January 2009 Archives

Hi everybody. I'm now in the country of South Africa and I'd like to tell you about my trip so far ...
 
First, we landed in Cape Town and took a cab to our new friend Richard's house, where we stayed for a few nights. We did some cool things while we were visiting with him and his daughter Georga. We visited a bird and monkey park and saw all types of African birds like parrots, ostriches, and owls. After looking at the birds, we checked out the monkeys and actually went into their cages, where we saw a few babies hanging on their mother's backs.

Here's Georga, Stefan, and myself at the bird park:
 
After spending more time with Richard and his daughter, who's two years younger than Stefan, we left them to go to a place called Grootbos. While we were there we saw my Dad's friend Michael, who owns the resort, and we went to his house for a "braai," which is a South African barbeque. Instead of coals, you use wood and fire it up and burn it down to charcoal before cooking. We had fun meeting Michael and staying at Grootbos, and the braai dinner was great. The next morning, we went for a whale-watching tour and got really lucky because the whales happened to stay very late in the area this year and we got to see 12 of them! There were six mothers and calves. One pair came right up to the boat and rolled over on top of each other.
 
From Grootbos we went back to Cape Town to meet our friends Owen, Tess, Parker and Hailey, who came to visit us on their vacation. Stefan and I were both so excited to have friends from home coming to visit us in Africa. We spent a couple of days with them exploring Cape Town and then brought them back to Grootbos to check that out too. Visiting Grootbos with them was really cool because we did something really unique to the area--we went in a shark cage.

Here's our boat:

Everybody from our group got into a cage in the freezing Atlantic Ocean with GREAT WHITE SHARKS!!! They attract the sharks by putting fish oil into the water. Then, they throw bait attached to a rope towards the shark to bring it closer to the cage, which is alongside the boat, so the shark swims right up to you. It was amazing to see them up close like that.

Now we are all heading off to go on safari, which I'll tell you about later. Bye for now!

I'm in South Africa now. When we arrived in Cape Town, we went to our friend Richard and his little girl Georga's house. They showed us all around where they live. We went to a place called World of Birds that had so many cool birds and monkeys. There had one monkey that was the smallest monkey in the world and we got to see it with their tiny little baby. It was very nice having somebody local to show us around Cape Town.

They even took us to see the new "Madagascar 2 - Return to Africa" movie at a local theatre.

Hello everybody! For this blog's adventure we go to Sydney. The first thing we did in there was go to the famed Opera House. The Opera House is a huge wavey structure and it is right next to the Harbor Bridge, which connects the two sides of Sydney. Speaking of famous things - we spent New Year's Eve in Sydney got to see the world renowned fireworks, which are considered the best in the world. One thing Sydney may not be well known for are the thousands of fruit bats that hang out in the gum trees of the Botanical Garden right in the middle of the city. At dusk, they all go flying off for the night and you can see them all.

Hello mates, I'm still in Australia and having a great time. Since my last blog, we have been to a few new places, including Sydney.

Here's a pic of me and the Opera House in Sydney:

Hello, I'm in nature loving Tasmania. In Tasmania, we went to the towns of Strahan and Bicheno. Strahan was our first stop and there, we went on a boat cruise on the Gordon River and checked out Hentry Dunes. The dunes were huge and really steep to climb up, but sooooo much fun to run down.
 
In Bicheno we went to a small zoo. The first thing we saw was a bird that said hello to us. It was cool. Then, we went further into the zoo and we saw some kangaroos and one hopped right over to us.  Tyler and I fed it, but two big birds with green beaks got mad because we were feeding the kangaroos and not them, and the birds pecked at the kangaroo's butt. Take a look at the video:



The birds were so mean, but we chased them away so that we could keep feeding the kangaroos. The zoo had lots of other really cool stuff like wombats and venomous snakes. We learned the difference between venomous and poisonous. If it bites you then it's venomous, but if you eat it and then get sick, it's poisonous. We also saw some Tasmanian devils which are actually really cute. We saw the babies drink milk and the mommy's pouch.  I loved the Tassie devils.

Hi everyone! For this blog, we go to the amazing land of Tasmania. The first stop on our Tasmanian tour was the town of Strahan to see the infamous Sarah Island which was a prison for British convicts over 150 years ago. We went over to the island on a boat trip and saw all of the ruins of the old buildings. While looking at the buildings we saw things like the old commondant's (or leader's) cabin, the shipyard, and the solitary prison. Although Sarah Island used to be a place you definitely didn't want to be, now it's a pretty island. The surrounding areas of Macquire Bay and the Gordon River lead to World Heritage listed nature areas, so we also got off the boat and took a cool walk through the rain forest with trees that are hundreds of years old. One was even over 200 years old!
 
After Strahan, we went a small beach town called Bicheno for Christmas. When we got there we were really surprised to find that we were in an actual house, which was a lot different than the "beach shack" we were expecting. We were really excited to be in a house for Christmas and not a hotel room. Anyway, on Christmas Eve things started to feel a little more like Christmas when we went to see penguins come in from their day of fishing. It was actually quite cold even though it is the middle of summer there (now if that's not Christmas, nothing is!). On Christmas Day we did what the Aussies do--go to the beach!