Amy and I haven't been back to North America to see family since we got married in 2007. We've been talking for a while about taking a trip back, and we've finally got everything in place to do that. Not inclined to do anything by half, our itinerary is now roughly:

• fly Christchurch - Auckland - Vancouver
• 5 days in Vancouver/Victoria (see family etc)
• fly Vancouver - Denver - Dallas
• 1 day in Dallas (see more family)
• drive Dallas - Austin
• 5 days in Austin (SXSW and NTN!)
• fly Dallas - Frankfurt (with almost all day for lunch in Frankfurt) - Dublin
• 1 day in Dublin
• train Dublin - Cork
• 5 days in southern Ireland (see friends)
• fly Cork - London - Reykjavik
• 9 days in Iceland!
• fly Reykjavik - London
• 2 days in London
• fly London - Frankfurt - Tokyo
• 2 days in Tokyo
• fly Tokyo - Christchurch

This is definitely the "Islands of the World Tour 2009". We're going to hit 6 of the top 20 largest islands in the world, plus the slightly smaller Vancouver Island:

• 7. Honshu (Japan)
• 9. Great Britain
• 12. South Island (New Zealand)
• 14. North Island (New Zealand) (sort of cheating, we only fly through Auckland)
• 18. Iceland
• 20. Ireland
• 43. Vancouver Island

We bought the tickets yesterday so we're definitely going. I'm stoked. Questions:

• What's the best airport-accessible place to have lunch in Frankfurt? Arrive 9am, leave 4pm.
• Anybody been to Iceland? Experiences to relate? Places not to miss?
• How best to see an infintesimal part of Tokyo in two days?

Things are suddenly moving fast. It looks like Amy and I are going to try to make it to Austin in time for SXSW (that means leaving Canada around march 4). We haven't got our paperwork for New Zealand completed yet, but our plan is to go to NZ anyway and I will enter as a visitor, while Amy can enter using her "Working Holiday" visa which is good until this July. We can complete the NZ immigration paperwork while being physically in NZ, so that will work out.

But we'd both really like to be in Austin for NTN@SXSW! We'll drive from Victoria to Austin again, and the Insight will be for sale in Austin once we get there.

I've finished culling, sorting, and organizing the photos that I took during our trip. There are 339 photos, 132 of which are in the "60 mi Gallery" and probably not all that interesting except as a curiosity. That leaves 207 actual pictures of potentially interesting things.

USA Southwest 2005 Photo Gallery

Enjoy!

During our recent trip, I wasn't necessarily as diligent about updating everybody about our current position as I could have been. Therefore, you are excused if you aren't familiar with the exact route we took. In an effort to remedy this situation, I was playing with the Google Maps API, which is really very cool, and created a map that will help you visualize our trip.

http://hewgill.com/travel/usa-southwest/ or open map in new browser window

The blue line is the approximate path that we took, and the red markers are cities or towns or campgrounds where we stayed at least one night. You'll have to zoom in a bit using the standard Google Maps controls (sorry, keyboard shortcuts don't work right now) to get a better view.

We left the GPS on for as much of the trip as we possibly could. Whenever the track log filled up (every two to four days of driving, typically) I would download the track log to my laptop and clear it to start over. In this way, we have a detailed track log of our entire trip containing over 120,000 unique points!

This was far too many points for Google Maps to draw in a single polyline. So I had to massage the data a bit and reduced it to just under 200 points. This is why, when you zoom in a bit, it looks a bit chunky. However, it does give a very good representation of our trip and especially most of the little side trips we took.

I'm now back to working on the photos. For the last week or so, we've been very busy preparing the paperwork for our New Zealand immigration. It's a ton of work! But this morning we sent off the bulk of the paperwork via FedEx to London, so that is no longer on the top of my todo list.

We finally made it to Canada! We're now in Vancouver at my brother's place on the 17th floor with a lovely view of the mountains. Well, it would be a lovely view if it weren't overcast!

I think we left off the last entry in the San Francisco area. We drove north and stopped in Ukiah and Eureka in California. (Once we hit Eureka the weather turned rainy and there hasn't been a single day without at least some rain since then.) The Oregon coast was really cool but windy and rainy too, so we just stopped in Coos Bay there. Then we spent two days in Portland, then two days in Seattle, then arrived in Vancover a couple of days ago.

Major things we saw and did were:

- Fetzer winery where we picked up a few bottles of wine
- Samoa Cookhouse in Eureka, for lunch, dinner, and then breakfast the next day (because it's so good)
- Redwood National and State Park
- Devil's Punchbowl
- mini-tour of local breweries in Portland
- Multnomah Falls
- Pike Place Market
- Seattle Underground tour
- original Starbuck's location
- Museum of Flight

I've probably forgotten some stuff again. It happens. We have pictures, somewhere. Once we get to Victoria (our final destination for a while), I'll set up my desktop machine and start working on getting everything into our photo galleries. That will no doubt keep me busy for a while!

It's been nearly two weeks since my last update! Yes, I slack. But then again, internet connectivity has been sporadic for us here in California. Since my last update we have done no less than the following (I've probably forgotten something):

- visited the Chinese Theater in Hollywood
- driven Mulholland Drive
- stayed with my friend Scott and his family in Bakersfield, CA
- fixed the cruise control on the car
- ate at Mclintock's in Shell Beach, CA
- missed riding ATVs at the Pismo Beach sand dunes because of time constraints
- visited Montana de Oro State Park
- had some great hot dogs in Morro Bay, CA
- visited Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA
- drove across the San Joaquin Valley to Yosemite National Park
- hiked up to Vernal Falls
- hiked in to Mirror Lake (which isn't a lake at all this time of year because it's dry)
- drove up to Glacier Point
- missed seeing a bear and two cubs at Glacier Point by mere seconds as they went over a ridge
- left Yosemite a day earlier than planned so we could pack our tent up while it was still dry (it rained that night)
- drove back across the San Joaquin Valley to the coast
- visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium
- didn't drive the 17 Mile Drive because they wanted $8.50 just to drive it
- met thomasj in San Jose
- visited the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA
- had some great sushi at Totoro Sushi
- visited the Big Basin Redwood State Park southwest of San Jose
- saw Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit
- visited Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco
- ate clam chowder from a sourdough bread bowl at Boudin Bakery
- stayed with our friends Eric and Sarah in Hayward, CA
- ate Dim Sum in chinatown
- skipped riding on a cable car because $5 per person, one way, is a bit steep
- walked up to Coit Tower to take pictures
- stopped and watched some setup for filming of the movie Pursuit of Happyness

We now have put at least 6720 miles on the car since we left. Having the cruise control again is so much nicer, and sure helps with the fuel efficiency too.

The one thing we had booked ahead of time (back in august) was three days of camping in Yosemite, so most of our trip up until then had been roughly scheduled in order to put us in Yosemite at the right time. Now we have no more hard commitments, so depending on how soon we feel like getting to Canada we might be on the road for as little as a week more.

Once we get to Canada, the first order of business will be to collect all the paperwork necessary to send to the New Zealand immigration office so they can start processing my actual application for permanent residency. Depending on how long the paperwork takes, we expect to leave for New Zealand perhaps as early as the new year, or a month or two later. We would like it to be sooner rather than later, so we can catch the end of summer in the southern hemisphere. We plan to do this same sort of trip around New Zealand once we get there so we can figure out where we want to settle down.

We visited the San Diego Zoo on saturday and spent nearly all day there, and yet only saw about two thirds of the zoo. It's huge! There was low cloud the whole day so it was kind of chilly. After spending a couple of weeks in the desert, this was quite a change in weather.

On sunday we went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, which is really huge and would also take days to see. The weather was playing tricks on us again, starting off cold, then getting sunny and warm, then cold again with rain and thunderstorms. But we did the whole monorail tour and saw most of the animal exhibits.

Since it was raining, we decided to head north out of San Diego to the Los Angeles area. We're staying in Laguna Beach, which if you know LA, is way way on the south end of the sprawling metropolis. So what did we do today? We drove all the way to Hollywood (60 miles) to have lunch and visit the Chinese Theater. Then we had to head back south to Huntington Beach for a chiropractic appointment. Finally, we had some excellent sushi in Newport Beach, watched the full moon rise, and came back to Laguna Beach.

Tomorrow we're going to head back north through LA, stop in the Hollywood area again, then further north to Bakersfield.

We just arrived in San Diego from our previous stop in Yuma, AZ. We spent the last few days seeing much of the state of Arizona, from Sedona north of Phoenix to Biosphere 2 north of Tucson and all the way to Tombstone in the southeast.

Since we totally missed everything south of Flagstaff and north of Phoenix due to the state having no vacancy (see previous post), we were glad to be able to go back to the Sedona area for some sightseeing. We camped in the valley north of Sedona (and shared our campsite with a skunk!), and did some short hikes around the area.

Biosphere 2 is essentially a big greenhouse, the most airtight building in the world. In the early 90s after it was built, two teams of people lived inside the closed environment, breathing recycled air and drinking recycled water, for two years and six months respectively. Since then it has been a research center for such things as carbon dioxide studies, since it is the only place in the world where you can accurately control the amount of CO₂ in the air.

Tombstone is the site of the famous OK Corral shootout and is now a tourist town. We saw a corny reenactment of some shootouts from the wild west, wandered the streets where they still do horse and buggy tour rides, and saw the Boot Hill Cemetery where the victims of many shootouts are buried. Apparently they filled up the cemetery in just a few years!

Tomorrow we're going to visit the San Diego Zoo and around Balboa Park.

We intended to stay in Flagstaff last night, but every hotel room within a 100 mile radius is full for some reason! Since Phoenix was our eventual destination this week, we continued and finally at midnight found a place with a couple of rooms left.

I've also updated our trip maps. In particular, the USA map shows the most detail, but it's getting kind of crowded. I need to do at least two things: (1) add state boundaries, and (2) do something about the text. I'm also recording pretty much every step we take via the GPS - I have 3.5 megabytes of GPS track logs already and more to come. When we're done I'll plot those on a nice detailed map of the USA so it will be easy to see where we've been.

09/25 - We went into the Needles area of Canyonlands National Park today. We did a hike around the top of a mesa, seeing several viewpoints along the way. The Colorado river does flow through this park, but it hasn't carved quite as gaping a hole as the Grand Canyon. The canyons are nevertheless quite impressive. We hiked around the top of a mesa which was hot, dry, and rocky. We then continued north to the town of Moab.

09/26 - We went into Arches National Park and saw many of its famous features including Balanced Rock, North and South Windows, Double Arch, Landscape Arch, and the venerable Delicate Arch. We didn't hike the full mile right up to the arch itself, but instead went to a viewpoint just south of the arch. Using my binoculars as a makeshift zoom lens (holding it up against the camera lens), I got some nice photos of the arch.

09/27 - Since Moab is one of the best (or at least most popular) places in the (continental) US to 4WD, we decided to rent a Jeep and explore the trails. We got off to a late start around noonish, with a 40% chance of rain in the forecast. Most of the day it was beautiful weather, but we ran into some rain right near the end of the day. It certainly didn't spoil the day, we had a great time climbing steep switchbacks and bouncing along trails.

09/28 - We left Moab and headed toward Capitol Reef National Park. Capitol Reef is one of the lesser-known national parks in Utah, and it's mostly of interest to geologists. But it has several interesting narrow canyons, and some historical significance such as the "Pioneer Wall" where early explorers and settlers etched their names into the rock. We hiked up to a formation called "The Tanks" where rainwater collects in deep pools in a staircase-like arrangement.

09/29 - Next up was one of the places I really wanted to see - Bryce Canyon National Park. We did a few short hikes there and took lots of pictures, but decided not to camp because the altitude is pretty high and it was forecast to be cold that night. Instead, we decided to head toward Kanab, UT.

09/30 - We talked to some Germans a couple of nights before and they told us about a sandstone formation called "The Wave" in the Vermilion Cliffs wildnerness area. Apparently since this area is quite delicate, only 20 people per day are issued permits to hike into it. They told us how to obtain a permit, so we woke up at the crack of dawn and drove from Kanab to the ranger station. Ten people per day can get permits online six months in advance, and the other ten are picked in a lottery from whoever shows up in the morning. We decided to give it a shot. We showed up and found that the lottery is for the next day's permit instead of the same day. Regardless, about thirty people showed up and we didn't get in. So, we continued to the uninteresting town of Page, AZ and saw Horseshoe Bend. We had considered also going to see Antelope Canyon, a beautiful slot canyon in the area but we would have had to book tickets for the next day and we didn't feel like staying in Page any longer. So, we continued on to Zion National Park.

10/01 - Zion is pretty cool. One of the interesting things to do is "The Narrows", which is to hike up the narrow canyon through which the Virgin River flows. There is no specific trail, and the river occupies the canyon from wall to wall, so one must hike in the river itself. It's pretty cold! The deepest part was right at the beginning, about chest deep depending on where you step. We spent about two hours hiking upriver with no specific goal. Every turn revealed more canyon and more river. Finally we decided to head back and do something else (rivier hiking is tiring). We did one other short hike and then relaxed for the rest of the day.

10/02 - We did one more short hike in Zion before leaving. It seems that the hikes are either short walks up the side of the canyon, or long walks up the canyon itself. We then left Utah, passed through the northwest corner of Arizona briefly (we will return), and headed into Las Vegas one day early.

10/03 to 10/08 - In Vegas, we walked a lot, ate a lot, spent a lot, walked a lot, saw three Cirque du Soleil shows (Zumanity, O, and Mystère) and Danny Gans (not the best way for us to spend $200, don't bother unless you're over 60), played some blackjack, walked some more, then finally got the hang of driving where we wanted to go. Driving in Vegas isn't so bad really. Did I mention we did a lot of walking? We have had our fill of this crowded fantasy city and are ready to leave. Next up is the Grand Canyon and Arizona!

Wow, it's been forever since I've actually sat down and written a livejournal entry. I know I should do it more often, especially when you people are trying to follow our progress, but we never seem to have enough time. We manage to get internet connectivity every few days, but I'm a slacker and fail to update. How about this: Whenever we get net connectivity, I'll at least update and say where we are. Would that work?

Anyway, here is the daily summary of the whirlwind Colorado part of our trip.

( read about colorado )

Our adventures in Utah are coming up in the next post.

Last time I updated we were still in Houston. Since then, we went north to the Dallas area and stayed for three nights in Irving with Amy's friend Shannon. We saw some things in the Dallas area, including the place where JFK was shot and the Highland Park Village (which is apparently the first shopping mall in America). And we had some Steak 'n' Shake too (mmm, steakburger).

We left Irving on sunday and drove north to Tulsa to see Amy's mom. We saw a bit of Tulsa including some areas with huge multi-million-dollar homes. On monday we left Tulsa and visited Bixby where Amy's great-grandmother was buried a few months ago (she was about a week away from 105 years old when she died). We then took Route 66 to Claremore (a few miles northeast of Tulsa), just so we could say that we saw some of the famous road. Then we headed north through the backroads of Oklahoma, and then into Kansas, to Eureka where Amy was born. We visited the community hospital which was pretty quiet on a monday evening.

We had originally considered staying somewhere in Eureka, but we didn't see any place that really jumped out at us. So we continued west a bit more until we got to the El Dorado State Park, on the shore of El Dorado Lake. We drove around the campsites and selected one that was reasonably flat and quiet. Unfortunately, it was also fairly unprotected and there was a constant wind coming from the southeast all night. We had set the alarm for 6:45 in order to get up to see the sunrise at 7:05. All night the wind was blowing and rattling the tent around, and we also had to reinflate the air mattress several times during since it seems to have a leak in it somewhere (it didn't leak the last time we used it).

When the alarm went off this morning, we also heard a rumbling in the distance that didn't sound like traffic or a train. We found that we were indeed still in Kansas and it was a thunderstorm! The lightning was incredible and we got several great pictures. But it was certainly going to start raining any moment so we quickly packed everything in the car and got the tent down just as the rain started. It's a good thing we decided to get up early otherwise everything would have been really wet!

We continued west to Wichita, got gas for $2.65 per gallon (the cheapest we've seen so far), and stopped for breakfast. There is no wireless available in this Denny's, so I'll save this for now and post it later when we have a net connection.

Now we're in Dodge City, KS and found a nice dry motel for the night. With internet. The weather report shows thunderstorm and tornado warnings around where we were last night, so it's a good thing that we got this far west when we did!

Tomorrow, we're off north to meet up with I-70 and perhaps to camp in Goodland, KS. If the weather cooperates. If not, we figure it's not worth potentially getting drenched, just to camp.

We're finally on the road. The house is empty (it's still on the market!), some stuff has been shipped to my parents in Canada, the car is packed to the gills, and the new cruise control system is working great.

We spent last night in Houston (actually near Conroe) at Amy's dad's place. Tonight we're staying at Amy's friend Shannon's place in Dallas, where they have a fast fiber connection to the net.

I don't think it's really hit me yet, that I've actually left Austin, without plans to come back. Before it does, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank a bunch of people who deserve it. In no particular order:

• decibel45 for letting us borrow the Suburban for a couple of days to move around all kinds of stuff
• nugget for providing SlackerNOC hosting for my computer that receives weather radio streams (although the machine is set up, the streams are not yet active)
• bovineone for letting us store a few boxes of our stuff in a corner of a spare room of the cowhouse
• bumpertx, cowquat, _fool, ivo, lucky_mcgee, moonwick, snaxxx, Moose, and many others for buying stuff from us through gbay

I'm going to miss everybody who I've met over the last several years in Austin. But I would rather look forward to the future than dwell on the past. I'm really looking forward to this road trip, I'm looking forward to spending a couple of months in Canada, and I'm definitely looking forward to starting a new life on the other side of the planet with Amy.

We will try to keep the amyrtw.com maps page updated as often as possible, so you can follow our journey! We will also be updating our respective journals with stories from our trip.

I've been promising to post about our upcoming road trip and subsequent plans for a while. Now that it is about a week until we leave Austin, I figure I should send out an update to let everybody know what's going on.

The plan is to leave Austin by september 7 at the latest. By that time we will have sold everything we can, through either gbay or a garage sale, packed up and stored the stuff we eventually want to ship to New Zealand, and packed the Insight with a small amount of stuff for the road trip. The house will sell sometime (soon, we hope).

Our itinerary is roughly:

• Dallas, TX
• Tulsa, OK
• Eureka, KS
• Denver, CO
• Zion/Bryce Canyon National Parks, UT
• Las Vegas, NV
• Prescott, AZ
• Phoenix, AZ
• San Diego, CA
• Los Angeles, CA
• Bakersfield, CA
• Yosemite National Park, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Eureka, CA
• Portland, OR
• Mount Saint Helens, WA
• Seattle, WA
• Vancouver, BC
• Victoria, BC

We expect this to take just over two months and be about 5000 miles distance. We'll be camping and/or couchsurfing and/or staying in hotels. If you're on or anywhere roughly close to that route, let us know (some of the destinations above are already on the list to meet specific people). We'd love to stop by and say hi.

As mentioned, we're taking the Insight which should get a good solid 60 miles per gallon on the freeway. If the gas prices go up in Katrina's wake, the interstate freeways might be pretty empty. But, that's not a bad thing for us. Last week our predicted fuel budget was only about $300 so it won't matter too much even if it doubles.

Once we reach Canada, we're going to hang out at my parents' place in Victoria until my New Zealand paperwork is complete. Our current estimate for that is around december. When that is all approved, we will head to New Zealand to enjoy the rest of the summer there!

When we reach New Zealand, we will travel around the country for a couple of months and figure out where we want to live. Currently, Wellington and Christchurch are high on the list but we don't really know for sure yet.

I'm really excited about this trip and I'm glad I get to enjoy it with Amy. I'll miss everybody in Austin, but there are some things I won't miss very much (the heat, the traffic, the sprawl). The internet makes the world smaller, so nobody is ever more than an email away.

Finally, I have finished the big Peru trip report!

For the pictures-only tour, all the pictures are online in the Peru section of my photo gallery. The Highlights sub-album has 22 of the best ones if you want a really quick tour.

June 22. Amy's flight was a day before mine, so I took her to the airport for her flight to Lima.

June 23. I fly out of Austin to Atlanta and then to Lima. One other person from Austin (Carmen) was also flying on the same flight so I travelled with her. Fortunately I already knew the layout of the Atlanta airport, because we had to dash from one end of terminal A to the other end of terminal E! They were already boarding when we arrived at the gate and we were glad to have made the plane. When we arrived in Lima at midnight there was supposed to be a driver there to pick us up, but nobody showed up. We ended up getting a taxi and had a hair-raising ride through Lima to our hotel. Besides the usual speeding and total disregard for lane changes and traffic control, our taxi driver actually went through a red traffic light in front of an ambulance with emergency lights on coming the other way! The ambulance had to slow down to avoid a collision.

June 24. We had a free day in Lima because most of our group was arriving later. We met up with a couple of local people from CouchSurfing that Amy had arranged beforehand. Miguel took us to see the Barranco district and a pre-Inca mound (archaeological site) in the middle of Lima. Lourdes showed us how to make Pisco Sours (a margarita-like drink) and showed us more of the sights in Lima.

The Australia Zoo was pretty good. This is Steve Irwin's zoo so the main attraction was of course the crocodiles. Aside from the crocs, there were kangaroos, wallabys, wombats, emus, Tasmanian devils, and other uniquely Australian animals. There was no platypus though, so we had to find a different one to take a picture of.

We then started our quest for Big Things in earnest. Throughout Australia, people have built larger-than-life models of all kinds of strange things. Apparently it was all started by the Big Banana 40 years ago. You'll usually find these things at tourist type places. If we had the Big Things list beforehand, we could have found some north of Brisbane too.

We stopped at various places between Brisbane and Sydney, including Nimbin which is a small, very hippie town a couple of hours south of Brisbane. If the question is, how many steps did you take before somebody tried to sell you something, our answer was a surprisingly large 30 or 40 until the "cookie lady" found us. Jim said he didn't even get his foot out of the car.

In addition to the places we stayed, we also visited the Glass House Mountains, Rainbow Beach, South West Rocks and the Trial Bay Gaol, Emerald Beach, and probably some other places.

We arrived in Sydney on the evening of the 24th, and managed to find our hotel without a map, knowing only that it was in Coogee which was south of Bondi. Christmas day was cloudy and overcast, so we met up with Nicola (who Amy worked with in Fishery Falls) and drove up into the Blue Mountains. Unfortunately we didn't reach above the cloud layer, so it was quite foggy and we didn't get to see much. We had set out to find four more Big Things, but were unsuccessful on all counts.

Boxing day in Sydney was very nice, with clear blue skies. We went down to the harbour to watch the start of the Sydney to Hobart sailboat race, but unfortunately we were in the wrong place (the race started further out toward the ocean). We did see the boats but didn't realize that was the starting line at the time. We got some good pictures of the opera house and bridge.

One of the things we had heard was a must-do was the "bridge climb". It is apparently a bit expensive but worth it. It is a 3.5 hour climb to the top of the Harbour Bridge, where there is apparently an excellent view. However, after inquiring about the details, we found that you could not carry anything loose at all, including your own camera. They would be happy to sell you pictures from their photographer, of course. It also cost nearly AU$200 per person, which we felt was unreasonably expensive. We decided to do the $8.50 walk up one of the pylons instead.

We drove out to Manly Beach and took the Manly Ferry back to Circular Quay. The ferry certainly does give a good view of the harbour.

The next day we returned the rental car (after 4454 km) and wandered around looking for a place to eat lunch. Amy had an idea, and pointed up. So we ate at the restaurant on top of the Sydney Tower. It's a rotating platform, doing one revolution in 70 minutes. We took our time and were there for about 90 minutes, as we wanted to see the whole view. They had an excellent buffet lunch - I tried emu and camel for the first time (I had tried kangaroo the night before). I thought the smoked emu was good, the camel was chewy and not so good.

Since we ate lunch with the best view in the city (better than the top of the bridge!), we ended up not doing the walk up the bridge pylon, mostly due to lack of time.

I saw a ton of stuff in the 2.5 weeks I was there, but it was still nowhere near enough time. I'm glad Amy will be able to take the time to see more of Australia. Someday I hope to go back and see more.

I have updated Amy's trip maps. Most of the links in this post are to my Australia photo gallery, for which I still need to write captions. Check back for that, and for the panoramic photos that I am still working on.

Wow, what a week! We have driven over 2400 km, spent three days sailing, and two days 4wd-ing on Fraser Island.

We got on board the Alexander Stewart on monday evening. We motored to our first anchorage at dusk which took a few hours. Some people on the boat weren't feeling too well that first evening, because it was somewhat rough and dark which upset some stomachs. The next day we sailed a bit to a spot where we could hike to a lookout and a beautiful white silica sand beach. We could go swimming, but had to wear a "stinger suit" which is a thin, fine mesh full body suit that protects you from stinging jellyfish. The next day we got a chance to go snorkeling, but it was a little disappointing because the water was murky and we weren't in a very good location. Amy saw a big sea turtle though, and we saw several kinds of tropical fish. We did some more sailing, and another bush walk up to a lookout point. It was great having all accommodation and meals taken care of, and having a chance to just relax!

We returned on thursday at 3pm, and started to drive toward Hervey Bay. On the way we called to book a tour of Fraser Island, which left the next day at 8am. After 900 km of driving that got us to Hervey Bay at 4am, we slept for a couple of hours in the car and then got on board the ferry to Fraser Island. We were with a group of about 24 people and our transportation was a big green Unimog (pictures available eventually). The roads are usually deep sand and often quite rough - the Unimog did very well. Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world, and has rainforests, long beaches, sand dunes, freshwater lakes, and much more. We saw most of it on a whirlwind trip that was great fun. On the second day we went swimming in three different places - a river, the ocean, and a lake! We also took a short helicopter flight over the island.

After returning on saturday, we stayed the night in Hervey Bay rather than driving more that day. Today (sunday) we drove south to Noosa, taking the scenic route. We saw a small sign to a lookout point and drove up a gravel road to the top of Wolvey Mountain where there was a fire lookout tower. There was an amazing view from up there! Our "Uni-bishi" did well enough on the gravel road.

So we are now in Noosa just a couple of hours north of Brisbane. The weather here is great, not as hot as it is up north. Tomorrow we plan to visit the Australia Zoo and drive through the Glass House Mountains.

I arrived in Sydney, Australia on friday and then to Brisbane to meet Amy. It was raining in both Sydney and Brisbane with low overcast clouds so I couldn't see very much of the scenery on the ground. I hoped the weather wouldn't stay like that for long (it didn't).

The first thing we did was to go see a Cirque du Soleil show ("Quidam") in Brisbane on friday night. It was closing soon (last show on sunday) so it was pretty much our only chance to see it. It was excellent.

The next day we rented a car and started driving north. While on the Bruce Highway (the main highway that runs all the way down the east coast) we passed a small airstrip that had a sign for glider flying. We stopped and I took a short flight which you can read about in my online logbook. I was excited to be able to log a flight in Australia!

We stopped in Gladstone for the night and stayed with some friends (Tricia and Cole, who Amy stayed with on her way south last week). Very nice hospitable people. The next day we took off early as our goal was to reach Airlie Beach that evening.

It's now monday lunchtime and we are booked for a 3 day + 3 night sailing cruise starting this evening, through the Whitsunday Islands on a 70 foot ketch, the Alexander Stewart. The islands are very beautiful and we plan to do some snorkeling on the reefs too.

The weather here is quite hot and humid (we are just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and the december solstice is coming up soon, so the sun is pretty much directly overhead). Hopefully it will be a bit cooler on the boat.

We are definitely having fun!

We arrived back in Barcelona on tuesday morning. Our train was nearly two hours late, apparently due to some sort of railway workers' strike. This was actually fortunate, because it allowed us to check into our room in Barcelona immediately, without waiting around for an available room.

We had lunch at Les Quinze Nits, a reasonably priced Catalan restaurant with excellent food and mediocre service. As usual we had the Creme Catalán for dessert (which is much like Crème Brulée, only better). Then we took a nice long siesta because we really didn't get a very good night's sleep on the train. I think the Spanish are definitely onto something with this siesta idea.

Our plan for wednesday was to take a day trip to somewhere up on the Costa Brava (the part of the Mediterranean north of Barcelona). Almost all the towns along there are named [something] del Mar. There wasn't any regular train service up there, but the buses ran regularly. Anyway, when we woke up in the morning, it was raining! Not much, but not really a great day to go to the beach. So instead, we went to see the Palau Güell, a national historic building that is in the process of being restored. We only saw the stables in the basement, and the roof, and one of the interior floors. But it was very cool.

By the time we were done with that, the weather had cleared up and it was sunny again. So we decided to head to the bus station to pick a $random_del_mar to visit. We decided to go to Tossa de Mar, a little resort town with an old medieval castle and ruins. But not 20 minutes after we left Barcelona on the bus, it started raining again! Sure enough, it was still raining when we got there.

Not to be deterred, we got a map and wandered toward the beach area. The town almost seemed deserted, especially for being in the height of the summer season. There were a row of shops selling cheesy beach stuff and souvenirs, and we popped in there a bit to avoid some rain. But by the time we made it to the beach, the rain had almost completely stopped.

The beach at Tossa de Mar is not really sand but more of a fine granite gravel. We walked along the beach for a bit and the sun peeked out, so Amy laid out a towel and I poked around the rocky coves and such. After we sat on the beach for a while, watching people slowly come back out to the beach after the rain, we headed over to the old medieval town to check it out before our bus returned to Barcelona.

Thursday was my last full day in Spain, and we started it by sleeping in a bit. Amy wanted to get a bit more time at the beach (after the mediocre beach day in Tossa de Mar), so she headed down to the Barcelona beach while I explored a market and bookstores etc. In the evening, we took a sail on a 75 foot catamaran along the Barcelona waterfront. It was quite relaxing, and we had wanted to do some kind of sailing since the first few days we were there.

My flight home left at 10:40am, so we figured I should get to the airport around 9am. We got up on friday at 7am or so, did final packing and so on, and took the metro to the train station. The trains to the airport leave about every half an hour or so. We looked up at the departure monitor, and it said 8:38 to the airport, and my watch said 8:37! We heard a train arrive and quickly purchased one one-way and one round-trip ticket to the airport. Ran downstairs and there were two trains, luckily I had noticed which platform was airport-bound. 30 seconds later and we would have missed the train.

When we arrived at the airport, we said our goodbyes and Amy took the train back to downtown Barcelona. I headed to the terminal area and looked around for the Delta checkin desk. There was a mass of people in all kinds of lines extending around the area, and I had to cut through a few to find Delta. Then I followed the line back, and back... and back! There were probably 200 people in line. So I located the end, confirmed with somebody else in line that this was indeed Delta, and waited. This was 9am. At 10am, after waiting an hour, I had moved perhaps 20 feet. My international flight was leaving in 40 minutes, this was not good.

I had overheard the Spanish-speaking couple in front of me mention that they were also heading to Nuevo York. The lady had gone up to the desk a couple of times to see if she could figure out what was going on. Eventually she came back and motioned for her husband to bring everything and go with her. I followed, knowing that this was probably my best chance to get on this plane. Spending a day or possibly a night in the Barcelona airport was not my idea of fun.

We cut through lines and went straight up to the first class checkin desk, with me following trying to look like I belonged there. The agent hurriedly helped the couple with their checkin and bags, and then I said that I was on the same flight. The agent asked me how long I had been waiting (I said an hour and a half), she kind of sighed, asked me how many bags ("just one"), and finally said "ok, give me your passport". She quickly checked me in, I put my bag on the carrier they had specifically for our three bags, got my boarding pass, and headed up to security. Fortunately, the line there wasn't long. Then I realized that I wasn't in my originally assigned seat, but I was in 2G, a first class window seat! I ran to the gate, avoided the long line of people waiting to board by joining the first class boarding line. I was seated and had finished an orange juice by the time the rest of the people were done boarding. What luck!

Since it was a daytime flight, and I wanted to make sure my internal clock didn't get further screwed up, I stayed awake for the whole 8.5 hour flight. Believe me, if you're ever going to have a fortunate bump to first class, you can choose no better leg than the longest flight on your way home. That definitely made up for the extra JFK-ATL connection that I had to take on the return trip.

If you have read this far, you've reached the end of my journals for this trip. As your reward, my pictures from the trip are now online in my photo gallery. There are 190 photos in several albums (watch for the sub-albums especially the three in Barcelona). Enjoy! We certainly did.

Just a quick note this time, we're about to leave San Sebastián on the night train back to Barcelona. We've been taking it easy for the last couple of days, enjoying the sights around the city and of course, the restaurants. We were here one more day than we had planned because the train on sunday was full when we bought our tickets.

The weather for the last couple of days has been a bit varied. Yesterday afternoon a thunderstorm suddenly rolled in and almost completely emptied the beaches. I tried to take some lightning pictures over the harbour but was not lucky enough to get any. It only sprinkled a few drops of rain that time. This evening it started raining a bit harder, so we sought cover in the internet café before dinner.

Apparently the Basque language is spoken by about 30% of the population here. Under Marcos' leadership 20 years ago, teaching of the Basque language was forbidden in schools. Now it is being taught again, and its use is quickly on the rise. Most signs, even in store windows, are in both Basque and Spanish. One person we talked to said that in 40 years, everybody will speak Basque again. It's cool that a language spoken in such a small area can thrive.

They say the rain in Spain falls mostly on the plains. Well, the only place it has rained on us is here on the coast in San Sebastián. It's all good though!

Off to find some tapas for dinner at our favourite tapas bar ("Garroti" in the Parte Vieja). They have been closed the last couple of times we stopped by so hopefully they are open again today.