Try our other TravelPod Blog

My friend sid that she didn't notice the link to our new blog in the last entry, so I'll repeat it here:

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/paulfeuerborn/1/tpod.html



I've decided to post on the TravelPod blog for the rest of the trip. I like being able to enter posts by date, and I like the map and hotels aspect of it too. So please use the link above and read on about our adventures.

Blogging from China

You might be wondering why I haven’t posted since we arrived in China. Well besides the fact that we have been run ragged by my always-on-the-go, 71 year old mother seeing the sights, the real reason is because I’m blocked from getting onto my Google hosted blog. Facebook is also blocked here in China. We take freedom of speech for granted in the States. As a result, I am having my cousin post this entry for me. We are currently in Shanghai and have taken some day and overnight tours to some nearby cities. Our plan is to stay in Shanghai for a few more days, then head to Hangzhou where my mom has some family. (Her cousin has been helpful in getting a hotel reserved for us near Hangzhou’s famous West Lake.) We are all doing ok. The pace with my mom and brother has been faster than when we are alone. They’re going to do another 2 day tour this weekend, while we stay in Shanghai to do some schoolwork and relax. Thank goodness we have my mom to translate for us. She’s been an immense help to us and is really resourceful. We’ve been saving money on hotels, eating out and by taking public buses (which would be nearly impossible without her since everything is posted in Chinese.) She’s good at bargaining too, so it’s been fun to pick up little souvenirs here and there, as everything is “MADE IN CHINA”. My experience here is different from when I was here about 15 years ago. So much has changed (modern buildings, modern trains, subways, better roads), but a lot has stayed the same too (nasty squat toilet bathrooms, tons of people everywhere, laundry hung out to dry).

Here is a link to our “while-in-China” blog. Paul started it last year to try TravelPod as our blog host. He wrote about a trip we went on to Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore. I added pins in the map for all the places that we’ve been so far on our RTW trip. But as for reading stories and pictures, they start at the Korea entries. I’ll update this “new” blog as we go in China, then switch back to the Google based blog when I have access after we get out of China.

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/paulfeuerborn/1/tpod.html

Japan Whirlwind (Aug 19-28, 9 days)

Time went pretty fast as we sped through Japan. Started with a red-eye from Perth that wiped me (Paul) out, but we still managed to pack a lot into our first day as usual. We landed near Osaka around 7 am and took the train to Kyoto, the old capital of Japan. We were fortunate to be able to drop our bags at our Ryokan (hotel room – which consisted of one large room without any furniture and tatami mats and futon pads to sleep on. Quite cozy for all of us, but did the trick. The owners were very sweet especially with the kids and the kids liked the different experience. Kyoto itself was more developed than we both expected since we had heard so much of the ‘antiquity’ that Kyoto had to offer. We saw some if it on the first day seeing the old castle, but later we found much more in the old parts of the city around the temples and parks. We did have a very nice time feeding the wild monkeys outside the city and the last day we saw the Golden Temple which was impressive and the kids really thought the temple with the 10,000 red Torii gates was amazing, even when they were running up hill in the high heat. I think it provided a bit of a maze to run through so that kept them feeling like it wasn’t just another one of Mom and Dad’s ‘hikes’ that they have learned to dread. All in all I’d have to agree with Debbie that Kyoto was nice, but didn’t quite hit us as dramatically as our expectations had been built up.

Our second stop in Japan was to visit Deb’s cousin who is working for Ford on an expat assignment in Hiroshima. They were very gracious to put us up in their spacious pad with amazing views from the tallest building in the city. Kids of course immediately latched on to the Wii and playing Legos with their cousins. Teresa and Ben were great at introducing us to a lot of the diversity of food from ‘conveyer belt sushi’ to okonomiyaki (Japanese pancakes with noodles, veggies & and an egg) cooked right in front of us to teppanyaki (marinated meat & seafood grilled at your table). We took a great hiking day out to Miyajima island off the coast for 10 miles of hiking up the hills. Paul and Ben were able to check out an onsen (Japanese Bath), which was very relaxing after a full day of hiking.

On to the more interesting things... Deb and I took Jacob and Charlie to the A-Bomb museum and memorials and tried to grapple with the mixed views and emotions. At the heart of the museum was the obvious and indisputable theme of ‘the world would be a better place without nuclear weapons’. When I asked Jacob to write a paper on whether or not the bomb should have been used by Truman, he made a compelling case to say that it shouldn’t have been used based on the fact that he believed Russia and the US could have defeated Japan in a traditional land war. Deb and I struggled with the lack of any joint accountability on the Japanese part or acknowledgment for the heinous acts that they committed to start the Pacific war or what they did during it. Clearly Truman’s decision to drop the bomb was one that had enormous horrible consequences for the civilian population, and was a very controversial one, but Debbie and I would have been a bit more sensitive if the Japanese had provided a bit more of the balance on the event. For example outside the museum and barely mentioned in the museum was a memorial to the Koreans that died from the bomb. About 10% of all those killed were Koreans that were basically enslaved by the Japanese during the war to help with the war industry and various other services like the ‘comfort women’. Appalling to think that in the 20th century all this could have happened and by a country of people that appeared to be as friendly, polite, and low key as any that we have met. I’m sure they feel the same way about the Americans, wondering how we could have been so evil to make and use the A-bomb. Somewhere there is something that doesn’t compute on both sides. I guess that is why they say War is Hell. Not that any of this justified the dropping of the bomb itself, but the lack of perspective from other angles was a bit disturbing.

On to Tokyo on the high-speed Shinkansen at about 160 mph. Hard to take pictures out the window at that speed. The first time I visited Tokyo in 2004, I was quite impressed by the city, but I failed to realize how un-childfriendly it was as it was a nice business trip I was on. Kids didn’t have much space to run off their steam – we found a total of one playground on the whole trip I think. The city itself is pretty overwhelming albeit fairly accessible with the subways and train rides. People were everywhere (but a good test to see if we can keep track of 4 little ones amongst 15 million people). We had a great day trip out to Nikko, which in essence is the burial place for some of the legendary Shogun rulers. First class World Heritage site there around all the tombs, temples, and shrines. Also felt good to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city.



Deb’s high school friend, Bill joined us to tour Tokyo. We had a great time seeing the Yokohama Stars baseball team play the night before we left. The fans are absolutely crazy – every time their team gets up to bat they are on their feet continuously singing cheering songs personalized to each player. During a rally in the game we didn’t hear a pause for about 20 minutes as they roared at the top of their lungs their chants. This was all accompanied by a band in the stands to keep the beat with drums and trumpets. Deb got a massive headache from it all after 3 hours. But the kids thought it was a blast and the Stars won the game which made it all great fun.




In summary on Japan I’d have to say it was a bit disappointing in the round. I’m glad we went and saw it and seeing the Kuo family was very nice, but probably a bit better suited for adult only travel. Food however was outstanding.

(Debbie now) We are in Seoul now. We've been in Korea for about a week. Lucky us, we visited a friend here as well, so we have really enjoyed our stay, having a 'local' show us around and help us with our Korean itinerary. (More on Korea later.) We leave on Sunday for Beijing, where we will meet up with my mom and brother for a few weeks. Hard to believe we've been traveling for 2 months already. The kids say, "Two months?! It feels like 2 weeks!" So it is passing by quickly for all of us. We are going toward the 'harder' countries though. The kids make fun of me because I am dreading Chinese public toilets. Hope you all are well and the blog isn't too boring for you to read. It's weird that you will be starting your fall schedule, back to school and school routines, and we're moving on to another Asian country, while trying to get some homeschooling in. If only we could get rid of that pesky schoolwork....

RV Lessons Learned

I thought I’d write a few notes about the RV. If you’ve rented one before, then you would know all of these things, but we had to find out the hard way! And it’s sort of amusing the problems we had, figuring the whole RV thing out.

1) Make sure all the cabinets, refrigerator door, and the RV’s side door are locked before setting out. We picked up the RV, unpacked our stuff into all the cabinets, nooks, and crannies, then went immediately to a grocery store to stock up for the week. We bought a ton of food, stowed it all, then as we pulled out of the parking lot and took the first right, the refrigerator door flew open and stuff poured out rolling everywhere. Or, we would leave parking lots and forget to lock a cabinet or 2 and stuff would come flying out as we were driving down the road. And once, we forgot to lock the side door and that thing flew open as we were driving. All of these events are accompanied by loud shrieks from our children, “Stop the car! Oh my gosh! Everything is falling out! AAAHHH! We forgot to lock the door!”

2) Fill the toilet flushing water tank separately from the main water tank. We were using our RV toilet (basically a porta-potty) for a few days, then suddenly it stopped flushing. We would press the little flush-the-toilet button, but no water would come out to flush the stuff down. We went about 10 hours with it like that. We didn’t know what was wrong with it, since we had plenty of water to wash our hands with in the bathroom and we had water running in the kitchen sink as well. And, we knew the water tank had been topped off every day and we figured, “it’s an RV, how many water tanks can it have?” Well, apparently 2, which we found out after searching through the instructional DVD. The waste water tank is separate (and smaller) and has to be refilled often.



3) Leave the ladder to the upper bunk down while driving. We stowed the ladder to the upper bunk (the double bed that is right above the driver’s seat) every morning because the location of it,when it is down is right in the aisle way from the front seat to the back. So we thought it was inconvenient, because it was hard to get around and we didn’t really want the kids up top, we wanted them to stay down at the table where the seatbelts were. But of course, the kids wanted to go up and down, and unbeknownst to us, they started using the table to climb up. Eventually, after a few days of that, Jacob broke the table. We heard a horrible cracking noise and he and the table fell. He was unhurt luckily and quickly said, “I am SO sorry!” The other kids had been doing it, but he weighs more, so that was bound to happen. Luckily Paul MacGyver-ed it back together, after we bought a screwdriver from a local hardware store, so we didn’t get charged. It looked like that had happened before. So we learned our lesson and left the ladder down the rest of the trip.


4) Store upright sauces/bottles tightly together in the cabinets & refrigerator. On the second to the last day in our RV, we had much less food then, since we were trying to finish everything off before we turned it in. So we had a cabinet with upright bottles of olive oil, ketchup, soy sauce, Worchester sauce (things we borrowed from Cheryl for our 10 day trip)… stuff like that. But we had cleared out a lot of things and they were on one end in the cabinet, but as we drove, inevitably with all the vibration, they fell over and one spilled, which of course was the bottle of fish sauce. The kids started yelling, “Stop the car! There’s something leaking out of the cabinet and it smells like dog poo!” (They always said, “Stop the car!” if anything happened.)
So why, you ask, did I have a bottle of fish sauce? And that leads me to my last lesson learned.

5) Lower your expectations. I had unrealistic expectations of being in an RV. I thought it would be like being in a house or apartment, and I was going to whip up amazing delicious dishes, like I would at home. But it was much more like camping, making simple meals and showering using the RV facilities, not our porta-potty bathroom/shower. Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time in it and there was almost no whining, complaining, or fighting from the kids. Also, we didn’t have to stop for meals or to go to the bathroom, so that was the only way we could do that many miles in such a short time. And we would definitely do it again. It’s just not as luxurious as I had imagined. I don't know why I had that expectation to begin with, I mean, is it from TV? Or did I think we were traveling in one of those rock band converted bus things they use when they're on tour? In any event, we enjoyed the experience and highly recommend it.



Right now we are in Tokyo. We've been in Japan for about a week. It's been quite whirlwind. There is so much to see in Japan, we are barely scratching the surface. But it has been really nice, since we got to stay with my gracious cousins, Ben & Teresa, in Hiroshima and we also got to see a friend of mine from high school, Bill, in Tokyo. So seeing some friendly faces has made Japan even more pleasant. I'll post about it in detail with pictures hopefully soon. We head to Seoul, Korea in 2 days.

Western Australia in an RV, Aug 10-19

After Perth, we spent 10 days in an RV driving over 2000 miles in the outback along the western coast of Australia. We decided to try the west coast instead of the more commonly traveled east coast because we went to Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef on our honeymoon, so we thought we’d see something different. Our first mistake was not booking the RV for a one way drive and flying back from Broome. Western Australia is so big, we really did not realize how big until we were driving on its 2 lane highway for hours, trying to pass semi-trucks pulling 3 trailers. Let me begin with Western Australia’s size…

Australia is made up of 6 states and 2 territories and is about as big as the continental US. Western Australia is one state and it is as big as if you drew a line down the US, including MT, WY, CO, NM, and that western part of TX and taking everything west of that. Then Perth would be like “Los Angeles”. The crazy part is that there is all that land, like 11 western US states and only 3 million people live there, with over a million of those people in Perth. I thought the south island of NZ was unpopulated, well Western Australia is even less so. Basically, we drove from LA to Portland and back in 10 days instead of driving one way from LA to Seattle. But as I said it was much harder going than popping onto one of our highways in the US and doing 70 mph. The entire way was 2 lane highway, we had to pass very long semi’s and we could only drive during the day because there are tons of dead kangaroos on the side of the road (we probably saw a few hundred!) as reminders of what could happen and there are also open grazing areas, so cattle, sheep and/goats wander onto the highway as well. It was sort of slow going anyhow, since we were driving this massive 6-berth RV.



Here is Jacob’s journal entry about the RV:
So far I like the RV more than a hotel room. First, drives are less uncomfortable. Also, we don’t need to move around from hotel to hotel. Last of all, we can cook our own meals.
It’s less boring on drives for a few reasons. For example, we can watch TV on long drives. Next we can stand up and stretch now and then. Finally we can take a short nap whenever we want.
Next, it’s great that we don’t have to move from place to place. We don’t have to waste time packing up. Also we don’t take as many long drives. The camper really makes sleeping easier.
Finally we get to cook our own meals. It’s not as expensive, leaving more money for other things. Lastly, the food is just as good as at a restaurant.

I’m not sure renting the RV was necessarily “not as expensive”. It’s true we didn’t eat out much, but the rental cost was significant $2200/10 days and we paid around $40/night for a powered RV spot in a lot of places. We did stay a few nights “out in the bush”, that is, camping areas with no amenities (no toilets) that didn’t cost anything. We also had to stay in RV parks without power now and then, since they didn’t have a powered site available. So contrary to my unrealistic expectation that being in an RV would be luxurious and like being in a house, it was much more like glorified camping. The nights that we didn’t have power were pretty cold. It is winter here, so even though we were on the coast, which was temperate, the nights were probably in the low 50’s. When we could plug in, we had a heater running in the RV. But I’ll say more about the RV later.

We saw some neat things on the west coast. We went to the Pinnacles which reminded us of Goblin State Park in Utah. The stone formations were smaller than at Goblin SP but there were a lot more of them. We did a nice 3km loop hike there and played hide-and-go-seek along the way. It was the perfect place for that game.




Next we went to Kalbarri National Park which is on the coast. We saw humpback whales far off on the horizon and we hiked down to the river that runs through the park. It’s known for its red rock gorges. On our hike out we came across a bunch of kangaroos which was fun to see.



After that we went to Denham/Monkey Mia where this family of dolphins comes every morning to the resort beach to be fed. You can get quite close to them as you can see from the pictures. There were pelicans there too, fighting to get the fish that was being fed to the dolphins. There are rangers there and they keep track of how much fish they feed each dolphin. They only feed them 25% of what they need per day, so they still go out and fish properly. The dolphins have been going there since the 1960’s and now the daughters and granddaughters of the original first 3-4 dolphins are coming back to get free fish and have their picture taken by the mob of tourists. The big thrill here was that Jacob, Charlie, and Elise got selected from the audience to feed the dolphins, so they got to do that which they thought was pretty neat.





Near Denham we saw a very unique beach called Shell Beach. The whole beach was made up of tiny shells. They made them into bricks and built buildings out of them. It was pretty amazing to walk on. We’d never seen anything like it.








After that, we went to Exmouth/Coral Bay which was where Paul had the best dive of his life. I’ll let him write a bit about what it was he saw. He’s probably been on about 25 dives, in places like the Great Barrier Reef, Ambergris Caye in Belize, Maui in Hawaii, the Red Sea in Egypt Sinai peninsula and in the Mediterranean Sea in Bodrum, Turkey and he said that Exmouth’s Navy Pier was a 10 out of 10. Not a lot of press for the west coast of Australia compared to the GBR, but the snorkeling and diving was superb. We liked it because you could snorkel off the beach instead of at the GBR you have to take a boat out to the reef to snorkel and dive. We saw a pretty big octopus (6-8 feet stretched out) in Cape Range National Park which is near Exmouth




and a big sting ray (3-4 feet wing tip to wing tip) in Coral Bay just by snorkeling off the beach. The water was cold, but it was worth getting in. We got video of both of those. I’ll try to post them maybe if I can find a decent connection, the video files are so big.



At the very end of our trip, we stopped in Port Denison so the boys could hand fish off a pier for a couple hours as a break from driving. Jacob, Henry and I caught some small fish and Jacob caught a spider crab!




I'll post a little bit more about the RV next. We're in Japan right now, staying with my cousin in Hiroshima, so I hope I can get caught up here. More soon.

Perth Aug 6-10, 2009

We spent 4 very pleasant days in Perth, staying with our good friend’s sister, Cheryl. She was amazingly accommodating and gracious since we basically took over the place, there are so many of us. Here’s a picture of Elise & her cat Sparkle.

While in Perth, we saw the Perth Mint, (the kids liked that, they had a neat demonstration of pouring liquid gold into a gold bar worth $400,000), and spent a relaxing day at Kings Park (which is like the “Central Park” of Perth). Kings Park was really nice. It has a war memorial, botanic gardens with great colorful birds and massive old fig trees and even a Boab tree . Kings Park also has an amazing playground for the kids (which of course, they liked the best).

We went south of Perth one of the days, to a city called Fremantle and saw a local Aussie rules football game and stopped and learned the rules of the game from the locals. Then ended the day in the Fremantle Prison & Shipwreck museum. After reading the gruesome stories of the prisoners and their living conditions – Henry innocently asked ‘Why would anyone want to go to prison?’. Paul said, "Hopefully our explanation will keep him on a good path in life, and out of the klink!"

But the real gem of the things we did in Perth was Caversham Wildlife Park. The last time Paul and I came to Australia, (on our honeymoon 13 years ago,) we went to a wildlife park outside of Sydney where you could feed kangaroos, wallabys & emus, and pet koalas. It was so unique; we never forgot that experience, and we’ve been waiting all these years to bring the kids to Australia so they could do that too. Luckily, this wildlife park delivered. 1) It had lots of local Australia animals: local birds & owls, dingos, flying foxes, wombat, Tasmanian devil, etc… 2) There was a farm/petting zoo area where we watched a 45 minute farm show where they sheared a sheep (Paul and I found that so interesting since we’d never seen that before.) and had sheep dogs do a demonstration rounding up sheep. And, they let the kids milk a cow afterward. But the best part was 3) feeding the kangaroos & emus. They had a big tin can of food pellets and you could just take huge handfuls and feed them to the animals. Paul said, “I swear Henry touched every single kangaroo in the place.” There were probably 100 of them in the large 3 acre park-like enclosure. And lest I forget, 4) there were koalas we could pet as well. It was amazing and the kids loved it. To see their faces light up when they fed and pet the kangaroos and pet the koalas was absolutely priceless.

Charlie’s journal entry about the time we spent in Perth:
Today we went to a wildlife park. It was soooo asom we got to pet kangroos and even feed them. We could pet kwallas we even pet a wombat but we couldn’t find the flying squiril. We saw Tasmanian devals and foxes with razer sharp teeth and even dingo dogs. Today we went to a mint and even saw somebody make a gold bar. We really made a new coin and we went to the prisin and to a shipwreck museum. After that we went to a playground were I played a made up game. It started to rain like a wizard used some magic. We had to make a mad dash for cover and I convinced mom to go to Hungry Jacks (over here they call Burger King Hungry Jacks.)

Henry’s journal entry:
I liked peting the red kangaroos. Espeshely the emoos. Jacob droped (dropped) his glasses! It was in its cage. We saw a lot of bees! There were about 50! I liked peting the kawalas and the sheep. I liked milking the cows. I liked peting the rabbits. Espeshely the baby ones. I liked seeing the three dogs. One of them were called Henry. First we saw Jack, he rounded up all of the sheep. Then they let Henry out, then Billy. We saw a cool eagle. It was making a nest! We got to pet other animals too. It was very very very very very very fun!!!!!!!!

We've had very little internet access until now. We've been in an RV, driving around Western Australia for 10 days. I'll try to post about it soon. Tomorrow we are off to Japan.

I located Jacob's journal (hard to find in this RV) and here's what he wrote about the wildlife park:

Yesterday we went to an awesome wildlife park. After we paid to get in, we immediately went on the first loop. We saw tons of animals, like wallabies and small owls. On the way out we saw a ranger getting ready to feed the animals so we decided to watch. It was definitely worth it! We got to see an owl with a tiny mouth swallow a mouse whole!
After the first loop we went to a show. Rangers showed us 4 animals, 3 of which we got to pet. They were really cool. My favorite was Harry the Wombat.
Then we went to see the kangaroos. As we walked through the gate I was amazed. There were tons of kangaroos lying around lazily getting fed by excited tourists. There was a massive can of pellets waiting to be fed to the kangaroos. It was so cool to feed them, one actually stood up against me!
In the corner of the kangaroo area there were emus you could feed. As I was feeding one, it grabbed my glasses! After a taste test the emu dropped it on the ground. Dad had to lean over the fence to get them back. Now my glasses have a scratch on the left lens.
Next we went to pet some koalas. They were low on small trees so you could reach out to pet them. It was cool to see them right there in front of you.
Finally we saw a farm show. We were shown a sheepdog herding sheep, saw a sheep being sheared, and milked a cow. I discovered that sheep shearers are paid $345 a day on average, how to milk a cow, and that sheep and cows aren’t potty trained.

Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road

We have been enjoying our stay in Melbourne with our extremely gracious friends who are letting us stay here for 8 days. They have 3 kids, ages 13, 10 & 6. Yes, we are overstaying our welcome and loving being in a “home” again. Our kids are overjoyed: playing with their kids and having access to toys, games, Wii, trampoline, TV and books. It is so nice to stay in one place and stretch out, instead of having one tiny hotel room to live in and packing/unpacking every other day.


With our friends, we went to a science museum with a Star Wars exhibit going on and to Phillip Island to see the penguin parade. (That is a famous thing to do when you are in Melbourne. The smallest penguins in the world waddle up from the beach to their burrows every night at dusk.) We also took the kids to an indoor pool.

Then over the weekend, we took a road trip along the “Great Ocean Road” (I’ll call it GOR). That is another famous thing to do here, near Melbourne. It is a stretch of coast road, very similar to driving Hwy 1 (Pacific Coast Hwy) in California, on that nice stretch near Monterey, with gorgeous ocean views. There were neat things to do along the GOR, we looked in tide pools, saw wild koala bears and kangaroos, did some nice hikes, and saw famous rock formations off the GOR along the coast.
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Here is what Jacob (age 11) had to say about the koala viewing:
I think it was really magnificent because you are just driving by a normal eucalyptus tree and scanning it for koalas and when you see them you just see this big ball of fur. And then eventually you can work out all the details like when it is sleeping and just hanging there at dizzying heights or feeding. And it was really cool to see them climb, because we saw one climb and they stick out one hand and bring up the body. And it was crazy how they were bringing themselves up. And the funniest koala I saw was probably one that was hanging at the very end of a thin branch. It was an incredibly fat koala and this teeny branch was holding him up. I probably saw over 30, maybe I’d estimate 35-38. I made $5 dollars because dad was giving me 10 cents for seeing a koala and 20 cents for seeing it first. With the five dollars I bought a koala coin purse. And I’m going to dedicate the rest of my money to buy another coin purse from Australia. There was a koala with a baby that was pretty cool, because you could just see a mom hanging on lazily and every now and then you could see the baby kicking its legs. We saw all these koalas about 2 minutes away from a town and we saw a vacation house right next to where the mother with the baby was. It was just awesome that 2 minutes from civilization you could see these wild koalas. So on the road we were driving down to the hotel and all of the sudden we saw a wallaby. And all of a sudden when my dad said “Wallaby!” I looked out the front and I saw it immediately. We kept telling my dad to stop because we were getting closer, but he didn’t stop and my mom couldn’t get a picture because it jumped away.


Here is Charlie’s (age 8) description of seeing the kangaroos:
So we jumped over a fence because there was no other way to get in. So then we walked on a path and there were probably like 30 kangaroos jumping around. When we got there, there was a kangaroo just about 3 yards away on the path. When we got closer they all just went jumping away. The kangaroos were about 6 feet tall and it didn’t seem like they had any joey’s in their pouches. They were really cool because the way they jumped and the way they balanced on their tail was really cool and interesting. The wild I think was more cool because we actually got to get 2 yards away from them, and in the zoo you are usually kept quite far away. And then when we all left my dad was the only one there, and I wanted the car keys so I could get into the car. So I went back over the fence and came running up behind him. And he thought ‘Oh shoot I was too close and now they are attacking me.’ And then when I said ‘The Keys?’ then he said ‘Oh no, now they are going to steal my car.’ And then Jacob scolded me for running up behind Dad and scaring away all the kangaroos.


And finally, here is Henry’s (age 6) journal entry about the GOR. See if you can decipher it!:


The Great Ocean Raod.
We went to a cool baech and saw cool starfish and we saw a little crab. They did except I saw two. We saw kawalas and wala bees too. We even saw kangaroos. We saw about 30 of them! Prablable the funniest part was dad ran over too prity birds!!! The reason he crushed the prity bird is because he did it on a accident. Except it was sad too. Excep Charlie said that they where in dangerd except he was rong. When we saw the kangaroos we went into there field. They where scard very scard. When we got clost to them they hoped (hopped) back, nodest (notice) how I said hoped (hopped) not ran? Uur friends dog named Chily is fun to play with except some times he is a bad dog.

Paul's NZ Observations

This is a picture of Franz Josef. The glacier looks better from far away, in the picture we posted with us right in front of it, it looks "dirty" with the rocks and sand that it picks up along the way, but I snapped this from a different hike I took.

All in all the weather gods have continued to look favorably on us. It has rained a bit during some of the drives we have done and a bit on the Milford Sound cruise, but other than that we have had pretty clear and crisp days. Crisp translates to just over freezing most days. Luckily we came prepared with lots of layers and they have all seemed to do the trick. We picked up gloves and hats for the skiing and have gotten good use out of them. Night time has been the most striking difference from Fiji. The same way as Fiji doesn’t seem to attempt to do anything to compensate for the hot nights, Kiwi’s don’t seem to attempt to compensate for the cold nights, other than provide a warm blanket. The small space heaters in most motel rooms automatically go off every hour and don’t project much heat to start, so unless you are in the habit of getting up every hour it gets a wee bit nippy in the middle of the night. All in all, not much to complain about and it caused more worry for Deb than it actually caused lack of comfort for the kids.
Definitely a lot more animals than people here, and it isn’t just the 20-40 million sheep. Kids and even grandma got a laugh out of mom and dad constantly stopping to attempt to get the perfect picture of the animals with the dramatic back drop of snow capped mountains, unspoilt valleys and oceans. We made reasonable attempts at capturing pics of sheep, deer, cows, and even llamas. Mostly farmed animals (even the deer) didn’t really come across as much true ‘wildlife’.