TravelStream™ news feed for member genii_79 on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/genii_79 en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:35:37 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208657880/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208657880/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208657880/tpod.html Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:35:37 -0400 Kia ora! New Zealand - a trip to the end of the world

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Sydney, Australia

It hasn' t really stopped raining the whole day of yesterday... what a drag! We went to Sydney Wildlife to see some Koalas, Kangaroos and all those "cute" spiders and reptiles there are in Oz! The most venomos spider in the world lives in Sydney... hhhmmm, revise my decision....!?! The Koalas were really cute! Cuddling up to sleep all day long! The afternoon we spent shopping, you could shop till you drop here... seriously... unfortunately the season are revised here, so we can' t really do anything with all those awesome autumn stuff back home.... damn! :-( The summer stuff that is on sale .. is as usual only available in the big sizes! Oh well!

At night we met up with some Aussies and joined them at their after work drinks... that was fun. Met a lot of people. We went to some other bar with some other people we just met there at the pub. They were saying the bar we are going to is reallt trashy and not that hot... so I was thinking some place like in the Schanze or Kiez... but surprise the place was really cool! Not at all soo trashy. There we met other guys from Sydney... it is sooo easy to met people here. All of them were doing after work and the best thing is, all drinks until 11pm - it was like 9 pm back then - is on the company... yep, they were all wasted! ;-) So, we chatted with this group of people, and they looked like Advertising guys, but turned out to be lawyers... ok. We got teased because we went to Kiwiland... why in the world NZ!! Well, it was quite fun, all drinks were free for us as well, so we joined the office party there. Australian beer isn' t all that bad, eh! ;-) Tonight they all invited us over to an open house party in Paddington, hhhmm, we might go there for a change! Anyways, if anyone ever needs a lawyer in Syndey, I know a few! ;-)

Today we spent a bit hung over at Bondi Beach. The sun decided to shine for us on our last day down under, so we headed to the beach! Did some coastal walking and chilling in the sun! Nice day! Compared to Australia now, NZ really has this end of the world feeling to it. Auckland is compared to Syndey a village! :-)

So, tomorrow we will unfortunately fly back home... looong way to go again. We are really sad to leave... it ahs been a rally aweseome trip, time flew by like crazy. We haven' t really gotten the chance to really realize where we have been and what we have seen in NZ. Sooo much to see and do in soo less time. I will be back though soon!

After 4000 km on the road and 20 days at the end of the world, our trip comes to an end... it' s a wrap!
Thanks for keeping up with us and I will see some of you ina few days! :-)


Take care,
Bettina
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Sydney, Australia

Oh , we love Sydney!!

This morning it poured down rain like crazy! we were pretty pissed, not a repetition of Auckland, please not! Anyways you can also do a lot of stuff in Syndey while its bad weather so we hit the streets and walked all the way up to the CBD to get some brekky on the way. After we went to the Queen Victoria Building to check out my favorite store, Witchery, it finally cleared, thank god! We went down to The Rocks and did the Phtylon look out climb, to see the city by daylight this time. Awesome view. It still feels really unreal to actually stand in front of the harbor bridge and the Opera House now.

The rest of the afternoon we spent at the Bontanic Gardens. There we discovered that one shouldn' t be surprised or even scared if the eels that are in that little pond there eat the ducks!! aaahh, yeah... glad we didn' t know that when we were in the Waitomo Caves wading thorugh waist deep water with eels in it. Maybe just the Oz-eels eats meat!! ;-)

After we almost got lost in a huge underground mall, somehow all of the innercity malls are connected, we went down to Darling Harbour to have some "after work" drinks.

Now we are gonna hit some bars here in Newtown! :-)

Tomorrow if the weather is fine we'll go up to Bondi and watch some hot Surfers and hang out, or if its not that pretty Taronga Zoo is the final destination. We are meeting up with some Syndeysiders for a few or a lot of After work drinks. That' ll be fun! :-)
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Sydney, Australia

Good day from Australia!! :-)

Catching up on some free internet access while waiting for the rain to stop. yeah, right, Sydney and rain ... again... it was reall sunny in Auckland this morning. Great! We were up at like 4>30 am since we had to catch the flight at 8:50am, retrun the car and since it was an international flight, be there three hours in advance! Hurray!

Arriving in Sydney was somehow like coming home... :-) We caught a shuttle - since it was the cheapest way to get into the city - and the Indian driver dropped us of in Newtown saying that the hostel we are staying in is accross the street... well, it turned out it wasn' t and we had to walk 4km to reach this freaking place! Aaarghh!
The hostel is really great - thanks Maria for the recommendation - we are not staying in the main building but next door, so it' s more like a shared house, typical Sydney style! The room is pretty neat as well.

Now I am gonna show Anke around the city. Am leaving asap since in this TV room, where the PCs are, there are like 20 backpackers lying around watching TV... you just want to scream at them! Don' t they have anything to do at all!!!??!!!

Oh it has been wonderfull, as always! We walked all the way down to the Opera House so we could still see it at twilight. It was aweomse. So sureal though. There we also watched a spontaneous performance of some artists which was really good. Sitting there on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.... way awesome!! :-)



]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208289180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208289180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208289180/tpod.html Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:59:27 -0400 Kia ora! New Zealand - a trip to the end of the world

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Auckland, New Zealand

it couldn' t be stopped ... the last day in NZ has arrived. What a shame... and Kiwiland is crying because of it! Rainy day toady as well! :-( But that doesn' t make it easier on us. Can' t we just stay a little bit longer...

It has been a fantastic time here on the other side of the world. I can honestly recommend anybody to come and visit this beautiful country! It' s really worth it.

All my photos will be uploaded to my facebook account, which will be accessable to everyone from next week.

I can definitely say, that I will be back... more sooner than later. :-)

Now we are heading of to spend some days in Sydney, Australia....

There is more to come! Hoepfully, I will find the time to write, because I have a lot on my agenda the next few days, let' s see what will become of it!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208281320/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208281320/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208281320/tpod.html Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:53:15 -0400 Kia ora! New Zealand - a trip to the end of the world

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Auckland, New Zealand

Yesterday was not that good, weatherwise. It poured down rain, all day long. So no Sky Jump for me! Seriously I wanted to do it! We walked around the city all day! But it' s not taht of an interesting place to do a lot... the beaches and islands around Auckland would be awesome, if the sun would shine! Our last days in NZ are spent with typical Kiwi weather. :-(

Oh well, last night we cooked a German meal for the Kiwis. Oh, you all stop laughing...! Everyone is still alive and no, I won' t cook when I am back! Sorry! ;-)
We thought it's just gonna be just us stayinga the house, but Elaine invited her son and his wife over as well, plus the Japanese student was still spending the night, so it was 7 people in total. Oh oh! We decided on making Rouladen with potato mash.... yummy... never made that one and not for 7 people!! After we stormed through the NZ supermarket in the search of all the ingredients, thanks to the Dr Oetker' s english version of a German cookbook that was at the house already - we rushed to the house to find everyone already sitting at the table waiting for us. So, this time we were the next Jamie Olivers cooking show! :-) Nothing burnt down... and seriously it really tasted good. They even wanted seconds. :-) For desert we made vanilla ice cream with hot boysenberries... yummy! The chocolate cake we had for the Japanese girl' s birthday was rather interesting! We also sang a happy birthday to her!

Tonite we' ll get some real Kiwi food.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208129280/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208129280/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1208129280/tpod.html Sun, 13 Apr 2008 04:30:36 -0400 Kia ora! New Zealand - a trip to the end of the world

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Auckland, New Zealand

Finally we have made our way into Auckland... it was really pretty easy to find the place where we are staying at right now. We just drove on in... with out a map anything... thank god for my photographic memory! :-)
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Paihia, New Zealand

Finally I have a new camera... yeah! The newest Sony CyberShot.... perfect! It was a great deal since it was tax free and really cheap! I may say, that a lot of things are really cheap here - except some food - but like a latte is half the price as it is in Euro! Way to go!

For the weekend we had gone up to the Bay of Islands... beautiful beautiful... when it's sunny outside. We thought about hanging out on the beaches and do some snorkeling with the dolphins up there Well, no chance! Since we left Auckland on Saturday morning it oured down rain, the sun wouldn' t even come out at all! How frustrating! We were sitting there in Paihia and of course, there was nothing happening .. nothing, zero, nada! At night, the whole place was just empty! Oh well, so we sat there in this nice bar while it poured down rain with gusty winds! The night was also pretty interesting, since our room jined the kitchen and those three English girls were chatting at the top of their lungs.... really wolrd chaning stuff, I might say.
Yeah!! So, of course, no doplhin swimming today, since the sea was so rought, they wouldn' t let you into the water. And just dolphin viewing.... well, no thanks, I have seen enough doplins already. but never swam with them! :-( Fortunately this has been the first two days with typical NZ weather!

Today in the morning we drove up to the Mermorial of the Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace ship which was shot at in the harbor of Auckland. What a o\picturesque bay it was... would have been even better if it was not that stormy outside and a bit of light would have been a treat. There is not much to do up there, when it's raining, everything happens on the sea! So, we drove back to Auckland.
Right now we are in a big internet cafe which looking around might as well be in the middle of Tokyo ... only Asian people around... pretty interesting...

We have finally crossed the 4000 km margin with our car today...wow!

Two days to go!! How sad is that!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1207905720/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1207905720/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1207905720/tpod.html Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:33:28 -0400 Kia ora! New Zealand - a trip to the end of the world

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Waitomo Caves, New Zealand

Toady was our adventure day!
We went down to the Waitomo glowworm caves and had a blast. We did this combo which lets you do all the cool things in one go! We were a group of five and the guide, Daz a typical Kiwi guy, and three gyus from the UK. Fun group. First we had to change into a wetsuit, awful pants, harnets and gum boots! That was a shocking outfit! I just ingnored the fact that I was working for the fashion industry, god looked we stupid!! :-) After some "dry training" on ropes how to use the rope and safety instructions we went to the cave entrace. It went straight down ... like 30m and we had to abseil it ... by ourselves! Standing on the edge of the ramp, I was like ... alright, I am leaving. But it' s easier than it looks like. You slide down in a breeze. From then we did some exploring of the caves, black water rafting and rock climbing. It was amazing. The glowworms are awesome. The glow brightly. I didn' t know that they were dying out, they only exist in Southern Oz and NZ these days... so even more enjoyable to see them. It looked like a night sky full of little stars! After watching the glow worms we climbed some rocks... steep ones and climbed thorugh tiny holes. It was really fun.

In the end we had to climb up the 30m we came down. It was really steep. But we all made it. Daz shot some really cool pictures of all of us during the tour, but ... cannot upload them right now... later on! Unfortunately my digital camera decided to quit on me and broke down. There is nothing to repair anymore, which makes me really mad, why now?! I hate it!

Right now, we are on our way to Auckland. We stopped at Raglan, this amazing surefer beach and laid down on the beach for some hours before continueing on the two hour drive to Auckland, one of our final destinations.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1207804200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1207804200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/genii_79/2/1207804200/tpod.html Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:22:12 -0400 Kia ora! New Zealand - a trip to the end of the world

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Rotorua, New Zealand

The Spa was sooo great. It was set right on the Lake of Rotorua and you could sit in one of the pools and look over the lake... awesome! And since it gets quite chilly at night, even better. It was pretty quiet in there as well, so no crowds. The pools were all outdoors and ranged from 37 up to 42 degrees. So you could like jump from one to the other. After a while you also get accusmed to the sulfur smell, which smells like rotten eggs. And it does smell like that in the whole area. Sometimes it' s still gross though!

We had a really nice backpackers and we had our own little house, more like a shared house, with three guys from the Netherlands and a couple from Switzerland. We had a lot of fun at breakfast, all sitting at the table and chatting. We could have stayed there like one more day! But time is running out and we had to drive to the Wai-O-Tao Themral Wonderland, which is a Park full of volcanic activity and amazing thermal pools. It' s amazing, the colors range from yellow - sulfur- to orange and the smell.... uuuhhh, was disgusting at times, when the hot smoke hits you surprisingly while walking past the pool. There the LAdy Know Geyser is still active and errupts every day at 10:15am - with a little help from a package of soap. It wouldn' t errupt on time if they wouldn' t help a little. That' s also the reason how they discovered that the geyser is still active, way back. around that thermal area an outdoor prison was loacated once and the prisoners did their laundry like right next to the geyser when they one day found their laundry like 15 m next to where they washed it! The geyser errupts with a steaming water founain up to 20 m... it was really impressive. Although we thought it would go off with a loud bang, but it was quite smooth!

At noon, I tought it was about time to have another tatoo. :-) And since th Maoris were the ones who "invented" it - they all have amazing tattoos here! So, as we walked by this neat tattoo place I just walked in to see if they have space... and they did. Three more stars!!! I love ' em!

In the afternoon we went to a Maori village, the only one that is still lived in in Rotorua. A Maori Guy showed us around and this was really interesting. They live in an active thermal area and they are cleverly using the hot water streams for cooking and bathing. Quite impressive. Also, the groudn is soo hot they never get cold feet!

After the village we sped of to Waitomo, to do the cave tour the next day!
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Rotorua, New Zealand

After spending half day in Taupo, we are now in Rotorua. The Maori must see town in NZ. They have a lot ot villages and of course Thermal pools here. We are staying at this awesome backpackers here. Really cosy and we chatted to this Kiwi for like an hour what to do and what to see! Really nice mate. Tonight we are about to leave for the Polynesian Spa here in town, which is a big area with hot springs and thermal pools, really nice thing to do when its getting colder outside in the evenings now! Looking forward to this!

Tomorrow we' ll go and see the Geysers and more volcanic areas and amazing sights.

More to come....

But time is running out now...
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