porongurup

for the australia day long weekend, john and i decided to head south. as pretty much the entire population of perth would be heading to the margaret river region, we chose to avoid the obvious and headed a bit more east to porongurup and albany.

the drive to albany is pretty uneventful- small roadhouses get dots on the map! there is really nothing to see but bush land. luckily it was pretty sparse with vehicles and not a cop in sight... i'm just sayin' it's a bit faster, is all.

we arrived on saturday evening a bit famished. luckily one of john's clients recommended a nice restaurant for us. in un-typical aussie fashion, it's a thai cafe. in the middle of nowhere. the food at this place was fantastic, with everything made fresh. they even grow their own herbs. very satisfying. after dinner, we checked into our "hotel" holiday park place and settled in. 

sunday we decided to head into albany and explore. i'm sure it's a quaint place to be, but on a sunday it was snooze-tastic. so instead of explore the city, we ventured off to see some of the sights. 

our first stop was the "natural bridge and the gap", 2 interesting rock formations on the coast. the gap is a sheer chasm and on rough sea days, you can get spray all the way up to the viewing point. the natural bridge is pretty self explanatory. i do believe that in recent years, tragedies have occurred in this area as people are unsuspecting of the sea and get swept away. sad.

our next stop was "the blowholes" which are, well, blowholes in the rocks. as we sauntered down the 1.5 km path to them, we realized that the ocean was pretty calm, the wind wasn't blowing and no waves were crashing along the coast. having read the informative sign leading up to the blowholes, we decided that they wouldn't be blowing and therefore not worth the bother. 

finally, we headed to the old whaling museum. we didn't walk around it as it was almost closing time. it was enough to see the gargantuan silo-type tanks that had "whale oil" written on the side to know that a lot of cruelty to animals probably occurred on site. we strolled down to the beach instead and enjoyed what was left of the day.

on monday (aussie day) we woke and decided to do a small hike in porongurup (prawn-grup). this national park is 12km long and 670m at its highest point. the granite that forms this range is over 1,100 million years old! we chose to do nancy peak walk, approx 4km. the guide book says to allot 2-2.5 hours. i still have no idea who gets timed for this kind of stuff. the walk was nice and had some good views from the top. i've decided that hiking in  west australia is not as fun as NZ or canada. the flies were everywhere, the heat was beating down on us and it's so dry you get incredibly dusty and itchy. i have also recently decided that australia uses the term "national park" a bit loosely. i mean, 12km stretch of land = national park? pfffft!

we finished the hike and headed to the stirling ranges to do another one before heading home, only to discover that it's not actually cooler in "mountainous regions" in WA. instead, it's hotter. it was disgustingly hot when we got out of the car. we made it about 150m up and decided to turn around. a bit sad, we got in the car and drove home.

we've decided to head back and explore albany properly some time and we'll probably hit up the stirling ranges in winter instead.

xo

New Zealand- Waitomo

our last stop on the trip was waitomo. it's approximately 

1/2 way between wanganui and auckland. we had a mid day flight to catch, so the stop over seemed appropriate.  but waitomo has a bit more going for it then that. it's got caves!

there were many splendid caving options. given our time and our resources, john and i opted for black water rafting! what is black water rafting you ask? it's essentially tubing inside a cave with nothing but a headlamp. too cool.

we geared up in full wetsuits- overalls, jackets, booties and ever stylish shorts. we were bussed over to the start area, which honestly looked like nothing more then a small crevasse in a rockface. it felt like we were discovering an entrance to narnia or something. 

we spent just over an hour weaving and bobbing through the cave on our inner tubes. we stopped a few times to get some education from our uber cool guides. we jumped off some small ledges, paddled our way out in the dark and mostly had a ball.

the coolest part was the gloworms. which, in fact, should be called glow-larvae because that's what they are. with all of our headlamps turned off, the glowthings were emitting a light bright enough for us to see each other. if felt like hundreds of little LED christmas lights had been strung in the cave (we were assured this was not the case)

unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take our cameras in with us. apparently the glow worms respond poorly to the flash. also, i think it's a nice ploy for them to sell us our trip pics at an amped up cost. *sigh*. 

i would highly recommend the tour and if you want to see what the glow worms look like, check out the website below.

xo

http://www.waitomo.com/waitomo-glowworm-caves.aspx