G'day West Australia - A slightly sunburned update from Exmouth!

We relaxed three days in Perth and recovered from our 5 hour time shift from NZ to West Australia. This includes some walking through town centre, hanging around in the King's Park and eating out in the evening. Good news: Food is tasty; Bad news: Beer is expensive! A pint costs about 11 AUD (~10 CHF) and it might get worse once we get up further north! Temperature is a bit higher than in NZ, we faced around 38 degrees in Perth and it might be even hotter up north... we'll see. Last but not least, we went to a wine trip in Swan Valley (well, you can't see a valley there, it's just called valley because it sounds nicer) for some more wine tasting...
Next morning, we packed our stuff and we hired our little car. It's a 4x4 Hilux and contains a roof top tent and (even more important) a fridge and air conditioning inside :-) So we are allowed to go wherever we want. Our first stop, after the shopping and the stop at the liquor store, was the Pinnacles a bit in the north of Perth. To get this right: a bit north means 200 km distance :-) Definitely worth a stop as you can see in the pictures. Furthermore, we saw our fist Kangaroo!)

Pinnacles

Pinnacles

 We spent our first night in the roof top tent and it's actually not too bad up there (we have been camping now every night up to now) and it saves some money as well. So we continued our road trip with a short stop in Geraldton to get some very important stuff: Fly nets and snorkelling gear! The fly nets were a perfect investment since we seem to be in the "fly" season. In Kalbarri, we visited the national park (natures window) and we planned to do a 8 km hike.... it was hot, hardly no shade and the fly nets definitely paid of!
In Kalbarri you can also attend the daily pelican feeding (funny) and there is some more National park sites you can visit (by car since the temperature is killing you!).

Nature's window

Fly hike

Pelican landing

Heading further north (about 400 km) we visited Hammelin Pool, a former telegraph station in the middle of nowhere, before we wanted to visit the most western point of Australia (main land). Although we have a 4x4 we were not able to drive up the sandy street (even with deflated tires) so we got stuck quickly and decided to go back where we came from (btw. the street is called "Useless Loop" and it is a perfect description and our compressor broke while re-inflating our tires). So we arrived Denham for a night to get to the François Peron National Park next day. Some more sandy driving, but this time we deflated the tires more and the streets were better, so we had an enjoyable day in the park with taking pictures, swimming and wildlife watching (Kangaroo, Sharks, etc.)

Lookout from the Useless Loop Road

Or next stop was Monkey Mia, famous for it's dolphins. There is a shallow beach where around 07.45 the dolphins show up and about 150 tourists are waiting at the shore. Then, crowd is standing in the water and the dolphins are passing by and waiting for their food, but first, you have a 25 minutes speak about the dolphins... once this is done, they select some volunteers to feed some of the dolphins before they go back to deeper water. The show is very nice and it's even better when the dolphins come back the second or even third time (since fewer tourists are there then). The ressort is nice as well with pool, beach and all the things you need. So we decided to stay two nights and the second night was the hot one: There was a fire in the resort and some of the cottages burned down. AFTER helping and AFTER the fire-fighters arrived, it took some pictures of the situation... Luckily nobody got hurt and we did not have to evacuate the camping site.
So, we headed further north, to a place called "Corral bay" where we tested our snorkelling equipment to spot all the deadly and dangerous animals in the sea (we actually saw one shark and a 2 m fish that has no teeth and it disguising as a rock, sitting on the bottom of the sea, an octopus and a lot of colourful fish). It's very nice and relaxing being here, with 40 degrees and some wind in the afternoon :-) .

Francois Peron National Park

Rosi is feeding Dolphins at Monkey Mia

Fire...

The temperature is still around 40 degrees, but now, we are actually sitting in our air conditioned room in Exmouth, finalizing the blog. Tomorrow, we will go "hunting" the biggest fish in the world, the whale shark with a snorkelling tour. Looking forward for a day on a boat, before we are heading inlands to some more national parks.

Leaning Tree

A Kakadu?

Coastline close to Kalbarri

Kalbarri Red Bluff

Sunset at Kalbarri Red Bluff

Termit Dome on Fly Hike

Emu

Kangaroo

Francois Peron National Park

Monkey Mia

Following Frodo's footprints and G'Day Australia!

The bites of the sand flies are not itchy any more and we changed our location in the meantime. We have left New Zealand 2 days ago and we are now in Australia, in Perth where we enjoy 30 degrees and sunshine.

We left Te Anau and the Fjordland and drove up north with direction Mt. Cook. We did a short stop in the small town called Wanaka for it's main attraction: Puzzeling World (which is a museum with a lot of illusions) which is definitely worth a stop (you can look like a giant or a dwarf there!). Once we arrived in Mt. Cook village (with is basically a pure tourist town) the weather had changed from sunny to slight rain and the mountains were covered in clouds. Firstly, we checked the accommodation situation (not good, only some expensive bed's available) and then we checked the weather forecast, which was even worse than the accommodation situation: rain for the next days. So given these facts, we decided not to stay in this town (because hiking up a mountain and not seeing anything is not what we want) and we continued our journey. We wanted to spend the night in Lake Tekapo (they have some thermal baths) but we also had some issues to find an accommodation. Finally, we were able to get a nice and friendly Bed 'n Breakfast (most likely the last available one due to high season in town) which was not cheap but sometimes, you have no other choice. After a good and rich breakfast, we went to the thermal baths for a dip in the hot pools there (which is always a good option with insect bites!) before we drove to Arthur's Pass.

Puzzling World in Wanaka

Puzzling World

Arthur's Pass is a small village as well, not having much infrastructure but some nice hostels and you have some really good hiking tracks. Since we had now a day more, we were able to do 2 treks and one was amazing (hiking up to Avalanche Peak: 3 km of hiking and climbing 1'000 m for a great view). Furthermore, on the top of this mountain 2 Keas were waiting and posing for being pictured. They are not shy at all, they are pretty smart and curious and they know exactly that in the backpacks is food. So as soon as you step away from the backpacks, they jump on it and the will open it some way; either using the zipper or slicing the backpack open with their beak.
Next morning, our legs were still a bit sore from the hike but we had to drive to Picton, the town where the ferry from Wellington is landing, connecting the South and North island. On this drive, we had the opportunity to stop a the pancake rocks which are amazing when the waves are coming in and crash against the rocks. Once we left the car park, we tried to establish the "driving on the right side" in New Zealand for a short time, but since the others did not participate, we switched back to the left lane quickly (nobody was hurt!) :-)

View from Avalanche Peak

Kea posing

Pancake-Rocks

In Picton, we stayed in a great hostel, the "Jugglers Rest" where the owner are passionate jugglers and have a fire show in the night for the clients. Furthermore, we hiked up the highest mountain in the Marlborough Sounds for a great view over the Sounds and we took a tour to the close wineries for some wine tasting (as we usually do when we are close to wineries) :-)
Picton was our last stop in the South island, so we boarded the ferry to cross the Cook Strait to the North island were we drove up to Turangi. This is the town close to Mt. Tongariro and "Mt. Doom" of Lord of the Rings. So this was the goal for the next day, hiking the 22 km and climbing the volcano that was used in Lord of the Rings as Mount Doom. It is a very steep climb over loose rocks and a lot of poorly equipped people do it as well, so you have to be very careful when descending since they kicked off a lot of rocks. But the view from the top and the view during the hike are incredibly!

Marlborough Sounds

View from Mt. Doom to Mt. Tongariro

Lakes in the Crater

Still active Volcano

Before we went to Auckland, we also visited the Waitomo Glow-worm caves and the Hukka Falls close to Taupo. So finally, we handed over our car with this summary:

- about 5000 km travelled in 3 weeks in New Zealand
- fuel consumption of about 9 litres per 100 km
- once driving the car on the wrong side, but no accidents :-)

In Auckland, we relaxed and visited the city's highlights (e.g. Sky Tower) and I took the opportunity to visit my old school where I went to 10 years ago (language Internationals). The school still exists and my old teacher (Martin Schwartz, now re-named to HD Francis Waterman) is still there (he stated that we will be teaching there until he drops dead). Very funny to see him again and he actually remembered me :-)
So, after 2 days in Auckland, we cached our plane to Sydney and continued to Perth. Since custom and pest control were very quick, we were able to catch an earlier flight to Perth where we arrived in the late afternoon. Now we are planing our west coast trip with our 4x4 car we'll pick up on the 28th of Feb.

Hiking at Arthur's Pass

Flying Kea

Jumping Kea

Kea on Avalance Peak

Avalanche Peak Summit

Pancake Rocks

Hukka Falls

Sky Tower in Auckland

Sky Tower ... have a close look at it!

Skyline Auckland from Harbour

Language International

My former English teacher

Adios South America and hello New Zealand (Good on ya mate!)

We spent 3 nice days in the "Torres del Paine" national park where we finished the "W" track we started 2 years ago. This time, we were able to visit the missing part of the track that was closed 2 years ago due to the fire in the park. The vegetation has not recovered fully from the fire, so you see a lot of burned trees along the track up to the glacier. Since we didn't want to camp, we booked 2 beds in the hut there and they do dinner as well, so we just needed to carry lunch with us (which still was heavy enough).

Flowers growing again in the park

Soaring Condor

Los Cuernos and burned trees

From the cold and windy south, we made our way up to Santiago de Chile by plane and we arrived in the night at our hostel. We had a double room and the size of the room was big enough to play tennis inside (we actually set the alarm clock to watch the live ticker of Stan!). Or last days in South America we spent with eating, sleeping, using the swimming pool and reading... except for the day where we went to a guided city tour (which was very good!). Since we had some Argentinian Pesos left, we wanted to exchange them in Chile where we noticed that the exchange rate dropped dramatically. So we did not get much Chilenian Peso out of it, but it was sufficient to have dinner and reach the airport of Santiago with it. There, we boarded our Boeing 747 from Quantas for our flight to Sydney (a 14 hour fight).
So, we arrived around 18.00 local time the airport of Sydney, followed by the immigration procedure. We finally checked in at our hotel around 21.00, went for a quick dinner and then straight to bed. Due to the time shift, we were awake early, so we spent our day sight seeing in Sydney (see the pictures below) and we did some essential shopping (out-door stuff). In the evening, we took our Virgin flight to Christchurch for our Kiwi-Adventure. Believe it or not: the immigration takes even longer than in Australia and South America due to the "pest" Control where they wanted to see our hiking boots... Never ending story in short: we arrived in our hostel at 2 in the morning :-)

Harbour bridge

Sydney Opera House

Christchurch was hit by several earthquakes in 2010 / 2011 and almost everything in the city centre is destroyed or needs to be taken down. So in comparison to the city I visited 10 years ago, it is a ghost city in the centre. The cathedral is partially destroyed and there is hardly any shops open in the centre, but there is a lot of space for street art! Besides visiting the city, we were also up to find a cheap rental car and we found it! 37 Kiwi-Dollars (33 USD / 30 CHF) per day and a funny car: Toyota OPA! Not a small car at all but very thirsty (9-10 l per 100 km). So after the acclimatization time, we left Christchurch and headed south to Omaru to visit the penguin colonies there (Yellow - Eyed penguins and blue penguins) before we continued to Dunedin (the city where they brew "Speights - The pride of the South", where you can see Albatross and yellow eyed penguins as well) through the south of the island (the Catlins) to get to Te Anau for our 3 Day Keppler Track. The track is one of the "Great Walks" which are e.g. Milford Sound Track (booked out for this year) and Routeburn Track (also heavily booked already) and the Keppler Track is heavily booked as well, so we had to do a very long first day (25 km) followed by two shorter days. Usually, you splitt our first day into 2 days, but the hut was fully booked already, so we had no other option. The weather was perfect and the track was good as well, so we spent 3 relaxed days there. But before leaving for it, we had a another sunny day in the Milford sound and it's surroundings! We can't complain about the weather so far, just about the sand flies....


Now, our next plans are to drive direction north to Mt. Cook and Arthur's Pass for some more outdoor activities.

Christchurch Cathedral

Christchurch

Centre in Christchurch

Peninsula next to Dunedin

Sea Lion posing for the picture

Penguin posing

Nugget Point - Catlins

Family swimming in the Catlins

Key summit on the way to Milford Sound

Milford Sound

View from Keppler track

Iris Burn waterfall in the morning