Sydney and Home

Kristen writes;

We're back in the States!
But let me back up.

Erika and Jewel took an afternoon and took a surfing lesson, a fun and thrilling event to be sure. Just not as 'successful' as you might hope. They had a great time and did get up on the board a couple of times. I decided not to participate in this as we had been swimming a couple of days before and it was freezing! Not to mention the idea of being slapped in the face by the ocean isn't always my favorite. I acted as paparazzi instead and enjoyed watching the two of them attempting something that requires a lot of coordination.

We camped our last two nights, once at a loud and obnoxious rest stop on the side of the road. Free camping on the coast is not the same as free camping in the center where people stop driving at about sun down and there aren't many of them anyway. Our very last night we were at a beautiful lake front spot in the national park and had a very relaxing goodbye to life in the tent.
Of course, one of our motto's through all this 'cheap living' is to never eat a meal that made us lose the will to live. Our last night camping we came very close, using up all the remains of our food items. Thankfully after a soup that had us groaning we had chocolate to wash it down, topping up our desire to live.

Getting back to our friend Karla's place in the northern beaches of Sydney was great! It was so good to catch up with her and tell her all about our trip and talk about our trips coming up. (She left the day after we did to visit her family in New York so we all had a long trip coming up.)
We spent our last few days eating our way through Sydney. Enjoying the culinary delights that have been brought in by the immigrants; Thai, Chinese, and Greek. And the chocolate of the country that made a very big impression on us, Haigh's- a local, free trade organization that we toured in Adelaide, and an awesome chocolate bar that served up pudding as though it were hot chocolate.
We visited the water front, taking in the opera house and street fairs, went to the Art Gallery of NSW and enjoyed the speakers corner set up in the park outside the museum, attended service at the Anglican Cathedral and enjoyed their choir and visited almost every op shop (thrift store) that we passed in an effort to find Erika a dress to wear in our sisters wedding coming up soon.

Leaving each other in the airport to go to different destinations was one of the harder things we've had to do. We've become accustomed to having all three of us less than an arms length away at almost all times. Erika and I left at about two p.m. Wednesday afternoon, she got on the plane, ate, took her sleeping pills, put on her eye mask and went to sleep. I got on, ate, watched a couple of movies and proceeded to throw up the rest of the trip. We got in to Los Angeles at ten a.m. Wednesday morning. Hello international dateline! Wacky!
The good news about being ridiculously sick is that you get through customs quickly and easily.
Our next flight went well and we got in to Denver at about four.
Jewel threw through San Francisco and spent her eight hour lay over sick as well, but we weren't there to comfort her which was hard.

Now we're back with the family, working in the garden, hearing all about the wedding plans, unpacking and all the rest that comes with coming home.

Back to Sydney

Kristen writes;

I believe we've mentioned our love of food. I want you to appreciate when I say our last wwoof host was one of the best cooks we've stayed with so far I'm giving great praise. We arrived in time for a going away dinner party they were having for a friend and enjoyed some of the best food ever! It didn't go down hill from there. One night we mentioned, accidentally as it is a taboo subject, our love of Mexican food. Wayne immediately decided we should cook a Mexican meal and did everything in his power to make it possible!
We were overwhelmed! We made beans, salsa, guacamole, tortillas, chimichangas, enchiladas and even a syrup we served over ice cream that we made from prickly pear fruit that we got from the back of their property! It was so much fun to be able to share our love of Mexican/Indian food with other food lovers and to be able to cook for someone that appreciated it. In fact, appreciated it so much they let us cook it another night, we had a dinner party for our going away as well!
Leaving Wayne and Angela's we traveled back to Sydney where we had to trade in the toy car for another car from a different rental company. They were nice enough to call a friend and ask if we could stay with her for the night we had planned here.
We liked Karla so much and got on so well with her that we ended up staying. The truth is she invited us to go to Sydney's largest craft show with her and her friends the next day so we took a day to explore the north beaches of Sydney and today spent several hours wandering a wonderful place! The problem with craft fairs is they make you feel so very crafty and you immediately start planning all the projects you want to do and of course we're traveling. We still managed to spend quite a bit more than we planned and now have a couple of things to keep us busy on the long car rides we'll be on.
Tomorrow we head off again in the direction of Broken Hill.

A Word About Food

Erika writes:

We have made it to Auckland. We were totally out of touch while we toured the North Island. We didn't stop anywhere with internet access for a week. We left Wellington last Wednesday and drove up the east coast. We toured wineries and breweries and cideries (probably my favorite), were among the first to see the sunrise on Saturday (thanks to the old date line being so close), had a wonderful time staying in a friend's beach house and toured the Coromandel Peninsula, which is a gorgeous place with beautiful coast roads. We have mostly been working on logistics for the Australia segment of our trip since getting to Auckland but we've been able to see the city a bit. We are currently staying with old friends from Roanoke, Dale and Joan Furbish. It's been wonderful to end this segment with friends and in a relaxed manner. They've been very understanding, being great travelers themselves. We called our parents for the first time in 3 months today! That's by far the longest that we've ever gone and it was so refreshing to hear their voices. Thank goodness for email but there's nothing like hearing a loved one's voice. If only they would get on Skype, we could see their faces!

My friend, Lo, reminded me recently that it's about time to hear a little about the food here. Kristen and I are pretty dedicated to eating and to seeking out new food experiences. That has certainly remained true here. Our food on the trip has varied a lot because of the vastly different ways that we've been spending our time. I think it's fallen into four categories, so I'll say a little bit about each of those now.

1. Road food. Listen, when we were on bikes, all of our food had to fit into 2 panniers. Sometimes it had to last us for days. We also were limited in cooking facilities--2 pots and a stove that burns really hot. We ate gigantic helpings of pasta, peanut butter and honey sandwiches and fruit, concocted some very strange rice recipes (mostly adding veges and powder flavor packets) and discovered the mightily restorative powers of boiled eggs. I'm actually pretty proud of the egg thing. We were pondering snacks on the road and I realized that for less than $5, we could boil a dozen eggs and eat on them for days. They are a tremendous food and even have their own handy little carrying containers. Yep, life on the bikes was limited but we sure appreciated every mouthful.

2. Us cooking for real. Both hostels and campgrounds usually have kitchens and often have kitchenware as well. When we stay in one of these, especially for more than one night, we take advantage of these facilities. Please consult the food chronicle we compiled after one particularly gluttonous episode at Jewel's blog www.legitadventure.blogspot.com This illustrates both how many calories we need when biking and how truly crazy we've become. When traveling, the one privation we feel the most is the absence of Mexican food from our diets. You can sometimes find Mexican restaurants but they are always pretty expensive for us and end up being disappointing. My mom makes incredible food (of all kinds, of course, but especially stuff she learned growing up on a reservation) and we come to crave that food above all else. We have a rule that no one is allowed to mention Mexican food, of any kind. It's very hard to hold to that rule. Recently, in Wellington and our stint at the beach house, we've treated ourselves to some Mexican food of our own making. It is not the same. In fact, it's often not even that good. But we convince ourselves that it is similar and it fits within our budget. Our last venture starred guacamole because avocados are grown here and are delicious and cheap. That part was great. The part where we flavored processed meat with taco seasoning was incredibly weird. Still...oddly satisfying. Definitely looking forward to real beans again, though.

3. Food at restaurants. We mostly eat out at lunch and we've found some delightful restaurants and cafes throughout our time here. We've eaten lots of meat pies, something we don't really have in the States but is a product of British influence here. I would not have classified myself as a meat pie person before this trip but New Zealand has done some great things with the pie and I've enjoyed them a lot. We've had venison pies, steak and cheese pies, mince (the word for burger) pies, lamb pies, chicken, apricot and brie pies...been on a little bit of a pie tour, really. One small chain called Trisha's makes pies with very flaky crust and interesting flavor combinations. They are always fresh and the middles aren't the weirdly gelatinous stuff I objected to before but gravyish without being too drippy. We've had fun exploring the options there.

We've had fantastic food in organic/vegetarian restaurants (surprised me a little--I'm a meat eater, for sure). We had a meal up on the Coromandel that stunned us with how delicious it was. We shared pancakes and a sandwich and dahl plus a couple of milkshakes, which sounds fairly commonplace but was, in fact, food that had been stolen from the table of the gods. It was incredible. I have a page of description in my journal.

The other meal that we've tried to sample pretty frequently is fish and chips. We are not huge seafood people and, actually, Jewel is allergic to fish, but we love the chips and we like the fish a lot. Most of the shops that serve fish and chips also make burgers so, being a meat lover, I often get one of those. The burgers come with beetroot (sometimes pickled) and a fried egg on them. I love this. We ate at one burger place in Queenstown, which our friend, Andy, assured us served the best burgers in the world. Honestly, he might be right. They were incredible and came with all kinds of fascinating toppings. They were also HUGE. Very satisfying, even for us.

4. Food given us by hosts. And this is where life goes from pretty great to a recognizable gift from God--the food kind people have cooked for us. In general, food in NZ is a meat and potatoes kind of affair and we have had some beautiful roasts: venison, lamb and beef. We've also had great sandwiches made with leftovers from those roasts. We're here in the fall and we've had delicious pumpkin soup in a couple of places. We've developed a love of seafood that has taken us by surprise. A friend worked at a salmon farm and had just built a smoker so we ate lots of freshly smoked salmon. It was awesome. I've never liked one taste of salmon before and I was suddenly eating it by the pound. We also ate crayfish that were pulled from the ocean hours before and stabbed through the head, right next to me, moments before I ate it. It was also great and I've never liked shellfish at all. I guess everyone was right when they told me the key was to get fresh fish--it's made all the difference.

I made a list a few days ago with the long title, "things I'll miss from NZ" and realized that most of them are food related so I'll post that here to close.

• Tui (brand of beer)
• Speight's (same)
• Steinlager (ditto)
• Sunshine Beer (yeah, so there's a pattern)
• pavlova, lollycake, hokey pokey anything (these are desserts, pav is a kind of egg white confection, lollycake is a crazy, no bake cake that is really sweet and kind of addictive and hokey pokeys are little bits of crunchy goodness in ice cream and other desserts.)
• meat pies
• flat white coffee (a little more foam than I'm generally a fan of but pretty and tasty. incidentally, also seems to have caffeine, isn't that awesome?)
• banana milk (do we have this at home? they have banana flavored milk and it's actually really good.)
• Razorback wine (the vineyard we worked at. we drank more than we probably earned)
• burgers with eggs and beetroot
• giant crayfish (I guess we would call them lobsters. They can be almost a meter long.)
• L&P (a drink that might only be available here. kind of like ginger ale. my new favorite)
• Moro bars (incredible candy)
• men in stubbies and chaps (stubbies are short shorts and men here really wear them to work in. Seriously)
• men in stubbies and gumboots (those are galoshes, folks. picture it. it's a real thing.)

I'm still working on the list. I'll let you know if I think of anything else interesting. I'm planning to post pictures soon. We'll see how that works out.