New York City

The subway is more expensive.
The 2nd Ave line construction has progressed further south.
The New York Times has shrunk.
The GW Bridge costs $8.
Yankees and Giants have the best records in their respective leagues.
But except for a few changes, NYC is much like we saw it last time around. Exciting, noisy and vibrant.
Mercedes

San Diego & Los Angeles - sunny skies

To ease our way into the U.S., we stopped for 3 days in California, dividing that time between San Diego and L.A. Nice weather and bad traffic, as expected. We enjoyed a few strolls by the water, too cold to swim for my taste.
I'm still jetlagged, but I guess it'll get better. Welcome home.
Mercedes

Auckland in the land of the long white cloud

We don't have much to report about Auckland because, honestly, we didn't do much. In Simon's home town, we took the opportunity to spend time with his family. Days went by sleeping, eating, watching TV, and talking; in summary, feeling at home.

Spring weather is quite unpredictable, I was told. And it is true, we had sets of sun, clouds, and pouring rain, all within 5 minutes. But even when it is overcast, the place is bright. I'm convinced that NZ has the brightest and greenest grass in the world.

That said, we managed to do a few things. First, we went to a netball game. For those foreign to the Queen's Commonwealth like me, netball is a non-contact cousin of basketball played by girls in school; but the crowd was going crazy when the Kiwi adult national team, aka the "Silver Ferns", beat the world champion Australia. It was another fun chapter of my Kiwi cultural education. I could never be bored by lack of sports in New Zealand. There's always some game of something going on somewhere.

We also went to the beach, but it was too cold to swim, so we walked instead. I've attached pictures of places around Auckland: Piha, Karekare (the beach where the film "The Piano" was shot), and Buckleton. Finally, we took a ferry across the harbour to Devonport, and we got some nice pictures of the downtown skyline.

Auckland slowed us down, I mean this in a good way. It is such a laid back and livable city (for the most part, because we found a minority who overstresses and works long hours: you know who you are). All in all, we had a very relaxing two-week rest. Just what we needed before our upcoming crash with reality. Ouch!

Next stop: back to the U.S. It's time to earn money.

Mercedes

Wellington - Go All Blacks!

A visit to New Zealand is not complete without experiencing an All Blacks game. Fortunately, we were going to be there for the last Tri Nations match between New Zealand and Australia in Wellington. It served as an excuse to see the nation's capital.

It isn't called "Windy Welly" for no reason, the old joke goes that you know when a person is from Wellington because they are always holding their hats and coats against the wind. We experienced the gusts first hand. The two days we spent there the sky was overcast and the "southerlies" were blowing. Thankfully, we didn't catch rain, and so we were able to explore the town.

Welly is small, but quaint. A hilly terrain by the harbor; it always looks good on photos, and its downtown is festooned with colonial-looking buildings and cafes everywhere. We walked around town. The Botanical Gardens were beautiful with the tulips in bloom. Very conveniently, a cable car takes you uphill to the Garden's entrance and you can then walk downhill all the way up to the Parliament building that looks like a bee hive, and it's called just that. Te Papa, the national museum, was very interesting, with lots of interactive displays that make the visit to the museum very entertaining.

But the most memorable attraction was the rugby match. We dressed in black, borrowed All Blacks scarfs from Simon's family, tattooed our faces with a couple of ferns, and sat down on our second row seats to enjoy fish and chips while watching the game. The All Blacks dominated and beat the Wallabies by a good margin, so everybody was happy. The town and the almost-full stadium felt like a party. At the end of the day, the Tri Nations cup went to South Africa, but beating Australia made the Kiwis forget about that.

Back in Auckland now. Continuing our spectator's list of regional sports, we are planning on going to a netball game here. Nope, I've never heard of this game before. We'll see, it will be another New Zealand vs Australia popular nail-biting clash.

Mercedes

Blue Mountains

The first and the last stop in Australia was Sydney. It is such an amazing city that it needed double time. This second time we focused on the performing arts. We enjoyed the Symphony Orchestra at the Opera House and the musical Wicked on its opening Saturday night performance. Both fantastic in their own different ways.

We also took a day to drive to the Blue Mountains just ~100km outside of town. This is another place where the views we saw were just as perfect as the ones on the postcards. With a rented car we drove out of Sydney and stopped at several towns in the mountains: Wentworth Falls (the falls are very tall, but had little water), Leura (nice outdoors lunch, flowers in bloom, and beautiful view from Sublime Point), Katoomba (picture-perfect Echo Point overlooking Three Sisters, a rock formation shaped like three towers), and Blackheath (Pulpit Rock, Perry's lookdown, and the top of Anvil Rock). So we managed to look at several valleys from different perspectives. They all had something in common: looking at the horizon, the mountains and forests were covered in a blueish haze, caused by the abundant eucalyptus trees. That explains the name "Blue Mountains".

The most fun part of the day was at the Scenic World near Katoomba, where we went from the top of the cliff to the bottom of the valley on an 1880s railway that descends at a 52-degree incline, the steepest train in the world. We couldn't believe that the train went down so sharply. Truly amazing. At the floor of the valley there were a series of boardwalks where we enjoyed a short hike before taking a cablecar back up the mountain.

Goodbye, Australia. Hello, New Zealand.
Mercedes

Cairns, Barrier Reef & Wet Tropics

We used Cairns as a base to explore the Great Barrier Reef and the Wet Tropics in Far North Queensland. Not much to write about Cairns itself, it is a very developed and touristy town, but convenient for exploring the area.

To visit the Barrier Reef we decided to join a tour boat with ~70 people, but still quite comfortable and big enough not to feel crowded. It traveled approx 1.5 hours to get to the reefs, and then it made 3 stops in different places which we explored snorkeling around. I'm going to rank this as the most beautiful snorkel of my life. We had plenty of time to enjoy amazing coral formations, lots of colorful fish, some quite large, an elusive turtle and the fantastic blue and turquoise sea. There's no need to scuba-dive here, the reef is very near the surface. We were lucky with the weather, too. It was sunny, but not too hot. The price: at the last minute a stinger got hold of my leg. Rash. Sting. Itch. But thankfully, it wasn't a dangerous one, after an hour, rash and blisters vanished by themselves. Phew!

We joined a smaller group to explore the Wet Tropics. We went to Daintree National Park, the oldest tropical rain forest in the world. It seems to have been around since before Gondwana broke up. It's a lot of green: trees, vines, lianas, epiphytes and ferns galore. What? Epiphyte? It is something that grows on something else, but without damaging the host, like orchids, for example. The views over the sea from Cape Tribulation were quite nice, as well as the sight from a tower that went above the forest's canopy. From up there we could appreciate the bright sunlight on tree leaves and a few flowers. This tower was at the Daintree Discovery Centre, an eco-friendly interpretive center where we learned a lot about rain forests, including epiphytes. We had to cross the Daintree river twice: on the way up we used the cable ferry (there's no bridge), and on the way down we took a river cruise. We spotted a 30-cm baby croc. It looked cute and harmless at that stage. We weren't as lucky with the cassowary, a flightless bird, similar to the emu, that is an endangered species of this area. Everybody talked so much about it. We learned how important they are for spreading seeds, their parenting habits, and their main predators (cars), but we couldn't spot a single one, just bush turkeys were the closest we got. This area must have been very hard to reach by the European pioneers, telling by the names they gave to places: Cape Tribulation, Mt Misery, Mt Sorrow.

The other highlight of this part of the trip was my first skydive. Simon didn't jump and, for the record, didn't actually agree with my doing it. As for my feelings, I had wanted to skydive for a long long time, but never found the courage to do it. This time was the same, I was feeling luke-warm about it, but then I received an email from my boss asking about my return date to work. And that's when I said: "I'm definitely jumping out the next plane".

The plane flew over the coast and the Coral Sea. The door opened and very quickly, before we could even think or be scared, everybody jumped out. They make it easy for first timers: the instructor is strapped to your back, you seat on the door with your feet dangling outside and he pushes you out. And down. The first three seconds are panic, after that it is glorious. I felt the wind fast on my face, but we were so high up that things didn't seem to get closer, hence nothing to worry about. After 30 seconds of free falling, the instructor opened the parachute. No more wind, just peaceful silence. We glided for almost 5-minutes. Fantastic feeling and a wonderful view: the sea, the beach, the forest, the sugar cane fields, and the sky. We landed on Mission Beach, where we spent the rest of the afternoon. What an amazing feeling!

Mercedes

Ayers Rock & The Olgas

Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park is right in the center of Australia. It is a flat desert with scrubs and red sand, but what makes it famous is a single huge monolith called Ayers Rock (people now use its aboriginal name: Uluru) and a group of big rocks known as The Olgas (or Kata Tjuta). Most tourists stay in a resort just outside the park called Yulara; it has several accommodation options and even an airport.

There are shuttles that take you from Yulara to Uluru and Kata Tjuta in 30 and 60 minutes, respectively, including stops for sunrise and sunset views at those times. In two days, we managed to see the rocks at pretty much every time of the day and from every possible angle. We are posting lots of pictures, the most striking views are those that contrast the red rock, green vegetation, and blue sky. We walked on a couple of trails through Kata Tjuta and one around Uluru (climbing to the top is allowed, but Aborigines ask you not do it, so we didn't; see how well-behaved we are when asked nicely). Woke up early in the morning for sunrise views (if you know me, you know I don't do this very often), and stayed late for sunset views (on the other hand, sunset is never a problem). We were lucky to have a full moon, so even the night views were fantastic.

Since we were under starry desert skies, we took advantage of an observatory night tour. We learned more about the Southern Cross. Interestingly enough, this same constellation is depicted in the Australian and New Zealander flags, but while in the former it has 5 stars, in the latter it shows only 4. We got the Aussie explanation for the discrepancy, something to do with the quality of telescopes and astronomers, and their ability to count. Somebody even mention that the fifth star was not big enough to be an All Black, hence it is not on the Kiwi flag. Anyway, I don't think we unearthed the entire truth behind this issue. The highlight of the night was that we were able to see Jupiter with our naked eyes. I didn't even know this was possible. Later, with the telescope we were able to see the planet's stripes and 4 moons. I thought that was really cool. Very educational night, as you can see.

Now we are waiting for our flight to Cairns. This is our goodbye to Australia's desert. We are looking forward to the Barrier Reef.

Mercedes