On our way to Coffs Harbour we stopped at the beach town of Port Macquarie. Governor Macquarie was a pretty big deal in the 1800’s because everything seems to be named after him: streets, parks, that chair in Sydney, and now this town. It’s richsy, small and cute, plus it has a boardwalk with painted rocks by the community.
Port Macquarie Walk
In Coffs Harbour we stayed at a surf village (“Mojo’s”) where people go to learn to surf and work there in exchange for room and board. Everybody was gorgeous, blond, and tan. That night we sat by the campfire and drank a little, but instead of Jack Johnson, pop tunes and beer pong were going on for the 20-year olds in the group, so I didn’t have such a chill time as I was expecting at a surf village. Nonetheless, the next morning was fun trying to surf. All the instructors were very very very hot and super helpful. I did try to get on my surfboard a few times, but I guess I should’ve worked on my jumping at yoga more seriously. It is very hard, but I can see why a lot of people like it, especially because of all the eye-candy around.
Surf Camp Crowd
Learning to surf
Next was the small bohemian town of Byron Bay. If Port Macquarie was like Carmel, Byron Bay was like Santa Cruz. There were tons of healthy and alternative restaurants and that’s where I ventured. I just kept going from one place to the next on main street, trying different treats, like a roasted vegetable gluten-free quiche and a passion fruit and apricot gluten-free muffin.
Meal from “Fundies”
Byron Bay is also the most eastern point in Australia. If you go to the lighthouse, it’s a short walk to where the sign is and if you’re lucky, you can see dolphins and whales from there. Byron Bay is very popular with surfers and the sandy beach is long with a couple of lookouts that blend with the rocks.
Byron Bay – Lighthouse on the back
Look at all those surfers!
Most eastern point in Australia
Besides eating at the different cafes, reading, and jogging by the beach, I also decided to be a bit social and joined the group for an outing. The first stop was at the “Beach Hotel” where we played musical bingo with a very excited DJ. Then off to “Cheeky Monkey’s”, where there is no choice but to dance on the tables since there is no dance floor. Oh, and get your face painted like a 5 year-old.
Sydney is very walkable and easy to get around. Although I feel you could see everything in two days, you could also easily spend two weeks exploring. Most of my time was spent outside, but I did go to one museum, the Art Gallery of New South Wales where I fell in love with the paintings of Australian artist Lloyd Rees, who does landscape with an impressionist feel.
Sydney Opera House is the iconic building with white sails you see on TV every New Year’s Eve with the fireworks behind it. I went there at least five times because it’s smack right in the middle of everything. Built in the 1960’s, it was very controversial at first, but now it’s loved by all. Inside, it has a very minimalist style with geometric shapes and no decorations. In one of the theaters I visited they were tuning pianos and on another theater they were rehearsing for a future production, so I could experience their impressive acoustics.
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The Harbour Bridge is another recognizable Sydney landmark, connecting the north side with the south side of the city. Instead of just driving across it, I climbed to the top. For $265 you can walk across the arch of the bridge to the summit and then back for amazing views of the city, but unfortunately you can’t take your own camera, and they only give you four photos and a short video with your package. There is also no thrill. You have a harness on, and the steel platforms are very wide and secure, so I didn’t think it was that exciting. You can get the same views by walking on the bridge at car level, which is free and you can take as many pictures you want.
Bridge Climb
The best view of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge is from the Royal Botanical Garden in the morning, near Mrs. Macquarie’s Point, which has a stone chair built in 1816 for the governor’s wife to read and watch the ships go by. Then walk past the Opera House to reach Circular Quay and wander around the historical neighborhood of The Rocks to get a glimpse of the first buildings of the city, the ones that were built after the first ships of incarcerated people arrived from England in 1788.
Opera House
Mrs. Macquarie’s chair
The Rocks Neighborhood
Just a few miles away from Sydney, you can go to Blue Mountains National Park for a short hike to Wentworth Falls and then to Echo Point to a geological formation called “The Three Sisters”. Those rocks are sacred to the Aboriginal people because it is said three sisters tuned into rocks after a fight three brothers who wanted to marry them had with a sorcerer.
Wentworth Falls
Three Sisters
Blue Mountains
Finally, when I think of Australia’s east coast, I think of the beach. I absolutely hate hot weather, so coming to Australia during their winter has been great. We have blue-bird skies and temperatures in the 60s – perfect for a beach stroll and reading a book. Manly beach is easy to get to on the ferry and has a great boardwalk with water fountains, restrooms, restaurants, and art sculptures on the way. I am reading this book by Bill Bryson called “In a sunburned country” which is perfect for me because it mixes history with funny travel stories. While I was laying on Manly beach, I was reading a chapter about Sydney and its sites, including the one I was at, and it is just awesome being able to read about something and then look up to actually see it right in front of you.
Finding places to eat is not difficult in Sydney. There is a bar, a café, or a restaurant in every corner, making it difficult to choose. On the first night I led my tour mates towards Victoria St on Potts Point (yeah, that’s right, me giving directions to a group of people!) We decided on an English pub but after everybody got settled I realized you can smoke inside restaurants in Australia, so I had to get out of there and find a place elsewhere. Best decision ever because off on my own I stumbled upon an organic place with Wi-Fi: “Grill’d”. They serve burgers and salads but with many gluten-free options. It is a chain, but to help bring their community together “Grill’d” has a program called “Local Matters” where every month they highlight three different local businesses and donate part of their money to them.
Salad and wine at Grill’d
The next night we went to posh Darling Harbour for dinner. Australians are crazy about their barbie. By the way, Aussies shorten every word so barbecue becomes barbie, breakfast becomes breakie, etc. At “Stacks” we cooked our own steak and had some more Australian wine, which I’m very fond of 😉
Grilling my own steak at “Stacks”
By far, my favorite find in Australia has been their savory pies. Flaky crust, warm creamy meat or chicken inside… Yum! I’ve been having one for lunch every day, and I can’t get enough of them. Most restaurants here are “takeaway”, and pies are easy to grab on the go. One place in Sydney called “Harry’s Café de Wheels” is so famous around the world for their pies, tons of celebrities eat there even though it’s just a food truck style place. I also found a meat pie window inside a leather purse store the other day. They are everywhere. Lucky me!
Meat pie from Leura’s leather shop
Sydney is also dessert heaven. All my hard work for the past year has been thrown out of the window after I got to Australia. They have cheesecakes, cupcakes, brownies, pies, cakes, and gourmet chocolates readily available in every corner as well. One of their most famous chocolate and coffee shops is “Guylian’s”, where I had a delicious lemon merengue pie that rivals my favorite ones from Brazil.
Lemon pie from Guylian
Chocolate and more chocolate
On my last night in Sydney I couldn’t wait to try kangaroo, so I went to a pizza place called “Australian Hotel”. I mean, everything is good on pizza, so there was no way I wouldn’t like it. I actually got a pizza with half-kangaroo meat and half-emu meat to kill two birds with one stone (no pun intended for the emu…). The emu was very salty and I didn’t care for it. The kangaroo was lovely, and it looked and tasted just like roast beef. Needless to say, I ate the whole thing plus a couple of slices of the pumpkin pizza someone else had ordered. Good thing I had gone on another jog in Sydney’s Hyde Park that afternoon.
As always, I’m very lucky when I fly. Last year, going to Asia on a 15-hour flight, a lady asked me if I wanted to have her first class seat… This time, to Australia, I had no one seating by me, so I could spread out and sleep for a full 8 hours. I got to Sydney early but refreshed, and when I saw joggers right outside my hotel, I knew what I had to do.
Blue skies, mild temperature, mid-afternoon: my perfect running scenario. From my hotel, all I had to do was take a flight of stairs to be at the Royal Botanical Gardens, the Central Park of Sydney. On my “jogging tour” I went past the Art Gallery and St. Mary’s Cathedral, but the best part was when I reached the harbour and there it was: the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Brigde. My 1 hour run was probably only 4 miles round-trip, but there was no way I wasn’t going to stop to marvel at the view and take some pictures.
The hardest part of my day? Running on the left side of the path and passing on the right. So confusing at first, I almost ran into other joggers a few times.
A few years ago when someone would tell me they were going on a 15-hour hike I would absolutely think they were crazy (yes, I’m thinking of you, K.N.), but this year I was like, “yeah, sure, this sounds fun.” And it was! I went with my Achieve Fitness hiking group, and it was the culminating hiking trip after our 12-week training program. I arrived at Housekeeping Camp in Yosemite National Park after an easy 5-hour drive from Reno. This also included a 30-minute stop at Whoa Nellie Deli in Lee Vining for a burger. Lucky me, there was no traffic, but I hear it can get backed up near the park entrance. By 8 pm I was already in bed because we had to wake up at 3 am the next morning to start the hike. After a ride from our leader’s husband, we were ready with our headlamps on at 4 am at the Happy Isles trailhead.
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Half-Dome is one of the most iconic landmarks in Yosemite, rising 8,800 feet above sea level. With an elevation gain of 4,800 feet from the valley floor, most people do this 17-mile hike in 12 hours, but it took us 15 because we stopped a lot, took tons of pictures, and enjoyed some time soaking our tired feet near the Little Yosemite Valley Campground on the way back. We took the John Muir trail up and the Mist trail down. The John Muir trail is longer but less steep than the popular and scenic Mist trail. I totally recommend this trail if you’ve done Half-Dome thru the Mist trail before, as it will be easier on your quads, but if you’ve never been to the Mist trail before, you must do it for the amazing views of Nevada and Vernal Falls. Be careful though, on our way down we had rain and hail besides the waterfall mist, and it was very slippery.
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The hike is relatively easy (well, for those of us who have been training for a while at least) until you reach the base of Sub-Dome, where they check your hiking permits. It is a good idea to contain your excitement before you start this last part of your hike and actually spend some time relaxing under the shade of the trees. We watched squirrels trying to steal our food and even helped the park ranger with the permits when he had to go to the bathroom. After you start on the Sub-Dome, the heat will be excruciating. BTW, you will need really good traction on your shoes and hiking poles for this part. Many say this 400-feet ascent is the hardest part of the hike, even harder than the cables up Half-Dome. Once you summit Sub-Dome, you have a 30-minute arm work-out pulling yourself up the cables to summit Half-Dome. You must wear rubber gloves and you will have blisters on your hands!
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Besides always staying on the trail, another good idea is to never try anything new on a big hike like this. Unfortunately for me, I had no choice. The hike to Half-Dome requires a lot of water – I consumed a total of 4 liters, but I could have used even more. I had brought my UV SteriPen to sterilize my water, but of course it did not want to work that day. I had to use some iodine tablets I had never tried before to clean my water and refill my Camelback around the middle of the hike. I don’t know if it was the iodine or the extra electrolytes I had to put it in the water to offset the taste, but nausea and diarrhea set in, and by the time I finished the hike up Sub-Dome and reached the cables to get to the very top of Half-Dome, I was not feeling good at all. My dilemma was: should I just go ahead and pull myself up thru those cables since I had gotten all the way there already or should I listen to my body and take it easy since I already had another 7 hours ahead of me going back down? What do you think I did? Take the poll below!
The hike down was miserable for a while. Every time I took a sip of my iodine water, I would get nauseated again, but if I didn’t, I would be so thirsty! Not even the beautiful waterfalls of the Mist trail could cheer me up, but one good thing of hiking with a group of relatively unknown people is that I couldn’t just throw a fit like I would have done many years ago while hiking with my ex-husband (sorry K.N.!!) Eventually, I was able to get filtered water, and my stomach started to get a little better. We made it back to our campground at 7:30 pm. At the end of the 15 hours, I felt such a sense of accomplishment I didn’t even care about my water/stomach mishap or that the showers were closed and I had to go to bed all filthy!
Panoramic view of Half-Dome from top of Sub Dome
It was an incredible amazing experience and I can’t wait to do it again! After you complete a challenge like this, you just feel exhilarated. The views were breathtaking and being in the wilderness is inspirational (especially if you grew up in the city like me). However, I hate when people just talk about how great their experience was (like when everybody was telling me India would be so awesome…), so let me warn you: this hike was HARD! If you decide to do it, please train, train, and train: it is good for your mind since because of my training I knew I could do it, and for your body, since the day after I was barely sore. Oh, and bring a back-up UV SteriPen for your water!
One of my favorite songs of all times is “Banana Pancakes” by Jack Johnson, but I always thought he was singing about pancakes with bananas on top until one of my high school students told me about this gluten free banana pancake recipe during graduation this year. If you like bananas, you won’t be disappointed with this easy healthy breakfast.
First try: a little burnt but it still tasted good!
“Maybe we can sleep in… I’ll make you banana pancakes… Pretend like it’s the weekend now…”
I’m going away for a while and I don’t have much food at home, so this was the perfect recipe for this past weekend since all you pretty much need are eggs and bananas. When I told K.T. what I was making for breakfast though, he wasn’t very excited, but guess what, he ended up eating all of it! On my first one I used too much oil and it came out a little burned, but by my last one I had the hang of it and it looked just like a regular pancake. It is a little difficult to flip them, so the best way to make this work is to make small ones. Go ahead and add syrup and powdered sugar on top if you’d like. Don’t forget to listen to Jack Johnson while cooking them!
Gluten-Free Banana Pancakes
1 ½ bananas (put the other half on a smoothie or something…)
2 eggs
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Oil or cooking spray
Mash the bananas with a fork in a bowl, then add the rest of the ingredients and stir it all together. I like to add a lot of cinnamon to mine and also a bit of vanilla extract, but as you know, I have a sweet tooth. Put a little bit of oil or cooking spray in a frying pan and heat it on low-medium heat. Add a small amount of batter and let it cook for a few minutes (maybe 3 minutes?) Carefully flip the pancake to finish cooking it for a few more minutes. This should make about 4 medium pancakes.
Not much running going on lately… It’s been super-hot, and I’ve been enjoying spending time at home reading and watching movies before my big summer trip. Vacations are a time to relax and do nothing too, right? Out of the dozens of movies I’ve watched this past month, one stands out: “No”. It is a 2012 Chilean Oscar-nominated movie for Best Foreign film, but easy to find on Netflix or Redbox. Based on a true story, it recounts how an ad-campaign helped change Chile’s faith at the 1988 referendum to let the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet go on for another 8 years. Of course it does not tell the whole story, but it is a window into how people’s voice can be heard with the right tools. It also reminded me of what’s going on with the protests in Brazil this month and the military coup in Egypt today. It is hard to keep up with what’s going on in this crazy world all the time… so sometimes we need movies to tell us a story in an entertaining (well, sometimes biased) way and “No” does the job. Two things stand out: the use of vintage cameras and Gael Garcia Bernal. If you’re not familiar with him, I urge you to watch another one of his movies: “Motorcycle Diaries”.
One more thing: “Side Effects” is another movie I watched this month I’d like to recommend.
Run, eat, travel, and more 