Kangaroo in the Wild

Since I finally figured out how to upload videos properly on here I thought you all might enjoy the kangaroo.

I also have, because I know you want to see, a koala in the wild to show you soon!

T-minus 12 Days until we go home!

The Rest of It

It's Boxing Day here in Oz, (that's the day after Christmas for all the Americans out there) and while Dom watches the Dallas Cowboys I thought I would finish up our Uluru/Alice Springs recap so that I can delve into the Jamaica trip from more than a month ago and our weekend trip houseboating on the Hawkesbury River and also tell you about the Opera House...all before we leave tomorrow for Melbourne (I can almost guarantee that's not going to happen, but it's a nice thought). So, here we go...

Ayres Rock

The Olgas

The Road Trip

Alice Springs

First up, just as we were heading out of Alice Springs we saw a kangaroo! Yes we've seen kangaroos before but never quite as close as this! And after seeing all of the other wild animals on our road trip and not a single kangaroo...we really needed to see a kangaroo to make the trip complete. We even managed to capture the moment on video. Unfortunately Blogger does not want to load my video...so this picture where the kangaroo is barely visible will have to suffice. She's up at the top of the pic between the rocks, can you see her?

The road trip back was much less exciting as we took the shorter route and managed to do the whole thing in just over 4 hours. Here are the highlights:

Emus at a petrol station.

A giant frilled lizard and echidna...at the same petrol station. Because why WOULDN'T there be a giant frilled lizard and echidna at a petrol station.

A salt lake.

The Uluru lookalike.

More camels.

To be fair it was probably the same herd as we saw on the trip out, not more camels, just the same camels again.

This is a dingo. It's a crap picture I know, but I promise in the very middle of the picture is a dingo.

And here's the car after the roadtrip, not nearly as many bugs as we thought there should be.

Our last night in Uluru we decided to do the "Sounds of Silence" dinner, remember when we went to Port Douglas and did the "Flames of the Forest" dinner? Well, this was essentially the same thing. Dinner under the stars while watching the sun set behind Uluru. Instead of an aboriginal telling a bedtime story this time it was the most Australian guy I've ever seen playing a digeridoo.

Have you ever seen anyone look more quintessentially Australian than this guy?

Champers at sunset.

Totally worth it if you're ever in Uluru, they give you all sorts of weird Australian fare like kangaroo and crocodile and give you too much alcohol. Awesome.

As we got ready to head off the next morning we took one last trip out to Uluru before we headed back to the airport.

A closeup of the walk you can do up the side of Uluru.

And our final look. Bye bye Uluru.

Caves Part 2

Part 1

After Day 1 of cave adventuring we stopped along the road to take some photos in the picturesque setting. Every time we leave Sydney I am amazed at how the scenery changes, here in the Blue Mountains it looks like Tuscany.

This is Australia.

And for comparison sake, this one is Tuscany.

Similar, no?

For Day 2 of our cave adventure we vowed to make it to the caves for the 10am River tour since we'd missed it the day before. Along the way as we're driving through the fog (yes, foggy again in Katoomba!) the fog cleared for a few minutes just in time to see 2 kangaroos....BOXING! Yes, I actually saw kangaroos boxing in the wild. I'll just go ahead and mark that one down as a life experience one rarely gets the opportunity to...well to experience.

Moving on.

We got going early and made it there about 9:40am and while I was waiting in the ticket office for Dom to park the car (like the retard that I am I forgot my money in the car and thus couldn't even be useful by buying tickets, so I waited) a couple came in inquiring about the Ribbon tour and wanting to know if it was suitable for their 3 year old. I had no idea what the Ribbon tour was and honestly didn't care but the lady had such an annoying voice that I couldn't help but overhear. APPARENTLY THERE WAS A SPECIAL TOUR! One that gets booked out months in advance and only 8 people can participate in and they only do it once a week. And just because I was eavesdropping I found out that there were exactly 2 spots open still!

See, there was a reason I forgot my money in the car, it was so i could eavesdrop!

Anyway, we managed to snag the last 2 spots for the special Ribbon tour and once again put off River tour until later in the day. We eventually managed to do the elusive River tour that we'd traveled all this way for and honestly it was my favorite, but Ribbon tour was very cool too.

The reason Ribbon is "special", it's very small and as you will see, very up close and personal with the cave.

This was one of the most amazing things EVER. This is a tin can that was put there 74 years ago, as drinking water when they were rooting through the caves with candlelight, 74 years is all it took to look like that, it is now one with the caves as water continues to drop into it and minerals build up around it. So crazy to actually watch the cave grow and change before your eyes.

Ribbon tour again so special because you get so close to everything.

And for me, the highlight, finally, the river!

If you're ever in Sydney for an extended period of time I highly recommend going to the Jenolan Caves. They blew my mind. I had only seen such things on the Travel Channel and feel blessed to have been able to experience something like this in person.

Anyone know of any other Caves around the world? This was such a good experience for me I think I would go out of my way to find other caves to visit.

The Time I Touched a Wallaby

A few months ago because we had nothing better to do we decided to go to the zoo. Ok and also because we'd seen on the news that a baby pygmy hippo had just been born and he looked sooo cute!

The Taronga Zoo here in Sydney is pretty tiny but pretty great.

First, you take a ferry there, which in and of itself makes it unique and starts the experience of right.

Second, you're very up close and personal with the animals, much like I was trying to describe at the Croc farm, if you really wanted to you could stick your hand in and touch the majority of the animals. Granted the big scary cats are behind glass, but everything else is right there next to you again with just signs that tell you if you stick your hand in and a goat bites you, it's your fault, you were warned.

There is also a really great view of the city from the zoo, specifically the giraffes have a primo piece of real estate.

See that? They have a view of the bridge!

They also, have a special "walkabout" section where they let you walk about with the animals...specifically Australian animals, like koalas, wallabys and kangaroos. It's very weird and very cool, I'm not sure how the animals don't escape, since all they have to keep them in is two sets of doors, one of which will not open until the other closes....but still!

That's me petting a wallaby.

Kangaroos just hangin' out.

Some random dude and his baby and a wallaby. See now if that wallaby decided that baby was threatening and decided to bite the baby, the zoo would totally blame it on the baby...i'm not kidding. They take their signs very seriously, if there's a sign saying something is dangerous, you better be careful!

The baby pygmy hippo! Isn't he cute?

Peacock with the biggest tail I've ever seen!

So, like I said, it's definitely not the biggest best zoo I've ever been to, but it was a unique experience.

And a little sidenote, because what's a good post without mentioning something random, the Oregon Ducks are KILLING UCLA right now and it's awesome. It's 53 - 6 as I'm typing and they're about to score another touchdown. WOW.

Go Ducks!

Bushwalking, wine and kangaroos

The weekend began on Friday night, which was Dom's 38th birthday, he arrived home from NZ just in time for us to go out to a fancy dinner at Altitude, which has a gorgeous view of the other side of the harbor from our apt. In fact you can see our apartment from Altitude...which was amusing, I'm sad I don't have a picture of it.

Anyway, we got a fancy 4 course meal with wine pairings and at the end of the night Dom looked like this:

That is Dom going to bed with the cool tie I bought him earlier in the week, which wasn't for his birthday, because ties are boring presents for birthdays, but it's still a damn cool tie if I do say so myself. Anyway, he'd been running on 4 hours of sleep for the last week and he went to bed as soon as we got home.

The next morning we got up late and got on our merry way about noon. We had a very chill, relaxed drive to Hunter Valley wine country, stopping in a little town called BROOKLYN for some gas (petrol to Aussies).

Who knew there was a Brooklyn in Oz?

An hour or so into our journey we started to see these signs:

but still no kangaroos (or wombats for that matter) EXCEPT DEAD ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD! And amusingly enough, we saw one of those kangaroo crossing signs with a dead kangaroo RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT and then later down the road a wombat crossing sign with a dead wombat RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT! I figure they were admiring the pictures of themselves from the middle of the road...using the light from the oncoming car of course and just didn't have time to get out of the way. I almost took pictures, it was THAT amusing, but thought better of it, because who really wants to look at pictures of dead kangaroos and wombats?

Anyway, aside from the dead ones we hadn't seen any kangaroos and then suddenly we hit the kangaroo jackpot! A whole shitload of kangaroos...just hanging out...I squealed, literally squealed! I sounded like a pig...yes I'm awesome like that. Seriously, one of the coolest things about Australia so far is these goddamn kangaroos. Over the weekend we saw many more and I got excited each and every time I saw one. THEY ARE COOL.

Yeah it's blurry, whatever, they're still kangaroos!

Moving on.

Sunday we headed off for our wine tour. Now, we've done our fair share of wine tastings, both in Sonoma, California as well as Portland, Oregon and let me just say that the Aussie experience was somewhat different.

First and foremost, most people take a wine tour on a wine bus, this is brilliant for about 7 different reasons, the most important of which is that it keeps you from drinking and driving (or as they say here, drink driving). Also, YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. The driver has your tour all laid out for you, so you literally just sit back and enjoy. All the vineyards are expecting you and set up special group tastings, which means EXTRA WINE! Seriously, we visited 5 vineyards and tried at least NINE different wines at each vineyard. In a word, AWESOME. Now, keep in mind that the tour lasts about 6 hours and starts at 10am, so for the first time EVER, I found myself dumping out wine that I didn't enjoy. They were just so generous with their wine AND ALL THE TASTINGS WERE FREE.

In both Cali and Oregon the tastings are anywhere from $5-$10 so i guess you feel like you paid for that wine and thus don't want to waste a drop and by the end of a day of wine tasting, YOU ARE WASTED. I gotta say I enjoyed this way better, we came home with a bunch of yummy wine and we did not end up totally smashed at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon. Not that I mind being smashed on a Sunday afternoon, a proper NYC brunch is not complete without ending up so, but we were supposed to go out for a fancy dinner at 7:30 and I wasn't sure I could muster up the energy for that after a heavy day of drinking.

We toured around in a "Cheers" bus

Monday, we packed ourselves up and headed back towards Sydney, stopping off for a quick bushwalk. Now, I don't know about you, but I had it in my head that a bushwalk would be different than hiking. For future reference, IT'S THE SAME THING. They just call it a bushwalk because they call their forests "the bush" for some reason. So, anyway, we went for a "bushwalk" in the rain, which honestly was more fun than it sounds.

Setting off on our "bushwalk"

Us and Mel (the car)

Random carving in the rock

We have a wide angle lens and like to take cool pictures of ourselves, what can I say the two faces in the camera gets boring and we are exciting.

See, I am "bushwalking"

Monkey Face Road led to Monkey Face Lookout, Australians have awesome names for things.

And that concludes our first trip outside of Sydney together, I didn't even mind the fact that it was the 4th of July and we did absolutely nothing that has anything to do with America whatsoever. In fact, I completely forgot it was even a holiday at home. What did everyone else do this weekend for 4th of July?