So I said goodbye to my lovely girlfriend, a much sadder departure this time since I wasn't home very long, and joined Dera for our trip "down under." San Diego to LAX was easy, but the six hour layover was not, Bradley (L.A's Int'l Terminal) is the most lame airport I've had to hang out in yet, and once we made it onto our plane it was even worse. QANTAS seems like a pleasant enough airline but anytime your flight is full and it's 15 hours long nothing short of first class is going to make it better. Of course I had some nice drowsy cold medication, that mixed with a little red wine and valium made it fly by (no pun intended) - so we landed in Sydney at 10am and caught a shuttle to our Hostel.
The first day we didn't do much, wandered around, saw the Harbor & the famous Opera House, walked through the Royal Botanical Gardens and eventually found our way to a part of town called Kensington for some authentic Indonesian food. That's where Dera is from, and since that culture has put some serious roots down in this area his wife had mailed him the addresses of multiple restaurants for us to sample. So we did, and Indonesian food is spicy! I liked it, kind of wish we had the time to try a few different spots but didn't have the time. We had an agenda so we hit the central train station to check the schedule out of town the next morning, caught a train back to our neck of the woods and made it an early night.
The next morning we woke early and caught a train to Katoomba, two hours east of Sydney. This place was awesome, the eucalyptus oil has evaporated over the years into the air,
mixing with the water vapor and condensing back onto the rain forest giving this entire national park (Blue Mountain Nat'l Park) a Bluish haze. We bought a bus ticket that allows you to hop-on and hop-off whenever, our first stop was a glass-bottomed tram across a gorge with views of the Jamison Valley & Katoomba Falls, this brought us to a park where we rode the steepest train in the world down into the valley, under the canopy. From here we wandered around, took pictures & actually saw a wild peacock. After and hour or so we caught another cable car back to the top and jumped on our bus to the Leura Cascades. A trail down along the creek brought us to Bridalveil Falls, and even further down we saw Leura Falls. This was the "bush" as the Aussies refer to it, basically a thick forest or jungle similar to any other rain forest 
I've been in, except this place had cliffs everywhere! I hope someday to return in a climbing capacity since the rock seemed very similar to northern Arizona or Utah, except the trees were pine or fir, rather than desiduous, and several waterfalls. After our semi-strenuous hike (we actually passed a sign that said "Experienced Walkers Only" - I thought 33 years of walking was enough experience ;) we boarded our bus, made it back to town & had Thai food for lunch. After that we rode back down to Echo Point, the main overlook for the Three Sisters, that area's primary rock feature, and the view from the top of was breathtaking... a thousand meter drop from the top of the escarpment to the valley floor. Once done with that picture taking session we boarded our bus one last time, caught it to the train station and dozed for two hours back to Sydney. Once back at our hostel I passed out like a log for one of my best nights sleep ever. 
The next day I woke up and found my way to Bondi Beach, Sydney's premier surf spot that apparently everyone knows about. It was gorgeous but being from San Diego I wasn't too impressed, the cliff's and tide pools were reminiscent of Ocean Beach so I chilled for a few hours in true OB fashion. After that I caught a bus to Watson's Bay, walked around a small Nat'l Park situated on Sydney's southeast point and caught a ferry back to "Circular Quay" - the central ferry terminal closest to the Harbor City Backpackers Hostel where we were staying & I was meeting Dera. The next day we were leaving for Queenstown
so we wanted to do a little souvenir shopping and catch a ferry across the harbor for some night shots of the city. That we did, when we got to North Sydney we were blessed with a fireworks show, of course it was no Chinese New Year but it was impressive since Sydney was celebrating Mardi Gras this weekend. After that we caught our ferry back, packed our bags and since it was my last night in Sydney I was restless so I joined up with some Irish gents I'd met earlier in the week and headed out to King's Cross for a few drinks. We ended up at a club called "Candy's" - not my usual style but the DJ's were decent (for house music) and the prices were fair, 
Ollie & Donal were good guys and we ended up getting down for an hour or so before heading over to a Sport's Bar for a nightcap.The next morning I was still a little drunk, which made the shuttle ride & airport that much more fun. We caught our plane to New Zealand and an hour 20 into a two and a half hour flight the cockpit windshield on our 737 cracked because of the extreme cold, (minus 55 Celsius) so they turned us around and back to Sydney we came. Thanks QANTAS for the $20 meal voucher, whatever, another two hours go by and we finally boarded a new plane arriving in Queenstown six hours late. The customs in New Zealand is more thorough than anywhere I've ever gone, to sum it up they actually scrubbed the bottom of my boots in case I brought in any tainted soil! A short cab ride to our hotel (The Melbourne Lodge, a Comfort Inn franchise) and it was time to prepare for our trek... so I hit the grocery store, some Internet and packed my bag for our early departure the next morning. Of course after a few hours sleep and our on-time arrival at the bus stop they had messed up our reservation so I have an extra hour to write, I'm now off to hike the Milford Track, which I'll be sure to write about when I get back.
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