Blue Mountains

Hi again! Just returned from 3 nights in the Blue Mountains which were fantastic. And Andrew was kind enough to lend us his car for the trip which meant we could look around a bit by ourselves and didn't have to rely on public transport.

From Sydney we drove out to a small town called Katoomba, which is nothing that special but it's a great base to explore the area. Having said that, I was quite exhausted (I think it was something to do with Andy's sofa bed, and Mikko's tendency to hog it all!) so the first thing we did after checking into the hostel was to find the TV room and watch a few old films! In the evening we did venture out in the evening though to see the town's most visited attraction- a rock formation known as the Three Sisters, floodlit by night.

The following day we went for a walk. It was only 10 kilometres or so but we really struggled, maybe partly because of the heat, but also because we're becoming really, really unfit! The walk went along some cliffs, by waterfalls, by the Three Sisters again (much more impressive in the daytime), down some treacherously steep steps and into the forest. Fortunately we didn't have to come up the same way because there was a small railway (apparently the steepest in the world!) so we took that instead, which was pretty fast and scary but surely beats climbing mountains in 30 degree heat!




The next day we were again pretty shattered so we took it easy, just driving around north of Katoomba and stopping at a series of mountain lookout points, really fantastic scenery. I didn't expect any of Australia's scenery to amaze me after the sights of New Zealand. Again, I'm completely wrong!



Today we made our way back to Sydney but on the way we decided to stop at a wildlife park. We almost didn't, because we got hopelessly lost and it started to rain heavily, but then after giving up on the idea we discovered we were actually on the raod we'd been looking for, and the sun broke out again! Good that it did, because the park was pretty good. There were hundreds of kangaroos, wombats, koalas, wallabies and exotic birds. We've seen quite a few kangaroos and even some sleeping koalas in the wild since we've been in the country, but this is the first time we got to pet them and feed them (which sounds silly, but I'm a sucker for that kind of thing!!).





Now we're back in Sydney and the weekend's about to begin! So we're off to enjoy that before we head off up north on Monday.

Sydney

Sydney is one of those places where you could quite happily stay forever. At least, if you didn't need to worry about work and other such inconveniences.

After our kayaking we went to see some sights, had great meals and just generally enjoyed the good life. We had a really nice barbeque at Andrew's place one night, and Andrew took me to see a local Rugby game (rugby league, not union - apparently there is a difference) another night. I only have a rudimentary understanding of the game, but as far as I can gather, a dislocated foot and a couple of near fights (the first on the field, the second amongst the fans) amount to a good game. In any case, much beer and fun was had.



Another couple of friends that we have made on our travels were also in Sydney at the same time as us, and it was really nice to meet with Jakki (who we met in Russia) and Zoe (Laos). It seems that everyone makes their way to Sydney sooner or later.

I forgot to mention this earlier, but on our first night in Sydney we went to a Bottle-O (off-licence) and found a Finnish "Pirkka" beer can in the chiller! This is the cheapest and nastiest beer you can find in Finland, and how it ever made it outside the country is beyond me. But there it was, and I just had to give it a try. Yes, you guessed it, it was rank!



We also managed to sort out the rest of our journey in Australia. We booked a van for a month to drive up the east coast to Cairns, and we found a fairly cheap flight from Cairns to Singapore (we still plan to do Singapore and Malaysia on our way home). We also checked the dates on our bookings (many, many times!) to avoid making the same mistakes as last time we tried to rent a van. I think we're ok.

We can pick up our van next Monday, so in the meantime we will visit the Blue Mountains, just west of Sydney, and then come back to Sydney for one more weekend, before driving up north.

Adelaide to Sydney

The Barossa valley wine tour was great! We got to go to four different wineries; all different, from the oldest and most well-known (but not excellent) Jacob's Creek to smaller boutique shops that don't produce wines for the supermarkets. We got to try about 6 different wines in each so we came away quite tipsy! Our taste in wines hasn't changed (we still love Shiraz, we quite like Cabernet Sauvignon and Julie hates Riesling!) but it was nice to try new things and learn something about wine production, and the whole Barossa region has stunning scenery.



From Adelaide we managed to get our first car relocation job, back to Melbourne. We were specifically looking to drive this route since you can drive via the Great Ocean Road, apparently one of the nicest drives in the country.




It was indeed beautiful, and it was nice to be back on the road again. We had really terrible rain and wind on the second day which meant that we had to stop driving earlier than planned, and then we had a massive amount of driving on the final day, but we managed to see most of the sights on the way, although a bit rushed!



We decided at some point on the journey that we also wanted to drive from Melbourne to Sydney rather than fly, but we kept checking the internet and couldn't find any cars that needed moving in that direction. Still, when we arrived to drop the van off in Melbourne I thought it couldn't hurt to ask if they had anything that needed to go to Sydney and we were amazed when they told us that we could have a campervan for free if we could get it to Sydney within 3 days! So after a brief divertion back to St. Kilda (to pick up one bag that we'd left in storage there) we were back on the road straight away!

It was another nice drive, but by the time we got to Sydney we were knackered. Obviously, Australia is a massive country, but you really only feel that when you're driving. We drove for about 7 hours every day for three days, then you look at the map and see you've covered just the tiniest fraction of the country, whereas you could have circled New Zealand in that time (not that you'd want to do that in 3 days!). So, this is probably the end of our van relocating adventures. It was nice to try it and we saved ourselves some money, but we decided it's better to take the time and see the country properly, so we'll probably be renting a van again for the next stretch up the east coast.

For the next week at least though, we will be in Sydney putting our feet up. We're staying with Andrew, an Aussie we met in Vietnam who's now back home again. He lives in a lovely place close to the centre with amazing balcony views over the bay. I spent most of yesterday sleeping out on the balcony and getting some rest!



A mate of his has a kayak which he very kindly arranged for us to borrow this morning, so we spent a few hours out on the bay getting some exercise (which we really need, actually!). We haven't seen the centre of Sydney yet, since we came straight to Andrew's place yesterday, so it was amazing to be out in the middle of the bay and suddenly spot the famous opera house!




Tomorrow, Andrew's housemate Dani has offered to take us into town to see the sights, so really looking forward to that. Sydney seems like a beautiful city and we haven't even seen the centre yet!

Alice Springs and the Outback

We arrived in Alice Springs in the burning heat, with no car to take us to Uluru (we didn't manage to get a van for the dates/price we were after) and our accommodation plans based on the hope that a bloke called Aaron would meet us and offer a couch to sleep on.

We hadn't run out of our luck though. At the airport we found a tourist information booth, and booked ourselves not a car but a 3-day tour of the main sites in the area. We had also booked our returning flight one day too late for our original plans, which turned out to be lucky because we were only able to get on this tour the following morning, and so had we got our flights right we wouldn't have been back in town in time. Sweet!

Safe in the knowledge that we were going to see Uluru, we headed out to town to buy some swimming gear, which we hadn't anticipated needing in the desert.



After a bit of shopping and a well deserved pint (or two, to be perfectly honest) in a western style saloon we still hadn't heard anything from Aaron. Slightly concerned at this point, we decided to send him a text message to see why he didn't want to meet us. It turned out he had been calling us but our phone claimed to be switched off! Damn Aussie sim card! Five minutes later we were picked up from outside the saloon and chauffeured to Aaron's place for our first Aussie barbecue.



Aaron turned out to be a really nice guy who had a big house with several bedrooms, and a pool in the garden. We are starting to really get into this couchsurfing business; you just can't argue with good company, fine food and a cold beer by the pool! Aaron was also very patient with me when he was explaining the rules of cricket, a game I have failed to understand several times. I can't say that I'm a real fan yet, but at least I can make an educated guess at why the players suddenly start cheering when seemingly nothing happens.

Before the tour we had one day to explore Alice Springs, so we decided to do the cultural thing for a change (and also because the air-conditioned indoors were just too inviting). We visited the Royal Flying Doctors and the Alice Springs Cultural Centre. Both were good experiences and gave us more of an idea about the history of the place and also the vastness of the area. If I remember correctly, the area serviced by the flying doctors is equal to roughly 21 times the size of Finland.

After another pleasant night at Aaron's, we were picked up at 6 in the morning for our tour. We were a bit worried about the whole idea of going on a tour because we much prefer to do things on our own, but it seems that this time we made the right decision. Our tour group was very nice and very international. Luckily our group had no 18-year-old Americans (no offence, but, you know). Our guide was very knowledgeable and fun, and we learnt a lot more about the Aboriginal traditions and culture as well as geology and biology of the outback than we would have learnt on our own.



After a few hours of driving on straight desert roads we reached our first main attraction, Kings Canyon. We did a three-hour hike in the scorching desert (although the locals thought that the 35 degrees was quite mild and pleasant) with a stop for a swim in a natural water hole half way through (hence the shopping for swimmers). The walk was beautiful in an arid desert way, and certainly got us ready for lunch.





In the evening we stopped at bush camp in the middle of nowhere - quite literally - and rolled out our swags and sleeping bags on the ground around a fireplace. Crawling into your sleeping bag and gazing at the clear stary sky after a day that involved a lot of driving and walking was a lovely feeling.



The next morning we were up before sunrise and moving on to Kata Tjuta (aka the Olgas). There we did another nice walk, slightly shorter this time, but equally nice. The Olgas are rock formations that rise from the ground at a 20 degree angle, and look bizarre to say the least.



From there we went to the Cultural Centre to learn more about what we had just seen. In the evening we headed to Uluru to catch the sunset. Even though it seemed that every tourist in the southern hemisphere had decided to do the same, we really enjoyed having our dinner while watching the last rays of sun change the colour of the rock. After dark it was another night out in the open, but this time in the relative comfort of a camping ground (showers, yay!).



The early mornings continued as we had to be up to see the sun rise at Uluru. This time we found a more quiet spot for viewing, and munched our breakfast while the sun was rising behind the rock. After that we went for a walk around Uluru, which took a couple of hours, and then started making our way back towards Alice Springs.



We arrived in Alice Springs in the evening and had a nice evening with Aaron and another couple of couch surfers that were also staying in his place. The next morning it was time to fly back to Adelaide.



Overall, we had a great time in Alice Springs and on the tour. Considering how thoroughly we had managed to screw up all our bookings, we landed very nicely on our feet; making new friends, enjoying the beautiful scenery, and not having to drive the entire 1000 kilometer loop in the desert more than made up for the fact that we didn't manage to do it on our own.

We are now back in Adelaide, and will be going on a wine tour of the Barossa region tomorrow (I'm pretty sure we have the dates right this time), so we will soon have another tour to report on. Let's see if we change our minds about the touring life.

Organising (and screwing things up!) in Australia

Hello again and greetings from Australia!

So far so good, although we've spending so much time on the internet organising stuff that I don't feel we've really had the chance to settle down and enjoy it yet! We decided after New Zealand that we had spent a little more money over there than we'd anticipated, so we were going to do Australia with a different (more thrifty!) strategy. Firstly, we registered with a website called couchsurfers.com which is basically a network of travelling-minded people who use each others couches/ spare rooms when travelling, and who host travellers themselves when they're at home. We thought this sounded great, because not only do you get a free nights sleep, you also get to meet local people for a change instead of fellow travellers (no offence, fellow travellers!) Secondly, we decided that rather than rent a van for the entire duration of our stay here, we would look out for vans that need relocating somewhere else, and, erm, relocate them! Basically it works that you pay about a dollar a day for the vehicle, the company gives you some petrol allowance and you get a set amount of time to drive it from A to B. So this is our new plan of getting across Australia, although obviously that's not going to work all the time!

We arrived in Melbourne and were met at the airport by Laura and Andy (who we travelled across Laos with) and spent the next few days catching up with them. None of us are really city people so we stayed in a hostel in St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, by the beach.




I suppose we could've been anywhere really, since we spent most of the time inside our hostel room challenging each other to card games (we've played more card games on this trip than in the rest of our lives; it's getting to be quite an addiction!). Oh, we also did one very silly touristy thing though: we drove to Pin Oak Court, a.k.a. Ramsay Street in the TV soap Neighbours! I have to say it didn't look much like how I remembered, and it was surprisingly small!



Laura and Andy left us after 3 days as they have a job starting, but hopefully we'll meet up again after it finishes. We have also arranged to meet up again with Neil (who we met in China and walked the Tiger Leaping Gorge with) who is about to finish his trip and return to his hometown Melbourne, but he's not going to be there for another week or so, so in the meantime we decided to make a trip to Alice Springs and Uluru (Ayers rock). As luck would have it, there were some really cheap flights going there via Adelaide.

So we took a flight to Adelaide, and here we tried the couch surfing service for the first time. A bloke called Steven responded to our request within just 5 minutes, and even offered to pick us up at the airport! Amazing! When we arrived at the airport we were wandering around for a while with no sign of Steven and I started to wonder if the couch surfing was really going to be our thing. But it turned out that Steven was there all along, and Mikko and I had walked right past him, despite him holding up a sign with our names on! Steven's really nice, really interesting to talk to, and a great host. We had a wonderful night's sleep on the sofa bed last night. Today we went into Adelaide to have a quick look around, then when we got back this evening we spent a few hours playing computer games.

Tomorrow we have an early flight on to Alice Springs, from where we hoped to hire a van for a few days and drive ourselves to Uluru and surrounding areas. One small hitch... Mikko has just checked our van rental confirmation details and it seems that instead of renting it from the 5th to 9th of March, we've got it from the 5th to 9th of April!! I tried to call them to see if there's any way we can change the booking, but they had already gone home for the day. So we'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out if they can sort it out for us, or if we've lost our money. FRUSTRATING!! Still, we've had the most amazing luck so far on our trip; we've found amazingly good deals on flights/ van rentals, etc., so I can't be too angry. Something had to backfire at some point, and I don't think we can blame anyone but ourselves for this cock-up!

More from us soon! Bye for now ;-)