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December 23rd, 2002
We spent the night of the 18th up on Arthur's
Pass. New Zealand is so cool because a mere two hours
away from tropical beaches we get into high alpine meadows
and serious above-tree-line mountains. The little rental
car was almost not making it though, and we were putting
along at 20kph up this one steep section with no way to
pull off the road and a really brutal grade. Finally we
get up to the top of the pass and it was all downhill
from there. (Hah) So another thing they have up here is
this alpine parrot called a Kea
that supposedly has the intelligence of a 3 year old child.
Very funny with lots of personality but there are signs
all over the place saying "Don't feed the Kea!" because
apparently when they're well fed they get bored and in
their spare time they eat all the rubber off all the cars,
take backpacks apart, disable TV antennas, dig through
garbage, and are working on picking locks.
The next day we hiked around a bit and then drove back
to Christchurch for one more night before flying out to
Australia. We met up with Laura
Tudor at Baily's Pub and spent several hours with
her drinking and hearing about her adventures at McMurdo.
The next morning we hit the Botanical Gardens and took
it easy till time to fly away.
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Kea
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We've been in Sydney for a few days now
and it's kinda shocking how much bigger it is than anything
in New Zealand (Christchurch is smaller than Boulder).
We're staying with Sarah's Grandma who is very cool and
has traveled all over the world. She worked as a dealer
in casinos and says things like "Good on ya" and "He's
a right proper bastard" and makes us eat mangos every
day. She's 92 and can't get out much but she's very funny
to talk to and is giving us a great free place to crash.
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Sydney is just huge and we're still mastering the mass-transit.
It usually takes a long walk plus a ferry and a train and maybe
a bus to get anywhere. We could rent a car, but I think we'll
train it up to Brisbane overnight and then get a car where there
aren't so many silly people driving very fast on the wrong side
of the road. So far we're just hitting museums and aquariums
and stuff, which are really spectacular. We were in the Maritime
Museum today where we found they had the actual "James
Caird" on display, which is the tiny boat that Shackleton
sailed across 600 miles of open ocean out of Antarctica to get
help for all his stranded men back on Elephant
Island. Very cool, and completely unadvertised for some
reason, even though this is the first time it's been on display
in the Southern Hemisphere since they were rescued.
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Aquarium which has really cool giant tanks filled with
Great White Sharks and everything else you can think of.
My favorite was the platypus though, which is so weird.
It has a bill and lays eggs like a bird, can sense electrical
fields and has poison spines like a fish, and is covered
with fur and nurses its young like a mammal. Very fun to
watch them zooming around the tank, shoving their bills
though the mud like underwater bulldozers. |
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Now I'm in this absolutely massive Internet Lounge down near
Chinatown where almost everyone is playing some sort of online
video game and screaming insults at their screens in a really
staggering number of different languages, none of which are
English. Very educational.
All for now,
Andy
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