Puerto Del Rey, Puerto Rico

Tomorrow marks another milestone of this "adventure of a lifetime."  We leave the Caribbean and re-enter the fickle and feisty North Atlantic.  We say Adios! to lush tropical islands and super warm water.  We start "heading back."  Well, technically, we've been heading back since Trinidad, but with orders to  Alameda now in hand, and the last major stock up stowed below until our return to the U.S. mainland, it really feels like the end of an era.

What a ride it's been! Especially since last post - so let's get caught up.  We had a great visit with our family.  We checked into an ocean front villa for the first few days to be closer to some of the sights and because Navigator is comfy for two, and a little tight for five for a whole week.  The condo was a big hit.  Kathy, Don, and Lynn enjoyed the view, private beach and infinity pool, and Chris and I enjoyed the air conditioning, freezer, shower and full size kitchen!  We even treated all to make your own ice cream sundaes…we can't even remember the last time we had an ice cream sundae, it was awesome.

We did a hike through El Yunque rainforest, trying some photography lessons in practice and admiring the waterfalls.  The next day we just lounged around the condo, enjoying the pool and beach and dodging squalls.  We took advantage of the beach for some fun night photography that yielded some amazing pictures.

Finally, it was time to leave the oasis, so we loaded up the cooler with frozen goodies and headed into Old San Juan for the day.  Being President's Day, we were treated to free admission to the forts, so that was a pleasant surprise.  After exploring both San Cristobal and El Morro, we ventured down through the colorful streets of San Juan Viejo and settled into a tapas restaurant for lunch.  We tried all matter of local delicacies and especially enjoyed the drinks and the paella. Kathy even ate spinach. Soon after, it was time to return the car, so we drove the marina and loaded up for the next phase of adventures.

The next morning we sailed over to Cayo Icacos and did some snorkeling.  We knew it was going to be a good trip when we spotted manatees in the marina as we were heading out.  Our timing on the reef could not have been better, we were in and out before the day boats showed up and Chris even found an octopus!  After lunch we scooted down to Isla Palominos for the night and enjoyed dinner on the boat and a raucous game of "Catch Phrase," a new Navigator favorite.

The rest of the week featured more snorkeling, lots of beach exploring, turtle spotting, starry nights (complete with constellation lessons by the celestial navigation expert himself) and of course much relaxing.  Our guests enjoyed the white sand beaches instead of the white snow covering their houses back home.  The goal for the week was to take one thousand pictures and we actually exceeded that!

The weather started to deteriorate as the tail of the front from winter storm "Rex" reached all the way down here, so we headed back to the marina for the last night and enjoyed a nice dinner ashore.  It was an early morning wake up today to make the airport departure and we were saddened that such an awesome week had come so quickly to a close.

Back on the boat, we checked the weather and made our grocery list, shifting back into cruising mode.  The weather looks good for a run to Turks and Caicos starting tomorrow and we're anticipating a four day journey.  From there, we island hop through the Bahamas and plan to be in Florida by the middle of April.  We are expecting few services, so we stocked up on lots of food, water and internet downloads to hold us over.  We plan to take full advantage of the last of the tropics, soaking up the sand, sun and exploring as many reefs as time allows.

It's a major phase change for us, not only to be on the move again, but to have to pay close attention to the weather for the first time in over a year, as we will be moving north, out of the reliable trade winds and back into frontal passages from the U.S. mainland.  We're excited for the upcoming leg of our journey, but it is bittersweet because it means we are that much closer to the end of the trip.

Vieques, Puerto Rico

After our busy Coast Guard week, we took a few days to check out some locations on Vieques, Palamino, and Lobos islands, which are just east of Puerto Rico.

We were in search of good snorkeling sites for our upcoming guests, and found a couple nice spots that should do the trick.

Vieques was a great spot, although since the trade winds were howling, we had a tough time making progress to the east…but when we finally got there, the bottom was covered with turtle grass and colorful starfish.

After we got back to mainland Puerto Rico, we did a quick trip into San Juan to check out the area, and look for a bakery that we had heard good things about.  Alas the bakery is closed, but walking around town was nice for the afternoon.

This week, we'll be touring eastern Puerto Rico and some of the Spanish Virgin Islands (or "Passage Islands" depending on who you ask) with our guests from up north!

Penciled In

It’s been an exciting week for us with regards to our return to the Coast Guard.  On Sunday, we rented a car and re-provisioned the boat for the week while we have easy access to all the shopping in Puerto Rico. We also found out where we will be living and working for the next several years.

On Monday, the fun started…we drove to San Juan and met with the Coast Guard Recruiter for Puerto Rico.  We had submitted a lot of our paperwork ahead of time, so thankfully all was in order and we only had a few minor items to take care of. 

While meeting with the recruiter, he told us that we were projected for a medical exam the very next day (we had been thinking it would be next week), and that he had booked us a room in San Juan for the night (a great surprise – free hot water and a real bed!).

So we trekked over to the hotel and got settled in.  We spent the entire night (until midnight) working on our electronic security clearance paperwork.  In the best of times, the online system is a real pain in the butt…for instance you have to provide all your personal information and write down where you lived for the past 10 years, along with the names, addresses, and phone numbers of people who knew you while you were there.  Ostensibly, this is so the intelligence people can make sure that you are not a spy or have too much debt or anything. 

The hard part for us was that they also ask if you’ve completed any foreign travel in the past 7 years.  This is to ensure that you haven’t been recruited by a foreign intelligence agency or anything.  However, as you can imagine, our passports are completely full, and entering the details and dates for over 30 countries that we’ve been to was a real joy!  But despite the pain, I wouldn’t change a thing – this has been an amazing journey.

At 0340 the next day, we met down in the hotel lobby with about 50 other recruits from all the different services.  It was crazy to imagine that some of them will be soldiers, sailors, marines, coasties, aviators…some will work on submarines, or fly in crazy aircraft, or jump out of those aircraft.  A great patriotic moment, however we were definitely the oldest people there! 

After a quick breakfast, we took a bus to the medical facility (we entered through the cargo entrance), and formed up into some lines.  Apparently the medical staff had heard about our special case, because they quickly picked us out and asked us how old we were.  Kellee stuttered, so I said “I’m 33 and she is 40.”  They were not amused. 

However, the medical exam was painless – for prior service personnel, we were able to move quickly through the exam stations: hearing, vision, height/weight, medical history, blood testing, urine testing, fingerprinting etc etc.  No new thing for us. 

So with the early start, we were actually out of there by noon!  Pretty easy.  We are on standby for the next couple weeks in case anything comes up or there are papers we need to sign, but otherwise we should be good to go for returning to the service…hooray!

As I mentioned earlier, we also found out our new assignments (a completely separate process, it just happened to occur during the same week). 

The Coast Guard officer assignment process can be tricky to navigate.  In a nutshell, the Coast Guard assignment officers in Arlington, Virginia, assign officers to jobs every 2-3 years in a kind of nebulous way. 

Although we are able to ask for jobs, we get assigned to jobs based on the needs of the service.  So although I would love to remain skipper of a patrol boat for the rest of my career, the Coast Guard needs to give that opportunity to other people as well, and since we’ve recently advanced, they need to give us the experiences of working managerial positions in the greater organization. 

From the assignment officer’s perspective, it is all about grooming Coast Guard senior officers…so by the time we reach 18-20 years of service, we should have experience in a variety of Coast Guard missions, have some geographic diversity in assignments, and have a proven record of exceptional service.

The first 10 years of our careers were based on building operational experience and getting a sense of how the organization works from the deckplate level.  Even still, Kellee and I lucked out with a few more awesome jobs than most people get.  For instance the typical sea to shore duty ratio after 10 years is 4 years at sea and 6 years ashore…however we average 7 years at sea and 3 years ashore…can’t complain!

But going into this sabbatical, we knew the tide was changing. As mid-grade officers going forward, we are expected to advance our education, serve in staff positions, and eventually command larger, major cutters….no more patrol boats!

So by disappearing on sabbatical, we were able to delay the inevitable staff job that we were both (over)due for.  Nevertheless, we were still nervous about what we were going to get or if we would even be together!

So we asked for staff positions in Seattle, San Francisco, Honolulu, Boston, and Washington DC based on trying to get a diversity of experience and location under our career belts for later.  We hoped for something on the west coast, but we were ready for anything they could throw at us. I think our quoted request to the assignment officers was “Please put us together in jobs that are useful and challenging, somewhere in the Pacific Area.” That all happened in August.  Then there was a long wait….

Office assignments are made top-down.  So all the Admirals get to find out where they are going in November. Then they can influence the decisions on everyone below them.  Captains find out around Christmas, and Commanders find out in early January.  Once they were all notified, it was our turn!  So we anxiously waited a phone call or email, while we simultaneously found out some of our friends were getting assigned to this or that billet. Some of our dream picks disappeared, so we were constantly talking about the likelihood of this or that job as the power balance changed.

Finally, this week the assignment officer emailed us to set up a call.  Being a “dual-military” situation, sometimes our case is even more challenging for the assignment officers – in our first 10 years, we were assigned together for 5, and apart for 5.  So we didn’t know what to expect, especially coming off our sabbatical…would we end up with bottom of the barrel jobs? Would we end up together or 12 hours apart? 

Eventually the phone call came and we held our breath.  We were both assigned to Pacific Area command staff, in Alameda, California, just like we hoped. 

The Virgin Islands Encore

Being back in the British and US Virgin Islands reminds us how great a place they are…as we worked our way westward to Fajardo, Puerto Rico, we spent a majority of our time underwater, diving on the wreck of the Rhone, and snorkeling on the reefs around Tortola, Norman, Sand, and Peter Islands

The VIs have easy sailing conditions, plentiful logistics like groceries and calm anchorages, and great underwater scenery - what more could you ask for?

We've been here a total of 4 times now, and it still doesn't get old.  We calculated that we've spent about a month of our lives in the BVI and determined that it was a month well spent.

But we quickly moved through the region and on Friday ensconced ourselves on the eastern shore of Puerto Rico for the next couple weeks.  Monday starts our USCG medical exam and paperwork, and next week we should also find out where we will be stationed for the next 2-4 years.  Lots of our top choices are already off the table, so it will be interesting to see what we end up with!

We also took advantage of the plentiful marine stores in the region to stock up on some fairly priced parts and consumables that we need for the next phase of our journey.

While diving near the Rhone, we spotted this Spotted Eagle Ray cruising beneath our boat. Pretty cool.  Adios for now!

Grenada to the Virgin Islands

We arrived today at Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda, after a 4 day passage from Grenada this week.  We had been waiting for a good weather window to make the crossing of the Caribbean, and we departed Tuesday with a favorable forecast of ENE winds of about 20 knots, diminishing over the week. 

Our first night was a little rough since the waves from last weeks winds were still present, and the winds were still diminishing a bit from 20-25 down to 15-20, so we got pretty wet with the weather on the beam the whole trip.  

However the rest of the trip was nice, still a bit rolly and rough, but the winds were for the most part steady and squall-free, so we made excellent time, arriving 12 hours sooner than we anticipated.  So we just cleared customs in the British Virgin Islands and are drying out all our clothes and rain gear from the wet crossing, before we head out for more adventuring tomorrow.  

It was pretty strange making the 4 day crossing…we didn't see any of the islands, but we were only about 100 miles offshore from all of the islands we visited in 2013 on our way south…we covered in 4 days what it took us 5 months to do last year!  However its great to be back in the BVI…we have a week to make it to Puerto Rico for our Coast Guard physicals, so we'll check out some of our favorite spots in the British, US and Spanish Virgin Islands on our way west.  

Goodbye Grenada

 We're wrapping up our month-long stop in Grenada this week, and our "capstone" event was a visit by Leah and Rob who departed the frigid USA and met us in Grenada for a week of sun and fun.

To stage for their arrival, we positioned the boat on the south coast of Grenada in Clarke's Court Bay and then Phare Bleu Bay. However along the way we discovered a problem with our anchor windlass, the device used to retrieve our heavy anchor from the bottom.  It kept slipping, so we had to recover the anchor and chain by hand, and then immediately set to fixing the windlass. After two days of man-handling the beast off the deck and prying apart 30 year old seals and clutches, we discovered pretty much everything in working order with no obviously broken parts, so we simply cleaned and lubricated everything, tightened it all the best we could, and put it back in place…it was quite a project and it now works well, so whatever magic we performed must have been sufficient.  We'll hope the gremlin does not re-appear.

 With the boat as far east as possible, once Leah and Rob arrived we did some island exploring, including the very impressive Mt. Carmel falls, the highest on the island.  Since we've been having so much rain, the falls were really falling, and the water actually hurt as you got close to the base of the falls.  Unfortunately the rain also made the trail very muddy, so we ended the hike pretty "soiled."

After a bit of relaxing in the southern portion of the island we headed out into a nasty sea (the trade winds have been kicking lately), but thankfully most of the sailing was downwind and we just had to watch for the occasional reef or breaking wave to avoid.  But eventually we brought Navigator around to the western portion of the island and the more protected bay of St. George's.

There, we did some exploring of the city, some snorkeling at the famous underwater sculpture park, and some Hobie Cat speed racing along the beautiful Grande Anse beach. Along the way Rob discovered a love of passionfruit juice and Kellee found a new puzzle game for the ipad that will keep us occupied on the long sea voyage ahead!

All too soon, the last sunset happened and our friends headed out to the airport early this morning to head back to reality…which is crazy for us, because we're kind of doing the same thing, just on a slightly longer timescale.  We should be learning our new duty station within a few weeks, and then our plans will fall into place for the return voyage and our ultimate destination.  Time flies!

Clarkes Court Bay, Grenada

Happy Holidays everyone!
We made it to Grenada with a pleasantly surprising overnight sail.  Neither of us got much sleep after being keyed up for the first trip in over 6 months, but the wind was steady, the waves relatively calm and traffic light.  There had been some recent pirate attacks off of Venezuela, so we kept a "weather eye on the horizon" but luckily didn't see any nefarious ne'er-do-wells and were in the company of several other cruisers making the passage.  Once we arrived, we went straight to the captiol city of St. George and settled in for a week.

Kellee has been preparing for her Padi dive instructor class and spent her days at the dive shop going through the course.  It went well, she is now an emergency first response instructor and plans to take her instructor examination in Florida.  She would've liked to do it here, but Padi sends someone from California to do the testing and it wasn't worth it for them for just two candidates, so she'll keep studying and hope that goes well!

Chris put the boat to rights.  We left Trini with the minimum done, so he spent the week catching up on projects, doing some shopping and enjoying the pool!  After the week, we were ready to have some fun, so we headed up the coast a bit to a marine park mooring with plans for diving the next day.

 Little did we know that "typhoon Rudolph" was going to wreak havoc over Grenada on Christmas Eve.  The weather forecast had no indication of a big thunderstorm that lasted all night.  We pitched and rolled and had to re-secure some of our deck gear, but the mooring thankfully held.  Around 4 in the morning, Chris saw a couple of red flares go up and we tried calling the Coast Guard.  We couldn't hail them on the radio, but finally got through on 911.  The next morning, the water was very murky and still rolly, so we abadoned our plans and headed for calmer anchorage.  As we passed the next bay, we saw a sailboat on the rocks with her crew onshore.  We called 911 again just to make sure they had responded and were happy to see a Grenadian Coast Guard boat pass us about an hour later.  Some locals described the storm as bad as feeling their house was going to shake apart, like an earthquake.

Once we got into Clarkes Court Bay (historically important for the rum trade), we spent Christmas sleeping and talking to family.  It wasn't really a typhoon, and we named it in the Christmas Eve spirit, but it was definitely memorable.  Since then, we've been in cruiser chill mode.  Reading, working on fun projects like Kellee's quilt and Chris' videos and trying to get back in shape doing swimming and stretching.  Despite being active people, our land touring made us soft!  We're also getting excited for our upcoming visits from the Coles and Berubes and planning our route north through the Bahamas.  It's hard to believe we're on glide-slope now and we are anxious for the email to come through with our new job assignments.

We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and look forward to a Happy New Year!

Chaguaramas, Trinidad

Back on the boat. Great feeling.

Our 6-month, round-the-world "Eurafricoz" trip is in the books, and we flew from Cairns, Australia to Port of Spain, Trinidad with a short 4 day stop in Honolulu to visit Tom, who hooked us up with an awesome room at the "Modern" hotel in Waikiki.  During the stop, we were able to visit with some great friends, do some shopping at reasonable prices in the USA, get our mail, and generally get situated for the mental transition back to Navigator.

Unfortunately, the 10 time-zones and 160 degrees of longitude that we crossed have our internal clocks messed up pretty well. But that's ok!

Upon arrival, we found Navigator right where we left her, just a lot dirtier.  After 6 months sitting in a dirt lot next to a highway, she needed some TLC.  So we spent the last 4 days getting ready to launch…painting the bottom, varnishing the teak, washing the hull and deck, hoisting sails, servicing the engine, stowing our gear, and generally getting her ship-shape.

Tomorrow afternoon we launch Navigator.  We'll spend a couple days getting situated, and then when weather, equipment and tide permits, we'll sail for Grenada.  Kellee is signed up for a Dive Instructor class in Grenada (through PADI) next week, which will be an awesome experience and qualification, and Chris will spend the week knocking off a few minor maintenance items (for instance, the starboard cabin fan or the starboard cabin light will work - but not both), and also working on his YouTube Navigation Training videos (links above).

Beyond that, we're excited to have some visitors coming to Grenada after the New Year…after which we set sail for the Greater Antilles and start the long voyage back to New England.

Interlude Post 13 (and final) from Cairns, Australia

Happy late Thanksgiving everyone! We have established a reputation for spending turkey day on adventures, and this year was no exception.  We did get some roast chicken, but as Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Oz, we spent most of the day underwater!  We met many new creatures, but Wally the giant Maori Wrasse is our new friend.  He followed us like a puppy and LOVED to have his lips rubbed as he swam by you.  Our night dives were full of grey reef sharks, quite the eerie experience but totally awesome!  Saw some nudibranchs (brightly patterned slug like creatures, tons of fish, a giant cuttlefish (I'm pretty sure he was smarter than us) and turtles, but the coral was very cool, mostly hard corals, and very bright colors.

We spent two nights on a ship out on the reef and three days diving.  By the time we got back, we were exhausted but deliriously happy.  That was our last big adventure in Australia, in a couple of days we fly to Hawaii to see Kellee's brother for a few days and then on to Trinidad and finally back to Navigator!  Spending time on the water lately has made us really miss her and we're excited to get back.

Backing up, we put some serious kilometers on the car working our way back towards Sydney then took a break for a few days in Coolum Beach, a sleepy beach town near Noosa Heads and just enjoyed the sun and sand for a couple of days.  The water was a nice temperature, but lots of nasty looking jellyfish washing up on shore kept us on the beach for most of the visit.  It rained in the afternoon, which would become the common theme for the rest of our camping vacation.

We worked our way north along the coast, with a stop in Airlie Beach, gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, which if you didn't know any better, you'd think you were in the British Virgin Islands.  We did a day sail with some snorkeling, which also made us miss Navigator and we enjoyed the day, but it did rain...every day.

North from there we found another sleepy beach town, Mission Beach, and holed up for a couple of days relaxing by the pool, watching the kangaroos in the camp (one night on my way back from the loo, I got surprised by one crossing right in front of me...totally fearless, but about my height!) and looking for cassowary.  A cassowary is a bird like an ostrich or emu, but more aggressive.  The bathrooms had signs reading: "If you see a cassowary, do NOT run! Back away slowly and put a tree between yourself and the bird, and continue slowly backing away"  Awesome.  We started a list of all the ways you could die in Australia, here are some of our favorites:

-Sting from jellyfish (some jellyfish are so small you can't see it).
-Cassowary head butting you or eating your face.
-Gum tree falling on your tent (they drop perfectly healthy looking heavy limbs randomly, in calm wind).
-Kangaroo jumping in front of your car.
-Crocodile lurking in the river bed along your hike.
-One of the ten most poisonous snakes in the world crawling in your tent.
-Attack by Titan Triggerfish.
The list goes on, but I digress.

From Mission Beach we passed through Cairns and continued north in the Daintree National Park rainforest to the end of the paved road in Cape Tribulation, so named from Captain Cook after he ran aground near there on the Great Barrier Reef and his "troubles" started.  We spent a night on the beach, again in the rain.  Went for a nice walk in the morning and drove back south...we did finally see a cassowary here in the rainforest, but safely viewed from the car.  Our walk on the beach showed signs for killer crocs and jelly fish, and there were vinegar bottles on the beach in case of stings...only in Australia!

The final campsite was in the heart of the rainforest outside of Cairns and boy did it rain.  We escaped to the movies for awhile and enjoyed the new Hunger Games flick with popcorn for dinner.  The mornings were nice and sunny, and then (finally!) we got a sunny day and spent it at the pool.  Then it was time for our dive trip, definitely a highlight of this trip and something we are very glad we did.  The live-aboard boat was the way to go, nice and chill and not that crowded and lots and lots of time in the water!

So now we're back, we gave our camping gear to one of the dive instructors and are happy that our tent which we've called home for the last 6 months has gone to a good owner and now we have all of our stuff strewn around a hotel room for the final packing.  We have enjoyed our time in Oz and during all of "Eur-Afric-Oz" but we are excited to see Tom and get back to Navigator for the final leg of our sabbatical adventure.

Interlude Post 12 from Alice Springs, Australia

Greetings from Alice Springs, in the middle of the outback of Australia!

We are having quite the adventure here in the desert (and deserted) red center of Oz.  We took a
comfortable, scenic, overnight train, the "Ghan", from the south coast city of Adelaide and arrived in Alice Springs a couple of days ago.

Today we take the same train back south and pick back up our car to then drive back to the east coast and make our way to the Great Barrier Reef area.

We left Adelaide and pleasant 15 degrees C (about 60 F) and arrived in Alice in a sweltering 40 degrees C (about 105 F), but it's such a dry heat here that you don't sweat and you need to drink fluids all day.  We checked into our campground and promptly jumped in the pool to cool down.  We hit the rack early since the next morning our tour guides Mic and Calvin from Emu Run tours were picking us up at the ungodly hour of 0540.  They plied us with funny anecdotal stories about the bush flora, fauna and history as we drove over three hours south of Alice to Uluru, previously known as Ayers Rock, er, "the big red rock".  They told us to keep an eye out for the feral camels roaming the bush, but we didn't see any...just the yellow road sign depicting a camel....that was a first.

We visited several sites of geological and Aboriginal cultural significance throughout the day, and even got a couple of short walkabouts in around the national park, learning why Uluru is so important to the indigenous culture and some of the folktales associated with the massive monolith.  We wrapped up the day with a barbecue as we watched the changing colors of Uluru as the sun set over our shoulder.  It was a great fun day, but the drive was long and we didn't get back to the tent until almost 1 am.

The next morning we had booked another tour with the same company to see the West MacDonnell Ranges, a desert mountain chain of great natural beauty.  Since the day was so hot, we limited our walkabouts, but learned more about the Aboriginal culture and natural history of the area and even got to cool off at a local watering hole.  It's quite a hike to Alice Springs and the Uluru area, but we were really glad we made the excursion.  Most of our tour mates had flown in, but taking the train allowed us to see a lot of the interior....miles and miles of bush country speckled with free ranging cattle stations.  We also crossed the Finke River...the oldest river in the world, that hardly ever runs with water above ground and begins and ends in a desert.  Alice is a unique place...they actually have a river boat race in a dry river...they cut the bottom out of the boats and run through the sand, we didn't get to see it, but it sounds like the folks in this extremely isolated desert town are much more creative with their free time than finding kangaroo tails to pull or cows to tip over.

Before our excursion, we had spent our week or so since arrival in Australia working our way from Sydney down the east (wilderness) coast and across the south.  We spent most nights in national parks, and took a ferry to Kangaroo Island, which being isolated from the mainland allowed for some cool wildlife.

We caught glimpses of little penguins, the smallest of the 30 odd species of waddlers, and just as funny to watch as you would think, plus koalas sleeping in the trees, they spend 20 hours a day sleeping to conserve energy...Kellee found herself wishing she was a koala.  We also saw Australian sea lions and fur seals sunning on the beach, kangaroos hopping along, wallaby, and our personal favorite, the wombat.  These furry creatures look like miniature bears and were just roaming around one of the campgrounds we stayed at in the southern most, a reserved wilderness area of Oz known as Wilson's Promontory.  It was quite chilly there, but the wombats and birds were awesome.  We even had to slow on the road for passing Emu (ostrich looking giant birds).

We have been surprised by a couple of large lizards, and almost ran over a 4 foot red bellied black snake, which the ranger told us was venomous but shy, and told us we really needed to watch out for the brown snake, which will chase you....we were especially cautious on our hike the next morning, but thankfully had no unwelcome reptile encounters.  Oz is full of venomous creatures, we've had to make notes for where we'll have to watch out for paralytic box jellyfish, and are very careful when we hike to watch for snakes, lizards, spiders and scorpions.  We had a giant beetle sneak into our tour bus, but the guide took a good look and exclaimed, "not poisonous!" and turned back around to watch the road for suicidal kangaroos....a much bigger threat.

The Great Ocean Road winds along the south coast of the state of Victoria and though the day was grey and windy, the sandstone stack formations on the coast were spectacular.  We camped by Bells Beach, world renowned for the Ripcurl surf contest held here.  It's understandable why Ripcurl started as a wetsuit company here, the water is cold!

Melbourne was a pretty city that we only stayed for lunch, but would've enjoyed more time exploring the alleyways and city gardens.  We did a short Sydney visit as we had both been before, got some pictures of the iconic Opera House and took a harbor ferry to the Taronga Zoo...before we knew how much of the local wildlife we would see on our adventures.  We also hit up the bookstore for a good road atlas and were confronted with the largest travel section of any bookstore we've ever been in...which, knowing how much we like bookstores, is really saying something.  Aussies like exploring, that's for sure.

Except for driving on the left side of the road, and the kangaroo crossing signs on the highways, you could easily be in America.  All the fast food chains are here, and we embarrassingly have fallen in love with the local mom and pop stores that sell "chicken and chips" which is some delicious variation of fried or charcoal roasted chicken...and chicken salted french fries....chicken salt?! Yep...delicious.  We also loved the thickshakes at Cheeseworld...yes, I know, we only stopped for the reviewed milkshakes, but you must order THICKshake, otherwise, you get...milk.  Learned that lesson the hard way.

After a couple days of driving through farmland to get us back to Sydney, we'll start slowly working our way up the Gold Coast for some surfing and into the hopping off points for the Great Barrier Reef, where we'll get out on the water as much as our time left will allow.  We're dubbing it "operation get tan" as our land adventures have robbed us of our golden complexions and we need a base layer before we get back to the unrelenting sun in the Caribbean.