The way up to Adelaide - from the Great Ocean road through Port Fairy and Mt. Gambier

So we promised to update about the last days of 2010 and here is what happened: We stayed 2 days in Port Fairy after a long road trip on the Great Ocean Road. We wanted to see the Grampians and talked about it with our host in Port Ferry, Laura. She was surprised about our choice, saying it's a bit far for a day trip and suggested that we see the parks around her place that were close by, with no entry fee and always open. And we could see the same things as in the Grampians.

So we went on a hike in Tower Hill first, which is an ancient volcano crater that was overturned by nature to a park with lots of animals and tracks of all difficulty levels. When we arrived there, we saw koalas on the trees, as we did the previous day on the Great Ocean Road. It was great again, although it did not carry the same emotional reaction as the first time.

Tower Hill

Kangaroo staring at us

We went on one of the tracks there and after a half hour walk we saw kangaroos in the wild! Completely free, with no one around us. They weren't afraid of us and looked at us for a few seconds. In fact, one had a staring contest with Rony! Then they went on with their business as usual. Apparently they were used to cameras cause they kind of posed for us. That was the highlight of our hike. When we got back to the park entrance, we saw two emus walking in the picnic area. They were very friendly, especially with people with food. We don't understand why... :-)

Emus at the picnic area

Anyway, we were quite exhausted so we took a break and went to sleep in the afternoon... in the car. Our host was at work and we couldn't wait till she came back, so we just went to the town pier and took a nap.

Now we were ready for the evening event: Bird watching at sunset. And not just any bird, moody birds that travel all the way from Alaska to Australia to reproduce. So we went out there to watch them, as a dozen of other people did, but saw only a couple hundreds ("only.") There are supposed to be thousands. But it was special anyway.

The next day, we went to Mt Eccles, which, like Tower Hill, is an ancient volcano turned nature park with lots of hikes. We saw much less animals there, but the scenery was great. We then started towards Mt. Gambier, with a stop at the Princess Margaret Anne caves, which were totally awesome (according to Talia).

Princess Margaret Ann Caves

Our next stop was Mount Gambier, on the way to Adelaide. Mount Gambier is the second biggest town in South Australia (which is the name of the state, not physically the southernmost towns) and a good stop on the way to Adelaide if you come from the Great Ocean Road. And also that's where the Blue Lake is.

Blue Lake

We arrived in Adelaide on Christmas Eve, just in time to buy a few things for the weekend. And good thing we did! Because in Adelaide, everything is closed for 4 days at Christmastime: Christmas day, Boxing Day (which is supposed to be a sales day everywhere else and is the day after Christmas Day), Declaration day of South Australia, and Boxing day NT (New Technology or North Territory?). PLUS get this: In Australia, if a holiday falls on a weekend, you are reimbursed with extra vacation day! So everything was closed on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, AND Tuesday. You should have seen the streets - they were so dead, we though a disaster film could easily be filmed there!

Nothing is open beside Chinese restaurants and a few parks that are open anyway, like the botanic gardens, which were gorgeous. What we found most funny is that, even though many stores had Boxing Day sales advertisements in their windows, they were actually closed, and only opened 2 days later! The cinema were open and although the tickets are expensive, there are a few restaurants around the theatres that offer a cinema ticket at $8 AUD if you buy a meal. That price is much more in our range than $18, the regular price. So we went to see "The King's Speech" which was a great movie. And a real historical event...again. Talia really loves those movies ;-)

We stayed at the hotel for 4 days because of that and also because we had to limit our expenses and couldn't afford a trip to Kangaroo Island (cheapest tour was 350 dollars) or Uluru (500 dollars.) But we could afford to buy some gear for the cold winter in China and Japan: A sleeping bag for Talia andd thermal clothes for both of us.

It was time to go to Sydney and enjoy a New Year's Eve there :)
 
Pics from Adelaide:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=595490&id=906005363&l=daa4911657

Pics from the Great Ocean Road:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=588459&id=906005363&l=3dcccbe1fb

Happy New Year from Sydney! Well, it WAS in Sydney :-)

Hi all!

We're sorry we haven't updated in over a week, but we haven't really had Internet access. We will write about everything we did after the Great Ocean Road, but first we'd like to update you about now.

We were in Sydney for New Year's Eve, and we had a marvelous spot on The Rocks in Sydney, which is the perfect place to see the fireworks both on the Sydney Bridge and the Opera House.

As we previously mentioned, we were able to change our flight back to Sydney to the day before, so we had to find a hotel, which was no small feat considering we booked our New Year's Eve hotel back in JUNE and only found one an hour out of the city.

We ended up finding a really nice hotel (4 stars) also about an hour outside of Sydney for a pretty good price (what we were paying in Melbourne for a hostel) and arrived pretty easily by train, after a Tiger Airways flight that - OMIGOSH - arrived on time and - OMIGOSH - was uneventful. Our hotel for the next day was actually pretty close to this one, but first we had to go into town to pick up our car and buy some food for the next few days.

We took a nap when we got to our next hotel (also really nice and a 4 star hotel that was fairly cheap cause it was far) so that we'd have enough energy for the evening. We took the train into the city, which is about an hour, around 6 to make sure we have enough time to find a good place for the fireworks.

One tip if you take the train to the city on New Year Eve: Buy a one way ticket to the city, cause the trains are free after midnight till the end of service. Well, they aren't technically free, but there were so many thousands of people that they just open all the gates to have the traffic go through. The truth is, it was the same when we arrived, so we could have actually gone without a ticket, but whatever.

The Sydney train system was working all night long with extra trains just to make sure that people didn't drive drunk and to minimize traffic, so we were lucky that even though we were technically far, we had a very easy time getting into town.

We got off at the Circular Quay (pronounced key) station and just walked with the crowd to The Rocks. At one point we stopped to ask a cop what the best place to watch from would be, and he told us to run into the place next to him - which proved to be the best spot. Even though there were a zillion people there (the news said 1.5 million people all around the harbor), we found a great spot that gave us a great view of both the Sydney Bridge and the Opera.

We arrived at 20:15 (the area was locked around 20:30), found a good place, plopped ourselves down, and read for the next 3.5 hours. There were some crazy drunk Italians who were making tons of noise for a while, but then they moved closer to the water after the first fireworks which started at 21:00, and then it was pretty nice.

We heard a lot of languages during those 4 hours in the Rocks (not just Italian) and we even had the chance to ask a Chinese family there how to say long, warm coat in Chinese so Talia can buy one there :) And at midnight we even shook hands with a Pakistani family. It was cool to see everybody happy there and celebrating.

The walk back from The Rocks to the train station was much longer than what we expected: Millions of people on the streets of Sydney, all going to the same direction. The streets were closed for cars and there were a few policemen watching over us.

Once we got to the station, Town Hall, we saw so many people trying to get in the station that we decided to wait at a coffee shop around the corner and until it got a bit better. So we ended up going back to the hotel at 3:00.

The next day we were ready for our drive to the north coast. Us and a few millions of Ozzies with us.
But that's another story.

All we've been hearing on the radio lately has been countdowns of 2010 - and the decade - so in their honor, here's our list of awards in honor of the 2010 portion of our trip:

Most annoying song: Bruno Mars - Grenade. Why? Cause the lyrics are stupid - check it out for yourself.
First runner up: Black Eyed Peas - Time of my Life. Why? Cause the remake is sacreligious.
Coolest animal: Tasmanian Devil. Why? Hello - it's the DEVIL
Nicest people: Melbourne. Why? We have no idea.
Most beautiful country: New Caledonia. Why? Have you seen the pics? Looks like Photoshop.
Funniest print ad: "Happy Husband Sale: Prices you won't have to lie about!"
Funniest TV ad:



















Best individual experience:Volunteering at the WFFT.org
Dumbest TV concept: Writing "rerun" on I Love Lucy and other old shows
Most annoying TV ad: We can't remember cause we kept muting it
Best beer: Chang in Thailand. Why? Cause it's cheap and yummy :-)
Dumbest landmark: Great Ocean Road Memorial Bridge. Why? Cause there's nothing there!

We are currently spending our last few days on the Gold Coast and Byron Bay area (which is where all the surfing happens) and on Thursday we head off to Hong Kong, so we aren't sure how much we'll be able to update after that, but we promise to update about the missing days when we can.

So far the people we met on the Gold Cost are awesome. Our hosts as well as the other couchsurfers we met.

Pics from Adelaide and New Year's Eve in Sydney:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=595490&id=906005363&l=daa4911657