We Jumped!!!

Hello Sydney....wow, now this is a city!

Bye Bye, New Zealand : 28 November 2003

Tomorrow, we journey on to Sydney, Australia, to start the next portion of our tour. We both loved New Zealand very much, and would love to come back. We can't recommend visiting this beautiful country enough. Make sure that you hit the South Island for sure. And you don't have to do all the jumping off of things to have a good time. Then again, when we saw an 86 year old man bungy jumping off the Kawarau Bridge, you know it can't be all that bad! The drive up was quite fun, actually, and one hell of a deal. We got the rental car for $4 (that's New Zealand dollars, worth about $3 in the States) for four days, and the ferry between the islands was included for the car and one of us. And the car was great: a nearly brand new S.U.V., a Toyota Land Cruiser like thing. The hardest part was getting the damn turn signals right. Both Andrea and I would automatically go to flip the turn signals on with our left hands, and so we were always turning on the wipers instead. We also both decided that roundabouts are kind of cool once you get used to them. Today was our last day bumming around Auckland. We went up in the Sky Tower, the highest tower in the Southern Hemisphere. The rumor is that the Australians built one, so the Kiwis had to out do them out of spite. The thing is pretty ugly, but it was a nice view. And, in typical Kiwi fashion, they had two different "Adventure" activities on it. One was climbing the spire above the lookout lounge to a little crow's nest about additional 50 meters up. This would put you on a little cat walk about 250 meters off the ground with nothing but a little tether line to keep you from flying off. The other was even more insane: You could do a freefall off the tower. You were suspended by one main line between two guide lines. They'd drop you out about 10 meters to dangle for a moment outside the windows of the viewing lounge, then they'd let you drop all the way down to the ground before bringing you to a stop right at ground level. It seemed like a pretty wild ride, but we decided against it after hearing about the $150 per person price tag. I think we're a little burned out of spending huge sums of cash on adreneline rides that last all of 20 seconds. Anyway, the next update will be from a whole other country. And don't worry, Monica, we're still trying to figure out how to fit Micronesia in! Take care all!

Replies: 1 Comment

Yay.. you guys are finally getting closer! don't forget to let me know when you are finally coming down to Melbourne... Gareth's party will be on the 20th December would definately love to see you there if you can make it around that time Posted by angie @ 11/30/2003 11:22 PM PST