Where Can I Go?

Consider this post a pause in the Kim and Kristen Road Trip Diary 2014.

I had a moment the other day. Thursday, specifically. December 11th. Sometime during that day I had a moment where I realized I have 6 months left in my 20's. WHO LET THAT HAPPEN? 

And admist my panic and thoughts of "Have I accomplished everything I'm supposed to in my 20s?", "What is one supposed to accomplish in their 20s?", "I didn't get accidentally knocked up, so that's a plus", and "I wonder if 30 really is the new 20?", I also had the much more important thought, "What should we do- no, where should we go for my 30th birthday?". I may not be someone who needs an excuse to travel, but I am someone who needs an excuse to go big.

But how big is big? It's not the big 5-0 birthday. (Hopefully I have more money for that big birthday!). But it's pretty big. Travel outside of NZ big.

My first step when I book travel is to look at flight costs. With the way that Scott and I travel (cheap), the flight is always the most expensive piece of the puzzle. Because of this I rely on good travel booking sites with their competitive rates and good deals.

Since moving to New Zealand, I started using WebJet. Similar to Expedia or Kayak, WebJet sources the lowest prices from competitve airlines and in our case, the ones relevant in New Zealand. 

So I hopped on WebJet and stared at the blank search boxes. Where am I going? I know where I'm leaving from, but where to...?

At that moment, a blue box below my cursor caught my eye. It read, "Where can I go within my budget?" 

What a brilliant question, Webjet.

I clicked on it and it then asked me from where I was leaving [ok... Christchurch]. Next, did I fancy domestic? [no thanks! It's my 30th birthday!], or perhaps Australia [mayyyybe...] or an International destination... [Now you're speaking my language!]. 

I selected international, and braced for the flights with many 00's on the end of the price tag. (If you're in NZ, just add a 0 or 00 to the end of every price!)

What happened next was an internet flight searching miracle. The first, cheapest international flight deal that appeared is exactly where I hadn't realized I wanted to go.

...Bali.

Source

Rice Terraces

Rocky Temple of Gunung Kawi

The perfect combination of exotic and relaxing. A place we can dive and hike, and probably rent bikes to ride around the island. A place where your money actually gets you something. 

Affordable Luxury - $60USD/night

What! $43USD/night

$70USD/night. Take me here. Take me straight here.

There weren't even too many 00's on the price of the flight. After way too much time sorting out flights and hotel combinations and possible transportation choises (all easy to click through on WebJet) I basically have my milestone birthday planned out. Now I just need a new bikini and a pina colada. 

Do they drink those here?

I'm amazed at how swiftly and easily it all came together just by asking the question: Where can I go within my budget?

This post is sponsored by Zuji/WebJet. However all the rambling, opinions and otherwise, are clearly mine.

Road Trip Days 2-4: Beaches, Wine, and Snow

So when we left off, Kim and I had just driven to Dunedin. Here's the map, from Oamaru where we left off, through Queenstown, complete with my extremely useful travel notes.

Since we woke up to grey skies and rain, we figured, why not spend the whole day outside?!

After breakfast we drove out to the Royal Albatross Colony, and within 30 seconds of getting out of the car saw 2 albatrosses! That settled our decision about possibly paying to go on the tour to see one of the magnificent birds.

And Kim's photography skills are unparalleled...

Well, she got a photo and I didn't. Thats an albatross, take my word for it.

We thought about sticking around to see the Little Blue Penguins, which come up the beach at some arbitrary time between sunset, dusk, and dark. Since it was 1pm, and dark in Dunedin is 10pm, we thought better of the 9 hour wait. So unfortunately, Kim did not get to see any of the world's smallest, bluest penguins.

She was delighted anyways though, with the country-side scenery. As the rain lifted and the sun came out, the paddocks lit up and glowed against the ocean backdrop. Each crest of the hill was met with a squeal and her camera being precariously thrust out the window to crookedly capture another hillside.

Moving Car photo #1

Moving Car photo #2 

I think I stopped the car for this one?

We got out for a moment and hiked down to the overlook over sandfly bay. Not pictured below, 60km/hr winds. We hopped back in the car after 0.3 seconds deliberation regarding continuing the hike.

Oh the irony: sandfly bay is usually too windy for sandflies.

We arrived back in Dunedin without much of a plan, but hungry and sleepy. We ended up stumbling upon the Dunedin Botanical Gardens, which were absolutely beautiful. No photos happened. We sorted out a coffee and a snack and felt refueled.

As we were driving to the Botanical Gardens, we stopped at the World's Steepest Street. Yes, the world's steepest street is Baldwin Street, in Dunedin NZ! At its steepest point, the street is 19 degrees, or 35% gradient. According to Wikipedia, there are of course steeper non-paved streets in the world, and there actually is a small section of a street in Pensylvania that is 37%, but it is very short. Also, several streets in San Francisco have a small section with a steeper gradient from Baldwin St, however with distance of steepness considered, Baldwin St. is the steepest "complete" residential street.

Anyways, it doesn't really photograph well.

With our trusty guidebook (NZFrenzy) in hand again, we next adventured out to Tunnel Beach. I had had this beach circled in the guidebook since before we even moved to NZ, but having only been to Duenedin once before, we had never made it out before.

What a beach we were missing! Tunnel Beach gets its name from the tunnel carved into a bluff, which takes one down to a magical-feeling secluded inlet full of massive outcroppings and jewel colored water. A Dunedin man hand built (or exploded?) the tunnel so his kids could get down to the beach easily. Dad of the Year, 1870.

Hike to the tunnel.

Bluffs above the tunnel.

The tunnel.

The other side of the tunnel!!!

Rock outcroppings making Kim look tiny.

 We spent the better part of the area at this little beach, regretting leaving the wine in the car and the cheese at the store. Next time.

Light on the bluffs as we left. When did we teleport to Ireland?

After Tunnel Beach, I declared all I wanted in life was a pizza and a glass of Rose. As if by magic, we drove to the small suburb St. Clair- on the beach, and the first place we walked into was a classy little pizzeria. Full of pizza, wine, and sun, we crashed out hard for the night.

Before leaving Dunedin the next morning, we had time for another flying fox adventure. We vowed to find one in each town we visited and photograph it, but alas, this was the last one we found!

Then began our long drive from Dunedin to Queenstown, via the amazing wine country of Otago. After a beautiful but lengthy drive (see "boring but pretty" on map) we arrived in Alexandra for lunch. The Shaky Bridge Cafe (shaky bridge pictured below) is one of my favorite spots to eat in Alex. Normally I also would have insisted on staying longer, as Alex is a stunning high desert area with awesome rock outcroppings and a river so blue and beautifully juxtaposed against the rocks that it almost makes you hurt.

But it started raining. So we saw, we ate, we left.

Another hour or so in the car and we made it to wine country! Central Otago is famous for its Pinot Noir, and with reason! Where I find most pinots from New Zealand to be super dry, light, and sometimes sour, Central Otago manages to produce a fuller bodied wine, closer to the varietals I miss at home like Zinfandel and Cab Sav. 

My recommendations while you are in Central Otago (we were in Gibbston Valley):

Peregrine Wines

Chard Farm Winery

Brennan Wines

Gibbston Valley Cheese

I mean, have you ever seen such dramatic wine country?

Each time we walked out of a winery, the sun had turned to rain, the rain to sun, the sun to hail, the hail to wind... Oh, New Zealand.

The weather finally settled on freezing. Literally. I drove Kim to the top of Coronet Peak to see the view, and it started snowing.

Lake Wakatipu, and the general feeling of Queenstown while we were there.

 Despite the weather we went hiking the following day, scaling the mountain beneath the Queenstown gondola. Contrary to how it looks in the photo below, it was not warm.

View from the gondola:

Oh Queenstown, we love thee.

We were a little lazy in Queenstown. We hiked once. We went to historic Arrowtown. We shopped. We ate. We drank. We ate more. And we slept. We traded the offerings of the adventure capital of New Zealand for some R&R (slightly forced on us by the cold, grey weather, but definitely much needed!).

On our final morning the sun finally came out. I was pleased, because Queenstown is a completely different place when it puts it's clouds away:

Same lake as the one before.

 Ahhh, so much wine, so much cheese. After this leg of the trip we put our wine glasses away and put on our hiking boots. But that's for next time.

Guy Fawkes and the Failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605

So back in England, in 1605 -when the assassination of monarchs was a bit more straight forward- a chap named Guy Fawkes stockpiled heaps and heaps of gunpowder in the cellar below the House of Lords. He and his cohorts were in the business of offing King James I, who had the audacity to not be Catholic, and therefore needed to be off-ed.

To make a short story shorter, someone tipped off the local authorities and early on the morning of November 5, 1605 they cruised on down to see the gunpowder stash. And who's shift was it to be the guard? Poor 'ol Guy. So with a "trial" consisting of questioning and torture (has anything changed? jk! jk!) he finally confessed and was set to be hung on January 31. On the big day, he jumped off the scaffolding where his noose was hanging (where were those guards?) and broke his neck, avoiding the public humiliation of the scheduled execution.

On the evening of November 5, 1605, King James I encouraged his countrymen to celebrate his escape from assassination. Tradition has continued since the day of the discovery, and now- 408 years later- Guy Fawkes Day is still celebrated in England… and apparently New Zealand, or as I'm starting to think of it "New Zengland". The tradition now is to build a bonfire on the beach, and build a scarecrow like "Guy" who gets burned in the fire (historically inaccurate!!!). Also, everyone lights off their own fireworks, and in big cities a large fireworks display is put on. Guy Fawkes Day has also become known as Bonfire Day, Fireworks Day, and Plot Night.

Driving around Christchurch, I noticed heaps of advertisements for fireworks for sale, but somehow missed this whole Guy Fawkes thing. I figured they were just on sale early for New Years (how would I know?!)… then I noticed they were only on sale for 3 days, up to November 5th. Odd. Still, I didn't dig any deeper until a doctor at work asked if I was going to partake in Fireworks Day. Say what? So then she proceeded to tell me the whole saga (she's British), and explain how we celebrate now. I'm still a bit stuck on how "Fireworks Day" is a thing. Could New Zealand be any cooler?

So last night was Guy Fawkes Fire Works Plot Day Night. The big to-do happens on New Brighton Beach. Although New Brighton is only a 15 minute drive from here, we opted to head 5 minutes down the hill to Sumner. New Brighton was doing the whole big firework thing at the pier, accompanied by James Bond music (your guess is as good as mine… if Guy Fawkes channeled a little James Bond, we wouldn't be having this holiday). The beach at Sumner has a good view of the New Brighton pier though, so we opted out of James Bond night, and met up with some friends and our own fireworks.

Turns out $25NZD will get you a pretty decent sized box of fireworks- although most of them were kind of the wimpy kid kind. Scott did buy the box that said "Family Pack" on it… oops.

Our buddies brought some decent mortars and roman candles (which definitely did not result in fireworks fights, because that would be unsafe) and some people on the beach had gotten ahold of some real deal fireworks. For about 2 hours, the shoreline was nothing but pops and bangs of explosives, which I'm sure the local dogs were thrilled about.

The big fireworks display on the pier was pretty dang impressive, but too far away to take a decent photo of. All of the fireworks pictures are just the "little" ones you can buy in the grocery store (3 days each year!) And nobody built a "Guy" to burn. How disappointing!

So it's no 4th of July… but theres a similar feel and its the closest I'm gonna get (since obviously New Zealand isn't exactly independent of England- ha!). So I'll take it!

Exploring Australia Part 4: Port Douglas

The fourth and final leg of our Australia trip was based in Port Douglas. Port Douglas is the last "touristy" town heading north on the entire east coast of Australia. It's actually got a pretty nice vibe going to it. There's lots of places to eat and drink, decent shopping, but most importantly- miles of beautiful beach. And it's the last watering hole on the way to Cape Tribulation. But we'll get to that.

On our way out of Kewarra Beach we stopped in Palm Cove and spent an hour or so stand up paddle boarding. It's a fun way to get in a little exercise and sun. I wish I had some photos of how beautiful the water and islands looked from that perspective. Afterwards, we took our time driving up the coast. We spent our first day in Port Douglas exploring, shopping, and relaxing. 

We stayed in a comfy one bedroom apartment about 5 minutes drive from the city center. It wasn't special, but it was convenient. And they had a couple of beach cruisers that we were able to take advantage of. We cruised on the beach (never done that before!) with a bottle of wine, our books, and a frisbee. That afternoon was the relaxation I'd been looking forward to for the whole trip!

Driving through Port Douglas- obviously snapped through the dirty car window.

With two full days left of on our holiday left, we felt a little stressed. We wanted to maximize all of our minutes in the rainforest, without missing any really good hikes or adventures. So the first day we headed up to Cape Tribulation... or "the end of the road" marked A on the map below:

Zooming on out.... again A is Cape Tribulation, which is where all paved road ends. Australia is huge, and so much of it is uninhabited.

Anyways, if you check out the Daintree River on the first map, you can see that to travel to Cape Tribulation (or Cape Trib to locals), you have to cross the river. The river is like the guardian of the jungle. You have to take a ferry across, and very few people live on the other side.

The ferry, coming from the other side.

Why not a bridge? During flash floods, the river can rise up to 40 feet. Even a multi-million dollar bridge would have little chance of surviving that!

Everywhere!

Yet another sign telling us to be casso"wary". Hilarious guys. Not helpful at all. 

Once we got across, the jungle drive began. We were on the hunt for good hiking, but soon realized that building hiking trails in the forest is a really difficult, dangerous business. And, well, there's one. One real hike called "Mount Sorrow" and then a few boardwalks labeled as hikes. Mount Sorrow boasted the reputation of being really difficult- the guidebook said don't even consider leaving after 10am, and make sure you travel in groups of at least 4. Apparently the trail could disappear at times, and it was as awful and treacherous as the name made it sound.

Since Mount Sorrow was at the end of the road, we decided to do the drive, see what we would see, and decide on if we would do the hike the following day once we got there and checked everything else out.

Jungle scenery

We drove by the Daintree Tea Farm- which was kind of neat. I've never seen a tea farm. I drink tea every day. Exciting? Nope. But I bought a box and took a picture of where it came from- so it's blog worthy...

We stopped on a boardwalk through the jungle, and learned more about all of the vicious plants and animals in the area. Are you all aware that there are several types of dangerous plants and many deadly animals in the Daintree Rainforest? Well, now you know.

I liked all the creeping vines.

More vines.

The Strangler Fig: Starts as a seed dropped by a bird... and starts to grow atop a branch of another tree. Slowly it grows viney roots both north and south, eventually reaching the sun and the earth. As it grows, it weaves around it's host tree- using it to climb up to the light and down to the nutrients. Eventually, the host tree dies of starvation and light deprivation, and you are left with the hollow Strangler Fig:

Looking up...

The closest we got to a real cassowary...

Eventually the rainforest got close to the ocean and morphed into a mangrove swamp. This is a muddy, salty environment where pretty much only mangrove trees and crabs can thrive. All in all, I found it gross.

Mangrove swamp

A very silly bright orange and blue crab...

Beach at the other end of the swamp.

Patterns left behind by "bubble crabs"

So after our jungle-swamp walk and a bit more driving, we came upon the Mount Sorrow hike. Once again, the sign warned us not to leave after 10am, and that only "above average" hikers should even attempt the climb. We also needed to be on the look out for stinging trees, leeches, and of course, be casso-wary. I didn't find this last bit of information helpful AT ALL- because all of the signs told you to be aware of the 6-foot tall flightless talon adorned bird, but none of them told you what to actually do if you met one. Run? Hide? Fight? Cry? Nothing. I have no idea.

We hemmed and hawed for a few moments, and decided to start the hike in spite of the warning sign, and just go for about an hour and turn around. We apparently didn't have the time for the whole thing as it was already 1:30. But in the back of our minds we were both thinking... no matter how hard it is- how long can a 3 kilometer track really take?

I admit, I was very wary during the whole tramp. We came along two other couples coming down, which made me feel better about my survival chances. But between the cassowary threat (I wanted to see one so bad until we got out here) and the endless spiny palms and plants, I was a bit on edge. It was more of a run-shuffle-hike than a leisurely walk. Mount Sorrow indeed.

Anyways, after about an hour or so, we debated turning around. But we still had plenty of light and we'd already gone 2k. So we persevered on... and it became more and more like this:

And then like this:

And this:

After probably 90 minutes total we decided to turn around. We didn't know how dark it got under the canopy in the afternoon, and I was thinking about how all animals come out to eat in the afternoon as well. Yikes.

When we got back to the bottom (and I pulled a leech of my ankle- eeeeeeewwwwwwww!!!!!) we realized that we had made it about 3.3 of the 3.5 kilometers. We probably only had 15-20 minutes to go. And we had plenty of light left. I know it was a bit gutting for Scott to have not made it. But honestly I was so damn thankful to be in one piece, with all of my limbs unscathed and with only minor blood loss.... I really didn't care. We got him an ice cream and he got over it.

Well deserved post-hike beach time.

On our last day we decided not to make the long journey back to Cape Trib. Instead, we re-visited the idea of Mossman Gorge (the place with all the crowds that totally turned us off and we left the previous Saturday). It was now Tuesday, and we woke up early with a plan. Instead of taking the $6 tram to the gorge with all the people, we decided to make it a run. 2k isn't very far, but at 10am in the tropics, it's far enough! We got a nice workout, and were rewarded with a dip in non-croc infested waters.

After our swim we hiked the "difficult" 2k loop through Mossman Gorge. It was more beautiful rainforest, although very similar to all the rest of what we had seen. Below, a picture of just one of the many mean plants disguised as a pretty palm:

Look at all those spines!

More photos from Mossman Gorge Rainforest walk:

We finished up our day with that bike ride along the beach, and dinner in Port Douglas. We partook in trivia night at the local irish bar, and lost badly as usual. It was the perfect ending to a pretty perfect vacation.

Beach at Port Douglas