Dueling Backpacks

Day 196 (January 10, 2019) - Canberra, Australia After spending a week in Sydney, we caught a bus to Canberra to visit Tami. Australians typically joke that there's nothing to do in Canberra. Even Tami, when I told her we'd be visiting her for about a week, joked: "8 days in Canberra. Yikes!" Canberra really isn't that bad, it's kind of like a smaller version of Washington, DC. It's Australia's national capital, and it's a sprawling planned city with lots of museums, restaurants, and outdoor activities (like hiking, canoeing, rowing, etc.). I had been to Canberra 15 years ago during the summer break, to both Nick's and Tami's houses, and I didn't think poorly of the city (which I think is different than saying I thought nice things about it). However, Tami was determined to leave us with a good impression of Canberra, so she set off planning what we could do there before we even arrived. She and her husband Tim even hosted us an

Day 187 (January 1, 2019) - Sydney, Australia Ever since I left Australia in 2004 after studying abroad there for one year, I've been meaning to make it back. I've had several opportunities to do so, including a couple of friends' weddings, but things just never worked out. Since we were definitely going to Southeast Asia, and we had nothing but time, we decided to swing by Australia (this was actually the original reason we visited New Zealand too, because we had made the decision to go to Australia, and New Zealand was in the area, so why not go).

New Zealand was awesome. I’m so glad we decided to go. We almost didn’t because we knew it would cost a fortune. The only reason we ended up there was because we used award travel to get across the Pacific from South America to Australia and it was the same number of points to fly to either Australia or New Zealand. Had we been paying for it outright New Zealand would have been the more expensive ticket, so we decided to get more bang for our buck on the award travel and go for it. 

Day 178 (December 23, 2018) – Taumarunui, North Island, New Zealand New Zealand has thousands of hiking trails, but they note only a select number of them as being Great Walks, meaning that they are some of the best hiking New Zealand has to offer. However, one of these Great Walks is not a walk at all, but a river journey. The Whanganui River Journey is a 5-day canoe or kayak trip down 145 kilometers of the Whanganui River on the North Island. This is what we were going to spend our last week in New Zealand doing, but first we had to get there.

Day 171 (December 16, 2018) - Mueller Hut Hike, South Island, New Zealand It's pretty hard to go wrong when selecting a hike in New Zealand. You could pretty much randomly pick any hike and be impressed with the scenery. But when a particular hike has been called one of the best in New Zealand, you take notice and expect to see something pretty spectacular. We had read that the Mueller Hut hike was one of the best in New Zealand, and it was more amazing than we imagined. We lucked out and had some really great weather, so the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. 

Day 168 (December 13, 2018) – Milford Sound, South Island, New Zealand We left Queenstown on a road trip that would take us first to Milford Sound and then onward to Mt. Cook. Milford Sound is one of the many fjords at the bottom of New Zealand’s South Island, but it’s the only one you can reach by road which makes it the most accessible. Our first stop was Te Anau, only a couple hours’ drive from Queenstown. We arrived early in the afternoon and took the opportunity to dry our tent out on the shores of Lake Te Anau. We were staying in a hostel that night, and it would be our last night inside for a while. Compared to Queenstown, Te Anau was like a small village. It took us about 10 minutes to walk around the entire town center. We stopped for a beer and then grabbed dinner at an Indian restaurant. Back at the hostel we did some laundry, watched a movie, and called it a night.