This is the most beautiful place that we have been in the last 5 months. We started out in Picton after a ferry ride across from the North Island, drove down the west coast, then went inland and saw a few glaciers. Even though it’s mid spring, there are still a lot of snow covered mountain peaks. After the glaciers we drove down south to the lake district that has… lots of lakes. They’re all an unbelievably beautiful blue color. We have been in Queenstown for the last week and it has become my (Ed’s) favorite place in the world. Denise thinks it might be her favorite also. We took a few boat rides (Thomas and I did the crazy Jet boat through the narrow canyon), panned for gold (the kids were pretty successful), climbed a HUGE “hill” for a great view of Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu, walked all over town and Frances even got to go ice skating. We also visited a sheep farm and saw working dogs and a sheep shearing demonstration. Queenstown is called the adventure capital of the world but we passed on the bungee jumping and parachuting. Tomorrow we fly back to Auckland and then on to Tahiti. We actually arrive in Tahiti the day before we leave, because we cross the international date line.

New Zealand is amazingly beautiful. It’s also spring here and we love the cooler temperatures. Everywhere we go is pretty and green. It’s like the Shenandoah Valley, Colorado mountains, the pacific northwest and a touch of the desert southwest all rolled into one. There are very few people outside of the cities and lots of cows and sheep (4 sheep for every person in New Zealand). The driving has been easier than expected since there are so few people on the roads. We started out visiting some caves in Waitomo – videos didn’t turn out too well because it was so dark but on the top of the cave we saw some really cool glowworms that are not found anywhere else in the world. In one cave there were so many that once our eyes adjusted to the darkness we could actually see each other without any addition light. Then we went to the 238 square mile Lake Taupo which lies in a caldera created by a super volcano eruption about 26,000 years ago. The town of Taupo, right by the lake, was more interesting to the kids because it had a really great playground. Our next stop was Huka Falls which had unbelievably blue water. 220,000 liters of water flows out of Lake Taupo every second, goes through the falls (really more like long steep rapids) and dumps into New Zealand’s longest river. From there we visited a geothermal park. The different colors of the water come from different minerals that leach out of the rocks. Finally we took a 3 hour ferry ride (with our car) from Wellington to Picton on the South Island.

Our time in Australia was brief, but lots of fun. According to Frances, we found “the best playground ever” along the Esplanade that runs along the beach in Cairns. Most of our time was spent on Green Island, a national park complete with a rainforest on a 30 acre coral cay right on the Great Barrier Reef. It’s located 45 minutes from Cairns by boat. We toured the reef in a glass bottom boat (but the battery for the GoPro died so no pictures of that), snorkeled on the reef, fed fish, walked around the island (a couple of times since it only takes 45 minutes if you’re walking slow), swam, stargazed and relaxed. We saw sea turtles, lots of fish, manta rays and one shark. In the morning we head for New Zealand and we’re looking forward to a couple of much cooler weeks there. We can finally break out the jackets we’ve carried half-way around the world. We will be driving the length of New Zealand, from north to south. It should be exciting, especially since they drive on the left side of the road.

More fun in the heat. Bali is not a big island, but it has over 20,000 temples and shrines. The Balinese practice a unique form of Hinduism in a mostly Muslim country. There are little trays of offerings all over – flowers, small portions of rice, incense, candy, etc. These are meant to please/appease the gods or demons, or bring luck or protection and are really pretty decoration for statues, temples, shops and even cars. We started off in Ubud, which is a center for the arts in Bali. We walked around town and saw temples, watched a traditional dance and of course, ate some ice cream. From there we ventured out and even rode elephants one day. The countryside around Ubud is beautiful, with lots of green rice fields. After Ubud we went to Kuta, which was by the beach. The kids took surfing lessons and did really great. Unfortunately we didn’t catch Thomas’ best ride on video. We also went to a mall and got to play video games. Our flight from Bali to Australia was our least favorite so far – we left at 9pm and got to our hotel in Cairns (by the Great Barrier Reef) at about 10am after traveling all night. Then we took a nap.

Hong Kong meant back to the heat. It’s a really nice city that felt much more modern/cosmopolitan than Bangkok or Beijing. Just a quick stop there but we rode the subway, took a ferry ride across Victoria Harbor (supposedly the most beautiful harbor in the world), went to a mall to cool down, ate some ice cream, walked along the waterfront and lost some sunglasses. We also surprised the kids and took them to Hong Kong Disneyland which was really fun. Hardly any wait for the rides and it was basically a small version of Disney World, so it was easy to walk around the park. It was really hot and sunny but the kids didn’t mind “because we’re finally doing something fun”. Pro democracy protests ramping up while we were in Hong Kong but luckily we didn’t get caught up in any of that. We’re back in Bangkok now and we will be heading to Bali, Indonesia in 2 days.