I heart Oz!

Kate and I have such a fun time road trippin' down the eastern coast of Oz. We had an awesome Valentine's day with Biba up in Brizzy eating cheese and watching Sex & the City. It was so fabulously girlie! It was great to see the Cavids, Fletch, Austin, and of course, the lab gang. We ate at Trang's twice cause they have the best noodles in Australia. Then we started our road trip south to Sydney with a 3 day stop in Byron Bay where we took surf lessons. Surf lessons turned into a "private" surfing lesson which turned into us having to tell the surf instructor we were not going to have sex with him. While we were hanging on the beach the tide came in, and we couldn't really get back to the car the way we had come because the waves were crashing into the rocks. Kate and I decided to scale the rocks over the cliff while the surf instructor took the boards around the treacherous rocks. Half-way up the cliffs, we realize that he got the much easier job. The shale rocks are falling off as we grab them, the other beach goer that left before us was throwing rocks at us as he climbed up. About 45 minutes later, we finally made it through the Brier patch to the other side of the cliff so we could climb out. We basically hassled the surf instructor about his poor decision making skills until he was embarrassed enough to cook us dinner. After that fiasco, the swell really picked up and it was too dangerous for us to go surfing for a couple of days. We spent one night in Port Macquarie and the koala park before heading to Sydney. Friday night Kate and I took ourselves down to the docks and some nice men took us for a sundown sail around Sydney harbour. All day Saturday we spent surfing in Royal National park south of Sydney. And on Sunday,









Ellis and Scotty took us for a ride up the coast in a Cessna. We got to do a couple of laps around the harbour and see the cliffs along the coast and practice swinging our "guns" on sailboats. Check out the video bar to watch Kate and I scream as Scotty does crazy shit with the plane. Tuesday, we did some more surfing had a big brunch and then took the train back to Syd to see an outdoor movie with Gramps. It would have been lovely except it was raining the whole time. Then on Wednesday, I had to drop Kate off at the airport so she could go on to Vietnam and I took myself down to health services Australia to get a chest xray with all the other immigrants. That is a great place to catch some strange disease. Kate and I will be meeting back up at the end of March to see Nepal, but I was sad to see her go.

FIJI!

Fiji was awesome!! We spent 8 days visiting the Yasewa (or something like that) island group. Kate finished up her dive corse on the Blue Lagoon of Brooke Shields' fame. We spent the next 4 days on an island called Waya. We spent the first night in the dorm room, but the light never turned off because it was connected to the generator and the drunk English backpackers kept coming in and waking everyone up so from then on we camped in a tent. In the morning, Kate went fishing while I slept in a hammock on the beach. Unfortunately, I slept on my book funny and hurt my neck so I took some drugs and slept some more while Kate visited the local village over the hill. It was decided that the next night we would go stay in the village at a man named Semi's house. Semi has SEVEN kids. They range in age from 16 months to 14 years and they are most likely the spawn of Tasmanian devils. Village life was quite interesting. One morning we awoke to the sound of a pig being attacked by a pack of domestic dogs. It is a very pleasant sound and I think alarm clock makers should add that to the list of sounds available to arise to. The food was absolutely yummy as long as you didn't think that it came from the one room house that all 9 family members lived in (the 16 month old not yet potty trained and there are no diapers in Fiji) and which seemed to have a bit of a mouse problem. On Sunday, we went to Fijian church service. It was amazing to hear them sing, but the sermon was a bit long considering it was in the tribal dialect. After a bit of a lie down (called "Fiji time"), we hiked over the other hill to take the kids back to boarding school. Once there we helped our new friend who is trying to be a professional photographer/journalist take school photos of all the kids. It was hilarious!! These children were so excited to have their picture taken. The next day we had to be back on the big boat at 3:30 pm to get to the mainland in order to catch our flight to Oz the next day. We decided to go for a hike with our photographer friend (Merica) to the mountain top. The way up was fairly easy and since we had a professional with us we decided to take an epic butt picture. This involved Kate and I doing some serious rock climbing. After the photo shoot was over, we all 3 started our decent down. This did not go smoothly. We managed to get very lost. we could easily see where we wanted to be, but the vegetation was so thick that it was hard to get to. That was combined with the fact that the hillside was littered with ledges that were concealed by vegetation so you never really knew if the shrubs you were standing on had solid ground directly beneath it. The vegetation was so thick it would support all of our body weight and then some. At one point, I had slid down this slope on my ass and caught on to a charred tree before the log under me went over a small cliff. Nothing like a nice stroll to keep the blood pumping. After 2.5 hours of getting lost we finally made it back to the path and eventually back to the village. I would like to take this opportunity to take full responsibility for getting us lost. I have no idea where the trail went and we could not backtrack and find it, but it was there somewhere because it was the exact same trail we had ascended on. We didn't have time to analyse what went wrong. We had just enough time to pack up our stuff, get back over the hill, eat Oreos, and catch our boat. I would show you the epic picture, but it is stuck on the camera at the moment.

So much for hiking in Fiji. . .now it is on to Australia. We are currently in Brisbane catching up with some mates and head out in the morning to spend a couple of days surfing in Byron bay. Eventually, we will make our way to Sydney and hang out there for a couple of days before Kate heads out to Asia.

Holiday Road!!!

I have taken Ellis on a whirlwind tour of the US of A. From the hot Colombian jungles, we have arrived in Colorado to a record snow year. The first 2 days we were here we were snowed in with Jak and Nick who drove with us from Dallas. Finally, on Tuesday the plow got up to the house just after 4 pm and Nick and Jak could get on their way to Boulder. Those two days included some mad Nintendo playing, sledding, naked snow jumping (It's new!), frying random food items, hot tubbing, snow tag, and some good old fashioned sleeping and eating. It was a nice change after being on the go all the time in South America. But then the cabin fever kicked in. . .The next couple of days the weather permitted us to go snow mobiling, train riding, sledding, and skiing. Check out the video of the sledding. Fabulously dangerous! All of which rocked given the amount of fresh powder on the ground, well except for the train riding. It turns out that trains don't like to go up big mountains in the snow.

Anyways, tomorrow we go to Albuquerque to fly to LA and then we meet up with Kate. Poor Ellis has to go back to work, but Kate and I are continuing the eternal summer by heading to Fiji.