FUNNY ONE: I noticed that 818 was tagging me in Facebook photos and I saw one that was…well…not so attractive. I mean, it wasn’t so bad for me to ask him to delete it or untag it and his commentary made it funny. It was something about being confused and having the look of bewilderment while we were trying to find our way around the international terminal at the Brisbane airport. I did look confused and stupid. This was our text conversation from the other night:

Me: “Ewww stop tagging me when I look like shit!”

818: “Whatever.”

Me: “Nice attitude.”

818: “Oh please. It’s not that bad. And the tag justifies anything that would make people question appearance.”

Me: “It’s fine. I trust that you won’t post anything where I look really hideous.”

818: “I have all the beach and morning photos at reasontochewyourarmoff.com”

818: “I’m sorry. I couldn’t even stop myself from that one. I take it back.”

818: “Court ordered stricken from the record”

Me: “I am going to punch you where you pee the next time I see you.”

818: “hahahah you gotta admit, it was kind of good. Vicious. Uncalled for. But you’d have used it had you thought it first.”

(I don’t respond. I am trying to come up with something funny to say.)

818: “You checking on the site’s availability?”

Me: “I just bought it.”

 

NOT FUNNY STORY: The stupid dumb facedowns people are limiting their blog to only the three of them who are traveling. So I am thinking about buying the domain Myfacedownsarebetterthanyours.com or wickedawesomefacedowns.com or gofuckyourselffacedowns.com

But they told me that they are so happy that I reminded them about Zorbing while they are still in New Zealand! Oh awesome! Have at it! Tell the manager we said hi! And then go to Ayers Rock and get one!

Sunday April 11, 2010

It was a foggy morning on Blue Lake. (That sounds like the start of a Stephen King novel.)

Campground mascot and moocher.

 This Top Ten facility was not as nice as the one in Lake Taupo. It was dirtier, more crowded and FULL of college kids. I’m not saying I wouldn’t go back… the people who own it are very nice and it’s a great location. It’s funny, what we are noticing in New Zealand is that everyone is concerned with our fun time. They want to know where we are coming from, where we are going, how long we are in NZ, if we had seen the blah blah blah. We have people taking their sweet time giving us our change back because they want to tell us stories about the guy from NZ who invented the whatever the hell. It’s great. They love to talk and make you feel right at home. They are dying for tourists to come from the US and spend money in their country. I tried to get a nice shot of our daily ritual of hot tea, fruit and stale bakery products but no one can seem to stop chewing long enough or take the time to listen to me and look when I say “Hey look here I want to take a picture.” So there ya go folks, you all look like you hate mornings and hate each other. Yeah, I know I am annoying. Deal.

We went to the Zorb place so 818 and I could become human hampsters for a few minutes but I ended up sitting this activity out. It had nothing to do with fear of the act, it was the fear of me vomiting in the inflatable unit. I don’t do well with amusement park rides that go around in circles. (Mad Hatter Tea Cups.. no thank you.) You had two options: a dry run where you flip over in circles while strapped in…or a wet run where they add warm water and you pretty much stay on your back like a waterslide/waterpark. 818 took the monkey and went for a dry ride!

Of course I had to pay the $25 to get the CD with the pics of the monkey.

But here is the greatest thing ever. Facedowns on the Zorb track. I need to submit these to them for sure! We had kind of forgotten about them during the trip after Ayers Rock but 818 went and asked the guy if we could snap a pic of him in front of the unit the next time one came down. With a confused look on his face, the guy listened and then suggested that he actually go up ONTO THE TRACK AND GET RUN OVER BY THE NEXT ONE. Holy shit! The only thing I could think about was the poor girls IN the hampster wheel who didn’t know why there was suddenly a man laying in the middle of the path. Good stuff here, thanks Jarin!

We piled into the Maui again and headed off to find our Top Ten spot in Papamoa, about an hour away and promised to be literally on the beach. (Thank you again 818 for being our designated driver! With only 2 real anxious moments of you nearly driving on the wrong side of the road.) The lady who runs the Top Ten place in Papamoa was so cute she played the Star Spangled Banner for us when we went in there to pay the site fee. Pete and I heard it and started looking around and wondering who in the hell was watching a baseball game. It was really funny, she was trying to make us feel at home

Papamoa is a small town near the bigger city of Tauranga near Mount Maunganui in the Bay Of Plenty. This is the view of the campground from the beach. They were right. Beachfront property for $22 per night, per person.

Ann Marie gathering shells so that she can have them confiscated at the biosecurity sector of the Auckland airport.

The view down to Mount Maunganui from the beach. It’s about a 10 minute drive on the main road.

We went down to the pier in hopes of finding green lip mussels for lunch. We watched some people fishing for a bit.

We finally found a place that served mussels, got up to the counter and were told that they had just run out. We sat down at another place called Summer Sands Lounge and Dining, after 818 specifically went in and asked if they had them and as soon as we went to order the waitress said they had just run out. I almost blew a gasket. She went and checked and apologized for making an error and said that they did in fact have them. We placed our order: 818 and I each ordered them with the 2 different broths. (PS I won a $1 bet on that. He was having trouble reading the menu and it turned into a 10 minute argument about whether they came with chili, ginger and garlic OR a red tomato sauce. He read that chili was an option, and that ginger and garlic was an option and that the tomato sauce was an option. There were only 2 options indicated by the single “OR”. We are both pretty stubborn and would not let it go until we asked both of the ladies working there and sorted it out. Severly confusing both of them during the entire ordering process.) Sooo anyways…. the waitress comes back and says that they did in fact almost run out and that they only had enough for an appetizer portion and a entree portion. So we got them and then I gluttonessly ordered the sampler platter as well! PIG! The mussels were great and we certainly got our fill of them.

Pan fried tiger prawns, lamb cutlets, fish skewers, lemon pepper calamari, chicken skewers, semi-dried tomatos, olives, feta cheese and bread.

 This was a local beer that we drank.

If you read this label closely, you can see the part about the bottle looking like a marital aid.

After our snack we went to the market to grab some stuff for dinner and to enjoy our last afternoon on our private beach. Check out the giant pet food section in the store! I’m serious… I am totally coming back as a dog in New Zealand.

…ooooh EXTRA TASTY processed cheese spread…

Motivational poster: “You will never be as free as this bird if you continue to drink on Sunday afternoons and get so fucked up that you have to call in sick on Monday mornings and miss your manager’s meetings. You will amount to nothing because you will never get promoted and will stay in that position forever. So only have 5 mimosas at brunch instead of 10, okay?”

Ann Marie enjoying our last moments of sunshine.

Right about this time as I was squatting on the beach shooting the pink monkey started squealing again! He is alive! Click here to hear it! (turn volume way up for full effect)

“Sometimes when you feel like you can’t climb that mountain anymore, keep pushing because otherwise you will end up stuck at the bottom living in a tent.”

Ann Marie has now scalded and boiled these shells four times in hopes that all of the sand and traceable dirt is off of them.

Our last dinner together: burgers with extra tasty cheese. Thank you 818 for a yummy dinner.

We went to a cool little bar for last call right next to the campground called the Bluebiyou and met some people from Auckland and the nice lady who owns it and her awesomely fluffy cat. She did a fantasticly funny impression of her alligator tour guide from Florida. It sounded so funny to us and I am sure it’s about as ridiculous as we sound when we are trying to imitate a New Zealand accent.

For dessert we had Tim Tams with whipped cream. It’s official: the best ones are the minty ones… exactly like Thin Mints!

Wednesday March 31, 2010 (Happy Birthday Tyson!)

We got up at 5:00 am to catch the sunrise tour called Desert Awakenings. It’s a 4 wheel drive guided tour about an hour before sunrise. The bright spot in the top right is actually Venus.

I love this photo especially because you can see the bright colors of the sunrise in the monitors of their cameras. If you are wondering what the funny looking hat is on the guy on the right, it’s a fly net/cover for his entire head. The flies in this area are UNBEARABLE. I mean, they don’t bite but jesus christ they are annoying. 818 is probably the most even keeled mellow person I have met in a long time and he was pretty much like flipping out. They go away at sunset but sure as shit as soon as that sun rose they were swarming us. They love to go straight for your eye sockets, ears and mouth. Really super annoying.

They served us coffee and juice and these yummy english muffin sandwiches that were loaded with bacon, egg and cheese. This insane woman in our group was actually throwing her bacon away because she said there WAS TOO MUCH BACON ON HER SANDWICH? Whaaaat? I almost slapped the sandwich right out of her hand. Anyways, in the midst of me making love to the bacon with my mouth I had set my camera down and wouldn’t you know it… a shooting star went by. I was trying desperately to inform the others that it was happening and I literally could not get the words out fast enough. So I just starting pointing and grunting and luckily they caught the drift of my motioning and saw the tail end of it. It was truly magical, perhaps because I was eating that magical creature called pig at that precise moment. We keep joking wit 818 that he has a direct line with Mother Nature and every time something is not going our way we ask him to please put in a ticket with her and see what can be done about it. The shooting star was pretty awesome, and I want to personally thank her. Thank you Mother Nature. Now can you please make sure that I get a good sunset this evening.

The last of the full moon.

Sunrise!

We headed off to the National Park area where we drove around Uluru. Every mark or corrosion or slice in the rock has a story. This skull killed someone once. Or something like that. I don’t know… these fables all started to run together after a while. Plus I was way too busy trying to shoot.

The crack on the right was a gash to someone’s eyebrow and the gash on the right was the blow that killed them. I don’t know, look it up.

Beware of monkeys flying.

From the inside of a cave.

Watering hole.

Ann Marie and Pete.

JARIN! Here is your FACEDOWN at Ayers Rock!!!! I was already one step ahead of you when you left that comment Ann Marie was covered in the red sand for the rest of the day. What is the process now? Do we upload this photo to their site? Do we tweet it? Figure it out, handle that ok?

Love it!

If you look closely you can see the pink monkey in his reflection, but really the reason I posted this photo is that you can see a fly on his upper lip. Seriously, you have no idea how fucking annoying these are. Thank God they don’t bite!

After the tour we went back to the hotel and chilled out by the pool for a few hours and hung out by the pool, read my book, had a drink or two, snacked on some over priced bar food, and maybe had a little nappy poo. An hour before sunset we hopped on yet another bus to drive around Uluru in it’s entirety one more time and park it to watch the sun set and get that picture perfect shot of Ayers Rock that you see on the postcards. Pete is pretty much over the rock at this point and he is definitely over sitting on buses, but hey, I did not fly across the goddamn world to miss this opportunity so we went out one last time.

The Aboriginals request that you don’t climb Uluru, but these people are clearly assholes and did it anyways. Look at that bitch she can’t even make it down on her legs, she has to scoot her butt down the side of the rock. A lot of people climb this thing every day despite the requests and repeated warnings that it is against their wishes. In fact, a man who we met at the pool the day before said “Oh the Australians don’t care if you climb it at all. It’s the rest of the world that thinks you shouldn’t” (NOT the case at all. What an A-hole)

Here is Ayers Rock in various stages of the sunset. I am fairly certain that I have twice as many photos of the rock than I do of the Sydney Opera House. I will have to count them to be sure.

Totally unrelated: we have been trying to run the sink in the water and see if it goes down the drain the opposite direction, but neither of us actually knows what way it goes down in the Northern Hemisphere. It appears to go down clockwise at times, but then other times it just gets sucked straight down.

As promised our room came with a hot-tub/spa. Yeah. That is it. No, that is not a sink. It is a two person hot-tub. I can assure you that 2 people do not fit comfortably in that hunk of junk and by the time I eased my body into it and my already scorching skin was completely on fire the only thing I could think of was which was the water would drain down the sink. Our spa session lasted about 4 and a half minutes and we still do not know which way the water goes down.

Tomorrow we are off to Cairns, where is it supposed to be scattered thundershowers for the next 6 days.

RICH: tell Chris that we are all starting to speak with a slight Australian accent! I definitely am beginning to THINK the way they speak but am able to catch myself before actually speaking the same way. I am sure by the end of the trip it will be classic Chris… adapting whatever accent of the person around you. Love you guys! Hope Cancun is fun and I am sure Chris is speaking Mexican by now.

Sunday March 28, 2010

First off I want to apologize for writing the last two posts at a second grade reading level. I was totally exhausted and could barely sift through the photos let alone say anything interesting or informative. Sorry! Although I was able to lure in another “reader” because of the primitive nature of the posts. (Yes, Rich is finally reading my blog. Let’s work on Chris now. He just does it to piss me off.)

We woke up at the butt crack of dawn again to catch our Frontier Photographic Safari tour bus to the Blue Mountains. Sam, the landscape photographer driver was picking us up and 4 other people to go on a semi-private tour. You know I like to do things my way and when I inquired about a private tour it was too much money.  The woman I was corresponding with promised it would only be 8 of us so we went with them. Wrong. There were 11. Ok, I am not going to make a big deal out of this. No worries.

Our first stop was at Featherdale Wildlife Park where we could interact and touch kangaroos, wallabies and emus. Check out this baby wallaby (or maybe a relative of the wallaby…. I dunno 818 and I keep arguing about our marsupial viewing. He is probably right)

It was early enough in the day that they were still hungry and very friendly to us. We weren’t able to pick them up, but we could feed them and pet them.

For example, I thought this was a small kangaroo, but 818 says it’s a wallaby. How ridiculous that I come to this place and cannot even identify my animals…. anyone? back me up here.

Hilarious, he is doing self portraits with it.

And probably the single cutest photo I have taken in a long time…

I have this really cool wide angle video adaptor lens thingy and it looks like a true fish eye lens. The interesting part is that you have to get really really close to the subject, and kangaroos like to punch. Unfortunately (fortunately?) I was not punched in the face by a kangaroo, although that would have been the greatest story ever. There was a Nikon ad years ago with a black and white photo of a guy up close to a kangaroo who was punching him and his camera went flying: Nikon tip #47 when photographing nature, try a zoom lens. I desperately wanted that to come true for me.

I love this picture!

I mean seriously, is this not the funniest thing ever? Look at his little tongue! OMG Is that going to stop me from eating him tomorrow night? Absolutely not. There are 50 million of them in Australia, they can afford to lose a few to my belly.

We picked up another passenger at the wildlife park bringing out passenger count to 1/3 more people than I was promised. Ok, no worries.

We trekked on to the Blue Mountains and got out to take a brief 10 minute walk when we started approaching 2000 or 2500 feet.

Sam tried to get us to play his didgeridoo but no one was really interested in putting their mouth on his nasty wooden noisemaker after God knows how many others have done the same thing so we declined. One brave American woman played the thing. And it sounded nothing like it was supposed to.

After our mini hike we went to Mount Tomah for what was promised to be an amazing lunch with a beautiful view of the mountain range and then a quick walk around their botanical gardens. We all ordered the barramundi and we were all highly disappointed. The highlight of lunch was the cheap wine they served.

After lunch we went to see Govett’s Leap, the Australia version of the Grand Canyon, but much greener.

Then we went to the area where the famous Three Sisters are… We rode a tram down into the valley which was at a FIFTY TWO DEGREE ANGLE! holy shit it was steep! I was so frazzled on the way down I couldn’t even manage a clear picture.

After our sightseeing we had a long drive back to the city where Sam sang along with ancient Australian folk songs and made us listen to an Aboriginal tell stories. None of us were really that enthusiastic about any of that and I think about 75% of the bus was asleep within a half hour. So despite the fact that our itinerary said “Hotel pick-up and return” we were dumped off at the Sydney Olympic park and were told to find our way back to the city. I was like, ummm… dude sorry we didn’t play your fucking didgeridoo thingy, but aren’t you being a little lazy by not driving us back to the hotel? This tour was not something I would recommend. Especially since it was a “photographic” tour… he gave us about 10 minutes at each spot. Someone like me likes to take in the whole scene and might need a few more minutes to soak it in while shooting. Lame.

We had a beer at a outdoor cafe near Cockle Bay and then headed off to a 47th floor rotating restaurant called The Summit. Apparently the executive chef is named Michael Moore, not to be confused with the sensationalist director we love to hate. My brother was less than thrilled at not understanding the over priced 2 course menu for $79 and not knowing what his options were or what the menu items were. It’s all good, though, he’s learning how to live, too

I had the crudo and tartare appetizer: the salmon toro was kind of bland (the one on the left) but the other thing… was pretty tasty. It was thinly sliced salmon and had some roe on it and a bunch of little hot peppers that I had to pick off, of course.

For my entree I had the John Dory (my new favorite white fish and I order wherever I can. It’s very light and not fishy at all) It came with ravioli thingys stuffed with crab. (Slightly over salted but still good.)

And lastly, before we left Sydney I was bound and determined to get the Opera House from every possible angle in every possible lighting situation. Being that the place was rotating I was forced to crawl on the floor and set up the camera on a mini tripod on the base of the restaurant that was NOT rotating. It was quite a sight, but I have this gem to show for it.

On another note, I received a tweet from Jarin requesting some “facedowns” while I am on this trip. I am pretty sure I can make this happen and you know I love a good goofy photo-op!