Sydney Harbour Bridge

After our Essential Tour of the Sydney Opera House, Matt and I grabbed lunch alongside the Harbour before makin our trek across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We caught great views of the Harbour nd Opera House at sunset. Now we're waiting for the ferry at McMahons Point to take us back across for some more sightseeing. Here's to one last night in Sydney before we head back to the real world :o/

And to send us off on a good note, it hasn't rained today! :o)

Sydney Opera House

Matt and I saved the best stuff for last :o) We'll be taking a tour of the Sydney Opera House!

Darling Harbour

A view of the Harbourside in Darling Harbour. Today, Matt and I will be spending our day indoors and out of the rain at the Sydney Aquarium and Wildlife World.

We made it to Sydney!!!

Only one problem.... So did the rain! We are not going to let it ruin our visit though. We have our public transit pass (city rail and ferry) and we just bought our pass for the sky tower, wildlife world, and aquarium! We are currently waiting for the elevator to go back down to sea level from the sky tower.

On to Darling Harbour, where the Real World was typed, home of the Maritime Museum, and the Powerhouse Museum. Anyone else like history?

The flight was interesting here... First, there was a mechanical issue that needed to be fixed, then when the wheels came out before landing it sounded like the engine was failing, and last but not least some worker hurt himself while getting out bags out of the plane, which delayed us by 15 minutes at the baggage claim. The good thing was we made it to the hotel before the HUGE down-pour!

Thats the update, until next time! Cheers!

~Matthew

The East Coast, NZ

A photo of the East Coast at Shag Point.

It's our last night in New Zealand and it ended quite well. This morning started with a bummer with bad news from the Europcar Wellington folks, but ended splendidly with the hook up from the Europcar Christchurch ladies (from now on, we will be renting our vehicles from them). First, the ladies looked into our issue at wellington right away and got our damage fees removed after talking with the boss man, Nathan. Then they gave us a ride back to our hostel while telling us a few jokes/stories ('He must have little man syndrome').

Like Matt said, this country is amazing and we will definitely come back. Who's up for a trip? I'll go with you :o)

I am alive!!!

Well it is definitely true that New Zealand in the adventure sport capital of the world. The activities that we have done here are ridiculously crazy and many of you back home will not believe that I actually did them. As you can see from the picture below, I plummeted down a cliff yesterday which I have to say wasn't as bad as I thought.

The canyon swing was in Queenstown and we drove to Dunedin in the afternoon. Dunedin is a pretty large city and the buildings here are gorgeous. There is a lot of history here, which I am very interested in! I need to find my Starbucks, which I know is on George Street but I just need to drive down it and find the exact spot! The sheep are in massive amounts here in the South Island and we are going to have to get a picture of us next to some before we leave.

We are off to Christchurch to spend our last night in this beautiful country. If you haven't been to New Zealand, I recommend everyone to do so. This place makes you do things that are unimaginable. We are going to upload more photos tonight because tomorrow we will be in Sydney with a whole new array of photos to show.

I hope everyone is doing well! Stay tuned!

P.S. Maryann blogs from her phone in the car, as I focus an keeping the vechile on the left side of the road. So if I dont blog, please dont worry I am mostly likely still alive!

"even my shit was scared" - swing staff

well we made it out alive and now we are enjoying the famous queenstown fergburger!

Just so you know what Maryann made us do this morning, we jumped off a 109m cliff, with a 60m freefall, swinging in a 200m arc holding on for dear life. IT WAS THE MOST SCARIEST YET AMAZING THING WE HAVE DONE SINCE WE GOT HERE.

VIDEOS TO COME...

the view before the jump

In t-minus 5 minutes or so, Matt and I are plummeting down into the canyon overlooking the Shotover river. The sun is out today too... beautiful day to race down at 150kph and swinging for 200m.

As a precautionary, we skipped breakfast.

On the road again

Another photo taken as we drive further South to Queenstown. Today was our first gloomy, rainy day :o/ Matt and I shared the driving since it took about 6 hours to get to Queenstown, but that's probably because we took a lot of scenic detours.

As the tour guide extraordinaire and adrenaline junky, it's up to me to update you all on our trip with these random photos and blogs. Matt takes care of our nutrition needs (since I'm ridiculously horrible at remembering to eat), most of the driving, and he picks up the slack on the worrying too :op. Nonetheless, it's going to be hard for the both of us to leave this amazing country.

We got to Queentown a little too late to do the Canyon Swing today (bummer for the actual birthday) but we will be doing it tomorrow instead :o). The adrenaline rush from the Waitomo Caves adventure and Sky Swing in Rotorua has been wearing off, so we're due for another kick of adrenaline. We're still undecided as to what sort of style we're going to swing. Gimp Boy Goes To Hollywood? The Chair? 7 String Cutaway? The Osama Bin Laden? We'll find out tomorrow!

We'll (or I will) blog when we make it back from the canyon!

PS. what they say about sheep is bollocks! We haven't seen THAT many and I've seen more cows too!