Iceland: a beautiful cherry on the top of our trip

Iceland is amazing! I can't imagine a better place for the last stop of our trip. Although we only have four days here, and are just barely scratching the surface of what Iceland has to offer, the scratch that we've done has been pretty nice.

Our visit started out on a slightly stressful note though. We took a 10:30 PM flight from Frankfurt, which was scheduled to arrive around midnight local time (it's about a 3 1/2 hour flight and Iceland is two hours behind Western Europe), but the flight was delayed by about an hour and we didn't arrive until after 1 AM, and after taking the bus into Reykjavik it was almost 2 AM. We had scheduled to stay with a Polish couple through couchsurfing and we had their address and phone number, but it turns out we were dialing the wrong country code. We were using the SIM in our phone that we got in Greece so we didn't know that we had the wrong code, only that the phone number didn't work. After walking around for a while (even at 2 in the morning it wasn't even close to dark) we eventually found the apartment, but after ringing the bell and knocking on the door, nobody would answer! We didn't know what to do, but in the end decided to just "camp" in their yard. We unfurled our beach mat and sleeping bags and slept for a few hours in the back yard.  Around 8 AM we tried ringing the doorbell again and this time they answered. They're not sure why they didn't hear us the night before, but they welcomed us in the morning before heading off to work.

We spent the day exploring Reykjavik, which is a very cosmopolitan town, full of little cafes, restaurants, book stores and other little shops. We were lucky to have a beautiful blue sky day, with temperatures in the high 50s, low 60s. Here's the famous concrete church, called Hallgrimskirkja. We didn't get to climb it because it was busy with funerals, but it's quite a sight and because it's on a hill, it can be seen from all over town:

From Iceland

We also visited one of the many outdoor geothermal public pools. For a 360 kroner ($1.75 US) fee we soaked in a gigantic outdoor hot tub. These pools are everywhere and are centers of social life. Instead of going to a coffee shop (although they do that too) groups congregate and hang out soaking in hot water. It was quite fun.

Iceland has a reputation for being extremely expensive, but Iceland was hit especially hard by the recent financial crisis and their currency took a huge hit (thanks Financial Crisis!), so in dollar terms prices are half or less what they were two or three years ago. So, while Iceland is still not cheap (restaurants in particular are still quite costly), it is not at all prohibitively expensive. For example, we ended up renting a car for two days to do some touring and it cost 19,000 kroner (about $90 $145 US) for two days. This includes taxes and insurance! Update: I realized later I must have miscalculated the exchange, and it's actually $145 for the two days, which is on the high side, but still better than we could find on-line when doing research.

We also scored a free tent for out little excursion by just asking. We went into an outdoor store and inquired about renting a tent to do some camping and although they didn't rent tents they told us to check the hostel across the street. We went in there and asked and they said we could just have a tent! Some German tourists had bought it and didn't want to bring it home so left it at the hostel. We were surprised, but they just let us have it. It's not the best tent in the world, but it was more than sufficient. (See a picture of it in action.)

For our road-trip we toured around what's called the Golden Circle area, a loop of about 200 miles or so that visits some waterfalls, National Parks, hot springs and geysers. Here's a short video of a geyser called Strokkur. It erupts every five minutes or so. You can watch the water recede into it and then bubble up and explode. There were gangs of kids (heard screaming in the background) who would stand downwind from the geyser and get soaked by the water.

From Iceland

We tried to get some pictures of Eyjafjallajokull (no, I didn't fall on my keyboard, that's really how you spell it), the volcano that caused all the flight cancellations last month, but it was covered in clouds so we couldn't see any steam. We also saw plenty of huge waterfalls, including Gullfoss, which had a beautiful rainbow across it:

From Iceland

We've had a blast (no pun intended) touring around in our rental car. The scenery is just amazing. Iceland is very beautiful, and there is a lot to explore. It's a great time of year to visit Iceland since the sun doesn't set until almost 11 PM and then rises again at 3 AM which means it's never completely dark.

We now have about 24 hours left in Iceland (and on our trip). Tonight we hope to camp in a hot spring area and take a dip in some open-air geothermal swimming pools near Hveragerdi. Then tomorrow before our flight to Boston we're stopping at the Blue Lagoon, a famous spa/outdoor hot pool to do some last minute relaxation before getting back to the US.

We can't wait to see friends and family again, but it's sad that our trip is almost over. It's been 297 days since we left Seattle last August 15th. Iceland has been a great last stop, and I'd highly recommend it as a place to visit, especially now while the dollar is strong against the kroner. (And note to our Seattle friends, Iceland Air flies direct to Reykjavik from Seattle.)

From Rhodes to Crete

Our first stop in Greece was the island of Rhodes, fourth largest of the Greek islands, and only about 11 miles off the coast of Turkey. As we mentioned before we couchsurfed with Savvas in the main town of Rhodes, called imaginatively, Rhodes Town.

Rhodes was quite nice, albeit very touristy. It gets a lot of cruise traffic and the Old Town was swarming with tourists off the cruise ships. It seemed the favorite activity of these cruise ship visitors was to sit in little street cafes drinking gigantic beers. We wondered why, considering isn't drinking what you do all day on a cruise?

Anyway, although we enjoyed walking around Rhodes Town our first full day, we rented a car the next day and did a tour of the island. It took us all day to drive the perimeter of the island, stopping in several towns along the way. Highlights were the town of Lindos, about 25 miles south of Rhodes Town, where a huge Acropolis dominates above a town full of classic white-washed Greek buildings:

From Rhodes

We also enjoyed the 15th century Castle of Monolithos on the other side of the island, perched on top of a large rock outcrop. It was incredibly beautiful.

From Rhodes

From Rhodes

Here's a map of our road trip.


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From Rhodes we took a 13 hour ferry to Greece's largest island, Crete, where we are now. The ferry stopped at several islands along the way, and we did a Spot check-in at each port. Here's a map of the route:


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We plan on staying on Crete for about five days or so. We arranged to couchsurf tonight and tomorrow on the eastern side of the island, and we hope to visit the west side before leaving. So far, Crete seems nice and we've seen our first protests; we saw a group of men near the ferry picketing around an open fire. Not sure what their signs said as they were in Greek. We've also heard that there might be a ferry strike coming up. We hope we don't get stuck on the island, but apparently if there is a strike, they'll give two days warning. Here's hoping we don't get stuck in the islands...although I suppose I could think of worse places to be stuck.

Waiting out the rain

It is pouring down buckets of rain right now so we're waiting it out at our hostel in Fox Glacier along the West Coast of the South Island. After escaping from Jack's we rented a car in Westport for a tour of the South Island. It's been really fun and we've seen a ton. We won't recount every step of the way, but you can browse through the pictures here:

South Island Roadtrip Part I

One of the highlights for sure was our visit to Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. As we mentioned briefly in our New Year's post, we spent two nights at the New Zealand Alpine Club lodge over New Year's. It was windy and cloudy over the mountains for most of our visit, but on the morning we left, Mount Cook was visible:

From South Island Roadtrip Part I

It's an amazing sight, and then as we were driving away we stopped for more pictures at a viewpoint:

From South Island Roadtrip Part I

We went to Queenstown for a night, and wow was it packed with tourists. All the hostels were full so we ended up renting a tent for the night and camping at a campground in town. We can't believe how they pack people into the campgrounds here. It's pretty standard to put caravans and tents right next to one another. And it's not cheap! It would have been nice to get out in the backcountry here but we don't really have the right equipment (i.e., no stove, tent) and to stay in a hut costs about 50% more than staying in a hostel.

We're enjoying the West Coast as it's less touristy and when it's not raining (about half the time) the views and walks are great. We also had fun picking up hitchhikers yesterday. We gave a Swiss kid a ride (he was a former UN soldier in Africa) and then we drove these two teenagers across the island. They were doing what they called the "amusing race" where two teams of two were racing around the island only by hitchhiking. Ah, what crazy stuff the NZ youth do! We thought it was funny that they even stopped with us and walked down to a waterfall along the way:

From South Island Roadtrip Part I

We'll be back in Westport by Tuesday to return the car, then we're taking the TranzAlpine train across the island to Christchurch. It's supposed to be super scenic, and although we've already driven the road across, the train follows a different route.

And, in other news, we've booked our tickets out of New Zealand. We have been watching fares from New Zealand to Southeast Asia and the tickets we bought seem like a good deal. We're flying out of Christchurch on the South Island so we don't have to travel back to Auckland which is good. We fly to Singapore for five nights on January 25, then on to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia on the 30th. You can check our finance and calendar pages for more details. We've already sent out some couchsurfing requests for both Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. It actually looks like there are some cool hosts in both places.

Given that we have three more weeks in New Zealand we're going to try and WWOOF one more time before we leave. We have some leads on farms in the south. But if that doesn't work out, we're enjoying being tourists.

Happy New Year!

Just a quick post wishing everyone a very Happy New Year and wonderful 2010. No pictures for this post as we're using an Internet terminal at the New Zealand Alpine Club and there's no wireless to upload our pictures from our laptop.

Although we had the option of WWOOFing over New Year's we decided instead to spend it at Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. We spent New Year's Eve at the Glencoe Lodge, one of the lodges in the park. We didn't realize it had a Scottish theme until at New Year's there was a big speech by a guy in a kilt with a sword (his combination of Scottish and New Zealand English was completely unintelligible) and then a rendition of Auld Lang Syne set to bagpipes. Then it was back to our dorms for the night!

We're headed towards Queenstown and Milford Sound today. The beauty of the South Island is amazing. The weather has been pretty good actually. The West Coast was raining (sounds familiar :-) but once we crossed over into the Eastern side it's been sunny and nice. Super windy, but we were able to do a nice hike yesterday up to the Sealy Tarns and across a suspension bridge above a glacial river. Oh, and caves! We did a river walk through a cave that took us 45 minutes! There was no natural light so we used our headlamps to navigate up and over boulders and through waterfalls. We'll post a full report with pictures soon!

Have a safe and happy New Year's!!

A lightning tour of Northern New Zealand

As mentioned previously, we rented a car for a few days to go on a tour of the northern part of the North Island of New Zealand. We didn't really know where we were going except that we were expected back at our next WWOOF hosts by Monday evening.

We rented a car in Warkworth from the chattiest rental person ever - he told us that the USA used to drive on the "correct" side of the road until Henry Ford for some reason put steering wheels on the left-hand side of the car. He also insisted on going over all of New Zealand traffic laws before letting us part with his Toyota Starlet (we learned that you can only get a Starlet if you import it specially to New Zealand) rental, as seen here by a bush along the ocean:

From Northland Whirlwind

As it turned out we ended up driving 850 km (530 miles) all the way to the tip of New Zealand and back. We used our Spot device to check-in at various points of interest and I created a map with some of the photos geo-tagged to where we took them here.

We actually had great weather for this trip - lots of sun with clouds scattered around but no rain. Northern New Zealand is beautiful. It's super rural with lots of little towns and beaches around every corner. It reminded us of Whidbey Island in Washington.

From Northland Whirlwind

Here's the link to the full album of our trip:

Northland Whirlwind

We are now in Mangawhai Heads for another WWOOF stint. It's a beautiful setting - olive groves and a small farm amongst rolling hills. There's also a swimming pool and hot tub. I'm not sure what the work will be like though as our host asked us if we'd "done much concrete work before." I guess "organic farming" can take many shapes around here. And he drank a low-carb beer before jumping in the pool to get his exercise. We should be in for an interesting time...

Driving Around Melbourne

We arrived in Melbourne yesterday with Michelle, and as we mentioned we are staying with Yael's grandparents, Nan and Pop. It turns out that Nan and Pop are two of the nicest people we've ever met. They are pure heart and excessively generous with Michelle and by extension us.

Not only did they not bat an eye when we mentioned we might be staying until Saturday when we leave for New Zealand, but they were sad that we weren't staying longer. Today they took us on a drive around the entire Melbourne bay, starting from their house in Williamstown, going out toward Geelong and Queenscliff, taking a ferry across to Sorrento and driving back up to Melbourne to drop Michelle off at the airport by 4PM. We actually didn't stop very often because Pop was concerned about getting Michelle to the airport on time. But we did take this picture on Arthur's Seat State Park near Dromana:

From Around Melbourne

We're having a blast hearing old stories that Nan and Pop tell. They both grew up right after the Great Depression (which even hit Australia pretty hard) and were definitely shaped by World War II. We had no idea how involved Australia was in World War II before speaking with Pop and since Pop was in the Australian Navy (in the Navy band) he has quite a few stories about the war and the years after it. It's also fun to hear the perspectives of someone who has lived in the same house for over 50 years and how things have changed around them.

We've definitely enjoyed meeting locals on our trip and we put Nan and Pop on the top of our list of favorite people we've met so far. Tomorrow we're headed to Phillip Island for the day and night (our last night in the van!) before coming back to Melbourne for a couple days.

Here's a map of Melbourne - Phillip Island is to the bottom right of where this map is centered, below French Island. We hope to see wild penguins and have a look around at the other stuff on the island.


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Climbing Kosciuszko

As mentioned in our previous posts we planned on climbing Mt. Kosciuszko, the highest point in Australia on our roadtrip from Brisbane to Melbourne. Well, we're happy to report that we succeeded!

Continuing from our last post, we drove south down the coast toward Sydney and camped at Crowdy Head National Park, a secluded ocean-front park. We had to drive about 10 miles on a dirt road to get to the camp ground and since we didn't see any other vehicles we thought we'd have the campground to ourselves. We were surprised when we turned into the campground and it was pretty full. And they charged $10 per person per night! This is in contrast to US National Parks which almost always charge only per site, and never more than say $20. But, there were free showers which we took advantage of the next morning. We also enjoyed watching the kangaroos interacting with the other campers:

From Kosciusko

The next morning when we drove around Sydney we got stuck in quite a bit of traffic. There are a few toll roads in Australia but very few of them take cash; you need a transponder in your car to ride on them. Since we didn't have one we had to take surface streets around Sydney. Eventually we found our way out of the city and started heading west toward Mt. Kosciuszko.

We camped at a rest stop outside Australia's capital, Canberra, which is also near some of Australia's wine country. We were able to visit a winery on our way the next day but some of the other wineries we tried to visit were closed, as was a brewery! I guess it's sort of "shoulder season" here between Winter and Summer.

We got to the Mt. Kosciuszko area which is a National Park, even though there are several ski resorts inside the park. (As a side note, you have to pay per day to enter the park, which was $16 per day per car. Unlike the USA where paying a National Park entry fee generally allows you to stay for seven days.) We parked the van in a secluded spot where we had kangaroos and pygmy possums visiting us during the night.

We drove up to Charlotte Pass (one of the ski areas) to start our hike. It was a pretty easy hike, walking along a flat trail that used to be a car road. The hike was 18km (about 11 miles) round trip with about 468 meters (about 1500 ft) of elevation gain. It was really beautiful scenery. Here we are at the top:

From Kosciusko

It seems most people who climb Kozi (as they call it here) take a chairlift part of the way up. But not us. Plus, it cost $29 each to take the chairlift!

The drive from Kozi into Victoria and Melbourne took us another day and a night. We camped by a river and after a long day of driving today arrived in Melbourne in the afternoon. We're staying in Williamstown, a cozy suburb of Melbourne at the grand parents of Yael. They're super nice and plan on showing us a few sights around here the next few days.

Here's a link to the rest of the pictures of our Kozi hike.

Kosciusko

On the road down South

After picking up Michelle in Brisbane we headed to Galit and Brian's house for the night. Galit is Yael's sister (Yael and Michelle grew up together although Yael was actually born in Australia). We met Galit before when we went to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary as she's the vet there.

Galit and Brian have two amazing Great Danes. They are probably the biggest dogs we've ever seen. Here's Otis trying to slobber all over Michelle:

From Australian Roadtrip Part II

In the morning Otis and Indigo wanted to come with us in the van, but Jaimee wouldn't allow all that slobber. (Actually they didn't really slobber that much but for dogs that size even a little is a lot!)

From Australian Roadtrip Part II

Then we were off! Our first stop was the beautiful beach town of Byron Bay. This is the Australian hippie town and we definitely saw our fair share of dread locks there. The beach was super pretty and the water was clear and clean! We layed out on the beach for a few hours than went up to the lighthouse and viewed "The Most Easterly Point of the Australian Mainland". Apparently there must be some Australian islands farther east but I doubt the view there was better. The lighthouse and short walk down to the point was incredibly beautiful. Of course the perfect weather helped as well.

From Australian Roadtrip Part II

After sleeping in the van at a rest stop along Highway 1 we continued today along the coast. We've stopped at a few very cute towns for both breakfast and lunch and are now at the library in Port Macquarie. We're not sure how much farther we'll go tonight, but we're less than 400km from Sydney which is approximately our halfway point distance wise.

We've started posting some pictures here which we'll add to as we continue South and West toward Melbourne.

Back in Brisbane, briefly

We are in Brisbane again for a quick stop to pick up Jaimee's sister Michelle. She finished her last final about 1/2 an hour ago and we will soon be off on a road trip with her. Our first stop will be at a family friend's house near Brisbane for the night, then the three of us will be off on the long drive to Melbourne. This is about a 2,000 km (1,200 mile) drive. Our route will be along the coast initially, then cut inland toward some mountains in order to climb Mt. Kosciuszko, the highpoint of Australia. I'm not sure how much Internet we'll have during our trip but you can check our Spot page to see where we are.

After our sailing adventure, our return trip to Brisbane was fairly uneventful. We stopped at roadside rest stops to camp in the van. At one spot there was a huge flock of lorikeets. Here's Jaimee getting accosted by them when she brought out some bread to feed them:

From Australian Roadtrip Part I

They were super pretty and cute all lined up:

From Australian Roadtrip Part I

We also stopped in the town of Hervey Bay for a little bit but otherwise our drive back from Airlie Beach was pretty direct. We are writing this from the house of our second couchsurfing host in Brisbane. Couchsurfing has been so great so far on this trip, as we've met some great people and seen some less touristy sides of the places we've been.

Roadtrip Australia

We left Michelle in Brisbane to study for her last finals and rented a camper van to tour the coast of Australia north of Brisbane. We went with Wicked Campers, which as it turns out is not as cheap as we would have hoped (after adding in taxes, insurance, etc.) but since we can sleep in it and it includes a stove to cook on I think it will be fine.

The Wicked Campers are painted all crazy; ours has guns all over it which is kind of annoying, but I think it does make people give us a wide berth, which is useful since I often forget which side of the road I'm supposed to be on.

From Australian Roadtrip Part I

We cruised up the coast, stopping at the beautiful beach in Mooloolaba before camping for the night at a road side rest stop. Australia is pretty friendly toward camper vans and at the rest stop we were at there were several other vans staying for the night. It cools off at night and the van was actually pretty comfortable so we slept well.

The next day we continued up along the coast, stopping at a Sunday Market in Peregian Beach, just south of Noosa National Park. We sat on the beach for a while and got back into our van just before the rain came. The weather was not that great but the van was comfortable for sitting and hanging out.

Going north some more we went to our couchsurfing hosts for the night. They live outside of Bundaberg in Coral Cove. What an amazing couple Ely and Val are. They live right on a golf course and we went for a nice walk with them along the water when we arrived.

From Australian Roadtrip Part I

We had a nice dinner with them and they introduced us to a couple of their favorite Australian TV shows: Border Security and Rove. Both shows were very entertaining. We especially got a kick out of the fact that Val's 75 year old mother (who lives next door with them) got excited for Border Security. The show is a reality-type show about the customs agents in Australia. In the show we saw, an Indian couple got fined $220 each for bringing in contraband food and a man from Taiwan was trying to export live snakes and lizards in his checked luggage. Scary stuff!

Here's a map showing our stops in Australia so far. Australia is a huge country. Our plan is to drive north to Townsville (you'll have to zoom out to see it) before turning around to head back to Brisbane.

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