just take water taxi into several bays and walk to any other bay and get picked up by taxi later on, brilliant system.

So I ended up doing so called 2-bay walk, which was 15km in total. Amazing weather all day and it was so hot I actually managed to drag my ass into ocean and swim a bit...first time I have done that in New Zealand so far(excluding diving). Water was still freezing, about 20-22 degrees. Here are some of the views during walk.

After Abel Tasman I headed to Nelson for 2 days. Statistically, Nelson has 2 interesting facts. One fact is that it is sunniest town in New Zealand having more sunshine per year than any other town. Second, it is also location of geographical center point of New Zealand(yea, quite a feat...sigh).

And about the sunshine...how ironic is it that when I get there it rains. Luckily it was only shower but still it felt funny. Other than sunny and warm weather, Nelson was surprisingly dull. Pretty town, but dull.

After going through almost all towns worth seeing in New Zealand, there is clear winner. Twin town of Tauranga and Mount Maunganui in North Island's Bay of Plenty is clear winner. It was also only town in New Zealand where I might even remotly consider settling in to.

So now it's only 6 more nights left in Kiwiland till I'm whisked away in Oz again. I do hope don't find my Oz in smoke and ashes after those horrible bushfires in Victoria, where I am scheduled to arrive in 2 weeks time. Still one more entry to come from NZ where I will try to wrap up this country, its flaws and its high points. Till then...take care and see you all soon!

Marlborough

Day 217

"Drink with me to days gone by
Sing with me the songs we knew
Here's to pretty girls who went to our heads.
Here's to witty girls who went to out beds.
Here's to them and here's to you!"

Sometimes I know I'm the luckiest guy in world. Every now and again comes along day that keeps reminding me of that. This time I had amazing 3 days in Renwick, heart of Marlborough wine region. I had already seen other major wine regions in New Zealand(Hawkes Bay, Otago, Martinborough and Waiheke) and I secretly hoped the most famous one would also be the crown jewel, it was!

But lets rewind the clock back few more days. After Christchurch I went to Kaikoura. Now, I wasn't exactly sure why I decided to stop there, maybe because word of mouth since many had been praising that place. Main attraction in Kaikoura is whale watching which I so was not going to do. I mean, come on, after Tonga and that Humpback breaching 30 times in front of our boat I wasn't going to waste my money on whalewatching trip where I could have a chance to observe whale's tail from 100m distance. So, I was planning on doing diving there since I was told that sometimes there is chance to have seals swimming along you during dive, that could have been pretty cool.

But emphasize on the word could. There were 2 reasons I ended up skipping diving. One was weather, for some odd reason the day I was in Kaikoura temperature dropped down to +14 and it rained all day. Other reason was Federer and Nadal. Hehe, their Australian Open final ended up lasting almost 5 hours and clock was 2:30am when it ended. Was it worth staying up? Hell yea! This is rivalry in tennis history that will be talked about years and years to come. Commentators and spectators will compare future matches and future players to these 2 individuals. This time their match wasn't as good as Wimbledon final but thrilling and amazing still. Some of the rallies these 2 did were just unhuman. Never ever have I seen tennis played like this. In my opinion Federer and Nadal are reason why serve&volley players have completely disappeared from tennis top level. Anyway, great match and way too little sleep after that :-D

Day after that I just decided to have a walk around Kaikoura Peninsula which I canceled midway cause rain just started to get way too heavy and headed back to hostel to watch Superbowl :-D I did manage to make it to Kaikoura's wild seal colony and grab one shot before I tucked away my camera to prevent damage to it.

On it was from Kaikoura to Marlborough and Renwick. On the road clouds turned away and New Zealand's most famous wine region greeted me with almost clear blue sky. I had 3 days in there so on first day I decided to do walking tour and check couple of wineries close by, 2nd day I booked full-day wine tour and on 3rd day I planned to rent a bicycle and go check whatever was left in area.

I think the wine tour topped all my expectations. For 74 dollars(thats about 30 euros) guide took us to grand total of 10 wineries during day! One being the famous Cloudy Bay(which btw is terribly overprized compared to other wineries in region). Wine tour was just blast again. I had especially good time with 2 irish girls(Schnaps factory was just hilarious visit). Whats with the irish? I have had some of the best memories during this trip with irish girls, go figure...

On last day I took bicycle out to visit yet few more wineries. My grand total ended up being 16 wineries during 3 days, not bad hu? What was fantastic about this area was the quality of their wines. There wasn't single bad winery and people in smaller boutique wineries were just fantastic. There was couple smaller ones(Gibson Bridge and Grove Mill) were I ended up chatting with the winemaker for over hour while he kept bringing me some of his more rare reserve bottles for tasting. I have been in quite a few wine areas and visited even more wineries so I can say that it was highly unusal. I guess they realised that I was actually someone who was actually interested in wines. Oh yea, and the landscapes were amazing there, but since this is New Zealand, that goes without saying.

Oh winery of the area award goes to Saint Clair with Te Whare Ra coming as runner-up.

Now I am in Motueka, yet again. I was here with Tuulia and Sami about 5-6 weeks ago for brief visit, but now that I have little more time I came here again to walk(and burn those wine calories) in Abel Tasman Park. Pics to come in next entry ;-)