Looking for penguins

The drive from Mt. Cook to Oamaru was rather boring. The scenery is nice, but once you get used to the mountains, the moderate hills in this part of the country don't impress you any more. In any case we weren't going to Oamaru and the east coast for the views, but mainly for the wildlife, especially the yellow-eyed penguins, unique to New Zealand.

Mighty Mt. Cook

After getting drenched on the Routeburn track we were worried that we might have to skip Mt. Cook for now as there was no point in going all the way up there if it was raining. But when we woke up, the skies were clear! It looked like the luck was on our side, and the drive towards Mt. Cook was really beautiful one in such a fine weather.

Haere mai ki Aotearoa!

Welcome to New Zealand! Approaching the Southern Island from the air we could already see why so many people are fascinated by this land. We flew over a spectacular range of mountains before beginning our descent towards Queenstown's airport. Seeing the mountains getting closer and closer is almost scary, but the whole area surrounding lake Wakatipu is beautiful.

The marvelous Sydney

We arrived to Sydney really late, so we went straight to our hostel and tried to get some rest although to be honest, sleeping in a dorm room is getting more and more annoying for us. It must be the age or something but putting up with a strange snoring guy in the bed next to you is just not as easy as it used to be.

Last days in Tasmania

It was hard to leave the Natureworld park, but we had a long drive ahead of us. We forced ourselves to wave goodbye to kangaroos and other animals, and left Bicheno to reach the town of Deloraine before sunset. It was a rather long and boring drive. We had left the coast and the ocean, and spent various hours in the deep inland of Tasmania. The panorama wasn't ugly, but it's nothing special either, just small hills covered with forests and herds of sheep. Definitely very far from the image of rugged Tasmania we'd used to have. We were glad to finally reach Deloraine and enjoy the view over the Great Western Tiers mountains.

Bicheno, sympathy for the devil

As we were making our way up north, the sky cleared up almost completely, maybe we did break the weather's spell? Our drive of the day, as all distances here in Tasmania, was quite short, but there were enough scenic spots along the road to keep us occupied.

Tasmanian clouds

Tasmania is another name that has always evoked ideas of a far away foreign land, mysterious and full of strange creatures. The famous Tasmanian Devil and the quirky Platypus (once my favourite animal) inhabit the island, together with wallabies, wombats and other species.

The Grampians, going inland

And when we arrived to Port Fairy, at the end of the Great Ocean Road, the sea was yet again calm and flat, pretty but for us a disheartening sight. No surfing for us at one of the world's most famous spots. We'll have to hope that at least Sydney will be more merciful.

Too peaceful

The Great Ocean Road

Note: Wifi and internet connection in Australia is not as widespread, cheap and reliable as in Southeast Asia. For this reason it will be more difficult to update the blog. Expect delays.

The flight Kuching-Singapore went quite smoothly and we used the free wifi at Singapore airport to do a few things online and talk to our families. We enjoyed our stopover so much that we lost track of time... and almost lost our flight to Melbourne! We ended up running like crazy towards the gate and begging the guards to let us skip the queue. For a few minutes we seriously thought that we would miss the flight. Our road to Australia is paved with silly errors. But fortunately we made it on board eventually. The first half hour of the flight was rather turbulent and shaky, and we wondered whether all those problems weren't a way of Fate to keep us away from a bigger danger. Fate had nothing to do with it, the shaking stopped and we spent the rest of the flight eating the delicious meals of Singapore Airlines, watching a couple of movies and dozing off a little.

Aussie connection

We apologize to our (few) readers for the lack of posts recently. Unfortunately it's rather hard and expensive to find an internet connection in Australia. We promise that we'll publish something as soon as we can find a decent connection.
We really hope that you'll be still following us after this silent phase :)

Kuching, the "cat city"

Kuching is the capital of Sarawak, one of the states that compose the island of Borneo. According to some people, the name Kuching means "cat" and this fact is reminded by the many statues of cats spread all around. It's a rather large town, and a good base to explore this part of Borneo, but there is not very much to do in the city, apart from a stroll along the waterfront, a short cruise on the Sarawak river or a visit to some of its weird museums.