Have I mentioned we LOVED Tasmania? I think I might have. We spent some time camping up near the Bay of Fires on the east coast, and found these huge rocks all along one stretch of shore. The lichen (I’m assuming that’s what it is) makes an awesome red color, that really stood out against the blue sky.
We could not find a decent cup of drip coffee to save our lives in Australia or New Zealand. Down under, they are all about the ‘long black’ or the ‘flat white’ or any other variety of fancy espresso based coffee, non of which really satisfied my need for a basic morning cup of black sludge. That said, they really have perfected the art of the fancy coffee, as evidenced by the multitude of patterns you are sure to discover in your milk foam at any decent coffee shop. We particularly liked this one, the New Zealand silver fern.
Graffiti is not what it used to be in San Francisco. We spent some time there earlier in the week and stumbled on this colorful alleyway down near Mission St. It reminded me so much of Valparaiso, which, totally reminded me of San Francisco…it’s a cyclical thing.
It’s bananas. B.A.N.A.N.A.S.
For some reason, bananas have been pretty expensive in parts of New Zealand. It seems like they might grow well here, so it’s a tad confusing. In any case, it made me think of the time we were walking through this huge market in Mysore, India. It’s hard to tell just from this picture, but this entire section was filled with bananas, including the three sections behind this, and all the stalls opposite of it. Seriously, there were millions of them. I kept thinking, “How can they possibly sell all these before they rot?”
The Abel Tasman trek is one of the easiest ‘Great Walks’ in New Zealand. Most people take 3-5 days to hike the whole thing and camp, or sleep in Dept. of Conservation huts along the way. We didn’t have the time, or the gear for an overnight trek, but we really wanted to spend some time walking in the park. It’s possible to take a water taxi to many points along the track, and walk in either direction. We opted to head to Bark Bay, which is halfway out. We walked the whole way back to town, normally a two day walk if you are camping, but without the gear it’s totally possible in one day. We saw some spectacular coast, and it was well worth the absurd cost of the water taxi, even though we did get rained on for the last 12 kilometers.
We are fortunate enough to be tramping around New Zealand in early summer when there are flowers blooming everywhere. These are super tiny, each flower is about 1/3 the size of my pinky fingernail, but there were so many of them where we were walking this morning that the meadow looked almost like it had a light dusting of snow.
We spent last week trying not to dehydrate in the Outback of Australia. Much of our time was taken up with hanging around Kata Tjuta and Uluru (commonly known as Ayers Rock). The most famous photos of Uluru are taken at sunrise or sunset when the light makes the sandstone into a beautiful glowing spectacle. After 6 months with no real rain to speak of, we arrived in the area just in time for some serious thunderstorms. Fortunately the rain poured overnight and left a lovely scattered cloud palate for one of our sunrise views.
Khao Sok National Park, despite not having a coastal scene, has some of Thailand’s most spectacular scenery. We took a longtail boat through the lake, which is surrounded by incredible limestone hills that reminded us of Halong Bay in Vietnam and Yangshuo in China. It was stormy the day we arrived, but that only added to the mysterious appeal of the landscape.
The Parallel Life 