Good-bye Australia...

That ends our fantastic, amazing, journey of a life time trip to Australia and New Zealand. It was absolutely surreal and we're definitely sad to be going home but look forward to our next trip!

Thanks for following along... we hope you enjoy reading about our adventures and mishaps!

Here's our final tallies, thoughts and of course, the travel count.

Animals we saw:
Koalas
Kangaroos
Cockatoos
Parakeets
Camels
Horses
Dingos
Wallabies
Hawks
Manta rays
Turtles
Hundreds of fish
A snake
An eel
Blue-spotted sting ray
A shark
Cranes
Pigeons with mohawks
Cows
Crocodiles
Australian Frogmouths (a type of owl)

and a whole more that we can't quite remember..

Piyusha's favorite thing to eat: Pad Thai at Oaks Satay and Tempura Pumpkin Sushi Roll
Parimal's favorite thing to eat:  Kangaroo and Piyusha's cooking now that he's home :-)

Piyusha's favorite moment: spotting a sea turtle
Parimal's favorite moment:  Jumping out of a plane... and hiking in the Outback

Final trip count:
Injuries - Parimal: 0, Piyusha 1 (that's it I know... shocking!)
Items lost - 0!

The Mighty Rainforest

Besides the Great Barrier Reef, Cairns is also near the Daintree Rain forest... the world's oldest rain forest. On a whim, we decided since we had made it all the way out to Australia, we might as well as check it out.

The Daintree is also home to one of the world's more rarest birds... the Cassowary. There are only 1,200 left in the world and only 70 live in the Daintree... our guide said only 15% of his tours actually spot one so we really shouldn't hold our breath.

A smooth trip down the Daintree Rain forest to go crocodile hunting (all we saw was a mama croc and a baby)... and spotted some Australia Treemouths (owls) then a super curvy road along the coastline and we made it. Some of the trees were over a million years old! We were told to imagine the same backdrop but with dinosaurs roaming around... it'd be the exact same!

Walking along, we were told to hush... a cassowary and his ducklings (the male raises the babies) were just a few feet a head! It's even more rare to the babies! Unfortunately a guy was blocking the view but we managed to get a picture of his picture (ha).

After a quick lunch, we were to this very peaceful creek and enjoyed local tropical fruits. For those of you that know Piyusha well, you would know that it was like Christmas morning when they revealed we'd be tasking passion fruit that afternoon.

After leaving the Daintree, we made our way to Cape Tribulation... where James Cook came into Australia. It's also one of the very few places in the world where you can stand in both land and a marine life at the same time. Pretty cool stuff..

A random snake siting and what we thought was a croc turned out to be the cousin of the komodo dragon...

And finally... after all our attempts at getting close to a kangaroo, we finally finally got a close encounter with not just one, but TWO of them and got to feed them!

Soaring High Over Cairns..

One of the many things both of us have wanted to do was go sky diving... The rush of jumping out of a plane, while a mystery to some, sounded like a fantastic idea... the rush of aderaline... the wind on your face... possibly meeting a bird... Some of you might be shaking your head at us but as said in the previous blog... we went the exact opposite direction the day after scuba diving... up into the big blue sky!

After our "extensive" training on what was expected of us before, during and after the dive (this extensive training took all of 5 minutes), we were ready and pumped! Now, we know what you're thinking... Piyusha is going to completely have an anxiety attack and back out... or maybe even add another point to the injury count but ha! neither happened ;)

With the girl next to us providing comic relief (now she was completely freaking out), we both looked out as we made our climb up. At one point, Parimal asked his tandem diver if we were close to reaching the jump altitude (14,000 feet) and Max so casually said "No mate... we're only half way up"... oh boy...

At the last minute, it was decided that Piyusha would do a back flip out of the plane so she could give Parimal one "final" good-bye before jumping out. Imagine being stuck on the loop of a roller coaster over and over and over (and over) again... And then of course Parimal's "wooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" the entire way down... it just made for a fantastic 60 seconds of free falling over the rain forest, Great Barrier Reef and cutting through clouds.

Once the parachute was pulled, we floated down into an open sugar cane field.... And shockingly, unlike the girl that was relieved to be back on solid ground... we both wish the rush had just lasted longer.

One one more day left... :(

We found Nemo!... and a whole lot more!

Sadly.. this is the last city of our trip down under :( :( Luckily, it's filled with action packed adventures!!

We arrived at the fabulous Shangri La Hotel in Cairns... what a perfect view of the marina from our hotel balcony (again, go Parimal and his awesome hotel finding internet skills).

Day one in Cairns was spent with Ocean Freedom where we went SCUBA DIVING!! Not once... but TWICE! We decided to "hire" (the Aussie way of saying "rent") a fancy underwater camera to capture all our undersea adventures and you can feel like you were right there with us (yes, folks, we took 600+ pictures underwater alone... we filtered, don't worry).

Wet suits on? Check! Got our scuba gear? Check again! Ready to face the sharks? uhm... we'll see. Our diving guide was fantastic... On our first dive, we got to hold a star fish and saw clown fish (aka NEMO!!), a HUGE turtle and a bunch of manta rays and a gazillion fish and coral. It really is a different world down there. After a quick break for lunch, we signed up for the second dive in hopes to see a shark!

Our second dive was even more amazing since we were able to swim on our own. We did actually get to see a shark in its cave (turns out she's pregnant) and a huge manta ray! The manta ray was the size of 5 Parimals put together! Our boat guides were telling us that the ray and shark were buddies and you could always find them together...

Beyond finding Nemo again (they were just so cute!), we saw blue spotted rays this time around as well.. they look scary but thankfully they didn't sting Parimal (since he saw 2-3 of them together and actually started sinking since he was too cool to put a life jacket on). Piyusha also spotted an eel.... which slithered away before Parimal saw it.

When we returned our hired underwater camera, the store owner was pretty impressed that we managed to take 600 pictures in a matter of 4 hours... he obviously doesn't know how picture happy we can be :)

To leave a cliff hanger for our second day in Cairns... let's just say it was even more cool and in the opposite direction!

Cruisin' the Whitsundays

When we were planning our trip, we were told that "the Whitsundays is an absolute must." Unlike Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns, we really hadn't heard much about Airlie Beach or the Whitsundays. Of course, turning to Google, we came across pictures of beautiful beaches and knew it had to be added to our list.

Airlie Beach is completely a backpackers town.. random people bathing in the sun, with literally all their possessions laying right next to them (and a roll of toilet paper hanging off their bag) and just wandering along, waiting for their next adventure to stumble upon.

 When we were booking our shuttle to Airlie Beach from Mackay Airport, the email responses we got were "sorry... it's too late in the evening, we don't want to have to deal with kangaroo crossings... better if you just changed your flight." Now did we change our flight? Nope... we decided to rent a car and drive the 2 hours to Airlie Beach at 10:00 p.m. Let's see... after 15 minutes of trying to figure out how to exit the airport, we were on our way! Luckily, Parimal is a fantastic driver and knows how to get around the deers (all those years of driving in NY finally came in handy :) ). Despite driving through dense fog, stretches of road without any lights, we were doing great and kangaroo free! Parimal pointed out a baby kangaroo on the side of the road and then all of a sudden a larger (perhaps his big brother) kangaroo starts jumping across the road in front of us!!!  With a quick left and then right, we managed to avoid to the kangaroo and were safely back on the road... You'd think that'd be it but then about 15 minutes later, a large hawk comes swooping down on top of our car! These animals have a thing for headlights or something!

Moving onto actually being in Airlie Beach. Our adventure happened to be a jet ski tour around the Whitsunday Islands. With a quick "how to maneuver your jet ski" lesson and posing in our very sexy wet suits, we were off... Parimal tearing through the waves on a jet ski and Piyusha hanging on for dear life until she got used it.  At one point we got up to 54 mph (yes miles per hour) and we went for about 70-80 km on this adventure.

We stopped for a bit to check out some manta rays (similar to a sting ray, but doesn't sting :))... They were huge and they were attracted to the bottom of the skis since they were black as well.  Afterwards, we cruised over to a secluded beach where we jumped off our skis and did some snorkeling.  From there we continued on, attempted to find some whales, which unfortunately didn't happen, and made our way back to have some good eats. We also saw some cute baby kangaroo, at a distance, with none running in front of the bus (whew).

Seriously the smallest car ever!

We left Airlie Beach a little early so we could check out some of the stops we saw on the road back to Mackay Airport... such as the beach front view from the Holiday Village near the Laguna Quays Resort...

and the beautiful beach view from Midge Point....

As you can see, they were "must see" stops... we're surprised they aren't on TripAdvisor :)


Parimal was a regular Aussie on the left-side of the road and we made it back to Mackay Airport in one piece.


Off to Cairns... for some sun, fish, coral and a whole lot more!


Trip Count... no changes and healed knees!

Rollin' Down the River... In Brisbane

View from our hotel room

We heard a lot of mixed reviews about Brisbane... some loved it and wish they had a few more days there, others felt it was "eh, just another city"... We even heard "it's where all the Indians live." We figured it was worth at least one day before we headed north to the Whitesundays and Cairns.

Though we landed pretty late in the evening, we got lucky that our hotel was literally on the waterfront (go Parimal for having Marriott points!) We dumped our stuff and took a stroll along the river. It was such a nice walk... We stopped for a bite to eat at the Groove Train while we watched boats mosey on by.

The next morning, making sure we took advantage of our short time in Brisbane, we decided that taking the CityCat (basically a ferry that acts like a bus on the river) instead of the inner city bus was a better way to see the city. Parimal made friends with a turtle and Piyusha nearly got eaten by a 350 million year old dinosaur.

A must see for Piyusha was the collection of Valentine gowns at the Modern Art Museum... while Parimal decided his ticket money was better spent relaxing with a beer out on the patio :)

After strolling around the city (great shops and quick bites to eat!) and through the Botanic Gardens in Southbank, it was time to say good-bye to Brisbane... off to Airlie Beach we go!

Stay tuned to hear how Parimal's first time driving on the left side of the road goes!

The Outback

When we first decided to go to Australia, Parimal was set on venturing into the Outback, moreso, on the camping aspect of it. After compromising, Parimal wanted 5 and Piyusha wanted 1, we settled on a 2 day excusion that would cover all the highlights and include one night of camping.

So off we went... waking up at 3:00 a.m. to get a bus at 5:00 a.m. to venture out! The morning started off great... we saw a huge kangaroo, wild horses, a dingo and even wild camels (though not native to Australia, the only wild camel tribes lefts in the world are in Australia... there's your fun fact for the day). First stop, a hike in Kings Canyon. Now if you know Piyusha at all, you know she's not exactly the athletic type... so when faced with "Heartattack Hill", she wasn't exactly jumping for joy at the climb ahead of her. But she made it... huffing and puffing.. up and down hills and rocks.. liters of water later... and no injuries (!)... Parimal was relaxing, taking pictures at the top by the time Piyusha made it up. It was really beautiful as you can tell from the pictures. We also learned a lot on how the Aboriginal people lived off the land and their history.

After a 4.5 hour hike in Kings Canyon (seriously, up and down over rocks and hills), we drove out to Uluru (aka Ayers Rock). We managed to catch the sunset behind the massive rock... oh wait, that was "Fooluru" (Mt. Conner) which our tour guide told us most people initially think it's Uluru and well, just isn't. The camp site wasn't so bad... luckily we had permament tents to help with the -5C temperature and apaprently dingos like to steal shoes in the middle of the night so we managed to avoid that as well. The sky was beautiful... we could clearly see the Milky Way and other constellations.

Bright and early the next morning, we were off to the real Uluru to catch the sunrise! From there we got a chance to walk around "the big red rock".. another 3 hours... It was actually amazing to see the how the sand had hardened and formed this incredible massive rock in the middle of the Australia outback. Due to high winds, Parimal wasn't able to climb Uluru. Plus after hearing that the Anangu prefer that people don't climb the rock because it is sacred and dangerous, he was glad he didn't (though he really wanted to).

Just when you thought our hiking was done, we went to Kata Tjuta, a sacred site to the Aborginal men. They live a really simple way of life. You only know what you need to know... if you don't need to know it, then well they just don't tell you. So the men don't know what the women do and vice versa. We may save ourselves a lot of time, energy and drama if we lived by that motto but well that just wouldn't be that much fun wouldn't it?

After hiking, climbing, huffing and puffing up and down and all around (approximately 20 kms each), we made it back to Alice Springs. A hot shower later.. some interesting Asian food (Piyusha's luck with food continues in Australia as well)... we are ready to head back to the east coast and hopefully sunny weather!

Off to Brisbane!