Better Late Than Never (Just found our last post from April 2011 in draft) Savannah in New Zealand.

On April 19, we arrived very late at night in Christchurch, New Zealand from Australia, and we are really looking forward to seeing our camper van tomorrow!

Our Camper Van

Today we went to get our camper van! It is so cool! When we were driving out of Christchurch, we saw a lot of ruined homes, stores, and restaurants from the recent earthquake.  It was really sad. After we left Christchurch, we did a lot of driving. New Zealand has such pretty scenery! We stopped in a little town for lunch, and we also went to a jewelry store, where we saw some very pretty, colourful shells from New Zealand called paua (pronounced pa wa) made into jewelry. We also went to a beach where there is a seal colony out on some far away rocks. There was one seal that was right on the beach. He was so cute! The beach was mostly rocks with little patches of water, where we found little shells, and mom even found a few pieces of paua. That night we stayed at our first camp site. It was pretty nice.

He looks innocent, but.....

Cat's Eye Shell found on the beach

Savannah with Blue Penguin (right before he was probably seal's dinner!)

We spent the next 9 days in the camper van. It was sooo fun! We drove a few hours every day. The scenery is amazing! We saw snow peaked mountains, beaches by the coast, lots of rainforest, and fields full of sheep and a few fields full of deer. It was really pretty. Every night we stayed in a different campsite. There was even one called Jackson’s Retreat. At my favorite campsite, they had some sheep, and we arrived right when they went out to give them some food (they mostly eat grass though), so they let us do it. They were so cute and ate right out of our hands!

Savannah feeding the sheep at camp site


 

Some other things we did/places we went were:

Shantytown: Shantytown was an old fashioned town, where we went gold mining, rode a steam train, and went in a lot of old fashioned shops.

Savannah, Jackson and Paul paning for specs of gold

Walks: While we were driving from camp site to camp site, we stopped at a lot of little walks. Most of them were through forests, full of leaves, moss covered trees, ferns,  and a few little waterfalls. They were all really nice, but my favorite two were the glacier walk and the waterfall walk. We got to walk right up to about 100 yards away from a glacier. It was really cool. On the other walk we saw the Purakaunui Falls, which was a really cool, three stage waterfall. It was beautiful.

Purakanui Falls

Waterfalls on our hike to Franz Josef Glacier

Savannah at Franz Josef Glacier

Whale Watching: One day we went on a whale watching trip. The view from the boat was awesome! We could see all water on one side, mountains and lots of green on the other, and the town behind us. We saw the back of the same sperm whale twice, and when they dive down we saw its tail. They told us that the whale is about 40 years old, he has been coming to that same spot for 20 years, he is about 16 meters long, and he weighs about 20 – 30 tons! We also saw some fur seals, Hector’s dolphins, and albatrosses. The albatrosses were huge! Overall, it was a really successful trip and we were very lucky to see a sperm whale. 

Sperm Whale's Back

Whale Tale

Albatross

 Scenery Boat Ride: One day we went on another boat, but this time for the scenery. First we took a very short boat ride across a lake, then a short bus ride to another boat on Doubtful Sound, where we went through the sound to the end where it connects with the sea, turned around came back, and then took the bus and short boat ride again. All of that took the whole day. Doubtful Sound is very beautiful. It is narrow with mountains on either side. Some mountains have snow on top, and they all have a lot of trees, moss, and bushes. We saw lots of albatrosses, including one that flew so low over the boat that we could see its face perfectly and understand just how big they are! There were also some dolphins, including a mother and a calf, but all we saw were some spouts. In Doubtful Sound, the driver turned off all of the engines and generators, and we all stood in silence. We could hear a few birds and a small waterfall. It was really peaceful.  We also spent most of a day driving to Milford Sound where Lord of the Rings was filmed. It was really pretty, and very similar to Doubtful Sound.

View of the start of Doubtful Sound

Lake Manopouri

Where Doubtful Sound meets the Ocean

Hydro Electric Plant: On our way back from Doubtful Sound, we went to a hydro electric plant. We had to drive through a tunnel in a mountain to get there. A hydro electric plant is an electric plant where they make electricity, using the power of water. In this hydro electric plant, they use the water from Doubtful Sound. The driver actually pointed out the tunnel where the water goes in, and the other where the water goes out. The water goes down and turns the generator, which produces electricity. We got to see the big room where the generators are. It was really interesting!

Hydroelectric Plant

Fossilized Forest: We went to a beach that was covered with old tree stumps and trees that fell over when the forest was destroyed. You couldn’t really tell it was a forest, but once we knew what we were looking for, we started to see the shaped of stumps and fallen down trees.

Savannah at the petrified forest remains

There was a really cool beach that was covered in pieces of driftwood. The beach was on the Tasman Sea, and when we got out of the camper van I stuck my toes in. It was freezing!

Savannah on Bruce Bay

We went to Nugget Point, where there was a great view of the ocean from a cliff. We saw a few birds, but the best part (other than the scenery), were the seals. We could see a few seals and pups on some rocks, and in the water there were a bunch of them splashing and playing around. Two of them even leaped out of the water and started chasing each other around!

Savannah at Nugget Point

We have to leave the camper on April 29th L. We had a really long drive from Oamaru back to where we started in Christchurch. In Christchurch, we returned our camper van and then went to the airport where we caught our very short flight to Auckland.

Savannah does not want to leave the camper van!

On our first day in Auckland we went to the Auckland Zoo, which used to be on a T.V. show that we watched in Australia, but the last one ever made was two years ago. We did recognize some of the cages though. We saw all the normal zoo animals, (lions, tigers, seals, birds, monkeys, etc.) but we also saw some other cool exhibits. In one cage they had some baboons, and they were making a ton of noise, hooting and grunting and screeching. They had big balloon looking things on their throats. We also saw a show about the wildlife in New Zealand, and we got to see a kiwi in daylight! It was really cool. We also saw two kiwis in their cage, poking around with their beaks, but that was in the dark. It was a really cool zoo!

The elusive Kiwi

The Lorikeets are beautiful

The next day we drove from Auckland to Rotorua. When we got to Rotorua, we went to Te Puia, where they have some geysers. Rotorua is known for its geysers. At Te Puia we took a tour, where we saw some geysers and mud pools, and we learned a lot about Maori culture. Maoris are the Aborigines of New Zealand. We saw some of their wood carvings, a meeting houses, an old food storage house, and learned a lot about their culture. The wood carvings were really good, and the meeting room and storage house are really ornately carved. On our way to the geysers and mud pools, we stopped at the kiwi house. All we saw was the back of a kiwi under a log. The geysers were really cool, but my favorite part was the mud pools. It was a big pool of mud, and in a few different spots, a little bit of mud would spurt up in the air as much as one foot! Our guide told us that the mud was 95 degrees Celsius. On the way back, we stopped at the kiwi house. After looking around and waiting for a while, there was a ton of dirt that started flying from the corner, and a few minutes later a kiwi came out of the corner. He walked all around his cage looking for food. We stayed in Rotorua that night.

Today we were driving back Auckland from Rotorua, and we stopped at some caves where they had glowworms! At the caves, we took a tour where we looked around the caves a little bit, learned about the glowworms, and then took a boat ride through the part where there are tons and tons of glowworms! The caves were really cool, and we learned a lot about glowworms, but the best part by far was the boat ride. It were in complete darkness and silence, and the roof was covered in little dots of lights from the glowworms. It was amazing! It was like looking at the stars in the Sahara. We arrived in Auckland later that night.

On May 4 we left New Zealand and took a 13 hour flight to L.A. It was a beautiful country, and I would definitely go back.  On the same day we left, we landed in LA, and then on May 5 we flew to Boston.

In Boston we met Hannah and Sarah Lang at a hotel, and they brought DIXIE!!!! We were all so excited! We spent the night in the hotel, and then the next day we flew to North Carolina.

Hannah, Savannah, Dixie (and MiniPig!) Reunited

We were all really excited to see our house and our old furniture after so long. Now, a few weeks later, we are pretty settled in and both Jacksons and I went to school for a while, but now both schools are out for the summer.

It was an amazing trip, and an unforgettable experience, and now, although we miss out friends in Bermuda, we are happy to be in our new house in the USA!

Savannah in Australia Part 3 (Sydney)

This is my last blog in Australia as Sydney is our last stop. When we arrived on April 10, we went to our apartment in Darling Harbor.

View from Apartment in Darling Harbour

The next morning we brought a ticket for the Hop On Hop Off Sightseeing Bus.  We went around the city, and we got off a few times. When we got off at The Rocks, we walked around a little and went to some Aboriginal art galleries. We had lunch at Circular Quay, where they have lots of seagulls, but they also have a few ibises!

Ibis

After lunch we went to the Sydney Opera House! It was really awesome to see it up close! We realized that the sails are covered in tiles, which we didn’t know before. We had a drink right outside, so we could look at it. We tried to get tickets to see the Australian Ballet perform Madame Butterfly, but all the tickets were sold out.  They told us we could come and stand in line and hope that someone turned some tickets in. 

Savannah in front of Sydney Opera House

Tile Sails of the Sydney Opera House

 After we saw the Opera House, we went to The Botanical Gardens. The gardens are really pretty, and there are some great views of the city. In one part, there is a big tree full of sulfur crested cockatoos! The tree is full of berries that they like to eat. The berries have a skin, a little juice, and a pit. The cockatoos rip of the skin, crack open the pit, and eat the seed inside. You can hear lots of cracking noises. The cockatoos in the tree drop a lot of little branches covered in berries, and there are a lot of cockatoos on the ground eating the dropped berries. If you collect the berries, there are a lot of cockatoos a few meters from the tree that will eat out of your fingers and climb all over you. Jack, mom, and I fed them, and dad had some on his knee.

Botanical Gardens - cockatoos in the tree

As we continued to walk around the gardens, we noticed that there are thousands of large bats hanging in the trees. There were tons of trees full of them! At the gift shop they told us that they are grey headed flying foxes. Later, on the bus home, we saw them flying around the city on their nightly hunt for food.

Bats in the Botanical Gardens

Grey Flying Fox

Bat in flight

The next day we went to Bondi Beach, which is a famous beach known for its surfing. Jack and I went swimming, and there were some pretty good waves! Unfortunately, it was too cold to stay in for a long. Our last stop was an opal and pearl cutters, where mom looked at some opals. We also went to another opal jeweler down the street.

Bondi Beach



Savannah and Jackson having fun in the freezing waves at Bondi Beach

The following morning our first stop was the Sydney Harbor Bridge, which we walked across. The views from the bridge are amazing! It was a great view of the water, the skyline, and the Opera House. We spent the afternoon in the Botanical Gardens and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Paul, Anne, Savannah & Jackson - Sydney Harbour Bridge

Savannah about to walk over the Sydney Harbour Bridge

In the gardens we saw a Wollemi Pine that until 1994 recently had only been found fossilized and was thought to be extinct.

Savannah with the Wollemi Pine

We also saw more bats, but around dusk they started getting really restless and flying around a little bit. We also saw them getting a drink at a pond. The way they drink is really cool. They fly really close to the water, get their chests wet, fly off, and lick their chests dry. We talked to one of park rangers who told us a little more about them, including that there are over 15,000 bats just in the park. They are considered a huge problem because when they grip with their claws they kill the trees, so next month they plan to move them to another place by making continuous noise. They just need to make sure that they don’t move to people’s backyards. We were really lucky that we saw them before they left!

We also went back to the cockatoos, and this time I let them on my legs. Once, one jumped on my shoulder and really scared me! They were a little cheeky, because when they were ready for another berry, they would give you a gentle peck.

After we tore ourselves away from the cockatoos, we headed to the Sydney Opera House. On the way, we saw the bats leave for their nightly hunt. At the opera house, mom and I were the first in line waiting in case there were any tickets returned. Luckily, after a really long wait, WE GOT TICKETS!!!!!! We were so excited! We went to see Madame Butterfly the ballet in the Sydney Opera House! We had great seats and the dancing was amazing, even though the end of the story is sad. That was an AWESOME night and definitely the highlight of Sydney.

On our way to see Madame Butterfly (ballet) in the Sydney Opera House!

The next day we went to the Sydney Aquarium, which has the largest collection of Australian marine life in the world. Definitely the best part of the aquarium was the platypus. He was really cute! We learned that platypuses and echidnas are the only mammals that lay eggs.  We also didn’t know that platypuses are venomous. We saw lots of fish, a gigantic crab, a really big seahorse, some baby sharks, some jelly fish, and we also walked in an underwater tunnel. In the tunnel we saw sting rays, a lot of different kinds of sharks, lots of really pretty and colourful fish, and some dugongs. Dugongs are related to manatees, and look a lot like them. It was an awesome aquarium!





Dungong is related to the manitee

The following day we went to the fish market. The fish market is the second biggest fish market in the world . Unfortunately, there is only a small section for tourists, and the main part is only for auctions.  In the section we went in, we saw big fish, small fish, lobsters, crabs, crab legs, eels, mussels, shrimp, clams, already prepared food, and a few restaurants. We had really good fish and chips there, before going to an Aboriginal art gallery. At the gallery, we looked at a lot of paintings, and my parents bought one that they really liked. After the gallery, it started raining, so we stayed inside the rest of the afternoon. When it stopped, we went and had dinner at Chinatown.

The next day it was pretty rainy, so we went to the Australian Museum. It was a very interesting museum, with displays about Aborigines, skeletons, what lives in Australians backyards, Australian animals, Australian birds and insects, and dinosaurs. They had a special exhibit on Birds of Paradise, about the birds of Papa New Guinea. Later that night, we were really lucky that the rain stopped long enough for the fireworks in Darling Harbor. That was really cool. The best part was the fact that they were really close, and we could see them launching off little platforms in the water in front of us. It was a great night!

The next morning we went to the Maritime Museum. The coolest thing at the museum were the real boats that you can go in. We got to go on a naval ship and a Tall Ship that was once used as a cargo ship.  The coolest one was a submarine. We went inside, saw the humungous torpedoes and also looked in the periscope. The museum was really cool too, with a lot of interesting exhibits. The most interesting one was about the child immigrants from England that came to Australia.

Today we went to see our last Australian animals at the Taronga Zoo, which is known for its incredible views of Sydney. We had to take a ferry from Darling Harbor to the zoo, which is an island across from Sydney that connects to Sydney by the Harbor Bridge. At the zoo, we took a cable car up to the animals. The view from the cable car was spectacular! They had the usual animals, giraffes, elephants (including a baby!), zebras, etc., but the best part was the Australian animals. We saw some very active platypuses, sleeping wombats, lots of very pretty birds, but no koalas L.  There were kangaroos, cassowaries, and our first Tasmanian devil! He was lying down, but sometimes he would get up and walk around. We also went to a bird show. They showed a few different birds doing different things. The galah flew from the girl to a guy in the top row of the audience who was holding out a gold coin, and the galah took it, flew back to the girl, and dropped it in her shirt pocket, and when she took it out and gave it to him, he took it back and put it on the guys hand. With the next bird, the girl put an egg the size of an ostrage’s egg and a rock on the floor, and he picked the rock up in his beak and slammed it down on the egg repeatedly, until he could use his beak to fully open it. They didn’t teach him to do that; it was just natural instinct, because in the wild when they eat one of those, it fills them up so they can go a few days without food, and it is extremely nutritious as well. Another bird we saw was the biggest eagle species in the world with a wing span off up to two meters long. It was a great zoo.

Unfortunately, we leave Australia, today on April 19.  We had lunch at a restaurant on Darling Harbour before heading to the airport.  It was sad to say goodbye to Australia and all its animals and the fabulouse city of Sydney.  I had a great time and really, really hope to come back someday.

Savannah in Australia Part 2 (Whitsunday Islands, Fraser Island and Brisbane)

            We are still in Australia and we just flew from Melbourne to the Whitsunday Islands. Our flight arrived on Hamilton Island.  It was raining, and we had to take a ferry to the mainland where we were staying at Airlie Beach. Our apartment was really nice, and from our balcony, we had a nice view of the rainforest.

Since we were sick and it rained for most of the time, we didn’t really do very much, but here is what we did do:

Definitely the coolest thing we did was snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. We got up, went down to the ferry terminal, and took a boat out the Great Barrier Reef. On the way, the boat people tried to talk everyone out of going because the waters were really rough and they said 80 percent of the people the day before got sick. Luckily, we had seasickness pills with us and none of us got sick, although many other people on the boat got sick.  The staff ran around with paper bags for all the sick people. The waves really were rough. When we got there, we took a semi-submersible boat with glass on the sides and saw some of the reef. The coral was amazing, and the fish were really colourful and pretty. The coolest thing was the giant clams. The colours were amazing! Next we went snorkeling. Since there are sometimes jellyfish, we had to wear full body sting suits. The water was a little choppy, so we pulled ourselves around on the ropes. We saw more coral, fish, giant clams, and even a huge fish rolling around in the sand. The water was too cold to stay in for very long though. After we dried off, we went to the underwater observatory where we saw some fish, and then we did the semi-submersible one more time. Then we took the boat back and the waves were just as bad on the way back, but it was still such an amazing day!

The Great Barrier Reef

The other extremely awesome thing that happened was that we had about twenty sulfur – crested white cockatoos come onto our balcony. We fed them nuts, and a few even jumped on dads head, shoulders, arms, and when he was sitting down, his knee. I fed a few, but I wouldn’t let them climb on me. It was so cool how wild cockatoos would just sit on your shoulder and eat from your fingers!

The cockatoos find our balcony

Savannah works up her nerve to feed a cockatoo

Sulfur-crested cockatoo

The cockatoos put their crests up when they land

Savannah makes a lot of new friends

At the apartments, they had a ping pong table not too far from our room, and we played a lot of ping pong. We really enjoyed having a week of home cooking. Eventually, you get really sick of eating out, so we had a week of the food we would eat in a normal week at home. It was so good!

The only downside to the week (other than being sick of course) was the fact that it rained every day.

After a week in Airlie Beach, we flew to Brisbane, and then drove to the place where we catch a ferry to Fraser Island. We arrived on the island really late, and we drove to our hotel. Fraser Island is really cool and unique, because it is the world’s largest sand island (and a world heritage site).

Fraser Island

On our first day, dad woke up really early to go on a bird walk. Down by the beach, he saw dingo footprints and lots of little crabs with little blue bodies. Closer to the hotel, he saw two kingfishers. When the rest of us got up, we went kayaking in the mangroves. Mom, dad, Jack, and I were all in the same kayak (which was really a canoe), and our guide and two other people were in the other one.  We kayaked from down the beach and into the mangroves, where we learned about the different types of mangroves.

Mangroves on Fraser Island

Savannah & Paul on the canoe

After kayaking, we had lunch, and at lunch there were a lot of kookaburras hanging around, and a waiter told us that they are known to attack plates and steal food.

kookaburra checking out our lunch

After lunch, Jackson and I went swimming in the pool. After we went swimming, Dad and Jack went fishing, down by the dock by the beach, and they each caught one.

On our second and last day, we got up early to go to the beach. We looked for dingo footprints, but we didn’t see any. We did see the crabs that dad saw, pretty small with orangey – red legs and blue bodies. They dig into the wet sand when they feel the vibration of your footsteps when you come close, but if you stand still long enough, they come out and you can catch them and let you walk on your hand.

Soldier crabs on Fraser Island

After the beach, we rented a 4WD, which are the only cars allowed on the island because of the roads. The roads are like mud tracks! They are extremely bumpy, there are a lot of holes, and parts of it are flooded with huge puddles. The roads are surrounded by lots of trees and green, and there are some really cool trees called scribbly gums, which are really light colored tree trunks and branches that look like a little kid drew lots of scribbles on it. The scribbles are made by scribbly gum moths.

Scribbly Gum Tree

Our first stop was Lake Makenzie, which is often rated in the top ten  prettiest beaches in the world.

Lake Makenzie

The next place we went was 75 mile beach, which is on the Pacific Ocean. On Fraser Island, you can’t swim in the ocean because there are tons of sharks and treacherous currents, but inland there are over 100 small fresh water lakes and places to swim. We drove down most of the length of the beach in our car. On the beach, we saw the Maheno shipwreck, which was a luxury steamship that was being towed past the island but during a storm the rope snapped and the ship got wrecked and washed up on the beach.

Shipwreck on Fraser Island

We also saw some beautiful and colorful sandstone formations called “the Cathedrals”.

The "Cathedral" at Fraser Island

The coolest thing that we saw on the beach was …………………… a WILD DINGO!!!!!!! It was soooooooo cool! He was just trotting down the beach! We followed him a little bit, but he went inland to the underbrush.

Dingo on 75 mile beach on Fraser Island

Wild purebred dingo on Fraser Island

We also went swimming in Eli Creek, which is a really long, thin, shallow freshwater creek, and because of the current, it is like a lazy river. We ran up, and floated down a couple times, and we saw a few fish and a few small eels.

Savannah was the first to go in the cold water at Eli Creek

Savannah & Jackson floating down the (freezing) river

We also stopped at a store for water, and the store owner showed us a dingo that sometimes hangs outside of his store. He named him Rex. Since its illegal, he doesn’t feed him, but Rex still likes to hang out outside. The owner also told us that he hadn’t left the island for three years! When we went back outside and in the car, dad saw a huge spider and went out to take a picture. When he was out of the car, Rex walked by really close to him!

After the 75m beach, we went back to the hotel, where we went to a dingo talk, where we learned a bit about the dingos on Fraser Island.  The dingos on Fraser Island are the only pure breed of dingos in Australia, since they are isolated on an island.

The next morning we had to catch a ferry back to the mainland, where we drove to Australia Zoo, which is the late Steve Irwin’s zoo. The zoo had tons of animals, some of my favorites including our first Tasmanian devil, cassowaries (which look like something out of Jurassic Park), a very young koala, an echidna (which looks like a porcupine with a long nose), and we got to hear a koala make a noise for the first time. When a koala was trying to get up into a tree, there were a few other koalas in the tree, and one of them didn’t want him in the tree so he made a noise that was kind of a mix between a bird squawk, a grunt, and a growl. It was a weird sound for such a cute animal! We also fed kangaroos again, and there was one that grabbed my hand with his hands to get the food closer to his mouth. There was also a tiger show where they threw the tiger’s toy in the water right by the window, and he jumped after it. The splash was huge! We also saw two zoo keepers walking a cheetah on a leash, and there was another keeper walking a wombat! The absolute best part of the zoo, even the best part of Australia, was when we got to cuddle a koala! It wasn’t too heavy, probably the weight of a bowling ball, and very warm and fuzzy, and its claws were really sharp. It was awesome! At the end, we went to the animal hospital, where people bring in animals when they find them injured. In the hospital, we saw some people operating on a koala! It was an amazing zoo!

The weird looking cassoway bird

Savannah feeding a kangaroo

Savannah holding a cuddly koala



Savannah feeding an elephant at Ausralia Zoo



The wombat is quite cute!

 When we got to Brisbane, we went out to dinner, and from where we were eating outside, we could see a tree full of bats! Since it was getting a little dark, they were starting to wake up and fly around a little bit.  The next morning we flew to Sydney.  We didn’t get to spend enough time in Brisbane L