Sydney, Hong Kong and back HOME

The first thing we went to see in Sydney was the most well known Australian structure - the Opera House. Of course it was surrounded by tourists all over...














It was nice having a close look on it, but actually it seemed more impressive when we saw it from a distance with the sea around.




























The next thing we saw was the famous Sydney Bridge.














Climbing on the bridge's arc considered a popular attraction, but after a brief look at the price (200$ for each!!!) we were satisfied with just walking along the bridge's for free.
We spent our second day in Kings Cross area, visited the Jewish Museum (which was very interesting) and finished at the Darling Harbour (reminded us the Marina in Herzliya, but much bigger).
At the third day we went to see the most famous beach in Australia - Bondi beach.




























The next day was ANZAC Day (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), which was a great opportunity to see how the Australian people celebrate. The purpose of this day is to commemorate all those who died and served in military operations for their countries. For us it looked like a mixture of Memorial Day and Independence Day. The whole morning was dedicated to a 4 hours parade on the main streets of Sydney.














The whole afternoon and night were dedicated to get drunk from lots of beers... Sydney's streets and pubs were full with Australian soldiers. As Israelis we used to see soldiers everywhere, whereas in Australia it is a very uncommon sight. We felt it will be a real shame if we won't celebrate with our dear Australian fellows, so we had to drink few beers. It was definitely a special way to spent our last day in Australia...
Have a G'Day, mate!

The final stop in this long journey was Hong Kong. From Hong Kong airport we took a bus to our hotel (a decent hotel for a change, after all the hostels and cheap hotels in Australia & New Zealand). We were amazed from the things we saw from the bus's window. We couldn't spot a building which is less than 30 stories high! everything is massive in Hong Kong. There are people everywhere, neon signs, lights, shops, shopping malls and more.


















One of the thing we saw in Hong Kong is the fish market, or should we say "dry fish market". It seems like the Hong Kong people tend to dry every kind of food they can find, Fruits, Vegetables, fish, meat, shrimps, calamaris, starfish and more thing we couldn't recognize.










































From there we continued to "the peak", a viewpoint on one of the buildings top over the city. The cloudy sky and the smog spoiled the landscape a bit, but still the energy of the city could be seen.














We spent the rest of the day wondering around the city's streets & malls looking at the people and the shops.
On the second day we visited the different markets: the flowers market, the birds market (the main product for sale there is actually several live grasshoppers in a bag), the Goldfish market (all kind of animal for your home aquarium such as fishes, sea turtles, plants and more), and few souvenirs and clothes markets. That evening we went to the Avenue Of Stars, right at the waterfront, to see the famous light show that runs every evening at 8pm. The show was not so impressive but seeing all the huge buildings with the huge neon signs on top of them was worth the time.














We spent the rest of our time walking through shopping malls, gardens, important buildings, etc.
Every time we saw long queue of people next to a food stand, we stood behind them, waiting for our turn.














It seems like the tastiest food is sold in those food stands and not in restaurants. The local people know that, that's the reason for the queues around the food stands. We ate the best Dim-Sum, soaps and pastries that way.

With the lovely taste in our mouths and wonderful memories, we headed to our last flight in this journey - the flight back home.
It was a great 6 months journey!

2 days after landing in Israel we came back to our full time jobs... :(
It was 7 weeks ago, and only today we had the time to complete the blog (that's how busy we were...).

We want to thank every one of you who actually read all the posts, but we don't angry at those who just had a quick look on the photos...
And those of you who commented from time to time - we want you to know it made us smile every time :)

One thing we recommend you all - it's good to take a long break every few years.
You get to meet people from all over the world.
You get to see beautiful sights you can only dream of in your everyday routine life.
You get to miss home.

See you in our next journey...

Darwin - Alice Springs - Cairns

The day after Passover Seder we went on a tour to see the jumping crocodiles. The area of north Australia is full of salt water crocodiles, the biggest and the most dangerous of all crocodiles types. It length can get up to 8 meters. So what Australians do with this "resource"? There are many crocodiles farms where these animals grown for their skin and meat, and in the national parks several companies provide boat tours to see them. Since crocodiles live underwater these companies found a way to make them come out of the water: a piece of meat is being tide to a fishing rod hanging in the air above the crocodile head, the crocodile jumps in order to catch the meat. That's how you get to see these ugly giant animals.

We saw 4 crocodiles, some of them were missing a few extremities. They are so aggressive they even try to eat and attack each other.

Our next stop was Katherine Gorge national park. We walked a few tracks there. The most impressive one was Butterfly Gorge.














The next destination was Alice Springs, only 1200kms south... It took us 2 days to get there, not before replacing a tyre that gone flat.We arrived to the city on Friday and met there the Habad guys from Passover Seder (they told us they were going to spend the weekend in Alice), we had a Kidush and spent few hours talking with them. They are really nice guys.The next morning we continued towards THE most touristic attraction of Australia - Ayers Rock (Uluru), a giant rock in a size of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. It is located 450kms southwest of Alice. We arrived there the next day just on time to see the last minutes of the sunrise. The place was already crowded with hundreds of people from all around the world. Few minutes later everybody left the sunrise lookout (most of the people came with bus tours) and we had the place for ourselves.














A good breakfast, 100 photos and we headed to the rock, for a closer look. We planned to climb on the rock, but the track was closed due to strong winds. We decided to go for a different 10kms track which surrounds the rock.














We were busy all the way moving the flies away from us, they seemed to be very determent to find out how our eyes, nose and mouth look like from the inside. By the time we finished the walk we saw people climbing on the rock. Apparently the track opened.














5 minutes later we were in the middle of a steep climbing. All along the way to the top there were metal cables attached to the rock, helping to climb without falling backwards... According to the aboriginal believe the top of the rock is sacred, and climbing on it is actually forbidden. Still, hundreds of people do it every day, including us...When we got to the top we realized how huge is the rock, you can walk on the top forever.














Not far from Uluru located another rocky attraction, less known, Kata Tjuta. This place consists of several huge rocks and you can travel between them.
We were quite tired at that point and couldn't stand the flies anymore so we did only a short walk.














Hoping we got rid of the flies we continued the next morning to Kings Canyon national park. Of course millions of flies welcomed us as we opened the car door... A desperate situation led to desperate solution:

The canyon landscape was interesting, beautiful and worth the effort of looking ridiculous :)

We hiked there for few hours and then started driving the way back to Alice Springs.
The next day about 100kms before Alice the car broke down. The radiator cracked. We had to call for a towing service. The car was towed to the most amateurish garage we have ever seen. It took them 4 days to order, receive and install a new radiator! We had to spend 4 long long days in Alice, which is, to be honest, not the most interesting place in Australia. Meanwhile, the weather got worse. It was raining heavily, the all city was flooded and roads closed. Finally we got our car back and continued with our plans - West MacDonnell national park. We drove about 60kms west to Alice and had to turn back because the road was flooded. We spent enough time in Alice and the last thing we wanted was spending one more night there... Therefore we decided to skip on West MacDonnell national park and keep going north to Cairns.
The bad weather accompanied us for 2 more days. We spent the second night in Devils Marbles national park which probably looks nicer on a sunny day...














It took us 3 more nights to get to Cairns, on the north of the east coast. In all 3 rest areas we spent the nights in we had the company of small frogs...
We really believe all this bad luck came upon us only because we climbed on the sacred Uluru rock.
Cairns is very popular city due to its closeness to the Great Barrier Reef. We decided to take an overnight cruise in order to spend maximum time on the reef (you don't get to see much on a day tour). It was an excellent decision. The boat was very nice and comfy, our room was great, the food was excellent and most important the reef was amazing. This time we hired an underwater camera.On the first day we saw many many colorful fish and corals, spent hours in the water, snorkeling.






































































As it got darker, the boat's lights attracted many fish, which attracted many sharks, big ones. The divers on the boat went for a night dive. We watched them from a safe spot on the boat. It wasn't the best time for an introductory dive with all these sharks hanging around... Roi was really curious to see how a shark looks like in the water, so he grabbed a snorkel mask prayed for the best and put his head under the water. Those sharks don't attack people and they are not dangerous, but still...
The next morning we got a wake up call at 6am, half an hour later we were in the water, snorkeling and seeking for a sea turtle (they seem to be the morning type, we've been told). Few minutes later one showed up.














Sarit was so excited, she didn't left him for a long long time. At some point Roi had enough and went back to the boat. Sarit stayed in the water, chasing the turtle until she was too far from the boat and the only one who left in the water... We had a lovely breakfast on the boat, then the skipper led us to a different location and we were back in the water. This time we decided to try an introductory dive. It was very interesting experience, but we didn't get to see much, because we focused on the diving techniques most of the time.














The next snorkeling was right before lunch, few minutes in the water and we saw a second sea turtle, another chase and dozens photos more.














Sarit even saw few reef sharks, smaller than those who visit us at night.

We snorkeled few more times and eventually came back to Cairns, happy and satisfied.

We spent few more days in the city, managed to sell most of the equipment we bought in Australia, returned our lovely car to its owners and took a flight to Sydney.

Probably our next and last post will be written in Israel. See you soon!

Perth to Darwin

First highlight on this big journey north and east is The Pinncales at the Nambung national park. A pinnacle is a stone pole coming out of the ground. Its size varies between few dozen centimeters to few meters. This national park is a desert area full of pinnacles.

Next we drove to Kalbari. We went snorkeling in one of its beaches (not much to see...) and visited the national park near it which has the same name. At the entrance to the park we discovered something that will accompanied most of the national parks along our way - 4WD access only. An unsealed rough road spread out from the main road to the far horizon. Our car insurance doesn't cover us on unsealed roads, but we gave it a try. We started driving the 30km dirt road as slow as we could (20km/h) but still the car bounced like kangaroo on this road, closets opened, things flew in the air. After 10km or so and after all sort of lights led up on the dashboard we gave up and turned back, promising to ourselves no to try driving on unsealed roads again. Disappointed we went to 2 other lookouts in the park (accessible by sealed roads) but they weren't impressive. Everything was dry and millions of flies bugged us every time we took our nose out of the car.

Our next destination was Shark Bay. On the way we visited Hamelin Pool and the Stromatolites (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite),














Shell Beach and the Eagle Bluff. We spent the night at the boring town Denham and the morning after we went to Monkey Mia, the highlight of Shark Bay. The thing about Monkey Mia is that dolphins visit it's beach every morning (it could be related to the fact that the rangers feed them every morning). Anyway, after paying the entrance fee we went to the beach (along with 50 more tourists) and walla, 2 dolphins came. People not allowed to touch or play with them.

All we did was standing in the water (knee deep) and listened to the rangers talk about dolphins for 40 minutes. All this time the dolphins swam few meters away waited for the rangers to give them the daily fish.














Very boring experience. At least a pelican was nearby and gave us something to look at (it got fish from the rangers as well).














Disappointed we kept going north, starting to worry we'll be disappointed again...We stopped for a short visit in a place called blowholes. 1km south to the blowholes there is a blue lagoon, which is, so we've been told, a great place for snorkeling. Of course we gave it a try and of course we got disappointed... Well, actually there were few corals and few colorful
fish, but we expected more than that. Later we drove to the blowholes spot. Blowholes are few holes in rocks located by the sea. When a wave comes it enters beneath the rock and comes out from the holes in a great pressure. It looked like gazers.














We kept driving north to a tiny town called Coral Bay, which is located at the shore of Ningalo national park - a marine national park. After all the disappointing experiences we had since we left Perth, we didn't expect much. And then it finally happened - a little piece of heaven just in front of us. We stood on the beach, amazed from the beautiful sight - clear, quiet, turquoise water, no waves. exactly what we imagined about Australia's beaches.














10 minutes later we were deep in the water, snorkeling above beautiful corals, with lots of fish in all kind of colors, and all that beauty only few meters from the beach. We spent few hours in the water, until our backs became red from the sun. As the hours passed the water's level went down (low tide) and a group of big fish swam at the very edge of the water, tried get something to eat.














It was a weird sight because half of their body was out of the water.














Anyway the water seemed so tempting we jumped again for one last snorkel, before dinner. Too bad we didn't have a waterproof camera...
The next morning we continued to the gateway of the Ningaloo national park - Exmouth. One of the main attractions in the national park is the whale sharks. They come every year to this area and you can actually swim with them, if you're willing to spend the money for it. Luckily the whale sharks arrived early this year, usually they arrive on April. We've been told that every group had managed to see them since the beginning of March. After a long indecision whether it's worth the money or not, we decided to go for it. We said goodbye to a nice amount of money and booked a tour for the next day.
We were picked up early in the morning and were happy to find out we were going to be only 8 people in the group. We got on the boat and headed to a nice snorkeling spot in the reef, to warm up before swimming with the whale sharks. We jumped into the water and spent some time exploring the amazing corals and fish. The highlight of that snorkeling was a sea turtle that swam fast next to us. It was the first time we saw a sea turtle so we were quite existed - it's a very special animal and Sarit fell in love immediately with it. We came back to the boat, satisfied from what we saw and hoping it was a good start for the day. Apparently it was...
After a nice breakfast on the boat the skipper led us to a deeper area, where we were supposed to meet the first whale shark (a plane locates a whale shark from the sky and sends the boat to the right spot). We were ready with our snorkeling gear on us, waiting to jump and swam with the whale shark.
It all happened very fast. The guide shouted "JUMP!" and everyone jumped after her, divided to two groups we waited few seconds for the whale shark to swam towards us and when it did we accompanied him from its sides and swam with him. Amazing! A whale sharks the biggest fish in the world. The first one we saw was only about 4 meters long (a young one...), but they can get up to 18 meters! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_shark).
Few minutes later Sarit looked back and saw Roi with his hand up, waiting to the zodiac to pick him up. Few more people were doing the same. No one expected to swim more than a few minutes with the fish. Sarit didn't give up and stayed with the fish the all way until it was too fast to caught up with. 22 minutes in total! Great experience!
We were sure that was it - just one swim, but we were wrong. About 20 minutes later the plane located another one. The guide shouted "Ready" - everyone stood in line, "Jump" - everyone were in the water. Few minutes later half of the group was in the zodiac again. That fish was faster than the first one.
Then again - a third fish, the biggest one we saw that day. We were divided into two groups in the water. Usually the fish swam straight. This one didn't. It was very curious and tried to have a close look on us, so it turned to its right - the side we were. Everyone in our side tried to clear the way and not bump into the whale shark. But then he turned right again. It kept doing so few times and everyone freaked out, bumped into each other. It was quite scary to see its huge face coming right towards you. Finally it stopped with the crazy turns and swam straight...
We were quite sure that was the last whale shark we were going to see. Wrong again. The 4Th, and the last, showed up not long after. Some people gave up and were too tired to jump. Not us (well, we were tired, but we didn't gave up. How many times you get to see a whale shark in your life?).
We turned back to an inner reef, had a lunch buffet in the boat. One last snorkeling to see a bit more small fish, a fruit buffet on the boat and we were on our back. Again, poor thing we didn't have waterproof camera...
The next day we drove to two beaches in the national park to snorkel some more. The first beach, turquoise bay, was amazing, similar to the beach in coral bay, but a lot more corals and fish.














We spent few hours there. On the last snorkeling we were lucky to see another sea turtle, this time a slower one. Sarit didn't agree to leave him for about 10 minutes. She swam with him until she was just above him and then he got scared and started to swim faster, so she finally left the poor guy... :) (Where is the waterproof camera?).
The second beach was different, very rocky. You need to jump from the rocks in order to get to the water. We enjoyed snorkeling there, but not as much as we did in the first beach.
The next morning we sadly left Exmouth and Ningaloo national park and headed north east to a town called Karratha. It was our first night that we felt a real Australian humidity. It was hot, very hot, and humid, very humid. The next day we stopped for a quick swim in a place called Honeymoon cove and kept going north towards Broome. Two days later we arrived and experienced the most hot and humid night we've ever had. We couldn't sleep, tropical rain started to fall at night. We HATED Broome!
We tried to get a nice sunset shot (Broome is famous for its sunsets) but it wasn't as beautiful as we hoped.














The only nice thing we saw in Broome was a kangaroo with its baby in its pocket.



















A few arrangements in the city (including a 12v fan we bought for the hot nights) and Broome was left behind us. It took us 3 days to drive to Darwin, the northern big city in Australia. The way was beautiful, but we spent most of it in the car. We even skipped the famous Purnululu (bungle bungle) national park, again - 4WD access only...
We went to see a small version of the landscape in Mirima national park - very small park near the city Kununurra. Well, it wasn't like the real thing.




























All the way from Broome was full of Baub trees, we stopped almost every time we saw one to take a picture of it. It's a very special tree, looks like a tree from the fairytale, or like a tree a child drew.



















Finally we arrived Darwin. One good shower (after three days without showers), new clean cloths and we were on our way to celebrate the Passover Seder in the city (that was actually the reason why we came to Darwin...). We were about 30 people - most of them Jewish people living in Darwin, one Israeli girl that immigrated to Darwin, one south African Jewish working in the city's hospital (student), one English Jewish traveler and us. We were the only Israelis travelers there. The Seder was arranged and managed by 4 Habad guys from Germany and USA. They did a wonderful job! It was a very special Seder for us.
Most of the people there cannot speak or read Hebrew, so we read most of the Hagada in English, which was quite weird for us (it sounded like a Christian prayer...). Anyway, we were glad we drove all the way to Darwin. It was worth it.