Beauty and uncertainty

Day 19: Sydney… we hope!

Today, we had to finish up Great Ocean Drive, get back to Melbourne by noon to drop off our rental car, and make it to the airport for our afternoon flight to Sydney! A little stressful, but nothing we can’t handle!

We got up before dawn and headed out on our drive as soon as we saw the sun rising over the ocean outside our window. The sunrise was fabulous. We stopped at a couple of lookouts, saw waterfalls, drove through the rainforest, and generally tried to get through the sights on our tight schedule.

Today’s drive didn’t take as long as yesterday’s (less sights to see) and we opted not to do any hikes for lack of time. We got back to Melbourne in time to drop off our car, book a hotel in Sydney for tonight, and head to the airport for our flight.

We got to the packed airport (flights have been cancelled left, right, and centre because of this volcanic ash cloud) and just prayed that our flight would go. We checked into our flight, and waited at the airport for news. And as we feared, flights started getting cancelled around us, but this time due to “engineering” issues with our airline! Ack!

With our flight getting delayed and delayed and delayed, we started getting really worried. At one point, they even started boarding our flight, but then actually “unboarded” it because of issues with the plane! Then, they cancelled the Sydney flight after ours, and another couple of flights around the country as well. We were ready to leave Melbourne, but couldn’t!

Finally, after the two remaining flights took off, the last announcement of the night came. Our flight was… a go! As soon as they opened that gate, we ran onto the tarmac and rushed the plane before they could change their mind!

And, thankfully, we did take off. Since we were so late arriving in Sydney, we were also thankful we already had a hotel booked for the night and didn’t have to search for one! We got to our hotel, dropped off our stuff, had some dinner in Chinatown, and went back to pass out, yet again, right before vowing to spend tomorrow doing nothing, or close to it.

Sunrise over the coast

 Sandstone rock formation

Great Ocean Drive

Day 18: Great Ocean Road

We’re both not feeling too well, so we decided to take it easy this morning and leave at a leisurely pace. Great Ocean Road is a 300km drive along the coast near Melbourne, with spectacular views and sights to see along the way. The “mountains” are actually limestone and sandstone stack formations that have eroded over millions of years, sometimes leaving pieces of these formations in the middle of the ocean like lone pillars.

We started the drive in Warrnambool itself, with a visit to the ocean and the soft, soft sands on the beach, where the whales come to calve during the winter, and which is also one of the many surfer spots along the coast. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any whales (but we did see surfers) and we couldn’t stay too long, since we had a lot of driving to do today.

We moved on and stopped at beautiful lookouts along the drive, seeing gorgeous beaches and formations in the waters all along the coast. We were so happy to be back in nature!

When we stopped at an information centre part of the way in to find out what there was to see, we were told we would need days to see everything (which we didn’t have)! So we rushed out of there, and decided to see as much as we could and get as far as we could on the drive before sundown. We rushed to some spectacular sights, and spent some time by the ocean at sundown before deciding to call it a day. In about 10 hours spent driving today, we only covered about 170km of the 300km drive (not including the extra 150km it will take to get to Melbourne)! There were just so many things we wanted to enjoy!

Finally, we drove through rainforests out to a small town and decided to break there for the night. We roamed various hotels and motels for rates and chose one with a view of the ocean (which we didn’t see because it was night)! We had dinner and just relaxed. More driving tomorrow!

Our little rock stack (we're building them everywhere!)

A cove, a sandstone formation, and the ocean

A formation aptly named London Bridge 

(it fell down about 20 yrs ago, stranding two people on the remaining island

- they were saved a few hours later)

Thousands of "Stars"

Day 5: Waitomo Glowworm Caves

We got up early this morning to catch our bus from Whangarei to Auckland, where we headed to the airport (and met the same Indian bus driver from before – who hooked us up with a massively discounted fare) and picked up our rental car. In NZ, the driver sits on the right of the car and they drive on the left side of the road! With two days of driving ahead of us, you can imagine the tension!

We headed off to Waitomo, a town about 2.5 hrs south of Auckland. The drives here are just surreal. You can see cows and sheep (and sometimes deer and chickens) everywhere, just grazing on hectares upon hectares of bright green grass. They say the grass is always greener on the other side, but in the case of NZ - it's actually true! The grass IS greener here! On our drive, we also saw a rainbow (yay!) and not only did we see the rainbow, we saw the entire thing, end to end - and one of the ends was in the valley right beside us as we drove. So we were actually IN the end of the rainbow - we were IN the pot of gold! It seemed quite befitting, considering the beauty arond us!

So with a very hectic and tight schedule (in which even a minor delay could through everything off) - we finally reached Waitomo to see the Glowworm Caves. We reached just in time for one of the last tours! The walking tour took us through and down a cave about 48 feet below the ground, through a pathway created naturally by rivers running through it many (many) years ago. The caves were limestone and you could see stalagmites and stalagtites throughout. It was just gorgeous! Unfortunately, we couldn’t take any pictures (though it seems like the guide could have been bribed otherwise!)

The limestone, although beautiful, wasn’t the main attraction… it was the glowworms! Glowworms are basically insects that live in the caves and that go through five phases of life. When in their larva phase, they create a little hammock in which they hang at the top of the cave and then set out 20 little mucous fishing lines under their hammock. They emit a neon blue light from their tail, which attracts their prey, and when one gets caught, they pull up the fishing line and – dinner! In the caves, we were taken on a boat ride on the underground river, and the ceiling of the cave was filled with thousands upon thousands of these beautiful blue lights – like thousands of stars a few feet above us in a night sky!

After the tour, we went to a little scenic walk that a guide had told us about. It was pretty dark out, though, and the walk was unlit in the middle of the forest so, with flashlights in hand, we did most of the walk, but headed back out very soon, as the darkness got the better of us!

Anyhoo, after Waitomo, we hopped back onto our tight schedule and made the two-hour drive to Rotorua, a town built around its active volcanic areas. We got to our hostel, dropped off our stuff in our room (that looks like a jail cell or solitary confinement!), and got something to eat (in the only restaurant open in town at 9PM – Korean)! After being in four cities in one day, we are exhausted, but still very excited!