Photography, vegetarian recipes and travel

Sorry for the lack of updates. As per usual we’ve been doing too much traveling and not spent any time in internet cafes. Good for us but not good for the blog!

We’re writing this in Wanaka in Otago, South Island NZ. More about New Zealand shortly (we’ve been here 11 days with Jan and Ray and have managed to pack in quite a few things already!).

Since last we spoke we took ourselves off in a car again out of Sydney – Northwards this time. In brief we had a great time – Paul had some surfing lessons in a tiny place called Pacific Palms, managing to stand up quite a lot by all accounts. The guy teaching him was apparently in the top 41 in the world at some stage.

Our first night was quite funny – we ended up camping in Seal Rocks, but had driven to such a remote place late in the day that it was chocolate bars and nuts for dinner!

We moved on up to Coffs Harbour for some diving off the Solitary Islands (marine park). We were rewarded with grey nurse sharks -much closer than in our photos. The second dive was a bit of a shock though – we have never experienced current like it. On the ascent we were grasping onto a barnacle covered mooring line (very sharp) for dear life – we must have looked like flags in a gale. The current was of mask-ripping-off proportions. It was a relief to get on the boat – albeit not the boat we jumped in off!

Next day back down to South West Rocks for some diving with http://www.fishrock.com.au/ – the boat was miniature but the diving and hospitality was great. Far more sharks than the Solitary Islands and an amazing 128m swim through a cave. Our photos are rubbish, but they gave us a dvd for free that we can bore you with when we get home that shows how great the dive is.

Back to Tim’s via Hunter Valley (wine tasting) for a last few days sightseeing in Sydney. If you go there you must visit the Aquarium if only to see the platypus – a busy little creature that was fascinating.

THANKS SO MUCH TO TIM for having us! He even gave up his bed for us. We had a great time, finished off with a lovely meal down the road from Tim’s house. Looking forward to playing more scrabble Tim and watching the rest of The Sweeney !

Getting off the plane in Christchurch (CHCH) and being met by my mum and Ray was truly bizarre and fantastic. Mum had the biggest grin ever despite flying for 24 hours from the UK.

the Kiwis are so far extremely friendly – as demonstrated by our taxi driver from the airport – a large elderly woman in a massive wide-brimmed pink hat that talked all the way to the hotel and tried to show us postcards of the mountains at the same time as driving – nevermind – we all had our eyes glued to the road even if she didn’t:)

To our delight we discovered our motel unit had an amazing bathroom with massive spa bath / jacuzzi type thing – just what we needed to ease the travel-tired bones.

CHCH is, as they say, very English. We passed a lovely few days exploring the nearby Banks Peninsula and the city – stunning views from the Gondola. Akaroa was lovely and sunny, and we promptly booked ourselves on a swim with the local Hector’s dolphins. Just as we were getting excited, a storm appeared in all of 60 seconds, whipped up the water like you wouldn’t believe – it was very entertaining whilst we ate our tea and cakes, but bye bye dolphin swimming! The squall was so bad that two yachts in the harbour at the time had their masts broken! Our first lesson in NZ weather -very changeable.

Anyway the sun came out and it hasn’t changed since:)

Onwards to Kaikoura for marine mammal tasticness! Even as we drove towards Kaikoura we could see a pod of 100s of dusky dolphins (from the road) doing acrobatics. They jump over and over again doing back flips and twists – this certain;y did bode well for our visit.

Surprise, surprise the dolphin swim trips were fully booked, but the whale watching wasn’t. We had a wonderful trip – late afternoon so the light of the setting sun was wonderful. We had 4 sightings of sperm whales not to mention the petrels, albatrosses and the dolphins

Next up, swimming with seals – need I say more.

This just about takes us up to the current photos available for you to see, so I won’t tell you how awe-inspiring the helicopter ride was over the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers – especially the bit where we landed on top of the glacier We will get more news up later or tomorrow – promise!

We’ve been on the east coast for over a week now but have been out and about so no time for an update. It will be a bit backwards as we are starting with last week rather than all the stuff we’ve missed out in Thailand (Koh Jum) and Singapore.

Arrived last Saturday and Tim met us at the airport. For the first time since Kenya we experienced RAIN And except for today (Tues 6th) Sydney has been grey and damp with one outstanding thunder and lightning storm. The day after arriving, we walked around central Sydney – easily done as Tim lives very central – just 20 minutes from the bridge. It’s a lovely city with a mix of high-rise and old Victorian-style buildings, and with the bridge, water and old buildings it really did remind us of Newcastle – albeit on a much much larger scale

On the Monday we picked up a hire car and went for a week driving tour of south east New South Wales with Tim. We packed in quite a lot starting with the lush Blue Mountains National Park. Katoomba YHA is great, a wonderful art deco hostel. Becs in particular got very excited by the cable car descending into the valley, whilst Paul went on the steep train instead. The place, whilst obviously touristy, seems well designed in terms of paths etc that discourage people from trampling all over the place, eroding the plants etc (see the pics of sandstone cliffs and rainforest, as well as the thick mist that thankfully burnt off before our walk). The walk was lovely, though not so lovely for Tim towards the end when he discoverd about 6 leeches had attached themselves to his ankles – see pic of thin leech that we observed looking for a meal, compared with fat leech that was later removed from Tim!

After a stay overnight in Bathurst with an evening drive around the Bathurst motor racing circuit (a public road when not in use), we headed down to Canberra. This is a very open plan city and full of galleries and museums, and we visited the National Gallery as well as a cheeky evening visit into the Parliament to watch a deserted argument reading of some bill or other. We were amazed that they would let us in after hours, but if an evening session is in place then they are able to usher the public in.

Down to and Canberra we headed to Mt Kosciuszko, the highest peak in Australia (2228m). Luckily there’s a chairlift up the steep valley but there’s still a 13km roundtrip walk to the summit. Becs loved the chairlift! They had provided a walkway all the way, so the 13km was done very quickly and the mist and rain managed to hold off for most of the walk (see the pic of Tim and Becs at the summit).

The rain continued but as we arrived at Narooma on the coast we woke up to a clear warm sunny day at last. Walking on boardwalks around the river mouth and to the beach, Becs spotted huge stingrays swimming in the shallow water, quite an impressive sight. There was some good snorkelling around about as well, although the water was a bit chilly! Narooma was lovely and chilled, with a 1930s picture house where we saw Pan’s Labrynth with about 5 other Naroomians.

We headed back up the coast towards Sydney, stopped off at Bateman’s Bay (a bit disappointing but very nice food) for the first night of camping (caravan park cabins and YHAs for the previous nights) and Kiama with it’s beautiful and rugged point that has a big blowhole that shoots water spray into the air as the waves seem to get sucked up into it. There was a 2-4m swell coming in and someone had decided to install a sea water swimming pool in the rocks, filled up by the waves breaking over the edges.

We’re back in Sydney now and spent yesterday (Monday) around town inspecting the skeletons at the Australian Museum – oh and the exhib of BBC wildlife photographer of the year 2006 which had some absolutely breathtaking pics, and mooching around the NSW Art Gallery. Today is a chill out day as we’re planning our next road trip, uploading some pics and updating the blog. Hope that you have time to enjoy browsing the photos. We’ve taken so many with our new camera that it was difficult to whittle them down.

More news soon

Love Paul and Becs

Hello everyone

Sorry for the lack of news but we have been on the road for the last 10 days and getting access to the net is not easy. We hired a campervan in Perth shortly after we arrived and have been on a bit of a road trip up and down the massive coast of Western Australia. To say to that Oz is big is a bit of an understatement… we have done a lot of driving and seemingly covered not that much of the west coast.

However we got up as far as Coral Bay on the Ningaloo reef. The coral here is excellent and we also managed to snorkel with manta rays (again…!) although the visibility was slightly murky due to a 3m swell…

We are down in wine country, around Margaret River. It’s very reminiscent of home here with gently rolling hills, winding roads, lots of trees and a coastline similar to Cornwall. We should be doing some wine tasting this afternoon and then tomorrow heading back up to Perth before our flight to Sydney.

Inspired by the constant deep blue sky, we indulged ourselves in a new camera when we started in Perth, with a polarising filter… so when we get them on the net you’ll get bored seeing lots and lots of pictures with a postcard-perfect blue sky

Please keep sending us emails by the way… we can receive them on Becs’ PDA but sending is not working for some reason.

Love Becs and Paul.

Having problems with the blog, this is just a test.

PS if this does appear we are alive and in Singapore at the mo, flying to Perth tomorrow!

PPS check out the underwater photos on Flickr…