New Zealand - the "OMG LOOK AT THE KIWI" edition

Previously, I flew to Wellington to stay with Kim, and there was much rejoicing.

The day after we went to Te Papa and to see Thor: TDW, it rained. Like, a lot. All. Freaking. Day. And not even the kind of summery rain where it's still warm enough that you don't object to walking to the bus stop and going to do something indoors. Nope, the wintery kind where the rain is horizontal and it's freezing cold and all you want to do is curl up on the sofa under a blanket. Obviously, we stayed home, played Lego Marvel and ate an awful lot of junk food. We may also have watched an episode of Agents of SHIELD and mocked it for being terrible and contrivance-ridden.

My last full day in Wellington, luckily, featured no rain at all. Instead, it featured sunburn. Because when we left the house, it looked like it was about to pour with rain, so I put sunscreen on but didn't bother to take it with me. THEN THE SUN CAME OUT. Sigh...

Anyway, we caught the bus into the city, picked up some sandwiches, and walked the 4-ish kilometres to the zoo. We started out with a visit to the otters and the penguins, neither of whom were anywhere to be seen. So we headed up through the kiwi enclosure - also nowhere to be seen, but this was probably due to an extremely loud small child. Luckily, some of the teeny monkeys were more accommodating:

From there, we went to a display by a red-tailed black cockatoo who was zooming all over the arena and who could do little puzzles with stackable cups and things in order to get treats. Sadly, there was a VERY screamy small child present who desperately wanted to steal the cockatoo's toys and kept running across the floor towards it. This made the cockatoo and the zoo keepers very nervous, but apparently small child's parents had no fucks to give because they basically did nothing...

Our ears needed a break after that, and it was almost time for the chimpanzee talk, so we headed up to the top of the hill to eat our sandwiches and hang out with the chimpanzees and a great view of the city for a while:

We were basically the only ones there until about 30 seconds before the talk started when an entire class of unruly grade 1 kids turned up and swarmed all over the place. YAY... Luckily, the chimps getting their lunch was entertainment enough to shut them up a little. Said lunch consisted of the keeper tossing out pieces of fruit one at a time and the chimpanzees having to catch each piece. And let me tell you, those chimpanzees were EXCELLENT at it. They could easily play cricket with catching skills like that!

Other highlights of the afternoon included my all time favourites, the red pandas:

And the sunbear, who looked incredibly shocked about something:

We also saw a moronic 20-something guy banging on the glass of the baboon enclosure, causing a lot of the juvenile baboons to hurl themselves at the glass with their teeth bared. He thought it was hilarious. I'm still convinced that one day, he's going to wake up at 3am to find a baboon ripping his face off, because they were NOT impressed...

Eventually, we headed back to the kiwi house for the keeper talk. And it was FABULOUS. The kiwi that they had out only has one leg because he got stuck in a trap meant for feral cats (I think...) and it broke his leg so badly that it had to be amputated. They made him a prosthesis, but apparently he prefers to hop, which is basically the cutest thing ever. If you're interested, you can read more about Tahi here. Anyway, he was about a foot away from me and he was so stinking adorable that I probably could have watched him all day. So if you're ever in Wellington, you should go to the zoo and check out the kiwi keeper talk!

Also, you should go to the zoo because they have FABULOUS signage:

After a detour through the gift shop where I bought a kiwi shaped cookie cutter and a stuffed toy kiwi with wonky legs (I bought him for Little Miss A, but ended up keeping him myself because REASONS), we caught the bus back into town, grabbed ourselves a couple of scoops of ice cream, and walked around to Oriental Bay to sit on the beach for a little while. In keeping with my curse, there was naked New Zealander there, although this one was at least a small child rather than a creepy grown man...

We wandered back through the city and took a few obnoxious selfies on the way, because OBVS.

My flight the next day was at around lunchtime. It was insaaaaaaaaaaaanely windy so walking down the hill to the bus with my suitcase was a rather interesting experience - rather like being dragged along by a very enthusiastic dog... Still, we made it to the airport in plenty of time and, after getting rid of my suitcase and checking in, we headed to Donut King, because of reasons.

Stolen from Kim's Tumblr.

And then we sat there listening to flights being cancelled because the wind was reaching insane levels... Fortunately(??) for me, they were only cancelling the propeller flights, not the jet flights, so my flight wasn't cancelled. Takeoff, however, got a little bit interesting. Especially as I was trapped in a middle seat and the woman on the aisle demanded like 14 sick bags "just in case"... O.o

Eventually, I made it to Auckland, found my luggage, walked the million miles (read: 1km) to the international terminal, checked in, had lunch, abused the free wifi as much as possible, and flew back to Melbourne. THE END. And only four months after my trip ended! ;)

K xx

30 Days of Photography - Day 26

Oy. It's been seven-ish months since I last made any progress on this challenge that was supposed to take a month. I'm officially the worst. On the plus side, I'm not leaving it five-sixths finished, so I guess that's something??

The theme for day 26 was "close up". I thought this fit the bill quite nicely, don't you?

And no, it's not still attached to a peacock. Which is why I'm so close to it - that whole bird phobia thing doesn't extend to bits that have already dropped off the bird!

K xx

Whut.

You guys, Australian history is weird. I'm the first one to admit that. I mean, Melbourne was founded by a dude named Batman. Who had no nose by the time he died of syphilis only a couple of years after Melbourne was settled. And who we managed to LOSE when Melbourne's first cemetery was moved to make room for a market.

Hell, that's not all we've lost. We lost a Prime Minister in 1966. He went swimming at the beach about an hour from Melbourne and never came back. What did we name in his honour? A SWIMMING POOL.

And back in the days when Tasmania was Van Diemen's Land, it was under the control of a guy named Thomas Davey, who was basically the nineteenth century version of Captain Jack Sparrow.

He even LOOKS a little like Johnny Depp, you guys.
Also, source.

According to Robert Hughes in his (rather long-winded, but still fascinating) book The Fatal Shore, Davey

"...marked his arrival in Hobart Town in February 1813 by lurching to the ship's gangway, casting an owlish look at his new domain and emptying a bottle of port over his wife's hat. He then took off his coat, remarking that the place was as hot as Hades, and marched uphill to Government House in his shirtsleeves. Nicknamed "Mad Tom" by the settlers, he would later make it his custom to broach a keg of rum outside Government House on royal birthdays and ladle it out to passersby." (2003:369) 

And Davey is, according to Wikipedia, also known for inventing a cocktail called "Blow my Skull".

I honestly didn't think anything could beat Mad Tom Davey as my favourite bizarre thing in Australian history. But today? Today I was proved wrong.

Because in 1932, Australia went to war. Against emus. AND THE EMUS WON.

Can we just stop and process this for a second? A group of soldiers took a couple of machine guns and went into the desert to kill 20,000-odd birds. And they failed.

"Boo-ya, bitches". Also, source. 

Plus, this "war" led to some completely amazing quotes:

"The machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month." - Dominic Serventy

"If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world...They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop." - Major Meredith

I don't think I really have much in the way of a point. Well. Except for these:

1. What the hell, Australian government?! 

2. Those soldiers should be super pleased that they were only dealing with emus and not cassowaries... #velociraptorsofthemodernera

3. HISTORY IS FREAKING AWESOME.

K xx

Ancient History, Volume XXIII

In the last installment, giant lava bubbles, sharks, sea lions and penguins.

Our last day in the Galapagos started stupidly early. As in we were off the boat and on North Seymour Island by 7am early. We started out by seeing the frigate birds up close. We'd seen a bunch of them flying behind the boat over the previous days, but they're SO MUCH BIGGER when you see them on the ground. A couple of the males had their balloons inflated, which was pretty spectacular.

They inflate the balloons to attract a mate and they stay inflated for up to eight days, during which time the birds can't eat. I still can't decide if that's batshit cray-cray or seriously impressive...

From there, we headed across to the other side of the island to see the blue-footed boobies. On the way, we past a couple of land iguanas, which were rather enormous and VERY sleepy looking:

So, blue-footed boobies. They're SUPER dumb. Apparently a bunch of juveniles die every year because they fly out over the sea, spot a fish they want, and dive into the sea with their beaks open, at which point their lungs fill with water and they drown. Also? Their version of building a nest is pooping in a circle and laying an egg in the middle of it.

So yeah. They're dumb. But also kind of cute in their dumbness:

Apparently this is a mating dance

She doesn't seem very impressed...

Nest o' poop

After about an hour of going "ZOMG, there's a blue-footed boobie like a metre away from me!!!", it was back to the boat for the sail back to Baltra. We then had the joyous task of sitting around the shed airport shed for about three hours before our flight back to the mainland. The last half hour or so was pure agony, because:
a) it was about 32 degrees C outside (90 degrees Fahrenheit);
b) the plane's engines weren't on;
c) this meant the air conditioning wasn't running.

Have you ever been in a giant metal cylinder in 32 degree heat with no air circulation? It was NOT enjoyable. Thankfully, the flight back to the mainland was uneventful. Back in Quito, we decided that we should go to Boca de Lobo for dinner again. It was even more phenomenal the second time around - we ordered a dish called Ferocious Chicken and everything!

The following day, we headed up the Teleferico cable car, which offers pretty awesome views over Quito:

Back down in the new town, London Bound and I wandered around a bunch of camping stores, where we came across this:

Yup. It's a sleeping bag with arms and legs. Because, you know, who doesn't want to look like a Teletubbie while they camp?!

London Bound left the next day, and I had five days in Quito on my own. You'd think I would have seen a bunch of stuff. NOPE. I spent a crapton of time on the internet, drank a lot of hot chocolate, watched an awful lot of television ("Soopernatooral: Miercoles en Warner Channel!" featured quite strongly), and ate FAR too much for my own good. I also tried to find the archaeology museum that was apparently several blocks away, but failed miserably.

Next up? I spend forever flying to Guatemala, and climb an active volcano.

K xx

Ancient History, Volume XXII

Last time, I flew to the Galapagos and met tortoises, sea lions, and marine iguanas. And nearly died of fright when the door to my cabin fell open in the middle of the night...

The following morning, I was woken at the delightful time of 4.30am when we raised anchor to sail from Santiago to Bartolome. Thankfully, I was able to get back to sleep without too much trouble. By 7.45, we were in the dinghy and making a dry landing on the island of Bartolome. It was crazy volcanic, and pretty barren - kind of like walking on the surface of the moon! (I imagine, not having been to the moon...)

There was a half hour's walk to the top of the island, with numerous stops along the way to admire the view, particularly of this awesome underwater crater, caused by a giant lava bubble:

The walk got a lot harder from about half way up, because we were walking up shoddily built stairs that were on weird angles and unevenly spaced... Luckily, the view from the top was totally worth it!!

If you recognise this view, it's probably from any number of documentaries about the Galapagos, or possibly from Master and Commander. From there, we headed back to the boat to change, before being dropped off at the beach on the right in the photo above for a spot of snorkelling. We'd only just gotten into the water when our tour leader called out that there was a shark nearby and that we should go and check it out.

What he meant:

Source

What all the Australians imagined:

Source

So while we DID head over to see the shark, the snorkelling didn't last all that long! After lunch back on boat, we set sail for Sombrero Chino. On the way, there were a bunch of frigate birds following the boat, which was pretty awesome:

It was only a couple of hours sailing to Sombrero Chino, and I *MAY* have spent most of it standing on the upper deck of the boat, with my hands behind my back, pretending I was in an episode of Hornblower and singing the theme for HMS Indefatigable (see here) in my head. BECAUSE THAT'S HOW I ROLL.

Ahem.

Sombrero Chino (which, incidentally, DOES translate to what you think) is absolutely gorgeous. See?

And it's covered in all kinds of awesome lava formations:

And the usual dopey looking sealions:

And GALAPAGOS PENGUINS!!!

After the penguins, we'd exhausted Sombrero Chino's supply of wildlife and sights, so it was back to the boat for cocktails and dinner, before an early night.

Up next, more frigate birds, and blue footed boobies (which are quite possibly the dumbest birds of EVER)!

K xx

Ancient History, Volume XXI

Last time, I left Peru for Ecuador, went to the equator and ate my body weight in melted cheese. The day AFTER eating my body weight in melted cheese, we were off to the airport again, heading to the Galapagos. Turns out when you fly to the Galapagos? You fly via Guayaquil, which is about 35 minutes flight from Quito, and is the economic capital of Ecuador as well as its largest city. Kind of like Canberra and Sydney, really!

Anyway, the flight from Guayaquil to the Galapagos was about an hour and a half. The AIRPORT in the Galapagos is basically a tin shed, with no walls, which made claiming our luggage kind of interesting... From the airport, we headed to Puerto Ayora where we were transferred to our home for the next four days - the Darwin Yacht (or, as the stickers we were given said, Darwin Yatch).

After settling into our cabins and a quick spot of lunch, we were off to the Charles Darwin Research Station to see the giant tortoises. We got to get right up close to them, which was pretty amazing.

I was terrified that I was going to topple backwards and squish a tortoise...

We also got to see poor old Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island tortoise (he died about a month ago, so now there are NO Pinta Island tortoises. SAD PANDA). He did look very lonesome...

He's the rock looking thing behind the pond.

And we got to see BABY TORTOISES!!! (Also? Do you have ANY idea how hard it was for me not to write 'Esio Trot' in all these sentences???)

The colours painted on their backs tell the keepers which species they are.

Wandering around the research station (which also houses lava lizards, iguanas, and a bunch of different bird species) took up the rest of the day. That night, back on the boat, we had a briefing about the next day's activities, before we headed to the upper deck for a few drinks. And at about midnight, we set sail! I had a rather exciting(??) night, because the door to my cabin decided to fall open by itself, and bang against the wall, scaring the crap out of me. (Thankfully, my millionty kilo pack held it closed very nicely for the remaining nights!)

The following day, we were up stupidly early and doing our first trip ashore before 8am on the island of Rabida. It was pretty incredible - the beaches are red volcanic sand. We got to see hermit crabs, marine iguanas, sealions, pelicans and Darwin finches.

Marine iguana! They're kind of gross. There's almost no fresh water in the Galapagos, so
they've adapted to drinking seawater and snorting the salt out through their noses...

Cranky looking nesting pelicans

Sealions

And from there, we went snorkelling with several schools of fish, and a very curious sealion!! That part was ZOMG worthy, because the sealion swam along side us in the waves for a good ten minutes. After the snorkelling, it was back to the boat and off to Santiago. Public service announcement: taking a shower while sailing through choppy water is...interesting. On the plus side, there were a bunch of frigate birds handing out behind the boat, which was pretty awesome.

After a couple of hours of sailing and an hour for lunch, we were back in the dinghy heading for shore on Santiago. It's pretty amazing that two islands can be so close together and so completely different. Santiago had black sand beaches and a whole stack of crazy lava formations, along with TONS of marine iguanas, and a brand new baby sealion:

Kooky lava formations

Baby sealion, mummy sealion, and a butt ton of marine iguanas

We had a pretty long walk around the island, and wound up near some inlets getting to see a group of fur seals playing, which was incredible:

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

From there, we went snorkelling again, before sailing off into the sunset (literally) past a rock formation that was used for target practice during World War II (seriously), and a colony of masked boobies:

The Bishop

Masked boobies. THEY'RE BIRDS, YOU SMUTTY PEOPLE.

All in all? Not a bad two days! 

Next up, underwater craters, sharks, and a dose of "Hey, I remember this from Master and Commander!!"

K xx

Does this mean I'm cool now?

So I realised that I never told you guys about my trip to Canberra. But it can basically be summed up as follows:

• A shit ton of time in the car.
• A slightly troublesome dinner with Em and Matt (pregnant ladies should not eat salmon which turns out to still be raw and frozen in the centre...).
• Breakfast with my delightful friend and former coworker, L.
• The baby shower. Apparently baby showers include trivia games, which our team managed to win, and cake, and lots of tiny pink clothes.
• Discovering quite possibly the trendiest bar in the ACT. Obviously, this would happen nine months AFTER I moved back to Melbourne...
• A delightful Mother's Day lunch of McDonald's fries and an apple purchased at a truck stop and washed in a truck stop bathroom. 
• Did I mention a shit ton of time in the car??? Yeah...

Oh, and while we were EATING our delightful lunch (in the car park at McDonald's, for some reason that I now can't remember) with the windows open, a sparrow hopped up on a the side mirror and tried to FLY INTO THE CAR. About five times. Because what you want when you're eating your super classy McDonald's lunch in the car is the addition of an angry disease-ridden bird...

ANYWAY.

While I was in Canberra, the lovely Ti from A Cup of Ti presented me with this:

The Liebster Blog Award. Thank you so much, Ti - I'm so thrilled! <3

Liebster means dearest or beloved or favourite (I think. Nikki - feel free to correct me!!), and the award is specifically for blogs with less than 200 followers who deserve a little more attention. 

Here are the (slightly boring) rules:
1. Thank the person who gave me the award and link back to them. 
2. Nominate up to five others for the award.
3. Let them know via comment on their blog.
4. Post the award on your blog.

And here are my five other awesome bloggers. Go and give them some love:

Kat from The Engineer's Other Life. Kat's one of my IRL BFFs. She's an amazing photographer, and has just opened an online store for her photos, which you should definitely go and check out! We've had some amazing times together in Thailand, Melbourne AND the US. I have no doubt that there will be numerous adventures together in the future! Her blog is filled with photos I'm crazy jealous of, and sewing projects I have no chance in Hell of recreating, and you should definitely check it out.

Gina from This Is Not Your Blog. There are no words for how much I love Gina. I have no idea how she crams as much into her life as she does - three kids, three blogs, reading, a Masters degree, AND she and her husband and kids are about to move half way across the country. I'd pretty much be comatose by lunchtime dealing with all of that. I'm kind of pining for her batshit crazy painkiller induced dreams (the good ones, not the nightmares!!) from when she had her gall bladder out, but I still do a happy dance every time there's a new post from her.

Alice from The Rabbit Hole of Alice. I adore this girl. Sometimes I'm convinced that we're the same person, only on other sides of the world and born five years apart... (One day, the TARDIS will come along and we'll finally be able to hang out for real!!) Her writing is honest and vulnerable, and she's always there when I need to rant. <3

Pretzel Thief from Pretzel Thief. Holy crap, this girl cracks me up. Her posts are brilliant, and she leaves the most amazing comments. AND she's a fellow member of Team Pacey. One of these days, we'll have to arrange a Melbourne blogger meet up so that we can meet for real. IT WILL BE AMAZING. (There may have to be some gratuitous Joshua Jackson included somewhere. Obviously.)

Katie from Katiefoolery. I love Katie's blog. Her posts are always filled with incredible photos and fun stories, not to mention knitted Daleks!! You really can't go wrong with knitted Daleks. She's constantly going on fun adventures all over Victoria, and seems to find a never ending stream of unusual places to visit.

So, has a sparrow ever tried to get into your car at McDonald's?? Seriously. This is an important question and I need answers!!

K xx

Ancient History, Volume XII

At the end of the last installment, we went out for breakfast which included juice that looked like dishwater, and daring Air Force Girl to eat a chunk of butter.

Following the ridiculous breakfast of OMG-I'M-SO-HUNGRY-FEED-ME-NOW, we went in search of posh chocolates, and then to a lunch that lasted until about 3.30pm. But we didn't really care, because the views around Arequipa are pretty spectacular:

From there, we went on a tour of the Santa Catalina monastery, which was at its peak in the 18th century (I think...). It was really pretty, but it made everyone angry. Apparently there were two classes of nuns living there. The rich ones were the daughters of the nobility and paid the equivalent of $150,000 to be there, and had posh stuff and servants. If the servants had children, those children became the nun's personal property. The other class were the poor nuns, who actually felt they'd been called by God to become a nun. These nuns had nothing, and had to beg the rich nuns for use of their private kitchen facilities to even be able to eat. So...yeah. Angry stabby feelings. But it really is pretty!

Okay, you can't really tell from this photo. Apparently I
was feeling too stabby to take many photos there...

After the Monastery of Stabbiness, we went to the Arequipa museum, where we saw an exhibition that included the mummy of a teenage girl who was sacrificed by the Incas. Sadly, I have no photos of the mummy, so this shot from the Buffy episode "Inca Mummy Girl" will have to suffice!

Source. Also, the mummy looked nothing like this. 

After all of that, the group somehow decided that going to a restaurant for dinner sounded far too much like hard work. So we ended up eating a dinner of Ritz crackers and cheese and Sublime chocolate bars on the roof of the hotel. And it was AWESOME. (Especially the Sublimes)

The following day, we had a stupidly long bus ride from Arequipa to Chivay. There were lots of stops along the way to look at vicuñas and frozen waterfalls and volcanoes and whatnot.

Mountain + conveniently located vicuña = purdy pictures 

By the time we reached Chivay, we'd climbed about 1,300m in altitude (5,300 feet) and I was starting to feel a little altitude sickness-y. WHEEEEEE, DIZZINESS AND NAUSEA!!!! Which is how I ended up having flat Inca Kola for lunch...

After lunch, we headed out to a nearby hot springs. To prepare us for the whole walking 40km at altitude thing that was coming up in a week or so (aka the Inca Trail), they dropped us 2kms from the hot springs and made us walk in. Public service announcement: Do not think that you can save time by wearing your board shorts UNDER YOUR JEANS. It is enormously uncomfortable when you then discover that you have to walk 2km... (I do these things so you don't have to.) Once we eventually arrived, the hot springs were amazing. But getting out of the steaming hot water after 4.5 hours? That part was a suckfest and a half...

The next morning, we got up at stupid o'clock and spent an hour and a half on a mini-bus on dirt roads heading to Colca Canyon. And when we arrived, we had a 20 minute wait in freezing temperatures before the highlight of Colca Canyon showed any signs of moving. But when they did? ZOMG AMAZINGNESS. Andean condors are enormous and wonderful to watch, and a point-and-shoot camera does not do them justice. SIGH:

Witness the size of the condors compared to the people. They. Are. ENORMOUS. 

After a good hour or so of watching condors, we got back on the bus, and headed back to Arequipa, via Chivay. Somewhere along the way, we stopped in a town where you could pose with an eagle on your head for the equivalent of 30 cents:

Quality derp face. He shall remain nameless to protect what remains of his dignity.

While en route back to Arequipa, we went through the highest point on our trip - 4,910m above sea level (16,108 feet). Walking the short distance from the bus to the plaque for photos was something of a challenge.

Unflattering photo at 4,910m above sea level. I do have hair. I promise.

I blame the altitude for me deciding that what I desperately needed to spend money on was a Peruvian blanket. Because what you REALLY need to carry around for the remaining 7.5 weeks of a 9 week trip is A SODDING BLANKET. (Public service announcement: Do not buy a blanket. I have never EVER used this blanket. It's very pretty. But it's also very pointless. And very very scratchy...)

Ahem. Upon returning to Arequipa, we went to dinner and then to a bar. Ness and I ordered pina coladas. They were completely vile, as they were made with about 25% rum, 25% pineapple juice, and 50% coconut cream. GAG. The switch to drinking Not Cocktails was understandably fairly swift.

At some point, the overwhelming number of Australians in the group meant that we turned into a giant pack of bogans. And when a giant pack of bogans is drinking while overseas, it leads to the singing of this:

Alcohol: turning travelling Australians into complete dickheads since 1788. (At least we weren't wearing marionette uniforms??)

Next up, Puno, Lake Titicaca, and we discover our Spanish is terrible when we go on a homestay.

K xx