The End… for now

It’s sad to say, but our round-the-world journey is officially over.

 

The travel gods were looking after us one more time on our way home from Auckland. The four hours of layover time we had given ourselves at LAX had dwindled to one hour after our Auckland to LAX flight was delayed and our LAX to SEA flight was mysteriously moved up. There was no way we could navigate immigration, customs, pick up our bags, and make it to our gate in time. To make matters worse, all the flights leaving for SEA that afternoon were completely booked. We were preparing ourselves mentally for Christmas in Disneyland.

 

After landing in Los Angeles, we hustled through customs and immigration as fast as we could, and made it to the Alaska Airlines desk just about the time our flight was scheduled to take off. We let out a big sigh of relief when they told us that our flight had been delayed two hours and that we’d be able to make our flight. For once, we were actually happy for our plane to be delayed.

 

Anyway, that was about the extent of our travel excitement. We made it back to our home town of Port Orchard in one piece. The foot of snow on the ground was kind of fun – at least to look at. It was nice to spend Christmas with our families, something we hadn’t been able to do very often during our stint in NYC.

 

Thanks everyone for following along on our liltte break from reality. The job market isn’t looking too hot, so make sure to check back in a few weeks in case we’ve decided to postpone reality just a little bit longer.

 

If you’re curious, here’s a few things we thought stood-out along the way:  

 

RTW Best Of:

 

-Favorite Sight: Machu Picchu

-Favorite City: 5 way tie between Buenos Aires, Bruges, London, Prague and Sydney

-Favorite Country: Belgium

-Favorite Continent: Australia

-Best Beach: Roatan, Honduras

-Least Tourist-Friendly City: Moscow. We think they like it that way.

-Tidiest City: Singapore. One misstep, and you get slapped with a hefty fine. NYC could learn a thing or two.

-Best Lodging Value: $100 night at the Hilton in London via Hotwire.com 
-Most Unusual Lodging: A ship called the Waitanic in Waitomo, New Zealand. How many people can say they’ve slept in a boat converted into a motel? 

-Most Scenic Train: Lucern to Interlaken, Switzerland.
-Most Un-nerving Train Moment: Conductor on night train from Krakow to Prague warning us to sleep with our money under our pillows because of all the robberies.

-Most Memorable Flight: Short flight to the Bay Islands of Honduras. The plane looked like a shipping container with wings. Air conditioning consisted of the pilot opening up the windows in the cockpit. Nothing like feeling the wind in your hair at 10,000 feet.
-Best Airport for a Lengthy Layover: London Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

-Most Traveler Carnage: Thailand. Rashes, broken limbs, burns, bites, slings, etc.

-Meanest Tourists: Rome. We’ve never seen so many people so unhappy to be on vacation

-Most Pedestrian Friendly: Sydney. Cars stop even if you look like you might want to cross the street. Several times, we crossed the street just because we didn’t want the driver to feel bad.

-Best Language Moment: A man in Brussels whizzed by on his bicycle and dropped one of his gloves. Jim rushed to pick it up while shouting in his best French accent, ”monsieur!, monsieur!.”

-Place Most Unfriendly to the Waistline: Belgium. They ride their bikes a lot, but waffles and beer are a deadly combination.
-Best Coffee: Cafe Villamil, Honduras
-Best Steak: Argentina (duh)

-Largest Beer: Munich (duh)
-Most Ice-Cream Consuming Citizens: Santiaguinos. It was the middle of their winter too. What do they eat during the summer - hot soup?
-Most Smoking: Santiaguinos. Ice cream cone in one hand, cigarette in the other.

-Person who helped the most old ladies stow their luggage in the overhead compartments: Jim 

 

RTW by the numbers:

 

151        days

25          countries

19          trains

31          flights

12          ferry rides

51          different accommodations slept in

4            dog poos stepped in

13          jars of peanut butter

23          lbs - backpack weight

4,107     photos taken (avg of 27 per day)

$500      spent in Internet cafes

11:45     hrs on plane from Auckland to LAX (longest flight)

1            tarantula spotting, Roatan, Honduras

72          hrs of one-on-one Spanish instruction

$3          haircut in Beijing

1            misplaced cell phone

18.5       books read

NZ North Island

We arrived sometime around noon in Auckland. Since we had a pretty ambitious itinerary set, and didn’t really feel like dealing with mass transit, we headed to the car rental desk to pick up some wheels. Surprisingly, driving on the wrong side of the road in the wrong side of the car really wasn’t all that big of an adjustment since we weren’t accustomed to driving on either side of the road.

We drove south to the town of Hamilton to meet up with our friend and Jim’s former colleague Emily, who is spending some time traveling around the country. Our first stop was to the small town of Waitomo. There isn’t much going on in Waitomo except for a large network of glow worm filled caves that tourists flock to. We got a little turned around on our way there and ended up stopping off at our first of several extremely helpful tourist information booths called I-Sites. The nice people at the I-Site were able to book our cave tour for the following day and also gave us some good directions to make our way to Waitomo.

Our accommodations in Waitomo were one-of-a-kind to say the least. We stayed at Woodlyn Park, home of the enterprising sheep shearer Billy Black and his creative theme based motels including the Hobbit Motel, Train Motel, and Plane Motel. We stayed in the only room available in the Waitanic Motel. As the name suggests, it was an old ferry boat refurbished into a four room hotel. We were a little skeptical, but upon boarding the vessel it was actually a very nice place complete with a couple bedrooms, full kitchen, nice bathroom and port holes.

The following day, we got up early to prepare for our 9:00am black water rafting trip called Black Labyrinth. At the tour company’s office, we suited up in our our umpa-lumpa-esq (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) outfits, which, in addition to looking pretty funny, also happened to be wet, cold and a little smelly. After a few good laughs at our cool get-ups, we shuttled up to the caves to retrieve our inner tubes. The next few hours we would spend squeezing, hiking, jumping and floating our way through a huge cave system. One of the more un-nerving things we had to do was the ‘leap of faith’ where we crept out to the edge of a waterfall, turned backwards, placed our tubes around our butts, and jumped back into the blackness. Toward the end of the trip, with most of the hiking and jumping over with, we spent some time floating peacefully down the cave in the pitch black with only the star-like patchwork of glow worms to lead us out of the cave and into the daylight.

After a hot shower and some soup, we continued on to the self-proclaimed ‘Trout Fishing Capital of the World’ (more about that nonsense later) of Turangi. We stopped off at I-Site number two, and booked two nights of accommodations at the Judge’s Pool Motel, and also reserved spot on a shuttle bus for our hike the next day.

The shuttle bus arrived at 6:30 the following morning to take us to the trail head for the Tongariro Crossing, claimed to be one the the top day hikes in the world. It’s an 18.5 kilometer (11.5 miles) hike that leads up into and out of several volcanic craters, and back down though a beautiful valley looking out over the immense Lake Taupo. Heavy wind, rain and fog plagued the first half of the hike, and we missed out on some great views of Mt. Ngauruhoe from the top of Red Crater, the high point of the hike. Finally on our decent, the clouds began to clear and let the sun peak through. We stopped for lunch at a camping hut and were able to get out of the wind. Due to frozen fingers and lack of photo opportunities, we finished the hike in just under six hours verses the prescribed seven to eight.

As we were in a trout capital, Jim couldn’t pass up the opportunity to throw in a line. Not too tired from the hike, he rented waders and fly rod and reel, bought himself a fishing licence and gave it his best on the Tongariro River. After two excursions in the afternoon he called it a day without even a nibble. So much for Trout Capital of the World.

The next day, we headed north along the east side of Lake Taupo with the destination of Rotorua. We stopped off in Taupo to visit our friendly booking friends at I-Site for our accommodations and got a coffee before getting on the road again. On the way to Rotorua, we stopped off to visit the steaming, bubbling, gurgling, and  incredibly smelly geothermal wonderland of Wai-o-tapu.

We got into Rotorua in the afternoon once again visiting the neighborhood I-Site for help in booking a visit to a traditional Maori (New Zealand’s original inhabitants) village. That night we spent the evening with the Mitai tribe and learned a little about their culture and customs, and watched a performance of their traditional song and dance. The best part of the evening though, was the vast amount of food we consumed at the hangi or feast. It was a pretty impressive eating performance we put on.

Our last day in Rotorua, Emily went off to get pampered at the Polynesian Spa, while we explored the town. We later walked through the town’s museum and learned quite a bit about the strange and interesting geothermal history of Rotorua. Inspired by all the talk of the the mineral water’s healing powers, we took advantage of the 108 degree mineral pool at our motel followed by a nice dip in the bubbly spa. Despite being smelly, slimy and uncomfortably hot, we think the mineral waters did manage to help out our sore hiker’s muscles.

We parted ways with Emily the following morning, and drove north to Auckland to check out NZ city life for a few days. It’s a pretty walkable city and we covered most of the central area in a short amount of time. Auckland is know as the “City of Sails,” so we decided to take a nice dinner sail out into the harbour. It was a fun evening on the water and a great way to close out our stay in NZ.

Sydney and Environs

We arrived in Sydney in the evening and made our way to the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel, which is where we called home for our first three nights. We did a pretty poor job of planning a travel day on the same day as our second anniversary, but we made the best of what we had and managed to have a few celebratory micro brews at the bar. It took us nearly five months of traveling and dozens of different accommodations, but we finally found a place where we could sleep above a bar. It was the holy grail of sleeping arrangements.

Our first day, we took the obligatory walking tour to become acquainted. We started at the Observatory Park for a panoramic vista of the city, walked through the Rocks neighborhood and ended up down at Circular Quay for great views of the Harbor Bridge and the Opera House. We then strolled through the beautiful Botanical Gardens before walking around the mainly commercial Central neighborhood.

During our jaunt, we concluded that Sydneysiders do not work during the day. We can’t tell you how many walkers and runners we saw, but the Dri-Fit to blazer ratio was much too high. The overworked New Yorkers in us wanted to yell at them to go back to their offices to get some work done! Maybe that is a sign that we need to extend our travelers vacation beyond 2008. Upon returning to the Lord Nelson around 4:00pm, we found the bar packed with guys and gals dressed in their best business casual. Good for them. We would love to jog during our lunch break and be at the bar by 4:00pm.

After a tasty breakfast at the Lord Nelson’s (no beer), we headed down to Circular Quay to catch a ferry to Manly Beach. The ferry ride gave us a chance to see all of the inlets and harbors that make up the greater Sydney Harbor. About forty-five minutes later, we were looking out over the wide open ocean. The weather was somewhat sunny, but not warm enough to do anymore than dip our toes in the surf.

After the day in Manly, we headed back to Sydney to get ready for our big night at the Opera House. We watched a great performance that night of Kate Ceberano with the Sydney Symphony. We didn’t really know who she was, but concluded that she was a pretty big Aussie star back in the ’80s. She had some serious pipes (wind), and the Symphony sounded absolutely beautiful. We had a great time and even got to toast our anniversary with glasses of champagne just two days late.

The next day’s word of the day was “rain”. It rained all day long. We didn’t let it slow us down though, and hopped on another ferry in the morning to cruise across the harbor to visit the Taronga Zoo. In addition to the standard animals on display, the zoo had some awesome performances to show off the talents of the animals. We were amazed by the athleticism of the seals, grossed out by the gorillas, and admired the grace of the birds. We made it a point to see some of the great Aussie animals like koalas, crocs, kangaroos and wombats. The setting of the zoo provided fantastic views (although a little grey) of Sydney. We have included some of our best animal photos in our slideshow below.

Thank goodness for Gortex rain jackets, but after lunch we were ready to seek shelter. We headed for the central train station to catch a train to the Blue Mountains. They aren’t really mountains by the traditional definition, but rather really large hills – but scenic nonetheless. We arrived in the town of Katoomba at 4:00pm and had the evening to explore the town. It is a sleepy little town in the mountains but larger than some of the others in the area. We stayed at the historic Carrington Hotel, which was built in 1800’s, and sits right at the top of town. The location was great for our two night stay. The rain got progressively worse as the evening wore on, and we eventually hunkered down in a cafe for dinner. The restaurant had some really great live music, and we ended up staying for most of the night.

We started off the following morning with a hearty breakfast before we began our day in the wilderness. We got on the mountain trolley bus that does an all day loop around the area so we could hop on and off as we pleased. It was a great way to get around to all of the outlooks and hikes we wanted to check-out.

Our day started out a little shaky when some rain clouds moved in and gave us a little shower. We were glad it didn’t turn into all day wash out like the prior day. We rode the trolley to Echo Point to begin our tour. After snapping a few shots of the Three Sisters, and waiting for the rain to pass, we decided to head out into the bush and do a little walkabout. It wasn’t too long of a hike, maybe three miles or so, but was a lot of fun. We started by getting our quads loosened up on the 900 stairs leading down the Giant’s Stairway, which snaked down alongside the Three Sisters. At the bottom, we hiked through the forest on the Federal Pass Track where we connected to the Furbers Steps, which led us up and out of the valley. The trail took us past the misty Katoomba Falls, through the soggy and dripping forest, and a short detour took us right to the bottom of the falls where we had a brief Maid of the Mist flashback.

At the end of our hike, we reconnected with our trolley which shuttled us back through Katoomba, Leura, and then to Gordon Falls where we did another fun and scenic hike to the Leura Cascades. One the way home our trolley driver stopped at a vantage point to show us the blue haze caused by the oils of the Eucalyptus leaves for which the Blue Mountains were named for.

The following day we were back on the train to Sydney where we checked into Wake Up hostel near the Central station that was a useful location for our early morning departure to New Zealand. It was a backpackers haven, but we have been staying at so many hotels and guesthouses lately that the youthful crowd was a bit of a shock. We explored Darling Harbour that afternoon and spent the remainder of the evening doing some much needed travel coordination for NZ.

Our last day in Australia, we hopped on a bus and headed for the famed Bondi Beach. Actually, we rode the bus to the other famed beach of Coogee and made the spectacular three mile cliff walk up the coast to Bondi. As the name implies, the walk leads you right along the tops of the cliffs looking out into the blue ocean. Even bluer than the water, was the sky. Once the clouds finally cleared away, we have been amazed over and over at just how clear the Sydney sky is. It was a sunny but windy day and the waves were enormous. We’re not sure what it would take to close the beaches in this place, but there is no possible way we would have gone out in that water for the fear of promptly drowning. We sat outside and ate a nice lunch before going back to the big city and bidding farewell to the land down under.

 

Cairns

We had a fun five night stay in the tropical town of Cairns (correct Aussie pronunciation: cans) in the northeast of Australia. Our accommodations at Dreamtime Traveler’s Rest were pretty solid. Throughout our travels, we’ve concluded that the corny-er the name, the better the stay.

Our first night, we spent some time with Chris at the front desk going through our options of activities for the week. After much debate, we decided on a reef snorkeling tour with a company called Ocean Freedom and river rafting trip with . The Aboriginal hunt came in a close third.

The following morning, we got up nice and early for our  6:25 pick-up for an action packed day of rafting the Tully River. It was about an hour and a half ride to the river during which our energetic hosts ran through the day’s itinerary, gave us the safety spiel, and cracked a few jokes about New Zealanders and European men wearing speedos. We felt a little nervous and excited when we got to the launching point. We were going to be spending five hours on a class four river with over 45 rapids. Drowning this close to the end of our trip would not be cool.

We were divided into groups of six and went off to meet our guide. We were teamed up with three Aussies from the Northern Territory town of Darwin and a psychologist from the Netherlands. We piled into the boat with our guide, Dave from New Zealand, and we headed on down the river. Not a minute into our float, we were barreling through the appropriately named class four rapid Alarm Clock, while getting tossed all around the raft.

 always kept things interesting even when there were no rapids. We stopped off at a few points on the river to do some rock jumping, and also spent plenty of time swimming. They also let us float through a rapid (without boat), which Haley had a good time doing, but Jim could have used a little more O2 while he was tumbling through the rapid. After our action packed day, we stopped off at the shop which had been converted into the pub during our absence. We had a few cold ones and looked at the photos that had taken of our trip. Our eclectic team turned out to be a fun one, and we met up that night to have some drinks at a local watering hole.

Our next excursion was to the Great Barrier Reef. Our biggest reason for coming to Cairns was to see the reef, so we were pretty excited. The trip included two stops: one at Upolu Cay, a tiny little patch of sand out in the middle of nowhere; and the other at a beautiful spot on the reef called the Wonder Wall.

The trip began with danishes, fruits and coffee to get us going, while we traveled to Upolu Cay. Once there, we boarded up a glass bottom boat and a few of our hosts gave us a very informative briefing about the reef, corals, and sea life. The boat then motored over to Upolu, where we looked around (in awe) at the vast open ocean feeling pretty good that we weren’t marooned on the little speck of sand about the size of a basketball court. We wadded off the Cay, and snorkeled back to the boat in the crystal clear waters. For lunch, we feasted on salads, meats, chicken, cheeses, bread and of course prawns (not shrimp!).

Snorkeling at our next site was amazing. The coral was healthy, the colors were vibrant and there were too many fish to even begin to count. We saw some pretty interesting critters including a sting-ray, turtle, and massive sea-clams.

On our way home from the reef, they continued to feed us excessive amounts of food, including cheese and crackers, more fruit, and cakes. This was definitely not helping our swimsuit image issues. Overall, the trip was a great success. We had some wonderful snorkeling, heaps of food, and an extremely friendly and hospitably crew. We also managed to successfully avoid severe sunburnage.

When we weren’t rafting or snorkeling, we spent the rest of our time kicking around town. Let us just tell you real quick that it was super hot and humid in Cairns, so if you weren’t near water or an air conditioner, you were pretty much hating life. To keep cool, we took advantage of the large community lagoon/swimming pool near the beach, and also spent a little more time in the nice cool shopping mall than we’d like to admit.

Other exciting events to note were the city-wide power outage, and a bomb threat, which, to the best of our knowledge were totally unrelated. Strangely though, our first night in Cairns we walked by a boozed-up youth claiming that he was going to blow up the whole city and all the damn tourists in it. Coincidence? We hope not.

Our final day in town, we killed a few hours before our flight in the air conditioned comfort of the movie theatre. The movie pick of “Australia” was a pretty obvious one. Aside from some cheesy Wizard of Oz references, it was a pretty decent flick.

Speak-a Our Language

For some reason or another, this song has been stuck in our heads for almost five months. We can’t tell you exactly when or how it started, but the line “Do you speak-a my language?” kept popping into our heads during all our encounters with foreign languages. The song reached its peak annoying-ness while we were in Brussels (see lyrics below). Since we finally made it to the land down under, we thought we’d give you the opportunity to get it stuck in your head.  And yes, they do speak-a our language. Sort of.

LAND DOWN UNDER
by Men at Work

Traveling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said,

“Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.”

Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, “Do you speak-a my language?”
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,

“I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.”

Lying in a den in Bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, “Are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?”
And he said,

“Oh! Do you come from a land down under? (oh yeah yeah)
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.”