Australia and New Zealand

This trip was fantastic! It would be impossible to write everything about it in the blog so I went ahead and wrote our trip memories in a word doc. If you didn't get it and would like it let me know. Just a warning, it's painfully long.

I'll give a readers digest version of the trip here on the blog. We went on this trip during Chinese New Year because Chris and the kids had a week off school and work. We decided to spend one week in Sydney and one week in New Zealand traveling around the north island in a motor home.

Australia was just awesome! We stayed on Manly beach on the Northern side of Sydney Harbor. Our apartment was right on the beach and we enjoyed every minute of it. We got to go into the city several times using a ferry which we all loved. We saw the opera house, the Sydney aquarium, took a cruise around the harbor in a tall ship, and went to Torongo Zoo. At the zoo we got to pet a kangaroo and a baby wallaby and then got to see a koala bear up close. We bought tons of T-shirts and boomerangs and even got a didgery doo. Gabe and Emily both learned how to boogie board there at Manly beach. Everyone was very friendly and we loved hearing the Aussie accent. Although, there in Australia ,WE are the ones with the AMERICAN accent.

New Zealand was quite an adventure. Chris did an awesome job driving the manual shift motor home on the left hand side of the street through extremely hilly and curvy roads. We spent one night north of Auckland in a place called Bay of Islands. There we went on a cruise through the bay and got to see and observe a pod of dolphins. The ocean was a bit rough so we couldn't get in and swim with them as was the plan if the water was calm. Nevertheless, the dolphins were spectacular as was the scenery in the bay. Next we went to Roturua in the central part of the north island. Here we got to see a Mori culture show where Chris got to be the "Chief" of our visiting tribe consisting of our family and a giant Chinese tour group. We also got to see some thermal grounds including a geyser and a boiling mud pool. Next we went to a place called Coromandel Peninsula where they filmed the second Narnia movie. The beach is called Cathedral Cove and it was absolutely the most beautiful place I have ever been. There was no one else there so we had our own private little paradise for a couple of hours. The next day we went to a beach called Hot Water Beach to spend our last day. Under the sand is a natural hot water spring and if you dig down a few inches the hot water comes up through the sand. We had our own little hot tub right there on the beach. The whole experience was amazing.

These are just the highlights of the trip. Obviously there are a lot of details I left out but all in all it was an experience of a lifetime and we feel so blessed and lucky to have been able to go. We would go back in a heart beat!