Lake Taupo, the largest one in New Zealand (a bit smaller than Lake Tahoe though), is also a volcano, so there are many hot water springs like the one we went to in Spa Park. From there, it’s a short hike along Waikato River, which is also the longest in New Zealand, to the majestic and bright blue Huka Falls. We also watched a couple of people do bungee jumping at the lake, but I didn’t have the courage to do it, especially after they all said they felt they were going to die. To end the day, I took a long walk around the lake and watched the sunset while drinking some wine.

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The scenery so far in New Zealand has been amazing. Everything is green, picturesque, and full of cows and sheep. On our way to Rotorua, we attended a sheep show at the Agrodome where they sheared a sheep  and showed us how the dogs herd them.

Sheep Show at the Agrodome

Sheep

New Zealand loves to invent new adventures, like the black water rafting in Waitomo. In Rotorua we got to see another invention: zorbing, where they put you inside a plastic ball and shove you down the hill. It looked pretty fun and not too scary, but I didn’t do it because I knew I would throw up inside and roll down in my own vomit. But I did try the small race car called luge down the hill. First you have to take a gondola (cable car) up the hill where you have a beautiful view of Lake Rotorua. Very similar to Lake Tahoe and the gondola at Heavenly, but I don’t think you could use the luge to go down with all the ice and snow in Tahoe.

Rotorua is actually a city INSIDE a volcano. The city limits is pretty much the crater rim, so when you’re in town you are actually in a caldera. The area is full of geothermal activity and everywhere you look there is steam coming off the ground along with a pungent smell of rotten eggs because of all the sulfur. In the 1800’s they capitalized on the thermal hot pools and built a bath house attracting tourists for its medicinal purposes. Now the bath house is a museum holding tons of Maori artifacts.

Speaking of Maori, we went to two of their villages. Ohinemutu is a functional one by the lake where they live and worship. We learned a bit about their culture (they take pride in tracing their ancestors and sometimes tattoo their genealogy on their faces) and their mythology (like the one princess from Lake Rotorua who swam to the island to be with her lover after he played the flute for her.) There is an Anglican church carved with beautiful Maori art and a Marae, which is a meeting house used for ceremonies. In Te Puia we also visited a Maori carving and weaving school, but the most beautiful area was the Pohutu Geyser, full of hot-water springs and mud pools, with a geyser going off every few minutes.

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Back at the hotel we relaxed at the Polynesian Spa and their thermal hot water pools overlooking the lake and had a hangi, which is a dinner cooked under hot stones on the ground. For dessert, we tried some pavlova, a merengue cake with fruit.

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We first stopped at Otorohanga near Waitomo to see the endangered kiwi bird. They are flightless birds that only exist in New Zealand and are hard to spot because they sleep up to 20 hours a day and come out only at night, but at this kiwi house they have two little ones in special enclosures and, lucky me, they were awake when I got there. I couldn’t take any pictures because it was too dark, but they have a big body and tiny heads with a long beak. Very cute, of course.

Kiwi Bird

In Waitomo we went to the Ruakuri caves to see a beautiful underworld of stalagmites and stalactites. My dad is a geologist, so I’ve been to many caves in my lifetime, but this one was by far the best. Inside them you can find glowworms that look just like glitter on the dark cave ceilings. They are not really worms, but fly larva, (yes, maggots advertised as worms so it doesn’t sound too gross). They also have black water rafting which is pretty much just cave tubing at a faster pace.

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Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand, with 1.4 million people, and, just as any big city, it has some iconic high rise buildings, like the Sky Tower one, lots of restaurants, parks, and, since it’s by the Tasman sea and the Pacific ocean, it has a large harbor and marina. Auckland actually has the most boats per capita in the world and has hosted the America’s Cup sailing match twice. The day I was there, it was so foggy I could barely see anything, but it reminded me very much of San Francisco.

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BTW, as soon as I got on the plane I knew I would like New Zealand. Just take look at the airline’s safety video.

After a 10 hour drive we finally arrived at our last destination in Australia: Cairns, the getaway to the Great Barrier Reef. The reef is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it’s the largest living being in the world covering over 344,000 square kilometers. It is also the only living being that can be seen from outer space. I had high expectations for this day since scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef was on the top of my list of things to do before I die, and I’m glad to say I wasn’t disappointed. In this trip I had many “wow” moments, like when I went jogging in Sydney and saw the Opera House across the bay, or when I held a koala and pet a kangaroo, but being underwater watching colorful coral and neon bright fish was definitely the biggest WOW moment of Australia for me.

Great Barrier Reef

At first scuba diving was a little hard because you have to get used to the breathing in addition to the pressure, which kills your ears just like in skydiving, but after I remembered my breathing techniques from yoga, my anxiety dropped and I was able to enjoy the ocean (always holding the hand of my hot instructor, of course). I thought scuba diving would be very similar to snorkeling, but when you’re 6 meters underwater, everything is more colorful, more abundant, brighter, bigger, and better. There were sea turtles, reef sharks, barracudas, sting rays, giant clams, and tons of clown fish. It was not hard at all to find Nemo.

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Unfortunately my underwater camera broke after I took my first picture, so I had to buy a disposable underwater camera and go on a second dive to take more pictures. We’ll see how they’ll turn out. By the way, everybody thinks I’m crazy when I say I’m bringing four cameras, but I’m glad I did this time because one of my cameras broke during the first week and now the underwater one is done as well. All I have left is my big DSLR one and my crappy camera phone.

After my dive I was rewarded with some more kangaroo meat. This time it was a delicious steak and it tasted like venison. Kangaroos are also just like deer in Australia. On our way up the coast, we would always see some hopping on the fields and just like deer in the US, they cause a lot of accidents down here too.

Kangaroo Steak

Later that night the group I’m travelling with went to a pub crawl. It was actually a good deal: five drinks for $20, but I went to get a massage at the Night Markets for the same price and buy some more souvenirs. Call me anti-social, but I’ll take a massage over beer anytime.

Cairns is right on the water, but the beach is not suitable for swimming because of the crocodiles. Australia is known for its deadly animals: the taipan is the world’s most dangerous snake, for example, and crocodiles can eat you in the blink of an eye. Nevertheless, you can still enjoy some sand and water by the man-made lagoon they have, just like the one in Brisbane, and that’s where I was all day long during my last day in Australia. The weather was perfect – any hotter and I would’ve complained. And remember my two great finds in Sydney? The restaurant Grill’d and the paintings of Lloyd Rees? Well, right in front of the lagoon, there was a Grill’d place awaiting for me and right around the corner the local museum was having an exhibit on Lloyd Rees and his early paintings. My trip to Australia had come full circle.

We finally crossed the tropic of Capricorn line and the weather is so much warmer! Summer vacation is definitely on now and nothing better than a sailing trip to make it memorable. We stayed at Daydream Island, one of the 70-plus islands at the Whitsundays. The resort had rainforest walks, kangaroos hopping around, stingray feeding, and best of all, unlimited food and drinks at the Camira sailboat that took us to Whitehaven Beach, which was voted #3 in the Top 10 Best Beaches in the world. Anyone interested in hiring a sailboat and go island hopping like I did in Greece a few years ago?

Kangaroos are everywhere!

Camira Sailboat

Sailing at The Whitsundays

Beautiful Whitehaven Beach

Sailing

Clear waters of Whitehaven Beach

Australia is a very very large country, so we had to make a few stops between the 1,000 kilometers of road that we had between Fraser Island and The Whitsundays. Our first one was in Childers, a one street kind of town only (in)famous because in 2009 15 backpackers died at a hostel fire there. Then our last stop was in MacKay, a city known for its sugar cane production, where we pretty much just toured their giant shopping mall. In between, we stopped at a cattle farm, learned to use a whip (no, not the “Fifty Shades of Grey” kind…) and had a delicious home cooked meal to offset my pie and pastry diet.

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Fraser Island is the world largest sand island and the best way to explore it is to rent a 4×4. We started at 75-mile beach, which also happens to be a highway. Seriously, one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen with colored cliffs on one side and spectacular ocean on the other. Inland there are many lakes, like the one we swam at, Lake McKenzie, and trails through the rainforest. We got to stay at one of the resorts at the island, where I bought a bottle of wine to watch the beautiful sunset. Not that I’m a morning person, but I just felt I needed to see a little more of the island, so the next morning I woke up super early to go on a jog. Since the island is home to plenty of dingoes (wild dogs), I had to go with a German girl from my group through the woods to the beach and back. I think I’ve found my new favorite place in Australia.

Fraser Island

Camouflage Tree

Lake McKenzie

Fraser Island

Sunset

Time flies when you’re having fun. When I get too busy to write posts, I sometimes just jot down a few of the highlights real quick. I might be close to doing that, but I think I can come up with a couple of coherent paragraphs right now. Days are meshing together and I don’t know which day of the week it is anymore, but sometime this past week we started making our way up north. The first of many stops was at the bustling city of Brisbane. Australia’s third largest city has a really good vibe, and I wished I had had more time there, but because WiFi is not readily available in Australia as I would’ve thought, I spent some of my time using the one at their library, which was by far my favorite building in the city with their neon colors. Close to it is Queen Street Mall with tons of stores out of my price range and then across the bridge is South Bank Parklands with a beach lagoon near the river, right in the middle of the city.

Brisbane Beach Lagoon

Queen Street Mall

Brisbane

Brisbane Library

A couple of hours later we arrived at Noosa, another surfer’s town, but less backpackish than Byron Bay. While everybody went to the beach, I headed to Noosa National Park for one of their rainforest walks. As expected, mosquitoes had a feast with my legs. One of their trails had coastal views, and I could enjoy the tricks of many Australian surfers. I am always amazed at how many people are surfing right in the middle of the day. What do Australian surfers do for work? I guess it must be pretty similar to Tahoe snowboarders where they play during the day and work at night to cater for the tourists.

Growing up, koalas and kangaroos were my favorite animals with their cuddly faces and built-in purses to carry all their family and friends inside (well, that’s what I thought as a 7 year-old), so I knew going to “Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary” to see some of Australia’s animals was going to be a highlight of my trip. The first thing I did was, of course, cuddle up to a koala bear. They are so stinky cute I wanted to take one home. The one I held was called Happy Jay and he was the most adorable thing. Is it normal to be more excited about holding a koala than holding my friends’ newborns?

My little koala

The Sanctuary is not a typical zoo. Most animals are not enclosed and they have a hospital with big windows for you to see the animals they are rehabilitating. The kangaroo area was very impressive with dozens of kangaroos and wallabies you can pet and feed. And that’s not all: they have Tasmanian devils, wombats, and even a cassowary, which is the most deadly bird of Australia.

Petting a kangaroo

From Sydney to Byron Bay we were in New South Wales, but now we will be in Queensland for the rest of the trip. Surfers Paradise is the heart of the Gold Coast, an area where the sun shines 300 days a year. Perfect jogging weather again, and this time I was able to run for a little while. I’m very proud of myself, jogging in every town I spend the night so far.

Surfers Paradise

Unlike Byron Bay, this is not a quaint little town, but a city with high risers and a party scene like a small Miami. Apparently this is where people come for the Australian version of spring break. I did to go to a nightclub just to check it out, but the highlight of Surfers Paradise was a cabaret show called “Dracula’s”. It is a cheesy Vegas-style combination of random themes: burlesque, comedy, acrobatics, zombies, and vampires. However, the show is performed while we’re having a three-course meal, so if the show is not your thing, you’re sure to enjoy the Moroccan lamb.

Dracula’s Venue – No pictures allowed inside…