MikeAndClare

La Grande Terre

2009-05-05T19:34:00.002+10:00

Our flight from Lifou on Air Caledonie was on time and uneventful. We left Drehu Village in more than enough time because of a lack of confidence in finding the airport again. Key intersections were unmarked, but our memory served us well and we found the airport at Wanaham without trouble, and were able to observe the preparations for one of the few flights of the day. We sat in an open air thatched roundhouse outside the terminal and were entertained by chickens and their chicks pecking around us. The rental car return desk was well and truly closed, but we found a place were Aero staff were washing cars, and they took our key happily.

We puzzled how the lead stewardess on the flight welcomed us on board in English without us saying a word! We figure she must look at the passenger manifest. We were the only non-natives on board, and she must have known in advance that we were Australian.

A minor organisational wheel fell off on our arrival at Magenta Airport, but it was very irritating at the time. Our itinerary gave directions to the Thrifty Rental Car desk, but there was no such thing, and no-one from Thrifty at the airport with our car. Thrifty’s only “sign” at the airport was a tiny locked box to leave your car keys in. Outside, we found an Arc en Ciel bus driver who spoke no English but was very helpful. (This company is responsible for our itinerary in New Caledonia.) On showing her our booking slip, she rang someone, and then promised that the Thrifty car would arrive in “cinq minutes”, which it did, well after 10 minutes anyway. The Thrifty guy was very apologetic, the car was a larger Peugeot than we had ordered, and we suspect that it was the first car he could grab in his rush to get to us. It wasn’t clean inside, and the next day we found it had a half flat tyre, so maybe it wasn’t properly prepared.

Starting at Magenta, we had to drive 310km to Poindimie on New Caledonia‘s upper north-east coast. This was our plan, a big driving day on La Grande Terre to start, then more modest distances to cover thereafter. Following the Thrifty man’s advice, we stuck to the westcoast all the way up the island to Kone, then crossed the mountains to the east along the Transversale to just north of Poindimie. His advice was good! It’s a 2-lane road all the way, but we were able to maintain good average speeds, even though this route must have added 50-100km to the total. On the east side, we were later to discover, the roads are much more twisty, and there are many more tribal villages to pass through. We found a cute snack bar at Boulouparis where we grabbed a crevette Panini and a coke for lunch.

Our hotel in Poindimie was the luxurious Tieta Tera resort, right on the beach. This hotel has been recently renovated and we were placed in a “bungalow”, surely the most modern and outstanding room we have ever stayed in. The restaurant here (at incredible cost) restored our faith in French cuisine after the fairly mundane fare at Drehu Village. That said, we also got a takeaway one night from the Koyaboa pizza shop. Two small pizzas (and two ice-cream) were excellent but set us back over 4000XPF.

The hotel appeared to be pretty busy and was a step more upmarket in both style and clientele than Drehu village. The guests were exclusively French (one Aussie couple, but we only spoke French when they were within earshot). We noted again that French children (of families who can afford holidays here) appear to be very competent swimmers.

The beach at Poindime, and indeed those along the whole east coast, do not resemble the glistening white sands that we loved on Lifou. Here, the sand is coarser and apparently contains minerals which makes it black, and to that extent, unappealing. The beaches are littered with broken coral, driftwood (a lot of it bamboo), and contain a lot of temporary shelters erected by the native population, giving them an interesting but somewhat untidy appearance. Not at Poindimie but elsewhere, the beaches may be affected by offshore reefs, and have very shallow water, although this is tide dependent. At Poindimie, we found the sea water to be warm and clean and a delight to swim in (still no surf), but saw few locals or tourists actually doing so.

Poindimie is a tiny town, and it is hard to believe it is the main hub of the northeast. It has all the usual facilities, a townhall, a gendarmerie, a school and one or two shops as well as an inevitable church or two, but that’s about it. This town has a public swimming pool, and also a couple of petrol stations - not all do.

One day, we took a drive up north as far as Tao. This distance is less than 100km, but it took us 3 hours each way. The road is characterised by neverending potholes, and is lined with numerous stalls selling fruit, shells or plants on an honesty basis, meaning you just leave money in a tin. We bought our lunch this way. The road is shrouded by jungle most of the way, but all that distance is a succession of small houses and tiny tribal villages. Traffic is exceedingly light, and people walk along the narrow roads in relative safety. By appearances, much of the native population live in traditional lifestyles. They basically seem to live off the land and the sea, and make a few francs selling whatever to the tourists passing by. It’s also obvious that many indigenous people have regular jobs, but that all seems to supplement what appears to be a healthy and happy tribal lifestyle. We wouldn’t say that the problems which blight native populations in Australia and elsewhere are absent here, but at least they are not so obvious. What are obvious are tribal sensitivities. We are constantly warned to respect local customs (which is fair enough), and not to take photos without permission on tribal land (which is irritating and inconvenient, and often there seems to be noone about). We feel this is being just a little bit precious, and basically we just chose not to visit tribal areas or to photograph their “cases”.

This is not to say there is any lack of friendliness here. We could learn a lot from this population. Any of the natives we bumped into in the streets, or on the beaches were extremely friendly, and exchanging “bonjour” or “bonsoir” with people of any persuasion wherever you meet them, is par for the course. (When driving, all pedestrians you pass on the side of the road wave to you, and you quickly fall into the habit of waving at everyone you see.)

The coastline itself is spectacular, with hills and cliffs and beautiful inlets. Landslips and washaways appear to be routine. Near the village of Hienghene, there are amazing rock formations, one of which is featured on the XPF500 note. North of there is maybe the only remaining punt (ferry) across a river, the “Bac de la Ouaieme”, a tiny, noisy and geriatric device running across a wide river in a beautiful setting, powered by two fixed outboard motors, and guided by a fixed cable. The photo shows the ferry crossing this mighty river.

At Tao, we paid 400XPF to hike a small distance up to the Cascade de Tao and, all alone, have a swim in a deliciously refreshing pool at the base of the waterfall. A friendly family collects the price of admission off you - it must be great fortune to own a waterfall that you can charge people to visit.

In all of this trip, we could not find a patisserie that was open at any time we were hungry, so we survived the day on the fruit that we had bought by the roadside. Most shops (of the very few along the road) seem to close for long hours in the middle of the day, and some don’t appear to open at all after midday! Travellers in this area must plan and organise their eating in the morning. This does not suit serendipitous grazers like ourselves!

Our next driving day was south down the east coast from Poindimie, then crossing the range to the other side, stopping for a few nights at Sarramea. We saw more of the same beach-side situations with tiny tribal villages and isolated houses, and by skilled navigation (there being no signposting, and we couldn‘t see it from the road) we found another waterfall which had been mentioned in Lonely Planet, this one the Cascade de Bwa with a great and refreshing swimming hole at the base which we took advantage of (see photo). This time, the cost was 100XPF payable into an honesty box, and again, we had the pool to ourselves although a few others arrived just as we were leaving.

We were smarter this day, and had bought a baguette and some cheese before leaving Poindimie. We found a nice picnic table by the river at Houailou, and then set out for Kouaoua after which we would head across the mountains to Sarramea. This stretch of road proved to be an unexpected disaster zone, and a bitter surprise. Driving on the moon could not be more distressing and desolate. The road moves in from the coast and climbs and then drops out of a large mountain range which has been completely stripped of all vegetation by vicious open cut (nickel) mining. There is no sign of remedial work. In fact, not much work is apparent at all, with only a few diggers and trucks seen to be operating over a vast area. No wonder the Lonely Planet and other guides are silent on this area! It is appalling to see, and we read that the adjacent ocean is heavily polluted by runoff from the devegetated mountains and valleys here. Photo shows a view of part of this landscape overlooking the sea. We are sure that nickel mining is a crucial source of wealth for New Caledonia, but the devastation here is a disgrace. It reminded us of Queenstown in Tasmania. To compound the matter, the road we travelled must be one of the loneliest in the country. There is absolutely no traffic on it - there are alternative routes north and south of here, and locals must avoid RP5 due to distress. We chose this crossover solely because Sarramea lies at its western end.

Signposting on Grande Terre roads is pretty grim generally, but it caused us some worry on this stretch. In the end, the main intersections proved to be marked (often on the road surface) but the unmarked intersections, where there are alternatives of apparently equal importance, were a little nervewracking. We were ever so pleased to find that the intersection in the tribal area of Koh was marked, because a wrong turn here could have had us going out of our way, quite a way, before we would be in a position to confirm it. We missed the town of Kouaoua entirely. It must have been off on a side road.

Sarramea proved to be a tiny little village nestled deeply in a valley that the road plunged into shortly before reaching the main west coast road. It is deep in a very pretty tropical rainforest, and its few attractions are scattered widely around and proved to be hard to find. The feeling is one of Shangri La! Our travel consultants Dianne and Bel in Sydney had us stay at the Evasion Hotel in Sarramea, surely the most upmarket establishment here, featuring 10 luxurious riverside cabins and a superb French restaurant. It is so quiet here! The accommodation and locations recommended to us on Lifou and la Grande Terre has been excellent, varied and highly interesting. A beautiful swimming pool is set by the side of the river, and about 500m upstream is another cascade-swimming hole combination, the “trou Feillet la cuve“. Mike went up there one morning, and had it to himself, but the path was ultra-boggy, with the access to the swimming hole too slippery and way too muddy to attempt on one’s own.

That said, this swimming hole is apparently the must-do activity for Sarramea, and car-loads of visitors park in the nearby lot and put on their oldest shoes to make the trek. We decided not to go up again to see how they were going, because Clare had gone to the trouble of cleaning Mike’s shoes!

We drove to the nearby village of Farino. Whereas Sarramea nestles in the valley, Farino is high up on a huge climb out of the valley. From Farino, there are views right back to the west coast (see photo), and the township is characterised by a miasma of roads reaching into hills and secluded dales. We found a tiny coffee plantation. We found a very pretty and quiet camping area, Le Refuge de Farino, where one family were enjoying well maintained grounds, with their three little children playing (unsupervised, but competently) in a pleasant little river with gentle cascades and a sandy bottom. This was an idyllic location.

We suspect their solitude, or ours, would not last long. Today is Friday 1 May, and we discovered (by the incoming traffic) that today is a public holiday and so it’s a long weekend! The town of La Foa is on the main west coast road, but is very close to Sarramea and Farino so we visited it in our rounds. This is where we saw (for the first time outside of Noumea) heavy traffic, going north out of Noumea. Apparently the beaches near Bourail, north of here, have real surf, so maybe much of the traffic is headed that way. We looked at La Foa’s footbridge and famous movie theatre (film festival every June), topped up with pastries and petrol, and scarpered back to the peace and quiet of Sarramea.

Unless you like horseriding, or undertaking serious hikes, there’s not that much to do in this immediate region, but it is a very pleasant spot to chill out, and we have enjoyed our few days here. This brings our Grande Terre phase to an end, and our final mission in this 4 part luxury odyssey is l'Ile des Pins.

Unbelieveably Beautiful Lifou

2009-04-27T16:08:00.003+10:00

The next phase of our New Caledonian odyssey was to be spent on Lifou, one of the Loyalty Islands. We had the choice of three, the others being Mare and Ouvea, but because we thought there was more to see on Lifou, we chose it. The flight from Noumea’s downtown Magenta airport takes 35 minutes, in what appeared to be a sparkling new Air Caledonia aircraft. Industrial action amongst Air Caledonia staff was very apparent at Magenta, and some flights were cancelled, but mercifully, not ours.

The airports at both ends were very busy, and 90% of the travellers were colourfully dressed Kanaks, grouped in large families. We joked that everyone seemed to know everyone else, but that noone knew us. The few Europeans on our flight were French, and maybe they were having a weekend break from the relative hustle and bustle of Noumea!

Lifou (local name Drehu) proved to be unbelieveably beautiful. It is an island maybe 50km tall by 20km wide. Development is very sparse, and the population very few. The few towns are hardly towns at all, with almost no shops or public buildings. The resident population is almost entirely native, and of them, mostly Kanaks we believe. The only non-natives we saw were tourists, easily recognisable by their little Aero rental cars, Hyundai Getz’s (like ours) or baby Citroens or Peugeots. The island is ringed by rugged cliffs interrupted by glistening white sandy beaches. Often, a fringing coral reef is evident only a few hundred metres off shore, inside which the water is a spectacular aquamarine in colour (not surprisingly), the depth of colour depends on the depth of the water and the state of the tide. But its clarity is dazzling. The cliffs, such as at Xodre on the south eastern corner, often plunge into deep water.

We stayed at the Drehu Village Resort which is on the beach in the biggest (!) town of We. This establishment is ultra-comfortable, the rooms are luxurious, and they have a fine French restaurant. Thanks to Dianne and Bel for recommending we upgrade to a suite here. We had all our breakfasts (awfully expensive) and two out of our three dinners at the Drehu Village. The other night we ventured out of town to eat at the Oasis Kiamu, a very intimate affair (for much of meal, we were the only diners), and it was a stern test of our French language skills. There is not much to choose from on Lifou, it’s all pricey, and one thing that discourages our usual eating spontaneity is that, no matter where you eat, you are asked to book up to 24 hours in advance. Not surprisingly, the “local” restaurants specialise in seafood, and the menus sounded much like we could get in Sydney for half the price, so we stuck mostly to French eateries.

Beautiful beaches here are too numerous to mention, but ones we swam at include the Baie de Chateaubriand (at We), Jozip (where the Oasis Restaurant is) and the Baie de Luengoni. But the best of all was Peng, 4km down a rough dirt road (this does not discourage French tourists driving rental voitures. Peng is a spectacular ultra-white beach, renowned for its seclusion, but there were at least two other families there during our visit. There is no surf, just clear blue water, quite smooth if there is no wind. At Peng, one of the families had about 4 young children, and it was great to see that they could swim, and were extremely at home in the water (we don’t know how they would respond to surf). They had an inflatable canoe, and we figured that they must have arrived on Lifou on the ferry which plies between Noumea and We, we don’t know how often, it’s quite a trek.

For an island which is so sparsely populated, it is surprising that nudity is verboten on all beaches. It is not stated, but this is out of respect to the native population who are always well covered. Their sensibilities in this matter are somewhat unexpected since many of their totems feature topless warrior maidens! The French, rather more accustomed to skinny dipping than the Kanaks, seem to accept these restrictions reluctantly but gracefully. By the way, it is more than apparent and not at all surprising that the local population are well adapted to the ocean. The children especially seem to enjoy swimming, diving in and out with squeals of joy, and have taken up modern trappings of windsurfing pretty successfully by the look of it.

The only industry we noted on Lifou is that of vanilla bean plantations. For a small fee, many plantations will provide a guided tour, not much good to us, they are all in French.

The cliffs at Jokin are worth a special mention. They are spectacular in themselves, but what really amazes is the coral reefs and crystal clear water at the bottom. There is a steep path down the cliff at Jokin, and you can get in and swim/snorkel, but the access to and from the water is perilous. Arriving at the top of these cliffs in our Getz, we found the road obstructed by a tree trunk, placed there by two boys who explained (we think) that they wanted us to go round the church another way out of respect to the service taking place (it was Sunday morning).

Nearby, is the Baie du Santal, a particularly beautiful bay apparently visited by P&O Cruise ships. Their passengers are tendered to the miniscule town of Xepenehe/Easo and from there they can visit a church on the headland, Notre Dame de Lourds. It’s apparent this rather inaccessible church is not used much any more, but it seems to be well visited by devout or interested Catholic tourists.The next phase of our New Caledonian odyssey was to be spent on Lifou, one of the Loyalty Islands. We had the choice of three, the others being Mare and Ouvea, but because we thought there was more to see on Lifou, we chose it. The flight from Noumea’s downtown Magenta airport takes 35 minutes, in what appeared to be a sparkling new Air Caledonia aircraft. Industrial action amongst Air Caledonia staff was very apparent at Magenta, and some flights were cancelled, but mercifully, not ours.

The airports at both ends were very busy, and 90% of the travellers were colourfully dressed Kanaks, grouped in large families. We joked that everyone seemed to know everyone else, but that noone knew us. The few Europeans on our flight were French, and maybe they were having a weekend break from the relative hustle and bustle of Noumea!

Lifou (local name Drehu) proved to be unbelieveably beautiful. It is an island maybe 50km tall by 20km wide. Development is very sparse, and the population very few. The few towns are hardly towns at all, with almost no shops or public buildings. The resident population is almost entirely native, and of them, mostly Kanaks we believe. The only non-natives we saw were tourists, easily recognisable by their little Aero rental cars, Hyundai Getz’s (like ours) or baby Citroens or Peugeots. The island is ringed by rugged cliffs interrupted by glistening white sandy beaches. Often, a fringing coral reef is evident only a few hundred metres off shore, inside which the water is a spectacular aquamarine in colour (not surprisingly), the depth of colour depends on the depth of the water and the state of the tide. But its clarity is dazzling. The cliffs, such as at Xodre on the south eastern corner, often plunge into deep water.

We stayed at the Drehu Village Resort which is on the beach in the biggest (!) town of We. This establishment is ultra-comfortable, the rooms are luxurious, and they have a fine French restaurant. We had all our breakfasts (awfully expensive) and two out of our three dinners here. The other night we ventured out of town to eat at the Oasis Kiamu, a very intimate affair (for much of meal, we were the only diners), and it was a stern test of our French language skills. There is not much to choose from on Lifou, it’s all pricey, and one thing that discourages our usual eating spontaneity is that, no matter where you eat, you are asked to book up to 24 hours in advance. Not surprisingly, the “local” restaurants specialise in seafood, and the menus sounded much like we could get in Sydney for half the price, so we stuck mostly to French eateries.

Beautiful beaches here are too numerous to mention, but ones we swam at include the Baie de Chateaubriand (at We), Jozip (where the Oasis Restaurant is) and the Baie de Luengoni. But the best of all was Peng, 4km down a rough dirt road (this does not discourage French tourists driving rental voitures. Peng is a spectacular ultra-white beach, renowned for its seclusion, but there were at least two other families there during our visit. There is no surf, just clear blue water, quite smooth if there is no wind. At Peng, one of the families had about 4 young children, and it was great to see that they could swim, and were extremely at home in the water (we don’t know how they would respond to surf). They had an inflatable canoe, and we figured that they must have arrived on Lifou on the ferry which plies between Noumea and We, we don’t know how often, it’s quite a trek.

For an island which is so sparsely populated, it is surprising that nudity is verboten on all beaches. It is not stated, but this is out of respect to the native population who are always well covered. Their sensibilities in this matter are somewhat unexpected since many of their totems feature topless warrior maidens! The French, rather more accustomed to skinny dipping than the Kanaks, seem to accept these restrictions reluctantly but gracefully. By the way, it is more than apparent and not at all surprising that the local population are well adapted to the ocean. The children especially seem to enjoy swimming, diving in and out with squeals of joy, and have taken up modern trappings of windsurfing pretty successfully by the look of it.

The only industry we noted on Lifou is that of vanilla bean plantations. For a small fee, many plantations will provide a guided tour, not much good to us, they are all in French.

The cliffs at Jokin are worth a special mention. They are spectacular in themselves, but what really amazes is the coral reefs and crystal clear water at the bottom. There is a steep path down the cliff at Jokin, and you can get in and swim/snorkel, but the access to and from the water is perilous. Arriving at the top of these cliffs in our Getz, we found the road obstructed by a tree trunk, placed there by two boys who explained (we think) that they wanted us to go round the church another way out of respect to the service taking place (it was Sunday morning).
Nearby, is the Baie du Santal, a particularly beautiful bay apparently visited by P&O Cruise ships. Their passengers are tendered to the miniscule town of Xepenehe/Easo and from there they can visit a church on the headland, Notre Dame de Lourds. It’s apparent this rather inaccessible church is not used much any more, but it seems to be well visited by devout or interested Catholic tourists.

Lifou is somewhat cursed with litter, plastic bags and beer cans. We suspect that tourists are not to blame for this. But the townships of Mu and Xodre are trying to address the problem with a clean-up campaign apparent, and it is clearly paying off, because this part of the island was notably better than elsewhere. We rested at a beach reserve at Mu where the benefits of this campaign were manifest. There were clean and tidy tables and chairs, and a beach shower which we took advantage of and would put most in Australia, even at Bondi, to shame. Congratulations to this township!

As we found in Paris, many people in this outpost of Lifou are much more competent at English than we are at French. It’s surely a credit to the education system. People will burst into English of a high quality when they hear our pathetic attempts to converse in their language. It’s rather embarrassing. We overheard a Japanese businessman speaking fluent French at the hotel. Is it not a curse of the English speaking world that we tend to be monolingual?

New Caledonia - Noumea

2009-04-26T16:17:00.003+10:00

After years of waiting for the opportunity, we are finally taking a two week holiday in New Caledonia. The flight over was with Air Calin which was comfortable and uneventful. The seat pitch was a lot more generous than it is in many other economy classes we have endured. If only it was just a 2.5 hour flight to everywhere! Immigration and customs formalities were a breeze, compared with Mike's visit here many years ago on business when Australians required a visa and French officials were snooty reminders of the Rainbow Warrior.

Money could be easily changed at the airport, when the truth is first brought home to you that the Australian dollar is pretty miserable at the moment. The French Pacific Franc (official name XPF, we think, but it also goes by numerous other abbreviations) is permanently tied to the Euro and one Aussie battler only gets 60XPF and it takes 200XPF to buy a bus ticket in Noumea!

The deals to come to New Caledonia were excellent (mostly 2 for 1), so we lashed out spent our first 3 nights in Noumea at Le Meridien. We suspect this was previously a Club Med. This uber-expensive hotel is ultra comfortable, but suffers the disease of 5 star hotels everywhere, and charges extra for almost everything, even for a towel at the pool, and not a nominal sum either.

Le Meridien is just on the edge of the Anse Vata area of Noumea, where most visitors stay, we think. The hotel fronts onto Anse Vata beach, a very popular and pretty beach, spectacular blue in the sunlight, no surf, lots of activities can be hired such as windsurfers, kayaks etc. Anse Vata town runs in a strip along the beachfront, and features lots of cafes, restaurants, tourist shops. On the Anse Vata pier there is a noisy bar, a dance club, and a top notch restaurant called Le Roof, into which we did not venture.

Off Anse Vata beach are two islands, one is Ile des Canards, just a 5 minute water taxi ride. This is for day trippers wanting to swim and sunbake without too much riff-raff. The other is Ilot Maitre, a tad further out, featuring a luxury resort with over-water bures.

Jogging, walking and biking for recreation is very popular, and at the coastline around Anse Vata and nearby "mountain" Ouen Toro is blessed with a great track that is well utilised. The wild bush around Ouen Toro contains hiking trails ranging in difficulty to "tres difficile". The advanced tracks are poorly marked and Mike almost got lost on this mountain on our last day in Noumea!

Public transport is excellent, with a network of colour coded bus routes. The fare structure is simple - all journeys, no matter how far, cost XPF200. The green bus services between Anse Vata and the city, and we used it quite a bit. It's not so far, though, only about 2 hours to walk the full distance, and plenty to see on the way.

Noumea is very French, as one would expect, although it must be a disappointment to expatriate Parisians. Just too small for French sophistication, and frankly, we thought the city area was more than a little bit seedy, with not much going for it. Cafes which abound in Paris are few and far between in Noumea downtown, but we found a very pleasant one at the side of the cruise liner terminal. We also saw the "Pacific Dawn" depart Noumea bound for parts unknown (to us). We did a lot of walking around downtown - there were some interesting colonial buildings, but overall, pretty uninspiring. The
view from the top of the hill behind downtown was excellent. Noumea has a large natural harbour, and the whole area was apparently a major base for the US Navy during WW2. A memorial near the harbour thanks the US for protecting them at this time.

The native population (kanaks) is substantial and seems to be largely underemployed. This obseravtion is anecdotal and may be inaccurate of course, but there's a lot of people hanging around the streets with little to do, by appearances.

Le Meridien provided us with vouchers for free drinks and 500XPF gambling chips at one of the casinos. We had our free drink (beer or soft drink only), but it was so smoky inside we quickly sought to escape for fresh air. In Paris, you can't smoke inside cafes and restaurants since January 2008, but this enlightened law has not yet arrived in New Caledonia.

We enjoyed our meals in Noumea, but the prices are poisonous to Australians. We did and will continue to target French food, with occasional excursions into Asian food (such restaurants seem to be very popular), and maybe local tucker too.

Luckily, English is widely spoken, because we have proved again that our command of French is very limited. The best environment for us to speak French is in a restaurant. In the streets and elsewhere, we are way out of our depth!

New Zealand Wrap Up

2008-08-20T14:52:00.001+10:00

That wraps up our holiday in New Zealand. The map shows where we went, really only covering half of the North Island despite having over two weeks to travel. Even on that relaxed basis, we felt that we could have spent more time in the Coromandel (delightful because it was so quiet), the Bay of Islands (so much more to explore), the Bay of Plenty (which we just rushed too much), and all of the geothermal territory around Taupo and Rotorua (fascinating, but too commercial).

It was a great decision to rent a Peugeot diesel for our trip. This little car was so economical, aided immeasurably by diesel being cheaper than petrol in NZ, yet it was a great performer with ample power for passing slower vehicles on those few occasions the roads allowed it with safety. We enjoyed many refined features in this French car which are absent in our Subaru - such as automatic lights, automatic wipers (how do they work?), separate climate control for driver and passenger, and wing mirrors which retract when the doors are locked. The digital radio received NZ Radio National almost anywhere we were - what a great radio station!

In the car, we travelled 3449km, and the cost of fuel was $NZ12.48/100km.

We find that updating the blog is great therapy. It helps one to think about what we've seen and done. Internet connectivity was pretty good in New Zealand, but varied in its implementation. Only one place we stayed had no connectivity, and that was the B&B we used on arrival in Auckland. In anticipation of having to use internet cafes to post the blogs, we purchased $20 worth of credit on CafeNet. This was wasted - we never came across a CafeNet hotspot (even though we visit a coffee shop in almost every town), and never had to use one anyway because all motels we used had some form of internet access or other. Some had free WiFi (this is good, of course, but the free WiFi services were almost always problematic due to weak signal, confusion over WEP codes, and no technical support). Others had paid WiFi (some $10/hour which we thought to be expensive) which generally worked well. A couple had paid LAN in the room. One one occasion, we couldn't make this work and got our $5 back. One small motel had only dialup available, which we ignored, mainly because my Telstra iPass software overwhelms resourses on our geriatric notebook, and worse, changes PC settings without permission.

There's plenty we have not done or seen on the North Island, but sadly at this stage, it's not in our plans to return to New Zealand.

Back to Karekare

2008-08-16T17:50:00.001+10:00

After being pretty well washed out in Rotorua, the next day dawned somewhat better, although, during the day, we still managed to be caught in the open during a heavy squall. The whole of the North Island that we have seen has been so boggy underfoot, that we now understand how the All Blacks are good at playing in the mud, and how the comic strip Footrot Flats came to be.

The road from Rotorua to Auckland is much better than the average country road that we've been on the last two weeks, and we were able to maintain very good speeds much of the way. A hail storm provided some entertainment. The passage through Hamilton and suburbs is, however, long, devious and slow, and reminded us of Albury before the bypass was opened. But the rest of the journey was very speedy and pleasant. A very cute frog-themed cafe on the (flooded) Waikato River somewhere along this journey gave us a refreshing break.

We arrived near Auckland early, and decided to have another go at Karekare Beach. This place, where a famous scene in The Piano was filmed, had eluded us on a previous visit. Today, we made it. The beach is about a kilometer from the closest car access, and we found our way there on a boggy, sandy, ill-defined track. The weather was overcast and squally, and a gale was blowing, so we did get a bit wet, but the beach was starkly beautiful, making it worth the effort of getting there. Vast areas of black sand, rough seas and leaden skies contribute to the rough beauty of this place.

It's a popular spot, and there were about 20 other visitors there enjoying this windswept land and seascape. It must be very crowded at Karekare Beach in summer - indeed it must be a different place altogether, because there is a surf club at the beach. You'd be suicidal to swim at this beach in conditions like there were today.

Wet and Steamy in Rotorua

2008-08-15T15:27:00.004+10:00

Over the years we have travelled all over the world, and have never seen anything quite like Rotorua. We've been to hot springs towns in the Rockies, and in Alaska and elsewhere in New Zealand on other trips, but nowhere is the geothermal activity so extensive and obvious as it is here.

In many places on the drive in from Taupo, steamy vapours are seen to issue from rivers and cavities, and as you approach Rotorua, they become much more numerous. In Rotorua itself, the whole city seems to be a bubbling cauldron, with countless little patches of water giving off steam, some even bubbling away.

Geothermal watching is a very commercial activity in Rotorua. It costs $50 for admission to Te Puia, a Maori theme park with the best access to the Pohutu Geyser. Everywhere else is cheaper, but the locals know how to make a dollar from their great natural resource. Having said that, there are many places in town where these amazing sights can be seen, and sulphurous odours can be smelled for free.

After over two weeks of squally weather in New Zealand, the rain has now set in seriously and pretty well continuously. This limited our getting around a bit, and to keep dry during the steadiest of rain, we visited the Rotorua Museum, a magnificent Tudor style mansion, constructed in 1908 (opened 100 years ago today, as it happens) as a bathhouse. The building was never fully completed, but as a centenary project, it is now undergoing extensions to fulfil the architect's original design. The bathhouse was used for the rehab of injured soldiers after the first world war. The Museum is well worth a visit without needing rain as an excuse. The preserved bathhouse rooms are particularly interesting, as are the exhibits and the basement areas.

A cinema room shows a movie with the history of the district. This is fascinating, and extemely well produced. The New Zealanders involved had a wicked sense of humour, and did not take the movie project too seriously, making it very entertaining as a result. It is notable that the Maoris of the 19th Century discovered the value of money and how they could make it easily by charging the tourists to view the attractions. That fine tradition carries on today, as mentioned. It was a great surprise (for we did not know it was coming) when the seats "rattled and rolled" during the earthquake / volcano scenes.

To improve our spirits during the miserable weather, we spent a few hours at the Polynesian Spa. This is not a cultural experience, and we suspect it is not local Maoris making money out of this particular enterprise! The Spa is listed by Conde Nast Traveller as one of the "Top 10", and its adult pools and private pools are geothermal mineral water of various temperatures with great views over Lake Rotorua and its wildlife (mostly seagulls). This place is, unsurprsingly, really popular with Japanese tourists who arrive in busloads.Luckily the Spa is big enough to absorb them all comfortably.

Art Deco Heaven

2008-08-14T18:29:00.003+10:00

Leaving Gisborne, there followed a long day of driving, a long winding road, thru hills and dales and across some gorges to Napier. Hawkes Bay is a beautiful, sweeping bay, with Napier nestled in it.

The Art Deco in Napier is really worth seeing, so we took a walking tour, with a volunteer guide, and spent a nice morning admiring the buildings there. After the devastating earthquake on 1931, the town was rebuilt in the style of the times, Art Deco. It was only in the 1980's that the town's people rallied and made moves to preserve the style from the ravages of developers. It was little too late for a few buildings, but Art Deco in the CBD area is mostly intact and is now a major contributor to Napier's prosperity. It now attracts crowds of visitors, with a big jazz festival, in the summer each year. The first photo shows a detail of the pavillion on Hawke Bay, and the second is the old fire station, damaged by the earthquake, restored in Art Deco style, and now the Art Deco centre of Napier.

Whilst in Napier, we met up and had coffee at Ujazi with a local author who is researching a book on a Napier actress from the 1920's who happened to marry a distant relative of Mike's. The author had rung us a month or two ago having found our family name in the Sydney phonebook. What a coincidence that we were going to be in his hometown so soon after the telephone call!

Wet and Dry

2008-08-12T18:30:00.001+10:00

Coromandel Town is a most delightful place to stay, and also possibly the quietest we've ever seen, especially at night. Sadly, the time had come to leave the Coromandel Peninsula. We crossed it and came down the east coast. We planned to use the ferry at Whitianga to shortcut the road to Hot Water Beach, but discovered that it's a passenger ferry only. We also discovered that Whitianga is an exceptionally pretty town on Mercury Bay, and was worth more than the fleeting visit we gave it.

We went the long way round into Hot Water Beach. This has to be one of the most attractive ocean side beaches we have found. The sand is yellow, rather than the black characteristic of many New Zealand beaches (predominantly, the ones facing west?), and the water was most appealing, but still way too cold for a dip. The surf was very calm, but we have read this is one of the most dangerous beaches in the country.

The beach gets its name from two very specific locations along it where you can dig a hole in the sand, and sit in a pool of warm water, heated apparently from 5km down. The hot springs are under seawater most of the time, but become exposed only within 2 hours of low tide. The photo is of a poster at the beach, and shows just how close the low tide seawater is to the spring.

Hot Water Beach looks as though it gets very popular in summer, but even now, in winter, it would be a very pleasant place to spend a few days. There are some upmarket establishments there that look very comfortable, and the coffee shop was very pretty (and they rent out shovels for digging down to the hot water!).

But we had decided to put some kilometers under our belt today, and pushed on into and around the Bay of Plenty, eventually stopping at Opotiki as darkness approached, bypassing many places which clearly deserve more of our attention, but in two weeks you can't stop everywhere interesting. We had lunch in an old gold mining town, Waihi, and got lost following the main road through Whakatane. Obviously locals all know the way without the benefit of signage.

Approaching and passing through the Tauranga area we realised why we liked the Coromandel area so much. It was so quiet up there, but around the Bay of Plenty, we rediscovered traffic, and, on New Zealand roads, that's not pleasant. There are very few passing opportunities, and if you're behind someone slow, then, if they don't pull over, you just have to be patient.

The weather forecast was right, and the next day it was bucketing down rain. We had planned to do the trip to Gisborne the scenic long way round on State Highway 35, the coast road around near East Cape, as far east as you can get in New Zealand before Chile. This road had only just been opened after being closed by road slips from storms, and, in heavy rain, we thought "what the hell", let's go that way anyway!

It was well worth it. The rain came in squalls, and some of them were so intense we had to almost stop due to sheeting rain and almost no visibility. But the sheeting was fleeting, and mostly we were able to enjoy the scenery, and under leaden skies and with rough seas and black sands the rocky coastline looked most spectacular. The photo of Clare is on the gloriously beautiful, heavily driftwood strewn beach at Hawai on the west side of the East Cape peninsula. You can see the weather is being kind! The church in the last photo is near Waihau Bay, and contrasts starkly with the dark sea and sky, sitting on its own little point into the Bay of Plenty.

As we reached the east side, the beach sands followed what we now think of as a general rule, and turned from black to white. We went through numerous small towns on this long southerly leg to Gisborne, starting with the rather depressed-looking little village of Te Araroa. Other than the towns, which are located on very pretty bays, the road on this side avoids the coast, and passes through the ubiquitous hilly farmland.

The Lonely Planet guide advises travellers on a limited timeframe to avoid this road - nowhere to pass the "plethora of milk trucks, logging trucks and (unregisterable) ancient cars". Lonely Planet writers must only travel in summer because we encountered almost no vehicles at all, except in the towns, and cruised around the whole distance quite effortlessly.

We spent the night at Wainui Beach, a suburb of Gisborne, at a very luxurious motel. The beach here reminds us of Belongil Spit at Byron Bay. It is very heavily eroded by storms, and attempts to shore up accessways and properties look as though they are being successfully undermined by mother nature.

The Tip of Coromandel

2008-08-10T15:28:00.003+10:00

The upper northern tip of the Cormandel Peninsula is all dirt roads but today we haved proved that it is worth the effort to drive them!

The day dawned frostily, but absolutely perfectly and stayed that way all day, a delightful change from previous days, and, according to the weather forecast, not what we can expect in days to come. It was very cold but 100% sunny.

With this good weather, we told our motel that we would stay another night, and set out. Frankly, this coastline is stunning, and photographs cannot do it justice. Rocky beaches are spaced by jutting headlands and backed with rolling hills populated by sheep (mostly) and cows. The animals rightly think they own these roads, and it took us some time to get by a few herds of both varieties.

Apart from a tiny general store at Colville, the top of the peninsula is devoid of any sources of sustenance, and at the motel we were warned to buy a sticky bun in Coromandel Town before leaving for the day. Instead, we took some leftovers from last night's dinner, and they served us very well.

We lunched at the very northern tip of the peninsula, a prominent hill called Mt. Moehau (photo of us). From there we also did an hour on the Coromandel Walkway. It was very scenic but very boggy, and our boots needed some attention on return. And Mike attempted a swim on the totally deserted rocky beach there, but the water was just too cold and he chickened out before full immersion.

The drive from Colville up to Mt Moehau is 66km return, and we saw only one other vehicle in this whole sector, amazingly for a Sunday. We think the dirt roads are discouraging for many New Zealanders, but of course Aussies think little of them. These roads are narrow, very twisty and steep with sheer dropoffs, but mostly good surface, but sometimes very rocky. There are hundreds of washouts from recent storms adding to the thrill of the drive.

We came back to Coromandel Town via the "scenic" route, by crossing the peninsula and coming down the eastern, ocean side. Still all dirt roads, but there are a few small townships here, not big enough for shops, and still no traffic. The Pacific coast scenery rewarded the extra distance, although the surf was very mild, and the view coming over the ridge into Coromandel Town was one of the best (photo).

To the Coromandel

2008-08-09T15:34:00.005+10:00

After spending the night in Dargaville, we set off in the wrong direction for 20km. Eventually, we realised the error and turned back, to have a look at the Kauri Museum, at Matakohe, which was strongly recommended by Lonely Planet, and was excellent. Lots of displays of the logging and saw mill industries of the past, as well as the life style of 100 years ago. The re-creations using mannequins and old salvaged equipment were truly stunning, and this, together with furniture, old photos, clothing etc., made for a very interesting morning at the museum.

It was a showery day with bursts of sunshine. Then, anxious to have a fine afternoon, we set sail on the "Auckland bypass" to the west of the city, through farmland and Helensville. Signposting out of Helensville was very poor, but eventually we found our way onto the Scenic Drive, through beautiful rain forest, to have a look at Piha and Karekare Beaches. Piha was very scenic, ruggedly beautiful with its pitch black sand and windblown appearance. We climbed the hill on the beach (called Lion Rock) to meet the Mauri Princess, who looks out over the ocean there, it was indeed a wonderful place.

We were keen to have a look at Karekare Beach which featured in the movie The Piano. Who could forget the scene where the long boat is launched thru the surf, with the piano balanced over it? Not to be! The road down to the beach was closed due to land slips, after the severe storms which had lashed the North Island the week before we arrived. We had to make do with glimpses of it. We went 10km down Lone Kauri Road which was signposted to be an alternate route into Karekare, certainly did not appear on our map, but it was so slow and twisty that it was dark by the time we made it to the beach, which was not Karekare but some particularly beautiful unnnamed lost world further down the coast.

It had begun to rain seriously by this, so we headed into Aukland to spend the night. The rest of the Scenic Drive shows fanstastic glimpses of the city as it comes in from the south west.

A Thai meal was enjoyed for dinner on the Parnell Road cafe strip, and then, the next day, we set off for the Coromandel Peninsula. It was drizzling, but that subsided as we cruised along the beautiful coastline. We traced the road around the edge of Tamaki Strait, finding a cute coffee shop in a delightful little town of Maraetai, with a very friendly waitress. Amazing scenery, lots of inlets, with driftwood piles to explore kept us entertained for most of the day. We had a bite of lunch in Thames, and overnighted in Coromandel Town, very quiet and cold. The population swells in the summer, it is obviously a good fishing spot! We warmed up with a drink in the Star and Garter Hotel (1873), very nicely restored (the warning icons say no smoking, no dogs and no stilleto heels). This pub has a pot belly stove, and internet cafe, good coffee and cookies, and gets the local cafes to deliver food to the patrons. What a good business model!

The Far North

2008-08-08T18:49:00.002+10:00

As we left The Bay of Islands, the thick fog which had blanketed the bay lifted to a breautiful day. The drive up the coast to Mangonui was along a lovely coastline, which was very quiet. The town of Mangonui, fabled for its fish and chips and architecture from the whaling days, was a charming harbour village. We were too early for the fish and chips, but enjoyed great coffee there.

Mangonui Harbour is an arm of Doubtless Bay which was stunningly beautiful, and from there we drove up a long skinny peninsula to Cape Reinga, at the most northerly tip of NZ. We saw a lot of Azure Kingfishers on this road.

On the way we stopped at the Ancient Kauri Kingdom at Awanui, where there is a staircase carved from an ancient Kauri Tree, and a display of furniture and carvings. The Cape Reinga lighthouse is solar powered, only 50w according to the sign, the only solar powered lighthouse we have ever seen. How a light of that power can be effective is amazing, but the sign there said that it can be seen for 19 miles. It stands where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. We saw it on a gloriously calm day, but we imagine the weather can be frightful in this totally exposed location. It's also unusual in that you approach the lighthouse from above it! (See photo.)

Massive landscaping was being undertaken at the Cape. There must be a lot of visitors here in Summer!

The west side of the peninsula leading up to Cape Reinga is Ninety Mile Beach. Vehicles are allowed on this beach but we didn't see any, and we note that that the speed limit is posted at 100km/hr. Reports are that many vehicles come to grief on this beach, and we could see why. At high tide it would be impassable, and at low tides, just plain dangerous due to soft sand and extreme isolation. Franky, we are not supporters of vehicles being allowed to drive along pristine beaches.

Near the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach, we had a look at one of the few road accesses to this beach, at Waipapakauri. This access point was seriously degraded and impassable except for high clearance 4WDs. Most of the damage here was probably done by recent storms.

After this trip, we stayed the night at Kaitaia, then set out heading south though the Kauri forests. The highlight of the day's driving was the ferry trip across Hokianga Harbour from Kohukohu to Rawene (photo), both very picturesque towns, which although small, appear to be thriving. The town of Oponomi is also beautiful, being
set at the heads of Hokianga Harbour and characterised by spectacular sand dunes. It was very quiet there with only locals about.

The road was twisty and slow as we passed through the Waipoua Forest, where the oldest known living Kauri tree is to be found (photo).

Beyond the forests, we had a good walk along Bayley's Beach, which was wild and windy, as our last call for the day. The town here is cute and funky, but we noticed a massive development taking place on the headland which will not help this particular ambience.

The West Coast, down which we are travelling, is not on the tourist trail, so it's very quiet and enjoyable, especially at this time of year. The tiny towns along the beach are replete with shacks and huts with only the occasional well built house. Locals obviously make good use of this coastline, and are probably grateful that it
is not too popular with tourists. Serious erosion of the dunes is a problem everywhere, a problem which is seemingly made worse by beach shacks being built too close to the edge.

We pulled in for the night at Dargaville.

Bay of Islands

2008-08-05T15:51:00.004+10:00

The weather has improved in New Zealand's North Island. It's now mostly sunny, but frequently there are brief squalls of wind and rain, which are enough to keep everything wet, and requires us to keep our coats handy.

We managed a driving tour of the Devonport Peninsula, going up Mt Victoria and North Head, as well as along Cheltenham Beach, Narrow Neck Beach, Bayswater Marina and Stanley Point. The first photo shows the view from Bayswater across the marina to the Auckland Harbour Bridge. (They do bungy jumping from that bridge!) At North Head and Mt Victoria there are remnants of old forts first built to protect Auckland from the Russian attacks (which never happened). An impressive short DVD movie shows in a visitors' centre at North Head showing the history of the forts on this peninsula.

At Stanley Point, the city has only managed to preserve a single, tiny wedge of access and view to the harbour from private development. This is now the Cyril Bassett Lookout, in honour on New Zealand's only Victoria Cross in the Gallipoli Campaign. Bassett lived very close by, and no doubt used to look at the harbour from this precious spot.

We have now driven north out of Auckland to the Bay of Islands. A highlight of this trip was a diversion along the very spectacular Tutukaka coast (second photo), and we had a nice sandwich lunch in the little marina at Tutukaka township. We also enjoyed Whangarei Falls (third photo) which are extremely photogenic, and are running very well given the heavy recent rains.

We have stayed a couple of nights in Paihia (for the benefit of Australian's this is pronounced "pie here"), the main town on the legendary Bay of Islands. We took a commercial cruise of the bay, but the Fullers boat frankly had too many people on board for comfortable viewing and photography. This is not to say that it was overloaded, rather that it was too crowded to be described as a spacious sightseeing vessel. We would recommend trying another provider which has smaller vessels and appears to be less popular with bus trips, for only $2 more.

The cruise itself was excellent. The rain mostly held off, with only one squall, although it was cold and windy. The islands are truly spectacular, many are occupied with occasional holiday homes (some looked magnificent), so this Bay and its surrounds are obviously not protected by being a National Park as we would think it should be. There's lots of history in this bay, mostly involving unfortunate interactions between the Maoris and invading Europeans, mainly French.

The last photo was taken from a hill on Urupukapuka Island where we stopped for an hour or so, mainly, we think, to refuel the crew with lunch. We had fish and chips. This island includes a resort named after the American author Zane Grey (who liked the Bay of Islands for fishing and maybe writing), and the views from on top of the hills are splendid. It is very enjoyable walking up and down well grassed but a bit boggy sheep paddocks, climbing over the occasional stile.

We spent a pleasant hour in the historic and pretty town of Russell, originally a fortified Maori settlement with a name that meant "sweet penguin", but the victorious Europeans changed it to something they thought more pronounceable. In its early days it was a whaling town. It's most readily accessible by ferry from Paihia.

One night in Paihia we dined at Lips Beef and Reef Restaurant. This place is worth a mention because the food was "the best she's had in New Zealand" according to Clare. It was a totally unpretentious place, one we just chose walking by from the menu on the wall, and the wait staff that we met were extremely friendly. Such a pleasant eating experience leaves a very good impression of a town.

New Zealand Bound

2008-08-03T09:27:00.002+10:00

On 1 August, we set out for two and a half weeks in New Zealand, coinciding (naturally, for those who know us), with a clogging weekend (the NZ national convention) to be held in Auckland. We had decided to spend three nights in Devonport, because it is close to the clogging location, Glenfield, and also has a ferry to Auckland downtown, so Mike could easily visit the city.

Our flight over was on Air Tahiti Nui and left at the ungodly hour of 07:10 (well, it was meant to anyway, it's actual departure was almost an hour late). We discovered that for such early flights there is no point following the official recommendation of checking in "at least two hours early". At 5am, the airport is virtually deserted, and the Customs and Immigration people don't start until 6am anyway, so you just have to wait. Clare enjoyed a coffee (damn the paper cup!) at Starbucks, pretty well the only retail shop open that early.

And the flight turned out to be operated by Qantas on a codeshare basis. So we tried our luck at the Qantas Club. We were told that we weren't strictly eligible to use the lounge because we were flying Tahiti Nui and "Qantas don't get any money from our ticket", but they let us in anyway.

The flight was uneventful. Our part of the cabin was mostly populated by well behaved footy players from the Newtown Jets. On arrival, the slowest part (as usual in New Zealand) was the passage through "biosecurity" which Aussies would call quarantine. New Zealand is really careful on this topic, and we suppose you can't blame them.

For this stay, knowing diesel is cheaper here than petrol, and to be different, we rented a diesel Peugeot. It's a delightful little vehicle, so great to get in a French car again with all its refinements. The drive to Devonport was predicted at 32 minutes by www.wises.co.nz but it took well over twice that long. The road in from the airport is pretty poor, and even modest traffic bogs it right down to a miserable crawl. Even on the North Shore, the trip along Lake Road into Devonport is a funeral procession.

We're staying at a little one room B&B we found on the internet in Buchanan Road. Our room is a very little standalone cottage at the back of the owners' house. It's just a bit on the shabby side of quaint, but lovingly cared for by the owners, who gave us a very friendly reception, and looked after us very well. The cottage is just that bit too small for people like us who travel with much too much luggage!

The clogging is at Glenfield, not to far from Devonport, but requiring another drive back up Lake Road, a few k on the motorway, and then a windy, hilly trip through the backblocks. Again, a little traffic completely clogs these roads, making the trips back and forth to the Glenfield Community Centre very slow. (At midnight, coming home, it's much faster.)

Auckland, and indeed all of New Zealand have endured over a week of very heavy storms from a confluence of low pressure zones over the Tasman Sea. There has been flooding, washaways, houses falling off cliffs etc., with the top part of the North Island copping the worst of it, and even the Pacific Sun cruise liner had to limp back into the harbour after scaring the wits out of its passengers (and injuring a few) in "huge waves and high winds". The liner is sitting in Auckland now getting all its crockery and other loose fittings replaced. This is just preliminary to saying that it's extremely soggy and pretty miserable in the city at the moment.

On Saturday, Mike caught the ferry into downtown. The winds had dropped, but the occasional mild rain squall passed by, making umbrellas and raincoats necessary for any outing. Mike had an enjoyable walk around the city, and through Albert Park and Auckland University, dodging between the drizzle patches and managing to stay pretty dry. Lots of Australians were evident in the city, identifiable by their "Wallabies" jerseys, getting ready for the Bledisloe Club rugby match at Eden Park.

Homeward Bound

2008-02-28T15:35:00.000+11:00

28 February 2008 marks the end of our fabulous 3 month round the world trip, highlighted by a full month spent in Paris (covering Christmas, New Year and wedding anniversary), and a wonderful driving trip up and down the east coast of the USA.

We flew from New York to Los Angeles, and spent 4 days there just hanging out, relaxing, and cruising around. Our hotel was in our favourite suburb, Redondo Beach, where there's plenty of good eating and walking nearby. We rented a Ford Mustang so we could really fit into the LA lifestyle, and we really did nothing much else but cruise around in it. The Mustang was barely big enough to take our luggage, but it sure did look and feel good, and was fun to drive.

This completes our blog of this trip. We'll start up again when we go on another travel escapade.

Postscript from New York

2008-02-27T15:42:00.001+11:00

Our last day in New York dawned brilliantly clear and blueskied, with a fresh covering of snow underfoot, so we decided to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge with all the other tourists and local joggers and bike riders. What a great day it was! The view from the bridge is fantastic, you can see far and wide, including the Statue of Liberty, and the next door bridge, the Manhattan Bridge. There are lots of helicopters buzzing around, as there is a helipad below the bridge, and the structure of the bridge causes the wooden footpath to vibrate with the traffic flow. Looking back to Manhattan, the skyline of New York City is a lovely spectacle. The ugly Verizon building makes it very difficult to get a clear photo of the Brooklyn Bridge looking back into Manhattan [photo].

Brooklyn Heights is a very cute suburb, with lots of up market housing. The shopping village had lots of trendy shops, markets and cafes. Some of the houses have a great view over the East River, and have had balconies added to enhance them.

On our last morning we headed out by subway to Harlem, but found it rather run down, and weary. Maybe if we spent more time there, we would have found some treasures, but all we had was a brief walk before heading back to get our bags and walk to the bus station, for a ride to JFK. We had a good flight on Qantas, to LA, and were glad we were not continuing on to Sydney that night, but having a few days to chill out before the long flight home.

The photo shows the 1 Train subway bridge as it traverses Harlem.

New York, New York

2008-02-24T11:10:00.002+11:00

Our New York hotel is well placed, right near Grand Central Station, which is a marvellous structure. It is clean and warm, and has a vast array of food shops, including supermarkets and a fresh food hall which is really good. The trains are pretty well hidden from view (unlike Paris stations), which is probably another good idea. From our hotel window we can see the Empire State Building, lit up at night in silver. On the weekend it was lit in red, white and blue for the President's Day holiday [photo]. Right next door is a great place for breakfast, and they have good wraps and salads. A short walk takes you right to Times Square, and we are adjacent to the well known streets, Lexington Ave, Park Ave, Madison Ave, and 5th Ave. New York is great city for walking!

Our week in New York has been very interesting, it certainly is a different city, and the people watching here is most interesting. Foreigners abound - the city is packed with tourists. The decline in the US Dollar seems to bring Europeans here en masses, and they seem to be buying up brand name luggage in bulk, maybe to sell on their return. English visitors swagger around as if they own the place, and maybe they do, what with over two dollars to the pound!

The weather has been below freezing every day, some days have been bright and sunny, and we have also seen the snow fall, which has been great. Just like home the fashions in the stores are all summer, even though it is snowing outside and every one is wearing big coats, and it will be some time before the little flimsy numbers will be able to be worn.

We have done the touristy things, and just walked as we usually do, gazing upwards as the buildings here are so interesting, especially the tops of them. The photo shows an interesting brick building in Soho, incredibly intricate detail at the top levels, and those amazing NY fire escapes. There were trips to Macy's and Bloomingdales, and Century 21 the great discount store. In fairly dismal weather, we walked thru some of the "village" precincts of NYC, looking at the quirky shops and cafes.

We're big walkers, but NYC is also very big, so we use the Subway to move uptown and downtown in big hops. There is a convenient 1 week Metrocard which gives you unlimited travel for about $25, very good value. For some reason, we were able to buy the first one on a credit card, but had to use cash to buy the second Metrocard. The underground trains are clean, frequent, crowded and feel safe. The sounds of live music and buskers permeate the system. The network structure is not as straightforward as it is in Paris and London, but you get the hang of it quickly.

In perfect sunshine, we took the Staten Island Ferry, and gazed back at the familiar skyline of the NY skyscrapers, a sad sight now of course, and passed by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, where the early immigrants were processed. We took a trip to the top of the Empire State Building, mostly because Clare, as a little girl, remembers her Nana going there. It was crowded and freezing at the top, but the visibility was perfect. It's amazing to realise this building is 1931 vintage.

The Frick collection is very interesting, thanks Elaine for that tip, and the Guggenheim Museum in that wonderful building, although now covered in scaffolding for a massive external renovation, was amazing to see. Unfortunately on the day we went there, a new and very popular exhibition was opening, and it was also snowing heavily, therefore the cloackroom was suffering a huge overload and we decided not to stand in line to check our coats, but instead we spent the day over 5th Ave in Central Park.

This was a good decision, as it was very beautiful, covered in snow, with lots of cross country skiers, and children with sleds having a great time. All the wonderful buildings around the park had snow on the tops of them, and there were no cars in the park. The fresh snow in the park gives it a wonderful aspect [photo]

On a sunny day, we visited September 11's Ground Zero. It was very moving, we thought of the terrible events of that day, and looked up into the sky where the buildings used to be. It's really just a hole in the ground now. The design seems to be settled, and new foundations are well under way, and the streets around are full of construction workers and cement trucks. The pedestrians are very forgiving, and everyone gives way to the trucks as they turn and weave in the street. Noone can be offended by the minor inconveniences in moving around this place. We also looked at the sculpture, now temporarily housed in Battery Park, which once sat in the plaza of the World Trade Centre. It is badly bruised and battered, but is a fitting memorial to that terrible day [photo].

Return to New York

2008-02-22T10:40:00.002+11:00

The day to return the Subaru Outback arrived quickly, and we scarpered out of Vermont and through New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut rather more quickly than we would have preferred. The scenery through these states was great, but we didn't have much time to stop and enjoy it. We especially liked the frozen lakes with people wandering around on them, presumably safely.

We had specifically booked a Subaru from Avis, because that would guarantee "all wheel drive" which is highly desirable on the snowy roads we expected. This was after our experience in the Rockies two years ago when we discovered (several states too late) that, in the USA, SUV does not mean 4-wheel drive!

In the 40 days we had the Outback, it performed without a hitch. We travelled 5880 miles (9408km) through 16 states. Petrol (gas) prices were between $US2.90 and $3.20 per US Gallon, which translates to $A0.89 to $0.93 per litre, so they haven't got much to complain about, have they?

On the driving trip, we followed our usual US travel procedure and did not book hotels ahead. In the jargon of the trade, we were "walk-ins", and this lets you get good deals and make use of those discount coupon books you get from state welcome centres and McDonalds stores. We deviated from this strategy only twice, in Key West FL (where, worried about limited options in high-season, only Cuba, we rang 2 hours ahead, and just as well, because the town was full when we got there) and in Alexandria VA (where we had to tell a friend where we were going to be staying). We almost had a wheel fall off once, in Rutland VT, a ski resort town on the Presidents Day long weekend, but we managed to pay more and avoid having to sleep in the car.

Depending on opportunities, we stayed at Days Inn, Best Western, Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn, Quality Inn, Comfort Suites, Fairfield Marriott, La Quinta and one independent as well as two friends, of course. We like these chain hotels, because they not only provide the essentials and decent comfort, but also complimentary broadband (for this blog!) and breakfast. Three hotels let us down in the breakfast stakes, but we managed to avoid starvation.

Our reseach is anecdotal, of course, but we noted that, within any chain, the quality of the accommodation can vary widely. As someone said to us, look for recent construction or renovation! Our award for the most consistenly good hotels on this segment of our trip goes to Holiday Inn Express.

Covered Bridges of Vermont

2008-02-19T10:51:00.002+11:00

We stayed in Kingston NY with a vague plan to drive through the Catskills Mountains the next day, but then we looked at much time we had left before we had to return the Subaru, so in the morning, we set sail for Vermont, so we could look at some the 100 covered bridges supposedly in the state.

Vermont is a picture post card state, fresh snow fell as we drove into the state, and the temperatures were very cold. We saw a few ski areas, and the whole area was very busy as it was President's Day Weekend. The first town of major size we came into was Rutland, and we turned back from passing this town when it was getting late and snow was covering the road. We then decided to hunker down overnight. A bit of a scare there, as we got the last room, in town after trying many hotels. A very nice lady at the Best Western rang around for us, explaining that it was a big skiing weekend.

The next day dawned clear and bright, but extremely cold, about -10C. It was a perfect day to see the covered bridges whech we had come to see, so we set off, on well cleared roads. There are many beautiful little towns, the first stop for us was Woodstock, where we got the daily coffee and had a walk on the frozen footpaths. Around Woodstock there were 4 bridges of note very close to the route we were on. The first of these was the Lincoln Bridge, built in 1877, then came the Middle Bridge [photo], and they were most picturesque. We saw Taftsville Bridge, built 1836, near the very pretty Taftsville General Store, and the most beautiful of all, Quechee Covered Bridge, over the Quechee River, at a spot where there was an old mill. This was now converted to a glass blowing centre, where they made their own hydroelectric power, using an old generator which had been brought back to life. The river there was mostly frozen, as you can see in the pic. All 4 of these bridges are still in use by motor traffic.

Also on this road was the Quechee Gorge Bridge, uncovered, which we risked life and limb, walking on to see the gorge [photo], whilst traffic roared by. There was no footpath, as it was covered in snow, thrown there by the road clearing.

Will More Guns Reduce Gun Crime?

2008-02-16T12:05:00.000+11:00

Tragically, the USA has seen a spate of gun rampages in schools and universities, the latest causing 6 deaths, including the gunman himself, just out of Chicago. Not surprisingly, these outrages have been headline news, but what surprises us, as Australians, is the response of some of the "shock-jocks" on talk back radio.

As we are driving around, we spend a lot of time listening to the car radio. The music stations are usually boring (although we found a lot of great bluegrass music when we were on the Blue Ridge Parkway), and we gravitate to the talk stations on the AM band. On the day after the lastest rampage, we were listening to some guy called Al (we rarely know their last names). For two hours he assailed his listeners with his belief that the answer to these multiple gun crimes is for everyone to carry guns. We find this an extraordinary approach. In US schools, it is apparently forbidden/illegal to carry weapons, even if you have a permit, and Al says this makes them soft targets, and the victims, who can't shoot back, are no better than sheep at slaughter. He would have his audience believe that if teachers and students carried guns, then the perpetrators of these crimes would realise that they could face resistance and would think twice. The fact is that most of the gunmen in these situations are killed by police or themselves in the end. This would be known to the gunmen which means they are prepared to die in the process and thus would not be afraid of "resistance". This fact seems to escape Al, and indeed most of the people who call into his program and are of a like mind. We suppose that more rational people do not listen to Al's program.

It would be a fallacy to argue that supporting the right to carry guns into school is restricted to fanatical sections of the media. On the same day as the above radio broadcast, USA Today (a national newspaper that we regard as reasonably balanced because it usually gives both sides of an argument) reported that 12 US states, following the previous campus massacre, are currently considering laws which will prevent the prohibition on carrying guns at universities.

To use the common parlance, there is an "elephant in the room" on this topic. It is never discussed. It must be a taboo to debate the role of the second amendment to the US Constitution, viz: the right to bear arms, or to acknowledge the possible contribution of the ready availability of firearms to the occurrence of gun crime. We believe that if guns were much more difficult to obtain (you can buy them at Wal-Mart!), then the frequency of gun crime would be reduced, and that this would be a better solution than to have everyone carrying guns, as Al proposes. Al's listeners arguments include some memorable statements like "if guns are outlawed, then only the outlaws will have guns" and "if deer could shoot back, there would be less hunters". These are cute expressions, and both are no doubt true, but they are not the point. These gun massacres at schools are not being carried out by outlaws: they are being carried out by deranged people who, for whatever reason, have ready access to guns and ammunition.

The second amendment is sacred territory in the USA and cannot be discussed, it seems, no matter what atrocities are perpetrated because of it. Several weeks ago, we recall, another right-wing talk back radio host was inviting his audience to discuss which was the most important of the freedoms guaranteed in the US Bill of Rights. Was it religious freedom, or free speech? No, most listeners argued, it was the right to bear arms!

Australians and others know only too well (e.g. Port Arthur) that tougher gun laws are no guarantee against gun crime, but surely they help. The suggestion that everyone should carry guns to discourage anyone from using them is absurd. The fear of death won't stop the lunatic: they are of the same mind as suicide bombers.

There is a Bear Out There!!!

2008-02-15T13:16:00.002+11:00

After 8000km of driving, we finally saw a bear! Just after stopping for a picnic lunch by the Delaware River a few km north of Bushkill NY, Mike happened to notice a black bear cub in the field. He was grazing on some maize stalks, but took off when he saw us. Mananged to get a photo, not close enough of course! This was the highlight of our day after peering into forests for a bear for all this time!

Prior to this, after surviving the ice storm in Washington, we headed north through Maryland and into Pennsylvania. We called into the snow-covered Gettysburg battlefields (which surround the town), and did a road tour. These battlefields were the bloodiest in the Civil War and, apparently, Union victories there turned the tide against the Confederates. The fields are immense, and are peppered with hundreds of memorials and markers to various armies, regiments, positions and soldiers. Unfortunately the Visitor Centre was closed when we got there, "due to inclement weather" the rough notice on the door said, so we missed out on the ineveitable, very informative interpretive exhibits and movies. This is the only time we have felt let down by the management of the battlefields - there was no justification for the closure. We talked to a school teacher who had arrived there with a bus full of students, to meet a guide for the day. She was not impressed!

Gettysburg township itself is old and very pretty. The historical buildings are in very good condition, not doubt funded by the myriad of visitors to the battlefields in summer. But in winter now, the town was quiet (although many trucks seem to drive through), and we found a nice place to have cappucino and hot chocolate. We stayed overnight in Harrisburg.

The next day dawned perfectly fine but extremely cold, as predicted accurately by the Weather Channel, but the residues of the ice storm made for lots of black ice in car parks and sidewalks, and piles of snow, having been rained on and then frozen, were as hard as concrete. This made walking hazardous all day, especially morning and night, so we had to be very careful not to slip.

We called into Bethlehem PA to find a cappucino. The historic district of this town is very close to the now defunct steelworks, and it's quite sad to see this city, the birthplace of Galvalume, in a depressed state, a real rust-belt town [photo]. We passed through Pennsylvania into New York State. The landscape of fields and hills, was snow covered, and calm, with glimpses of the Catskills in the distance as we moved into NY. The town of Port Jervis on the NY side of the border was quaint, and provided us with an afternoon hot chocolate to help combat the cold.

Sunshine and Ice Storms in DC

2008-02-13T15:23:00.000+11:00

We've spent 3 nights in Alexandria VA, needing a few days to see Washington DC just over the bridge. The weather has been very cold, about -6C in Aussie terms, so the extreme weather clothing has been out again. One day was sunny, and brilliantly clear, but with a biting wind, and the other very grey, finishing off in the afternoon with an ice storm, freezing rain which made the footpaths dangerously slippery and quite hazardous for pedestrians, namely ourselves, after we caught the metro home. The ice storm has caused chaos in the traffic in Virginia, DC and Maryland, and even caused the presidential primaries voting today (Tuesday) to be extended to a later hour. Later on the TV news, there were complaints about sidewalks not being salted.

We met up with friends of our good friend Jack, Mike and Janell. Mike was kind enough to spend the entire first day with us, driving us around to some of the well known sites, as well as others which we would have missed had we been on our own. We also had two delightful dinners with Mike and Janell - thank you for spending the time with us!

We saw most of the presidents' memorials. Roosevelt's, extraordinary granite ediface which sprawls along the Potomac River, complete with waterfalls and fountains, and some of FDR'S great statements cut into the walls. Lincoln's memorial is in pride of place and so impressive, lined up with the Washington Momument and the Capitol Building on the hill in the distance at the end of the Mall.

A new and spectacular memorial to Air Force pilots soars into the air above the Pentagon, made from shining stainless steel. Perhaps the most moving memorials are the war memorials. These included the World War I and II memorials, and the Korean War memorial. The Vietnam Veterans' memorial incorporates the names of all soldiers lost engraved into the grey marble (heart-wrenching like the roll of honour at the Australian War Memorial) [photo]. It is a very modern memorial, which created a lot of controvesy when it was designed and erected, but has now become very popular.

The Library of Congress is a most beautiful building, marble columns and colorful frescoes [photo is of lobby, no photographs allowed in the reading room]. We peeked into the glorious reading room directly under the dome, with about 200 wooden desks and individual reading lights arranged in a large circle around the librarians' desk.

We had a very pleasant walk through the conservatory at the National Botanic Garden (after all, it's warm inside). This building, recently restored, reminded us of the petit palace in Paris, and contains what must be the best and most artistic implementation of a garden conservatory we have ever seen. The orchids were in bloom, so the colours were fantastic. In the rare and endanged section, there is a Wollemi Pine from Sydney.

Of course, there is the Smithsonian Museum. It is not to be missed but we could only skim the surface. The Museum of American History is closed at the moment for several years of refurbishment, so we missed that, but we spent good time in the Museum of Flight and Space, the US Postal Museum, the American Portrait Gallery (with its fabulous exhibit of US Presidents), and the US Archives (to look at precious originals or early copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (the first 14 amendments). Both days we had lunch in the Sculpture Garden, a delightful, comfortable and warm cafe beside the National Gallery of Art. This Garden features what looks like a permanent oval-shaped ice skating rink, and the cafe is of a Parisian theme, complete with a faux Metro station entry.

A walk around the Capitol Building was all we could manage. It is hard to get a tour through this building, even at this quiet time of year. The Supreme Court, the White House (so close to the road), so many significant buildings to see. Washington is set out very nicely, no high rise nearby, and all the buildings, modern and traditional fit together so well. Looking at the layout, and the architecture of the Federal Reserve and other government buildings lining the Mall, we were reminded of Walter Burley-Griffin who was, we think, an American, and must have used Washington as a model when he designed Canberra.

The Metro (the partly underground rail network which serves the DC area, running into Virginia and Maryland) has some lessons for Sydney. For one thing, our day passes cost $8 each, about 70% of the cost of a single ride from Central to Sydney airport! Signs at stations listed all stations where elevators were out of action (and apparently shuttle buses were available from other stations). The carraiges were mostly modern and clean and we did not see any graffiti. The underground stations were strangely dark.

As we post this, while the ice storm continues, Barak Obama appears to have whipped Hilary Clinton in today's local Democrat Primaries, while John McCain has more narrowly beaten Mike Huckabee on the Republican side. While we didn't get to vote, we are now "experts" on how the main parties choose their candidates for the Presidential election! It's impossible to miss.

The Civil War

2008-02-11T12:46:00.000+11:00

The Civil War, which took place in the 1860's, was fought in many battlefields up and down the eastern half of the US - we may have read that there were 400 sites! We restricted our "study" of this terrible conflict to the state of Virginia (where "more blood was spilt" than anywhere else). The battlefields themselves are interesting, fascinating indeed, but we were particularly interested in the background to and the reasons for the war.

The numerous battlefield exhibits and visitors centres deal with how the war went in that locality, but our more strategic question was answered perfectly at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond. Richmond is the state capital and, we learned, it was also the capital of the Confederated States of America, a country which had seceeded from the "Union" in 1861 and had its own President, Jefferson Davis. The USA must have viewed his behaviour as treacherous, but he is nevertheless honoured in modern day America, with the main coastal north-south road, US1, being named after him for much of its length.

The Civil War Museum is a new facility, and it structures its displays ingeniously by clearly dividing itself into the points of view of the three major stakeholders, the North (defending the "Union"), the South (defending state rights, which the museum called "Home") and the negro population ("Freedom" from slavery). The displays emphasise that while the seeds for the war were being sown effectively from the War of Independence about 80-90 years previously, and the causes were complex, they basically got down to slavery. The South was determined to defend its source of cheap labour which allowed them the accumulation of great wealth. The North was concerned about the morality of slavery, certainly, but they were just as opposed to the burgeoning economic strength of the South as slave populations grew. The South's political strength grew with this population too, because despite slaves being traded as property, a rule of "three fifths" was applied to their numbers. The geographic expansion of the USA (the acquisition of the "middle" by the Louisiana purchase from France in 1803; and Calfornia, New Mexico and Texas from the Mexican war in 1848) aggravated the balance between north and south achieved by the Union's consitution. When the southern states seceeded, the North's argument became more philosophical (the defence of the Constitution) and tactical (refusal to allow important ports and resources to be taken over by a foreign power). With the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, he called for armed retaliation to the secession, and seeking freedom for slaves was obviously not the major part of the motivation. We found this museum to be most interesting and informative, and it dealt with what we wanted to know perfectly.

Next door to the Museum is the Civil War Visitor Centre, run by the National Park Service. We were puzzled that the National Parks are the custodians of many Civil War sites and battlefields, but they take on this task with great effectiveness. Just as we commented when touring the Rocky Mountains two years ago, US National Parks are fanastically well organised and managed, and any natural or historical features under their care are in very good hands indeed. The Civil War sites are excellent and indeed awesome examples of this.

The main Richmond visitor centre has particular interest because of its location in the Tredegar Iron Works which manufactured cannons and other war machines for the Confederate army. Today, the works are partly ruins, but they have been stabilised and modified into a magnificent venue for the centre [photo].

At all the visitor centres we visited, there is a movie or some form of audio-visual presentation to describe the progress of the war in that particular locality. These are always very professional, very interesting and highly informative. The battlefields themselves (or at least those which survived and a now under National Park care) are laid out with walking trails, driving tours and numerous exhibits to described exactly what happened at this particular spot. In some places there are open fields or forests with few remnants of the war, but in others there are stunning artifacts and reminders, sometimes by reconstruction [photo], of how the war was conducted at that spot. To visit these places is very moving, and we were appalled at the horrendous loss of life which took place under our feet. It is notable that the use of metal detectors is specifically prohibited at all these sites.

At the Cold Harbour battlefield, near Richmond, we learned the extent to which this war involved "earthworks", the creation of protective barriers and trenches. No doubt these tactics and techniques were studied and adopted by European generals in the first world war, 50 years later.

At Petersburg, not that far south of Richmond, we were able to understand the battles which turned the war in favour of the North, and led to Confederate General Robert E Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S Grant only a week later. At this battlefield took place the "Battle of the Crater" where the two front lines were amazingly close together, and coal miner Union soldiers from Pennsylvania dug a tunnel 500ft from behind their lines to under a Confederate fort and blew it up with explosives. The Union troops were so amazed at the crater thus created, they actually lost the fight there, despite the damage and carnage suffered by the other side in the explosion.

At Fredericksburg, north of Richmond, we learned and saw how Union troops were repeatedly unable to capture a hill just out of town, and suffered horrendous losses, because the hill overlooked an open plain (now a suburb) and was easily protected by a rock wall, a "sunken road" and elevated gun emplacements. The Union army eventually won the hill by coming in from behind. The photo shows a portion of the rock wall, and a house, still riddled with bullets, that was in the way of the fighting. There is a huge cemetery here, full of mostly unidentified Union soldiers, buried on the very hill they died trying to capture [photo].

The towns we saw on these battlefield visits are worth a mention. Richmond is a large and modern city with a beautiful skyline as you drive in. It is undergoing great renewal in the CBD. We saw a huge modern edifice with Philip Morris emblazoned on it. Possibly it is the global headquarters of this company whose products must have killed more people than it is possible to imagine.

We didn't see much of Petersburg town, but Fredericksburg, just away from its battlefield, has a delightful and quaint historical district, full of life (University of Margaret Washington very close) and cafes, buildings in the English style (and one French, that we saw, right at the battlefield), and street names like Princess Anne, Prince Edward, George, Charles and William. A guide at the battlefield visitor centre told us of the Hyperion Cafe for cappucino, and we went there twice in two days (a record for us), so good was the coffee (ceramic cups!) and so cosy was the ambience [photo].

Thanks to excellent displays and short movies at visitor centres, informative exhibits at the actual war sites, and very clever reconstructions, we feel we know a lot more about the Civil War than we did before. We don't know that this sort of on-site historical representation of war battlefields is available in such volume anywhere else in the world - maybe the American treatment of its Civil War memory is quite unique?

As a final word, no matter what the war, no matter what the cause, the politicians are always to blame, and the tragic waste is always a deplorable testament to their failure!

Three Treats

2008-02-09T13:35:00.000+11:00

The Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park is the northern extension of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and we did this stretch on a fine, sunny day, although it was partly overcast while we were up in the mountains. It's strange that these two roads are managed separately, although both by the National Park Service. The Skyline Drive even has a "toll", strictly a park entry fee, while the Parkway is free.

The views of the Shenandoah River valley on the west side of the ridge are panoramic, although a little bit hazy due to pollution even during winter. There was even less private traffic (virtually none) on the Skyline Drive than there was on the Parkway, possibly because it's through a wider National Park and does not have private property either side of the road, although we did see a number of service vehicles.

We took a side trip to New Market (lots of Civil War battlefields here) to visit another of Virginia's covered bridges. This one you can still drive over! It was called Meem's Bottom, after a landowning family nearby. It's quite a photogenic bridge and its inside structure
(single span Burr arch truss) is fascinating [photo]. The current bridge is a reconstruction, having been burned by vandals in 1976, and like other covered bridges, it now sits on concrete piers and steel beams. The Meem's bridge predecessors were burned in 1862 in the Civil War by the Confederate Army, and its replacement was washed away in a flood.

After the excursion to the Shenandoah valley, we raced back to Charlottesville to visit the home of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, hence the writer of those famous words "all men are created equal" and have a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". He obviously did not practice what he preached, because he operated the surrounding tobacco plantation using slave labour. Even though he condemned slavery, he participated in it.

Jefferson was a great philosopher but also a self taught architect, and he designed his home, "Monticello". We did a tour of the building [photo]. It's unfortunate that no photographs are allowed inside, because the house features magnificent European design, and some extraordinary innovations. Jefferson was not an inventor, but he freely adopted others' ideas to great effect in his house. The house has some skylights, double glazing, a fascinating built-in pendulum clock that he designed himself (the weights have to pass through a hole in the floor), dumb waiters for wine bottles built into the side of fireplaces, a turntable servery for food coming into the dining room, so that doors do not have to be opened (letting a draught in), double doors linked with underfloor bicycle chains etc. Possible the greatest innovation is a device used by Jefferson to make copies of all his writing (something like a pantograph?) - the first copying machine?

Jefferson's wife died in childbirth at a young age. He had one daughter with his wife, but it had long been rumoured that he fathered several children with one of his slaves. Jefferson never acknowledged this, but it has apparently been recently been confirmed using DNA analysis, and we note that photos of these children at Monticello are now accorded the surname "Jefferson".

Cool Music on the Blue Ridge Parkway

2008-02-07T13:00:00.000+11:00

Our previous blogpost mentioned our first frustrating day on the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP) when, due to road closures we regarded as unnecessary, we managed to only drive about 10 miles on the Parkway in the whole day (between Linville Falls and Blowing Rock). Since then, we have spent two more much more successful days driving the BRP, after getting back on it at Deep Gap near Boone. We had spent the night in this town, named after Daniel, the famous explorer and good all round mountain man, and we ate at Troy's, a classic American diner.

After two days, we arrived at Charlottesville VA at the northern end of the BRP, having done several hundred beautiful miles on it. The road closures in North Carolina persisted, and we hap to skip parts of the Parkway, but the posted closures in Virginia seem to have evaporated. The closed stretches may have been opened in the last day or so, and frankly, we could see no reason for the closures anyway, no ice, no snow and no signs of grading.

The first day was a sunny day, so we had beautiful views over the blue ridges of the mountains [photo]. The road is so peaceful at this time of year, we had it to ourselves, hardly seeing another vehicle, and no commercial vehicles are allowed on it, so no trucks. It is an absolute delight to drive, and the scenery, numerous overlooks, wildlife, and side trips are a real bonus. This road is so attractive, that it increases our distress at the inexplicable closures. After a night in Roanoke/Salem VA, the second day started clear but we had some rain and at the end there was a heavy fog, which only enhanced the beauty of the mountains, but didn't do anything for the long distance views! Banks of fog swept down from the peaks into the valleys.

Our enjoyment was enhanced by the very cool bluegrass music which was being transmitted around the Blue Ridge. A pleasant change from the rantings of shock-jocks on talk radio about the Presidential primaries!

The interesting thing is the "public" roads running near the BRP have villages and cabins as well as the traffic on them, and you can see them quite clearly from many places on the BRP. It is easy to pop off to see things and pop back on again.

The forest is made up of maple trees and firs, and there are rhododendrons growing freely, they must be a beautful sight in the spring when they are in flower. We made a few excursions on the walking tracks which are well marked and obviously well used in the summer when the parkway is heavily used. There are plenty of white tailed deer to see [photo] and we saw turkeys and birds, but no bears unfortunately.

One of the most interesting things along the way is the extremely photogenic Mabry Mill [photo], and a village set out in the style of the mountain people who lived in the area, in the early 1900's.

We made a detour into Floyd, to visit the General Store there: it is a place where music and dancing happens every Friday night. Although it was only Tuesday, we thought we would have a look in, but it is only open 4 days a week in winter, and we were out of luck. The best we could do was peer in the window, and look at the entertainment list for next Friday. Lots of Bluegrass music!

Another detour took us to see 3 covered bridges. There are only a handful in Virginia, and the 3 we saw (one from a distance, it's on private property) are well preserved and registered by the Historical Society, we were pleased to see [photo].

Another side trip took us into Buena Vista, a small town which looks as though it has fallen on very hard times. We had a nice chat to the lady in the cafe there, over lunch. She has entertainment in the cafe every 3rd Friday night. Live bands of course, and a variety of music. The purpose of this visit was to see the Country Store there, but to our dismay it had closed some time ago. The lady from the cafe said she hoped someone would get it going again someday, she seems to be thinking about it herself. This seemed very sad, we hope the town manages a comeback, it certainly is on the bluegrass trail and could do with an injection of visitors. We also met the policeman of this small town, just as he closed the road back to the Parkway because of a truck accident. He was very friendly and he told us of a secret alternative way back up the ridge which saved us many miles. The secret way was very steep and windy, but paved all the way - luckily no trucks use this road. Our Subaru handled it with aplomb.

Again we had cause to be disappointed with the commercial appropriation of natural scenic attractions. We didn't even bother to make the detour to Natural Bridge after reading that a stiff entry fee is charged, and realising that it would probably be closed and locked up anyway for winter.

Why are the attractions on this road closed in winter? Maybe it's because the road itself is not kept open reliably. There's a destructive circular argument in here somewhere - the attractions are closed because the road is not maintained because the attractions don't have enough visitors? Anyway, we were disappointed that the Linville Falls visitors centres, the Blue Ridge Music Centre, the Mabry Mill shop (although the site was still accessible), Virginia's Explore Centre (and the historical exhibits were behind locked gates), the Peaks of Otter visitors centre were all closed. No doubt others were closed too, but we didn't go in to find out. We feel there is enough winter traffic on the BRP to encourage more openings, and that this traffic would increase if they maintained the road. That said, we did thoroughly enjoy the relative solitude on the road! Luckily the Folk Art Centre visitors centre near Asheville NC was open, because this is where we got our best map of the Parkway.

Blue Ridge Farceway

2008-02-05T12:16:00.000+11:00

Today was not a good day. Firstly, it was raining in the morning, and it rained steadily all day, which is enough to put any tourist in a bad mood, but our experience with the Blue Ridge Parkway made it worse.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a tourist road (no commercial traffic) which runs along a high ridge of the Appalachian Mountains for 469 miles in Virginia and North Carolina. The information about the Parkway proudly proclaims it to be a "designated All American Road" which requires it to have such exceptional and unique qualities that it is a "destination unto itself" and "the road must provide an exceptional travelling experience so recognised by travellers that the primary reason for their trip would be to drive along the Byway". This requirement places All American Roads well above "National Scenic Byways" which apply to a lot of particularly scenic roads in the US.

Well sadly, the Blue Ridge Parkway is a farce. Today it is closed in no less than 12 separate places, the closures totalling 241 miles of the most scenic (highest?) parts of the road. The closures are due to "ice and snow". Trouble is, we have seen almost no ice and snow anywhere on this trip. Even around ski resorts, the only snow visible is man made. The entire southern 80 miles of the Parkway, from Cherokee to Asheville, which we particularly wanted to cover, is closed.

Why is this "exceptional travelling experience" completely ruined by these closures? Our enquiries reveal that no attempts are made to clear the road, so travellers wanting to enjoy this All American Road have to wait for very old ice to melt naturally in areas where sun probably never reaches in winter. We have travelled the Rockies in winter, and mountain passes twice as high as anything in these mountains are kept open during snowstorms, and in exceptional circumstances, seem to be opened within hours of really heavy falls. Surely, no other American tourist attraction, not to mention one claimed to be as exceptional as the Blue Ridge Parkway, is treated with such contempt by its guardians.

Before we get flamed, let us emphasise that in no way are we criticising the staff of the National Parks service which, apparently, has responsibility for the Parkway. We are confident that the Parkway is being neglected due to underfunding, and that the staff are doing the very best they can with the limited resources available to them. Surely the "blame" belongs with the bureaucrats and politicians who determine the budgets available to the Blue Ridge Parkway, this road of exceptional significance. Shame on whoever is responsible for this!

Good information is available from recorded messages and from very helpful visitor centre staff on where the road is open or closed at any particular time, and what the best alternate routes might be. It's a pity that notices on the road itself about closures are virtually non-existent. Maybe the budget again?

So, our drive from Asheville to Boone which should have been 100 miles of the Parkway, was actually less than 10 miles of the Parkway (with hardly a trace of ice or snow), and the rest of the way on alternative routes, including Interstates and US Highways which hardly give the same experience.

This drive had its highs and lows. The scenery was both interesting and delightful once we were off the I40, and we saw some quaint mountain towns such as Black Mountain, Old Fort (which we would have missed if were on the Parkway, and Clare got cappucino at a friendly shop in Black Mountain) and Blowing Rock.

We tried to see Linville Falls which is supposedly one of the most spectacular sights of the Parkway, but it required a 1km bush walk, and frankly it was raining too heavily, and the path was slippery. We can't blame the bureaucrats for the rain! The Parkway visitors centre at the Falls was closed as was the State Forest visitors centre (a cute shack, photo). Why are these Centres closed? We are quite concerned at the tendency to close businesses and services down in winter when there are still tourists about (these mountains abound with ski resorts, after all) and most of them are accessible.

We tried to visit Blowing Rock, a natural feature in mountainous country apparently characterised by exceptional updrafts. Sorry, it's closed for the season, and because it seems to be on private property, not even able to be looked at from a distance.

We think the value of the Appalachians, and the Blue Ridge Parkway, is the exceptional natural beauty of the area, and the quaintness of the towns and small settlements. There is little or no value in the commercial capture of scenic beauty (Blowing Rock as mentioned, also Grandfather Mountain), turning them into tawdry attractions and theme parks. It's a shame that this exploitation has been allowed to occur in such an exceptionally beautiful region.

Driving slowly along the Blue Ridge Parkway today would have been a perfect way to spend a miserable rainy day or two. The scenery would surely still have been glorious. Instead, we missed that opportunity, although the other road was still good. Hopefully, the weather will improve - that will improve our mood considerably - but we doubt that anything quick will happen to open the closed sections of the Parkway.

The Vanderbilt's Country House

2008-02-04T13:42:00.000+11:00

We had originally planned to skirt round the Great Smoky Mountains on the I40 and then drive the Blue Ridge Parkway near its southern extremity at Cherokee NC, but we were stunned to hear that the Parkway is closed throughout North Carolina due to snow and ice! We have just driven over the Smokies on the day after the last storm, and there is barely a flake of snow to be seen. We cannot fathom how the Parkway can be closed, but we do understand that the road is not snow-plowed, but has to clear itself naturally. This is a stark contrast to the approach we saw two years ago in the Rocky Mountains, where mountain passes twice as high as anything on the Parkway seem to be cleared within hours of a snowstorm. These are isolated roads of course, and therefore very important, while the Blue Ridge Parkway is a tourist road with lots of alternatives available.

Anyway, we had been advised by both Jack's friend, Mike, who lives in Washington, and our friend Judy from Greenville that when near Asheville NC, we should not miss the Biltmore Estate. We were not sure we wanted to take up these recommendations, having previously visited Versailles out of Paris, and Schoenbrunn in Vienna. But in the end, while waiting for the snow on the Parkway to melt, we made the pilgramage to Biltmore, and the investment of our time and the entry fee was amply rewarded.

At 8000 acres, the Estate is huge. The drive around it is about 11 miles long. The gardens are large and immaculate, and were designed by the same fellow who did Central Park in New York. There was once a working dairy, which provided the town with milk, but it has now been replaced by a huge vineyard and winery, which now markets Biltmore wines. We sampled some of the wines, which were very good! There are other tourist attractions now, a farm and horse stables, not to mention walking trails, jogging, bicycling, carraige rides [photo] and even Land Rover off road driving experiences. There is a large inn, for people to stay on the estate.

The highlight of the visit to the Estate is Biltmore House, the largest house in the USA. The house's exterior is very ornate, bringing to mind Windsor Castle and Notre Dame. The house was built by George Vanderbilt in the 1890's as a "country home". It is interesting to see this house and the furnishings, as there is so much of Europe incorporated there. Many tapestries, on the walls, all the furniture in the rooms, and the art works. For example, all the bedrooms are themed in such a way that you can almost guess the name of the room from the art on the walls, all European. The European palace approach of having narrow passageways between the rooms for servants to scurry has been adopted at Biltmore. Of course there are very practical American touches, specifically that all the bedrooms have ensuites. This would be an innovative idea in Europe, even today.

Sadly, photography is not allowed inside the house. There is a winter garden just inside the front door which is stunning. The main dining room is beyond description, it even features a huge pipe organ! The circular grand staircase goes from bottom to top and wraps around a gigantic multileveled chandelier. While the tour of the majestic rooms of Biltmore was as impressive as you would expect, possibly the feature of this tour which made it partly unique and certainly fascinating was the visit to the servants quarters, the kitchens, the pantries, the laundries etc, all in restored condition. We even saw a blower room which powers the organ upstairs, and a "mechanical" walk-in refrigerator. The washing machine was a sight to see!

Biltmore seems way ahead of its time: it has a bowling alley, an indoor pool and a gymnasium. We are guessing the house was used in the winter, there is no outdoor pool, no tennis courts etc, so maybe the Vanderbilts had a beach house as well, for summer use. Obviously the grounds would have been used for hunting, and shooting, geese, deer, etc., and there were large lakes for fishing.

Biltmore House did have an outdoor bowls area, and extensive vegetable gardens. Still functioning is a beautiful conservatory [photo], with many plants we recognised, all of which would grow in a Sydney garden all year round, and were flourishing in the hot house conditions, even pineapples!

The Estate is still in the Vanderbilt family, but it was opened to the public in the 1930's as a means of helping Asheville with tourism during the depression. Despite the entry fees, and the wine and merchandise sales, one would not assume that the "business" makes too much money. Maintenance of the grounds and the buildings would cost a fortune, and there are great numbers of staff employed.

Cades Cove

2008-02-03T13:56:00.000+11:00

We stayed at Gatlinburg, Tennessee, just on the northern border of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Our hotel room has a balcony overhanging a gushing river, and the town itself is a theme park in its own right, full of (apart from gunshops) a wide array of amusements (exemplified by Ripley's Believe It or Not) and rides, all no doubt designed to separate tourists from their money. Despite this, it is a very pretty place, jammed between mountains and divided by numerous rivers and creeks, and populated by tourists who seem to be totally unprepared for cold weather, judging by their clothing and footwear. We saw the same in Florida, but there, cold weather is unusual, here it is surely the norm! The next town, almost joined with Gatlinburg, but lacking its mountainous location and charm, is Pigeon Forge (it's on the Pigeon River), also full of motels and fun parks, and very busy with tourists. The photo shows fishermen in the Roaring Fork Creek or Little Pigeon River in the centre of Gatlinburg.

There is a ski resort above the town, although you cannot see any snow from the town. Gatlinburg reminds us of Jindabyne, but much bigger and flashier. We drove up to the slopes and still did not see a flake of snow, so it must be 100% artificial at the skiing area. We didn't go past the car park, because at 5pm, they still wanted us to pay for a day's parking. It is certainly cold enough here to make snow, and they have more than enough water.

We spent the day at Cades Cove, an old remote community from the 1800's in a wide valley surrounded by mountains, where "homesteaders" or "hillbillies" lived before the land was acquired for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cades Cove is a long, twisty, slow 30 mile drive out of Gatlinburg (along the Little River, being enjoyed by kayakers), and then to see the Cove you drive round an 11 mile loop (reserved for pedestrians and cyclists on some days in summer). It was a beautiful cool, sunny day, and it was so nice to be in this Shangri-la-like hidden valley where about 700 people once farmed and raised crops. There were several restored churches and houses [photo], with barns. We saw old waterwheel mill, a forge, smokehouse etc. The visitors' centre there was very impressive, with lots of information.

This is a very popular area, and the limited roads were quite crowded. People were fascinated to see wild deer - one can only imagine their reaction if a black bear appeared! The Cove has large empty fields and visitors really wandering off into those fields and enjoying the relative solitude and quiet [photo]. We think this Park, and Cades Cove in particular, is quite unique in the USA.

The descendents of the original Cades Cove families have a reunion every year, and we note that many of them are still being buried in the tiny cemeteries at the churches there.

Judging from their number plates, many people visiting Cades Cove, and indeed in Gatlinburg, were from the nearby states, Alabama, Georgia, and Nth Carolina and most were from Tennessee. We figure this is a popular place for weekends away.

The Great Smokies

2008-02-02T14:19:00.000+11:00

In Greenville SC, we met up with old friend Ralph and his wife Judy, who generously invited us to stay at their beautiful new home. Thanks very much Ralph and Judy, and we hope we get to repay the compliment in the future! Ralph showed us around the delightful and recently restored historic downtown area of Greenville. The Reedy River flows through town, and the rejuvenation of this district has rendered the area beautiful and charming.

On this drive + walk, we discovered that the Poinsettia is a flower of Mexican origin but introduced to the US by a Greenville resident Joel Poinsett who became the first US Ambassador to Mexico. We also saw the beautiful campus of Furman University, within walking distance of Ralph and Judy's home.

Ralph and Judy advised us on a scenic route into the Great Smoky Mountains (GSM) which was to be our next destination. We followed this route, and found it to be (as warned) circuitous and extremely twisty, but as it climbed into the hills, it passed through delightful countryside and towns, such as Cashiers and Highlands. This route looks as if it is very popular in summer, but it was reasonably quiet for our drive. At the latter town, we found a great place for cappucino. It seems the arty and touristy towns are reliable sources of espresso coffee outlets!

We eventually arrived at Cherokee at the southern gateway to the GSM National Park, and decided that there wasn't enough time to cross the mountain at leisure, so we stayed the night. Cherokee is a big touristy town, full of "trading post" type souvenir shops, located inside the Cherokee Indian Reservation. The town is getting quite a lot of work during this off-season. The photo shows one of many painted bears which decorate the streets of Cherokee - they are quite cute!

Indian reservations in the US are allowed casinos to provide a solid source of financial support to the native populations. This is no doubt one way of compensating the Indians for atrocities performed in times past. In the Cherokee's case, the entire nation was marched to Oklahoma by the US Government in the 1830's, the famous "Trail of Tears", where few survived.

Hopefully the Cherokee Casino (and all others for that matter) is distributing wealth where it is most needed, but we found it quite dispiriting, a dark and very smoky place populated by sad looking and addicted gamblers. We remember someone saying that gambling is a tax on stupidity. Casinos are certainly habituated by people with poor mathematical skills, otherwise they would know that they are going to lose! The fact that gamblers seem to smoke heavily is perhaps another indicator of their intelligence.

We spent a fine but mostly overcast day in the GSM National Park. The drifting mists which give rise to the "smoky" were well and truly in evidence, and the park was amazingly beautiful. After an overnight downpour, the rivers were flowing apace [photo at a bridge over the Oconaluftee River], and the waterfalls were plentiful and magnificent. The altitude of the park is not so high (Newfound Gap is at 5046ft), so it's partly above and below the snowline, leading to the slushy and slippery conditions that also grace the Australian Snowy Mountains. We only attempted about a mile of the famed Appalachian Trial, and found the walking conditions quite challenging [photo].

At the vistors' centres, we learnt a lot about the history, flora and fauna of this Park. The GSM National Park is effectively the only wilderness area on the eastern side of the USA, and it only came about through the cooperation (sometimes grudging) and contributions of many landholders, residents and schoolchildren, and commercial stakeholders, including logging companies who had already logged 80% of the area, and the governments of Tennessee and North Carolina. A most important donation came from the Rockefeller family. The biodiversity of the park is stunning (a movie at the visitor's centre explains why) and precious, and accordingly we found it quite unnerving to see a lot of gun shops in the town of Gatlinburg on the north side of the park. These shops are here for a reason!

While considering where to stay after our Park visit, we looked for Dollywood at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It's missing! We found the car park, but not the theme park (which is shut for the Winter anyway), and not the "emporium" which is supposed to be open.

Georgia on our Minds

2008-02-01T12:44:00.000+11:00

Travelling north out of Florida, we moved up through the middle of Georgia en route to the Great Smoky Mountains. We avoided Interstates as much as possible, although at Tifton we were lucky enough to spy a Starbucks advertisement so Clare could get her fix for the day.

Although she would not normally have coffee from Starbucks in Australia (not great coffee, paper cups!), espresso has not taken off so much on this side of the USA,and cappucinos can be very hard to find. If you stay off the beaten track, you can travel 100's of miles between espresso shops, and a Starbucks outlet thus becomes a welcome sight.

We deviated to Andersonville to visit what proved to be magnificent National Monument commemorating Prisoners of War. Our Navman had some trouble getting us here, but we made it in the end. Andersonville was the site of the biggest Civil War prison camp on either side (it was a Confederate camp), and due to how the camp design contaminated its own drinking water, it suffered the highest number and percentage of prisoner deaths. The cemetery here was large, crowded and most moving. The dead soldiers were originally identified only by numbered stakes, but, after the war, the lady who established the American Red Cross (and others) painstakingly went through the records and identified the soldier associated with every numbered stake. Now these names of these soldiers appear on small tombstones across the cemetery. Like all war cemeteries, this is a very moving place.

But more fascinating is the site of the camp itself, about a kilometer away, with some reconstructions and other devices to clearly show where the wells were dug (in a desperate search for water during the hot summer drought, and to build escape tunnels), where the stockade (perimeter fence was), where the "deadline" was inside the stockade, beyond which any prisoner would be shot, and where Providence Spring appeared after a downpour to save the lives and quench the thirsts of the prisoners. The photo shows this site and some of the numerous memorials erected by the northern states to show where their citizens tended to congregate in the camp. Apparently the men from the individual states tended to stick together for better morale and peer support.

The museum at this historic monument features an incredibly gruesome and moving movie reconstruction of life inside this horror camp. The museum itself seems to memorialise American POWs of all wars, as well as foreign POWs held in American camps.

Although we spent a night in the large city of Macon (rhymes with "bacon"), we cruised up through Georgia mostly on back roads and passed through some delightful little towns, such as Juliette (where the movie Fried Green Tomatoes was filmed, centering on the Whistle Stop Cafe, see photo). Andersonville itself as particularly charming, as were places such as Monticello and Eatonville. In this last town, we stumbled across a very cute cafe which served cappucino, so we stopped there for a break. The photo shows the inside of this cafe, which was preparing for a lunch rush. While we were there, the phone rang repeatedly with people asking what was on - it was chicken pie and squash casserole, with rice and green beans!

We started to notice that the lakes and rivers are at very low levels. The "high tide" marks are well up from the present water edge, and some boats and wharves are particularly high and dry. There is a serious drought in this part of the US.

Up the Middle of Florida

2008-01-29T12:05:00.000+11:00

In the spirit of trying to avoid Interstates as much as possible, we followed US27 North from Miami up to Gainesville Florida. This route proved to be interesting, although not terribly photogenic. US27 is an excellent road all the way, and was very quiet down south, but progressively got busier and busier.

For the first several hours, US27 looked to be going through the Everglades, with swamps and canals the main thing in view. The swamps gave way to massive development work to drain them and clear them, and then we saw massive sugar farms, and a lot of turf (lawn) growing as well. For a while, much of the traffic on the US27 was very large sugar trucks and machines which look like cane cutters. Full sugar trucks were headed towards occasional large sugar mills, with empty ones going in the opposite direction.

The Lake Okeechobee region and the busy town of Clewiston (where we stayed) seemed to be the centre of the sugar industry. US27 through Clewiston is called the Sugarland Highway, and the town proclaims itself as the "sweetest in America". There was a fishing tournament going on in Clewiston, banners welcoming the participants, and the town was full of enthusiastic boaters. The RV parks were full, but it was pretty quiet in the town's hotels.

Clewiston is rather "off the beaten track" (meaning any town not very close to an Interstate!) and as such, should not have to put up with intolerant and demanding city slickers like ourselves. We walked out of one restaurant which was so overwhelmed with its clientele that night that no waiter came to attend to us (it had just opened a few days earlier, and everyone in town was trying it out, we think). The next restaurant we tried had already been recommended to us as "excellent", but the food was nothing special, the service was charming but naive, and the billing system was primitive. The truth is, legendary American efficiency does not always extend far outside the cities, and it doesn't in Australia either, so we shouldn't be so critical!

Lake Okeechobee is a large natural lake, about 40km square, which once flooded causing massive loss of life and property, so it has since been surrounded by a large levy bank and intensive water management (which gets blamed for water shortages in the Everglades downstream). The lake is only 14ft above sea level, quite amazing given that it drains to the Everglades and is nowhere near the sea. The levy bank itself provides great recreational opportunities (biking, picnicing etc), and incorporates many boat launching facilities to accommodate the fishermen. The lake is strange in that inside the levy is an artificial channel of deep water, and inside that is a lot of shallow or marshy areas, and then inside that, the lake proper, linked to the outer channel by radial channels [photo].

North of Okeechobee along the US27, the sugar industry gives way to oranges (we passed a town with a massive juicing factory), and the countryside becomes what could be called "the Lakes District". The road passes literally dozens of small to large lakes (including Lake Placid), many of which are mostly built up around the edges by holiday homes and boat sheds. Many of these look charming and are very picturesque. The towns around these lakes are obviously very popular with recreational boaters and RV campers. We have never seen so many large and exquisite RVs and fifth-wheeler caravans as we have in this part of Florida, and the state is particularly popular with Harley Davidson riders too, who patrol around usually in small to medium groups, mostly grey power, some couples.

The photo shows a cooperative specimen of local fauna (species unknown to us) which met us in the grounds of a very quiet Visitors' Centre near Leesburg.

From the lakes district north, as the US27 bypasses Orlando to the west, the path of this highway is almost 100% built up and urbanised. The towns look to be not so significant on the map, but on the ground they seem to link together to become a huge (or long) suburban sprawl. In some areas, the development is very new and affluent, other parts look to be older and maybe a little bit jaded. We are impressed that the new developments appear to incorporate excellent roads and to gain their commercial infrastructure at the same time as if not before the bulk of the residential development. This forward planning does not seem to occur in Australia. We are not so sure about public transport, trains or buses. The planning paradigm in the USA seems to revolve around motor vehicles, and often even sidewalks (footpaths) are overlooked. We see very few pedestrians except in very poor areas, or "retirement" suburbs, or along beach paths. We normally wish to walk to restaurants at night if they are within a kilometer or so, but often we cannot due to lack of sidewalks or lights.

By the time the US27 arrived in Gainesville, the weather was again cool but sunny, and we realised that it was now looking like what we remember of Georgia, especially Savannah, lots of very large trees with Spanish Moss hanging in them. We have at last left the swamps of the Everglades!

Gainesville itself is a delightful university town (University of Florida), leafy and low rise. Most streets have marked cycleways, and although these are not safely separated from cars, their very presence shows a refreshingly different planning attitude prevailing in this town. We looked at an intriguing geographic feature known as the Devil's Millhopper, a very large sinkhole which supposedly resembles a mill hopper. This deep hole is traversed with walking trails where we took the photo.

The Florida Keys

2008-01-27T12:52:00.000+11:00

We made the long trip south west from Miami to the Florida Keys, and to the very end at Key West. It was worth the effort, even though you have to come back exactly the same way, something which we are normally philosophically opposed to. The Keys are unbelievably beautiful, although possibly developed beyond their capacity. They consist of 700 islands, according to the guide books, many of which are linked together by the southermost part of Route US1 (a pretty good road) and dozens of bridges, many large, and one seven miles long.

As you pass down US1, the major towns are Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon and then Key West, with plenty of lesser towns in between. You can see the Gulf of Mexico on the right, and the Atlantic Ocean on the left. Lots of the Keys are reserved as State Parks, thank heavens, but where developed, there are whole suburbs of beautiful waterfront houses, and many very cute marinas. The crystal blue water on both sides is a haven for all forms of recreation, boating, sailing, fishing, kayaking and diving. It's just like paradise, but maybe a bit too crowded. US1 is just a two lane road much of the way, and it's steady heavy traffic in both directions.

Stunningly, the Atlantic coast of the Keys was quite calm during our visit, and judging from the look of buildings and seawalls etc, it is calm most of the time. Maybe it is protected by some offshore reef, but we were quite surprised to see a total lack of surf on this ocean side.

The "African Queen", the boat which starred in the movie of the same name, is in the marina at Key Largo. It seems to be available for cruises, but it doesn't look very seaworthy to us.

Key West itself is a very pleasant town which effectively fills up its island. There are streets and streets of historic and beautiful old wooden houses, some very grand (such as Ernest Hemingway's old house, and the "little White House" used by quite a string of US Presidents). There are also some very beautiful public buildings, such as the old Customs House [photo].

Key West proves to be the epitome with Florida's contact with the Cuba and the West Indies. The town seems to have a lot of Caribbean people and culture, voodoo and the works! We ate one night at Kelly's, a very nice restaurant (in Pan Am's original offices, apparently) which supposedly specialises in exotic islander tastes (but not that much on the menu reflecting this, and our waiter didn't know much about it either, he came from Argentina).

Key West is only 90 miles from Cuba, and is the southermost point in the continental USA (even though it's actually not on the mainland). A marker to this effect is a popular tourist attraction [photo]. Key West developed and grew at least partly because of the profits from "wrecking", the salvage of valuables from the numerous shipwrecks in the area: there an excellent sculpture commemorating this.

During our visit, Key West was hosting a major sail race week, so the town is full of yachties who seem to know how to enjoy themselves in the bars and restaurants in the evening. Luckily, a sponsor of this event was a Barbados rum company, so cheap Caribbean cocktails were available all over town.

The port area of Key West is very beautiful, being next door to the little White House area, and enjoying a marvellous redevelopment by a resort hotel, and an interesting market area. While we were there, there were two cruise liners disgorging their guests into the town for a day visit. We noted an exquisite luxury yacht from the George Town in the Cayman Islands, "Meteor", moored in the marina. The older part of the marina is more down to earth, and features many rustic restaurants and bars. The last photo shows a developed island off Key West, as seen through the ropes of a moored cruise ship.

The Florida Coast and Everglades

2008-01-25T13:58:00.000+11:00

Our southerly journey through Florida was down State Route A1A wherever that was possible. This is the road which follows the Atlantic Coast all the way to Key West. The road is sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal waterway, all the way. (North-south highways on the eastern side of Florida are firstly the Interstate 95, used by anyone needing to get anywhere, then, mostly closer to the coast, US1 which was the main road before the interstates were invented, then A1A, which follows the very coast as much as possible.)

The weather began to get hotter as we came further south, so now we have exchanged our winter uniform for the Floridian clothing of shorts and t-shirt.

Most of the road is built up on either side by a variety of holiday housing. It seems like hundreds of miles of holiday houses. As we neared Fort Lauderdale and Miami, we began to see some very palatial houses, complete with gate house, studios, and pool houses, which allowed no access to the beach at all for the public. In fact most of the actual coast, especially outside the towns, has very limited public areas, and it is very hard to actually get to the beach, and when you do, there may be nowhere to park. Trying to find the beach, we detoured into a couple of little areas, of modest looking houses and trailer parks, they were a rabbit warren of tiny streets, and looked as though they had just popped up there. Still no parking in these areas, we parked illegally to have a quick walk onto the sand.

As you approach major towns and cities, the upmarket houses on the Atlantic beachfront give way to rows and rows of high rise buildings, some of them still under construction, about 50 stories high, which were amazing. On the other side of the road, the intracoastal is often there, and alongside it there were lovely islands of houses, some gated, many with big boats parked in the water, and complete with pools and sometimes beaches [photo]. In what you might call the "village centre", most Cities have provided for public parking and public access to the beach. Maybe the best example of this was Fort Lauderdale which, while it had its full compliment of high rise with private beach access, also had extensive areas of public parking and beach access.

The Florida experience has certainly has been an eye opener for us, and it has put us in a place which is very busy, unlike most of the places when we visit them. For example, the Outer Banks were almost closed when we were there, but now we are in peak season in Florida (and the hotel prices reflect this too!).

We visited Naples to visit some old friends, Ange and Lucia, who hosted us overnight, and we are very grateful for their generous hospitality.

We made two passes through the Everglades, once on the I75, and once on Route 41. The Everglades are a threatened area (too much housing development and golf courses), and a long drought, are taking a toll. Even the water supply to the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee, has been largely cut off by the construction of a levy around the lake. Nevertheless we were amazed to see lots of alligators, sunning themselves on the banks of the swampy waterways. The bird life is really plentiful, quite stunning, but extremely difficult to photograph, and we saw lots of different species of egrets, other water birds, many banded kingfishers, rare ruby spoonbills [photo], and pelicans. Lots of people take advantage of the several viewing areas along the sides of these roads.

A ride on one of the Everglades air boats was a must for us. We took a private boat and we sped through the grasses, just like in the movies [photo of our "captain"]. Many of our wildlife observations were during this ride. We had an excellent guide, a native of Argentina, who gave us good descriptions of the flora and fauna of the beautiful Everglades, and even showed us an alligators' nest.

We didn't see many other critters which inhabit the swamp. These include black bears, deer, snakes and a rare species of panther, with a tawny coat. The Florida Panther is highly endangered - there are thought to be less than 100 left, and unfortunately, quite a few of these get killed by traffic despite "Panther Crossing" signs, and specially reduced speed limits, which most drivers seem to ignore. Breeding programs in a refuge have been successful, but nevertheless the future for this precious species must be most precarious indeed.

Kennedy Space Centre

2008-01-23T13:41:00.000+11:00

We spent two most fascinating days at the NASA base at Cape Canaveral Florida, specifically at the Kennedy Space Centre and the Astronauts Hall of Fame. This sounds like a long visit for two baby boomer adults, but it is a most awesome place, and it is very moving to be at and view the actual site of most of the action of the space age. The most advanced technology in the world is developed and employed here, and for technologist Mike, Cape Canaveral is thus a holy place.

Visits to the NASA facilities are managed from the Kennedy Space Centre, and the whole place has the touch and feel of a theme park (which is unfortunate but probably the best way of managing the crowds of visitors), and as one bus driver put it, Cape Canaveral is not a theme park, it is the real thing!

Buses are used to move visitors around the huge NASA base - these are driven and hosted by enthusiastic and knowledgable guides, at least some of whom were previously engineers or technicians at the site. You can get off the buses at several locations and then get back on any following bus at your leisure. This process works quite well, but the queues and waits to get on the buses are quite irritating, and take up a lot of time.

We took a stop at a visitors gantry where we could see the gigantic building (the tallest single story building in the world?) where the rockets and shuttles are assembled before being moved on huge crawlers (along dirt roads) to the launch pad. We saw the shuttle Atlantis at the launchpad being readied for its next launch on 7 February [photo].

Possibly the highlight of the bus tour was the stop at the Apollo/Saturn V Centre (well, they spell it "center") which includes a visit to the actual control room used for Apollo missions to the moon, and there is a stunning simulation of a launch in this very room. In an adjacent huge hangar type building, we got a very close look at the one complete spare Saturn V rocket left over from this project. Everyone is gobsmacked at this, it is so, so big [photo].The NASA people have done a fantastic job with this display.

Looking at this rocket close up, and the examples of various Apollo, Gemini, Mercury etc modules etc which proliferate at the Kennedy Space Centre makes you realise what a tremendous undertaking these missions were, how complicated and vulnerable everything looks. It made us truly appreciate the miracle that these things worked at all - what a testament to the skills and persistence of everyone involved, and a tribute to the bravery of the astronauts who put their faith and their lives in the hands of everyone who worked in these projects.

A lower key visit on the bus tour is a visit to the facility where assembly of the International Space Station takes place. We could see, through double glazing, the clean area where the various bits and pieces are assembled and tested.

The Kennedy Space Centre itself, where these bus trips start from, really is just a theme park, with activities for children, rides (simulators), and junk food on sale. But there is interesting stuff there, such as the "rocket garden" [photo], and whole buildings devoted to early space exploration, and how robots pave the way for manned missions to Mars. At the Imax theatre, we saw a 3D movie actually taken at the International Space Centre, and it was just fantastic to see those scientists and engineers working and playing in genuine zero gravity.

While the whole place is undeniably upbeat, the planners here did not shy away from the highlighting the risks of space travel and the tragedies which have occurred. There are sombre reminders and memorials to the astronauts who have died in space travel accidents.

The Astronaut's Hall of Fame was particularly interesting but despite the theme being to honour those people who have gone into space, we found it disappointing that Yuri Gargarin, the first man into space (but not an American), was omitted. If there was any reference to him in the Hall of Fame, it's pretty subtle and we missed it. American patriotism is justifiable and understandable, but we really felt that this was an omission in the Hall of Fame. The role of the Russians in the early days of the space race is however covered in the historical exhibits elsewhere, and the role of other countries in the International Space Station is also recognised.

At the end of our visit to the Kennedy Space Centre, we sat in the shade (it was cold on our first day's visit, and hot on the next) consuming hot dogs and coffee, and we looked at all the young people visiting with their parents. We realised that all the space race and the moon landing program is ancient history to them, often having taken place before they were born. The visit to the Space Centre cannot mean the same to these people as it does to us. We have lived through this most exciting period of history - we remember peering in the sky at the Sputnik as it circled overhead, and (at a local shopping centre once lunchtime) we watched grainy black and white TV images of Neil Armstrong taking that step onto the moon live, as he actually did it; we held our breath with the rest of the world as Apollo 13 (not actually commanded by Tom Hanks) limped back to earth.

We earnestly hope that younger generations have and take the same opportunities to marvel and be excited if not enthralled at the advances in space exploration that the International Space Station, the renewed moon program and proposed future missions to Mars promise.

During our visit to Cape Canaveral, it was particularly gratifying to realise that the whole NASA installation is in the middle of a giant wildlife refuge, and to see this celebrated at the Centre. We saw numerous alligators as we drove to and from the Centre, and also had the chance to glimpse at a bald eagle guarding its nest.

Into Florida

2008-01-21T12:34:00.000+11:00

Leaving Georgia, we have now ventured further south into Florida. Having followed the coast down the intriguingly numbered route A1A, our first stopping place was Saint Augustine, said to be the oldest permanent settlement in the USA, a community having been established there in the 1600's by the Spanish. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, but the town has (since the 1800's) reinvented itself by foresighted citizens building and maintaining the Spanish style [photo] and the old town has turned itself into a neat and popular theme park exploiting the Spanish history.

Then to Daytona Beach, passing the famous speedway, thankfully quiet at this time, or we would have never found accommodation! We stayed at a beachfront hotel and splurged on a full oceanside room. We had a delightful walk along the beach, but you have to dodge the traffic which is allowed to drive along the beach here [photo]. During dinner, the heavens opened, and we got quite wet getting home. The TV then issued "tornado warnings" for our area - this didn't eventuate but there was a spectacular thunderstorm, and, later, very strong winds which persisted until about 10am. These winds blew up such a surf that Mike could not jog along the beach in the morning as he was looking forward to (the previous day it rained, preventing the same activity).

We visited the Ponce Inlet Light Station [photo] which is at the very southern end of the spit that is Daytona Beach. This very pretty terra cotta painted lighthouse is the tallest in Florida, and the 2nd tallest in the USA.

So far, a pleasant first few days in Florida, but it's been bitingly cold here, and it's apparent that neither the locals nor the tourists are expecting or prepared for it. Many people are inappropriately dressed, and are obviously uncomfortable. We're lucky, we are travelling with Paddy Pallin's warmest clothing, and can get well rugged up.

A Tale of Three Islands

2008-01-19T12:16:00.001+11:00

Driving down the Georgia coast (on the I95 mostly), we sidetracked to three offshore islands, separated from the mainland by the so called "intracoastal waterway" (which runs virtually the full length of the east coast), and all connected by bridges.

The first was Tybee Island, directly east of Savannah. The Atlantic side of this island was pure surfie seediness. The town was sun-blistered, last painted some time ago, and wind blown. The shops (mostly closed for the season) were cheap and many were dim looking bars. The people in the street were friendly, and always asked us what we thought about the surf that day (the surf was grotty, but we were polite). One guy realised we were Australian (at first he thought we were from New Jersey, based on our car's plates), and when we knew who Kelly Slater was, became very friendly indeed - "Aussies are so in touch with the ocean". There is no where to park on Tybee Island without having to feed parking meters a quarter for 15 minutes, not at the lighthouse, not on the beach, not at the shops. You can't blame the City for trying to make money from day trippers, but this process was very annoying.

Tybee Island "downtown" has an interesting pavillion and fishing pier which runs well out into the ocean. We realised that there are hundreds of piers like this on both the east and west coasts of the USA, but we can't think of a single example in Australia, a pier which runs out into the unprotected ocean, not in a bay or inlet.

The second island was Saint Simon Island, east of Brunswick. It was like a different world to Tybee, much tidier and more upmarket. It's quite a big island with lots of residential development, and very pretty indeed, yet another beautiful Atlantic lighthouse. In the village area we were able to buy a cappucino and sit outside in the warmish sun to enjoy it (!!!). Plenty of free parking here. Guided by a free map we'd picked up in the village, we explored the island and drove onto the adjacent Sea Island (a long spit of sand criss crossed by 56 streets running to the beach) only to find the entire island is a private, gated community, and we were on the outside!

The third island was Jekyll Island, quite petite, and really just south of St Simon, but you have to go back into Brunswick to get around to it, crossing Saint Simon Sound on one of this coast's many magnificent bridges. This island was totally different again - it used to be a private club for the extremely wealthy up until the 1940's, and even though it has now been opened up to the public, it very well preserves its elegance, and many of the original club buildings are now preserved as a glamorous hotel and shops etc. Jekyll has a magnificent beach along the full length of its Atlantic coast, and development has been very well managed here. We had a good meal at Blackbeard's Restaurant (a well known pirate who once plied these seas), one of the few places we have found with excellent views of the ocean.

The Deep South

2008-01-17T13:13:00.000+11:00

Reluctantly we turned the Subaru from the Outer Banks on a brilliantly sunny morning, after a huge downpour the night before, and headed south. We had decided not to risk the North Carolina ferry system which, by our investigations, seemed to be in disarray during the off-season due to maintenance, and providing an unpredictable service. Therefore we headed inland. Maybe the Outer Banks saved its best for last for us! We popped into the most beautiful village of Manteo as we left for a coffee and a last look over the sound. [Photo shows some buildings in Manteo's harbour area.]

It was a long day of driving via very flat back roads through farm towns, they grow cotton here in summer, heading for Wilmington NC for a stop overnight. Still plenty of water here in the low lands, alligators and bears aplenty here, although we did not see any. The inland waterways, which criss-cross everywhere, are crossed by huge bridges, unremarkable here, but they would be famous if in Australia. The main interest on this drive was a campaign called "No OLF" to resist the military building a new landing field which would destroy a large area of cotton land. Due to a road closure in Wilmington, it took us an hour to get through the suburbs, and in retrospect, we could have bypassed Wilmington altogether and headed for Myrtle Beach SC.

That mistake endured, we stayed in a delightful hotel over looking the Cape Fear River, in the Wilmington historical district, which is being saved and restored. A big picture window in our room allowed us to watch the barges and fishermen as dark fell [photo], and again as dawn broke. We enjoyed dinner in a nearby Irish Pub. The next morning Mike planned to run along the riverside boardwalk, but it was icy and way too slippery to be safe, so he settled on the hotel gym.

We are now well into "y'all" country. As soon as we had entered the Carolina's, we noted that accents take on the southern drawl, and it is just that little bit more difficult for us to be understood. Waiters, shopkeepers easily recognise that we are not from around here, but they never guess that we are speaking with Australian accents until we tell them.

It took us another big driving day to get to Charleston SC, where we saw the first of the southern style of cities. Charleston has been rebuilt many times, after a big earthquake in
1886, several fires and storms, and devastating cyclone Hugo in 1986. Of course it was badly burned in the civil war, where the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, just out in the harbour. On the way, soon after we crossed the border into South Carolina, we saw Myrtle Beach, and Murrells Inlet, both lovely, nice and quiet. We fear they are the "holiday ghettos" in the summer, but Myrtle Beach in particular is a beautiful long beach blighted by too much development.

At last we crossed into Georgia, to enter Savannah GA, a city we had looked forward to visiting very much, since 10 years ago seeing the film directed by Clint Eastwood, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil". The weather here is unusually cool, we see the people are not dressed for cold weather, and they are all complaining. It is snowing in Atlanta in upstate Georgia. Fearing rain, we straight away headed out on a walking tour of the historic district. What a beautiful place, just as we pictured it! Cobbled streets, lots of small squares [photo] with trees adorned with spanish moss, and statues and informative plaques. The statues commemorate war of independence victories, confederate generals and Indian chieftans. The squares are surrounded by beautiful period buildings. Everywhere the streets are lined with beautiful magnolia trees. The old town area is magnificently preserved and all the parks and squares seem to be so "unAmerican", meaning so unlike most cities we have seen. So much history here from the American Revolution, as well as the Civil War, and Civil Rights issues. Architecture is wonderful, much is preserved, and the old houses are magnificent. The city surrendered to the North, so was unburned by the troops, when they arrived. The riverfront area is in the progress of restoration - they've still got a way to go. The rain set in as we walked but we managed to get a lovely taste of Savannah.

The Amazing Outer Banks

2008-01-14T12:26:00.000+11:00

What an interesting place the Outer Banks are in North Carolina: even having read about the area, we did not expect what it was, and we have really never seen anything like it. These narrow barrier islands stretch for 100 miles south, joined together by bridges or ferries. For much of the drive, you can see the ocean on one side, and the sound on the other, so narrow is this ultralong spit. The banks are very quiet for the months from October to March, and there are miles of empty beach houses which are rented for the summer, including some very up-market ones, which we assume are family beach houses, and not rented out.

Most of these houses however are huge, 4 times the size of our modest terrace in Sydney. It is quite strange to see almost all of these houses empty! Collectively, they resemble an alien landscape, especially where sand seems to be engulfing them as they sit neglected over winter (photo). Driveways and even whole streets have been taken over by blowing sand dunes. With a strong wind blowing, and a decent Altantic surf raging very close to the houses, the whole area looks very vulnerable. They must worry about global warming here!

Most of the shops and restaurants are closed, but we don't think we would like it here in the peak season, it must be wall to wall people and cars.

We spent a lot of time at the Wright Brothers memorial at Kitty Hawk (actually at Kill Devil Hills), the exact spot where the brothers Orville and Wilbur, first flew their aircraft, in the early 1900s. As usual in the USA, the memorial was really well done, you can see the markers where the 4 successful flights took off and landed. There is also a great National Monument there to honor early aviators. Photo shows a sculpture representing the take off of the first flight. Our camera is balanced on the photographer's shoulder!

We looked at two of the significant lighthouses of the North Carolina Atlantic Coast, Bodie Island and Cape Hatteras. The latter was actually moved in 1999 a distance of about a quarter of a mile, on rails, as it was in danger of being washed away by the encroaching seas. Quite a feat! (Photo shows original and current sites.) This coast is all beach and sand dunes and no rocky cliffs, so the lighthouses had to be built on quite insecure foundations.

To get to the Outer Banks from our previous destination, we crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, a marvel of engineering, consisting of a bridges, two tunnels under the water (to allow heavy shipping through), 4 islands and a series of causeways. It goes for 20 miles, and was finished in the early 1960's. As we came over from Chincoteague, we passed through pretty towns like Onancock, then over the bridge to Virginia Beach, which gets bad press as a holiday ghetto, but as it was quiet it more resembled a ghost town or a movie set, and we thought it ok. There is a fantastic, very long, boardwalk (concrete actually) with separate pedestrian and bicycle strips along the ocean. It must be a nightmare in summer when all those cars arrive!

Paris to USA

2008-01-12T11:22:00.000+11:00

Charles de Gaulle airport proved to be no better going out than coming in, with only misleading signs pointing the way to incorrect queues for security and immigration checks. Snooty officials then tell you where to go. However, the American Airlines flight from Paris to New York JFK was, despite Mike's poor expectations, excellent, with a new aircraft, comfortable seats, good food, and best of all, very friendly cabin crew. The flight was over an hour late however due to (that classic unacceptable excuse), "late arrival of the incoming aircraft". The simplest way into New York City from JFK is on a shuttle bus which dropped us at Grand Central Terminal (only 100m from our hotel) along pretty terrible roads and freeways. This only cost $30 for the two of us. It's a comment on the state of the US Dollar, that this far amounts to less than half the fare for the same trip between Paris and the airport, the latter being maybe half the distance.

We spent a night in NYC before picking up our car, surprisingly exactly what we had booked, a Subaru (Legacy) and heading south as quickly as possible. We exited NYC via the Lincoln Tunnel and I95 south, and it's truly amazing how bad these very old roads are. They must be amongst the earliest "freeways" built under Eisenhower's post war plan, and they haven't been updated an iota ever since. It's a shame that America's premier city has such poor road infrastructure on its boundaries.

We left NY via New Jersey, without stopping as most of it was industrial, and soon reached the next state, Delaware. Rehoboth Beach, where we spent the night, was a delightful seaside town, and was very quiet at this time of year. We could tell by the myriads of beach houses, restaurants, and tourist facilities, that in the summer this place bursts at the seams. At Outback Steakhouse where we had dinner, we looked with interest at the other diners, including the young man who was eating his big steak absolutely raw! The next morning we headed off into Maryland and the town of Ocean City, much high rise here, and we do mean high rise, blocks and blocks of it like the Gold Coast. Obviously a very popular place to spend the summer, many people from Washington DC come here for a vacation. The interesting thing were the many canals on the west (non-ocean) side of the road, a huge inland waterway. Houses here all have a bit of water at their back yard.

Afternoon saw us arrive in Virginia, and the interesting town of Chincoteague. The whole area on this Atlantic Coast, has magnificent beaches and lots of low lying marshy areas, filled with bird life and deer. We noted with interest the sign outside the motel, "Hunters Welcome", and thought no more of it until we saw several pickup truck loads of them with lots of "dead things" in bags. Apparently it is hunting season here now, even in the State Park where we spent the afternoon, a little nervously, and saw some birds and lovely white-tailed dear. The coastline here is magnificent, and although it was not too cold, the weather pattern is still very mild for the time of year, it was windy, so a lovely salt mist spread along the coast. A highlight of this area is the Assateague Lighthouse which shines out over the Atlantic Ocean - we can see this lighthouse flashing from our motel in Chincoteague.

Velibs and Dogs

2008-01-09T03:49:00.001+11:00

Our friends at the City of Sydney are interested in the Paris City's "Velib" system which is infrastructure allowing easy rental of and depositing of bicycles, for getting around the city.

There are Velib depots in the streets everywhere, and more are being built as we speak. Each depot has maybe 20 spots for a rented bike to be picked up or returned. There is a central control panel where you select the bike you want, pay for it, and release it. When you have ridden where you want, you park the bike at the nearest depot and use the control panel to terminate your rental and finalise the payment.

This whole system looks quite new, and the bikes are clean and in good condition, and have bright head and tail lights on when you are riding them. Parisians (and the odd tourists) using the system seem to spend a lot of time working out the instructions at the high-tech depots, so we guess they are still familiarising themselves with the whole deal. We didn't rent any Velibs (we are walkers!), but did study the instructions, and they are quite confusing. Velibs seem expensive too! Our reading is 7E for two hours. That said, Velibs look to be quite popular, and you get the most well dressed ladies and gentlemen hopping on and riding away. Of course, not having to wear crash hats (noone does) simplifies this whole system a lot.

We have observed what seems to be one major hiccough with Velibs. Some depots are full, and renters can't return their bikes. You see them standing around waiting, hoping for someone to show up and rent a bike. Other depots are empty, particularly those at the tops of hills (e.g. Montmartre) - we guess people prefer to ride down Paris's gentle hills than up them. You see Velib service wagons towing dozens of Velibs around, presumably to even up this situation - it may be just a teething problem. You also see JC Decaux contractors doing maintenance on the bikes. Decaux bus stops are as big an obstruction in Paris as they are in Sydney.

Thanks to the wonders of live streaming over the internet, we heard Lord Mayor Clover Moore talking about new dog rules in Sydney parks. Clover mentioned Paris as one of her models of her proposals to allow dogs off leashes at more Sydney parks (she did emphasise that dogs must still be under the control of their owners). What we didn't hear her mention is that many if not most parks in Paris have gates on them and ban dogs altogether. Many people, especially families, take advantage of these open spaces in Paris where you can safely relax, walk, and children can safely play, without being contaminated by the leftovers of irresponsible dog owners. We think Clover's proposals for increased freedom for dogs should be balanced by more dog free domains for people who don't want to be in contact with these furry friends. Clover has always been a strong supporter of responsible dog ownership, but sadly, a large proportion of Sydney dog owners do not know what this means!

Paris Favourites

2008-01-08T04:57:00.000+11:00

Our time in Paris is coming to a close, and we head off for the USA in a couple of days.

We have thoroughly enjoyed our apartment here in the Marais. It's been warm (once we worked out how to use the heating system), perfectly comfortable, very well appointed with everything short term stayers like us would want - hot plates, microwave oven, dishwasher, refrigerator, washing machine (no dryer) and all the kitchen utensils needed, and broadband. The bathroom was excellent, large, bright and airy. Being fresh juice squeezers, we were delighted to see an electric squeezer, but we wrecked it within a day or two, so we bought a new one from BHV (Bazar de l'Hotel de Ville), but it too only lasted a week (just long enough for us to have thrown away the packaging and receipts). Obviously French juicers are not up to Australian juicing behaviour.

A real bonus with this apartment has been the "entertainment" visible from our windows which overlook both Rue Vielle du Temple and Rue Marche des Blancs Manteaux. The crowds i the streets, and the cafes and shops we can peer into, are enough, but we can also see into the local community hall, l'Espace d'Animation des Blancs Manteaux. In an upstairs room of that hall, we can watch pilates, yoga, dance and fencing classes close up (see photo), and in the downstairs main room, we've enjoyed a popular two week exhibition of artistic treatments applied to industrial materials, and before Xmas there was a Xmas market, with arts and crafts.

At our apartment, we have to pay for the electricity we use, but we can and do monitor it every day quite easily. The average cost for our power is about 7EUR / day.

In our time here, we have gravitated to certain shops which best fill our daily requirements. We have found our favourite boulangerie for our daily baguette (Saveurs de Pains), and Clare's favourite coffee shop (Columbus), and a favourite fromagerie for our cheese. Most notable is our favourite corner store where we buy milk, daily fruit and alcohol (Les Vergers du Prince de Sicile) where we've become quite friendly with the owner (see photo); his English is about as good as our French. For serious shopping, there are 3 Supermarkets (G20 and Franprix) within a very short walk, and for real fun with the language, there are the street markets for specialised fresh produce.

Possibly the most spectacular architecture (gothic in this case) we have come across is the pretty well unheralded Sainte-Chapelle, a church built by the Louis IX in the 1200's to house treasures from the holy lands, most notably the Crown of Thorns. No photographs can do this masterpiece justice (modest attempt attached), and no description can convey how beautiful the inside of this building is, particular the upper chapel which seems to be all stained glass and no walls.

Our thanks to friend Anthony for recommending the visit to Ste Chapelle. We would probably not have gone there if not for him.

And the most beautiful and pleasant park has been that of the Palais Royal. Obviously this opinion is based on weather at the time of our visit, but so be it. This garden has ambience, a fountain which was working, chairs to sit on, interesting artwork, real grass etc etc. So it wins our prize, and because the sun was out and people were lazing around to take the sun, we were able to take our coats and gloves off, and hats too(Ben!), for the photo.

By the way (message here for Telstra), Paris is replete with free WiFi hotspots. As a visitor, we notice them mainly in parks, where you see people logging on with their Macs and PC notebooks. We wonder how long Australians will have to wait for free wireless broadband access across the Sydney CBD and elsewhere?

The Good, the Bad and The Ugly

2008-01-06T08:02:00.000+11:00

Today was like some many other days for us: a very late start, breakfast involving coffee and a fresh croissant, a very long walk somewhere in the city, a drink at a bar [the Cafe Benjamin on Rue de Rivoli today], back home to scrub up, then out for dinner at a restaurant which has caught our eye, tonight the Cave de Vin on the Ile de la Cite.

So much is good about Paris, much of which has been dealt with in earlier posts to this blog, but here are some additional comments . . .

The city barely misses a beat over Christmas and New Year. Whereas Australia virtually closes down for a week if not two weeks, this city bustles every day during that period. It's true that major department stores and government offices close on the two public holidays, but this hardly makes a dent in the buzz of Paris.

Paris has a long and turbulent history, not all of it to be proud of, but there doesn't seem to be any attempt to hide it or rewrite it. It makes us mad to be reminded of cowardly Sydney politicians who would not retain the even slightly unsavory but historically significant name "Hungry Mile" for a reurbanisation project, while the suburb we are living in in Paris is most unglamorously called "The Swamp".

One glorious little cultural institution we came across (and were invited to participate in) was an apparently singing get-together in the park over Les Halles. There were three muso's, some ladies handing out song books, some "vin chaud" to wet your whistle, and everyone sings together selections from the book. The songs seems to be ancient and old Parisian folk songs. One we sang was about the Paris metro. You hand your book back at the end, so we don't really know who really ran this delightful community activity, but it was a lot of fun on a Saturday afternoon. How great is that? [see photo]

The health media is often preoccupied with how Parisians, with their love of pastries and cheeses, manage to stay so thin, so fit and healthy looking. We have discovered the answer to this. Firstly, it is true - the average Parisian of either gender, and of any age, looks trim, taut and terrific. We think they do it by walking everywhere - they love to stroll. They walk for fun and for exercise, they do it to browse in the shops, they do it to check out the restaurant menus, they do it to see and be seen. There are really not so many taxis cruising about, and it's obvious that the locals are more than happy to walk from one location to the next. Bicycles are very popular, and you see a lot of very well dressed people cycling the streets. Of course, if you really have to go a long way, there are taxis, buses and the incredible metro.

Paris is unaccountably filthy, not with or from air pollution, because vehicles are fed with very clean fuels, and dirty industry is either elsewhere or well controlled. No, it's litter in the streets! Garbage bins are everywhere: they are all clear plastic in this post September 11 age, and there are numerous City workers emptying them, as well as sweeping the streets, but it's a neverending task. Parisians don't use the bins, or not enough of them do anyway. It's common to be walking behind someone and to see them throw a tissue or a lolly-paper down on the ground. This can happen anywhere in the world, of course, but it's so common here, and so sad. There are obviously no anti-littering laws, or no enforcement of them.

The street litter is made much worse by the advertising leafets which are left en masse under car windscreens, then totally ignored by the car owners who drive away, and the leaflets flutter away.

The streets are also blessed with dog droppings. These are very bad, and frankly you've got to be very careful walking around. Parisians seem to have a special radar to help them avoid these messy spots. The truth is, the frequency of dog droppings is not as bad as we feared. There are plenty of dogs being walked or carried, but maybe they've trained owners to be responsible - there are signs all around with pictures of dogs being walked saying "I love my arrondissement, I clean up!".

And then there's the cigarette butts. These never quite get cleaned up because they accumulate in the cast iron grills which are installed around trees. The poor trees must have to adapt to a steady diet of dissolved nicotine. This source of uglyness in Paris will probably get worse before it gets better now that the no smoking rules have come into force in cafes and bars.

We have been very pleasantly surprised to see how easily these new rules seem to have settled in. On New Year's Eve, Paris's bars and cafes seemed choked with very determined heavy smokers. From the very next day, the same places are still packed, but no-one is smoking. You can actually breathe inside, and see rather than feel your way to the toilets. Many places are actually marketing the benefits of a smoke free environment, usually using humourous cartoons (e.g. Now I can see and taste what I'm eating!), but they've all got new no smoking signs up. Regardless, it's now a pleasure to call in for a drink or a meal in Paris. If you want to smoke, you now have to sit in the open air "terraces". The terraces are not so crowded in winter, but in summer, we'd expect a lot of competition for these outdoor people-watching and sun-catching locations.

Paris' public toilets are the stuff of legends, but they really have no idea with them. We can grumble in Sydney, but it's really a public loo paradise compared to Paris. There are some high-tech free access toilets in the streets, but they are not very appealing, and not often used by our observation. Mike used one once, but they seem to be dirty, dark and not vey comforting at all. You would always be on edge that the door would swing open at any time and flush you out into the street in the cleaning cycle.

There are no toilets in the Metro (amazing), some at the major railway stations (but you've got to pay to use them). Toilets in some places (such as Department Stores, in the gardens at Versailles, near the Place de la Concorde) are proof that French architects all skipped classes on bathroom design. They are cramped, illogical, and are never, ever big enough.

The best bet if you need to go in Paris, is to call into a bar for a coffee or a drink. We've not found one which didn't have a loo, but sometimes you have to go up or down a very scary and maybe dark set of stairs. And as for the variety of loos themselves in cafes, this could be the topic of a PhD thesis. Some even charge half a Euro, but most are free. Points can be allocated on the state of the urinals (for the guys), and whether there are separate cubicles for ladies and gents, toilet paper, a toilet seat, a toilet seat cover, a lock on the door, a door at all, a wash basin, soap, and anything to dry your hands on. Most cafes would score low, some actually score very well, but at least they have the loo.

Parisian Bon Mots...

Black is the new black.
Magnificent fashions, boots and coats.
The wonderful bridges over the Seine.
Water frozen in the fountains.
The fountains, but most of them are off for the winter.
The Louvre.
The bread.
If you don't eat meat, you must eat cheese!
The fur coats, no paint throwing here.
The grates in the church floors, from which hot air rises. The metro? the furnace? or a deeper place?
The churches themselves.
Narrow, winding, cobbled streets (lucky to have escaped the boulevard-making process inflicted by Baron Haussmann) [in the photo, compare the quiet Rue Quincampoix with the bustling Rue des Rosiers in an earlier post]
The patisseries, and fruit and veg shops, all the speciality shops.
The music, buskers in the metro.
The buildings and their marvellous rooftops.
The politeness of the French.
Gauffres (waffles) and chocolat (which is really Nutella).
La Tour Eiffel, and its beautiful lights.
The ice skating rink at the Hotel De Ville.
The policemen patrolling on roller blades.

La Tour Eiffel

2008-01-03T07:00:00.000+11:00

The Eiffel Tower is the definitive icon of Paris, and is absolutely irresistable, even apart from a great application of steel construction! We have visited the tower a couple of times this stay, and have photographed it repeatedly from numerous vantage points around the city. On one daytime visit, we approached it from the Place du Trocadero where we paused for coffee, having found one of the very few places you are able to sit in the feeble Winter sun in all of the city. Inside this restaurant was very crowded, but we sat outside where there were very few people, and enjoyed, not only the sun, but also a unique view of the steel tower through the buildings of the Trocadero, apparently one of the few cafes with a good view of the tower (see 1st photo).

The golden statues outside the museums which separate the Place du Trocadero from the Eiffel Tower were as glorious as we remembered them from 1980, although this beautiful space is somewhat blighted by the numerous sellers of miniature towers for EUR1, also as it was then. They seem to be quite offended when you let them know that you don't want to buy one!

The tower itself is not quite as tall as you expect it to be. The base is crowded by tourists queuing up to ride the lifts to the first, second or top levels. The queue was hours long on both our visits, so we didn't bother, and it's amazing that only one of the four pillars has its lifts going in the presence of such crowds. On our second visit, they had more pillars going, but the queues were just too long.

The Parc du Champs de Mars, the long and beautiful park between the Tower and what is presumably Napoleon's military school, is a very pleasant walk, and is full of tourists positioning themselves for photographs of the tower on top of the heads etc. Something new (to us) at the end of the Parc in Place Joffre is an attractive and modern peace memorial (2nd photo), rather interestingly situated directly in front of the Ecole Militaire!

We made our second visit to the Tower at dusk. The 3rd photo is taken from the Pont de Bir Hakeim. It looks cold, and it was! By observing the temperatures showing on TV, and the current temperatures which appear on some City info signs and pharmacy signs, it varies between 4 & 7 here. Whether we actually think it's cold seems unrelated to these values with several obvious potential explanations. But when it feels cold, it's really really shivering weather!

We wanted to wait to 6:00pm for the nightly "on-the-hour" sparkling to start up, but we were so cold that we retreated to the nearby Hilton Hotel for two excellent hot chocolates, not to mention a well needed toilet stop. The sparkling display is shown, rather inedequately, in the 4th photo in this post. The human eye has a longer retention time than our camera shutter, so it seems like the Tower is densely covered in sparkles, but the camera reveals that not so many are on at any one time.

New Year in Paris

2008-01-02T04:54:00.000+11:00

Having watched the Sydney midnight fireworks live and in full on Sky News here at 2:00pm Paris time, we walked along the banks of the Seine on NYE, satrting at about 10pm, to the Place de la Concorde, along with many Parisians and other tourists. We had previously identified this a good spot to watch from, and it avoided the areas said to be very popular, the Champs Elysees, and the Parc du Mars. We didn't want to encounter Sydney like crowds. It was a good spot, but big numbers of Parisians and tourists thought so too, and it was very crowded with both pedestrians and motorists. Paris doesn't close its streets for NYE! We actually sat on the railings of the adjacent bridge, the pont de la Concorde.

At midnight the Tour Eiffel put on a beautiful dancing display of gold and silver, but it does this every hour every night for 10 minutes, anyway. We did a hand held video of this display - trust us, it's at midnight on NYE. So Paris did nothing for New Years Eve. There were no fire works from the tower, but we did hear (on German TV) that the government had banned fireworks "due to security concerns". The City took notice of its own ban, but not the people who had brought their own fireworks which they let off in the street for the hours before and after midnight, so they were showering us as we watched. Frankly, what security concerns could be allowed to interfere with the City's own fireworks eludes us, and it really sounds like a defeatist concession to terrorism rather than a justified precaution. A city with equal or greater issues with terrorism these days is London, and their fireworks went ahead an hour later, focusing on the London Eye, and looking fantastic. That all said, everyone was in a festive mood, lots of champagne was being drunk, and groups of friends were clustered together. It looks like this is what happens here at New Years, and the people watching and the traffic watching was extremely entertaining, as was the walk back to le Marais - we didn't brave the Metro, and the walk was invigorating. Approaching midnight, and afterwards, the cacophony from car horns was deafening. We were interested to see huge numbers of motor home type vehicles parked on a large area to the side of the Place de la Concord. It seems that this is a very popular spot for motor campers in France on New Year's eve. On New Year's day, after a slow start we headed into the city centre, via the ice skating rink at Hotel de Ville, which is always popular, and had many skaters on it. We passed by the Place St Martin (photo is of the memorial to the liberation of Paris during WW2. We learned from Ben's Christmas present book on Paris that the French have a lot to regret about WW2, but they can be rightly proud of this liberation with General de Gaulle ignoring the US Army and marching his own army on Paris to take it back) and walked in the St. Germain des Pres area, which has some lovely boutiques, unfortunately, or maybe not, most were closed , so it was window shopping only. Stopped for a coffee on Bvd St Germain, which was the most expensive one yet, about $12, and we were't even at le Deux Magots or Cafe Flore! There were many ladies passing by, in very nice fur coats, the most we have seen, although they are very popular everywhere in Paris. As usual we spotted a huge church, St Sulpice, and detoured in to have a look. A huge building, having quite a big renovation on the outside, but needing lots of money spent inside as well. It was very cold today, about the same as it was when we first arrived in Paris, took us a bit by surprise, as you cannot tell from our apartment windows, and it has been much milder the last week.

Note: Have removed the Video - it doesn't seem to work!

Our Neighbourhood

2007-12-31T07:23:00.000+11:00

Well our last week is starting, cannot believe how the time is flying by. We have done a lot of walking and have enjoyed seeing so much of Paris and the way of life here. The Parisians are great stollers, and spend a lot of their leisure time walking about their neighbourhoods. Our part of Paris, le Marais, is very busy Friday, Saturdays and Sundays, all the little shops and boutiques are open, and a popular thing to do is have a falafal from the many jewish shops selling them here. The photo shows the Sunday crowds in the Rue des Rosiers which is the street the Nazis marched down to grab 75,000 Jews and send them off to concentration camps. Our apartment is in the block on the front left of this photo. From our window, we look down directly on the Rue Vielle du Temple, one the most popular streets in le Marais.

Clare has her "local" coffee shop, which she uses most days. We are using a boulangerie for our daily baguette, and so far the lady behind the counter is aloof and not recognising us, although polite to us, as she is to all her customers. I think the man in the corner store, where we buy our milk is starting to know us now.

Everyone in this area is stylishly dressed, beautiful coats, boots and scarves. This includes the French men, they look so good! A lot of people buy take away ("a emporter"), and eat it while they are walking, I think because the cafes are always so crowded. Just like Surry Hills!

The metro is very good, although sometimes very crowded, we just squeeze on with every one else. So far have not had any trouble with pick-pockets, which are very bad here in the summer, when it is peak tourist time, but we protect our valuables very carefully. We do see some homeless people, the French always give them money and food. There are also the "gypsies", from eastern Europe, who beg at the tourist hot spots. They ask us "do you speak English?" to which we reply "non" in our best non English accent, and they quickly move on.

We are looking forward to the last week of our stay here, as the non-smoking rule will be here, it will be interesting to see how the French smokers deal with it! Only 2 more sleeps!
We have been back to the Louvre for a second visit, that is how we spent Boxing Day. It was very crowded, but we had a great visit, and its good that a ticket is good for the day, so you can have a break and then go back in.

The weather has warmed up a bit, we are up to 10 or 11 , during the day now, so it is perfect for walking. A few showers the last couple of days, but nothing serious.

Some gems discovered in recent days have been the Parc des Buttes Chaumont (a good sized park complete with steep hills and waterfall in the north east of the city), and the Canal St Martin between the Gare de l'Est and Belleville (Edith Piaf's home 'burb). This canal has locks and even goes underground for quite a way until it reaches the Seine (see photo of footbridge and lock). We now know that the Marche Bastille that we visited on our first Sunday here is actually over the top of this canal. Also, l'Hotel de Sens (photo), built in 1475 the oldest medieval mansion in le Marais, featuring a cannonball in the wall from the Revolution, and a port over the portal for pouring boiling oil on unwelcome guests, neither of which we could photograph because of the scaffolding and renovation going on!

Language and Smoke

2007-12-28T05:04:00.000+11:00

Somewhere we read that the restaurant Les Philosophes is a cheap eat place good for "seeing people and being seen". Since it is only 50m from our apartment, we have been trying to have dinner here since we arrived, but it was always too crowded. At last we made it in! Don't know about seeing and being seen, there's just too much cigarette smoke in the room. The food was fine, nothing special but perfectly adequate, and the waiter we got spoke perfect English but was prepared to put up with our French.

Sadly, our French langauge skills are not great, despite a refresher course at Berlitz before we left Sydney, but they are more than good enough to order a meal at a restaurant, a drink in a cafe, a baguette at the boulangerie, a ticket in the Metro etc. Clare has discovered that some cappucinos come with "mousse" (froth, which she wants), others with "chantilly" (whipped cream, which she doesn't), so we know how to ask for it. Holding a conversation is another matter altogether, and we have 99 French language stations on our apartment TV and radio, but we can't really understand them.

Our attempts to speak French in shops are almost always well received, and the shop assistants really try to help you. In some places, we've found that no-one can speak English, but we still manage to get by with our fractured French, which visibly makes the locals cringe. We have seen very little of the famous snooty French attitude to non-speakers. Where someone does speak English, they seem to prefer to speak it rather than listen to us mangling their language. Maybe they like to practice English, maybe they just can't stand our accents! But, almost invariably, if they do speak English, they speak it a lot better than we speak French. Others are quite prepared to let us practice, and they offer help. We shopped in the markets on our first Sunday here. Not much English spoken there, but everyone was friendly, and we were able to buy what produce we wanted and pay the right price. One lady, who we bought holly off for Christmas, realising quickly that we weren't locals, proudly told us that she was from Romania. A lot of people are interested in where we are from - they often guess, England first, then America, never Australia.

Mike had spent a walk to the local post office practicing how to order stamps for postcards to Australia and the USA. It was unnecessary. The man at the counter had excellent English, and went to a lot of trouble to explain what the picture on the EUR0.85 stamp was commemorating (renovations at the Palace of Versailles).

One young couple approached us looking for directions, for the Tour Montparnasse as it turned out. We knew where it was. They had no English (which surprised us, given their age), and we struggled to point them in the right direction. Another oldish lady in our apartment block opened up a conversation with us one day. She had no English, and we didn't get far, but we were able to work out what she had been saying afterwards. In other words, we couldn't deal with her language quickly enough, but should have been able to.

It has been said, and we have confirmed, that it is easiest to read a language, much harder to speak it, and much much more difficult to listen to it and understand it. To our ears, French seems to have so many silent consonants, and so many common words which are similar, that it's a real battle. We have had particular troubles understanding a price when quoted by a shop assistant. Mostly, fortunately, you can read the cash register, but sometimes, you can't.

One time, we had a change of plan in a Metro station, so we were puzzling over the map on the platform ("quai"). A young French lady helped us - she spoke excellent English - and it transpired that she works for the chocolate company Nestle, and will be coming to Sydney in 2008.

As mentioned, our TV options are quite limited. The apartment gets cable TV (and broadband) but the only English channels are BBC World, CNN, Skynews, and some of the content on the German channel DW. But we can easily connect the radio 702BL in Sydney by streaming from the ABC's website, so we put ouselves to sleep with this at night. We believe foreign (i.e. English) movies are shown in their original language and with French subtitles, but so far, we haven't encountered anything we want to see, that we haven't already seen (e.g. Elizabeth). We don't seem to have time anyway.

Just listening to people speak makes you realise that Paris is full of foreigners, and they don't all seem to be tourists or visiting businessmen. No doubt, the open borders of the EU have allowed a lot of people from elsewhere in Europe to come here, work here and live here. We've noticed on TV that these EU borders have just been widened, and the news reports just how far you can drive now without having to show a passport. This seems strange to Australians, but it shows how much Europe has been changed by the EU. No doubt, these arrangements will be causing great ethnic tensions, but the economic power generated by the trade consolidation here is made manifestly obvious from how the Euro has appreciated over the US Dollar since it was created.

We are counting down the days to 1 January, when, apparently, smoking is banned in Paris cafes. We have observed that smoking is rampant in traditional French cafes, but is much less so in what you might call American influenced places (hamburger restaurants, fast food cafes.) Anyway, note the photo of a poster in a Marais bar advertising the "Last Smoky Party" for new year's eve. Other photos are of us in the Cour Puget inside the Louvre museum, and of Sacre Coeur from a vantage point down the hill from Montmartre.

Christmas Day in Paris

2007-12-26T05:32:00.000+11:00

Our Parisian Christmas Day began at midnight when we attended midnight mass at Notre Dame. We arrived at about 10:30pm (the Lonely Planet had said get there by 11), but the gigantic cathedral was already packed to the rafters and it was the quick and the dead in getting seats. Hundreds if not thousands stood. Prior to the midnight mass, there was a program of organ music, the choir and a "sound and light" show telling the story of Christ's birth. We are pretty secular people, but the whole event was very impressive and moving, especially the entry of the "archeveche" and his party on the stroke of midnight. The cathedral uses modern technology, and numerous flat screen TV's relay the "action" to people not near the front.

Overnight and in the early morning, we used Skype to talk to friends and rels all over Australia. Skype is wonderful (cheap and convenient), but its sound and picture quality is quite variable, maybe dependent on bandwidth and traffic, and still has a way to go. Our clapped-out laptop probably doesn't help, especially since we later noticed it had been pottering away doing a scheduled anti-virus scan during all this.

Not knowing what to expect (and noticing that businesses conspicuously do not show notices in advance saying what they will be doing over Christmas) we prepared in advance for Christmas day, by having all 3 meals organised in our apartment. It was totally unnecessary! Christmas Day is just another day in Paris, and expecially in our area, the Marais. By about midday, not all but most of the stores and cafes and bars and boulangeries were open and trading normally. The big department stores, post offices, museums are certainly closed, and the motor traffic was noticeably less than usual, but other than that, everything was going. The streets were crowded with pedestrian families. How different to Australia, but as Clare points out, we don't really know what's open in Sydney around Bondi Beach and Circular Quay on Christmas Day - probably quite a lot, to cope with (or exploit) the tourists.

So we joined everyone else and had a big walk in the afternoon and evening, spending about 6 hours on our feet, before we caught the Metro home. We rejected our first choice for a coffee break (about 4pm) because the maitre-d' tried to sit us next to a group clouded in cigarette smoke. He told us nowhere else was available. He said "next year there will be no smoking". We said "next week!" He agreed, and invited us back then.

It's no news that there are many beautiful churches in Paris, and we touched on some of them today, in particular, St Merri in Rue St Martin (where we saw a feast being enjoyed by people we assumed to be the local underprivileged, see photo); St Eustache at Les Halles (a most glorious building, see photo of stained glass); St Honore, and la Madeleine (where we enjoyed an awesome organ recital). Parisian churches are inspiring on Christmas Day!

We took our photo in the most beautiful Place Vendome (featuring yet another memorial to Napoleon - this time he's in disguise as a Roman emperor, but we left it out of the photo), and enjoyed looking at the swish hotels and the specialist food stores in the La Madeleine part of town. Most of the latter were closed, so we weren't tempted to buy.

Christmas Eve in Paris

2007-12-25T05:39:00.000+11:00

Christmas Eve dawns in Paris, another fine sunny day, although we don't think it got much above 5 degrees today. There was quite a thick frost on the northern banks of the Seine, which stayed all day. Most shops are open, and going strong, people are still carrying Christmas trees home, and there are still a lot for sale in the streets.

We discovered an interesting little cafe, just over the river from our apartment and out of the way of the crowds, but when we went in at 4.30pm (late lunch!), the proprietor told us she was closing early today. Clare thinks she is going home to cook for her family! We will try it again when things return to normal. We managed to get a glass of hot mulled wine, "vin chaud", which is delicious and just what you need after a cold day in the streets, and a snack ("potage de poisson") in another tiny cafe, shortly after.

On our walks this week we have been interested in the tiny shops which stock just one thing, but a lot of it. For instance the accordian repair shop, see the pic, which was next to the accordian shop, which was next to the accordian sheet music shop, in Rue Daguerre. Another street was full of little shops selling, watches, and watch bands. If you know where to go, you would have an enormous choice of the item you were looking for. Tiny shops just selling cheese, or meat or pastries, or tiny delicacies, dot the streets.

Notre Dame was not too busy today, we popped in as the sunlight was coming in through the rose window, and saw that they are getting ready for services tonight, with extra chairs.

In one very popular and smoke filled bar in le Marais, the Pick Clops, we were told that smoking in cafes is going to be banned from New Years Day, 2008. We cannot imagine how that will work, as everywhere is full of patrons puffing away. We can just about last the distance of a drink or a meal before bursting out into the cold fresh air, and gasping it in lungfulls. It will be very interesting, as this no smoking rule will completely change the cafe culture of Parisians. If, like in Australia, they stand on the footpath outside, then it will be very crowded passing by on the narrow foothpaths. Of course in the summer, they can sit outside, but the last couple of weeks have been way too cold to do that, and you see very few people sitting in those famed outdoor seats. We did manage coffee today at a brazier heated outdoor seat, in the sun, on the Ile de la Cite today.

We haven't been eating at the Ritz or at other fine dining establishments, rather we call into whatever cafe we find attractive wherever we are when we get hungry. (It's pointless looking for smoke-free cafes, although there are a few.) All the cafes we've called into are very compact and crowded: it's rare to find one where you have room to take off your coat and sit comfortably. They always feel cramped, but people are universally very polite when they are forced to get past you to get in or out. There is much saying of "pardonne" and "excusez-moi". One place we had a kir in the other day near Montparnasse was quieter, being very much out of the way of tourists. The customers calling in there were almost all regulars, who didn't have to place their order, it was just put on the bar for them as soon as they walked in. They all had a double take at us, being strangers. Mostly, they finished their drink, just one, and left quickly.

There is little difference between bars and restaurants - the former focus on alcohol but serve meals, the latter focus on meals but seem happy to serve coffee or a drink, especially outside of meal times.

Merry Christmas to all!!!!

Champs Elysees

2007-12-23T07:41:00.000+11:00

A walk down the Avenue des Champs Elysees is scorned by many tourist publications because the ultra-wide boulevarde has been hijacked by Virgin Megastore, Gap, McDonalds and other non-Parisian brand names, but it is irresistable anyway.

We started at the Metro station Argentine, so we could see the arch of La Defence in one direction, and Napoleon's grand Arc de Triomphe in the other. Mike had visited La Defence some years ago on business, and our family has also been to the Arc in 1980. The Arc is bigger and more dramatic than we remembered, such a stupendous construction!

The traffic around the Arc is legendary, and its amazing how the vehicles manage to avoid each other when negotiating which of the twelve exits they want to take. We notice that the rule seems to be that vehicles entering the roundabout have right of way over vehicles in it. Maybe it's a simple give way to the right rule? Regardless, it's the opposite to the rules we are used to.

The walk towards the Louvre was devoid of excitement, but was pleasant enough. The only places we stopped at were the car museums for Peugeot and Citroen. We missed the Renault museum, which we remember from 1980. The concept cars in these places look magnificent but I doubt if we'll be seeing any of them in the streets of Sydney.

The most interest in this walk arises from sidetrips to the Palais de la Decouverte (a magnificent structure now devoted to a hands-on science museum, and accordingly, full of school groups), the Grand Palais (complete with huge glass roof, getting ready for a railway exhibition which we will go to later on so we can see inside this wonderful building), the Petit Palace (just renovated, truly stunning, great cafe, now containing modern art and displays of period Paris), and the Pont Alexandre III (supposedly the most decorative bridge across the Seine, and certainly no disappointment).

At the end of the Champs is the famous Obelisque de Luxor in the Place de la Concorde. Here, there is a large ferris wheel, fantastically lit in the night, perpendicular to and exactly in the line between the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre, so (no doubt) giving a great view to both. The stunning photo of the Eiffel Tower and searchlight is taken from the Place de la Concorde.

This particular spot is very popular with tourists, and hence with gypsies who ask "do you speak english?" Saying "non" makes them go away, but if you say yes, you then cop a written plea for money.

The Jardin des Tuilieries which separates the Place de la Concord from the Louvre may be wonderful in summer, but now, in winter, it is a desolate and stark landscape. Children play in the mid afternoon half light in these gardens, but they look so sad rugged up against the cold. Even the ponies, there for children's rides seem to be muttering to each other, wishing, no doubt, that they were in Sydney!

Even at midday, in December, the sun in Paris is well to the south, and Mike's estimate is that it never gets over about 20 degrees above the horizon. With its tall buildings and narrow streets, this means great swathes of Paris must never see the sun in winter. Our apartment, with lots of big windows on two sides, faces north, and so we don't catch the sun either, although some reflects off adjacent windows.

That said, the weather has changed here somewhat in the last two days - it's got warmer! OUr interpretation of the weather forecasts on TV didn't predict this for us, but we've now seen temperatures as high as 10C, compared with the 2-3C max previously. Surprisingly, this warming up has not been accompanied by any instability - the sun has been out (but low) and the sky nearly cloudless.

Covered Passages and Glitzy Retail

2007-12-22T07:01:00.000+11:00

In our random wanderings, we have discovered numerous shopping strips contained in "covered passageways", most of which must have originally been open laneways, but which have at some stage been covered over to form arcades protected from the weather. Some of these were off Rue St Denis, which we had chosen to walk up (such as Rue Caire) because of its interesting variety of cheap shops, sex shops and generally dodgy characters. We were fascinated by the hairdressing shops focusing on particular ethnic varieties ("black girls", "white girls"), but its true that people fitting into these demographics often seem to wear distinctive hairdo's. One passage was full of Indian restaurants. Another covered laneway off Rue St Denis seemed to be have a "rag trade" speciality, rather like the slopes of Surry Hills.

We encountered another group of covered arcades, rather more upmarket this time, on either side of Bvd Montmartre on the border of the 2nd and 9th arrondissements. These were passages Verdeau, Jouffroy and Panorama. These featured very cute shops, tea rooms (much quieter and more comfortable than Angelina's) and speciality stores individually trading in tiny ceramic-ware, old stamps, postcards or movie posters.

The covered passages are fascinating, and are pretty well unheralded in most of the touristy stuff we had read.

Then, being in the area, we walked to Bvd Haussmann where the glitzy department stores of Galleries La Fayette and du Printemps compete for the Christmas Euro with fantastic sound and light effects in the streets, artificial snow blowing, and window displays which are clever and cute but notably short of any Christmas stories or messages. The streets and inside the stores are crowded, oh so crowded. As an exercise in shopping, Paris takes Christmas very seriously, and we notice that all the stores are open extra hours. Galleries La Fayette probably takes the crown in our view, but an incredible atrium inside their main store gives them a great opportunity to decorate. The more modest C&A store across the road does its best, but is left behind by the bright lights of La Fayette and Printemps. The photo of us and the Eiffel Tower is taken from the rooftop of Galleries La Fayette - you can see the Grand Palais too. We picked just the right time to go onto the roof - the dusk lights of Paris are stunning.

To bring back old memories, we called into the railway stations Gare de l'Est and Gare du Nord, separating these two visits with coffee at a very smoky tabac. A lot has been done to modernise these main line stations since last time we were here, but we confirmed (what we feared) that Gare du Nord (a possible way for us to get back to the airport) is no place for anyone with luggage. The few lifts seem not to work. We looked at the Eurostar, TGV (very fast train) to London leaving from this station (as we had looked at St Pancras in London). Gare du Nord was very crowded with nervous looking travellers - it appeared that there were major delays somewhere.

We are big walkers, and our routine in Paris seems to have evolved to the following. We don't get up until 9am (it's dark until 8:30), and Mike has a half hour run. The best route is to and then around the Ile St Louis and the Ile de la Cite, mostly because there is no traffic there, and it amounts to about 5km. He comes home with a fresh baguette, and breakfast then occupies us until we leave for a long walk at about 11:30-12. Sometimes we catch the Metro to begin the walk. We have made good use of Tracy's great walk cards, but sometimes we wander without such direction, like today's trip. Coffee breaks are important - Clare has found it better to order cafe au lait rather than cappucino, because the latter often comes with a heap of whipped cream rather than milk foam. We walk until 8-9pm, then find our way home, by more walking or by Metro. To control consumption, we have tended to eat one meal out a day, be it a lunch or a dinner, and with the other meal being snacks (olives, cheese, bread) at or from our apartment. We are enjoying drinking Kir at the cocktail hour at some bar or other. It's easy to order too!

Le Musee Louvre

2007-12-20T09:19:00.000+11:00

Today we ventured to the Louvre. We had been waiting for a rainy day, but so far the weather has been fine and sunny every day, but very cold. The water in the fountains is staying frozen all day now (see photo), as it is in some gutters.

We arrived at 12.30 and were very impressed by the new foyer facilities, including the glass pyramids. The pyramid entry was very controversial when it was built in the later 1980's, but we think that it treads so lightly on the "place" that it does not detract from it at all, and the amenity that it adds is extraordinary compared to what was there previously. Only the French would have the daring to attempt this modernisation, and they have done it with spectacular success.

We walked in direct from the Metro station. Thank you Neryl for the ticket you gave me allowing Clare's free entry, so we only had to pay for Mike's entry. No queues, buy your ticket with credit card at a machine etc. Moreover, 9EUR for all day multi-entry such a huge and fantastic museum is very reasonable.

One real bonus of the 1980's redevelopment was the excavation of the "medieval Louvre", now a fanstastic exhibit under the courtyard of the Palais du Louvre. It was via this exhibit that we actually entered the museum proper.

This museum is so large, and of such grandeur in its buildings, and contains so much fantastic art, that it is literally overwhelming. One just cannot believe how beautiful it is, inside, outside, all over.

We stayed inside until 3.30, when serious fatigue set in. After a walk in the fresh air, and afternoon tea at Angelinas, one of the lovely tea rooms of Paris (claimed to have the best hot chocolates in Paris), we ventured back to the Louvre as it is late opening on some nights, and stayed till 8pm. We think we covered about one third of what we want to see, it is such a luxury knowing we can go back several times, at our leisure, given the length of our stay in Paris.

Last time we were staying in Paris was 1981, and the Louvre was on strike for the entire week we were there, and we (and Ben) had to make an overnight trip on the Orient Express from Munich to spend a day there, so did not see all that we will this time. We covered most of Pavillon Sully and some of Denon, including the Mona Lisa (now housed in a much larger and no doubt more secure space), Egyptology, and galleries of the very large french format paintings, mostly about the revolution. This includes the fascinating Delacroix barricade painting which featured on one of the old Franc notes.

From the Louvre, we choose to walk home along Rue de Rivoli which goes all the way into the Marais, shopping for dinner on the way, in the crisp night air. The ladies of Paris are tres chic, and Clare is looking in the shop windows with interest. The boots and coats of the Parisians are to die for, Clare is very envious, but it is never cold enough at home to wear them, although you certainly need them here in a Paris winter.

At night, the Tour Eiffel twinkles in the dark, and the beautiful lights in the trees lining the Champs Elysees flash like shooting stars. All the buildings are lit to highlight them, and they are gorgeous.

Life in le Marais

2007-12-18T07:38:00.001+11:00

Our Le Marais apartment is in la Rue du Marche des Blancs Manteaux, which (for the non Frensh speakers) means the street of the market of the white coats. This area is steeped in Parisian history, which we won't go into here, and we have found it to be a most interesting neighbourhood to live in. Le Marais means "the swamp" which no doubt describes this area before it was developed.

Architecturally, our apartment is in a fairly typical and pretty unexceptional building in the district (photo). We enter a security code which unlocks the door to a lobby. A key then gives us access to a lift and the stairs. We are two flights of stairs up. Incredibly, the lift (which is large enough for one person and a small bag) lets you out halfway up a flight of stairs. Our apartment is directly over a shop, and overlooks a community hall which has just hosted a "Marche Noel". We can see straight into a nice room in which various activity classes are run, yoga, pilates and tango lessons for example. It's great entertainment, which is helpful, because the only English on TV is BBC and CNN news (photo).

The streets of our immediate neighbourhood are narrow, cobbled, and filled with jewish delis, felafel takeaways, tabacs, cafes and restaurants. It'd be hard to go hungry. Within 100m walk, there are two general stores that we have found and are patronising, and a great "chocolat" shop, nearly but not quite as good as Max Brenners in Paddo. The area was extremely busy on Sunday, and the police shut off the streets to traffic to improve the amenity for the myriads of pedestrians. We think the popularity on Sunday is at least partly because of the jewish influence year, which much of the rest of Paris effectively closing down on Sunday, but not here. (Saturday is quiet here though.)

Le Marais is home to the Musee Carnavalet, a free entry museum specialising in the history of Paris. What it really seems to be is two old mansions whose various rooms and sections are decorated with art from and in the style of different periods of Parisian history. The Place des Vosges is in the Marais, which is one of the most beautiful examples of classical bourgeois residential architecture (as distinct from religious or royal constructions). No doubt there's good reason that this Place is in the Rue des Francs Bourgeois.

Le Marais contains the George Pompidou Centre, and is very close to Notre Dame cathedral, and the very popular shopping area of Chatelet / Les Halles, many of the streets of which have been made pedestrian malls. In incorporates the Place de la Bastille, which is where one of Paris's premier markets takes place on Sundays. We filled our refigerator up with fresh produce from this market, severely straining our French language skills, but everyone tries to be very helpful. The BHV department store is in the Marais: how crowded its toilets are on Level 5 is testimony to the deplorable shortage of public loos in this city.

Our neighbourhood is also adjacent to the Ile St Louis and Ile de la Cite (islands in the River Seine) which are where Mike has found it best to have his morning run, in a temperature of about 2C. There are plenty of other runners about to say "bonjour" to, and it's important to watch for traffic, dog droppings and the perils of cobbled surfaces. On the way back, he brings home a delicious fresh (and warm) baguette which is 1E10 at our nearby boulangerie.

Montmartre

2007-12-16T06:14:00.000+11:00

Today, a bitingly cold but brilliantly sunny day, we decided to walk around Montmartre. We used the Metro to get to Blanche, and followed two of the walks in the pack that friend Tracy gave us. It was interesting to see the various places that famous artists hung out, not to mention Amelie's tabac and merry-go-round!

Much of the route was awash with tourists. The Montmartre area is just too popular. The area near Sacre Coeur cathedral is infested with overpriced and crummy cafes and souvenir shops. We had a coffee and hot chocolate at one of these - the price was high but the quality was OK (trying to order the cappucino as "strong" in French was a failure), and as a bonus, we managed to get one of the few seats they had in the feeble sunshine. The artists market in the square at St. Pierre de Montmartre is quite interesting, but not too many Renoirs or Picassos were apparent there. Plenty of sketch artists were there willing to capture your likenesses though. Based on cameras and maps, almost everyone up here seems to be a tourist, although most of them were French tourists. It was Saturday, after all.

Sacre Coeur cathedral dominates its location of course, and was exceeedingly crowded inside. Can it be like this every day here? Guards posted inside were making sure we did not take photographs or fail to remove our hats. Outside this cathedral is, of course, the place to see the view of the classic "rooftops of Paris" (photo).

We went off the tourist track to find a place for lunch (well, whatever the meal would be called at 3pm). Many places were closed, but we finally picked a good place in the Rue Ravignan, and had a very enjoyable meal. The cafe was quiet when we arrived, but by the time we left it was packed, which means either that we dragged the customers in, or that it was time for the afternoon apperitif.

To work off the meal, we decided to walk back to the Marais. This was a great choice, and we found places like the Rues des Martyrs, de Fauberg Montmartre and de Montmartre were fascinating. We stumbled on a street fair in Cadet, where they had live music and gave away heated, spiced wine which we and many others greatly appreciated (photo). The large pedestrian mall area at Les Halles/Chatelet must be one of Paris' attempts to control traffic, and it was really vibrant. This is nice and close to the Marais and we'll go back there.

London to Paris

2007-12-15T04:33:00.000+11:00

After four days in freezing London it was time for us to fly to freezing Paris. Our original plan was to use the London Underground to get back to Heathrow. The route necessary would require 3 changes of train, but we had researched it, and there were no steps to navigate, and so we decided to give it a go. We changed our plans after experiencing the incredible crowds on the Underground and how often various lines and stations were closed. So we saved up our pennies and took a taxi back to Paddington Station for the Heathrow Express. En route in the luxurious Mercedes taxi, we negotiated a price to go all the way to Heathrow for less than we would have paid on the Express train. It still totalled 60GBP! But we enjoyed the drive in heavy traffic. One thing staying at Docklands is that you get a full city tour on the way to Heathrow!

Heathrow Terminal 4 departures is showing its age and the effects of one too many security scares. Despite that, our British Air hop to Paris got away just a bit late, and we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport 40 minutes later, and, after a scare, our bags arrived too! We rang our apartment manager to let him know we had landed. Our research had warned us that catching a train to Gare du Nord may involve a lot of steps, which scared us, so we thought an Air France bus or a taxi would be a better bet. We couldn't find the way to either, but while looking, a hotel shuttle bus driver whose passengers had not all showed up approached us and took us to our appartment door for 45Euro. This took hours, Paris traffic being atrocious, made worse apparently by some demonstrations going on. After experiencing Dubai, London and Paris, it seems that it's not only Sydney which is choking itself on traffic.

Our apartment is a delight, and we'll say more about it in another blog. We were exhausted on arrival, so we had a walk around our neighbourhood. Boy, was it cold! The photo shows us on the Ile St Louis - if we look cold, it's because we are!

Cold but Sunny in London

2007-12-13T08:03:00.000+11:00

Our 4 days in London included a social whirl, meeting up with several friends and relatives.

It's always an honour to be invited to someone's home, and we enjoyed splendid hospitality at the Woodside Park home of Kevin and Christel. Theirs is a terrace home not so different to ours in Surry Hills, but maybe a little bit newer, being Edwardian, whereas ours is described as Victorian. Kevin met us at the station, near the northern end of the Northern Line, and he generously drove us back to our Docklands hotel later in the evening.

We had coffee with friends Steve and Allan near Piccadilly Circus. Steve and Allan are like us, on a round the world trip, but our itineraries fortunately intersected in London. It was good to catch up with them. And then we had a delightful italian meal at Carluccios in Covent Garden with Imogen and Stu, just before they fly back to Australia for Christmas. Meeting them was a bonus, because we will miss them on Christmas Day in Wollongong.

In between these encounters, we had enough time to see some of the classic sights of London. We did a lot of walking, and enjoyed seeing the theatre district, the shopping strip of Oxford Street, the markets of Covent Garden, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge (photo) the food halls of Harrods and the Christmas fair at Hyde Park. The Christmas lights in London are stunning, and since it is dark from about 3pm, these are particularly effective. We looked inside stunning St Pancras Station, just renovated as the departure point for the Very Fast Train (Eurostar), and had a meal at Canary Wharf, the ultramodern new city in the docklands area.

We got around mostly using the London Underground, using Octopus Cards we had prepurchased and loaded up in Sydney. London public transport is not cheap, and you have to top up your cards when they run out of money, as they quickly do. Sadly these cards do not work on the Heathrow Express, and not on regular rail lines, as we discovered when we tried to catch an "above ground" train from London Bridge to Cannon Street. Octopus Cards are just an easy repositary for cash, and it is annoying that not all public transport providers will accept them, as they seem to in Hong Kong. The Underground is an extremely comprehensive system of trains in London: in our days here, there were a lot of interruptions and delays due to causes such as failed trains, suspicious packages, overcrowding. We know this because of excellent communications, where announcements on such matters are made frequently on both platforms and trains. The overcrowding we experienced first hand - even at 10pm, we had to cram into incredibly crowded carraiges. It's amazing how many people the London Underground moves around.

After the really miserable conditions on our arrival in London, we have enjoyed spectacularly good weather here. The days have been sunny, windless, but freezing cold. In the morning it is below zero, with daily maximums of 5-7C. Brrr!

Mike found a pleasant run in the mornings around the Royal Victoria Dock, judging by the time it took, it's just under a 5km loop. Around the dock is about 3/4 redeveloped, with nice paving, several hotels, including our Ramada, a floating hotel called Sunborn, and, on the southside, lots of new apartments. There are a few cafes, but not as many as we would expect - maybe the weather doesn't encourage that type of development. The run also passes the end of the London City Airport runway - in fact the Ramada is almost in the flightpath of this airport, but our room is triple-glazed and is perfectly silent.

Dubai and London

2007-12-10T22:08:00.000+11:00

With the possible exception of Shanghai, we have never seen a city with so much construction going on. There are huge cranes everywhere, and many of the new projects are the biggest, the tallest etc. in the world. The photo shows what is apparently the world's tallest building, but it's status is only temporary, as a bigger one is going up somewhere else soon. There is a new metro system being built (desperately needed), but even apart from that, it seems that every street is being dig up for something or other. There is a new airport (the world's biggest) under construction, but (according to a taxi driver) won't be ready for quite a few years.

All of this is really quite amazing for a relatively small city of 1.4m people, 80% of whom are expat workers from elsewhere. The oil, discovered relatively recently in Dubai, has made the 20% very rich indeed.

The old airport, which we had to use for our flight to London, is pretty big and impressive in its own right. Getting there, a full 5km from our Holiday Inn, was another matter. Our taxi went via a most obscure route and we thought he may be ripping us off, but he pointed to the traffic jam on the main road and said the delays there were up to an hour! It looked as ifthough he may be right, but he got us there in 10 minutes. Outbound immigration was much more efficient than coming in, and we were searched / scanned 5 times before boarding our British Airways flight. The terminal itself was at least as crowded as Dubai itself, with dozens of people looking as though they had slept the night on the floor there.

The flight was uneventful, although an hour late departing due to some paperwork hassle at Dubai. Heathrow proved to be not as awful as some reports in the Australian press would have it. The queue at immigration was maybe 15 minutes, with another 15 minutes waiting for our bags to appear.

Weather on arrival was cold, dreary and rainy, and even at 3pm, it was just plain dark outside. Ah! London in winter.

We caught the Heathrow Express to Paddington. This train was positively grubby compared with the Airport Express in Hong Kong, and cost a mere $76 for the two of us. This was modest compared to the $100 we then spent on a taxi to get from Paddo to the Ramada Docklands, but at least the driver was entertaining (and you can't even pay by credit card). We had hoped a new out-of-town hotel would be a better proposition than the preposterous London hotels, but the room is small, the in room facilities are poor, and it's probably lucky that we have forgotten what our prepaid booking cost for here.

Lunch at the Birj Al Arab

2007-12-08T03:02:00.000+11:00

Well what an experience! We sped along a modern 8 lane highway, with huge new buildings of amazing architecture both sides of the road and many more under construction, for about 20km, until the famous building came into sight. An automated warning in the taxi kept saying "you are driving too fast - please slow down" but the driver ignored it.

This very new area of Dubai is called "The Beach". Many luxury hotels are out here, and The Burj is supposed to be the world's only 7 star hotel. It rises majestically into the sky, built on a tiny island and joined to the land by a short bridge. All entry is via a security gate. Only guests and people dining there with written confirmed reservations may pass, so we arrived with our document to have lunch at one of the restaurants, with a friend Bob who lives down the road in Abu Dhabi.

Inside is like an Aladdin's Cave, very colourful and with wonderful fountains which shoot into the air. Exotic live music fills the air. You are greeted by the door staff, and offered tea and dates. We met up with Bob, and proceeded to have a spectacular (and expensive) buffet lunch, with lots of exotic Arabian food. The water which accompanied our meal came from a loch in Scotland! It was an experience we will long remember, and made our trip to Dubai very special.

Old Dubai

2007-12-08T02:58:00.000+11:00

Luckily it's winter in Dubai, because it's sure hot here. Sometimes when you get close to the water, a sea breeze blows in to cool you down, but mostly, it's uncomfortably warm and dry, and you look for places to hide from the sun. It explains why most activity seems to occur in the morning, late afternoon and the evening.

Our mode of travelling is to generally avoid organised tours, but instead we do our research in advance, decide where we want to go, and then do whatever is necessary to get there. In Dubai, this is a challenge. The fantastic public transport system of Hong Kong is almost entirely absent here. There does seem to be a bus system, but the routes are not apparent to strangers, and tourists are obviously not expected to use buses. Instead, there is an excellent and cheap taxi system. The reputable taxis are sandy coloured, and clearly metered. The trouble is getting one! The best method seems to be to just find a spot where you think a taxi is likely to be able to pull up and drop off a customer, and just wait there. Such spots are not easy to find - the traffic in Dubai is unbelievably heavy, there are few places for any vehicles to pull over, and the whole city seems to be a contruction zone.

Even our hotel, the Holiday Inn Downtown Dubai, has trouble getting taxis. We waited maybe 15 minutes for one to arrive after it had been called by the concierge. And we waited 55 minutes in a huge queue at the extremely modern and ultra-popular Deira City Centre shopping complex for a taxi back to the hotel at 9:00 at night. The experience in this queue of hundreds of patient shoppers will probably prove to be one of the most memorable of our Dubai stay. Firstly, the taxi rank at the Centre was designed in the expectation of long waits. There is a fixed queue layout about 100m long, just like at airports, but it's not long enough. The queue extended another 100m into the shopping mall itself. The queue is startlingly well mannered and patient, although two people pushed through it while we were there, without a murmur of complaint from anyone. Of all the locals, it fell to Clare (trained in queues at Perisher Valley) to accost the second person, a young lady, who then said that she was ill, and indeed she seemed to be.

Trouble is, you need taxis to get anywhere. Everywhere we wanted to go seems to be 5-10km from the hotel. We would walk some of these trips except it's hot and we don't know the way, and the maps are poor, and those footpaths which are not dug up are covered in parked cars. It's easier, but dangerous, to walk on the road!

This all sounds like a lot of grumbling, but the truth is, we have enjoyed the experience, but the stress of waiting for a taxi, then getting stuck in taxi, is a big worry if you have to be at a particular place at a particular time. We also discovered (by looking at signs on construction sites) that an underground railway ("metro") is being built in Dubai. This will revolutionise the city, we're sure, and will go a long way to overcoming the problems we encountered.

That Deira Central shopping complex is an experience too. We ate at the Cafe Havana. We had read that in the evening the Havana would be crowded with Arab men in their "dish dashas" whiling the time away with their friends, and indeed that proved to be the case. Men wearing this traditional dress are very common here. The dish dashas are almost always a pure white, although there are some in pale pastel colours, beige etc. These guys look very proud of their appearance, and their clothing is always impeccably clean. In contrast the ladies are dressed mostly in black, so called "abayas". The veils are called "shaylas". The extent to which the ladies cover their faces seems quite variable, ranging from not at all, to a shawl covering the hair, to the lower half of the face, to everything but a narrow eye slit, to not even an eye slit.

Then, proving the tolerance of this society, there are women, not always tourists, dressed in modern western gear, sometimes very short and skimpy, despite cautions to the contrary in guidebooks and elsewhere. By all accounts, this tolerance does not extend to other parts of the middle east. Male tourists seem to be able to get away with cargo pants, but no locals wear such stuff. We have been very careful to fully cover arms and legs, despite the warm weather.

We have explored the souqs in older parts of the city: they are generally narrow lanes of shops jammed between old buildings and usually focusing on a particular type of merchandise. For example, there are souqs called spice, gold, perfume, electronics (hardly traditional!), money changing etc. Amongst these were myriads of tiny shops selling textiles for traditional Arab dress. The souqs are crowded, and the shopkeepers, almost all males, enthusiastically invite you in to view their wares. Structurally, the souqs don't look original, but their alleyways have been widened, straightened and beautified a lot. The spice souq was the most charming, crammed in an extremely narrow alley, and filled with the most delicious of smells.

Another highlight, if not the highlight of the old city, was the Dubai Museum. This is in an old fort, but in an excavated area underneath the fort is a particularly modern presentation capturing in full size models much of the ancient ant recent history of Dubai. This museum is not very big, but it is really one of the best we have seen anywhere in the world. A must for any visit here! And it has the only toilet we were able to find in the city outside of hotels and restaurants. The cost to visit this superb museum is 3 dirhams, less than a dollar.

To cover the old part of Dubai, you need to cross the river in vessels they call abras. These are the most basic of boats, nowadays diesel powered, with a wooden plank for a seat. The cost is 1 dirham, and each one holds about 20 people. It leaves only when all seats are full, a wait of less than a minute, and the next abra pulls into the dock as soon as the previous one leaves. A fantastic public transport system!

From Hong Kong to Dubai

2007-12-07T01:13:00.000+11:00

Apart from our firt day misunderstanding of what prepaid Octopus cards actually cover, public transport in Hong Kong is fantastically well organised. We used a lot of it while there, and all you have to do is swipe the card in front of reader when getting on buses, trains and ferries. But perhaps the most impressive was the ride back to the airport for our departure.

Our Octopus cards included the Airport Express fares, and with such a ticket, the train company (the MTR) shuttles you for free from your hotel to Kowloon Station. At Kowloon Station, as our friend Debbie had told us, you can check your bags in for the flight. One's confidence in this process is enhanced by the check in area looking just like any airport, and boarding passes as well as baggage claim tickets are issued there. Thereafter, the train takes you at high speed to the airport, with no luggage to lug around.

Hong Kong airport is one of the world's best - that's well known, but it fell down in one area for both our arrival and departure, and that was in the Immigration check, where long queues and surly staff greeted us both times. Everything else works so well in Hong Kong - why can't they get this important process right?

Our flight to Dubai was pleasant enough on Cathay Pacific. The 9 hour flight with a 4 hour time change and late night arrival makes for some very tired passengers. The horror stories about arrival in Dubai that we have read in the Sydney Morning Herald were confirmed but not fully borne out. Correspondents to the SMH have complained about immigration queues of 2-3 hours, but we only endured about 30 minutes, and it was torturously slow enough. Huge crowds of incoming passengers, even at that time of night, were being processed by large numbers of staff working very slowly, and in fact, most of them seemed to be doing nothing at all. There are no forms to fill in on arrival in Dubai, so everything the immigration people want to know, they have to ask you. It just seems so slow and inefficient.

But the rest of the airport works well. Our bags were dizzy from having been on the conveyor for so long before we got there, and the process of getting a taxi to our hotel was efficient and worked well, much better than it does at Sydney airport.

Dosed up with sleeping pills, we both managed a good night's sleep, and look forward to our stay in Dubai.

Hong Kong Update

2007-12-04T21:06:00.000+11:00

The civic fathers of Hong Kong must be very pleased with the way that they have trained the population to keep the city clean, and to give up smoking. The fines for breaking these rules are substantial, which is no doubt why the campaign has been successful. Rigorous enforcement must take place, or at least used to, but it was not apparent to us.

The Temple Street night market is promoted as quirky, but it really just seemed to be a regular market, selling mostly cheap goods (we bought some socks), not much different at all to, say, Paddy's Markets in Sydney, either in the goods available or their price. The fortune tellers and Chinese opera singers, which are supposed to make this market unique, were mostly not apparent. What was interesting was the multitude of very popular eating establishments in adjacent streets. We noticed these mostly in Woosung Street. Tourists enjoyed mingling with the locals here, and enjoyed very low cost Cantonese cuisine.

At the other end of the spectrum was a visit to the Felix bar at the top of the Peninsular Hotel. This had been recommended to us by our travel agent - thanks Bob! You travel up to the 28th floor in a dedicated and suitably decorated lift. Lights are dimmed as you step out into the bar's lobby. Interior design at Felix's is fascinating, there are no straight lines, and no surfaces are horizontal, not even the ones you put your drinks down on. Of course, the view back to Hong Kong Island is stupendous, although venetian type blinds are an unnecessary distraction. The bar is very small, and we couldn't get a stool with a view, so we stood and soaked it all in. In such a location, you might expect the drinks to be way overpriced, but they were not, in fact barely more expensive than you would pay in the trendy hotels of Surry Hills.

Another touch of luxury we enjoyed was a very relaxed afternoon tea at the Intercontinental Hotel. The same view, stunning of course, but filtered heavily by thick pollution hanging over the city in relatively windless conditions.

Causeway Bay is a great place to visit, bustling in the city area, but calm and peaceful on Victoria Park. We were lucky enough the see the ceremonial noon day gun go off (see photo), and it's good to see that Hong Kong is preserving its traditional history from the colonial past.

For a change of pace from hectic Hong Kong and Tsim Sha Tsui, we took the fast ferry to Cheung Chau, an island about half an hour away to the south west, in the same general direction as Lamma Island which Mike visited on a previous trip. Cheung Chau proved to be a good choice for this excursion. It centres on a delightful and quite large fishing village. Hundreds of craft are protected within the artificial breakwaters. The township occupies a very narrow spit on the island, and it's only a short walk between the protected harbour side to a beach area on the other side. The beach was quiet, it being winter, but it looks as though it's very busy on weekends and in summer. The long waterfront features a neverending strip of popular seafood restaurants, and the back lanes of the town were a delight to walk through. There are no motor vehicles on Cheung Chau! There are some little gas powered buggies used by tradesman, but for the most part, people walk or bicycle around. We saw hundreds of parked bikes. The only regular vehicle we did see was a fire brigade van as it passed us, siren and all, on the narrow waterfront thoroughfare. Signage implied that no vehicles, including bikes, can be used on weekends. It's very worthwhile to make the trip to Cheung Chau!

Hong Kong Arrival

2007-12-02T23:14:00.000+11:00

Our grand trip has started, with a flight from Sydney to Hong Kong. That was uneventful, mercifully shorter than the 14 hours flights across the Pacific that we have become used to. The MTR train trip into Kowloon from the airport is a lesson on how Sydney should run its train network. Clean, fast, efficient, frequent service, precision arrival at each station platform - everything that CityRail is not. Ticketing was confusing however - the much lauded Hong Kong Octopus Card is not all it's cracked up to be, but only because information available on what ticket is most appropriate is incomplete and doesn't answer obvious questions. For example, we found that the special tourist pass which covers trips to and from the airport and (we thought) unlimited 3 day travel actually does not cover bus travel at all, and you have to top it up for that. The unlimited travel is only on the subway system.

Our hotel is in the Nathan Rd area of Tsim Sha Tsui, and arriving at 7:30pm on a Saturday night was a great way to thrust us into the excitement of modern Asia. The first thing we noticed (apart from the endless touts trying to sell us shirts, suits, bags etc), compared with previous visits to Hong Kong, was how clean the city is - obviously great attention has been paid to enforcing anti-littering, and there is little or no graffiti. There are few cigarette butts around and not many people are smoking - how delightful! Smoking is totally banned in many outdoor areas.

We visited Stanley and its famous Sunday markets today, using buses to get there and back (which is when we discovered that our Octopus cards were devoid of bus money!). The thrill of rides on the top deck of Hong Kong buses are always a highlight of a Hong Kong visit. One has to admire the skill of the drivers negotiating the narrow, hilly, windy & crowded streets, and the views of the island are superb, although it's all but impossible to take good photos. At Stanley, I recognised a restaurant I had been taken to by friends on a previous visit. The photo is taken at the Stanley seafront, in a no-smoking outdoor zone. Not everyone could read the signs, though!

We also bused up to the Peak on Hong Kong Island. What a fantastic structure they have built up there since we were both here last. The view back to Kowloon was amazing, as it has always been, but it was quite hazy, maybe too much air pollution. And it was monumentally crowded. Sunday is possibly not a good day to visit the Peak. We decided to walk down rather than catch another bus or queue up for the tram. The walk was a great experience and we're glad we did it. There were very few other walkers.

Today was also the Philippino maids' day off. So the city, and every recreation area that we looked at, from the Peak, to Stanley, Repulse Bay, Deep Water Bay, and Central, is packed with them relaxing with their friends, and incredible sight.

Final Statistics

2007-07-10T16:36:00.000+10:00

Back home, some final statistics may be of some interest.

In the 28 day holiday, we travelled a total of 4690km in our 4WD Campervan, the biggest day being 528km on 27 June, the drive from Lake Argyle back to Katherine. We spent $A894 of diesel for the guzzler.

The costs of renting the data satellite service were $572, and transmission costs were $497, making this a quite expensive blog, no?

We travelled on frequent flyer points to Darwin (so only had to pay the extortionate taxes), and the total cost per day of the holiday to us was $375, including the RBGAN and the campervan.

We will resume updating this blog when we do our round the world trip starting in December 2007. Au revoir!

Fireworks and Return to Darwin

2007-07-02T17:22:00.000+10:00

Sunday night we had a great time at the Batchelor Oval, watching the Territory Day fireworks. Seems like the whole town turned out, and there was the usual "sausage sizzle" run by the Batchelor School. The crackers were very good, funded by the state government, and the mayor gave a short address. The kids in our campground also let a few crackers off, but we settled down to our usual silence and had a peaceful night.

Monday, here we are all checked in to our hotel, in downtown Darwin. The truck has been returned to the Apollo depot, and our camping gear disposed of. The day is very hot, as usual here, and we look forward to some good meals, and a bit of relaxation before we start the long trip home, via The Alice.

Beautiful Litchfield

2007-07-01T17:05:00.000+10:00

Sunday, Territory Day! After a peaceful night, quite cool, we drove a few k's down the road into Litchfield National Park, to Wangi Falls. Well, what a delightful place! Being early, we managed to be the only ones in the beautiful pool, at the bottom of two waterfalls. It's hard work, swimming upstream to get under a waterfall. We really enjoyed the cool, crystal water this morning. (Photo of us in the pool here.) As we were leaving, crowds started to arrive, so we think we were lucky to have the pool to ourselves for a while. The sun gets onto the waterfall and the pool more in the afternoon, so that is probably the most popular time for Wangi Falls (it's "wan-guy", not "wan-jee" as Wangi in NSW is pronounced.)

We then headed down the 4WD track to Tjaynera Falls hoping to find some seclusion at these difficult to get at falls, but the river crossing we encountered was too deep and too murky and too wide to be braved on the day before we are to hand our truck back in, so we decided against it. We visited Tolmer Falls lookout, which overlooks the falls into a beautiful rockpool and gorge, but no swimming allowed here because of the rare bat species which live in the gorge.

Then we drove to Buley Waterholes, near Florence Falls where we swam yesterday. Again, we were delighted to see several small cascading falls with connecting pools. Some were very deep, and they were stunning, so in we went again. The waterholes were crowded - indeed the signs in the little car park say "if the car park is full, the waterholes are crowded, so come back another time". We got the last parking spot.

Litchfield is a great park, and so close to Darwin. No wonder it is so popular, but we were here on a Sunday. We have found the park very well managed, with excellent walking tracks to the sights. The park does not charge you to enter.

Now we have pulled up in the town of Batchelor, which is quite near to the old Rum Jungle mining site. A quiet, very green and tidy town, very small, does not seem to have the problems of some towns we have stopped at. Batchelor has a TAFE type college for aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander students. Tonight, there is a fireworks display, on the Batchelor oval, to celebrate Territory Day. We will walk there from here. A fantastic last day for us, tomorrow it is back to Darwin, for a couple of days before we fly home.

Florence Falls

2007-06-30T19:15:00.000+10:00

Saturday, this is our 2nd last night in the "truck", the time has flown. We are however exhausted, it has been a very active holiday.

Last night was not as quiet as we would have hoped. The boys and girls from the 2007 Wantirna High School Central Australia Tour ran like crazed animals around the Katherine Gorge campground, and it wasn't until after 10:00pm that their teachers, not really in control, tried to exercise some discipline and get their charges into their tents, where fights ensued and giggling lasted for a long time. These students, the boys in particular, showed no consideration for the other campers, and no respect for the aboriginal owners, and terrorised the noctural wildlife in a National Park. The administrators of Nitmiluk National Park are doing themselves no good service in accepting bookings from school groups, if this is how they behave.

We set off in the direction of Darwin today, and have now pulled into Litchfield National Park, 50km off the Stuart Highway, and about 80km short of Darwin. It is a great place, very well maintained, and with pristine water holes for swimming, and beautiful flowing creeks. First thing we did after a lunch by the gurgling Shady Creek was dive into a very large water hole, fed by a beautiful year round waterfall, in Florence Creek. How refreshing it was on this hot day. Many others had the same idea. No secluded water holes here!

This park must be very popular with "Darwinians", as it is so close to Darwin, and a real gem. Also, it's a weekend and it's Territory Day tomorrow (fireworks!), and we found we could not get into the National Park camping area at Wangi Falls that we wanted to. However, we have found a delightful spot nearby, Litchfield Safari Park, grassy, lots of trees and very quiet, and a powered site is a bonus. Not much chance of large school groups here!

Cruising the Gorges

2007-06-29T18:25:00.000+10:00

Friday, well it wasn't a cold night at all, even tho' we are just down the road from Katherine, where we had an extremely cold night. About 6am we felt the chill and it was a very cool morning until about 10am. After that, it became a very hot day.

Last night about 9pm, two coaches roared in and a crowd of Year 11 teens from Warandite, Vic., piled out and set up camp. They sounded like the invading hoardes, and were very noisy until they went to bed, not late, and again when they awoke at 6am. They had apparently been on the road since 5am - we figure their departure must have been Alice Spings or Uluru. No sooner had they moved on, that sometime this afternoon, two coaches arrived from Wantirna, Vic., also full of teens, who are not too noisy (they haven't been cooped up in a bus all day), but are stretching the resources of the shower block a bit. This is our first encounter with school bus trips of this type, you do not get them in regular caravan parks of course. Needless to say the expected "dawn chorus" of birds did not eventuate, I think they had flown off to a quieter place. Both these groups of schoolies were well drilled at putting their tents up quickly and in neat rows (the first group in the dark) - we figure they've had plenty of practice since they left Melbourne.

We had the most fantastic day, doing a 4 hr boat cruise touring 3 of the 13 gorges here at Katherine. Each gorge is separated by a rapids at this time of the dry season, so you get out of one boat, walk over the rocks around the rapids, and get into another boat, for the next gorge. This works quite well. These gorges, which are so accessable to the general public, not needing a 4 wheel drive to get to, are spectacular, and the amount of water here is astonishing. To go past the 3rd gorge, you have to canoe or walk, or fly.

The second gorge was the most interesting of the three we saw, and given more time, we would try a full day canoeing, where you can do multiple gorges. The third gorge included a stop from which you could walk to a beautiful swimming hole, Lily Pond, fed by a very high "maiden's hair" type waterfall, which normally dries up in the dry season, but was working today, given the recent rains. Not too many people swam - they hadn't warmed up enough yet.

Coming back through the second gorge, the cruise guides Di and Jai tried something they hadn't tried before - it was a stop at Butterfly Gorge (normally only accessible by a 4 hour walk), named after the butterflies which inhabit it. It was a trial and error exercise, with nowhere obvious to pull up, and very steep banks to clamber up and down. Today's photo is taken from Butterfly Gorge. The people who had tackled the tough walk to Butterfly Gorge (for peace and solitude, one of them said), were none too pleased to see half a boatload of cruisers trampling their quiet turf, but we only stayed 15 minutes!

As everywhere in the Top End, the bird life is very interesting, but here the crocs were not evident at all. There is a particularly well decorated bower bird's nest in the campground here. Its owner seems quite unperturbed by the many passers-by.

The Nitmiluk National Park, jointly operated by NT National Parks and the traditional owners, the Jawoyn, is very well set up for tourism - they operate a commercial enterprise right out of the park's visitors' centre, although there are a few glitches in the operation. By our observations, the school groups are doing 2hr gorge cruises, which cover the first two gorges.

Katherine Gorge

2007-06-28T20:52:00.000+10:00

Thursday, a freezing cold dawn at the Shadylane Van Park in Katherine. First thing, we upped stakes, drove 25km, and got one the the first powered sites (one of the dusty, non-allocated variety) available for the morning in the Nitmiluk National Park. We reckon we got the best one. These are apparently all gone by about lunchtime. Immediately, we noticed the prolific birdlife here - it's so noisy, it's going to be bedlam in the morning.

We rented a double canoe for a four hour afternoon session, to paddle Katherine Gorge up to the 1st rapids. They strictly limit the number of canoes on the river, and we were just early enough to get the booking. The paddle of the 1st gorge is 3.6km upstream, and then back again. It was hard work! Not because of the flow, which was very slight, but because of the light wind and our poor canoeing style. The canoes had no keel and no rudder, and it was impossible to maintain course, either upstream or downstream. But the gorge was, well, gorgeous, with a mixture of cliff faces and sandy banks running into the water. The sandy banks were almost all marked "no entry, crocodile breeding area". We didn't see any crocs today. We had a swim at the rapids.

There were lots of other people canoeing on the river, some were doing more adventurous trips where they ported their canoes up the rapids and did the next gorge. There appear to be many gorges accessible this way, 13 in total. Some people had backpacks, and were doing overnight canoeing trips. The canoeists competete with the cruises for the river. Paddlers are cautioned to avoid the cruise boats, "they are big and have no brakes".

We are unused to canoeing (Tracy please note!) and are exhausted after the effort, Mike's arms are sore and so are Clare's wrists and hands. We hoped to save energy by eating at the very nice cafe here, but it's menu wasn't up to our exacting standards, so we are back at the truck, eating our own tucker.

It will possibly be another cold night tonight although now, at 8pm, it seems much milder than last night, but it is still clear skied with a full moon. Yes Ben, we are sleeping in the thermals again. Tomorrow we will be up early, to go on a 3 gorges cruise at 9am, should be great, and someone else will be paddling! Kathryn Gorge is a beautiful place, quite crowded, but the natural beauty is stunning, and it is only 3 and a half hours from Darwin.

The Long Drive

2007-06-27T20:06:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, we've just completed the third big driving day on this trip, and the last. We covered 528km from Lake Argyle WA to Katherine NT, nd in our truck, that's about as much as you'd want to do. Our Toyota Hilux, which must be the oldest in Apollo's fleet (140,000km), is happy to do between 100 and 110km/h on a good bitumen road, which means we overtake all caravans (which seem to cruise at 80km/hr), and, despite its age, its been very reliable and performs very well. The speed limit in NT is 130km/hr, but very few vehicles are doing it.

Today's drive was quite dreary, with the only scenically beautiful section being in Gregory National Park and the Victoria River Gorge. Remember, we stayed at Vic River on our first night out of Darwin.

By doing the trip out of Darwin, we will have the opportunity to visit Nitmiluk National Park (Katherine Gorge), and Litchfield National Park on our return to Darwin, but, in retrospect, we could have avoided the dreary Kununurra to Katherine section of the road (both ways) by doing the trip out of Broome. When we planned the trip (a year ago), we chose Darwin probably without thinking it through properly, but we knew that flights to Darwin were much easier to get than flights to Broome. We've since heard that renting motorhomes out of Broome incurs a $500 remote site fee, which is startling, and nice to have avoided.

We are here (in the North End) in winter, peak season, but we are still surprised at how crowded the main caravan parks are. When we first arrived in Kununurra some weeks ago, the parks were full, and we were lucky to get a space in the lakesise park (which we then abandoned when we felt it was too crowded). Everyone says you won't get a space in Broome, but we did, right at Cable Beach, by just fronting up, pretty early in the day. That van park was indeed chockers, but we were lucky. Today, arriving at Katherine, the first two parks we tried were full, and the third, "Shady Lane" only had 3 spaces left when we arrived, and it's now got the "full" sign out.

This park is on the road up to the Gorge, and its in a delightful location, with spacious, shady sites, yet well grassed. Despite this, we prefer the sites in National Parks, where you can sometimes get "private spaces". (Today's photo is of our campfire at our private site at El Questro.) That privacy and seclusion is worth the price of no power and limited facilities. We're going to try our luck at Nitmiluk tomorrow. Having said that, the parks are still quieter than our neighbours in Surry Hills, although you are very close to vans and tents. People are very considerate, even the dogs are quieter!

Argyle Cruise in Sunshine

2007-06-26T21:27:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, sunshine at last. Mike was happy getting a dawn run from the campground, across the Ord River dam wall, and down the gorge a bit, and back.

In the afternoon we did a cruise on Lake Argyle with Drew, a young fellow who has spent all his life here and certainly knows his lake. It's incredible to contemplate how big this body of fresh water is (30 - 50 Sydney Harbours, depending on the water level), how relatively small the dam is that holds it back, how it only took 3 wet seasons to fill, how it is massively underutilised as both an irrigation resource and as a tourism resource.

The cruise was in a very speedy catamaran - it had to be, we covered 100km on the water, and still only looked at a fraction of his huge lake. It was quite windy and hence choppy, which made high speeds in open water very uncomfortable for both the passengers and for the cat, so we couldn't go to the far side of the lake to see where the Ord River comes in. Instead we explored a long way up a river running into Ulysses Bay and saw a whole heap of wildlife.

The wildlife included more crocodiles (freshies, no confirmed reports of salties in Lake Argyle), ospreys (see photo), sea eagles, azure kingfishers, cormorants. We also saw wallabies and even big herds of feral cattle whose ancestors were lost when the valley was flooded 20 odd years ago.

It's quite amazing to see Kimberleys geology butting up against this huge man made sea!

Out of the Rain???

2007-06-25T19:10:00.001+10:00

Monday, what a good idea it was to book into the Kimberley Grande, a brand new resort in Kununurra. Although having a few teething problems, the room was great, and we had a good meal in the bistro. A lot of washing and drying was done, and we have completely reorganised, so have set out afresh today. It poured all night and was still pouring this morning, when we left. We now know why its raining - it's not just Clare's determined hope for cool weather. It's really because our Nic and Baz are trying to to film some of the new movie "Australia", it is set in the dusty hot land! We hear they are knee deep in mud.

Yesterday, we discovered that our Apollo motorhome leaks in the rain. It has a pop-up lid, and when it is down (for driving), and you are moving forward into the rain, it leaks into the front of the "house" right where Mike sleeps. So we carted the mattress into our motel room to dry out last night.

We have now arrived at Argyle Dam, only 70km from Kununurra, and it is a most idyllic spot. We are camped in a nice grassy spot under a gum tree, a nice change from the mud.

Lake Argyle is the largest body of fresh water in Australia, about 54 Sydney Harbours. The air is so aromatic here, the gums and the water smell delightful, after the rain. Today, downstream of the dam, we noticed a small group fishing. One of them, with binoculars, was appointed to watch for crocodiles - they had one in sight, only 30m away, but it was just a freshie. Today's photo is of the Ord River gorge, downstream of the dam, taken near our campsite.

Thankfully it looks like the rain has gone at least for the time being. Everyone is talking about it. Yesterday we saw a man stopped in a river crossing, cleaning his car and caravan with a broom, in the rain. That's one way to get the mud off. We'll have to do something like that at the end of this trip. Apollo expect you to return the vehicle clean!

Rain, Rain and Roadhouses

2007-06-24T19:13:00.000+10:00

Sunday. It rained most of the night at our Turkey Creek campground, leaving it an even muddier mess this morning. Our plan for today was to drive to Kununurra, do some shopping, and then drive to Lake Argyle where we would stay a couple of nights. But the weather was so bad on the way to Kununurra, tropical downpouring rain, which looked quite set in, that we eventually decided to stay the night at a motel in town, in the hope of riding out the weather. We've checked in - it's going to be very luxurious to have a real bed and a real bathroom tonight. The forecast is for more rain tomorrow, clearing Tuesday.

Last evening, the whisper at Turkey Creek was that the road into Purnululu would be opened today (Sunday) despite the official statement of "no review before Monday". We guess this batch of heavy rain has put paid to that rumour. We're very glad we managed that helicopter ride over the Bungles yesterday - walking in this magnificent national park will have to await another visit.

Our friend Cindy from Skykomish wondered how the isolated roadhouses of the Kimberleys received their "gas", petrol and diesel to us Australians. Today's photo shows how - it's of a huge road train pulled up in the boggy forecourt of Turkey Creek this morning.

Those roadhouses have been quite interesting - apart from the fuel and goods travellers buy there, they seem to have become centres of their communities in one way or another. Almost every roadhouse has a family of aborigines hanging around outside, enjoying the chairs and the shade of the awnings. Often these people will try to sell tourists some artwork, but, from what we've seen, they're asking too much money for very mediocre stuff. The aborigines seem to all have money, and look like heavy consumers of soft drinks and chocolates.

This is not news, but many of the aborigines are affected by alcohol, and loud arguments and physical fights are common. One such fight only this morning seemed to discourage a whole busload of people from getting off a Greyhound Coach at Turkey Creek. We had thought the local community was dry, and maybe it is, with this particular group being from elsewhere.

All Roadhouses sell premade food and some basic provisions. Signs say "ignore the use-by date, because the goods have been frozen". If there's hot food, it's almost always of the "pie in the oven" or "baine marie" variety, but some do it better than others. The Victoria River Roadhouse (NT) prepared meals from a menu in the evenings, although we didn't sample them. You could do short helicopter flights of the river gorge from right outside that roadhouse. On the Gibb, the Mount Barnett Roadhouse (diesel was $1.95/L, the most expensive we have bought) had a large and comprehensive general store, but stock levels on may items was low. They were expecting deliveries soon. The Imintji Roadhouse was next door to the mechanic who repaired our flat tyre. The couple running that place were obviously expat Queenslanders (judging by his Maroons shirt and flag), and had just taken over the business. They were very friendly, and sold us some fresh sandwiches, but were "too busy" to make hamburgers etc. We didn't stop at any of the roadhouses near Broome, and, on the Great Northern Hwy, we actually spent the night at the Turkey Creek Roadhouse, and enjoyed some very tasty baine marie tucker.

Over the Bungles

2007-06-23T17:52:00.000+10:00

Saturday, another grey morning, cold and windy over breakfast, and the drizzle will not quite go away. This sort of weather is not supposed to happen!

We left Hall's Creek, and drove the 150km down the road to Turkey Creek, there was very little traffic, I think most people have just stopped and are waiting for the roads to open again. The vegetation was beautiful, as it was cool and overcast, so the silver, purple and grey foliage was splendid.

Last night reminded me of the wagons circling for protection from the Indians,in the wild west, as all night outside our compound the indigenous people of Hall's Creek partied loud and long, in acompaniment to loud live music from the Halls Creek pub which went to about midnight, but didn't keep us awake.

In the face of the road closures preventing us getting into the Bungles, and believing that Kununurra will be over-crowded again (there's a writers festival there this weekend), we decided to take a helicopter flight from Turkey Creek over the Bungles, so we can drive on tomorrow to Lake Argyle, hoping that it will be a good place to camp for a couple of nights. The rain is absent at the moment, but threatening to return next week. It is the coldest, wettest "dry "season here for 50 years, we heard today. As we only have a week left to camp out, we do not want to get stuck anywhere, and luckily the roads we will use now are sealed.

The helicopter flight was magic: Elaine, I had a look for you. I sat up with the pilot, and of course there was no-one in the Bungles, or on the road in. There were lots of pools of water, and a couple of falls running due to the amount of rain, and I have never seen such spectacular scenery, the rocks were so coloured, and you could see the silver-green lichens on them, it was great from the air.

There is an Aboriginal community near here, it looks to be dry, which is just as well, based on what we have seen. The houses all have air-con and they have a clinic and school there. There are some well known artists living there, selling paintings etc. Most of the people have been down to the store by the look of things today, our campsite is a good spot for watching. Turkey Creek is a basic little road house. We are sandwiched on a muddy site (everything is muddy), between the road house and the road, not very glamorous.

Mary Pool and Halls Creek

2007-06-22T18:54:00.000+10:00

Friday dawned overcast again, but as we drove east from Fitzroy Crossing to Halls Creek, the sky cleared up progressively, and then become overcast again. The people are stunned by the cool and wettish weather, and we notice that cars and shops have their heaters on full bore.

We left Fitzroy Crossing via the old crossing, now consigned to a corrugated dirt road, and not via the new bridge. Again, a fairly uninteresting drive but a break at Mary Pool (on the Mary River) proved to be a wonderful relief from the boredom. We had heard about Mary Pool before this trip, and from many people during the trip, but we didn't realise what made it wonderful. We thought, is it a great swimming hole? A majestic river? Neither, it is the wildlife there! The trees are heavily laden with thousands of noisy corellas (must be a cacophony at dawn), the languid river boasts equally languid freshwater crocs, and we also saw numerous other birds, cranes, sandpipers etc.

Not quite matching the corellas in number are the numbers of free campers there. We counted about 25 camps (vans etc) set up, and the people were some of the most friendly we had come across - must be the spirit of the free camper! Our friends Jo and Henry had warned us on how awful the long drop toilets were in this location. We can report that the camp toilets were clean, not smelly, and equipped with toilet paper (by the campers, by the look of it). The bowl itself was an intrguiging contraption, moulded in concrete and painted white, without a seat or a cover.

Hoping for good news, we got the dreaded bad news when we reported to the Halls Creek visitor info centre. The road to Purnululu National Park (the Bungle Bungles) is closed, and the situation won't be reviewed until Monday. A bit more rain is expected, what's more. Lots of people have been trapped in the park, and there being no supplies available in there, today they towed the light 4WDs out. Tomorrow, apparently, they're going to use a grader to tow out the large 4WDs.

So we're holed up at the Halls Creek Caravan Park - it's usually a dusty mess, but now its a muddy mess. I asked the owner why he doesn't have grass like they do at Fitzroy Crossing and he (nicely) lectured me on how big the Fitzroy River is compared to the non-existent Halls Creek, and how strict the water restrictions are here. This afternoon, we could have visited some attractions out of Halls Creek, such as the Wolfe Creek meteorite crater, Caroline's Pool, the China Wall and an oasis called Palm Springs but, you guessed it, they're down dirt roads which are firmly closed. So we did a walk of town, and saw more of the same old problems with the indigenous population. Quite a few young ones talked to us as we walked around, they are as bright as buttons, and its so sad to contemplate their limited opportunities.

Geikie Gorge

2007-06-22T09:13:00.000+10:00

Thursday, after a drizzly night, we spent the day at Geikie Gorge. It is the only gorge on our itinerary with a sealed road into it, so we are in the right place at the right time. All of the unsealed roads in the Kimberleys are closed due to the unseasonal rain. We just heard on the ABC, that 140 guests are stuck at El Questro due to the road closure. It was very fortunate that we did the Gibb River Road during the week it was so dry. We're picturing what those people at El Questro are doing. If you were at our private site "Wren", you couldn't leave it - there are two river crossings just to get back to the resort. To walk the gorges themselves require river crossings which would be impassable on the access tracks, and impossible to cross on the walking trails.

Today was overcast and cool, a refreshing change, and it did not rain, answering our prayers. We hope the rain has gone away altogether. This arvo, there are patches of blue sky showing. The locals are complaining about how cold it is - Kununurra radio this morning said it is like a Russian winter!

The gorge is 18km out of Fitzroy Crossing and was really beautiful, different to all the other gorges we have seen. We did a barge trip on the river, the Fitzroy, and then had a walk along its bank. The gorge is flanked by a reef from the Devonian Period when this was a seashore, and runs 1000km to the sea. On the bank we found shells and fresh water mussels, it was just like a beach. We saw some fresh water crocs, some rock wallabies, lots of birds, and were delighted to see 6 brolgas on the drive in and out, which elicited a chorus of "out on the plains the brolgas are dancing".

We have given up hope of being able to drive into the Bungle Bungles (would have been day after tomorrow). The river crossing on the road in is reported to be really difficult at the best of times and it will now be impossible. Anyway, the road is officially closed. Probably people are stuck in there too, although that hasn't been on the news.

Tonight, we are in the no frills caravan park again, but it is the most grassy under foot of all we have stayed at, which is nice in this damp weather. The town of Fitzroy Crossing is making us despair, we saw 10 children this morning going into the shop to buy sweets. They should have been in school.

The Savannah Way

2007-06-20T21:15:00.001+10:00

Last night, we had a seafood platter at Zender's on Cable Beach. We ate early, at 5:30, so as to be able to enjoy the beautiful sunset. No green flash of course, the clouds saw to that, but the sunset colours in those clouds were just gorgeous.

Wednesday dawned drearily, said to be most unusual for the Kimberleys. Even ABC radio news is led by this exceptional weather. For us, the day started off with another 6:00am run along Cable Beach followed by a swim for Mike. This morning, there was a dawn camel ride going on on the beach. We thought these were only at sunset.

Departing the campsite at Cable Beach, we reminisced that it had the best (cleanest, most modern) facilities of any we had stayed at, but at $35/night, it was getting close to double the price of most others. While the spaces were generous, the ground was much too crowded, and we really prefer the private campsites concept elsewhere, despite the lack of power and facilities. We don't know if we'll see any more such places the rest of this trip.

Before leaving Broome, Clare retired her old Nike walking shoes, which had been good for years, but gave up the ghost in one of the gorges, and bought a shiny new pair of Dunlops, and we dieseled up, and got take-away cappucino, the last we'll see for nearly two weeks, at the Old Zoo Cafe.

It was a driving day - we covered 400km to Fitzroy Crossing where we'll stay at this small, run-down but still too crowded (powered) caravan park for two nights, so we can go to Geike Gorge tomorrow. We hope for better weather. It's drizzling lightly here, and quite cool - it reminds us of our old camping days at Durras - but the weather here is supposed to be hot and reliably sunny here in winter.

We are fascinated by how the owners of caravans which never leave the bitumen seem to wash their cars and vans lovingly in the caravan parks every night. We sat here under our tattered awning (out for the first time to protect us from the drizzle) beside our very grubby motorhome, having a cup of tea and watching everyone washing their cars in the drizzle. The Fitzroy River must have boundless water for this to be allowed!

On the way here we encountered patches of drizzle only, and the sky was very threatening. The drive along the Savannah Way (Broome to Cairns) was boring, the only point of interest being the rest area where we had lunch. This area surrounds a massive and ancient boab tree. Also parked there for lunch was a huge fifth wheeler caravan, which must be more comfortable than our modest Apollo truck. Mind you, these fifth wheelers, and indeed any regular caravans, are not able to do the Gibb River Rd! Apart from our friends' Steve and Alan's fifth wheeler, you rarely see these vehicles in the east, but they are reasonably common over here.

The town is very depressed with the usual samples of indigenous population camped out at the shops.They throw down their rubbish anywhere, even though there are plenty of bins, and it is very dirty. From what we saw, only the tourists use the rubblish bins.

Chilling out in Broome

2007-06-19T17:49:00.000+10:00

Tuesday broke quite cloudy. Mike had an early run (with swim) on Cable Beach while Clare listened to local ABC and heard that most unusual heavy rain in patches around the Kimberleys had closed some of the roads we had recently travelled. Windjana Gorge and Bells Gorge access roads were closed, so we are lucky to have been there only a day or so ago.

Today we chilled out, but knowing that there'll be no restaurants over the next week and we'll have to live out of our van, we had breakfast out and will also do dinner at Cable Beach this evening. The overcast conditions made the beach suitable for Clare, so we walked along Cable Beach to a virtually deserted section and had a good swim there at high tide, when Cable Beach is at its best.

Today's rain (which we have not seen in Broome), makes one reminsce on the purpose of our holiday here, the Gibb River Road. It is about 700km long, running from the Kununurra to Wyndham road in the east, to Derby in the west, in Western Australia, and all but the 50km nearest Derby, and the odd steep pinch, is dirt. The road is "recommended as 4WD only", but based on our trip along its full length in the last week, this recommendation really only applies to the river crossings. The Pentecost River crossing is the longest and most daunting on the road, but there are numerous, dozens, of lesser rivers to negotiate. We had heard horror stories about this crossing at El Questro, but we found that Pentecost and all others are quite navigable with due care.

In wet conditions, such as might apply today, it is apparent that the road would be very treacherous. We traversed it just after the wet season, but the road was mostly dry and had been recently graded. There are long sections of very rough, dried up boggy bits, but most of the road is in quite good condition, and it is extensively maintained, apparently by the Wyndham and Derby Shires, which, we think, do a very good job. The dirt roads to Doug and Anne's farm at Glenrossal, and over much of NSW, are much rougher than most of the Gibb River Road, but as mentioned, it's the river crossings and bog potential which makes the Gibb special.

The bad stretches of the Gibb River Road are mostly in the eastern half. We felt, and confirmed with a destroyed tyre, that the greatest hazards were long stretches of grey coloured, very sharp stones. One of these tore a gaping hole in the side wall of our rear, passenger side tyre, forcing us to drive 300km or so on a sometimes very stony road with no spare tyre - this was quite a nervous time! Every private vehicle on this road carries at least two spare tyres, and we think the rental 4WDs should as well. We'll see what happens when we suggest that to Apollo.

The side tracks off the main road are notably worse than the Gibb. The roads to Gorges, or to Mt Elizabeth Station, are generally a degree narrower and rougher. Many of these tracks are not trivial, being up to 50km long. Even El Questro appears to maintain a policy of not improving the tracks on its property. The track to El Questro Gorge, for example, was a rugged affair definitely requiring 4WD. Even the track to our private campsite, Wren, was really rough and included a dry, very rocky, creek crossing. The hideous road to our dingy cruise on the Chamberlain River featured a very rough river crossing, and a really rugged rocky section which seemed to encourage all the young 4WD heros.

A lot of people travelling the Gibb, take the long excursion up to Kalumburu. Up there and back adds at least 600km to the trip, more if you do the obligitory side trips to the Mitchell Plateau. Even before we left Sydney, we had decided we did not have time to do this section of road, but we have spoken to many who have, or who will, and by all reports, it's a much rougher proposition than the Gibb River Rd (it crosses the Gibb River too!).

Into Broome, connectivity again

2007-06-18T22:16:00.000+10:00

Monday, our dinner in Derby last night was at the Boab Inn hotel, a Sunday roast, which was excellent. Lots of vegies which we fell upon, as our diet had not included them of late.

We drove into Broome today, a couple of hours from Derby on a sealed road. Lots of road trains tho, 4 trailers long boring down the road. Broome has really grown in the few years since we have been here, it is a very vibrant town, unlike some of the others we have been thru. They have a lot of new roads around the town, very good planning, but our Navman is totally lost!

Luckily we got into the caravan park out at Cable Beach, we had thought Broome might be full, which it is, but the park is very big so got in ok. The vans are slotted in side by side, and we find it quite entertaining looking at all the "rigs". We are in a lovely street, a lot of the people look like they are here for the winter, and even have fairy lights twinkling away, and pot plants. No dogs here, but some folk have birds in cages. I'm afraid we are the gypsies, as we do not even have a carpet outside our door, or an annexe, or a garage for the car which most people have.

Our mobile phones work in Broome, the first time we have had a signal since we left Broome. Also, on the way into Broome we found ABC radio on the car radio, the first signal for a long time. And to boot, last night in Derby, Clare was able to watch Grey's Anatomy on our portable TV, with rabbits' ears perched precariously on the bonnet.

The water at Cable Beach is very beautiful, so blue (at high tide anyway), and the rocks so red.

We ate at the Old Zoo Cafe tonight, an old haunt from our visit several years ago. It's great to experience fine dining again.

Doing this blog tonight, we can hear the waves of the Indian Ocean . . .

Thoughts on Campsites

2007-06-17T21:30:00.000+10:00

Being non-campers, non-caravanners, and non-4WDers, we didn't really know what to expect at campsites.

First of all, there is the power/no power dimension. Since our rented Apollo campervan has a 240v power inlet, getting a powered site is important for convenience, but knowing where we were going, we did not expect powered sites to be common. The briefing where we rented the vehicle spooked us a little, because young Brett warned us that the van engine would not charge the "house" battery, which runs the fridge, very well, and we should use a powered site after 2 or 3 days. Well, we went 7 nights in a row without a powered site, and frankly, the house battery and van fridge held up quite well. We guess the good mileage we did many days helped the battery recover quite well.

Commercial campsites in towns tend to be powered, but the really attractive national park and wilderness sites (El Questro, Bell Gorge, Windjana Gorge) never do, and neither did the campground at Mt Elizabeth Station. We had powered site at Victoria River Roadhouse. Unpowered sites sometimes manage noise, by specifying times that generators can be used (for those who have them, e.g. El Questro) or by dividing the campground into "quiet" and "generators" areas (Windjana Gorge).

Some campsites allocate spots, others do not. With a motorhome as we have, non-allocated sites can be a problem, because you can't really leave anything behind to maintain a claim on a good site. Generally, with non-allocated sites, it's a first in best dressed approach, but this works fine if the camping area is not too crowded. We managed to get the same good spot two nights in a row at Windjana Gorge. At Wyndham, the powered sites were laid out with kerb and guttering, but the manager there lets you go and choose the site you like (and he cooks you Barra and chips for dinner too, if you like).

Allocated sites are booked out like motel rooms at most commercial town campgrounds, you get a site number, and you can freely drive in and out of that site. Trouble is, the commercial campgrounds tend to have small sites, close together, just like our friend Jack said he experienced in New Zealand. We actually paid for a site on the lake in Kununurra, and abandoned it because it was so crowded, and moved on to the next town, Wyndham, for a much more relaxed location. A tag system was used for the few private sites (about 12) at Bell Gorge, and we were very lucky to get one. We drove in at about 4pm and caught a lady returning her tag to the board. This was a miracle! They must have changed their minds about staying overnight, because the tags are put out at 7:00am, and are usually all gone soon after. We were also lucky at El Questro, although we orchestrated that luck by following advice and arriving there at about 9:30am. The site "Wren" we got was fantastic, highly recommended to anyone.

Most campsites we have stayed at have hot showers. Some, like El Questro's, are 2km down the road from our private campsite. But at Bell Gorge, the showers were 10km down the road from the private sites. And at Windjana Gorge, the showers were cold water only, but it was so hot there, that a cooling shower was very appropriate. Some campers don't like cold showers - we saw one guy rig up a heat exchanger and pump to warm up water real time for his wife, and others used solar heated hot water.

We have been very impressed with the quality of the toilets we have found. You expect clean flushing toilets at commercial sites, but we also found these at really remote places like Bell Gorge and Windjana Gorge. At El Questro, there was an "Eco-Loo" near our private site which was a high tech above ground modern looking contraption using no water, but was clean and odour free. We have been warned not to expect any such luxury in the Bungle Bungles when we get there!

End of the Gibb River Rd

2007-06-17T21:27:00.000+10:00

Sunday, Mike was sad today as we drove the last of the Gibb River Road, into Derby. We left our lovely camp site, where a Bower Bird had built a bower,complete with a garden of white pebbles, and are in a very busy caravan park in Derby for the night. The sites are a good size, if a bit close, and next door there is a small caravan which is being towed by a Morris Minor. However we now have power, and have done 2 loads of washing, which dried in a minute. Expecting warmer nights now we are near the coast again.We have had a walk round the town, which is trying hard and Mike had a chat with a local man Andrew, who was selling an Aboriginal art work, which we had to decline to buy. Off to the pub for dinner.

Tunnel Creek

2007-06-17T21:24:00.000+10:00

Saturday, this morning we drove 40km down the road to Tunnel Creek, which is an interesting place. It is a cavern about 1.7 ks long, with a creek running thru. Bad Points are (a) you have to wade thru waist deep water in the dark, (b) there are things in the water, crocs the biggest, fish the smallest. Good Points (a) the water was mostly knee deep, (b) we had our Petzel lamps and (c) we saw no crocs. At the end of the tunnel, we found some aboriginal rock art.

It was a magical place, very cool and I am glad we went there.

Stayed in the same camp site at Windjana again, the showers are cold but extremely pleasant after a hot day. We watch a few short films from TropFest every night, on our portable TV/DVD.

Technology Failure

2007-06-17T21:21:00.000+10:00

Friday, the drive from Bell Gorge to Windjana Gorge uneventful. Has lunch at a totally unexpected "Snack Stop" on the Lennard River. The man at the snack shack, was a character and showed us a big croc basking on the river bank, thru his telescope. He lived very simply there with his little shop and garden.

The Gibb Road was very good this stretch, with lots of sealed bits. Every one drives as fast as they can, we are glad of an uneventful day, no dramas.

The nights are very cold, Ben, down to 3, so we are sleeping in the thermals. Mornings are lovely, and arvos are HOT. We have an air con in the cabin and one in the camper which we do not need yet, which is just as well becasue we haven't seen a powered site for a week.(This note for Deb).

Very impressed with the little private clearing you get to camp in, in some places, usually with a fire place, and close to a river. We have had lovely nights with a fire and a carpet of stars above. The toilets are very impressive, perfectly clean, flushing toilets. Amazing.

Have seen correllas and lovely finches today, as well as a lot of crocs in Windjana Gorge.

A technological failure delayed updating the blog. Our inverter, converting 12vDC to 240vAC has mysteriously failed, and we can't charge the computer's battery without it. For other appliances (e.g. the RBGAN satellite modem, our portable TV) we have 12v chargers, but alas, not the computer. We will not be able to update our blog until we can recharge the PC at the next powered site. We don't like our chances of replacing this inverter in Broome.

Swimming Holes

2007-06-14T19:56:00.000+10:00

Thurs. Well you will know who is doing the blog today. We got the new tyre ok, a nice man named Neville a bush mechanic fixed it for us at the Imintji Road House, where we had lunch while we waited.

We called in at Galvans Gorge, which was beaut. Mike had a swim in the very deep pool at the bottom of a waterfall there. The Gibb River Rd is not too bad, we are being very careful now, as we do not want to buy too many tyres. The roads in to the Gorges are terrible, and the tracks to the Gorges are very hard, down river beds on rocks. My foot is suffering a bit, it is so rough. There are no tracks people just walk any where.

The gums are all flowering, and the native grevillia are beautiful. Just as I adjust to thongs in the showers, we get to camp for the next few nights where there are no showers. Upon arriving at Bell's Gorge this afternoon, we went straight to the river and had a great bathe. We have had no power for the last 5 nights, but the blog gets out, that is remarkable. No radio, no phones since we left Darwin a week ago.

Explosions and Flat Tyres

2007-06-13T19:31:00.000+10:00

Tuesday, we chilled out in the morning and lazed around our ultra-private campsite. There are rapids in the Pentecost River near our site with running water and pools just perfect for an al-fresco bath, which was greatly enjoyed.

In the afternoon, we did the Explosion Gorge tour, led by ranger Del, a self-confessed "horse chick" who delighted in flinging a Land Rover down the worst 4WD track imaginable (that is how the tour was promoted, take a ride along a track you would never consider taking your own 4WD on). Several other "lads" did try the road for themselves though. That was followed by a cruise in dingys on the Chamberlain River gorge, a truly spectacular waterhole. Finally, back up the horror track to Branko's Lookout, amazing vistas of El Questro, accompanied by champagne and nibbles. We splurged and ate at the ElQ Steakhouse for dinner.

Wednesday, reluctantly departing El Questro, we hit the Gibb River Rd again. The road is a pretty reasonable gravel highway, but what makes it a 4WD only route are the river crossings. The biggest was the Pentecost River, but there were many others.

We had no troubles in our Hilux until we had a flat tyre, very flat, totally destroyed on a sharp rock. Some South Aussies helped us change the wheel in our unfamiliar vehicle, and we then drove ultra-carefully to tonight's resting place, camping at Mt Elizabeth Homestead, some 150km without a spare tyre on a rough dirt road. Same tomorrow, another 150km before we can hopefully get a new tyre at a bush mechanic's garage!