We’ve been in Sydney and about now for 4 days, having left the city for the sea side town of Narrabeen, we came back in today to help celebrate the bridges birthday!
Sydney is a vibrant city, full of people! We estimated that there are more people in Sydney than we saw in the entire of New Zealand! It has been quite an effort getting used to full streets, busy shops and full cafes. We escaped to the seaside for fewer people and to get used to Australian way of life from a distance.
Our first day and a half was spent sightseeing, lovely Christina from the hostel gave us a map and route, first port of call was the botanical gardens which overlook Sydney Opera House, where we took endless photos of it and the Harbour Bridge (both iconic landmarks are much bigger than photos make them look), walked round The Rocks- the first part of Australia to be colonised by 700 odd criminals and very quaint- old cobbled streets and European style old houses. Then the Aquaruim- hopefully the only time in Australia that we will come face to face with very big, scary and evil looking sharks! The Aquaruim was awesome, underwater tunnels in the seal and “ocean” areas, an enormous crocodile and vast containers of brightly coloured fish.We also visited the Australian Museum and the Museum of Comtempary Art. After the aquaruim and Museum, we (well Becky mostly) have been checking the lawns for spiders and snakes, any piece of water for jellyfish and crocodiles and we haven’t even dare go in the open sea yet! Damn Aquaruim and Museums!! Today we went on a boat from Manly (Sydneys premiere seaside town) to Circular Quay. Manly, if you can imagine it, looks very much like Torquay! Wasn’t quite what we were expecting!
We were staying in Kings Cross- very swanky during the day, THE place to have a street address, by night it turns into restaurants, strip clubs, “adult entertainment” etc. It is fair to say that this place does not sleep and is full to brimming with quirky characters. We stayed at the Blue Parrot, a bright yellow house situated on the “quieter end” (yeah right!) of Kings Cross. You could compare Kings Cross easily with Soho!
We have been trying some “Australian food”- e.g. kangeroo! We made it into spaghetti bolognase- Andy remarked it tasted very much like horse!! Think that is another story altogether…
It was a wet, foggy, miserable day in National Park, so what better than watching all three Lord of the Rings in the comfort of the National Park Hostels Lounge? If we could see outside the window we would have seen the towering presence of Mt Ngauruhoe aka Mount Doom across the fields. As we watched Lord of the Rings (LOTR) we prided ourselves that we had seen a lot of this landscape in the film, from snowy topped mountains to waterfalls in forests; a lot of the scenery is classic New Zealand scenery. All I needed for our epic journey on Friday is a good looking blonde haired elf, a short ginger dwarf, an old grey haired man and a couple of very small people. Oh and not to forgot a Ranger who mysteriously is the real leader of men on earth. Excellent.
We set off first thing in the morning (7am!) to a brighter day. We started quite high up; above the low cloud level anyway! We first skirted round the infamous Mt Ngauruhoe (Mt Doom!) looking angry and forbidding, red dust and jet black scree in a perfect cone. We trudged over marsh (fortunately with no dead things with glowing eys to lead us to our doom) then up a very very steep rock climb (Frodo and Sam surely had blisters by the end?) and to a stunning lookout over the mountain. As we looked into the West (no not elf ships!) we saw Mt Taranaki on the horizon peeping out through the clouds.
We carried on, our mission to catch the 3pm bus at the other end; through craters, volcanic rock, scree sloped mountains. We had beautiful views of “Orc country” no wonder than Peter Jackson chose this landscape for Mordor. Our highest point was “Red Crater” a stunning view of a massive red rock crater, before the journey down. This wasn’t as easy as expected, over a kilometre of rough, slippery grey scree or gravel. No wonder Boromir was so adamant that he wasn’t going anywhere near the place. After pretty much sliding down, praying that we weren’t going to break anything we got to a look out point over the Emerald Lakes.
The Emerald lakes, are, exactly how they sound, 3 bright turquiose lakes at the bottom of the mountain. They were pretty impressive at the top, looking like little puddles but closer inspection found them eeriley still….as if some monster with tentacles was biding its time before snatching small hobbit sized creatures…..hmmmm. We braved it and sat down near the edge for a well earned scroggin snack.
Off again, across a vast crater guided by white poles the Tongariro Crossing continues over Central Crater to Blue Lake. Blue Lake (an old volcanic vent) is also known as Te Wai-whakaata-o-te-Rangihiroa (Rangihiroa’s Mirror). Quite a mouthful. We were on the way down now towards Ketetahi Hut. The walk to the hut had magnificent views across to Lake Taupo (at least 100km away) and what felt like half of Middle Earth…sorry New Zealand. It might well could have been, there was no houses, settlements or any sign of human interference for as far as the eye could see, and it was a long way.
After refreshing ourselves at the Hut (but no lambas bread for us) we carried on down, through alpine scrub and further to dense rainforest with waterfalls and bubbling streams. We arrived for the bus 1 minute too late, the bus had gone, our mission seemingly failed. However there was a glipse of good fortune (Elvish magic me thinks) there was also a bus a 4.15. Phew! What an adventure!
We’re here in the capital of New Zealand, which incidentally shares its name with my home town. It’s true what they say of Wellington, it’s very very windy.
We came across the Strait from the south island yesterday which left us feeling like New Zealand was almost over for us (which of course it is, we just don’t want to admit it).
We had left Queenstown a week earlier to continue south through Te Anau and Milford Sound, with its breath taking views and vast mountains.
Through Invercargill, famously labeled ‘Arsehole of the world’ by Mick Jagger, we’ll leave it at that… skipping Bluff, the self proclaimed furthest southern point to go to Slope point, the real southern point of the south island. From the bottom the only way was back up, journeying through The Caitlins National Park and up to Dunedin, failing to find any sign of a bra or shoe fence that hear-say had led us to believe existed. So Dunedin, home of one of the 19 Cadburys Factorys worldwide (and well worth a tour), New Zealands oldest university and the worlds steepest street. Its also worth mentioning, just incase any of you go there with a car, that the innercity carparks close at 6:15, which could leave you, like us, stranded the other side of a large shutter from your car, tent, food, clothes… Then back to Christchurch via Mt Cook (see a life in the day of) for our rare luxury accommodation with our OWN shower! Finally whizzing up through Kaikoura, Blenheim and Picton to catch our ferry.
And here we are, in the city centre, waiting for dinner time after spending a full and hectic day in museums (Te Papa is possibly the best museum we’ve ever been in!), art galleries, on the cable car, window shopping and a cinema visit.
We’re staying in a sizable hostel in the middle of town that an elderly couple checked out of this morning due to it being a ‘Party Hostel’, it’s certainly not the loudest we’ve been in. The Kitchen’s a little grubby so we’ve been using ‘health reasons’ as an excuse to eat out every mealtime.
And the future, plenty of things we want to do but little time, definates however are walking the Tongariro crossing, snowboarding, sailing and climbing in Taupo then off to Sydney!
Maybe another post before we leave ‘The Land of the Long White Cloud’ otherwise, see you in Oz!
