We departed for Sydney Australia on Friday, October the 13th. While some may be superstitious about this date, we believe it was one of our luckiest days on the trip. We departed for Australia at 3:00 p.m. local time and arrived in Sydney 3:00 p.m. local time – thus we arrived as we departed, as it were.
Chuck has been to Australia on several occasions for business and vacations and has many friends here. Deborah, however, had never been to Australia and is now a card-carrying Aussie wannabe. It also helped that we checked into the Sheraton on the Park, by far the best accommodation so far on the trip. Our rooms include high-speed Internet access, electric blackout blinds, art deco décor, walk-in closets and plush cotton housecoats. This is living!
Sydney is one of the most stunningly beautiful cities in the world. Its waterfront takes center stage, and features the beautiful Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. On Saturday we also toured the city via bus and went to such iconic spots as Bondi beach where the beach-goers are packed in like sardines (including the oil!). The waves were amazing and the undertow was very strong; thus the reason so many lifeguards patrol the beach.
Sydney has many gorgeous attributes; it’s hard to describe them all. The various Syndey area neighborhoods we drove past had all kinds of wonderful cafes, restaurants, bars, shops, houses and gardens. We’ve never seen so many exotic flowers that grow seemingly everywhere. The architecture runs the gamut: from New Orleans style ornate iron gates, to skinny houses built close together, like the ones you find in San Francisco, to Miami-like art deco mansions that perch high on the hill. Prices range from hundreds of thousands of Aussie dollars to multi-million dollar spreads.
We also toured the harbour via catamaran and lunched on poached salmon, steamed prawns, cracked crab, etc. Most amazing are the number of sailboats and other watercraft on the water. Literally, dozens and dozens of boats vie for precious space at any moment. We saw a couple of near misses.
In the evening Deborah and fellow travelers dined at the Summit Restaurant, which is located on the 47th floor at Australia Square. (Chuck spent the evening on his own.) Like Toronto’s CN Tower, the Summit turns a complete 360 every 75 minutes, so you get to see the entire city while ‘spinning’ and dining. (Btw, Deborah had spoken to her husband, Bob McWhirter, who is keeping the home fires burning and taking care of their son, Sam, via telephone the night before. Bob reported that the weather in Toronto was drifting in the single-digit range, with sleet and snow warnings. Sydney was hovering in the mid-30s with brilliant sun and not a cloud in the sky.)
Sunday was overcast, but that was fine as we were given a ‘day off’ from touring and could do as we pleased. The cooler weather was a welcome relief. After a very tasty breakfast, Chuck and Deborah met Chuck’s friend for lunch (more food) and a visit. As you may be aware, Chuck is a vegetarian, whereas his buddy hates vegetables and prefers to chomp on stuff that has clucked, mooed or bleated at some point in their short lives. These two are Australia’s and Canada’s answer to Oscar and Felix!
While we had the opportunity to go to dinner with our fellow travelers, Deborah and Chuck opted out for a quiet evening and a chance to get packed in advance of our Monday flight to Ayers Rock, 1,354 miles to the northwest of Sydney.
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Saturday, 14 Oct 2006
…A brief interlude before we tell you about our stay in New Zealand…
Chuck reported to Deborah as they were boarding the bus to the Auckland airport en route to Sydney, Australia, that his site had “thousands of hits since our first blog was posted about our round-the-world trip”. Apparently, many readers marveled at the quality of writing and couldn’t believe that Chuck had penned such prose being the ‘quant’ left-brainer that he is…and they were right! Little does everyone know that Chuck ‘hired’ a ghost writer – a.k.a Deborah (ok, he wrote the Tahiti stuff for the most part…).
…now back to New Zealand…
Following a 6-hour flight, our plane arrived in Auckland, New Zealand – a mere 2.544 miles from Tahiti.
Everyone in our tour group seemed to breathe a sigh of relief upon arriving in New Zealand…there’s something to be said about being in a place whose residents speak your language and the food is more familiar.
New Zealand is a beautiful place. Very lush and reminiscent of many places… like the Scottish Highlands, Wales, Ireland, parts of Canada, and even Italy. We stayed overnight in Auckland at the Stamford Plaza, a refurbished hotel in the heart of the city. The problem was, the “refurbishing” was still under way and many of our group had rooms without heat – including Chuck and Deborah. The big difference was, however, that while Chuck was shivering in his suite (he reports that he slept in the hotel room’s bath-robe) – Deborah stormed the front desk and asked for a new room WITH heat…in large part due to the fact the Deborah was feeling under the weather and needed a warm place to sleep.
After a lot of ‘back and forth’ Deborah secured a room whoseith a temperature above freezing, which allowed for a much more comfortable rest in advance of the next day’s foray to Rotorua.
Rotorua is the heartland of New Zealand’s Maori culture. The Te Arawa people of Rotorua were some of New Zealand’s first residents more than 600 years ago. However, the Maori were the first inhabitants of the district. Today the Maori community is mostly urban. There are approximately 35 “marae” – meeting grounds in the district, out of which 20 are located in rural areas.
Surrounding Rotorua are geothermal sites, Ohinemutu and Whakarewarewa. We visited the “Lady Knox-Geyser Te Puia Whakarewarewa – the geothermal valley art and crafts institute, and the Agrodome Farm Show.
The Farm show proved to be huge fun. We were treated to an array of bucolic activities and sites, including sheep herding, sheep shearing and feeding new-born lambs. We also saw the dexterity of the New Zealand’s amazing sheep-herding slane lamb.
Earlier in the day we visited caves that are home to “glow worms” which are brightly lit larvae that attach themselves to the caves by long threadlike fibers. We were taken by boat in complete darkness so that we could see the amazing glow worms that dot the ceiling of the caves. We also got to see a spectacular array of indigenous animals, including the Kiwi, which is a rather unusual looking bird because it doesn’t fly, hops around, has a long beak and is extremely timid. In fact, it prefers very dark spaces. There are two very unfortunate things about the Kiwi in Deborah’s opinion: 1, it has many predators because of the fact that it doesn’t fly; and 2, its females lay eggs that are almost two-thirds their own size…meaning, it would be like a human female giving birth to a three-year-old. Deborah wondered why the Kiwi females didn’t also have crossed eyes, too, because popping out one of those eggs must be quite the experience!
We also stopped for lunch at a wonderful dairy farm where we literally feasted on roast legs of lamb, roasted root vegetables, wine and beer. Speaking of which, the food on this trip has been good and plentiful. Fortunately, we figure we haven’t gained any weight, in large part due to our discipline of not going for seconds and thirds at the “trough”.
Ah Tahiti! The blue ocean, the lagoons, the waterfalls….
But then Tahiti or French Polynesia has its drawbacks: people speak French here and close everything on weekends. Not that we have anything against French – some of our best friends are French. Just that I (i.e. Chuck) have difficulty speaking French. [Note from Deborah…Deborah is bilingual, and becomes more fluent in “le francais” as she drinks wine.] As for the weekend closing, it might not have been such a great deal except for the fact we were there on the weekend.
And now for those who need some serious information: Tahiti and Her Islands have three time zones (greedy, aren’t they?). The country spans 5 million (Yes, FIVE MILLION) square kilometers with a population of just 245,000 (greedy, aren’t they?) mostly Christian and have as many as 120 islands (greedy, aren’t they?). In fact, they think every country is an island. The entertainers greeted us people “From the island of Canada!” And, believe it or not, Tahiti has many Mormons, although we are not sure if they practice polygamy openly.
Remember the Mutiny on the Bounty and Captain Bligh? It all happened here.
The first day Deborah and Chuck bought some gifts, before they closed everything for the weekend (at 12 noon on Saturday).
While Deborah lounged around the pool, Chuck decided to explore the island. He saw sharks in the aquarium, waterfalls in the mountains, but no Gauguin paintings in the Gauguin museum (which for some reason, they seem to call Gauguin Musee). Yes folks Gauguin loved Tahiti, he lived here and, alas, died here at an early age of 55.
Tahiti is nice, but too commercialized. I (Chuck) may come back here, but not so keen. Deborah agrees that Tahiti, while scenic, is not worth the very long flight and expense the island requires
Easter Island…A spectacular surprise awaits...
Easter Island is in the same time zone as US Mountain Standard Time. Chile, however, adjusted time so there is less difference between island time and mainland time. This puts the island behind Chile by 2 hours.
Easter Island reminded Deborah of Ireland. The landscape is lush and green. Wild horses roam the land. Unlike Ireland, Easter Island is over 2,000 miles from the nearest population center (Tahiti and Chile).
Resting on volcanic rock in the South Pacific, it is known for the giant stone monoliths known as Moai. The early settlers called the island ‘Te Pito O te Henua’ -- the “navel of the world”.
Admiral Roggeveen, who arrived on the island on Easter day in 1722, named it ‘Easter Island’.
Our ‘Blue’ group, upon arrival at the airport, decided that a ‘hostile takeover’ of the other groups – Green and Red – might be in order to secure ‘appealing’ accommodations. (To put it politely, our stay in the Galapagos had mixed hotel accommodations – i.e. no hot water, no TV, no headboards, no locks on the door, dripping water from the ceiling…and so on.) Thankfully, the ‘coup’ wasn’t necessary. Our ‘home’ on the island was the Iorana Hotel, a wonderfully comfortable place. Everyone agreed that this was a welcome place to rest our very weary heads.
However, our first stop was not the hotel. Directly from the airport our bus took us to the Ceremonial site of Tahai, which also featured an amazing ‘cocktail party’ under a tent with lit torches and music provided by Rapa Nui musicians.
Chuck and I bought some gorgeous native jewelry before we headed into the party tent.
On Friday October 6 we departed for an island tour, the highlight of which was a drive to the beach of Anakena where we visited Ahu Nau and enjoyed an amazing BBQ lunch with a wonderful performance by Polynesian singers and dancers. Chuck and Deborah participated in the dances…but we were told to stick with our day jobs as we didn’t quite make the cut.
The late afternoon was spent visiting Ahu Tongariki and Rano Raraku where many of the carvings from the mountains are found.
At dinnertime, Elveira Mueller, our ever-energetic tour leader, and Deborah decided that it was appropriate to ‘borrow’ some flowers from the hotel garden in order for all the female attendees of the dinner to wear in their hair….
The next day brought more adventure – Tahiti!
Easter Island…A spectacular surprise awaits...
Easter Island is in the same time zone as US Mountain Standard Time. Chile, however, adjusted time so there is less difference between island time and mainland time. This puts the island behind Chile by 2 hours.
Easter Island reminded Deborah of Ireland. The landscape is lush and green. Wild horses roam the land. Unlike Ireland, Easter Island is over 2,000 miles from the nearest population center (Tahiti and Chile).
Resting on volcanic rock in the South Pacific, it is known for the giant stone monoliths known as Moai. The early settlers called the island ‘Te Pito O te Henua’ -- the “navel of the world”.
Admiral Roggeveen, who arrived on the island on Easter day in 1722, named it ‘Easter Island’.
Our ‘Blue’ group, upon arrival at the airport, decided that a ‘hostile takeover’ of the other groups – Green and Red – might be in order to secure ‘appealing’ accommodations. (To put it politely, our stay in the Galapagos had mixed hotel accommodations – i.e. no hot water, no TV, no headboards, no locks on the door, dripping water from the ceiling…and so on.) Thankfully, the ‘coup’ wasn’t necessary. Our ‘home’ on the island was the Iorana Hotel, a wonderfully comfortable place. Everyone agreed that this was a welcome place to rest our very weary heads.
However, our first stop was not the hotel. Directly from the airport our bus took us to the Ceremonial site of Tahai, which also featured an amazing ‘cocktail party’ under a tent with lit torches and music provided by Rapa Nui musicians.
Chuck and I bought some gorgeous native jewelry before we headed into the party tent.
On Friday October 6 we departed for an island tour, the highlight of which was a drive to the beach of Anakena where we visited Ahu Nau and enjoyed an amazing BBQ lunch with a wonderful performance by Polynesian singers and dancers. Chuck and Deborah participated in the dances…but we were told to stick with our day jobs as we didn’t quite make the cut.
The late afternoon was spent visiting Ahu Tongariki and Rano Raraku where many of the carvings from the mountains are found.
At dinnertime, Elveira Mueller, our ever-energetic tour leader, and Deborah decided that it was appropriate to ‘borrow’ some flowers from the hotel garden in order for all the female attendees of the dinner to wear in their hair….
The next day brought more adventure – Tahiti!