Terra Australis

By way of third party complaints of blog update infrequency have reached me - alas, I must confess to being so smitten with our latest destination that I simply have not had the time to create a blog entry worthy of this continent... It is simply "grossartig" (German word for those not knowing :) in so many ways.

Anyway, we have indeed arrived in Sydney after a quick little 3.5 hour plane hop from New Zealand. Bjoern, one of our kind hosts here, picked us up from the airport and immediately after that introduced us to the 'Australian Way of Life': drinking cold beer on the deck while watching the parrots fly by, ah yes, quite pleasing in many ways!

Agnes, Bjoern & Cille, the family we are staying with, live in what is called 'the northern beaches' more specifically in Narrabeen beach, known as one of Sydney's prime surf spots. As stated, it is 'wild' here - being a suburb and all Narrabeen features a decent amount of lush greenery (of exotic kind seen with EU eyes) and plenty of wildlife of equally exotic nature. Mind you, the phone book delivery here includes a special book on which potentially lethal insects and critters to avoid while enjoying the local scenery (to be honest however, we haven't seen any snakes yet, just a few spiders and a decent amount of bats, the latter however in the botanical garden, which i guess doesn't really count ;)

Here is what we have been up to so far:

Tuesday: Visit to downtown Sydney: arriving to breathtaking views via Ferry from Manly (which is close to where we are staying) and spending the day hiking through the city from The Opera House, to The Rocks, to Harbour Bridge, the Observatory, George St, Hyde Park, Botanical Gardens and back to the Opera House for sunset cocktails and dinner (which included a crocodile + kangaroo appetizer!)

Wednesday: Beach day: hiking the beaches of Narrabeen and Dee Why, learning what rock pools is and trying to be cool with the local surf crowd (ok, maybe not so much, but it was worth a try...)

Up next: tomorrow Bjoern & Agnes will be taking us to the Kuringai National Park, which should be both quite exciting and exotic -- i recommend going to their website and/or checking out this link under which you'll find a list of all animals found in the park...

And now, I am off to work on adding some pictures - stay tuned!

Here we go - pictures! ->