When we got to the bus station, the timing was perfect and we hopped right on the bus. My situation was becoming desperate at this point. That was one of the longest bus rides I ever taken in my life. When we got to Nana's street, I ran off the bus and headed towards the house. I don't know if I've told you about the street my Nana lives on a very nice street in an older part of Sydney in the suburb of Rose Bay. It's nestled between Rose Bay and Bondi Beach at the top of hill. Yup, the top of a hill. I had to pee so badly that I was running up that thing. Andy told me to squat in a bush somewhere, but I don't like doing that. Bushes chafe. Anyway, Andy found it difficult to keep up with me. The hill nearly killed me, but I won in the end. I heard no end of grief from Andy though. I should really get in shape.

After much deliberation, Andy and I decided to go to the Zoo. It was a Saturday so of course, the zoo was swarming with ill-behaved, howling children. When we got up in the morning after sleeping really poorly, we looked outside and it was pouring rain. Nana said not to go, so we dawdled a bit. Andy really wanted to, so we saddled up and started out. In order to catch the ferry we had to run down the hill, turn right and run for several blocks, then run across the park to the waterfront to the ferry station. After all the bloody running and my whining, we saw the ferry pulling away and I was cranky. Mega cranky. You know I'm not a morning person and then trying to keep up with Andy when he's in a hurry is nearly impossible. grrhh. At that point we decided to hail a cab to one of the metro stations. While we were riding in the cab, I went into the backpack for something and saw the bottle of sunscreen had exploded all over the pocket. At that I just started laughing! I knew then that the Gods were conspiring against us just so they could have a laugh. ha ha. Anyway, from the train station, we made our way to another ferry station and missed that one too. Not too big a deal, we only had to wait 1/2 an hour. So, I bought a hat.

Meer Cat

After all that, we finally got to the zoo and sure enough there were children all over the place. They were pushing me while I was standing line for the gondola, saying stuff like, "HURRY UP, HURRY UP!" So, we're at the zoo, we go see some animals. We tried to see the platypus, but the stupid thing wouldn't come out of its burrow. But that's ok because we saw some at the Aquarium, so there. We saw some fruit bats, dingos, lizard things, frogs, a really boring chameleon, elephant, zebras. Oh we saw these freaky marsupial night critters Those things are weird.

Hopping things all over the place, a lot of them looked like big hamsters with pipe cleaners for tails. I can't go through the whole list, but I'll give you some of the highlights. We went and saw the Koala's. They were just like I remember them. Lazy. They sat there. Some of them would move, but only to scratch. I took a movie of one scratching. That's pretty much all it did while children were screeching in the background. That was my favorite part really. The kids yelling, screaming, pushing. I only wish that I could have seen one of them throw-up. That would have made my day at the zoo complete. Most of the animals were pretty well behaved, but we saw a couple that weren't. The cool part is that I caught them on film. Evidence. We were looking at these small Asian Sun Bears. Really cool. Black with an orange ring around their collars. They started grunting and puffing and then one of them jumped on the other and started a row (fight). Not very friendly if you ask me, but made for a great picture.

Cheers,
Sarah

Red Panda

December 17th, 2002
New Zealand

I don't know what it is about blowholes, but anytime there is the promise of seeing one, well we have to. But this was no whale blowhole. This is one that is made out of rock. It's really strange, but cool. All the rock is limestone which is made out of shells and mud that is compressed over time. In this case, what we saw was called pancake rocks because of its resemblance to pancakes. This is formed as the rocks are eroded by the ocean.

We also saw these birds. They're called Wekas. They are also known as a bush hen. I bet they taste like chicken. Anyway, we kept seeing these things and yes, they were crossing the road, but we don't know why. And the Weka likes to climb up onto the top of bushes. Stupid bird. And last night we saw a Kiwi. NO NOT THE FRUIT! This is one of those flightless birds, but you probably already knew this. Funny little thing. It was also crossing the road, but we don't know why. Andy almost made me get out of the car and chase it down to ask, but those buggers move fast. Alright, enough out of me. We have to go drive real fast in the mountains now.

DIZ