Auckland

About a week or so has past since the last post and A LOT has gone down. I'll give you the skinny because this keyboard sucks.

Nirav arrived on Feb 4th in Sydney and we took him around Sydney for a couple hours. This was our first chance to drive in a big city.. it was interesting to say the least. Then we started a two day road trip to Melbourn, beginning with a stop in the Royal National Park and then heading further south. We stopped at a couple beach towns along the way, but the hightlights being Jervis Beach and Buchan caves. We arrived in Melbourn in the middle of some music festival and proceeded to begin a festival of our own, that did not end until 4 in the AM. Below is a slide show of the road trip.

The next morning we began our journey to the second country on the list: New Zealand. New Zealand is unlike any place on earth. We hiked a volcano, a glacier, explored fjords 400m deep, jumped out of a plane at 12000 feet and jumped off a ledge 147m above Queenstown all the while living out a rented camper for 5 days.

Below are a select few pictures from the north island of New Zealand. The highlight of the north island was the Tongariro Crossing which is one of the most famous one day hikes in the world covering amazing terrain including a volcano, sulfur lakes and a rain forest.

The south island was a fantasy world. The slide show below will start with Arthur's pass, which is north and we will work our way down the west coast to the Franz Joseph Glacier. From there we head to Queenstown, where we wish we had more time, but reminded us of Colorado. We then head to Fjordland that includes Te Anau and Milford Sound, which is all included in a National Park carved out by glaciers. We end with the 'Last Super' on the shores of Lake Tekapo.. Enjoy

Now were headed to Singapore for the second half of the trip... stay tuned.

Thoughts: Visiting such great scenery and awe inspiring geography has a tendency to put you in your place. You realize how small humans are. On our drive from Auckland to Togariro National Park we pulled over to sleep in the car for a couple hours. Looking up at the sky almost made me have to sit down. The Milky Way was clearly visible, millions of stars littered the pitch black sky... if you are any where else in the universe, you can't even see us.

Google Images: Garie Beach, Franz Josef Glacier, Tongariro National Park, Milford Sound