Everybody move to NZ!!
This country seems only after one week amazing, definitely the best of anything we have seen so far. Landscape is awesome, people are nice and theres a billion things to do here. We will come back, no question about it =)
So, today er are going to the airport of Auckland and head towards Santiago de Chile. We have finally made a decision how to get our asses to Rio since i bought a tracel guide about Patagonia. So there we will head, although according to someone (..) its not america latina enough ;)
But my time is running out, so thats it folks for now!
M&B
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Cairns
Moromoro,
Here we are in Cairns safe and sound. We took back the campervan today and tomorrow we have flight to Melbourne where we are spending few days before going to New Zealand for a week. Driving to north along the coast has been great fun, and against all odds not at all too rainy. Lucy i admit that here in Cairns and down in Townsville it has been raining, but we were waiting the highway to open in Airlie Beach where the weather was more or less ok. And yepyep, the highway from Townsville to Cairns seems to be still closed due to all the rain and floods, but we did yesterday the strongly NON-recommendabe inland drive to get here. The road was two-way but one lane, but we were lucky enough that it wasnt raining too much so we saw early enough when a road train (truck with three trailers, scary...) was coming. so that we pulled over to dirt to let them pass. Interesting 10 hours of driving :)
We also finally saw the Great Barrier Reef, although our trip was cancedde twice due to rough wind. But once we finally made it there it was definitely rewarding. i could have been snorkelling for more than the three hours and look at the fish in all possible rainbow colors, lovely!
And also another awesome thign we did was in Mon Repos Beach where we saw sea turtles hatching, emerging up from the sand and running down the beach towards the sea and the waves. Incredible! It just hurt me to know that out of the 150 turtles we saw only one if any make it until htey are 30 and come back to the beach to lay the eggs - if they are females that is. The males never come back to the shore, they just spend all their lives swimming in the ocean and looking at all the fish in all possible rainbow colors - would be nice ;)
But honestly i will (one day) put here some pictures, we have plenty of them. The Australian part has been lovaly, cant wait to get to South America.
kisses to you all!
Here we are in Cairns safe and sound. We took back the campervan today and tomorrow we have flight to Melbourne where we are spending few days before going to New Zealand for a week. Driving to north along the coast has been great fun, and against all odds not at all too rainy. Lucy i admit that here in Cairns and down in Townsville it has been raining, but we were waiting the highway to open in Airlie Beach where the weather was more or less ok. And yepyep, the highway from Townsville to Cairns seems to be still closed due to all the rain and floods, but we did yesterday the strongly NON-recommendabe inland drive to get here. The road was two-way but one lane, but we were lucky enough that it wasnt raining too much so we saw early enough when a road train (truck with three trailers, scary...) was coming. so that we pulled over to dirt to let them pass. Interesting 10 hours of driving :)
We also finally saw the Great Barrier Reef, although our trip was cancedde twice due to rough wind. But once we finally made it there it was definitely rewarding. i could have been snorkelling for more than the three hours and look at the fish in all possible rainbow colors, lovely!
And also another awesome thign we did was in Mon Repos Beach where we saw sea turtles hatching, emerging up from the sand and running down the beach towards the sea and the waves. Incredible! It just hurt me to know that out of the 150 turtles we saw only one if any make it until htey are 30 and come back to the beach to lay the eggs - if they are females that is. The males never come back to the shore, they just spend all their lives swimming in the ocean and looking at all the fish in all possible rainbow colors - would be nice ;)
But honestly i will (one day) put here some pictures, we have plenty of them. The Australian part has been lovaly, cant wait to get to South America.
kisses to you all!
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
hippiecamper @ east coast Australia
Hei all love ones!
Sorry for not writin here at all for a long time, but time somehow goes so fast and the internet caefs here in Australia are shitty expensive. And theres always something else to do or take care of when sitting next to a compu.
But so far our trip here in Oz has been just success. We have been now driving up the coast for a bit less than two weeks, and we still have one and half weeks time to get to Cairns. Mostly we have been driving on the little roads, staring at the sub tropical rainforests, spotting kangaroos and enjoying the lovely sea so far without jellyfish. That jellyfish part will start soon though, and after that it will be only admiring the sea wihout actually swimming in it..
Before getting here to Rainbow beach we spent three nights in Brisbane with Jaclyn and Jordy, thanks for the accommodation guys <3 Lovely city - if you end up everf going there then visit the Gallery of Modern Art. Awesome place! We did one-day hike to rainforest with Jac and Jordy and it was nice - amazing huge trees! And the leeches (iilimadot) attaced us just in the end of the hike so it was more that nice.
Today later we will go kayaking in the see hopefully with dolphins (they didnt have guarantee to see them though..) and we are concidering to go to the Fraser Island, but since its one huge sand dune we are not allowed go there with our van, but have to hire a four-wheel-dride.. And like everything else here its shitty expensive and smells a bit like tourist trap.. But lets see what we end up doing...
Maybe tomorrow (or some other day) i will put here some photos for you.. Big hugggggs to everyone from the sunny Australia <3
M&B
Sorry for not writin here at all for a long time, but time somehow goes so fast and the internet caefs here in Australia are shitty expensive. And theres always something else to do or take care of when sitting next to a compu.
But so far our trip here in Oz has been just success. We have been now driving up the coast for a bit less than two weeks, and we still have one and half weeks time to get to Cairns. Mostly we have been driving on the little roads, staring at the sub tropical rainforests, spotting kangaroos and enjoying the lovely sea so far without jellyfish. That jellyfish part will start soon though, and after that it will be only admiring the sea wihout actually swimming in it..
Before getting here to Rainbow beach we spent three nights in Brisbane with Jaclyn and Jordy, thanks for the accommodation guys <3 Lovely city - if you end up everf going there then visit the Gallery of Modern Art. Awesome place! We did one-day hike to rainforest with Jac and Jordy and it was nice - amazing huge trees! And the leeches (iilimadot) attaced us just in the end of the hike so it was more that nice.
Today later we will go kayaking in the see hopefully with dolphins (they didnt have guarantee to see them though..) and we are concidering to go to the Fraser Island, but since its one huge sand dune we are not allowed go there with our van, but have to hire a four-wheel-dride.. And like everything else here its shitty expensive and smells a bit like tourist trap.. But lets see what we end up doing...
Maybe tomorrow (or some other day) i will put here some photos for you.. Big hugggggs to everyone from the sunny Australia <3
M&B
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Sydney and Blue Mountains
Heippa all,
Greetings from Austalia, this will be just a quick posting telling you that we have landed to Australia safe and sound. We have spent few days now in Sydney and now we will head towards Blue Mountains for one-two nights. On Friday we will get our camper van and then the road trip to hot and rainy north (thats what we have heard atleast) will start.
Big hugs to yo u all and ill put some photos maybe later. Now we will check out of the hostel and cath a bus!
M&B
Greetings from Austalia, this will be just a quick posting telling you that we have landed to Australia safe and sound. We have spent few days now in Sydney and now we will head towards Blue Mountains for one-two nights. On Friday we will get our camper van and then the road trip to hot and rainy north (thats what we have heard atleast) will start.
Big hugs to yo u all and ill put some photos maybe later. Now we will check out of the hostel and cath a bus!
M&B
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Hong Kong
Greetings from Hong Kong!
We have been here now two full days and the city seems to be quite something different that im used to. Its huge, crowed, high, noisy and hot. But at the same time very nice! We have been eating every day some strange who knows what food, but tasty anyhow.
Yesterday we spent the whole day just walking around the city, and today aswell. Now i know how the chinese tourists must feel like in Finland when they stop in the middle of the road to take some pictures from the most normal looking houses. Well, been there done that ;o)
Tomorrow we might catch a boat to go and visit some of the islands here close by, but lets see. Although there is a lot of people here then still the nature seems to be quite close. Here in the end i put some of the tourist pistures for you to see =) Ans day after tomorrow well have a flight to Sydney, here we come!
*hugs* to you all <3
PS. By the way all these pictures came by total random since this computer is working on chinese and i dont know how to have the preview pictures from here, hehe! And some of them are on the side since i dont know how to turn them =D
We have been here now two full days and the city seems to be quite something different that im used to. Its huge, crowed, high, noisy and hot. But at the same time very nice! We have been eating every day some strange who knows what food, but tasty anyhow.
Yesterday we spent the whole day just walking around the city, and today aswell. Now i know how the chinese tourists must feel like in Finland when they stop in the middle of the road to take some pictures from the most normal looking houses. Well, been there done that ;o)
Tomorrow we might catch a boat to go and visit some of the islands here close by, but lets see. Although there is a lot of people here then still the nature seems to be quite close. Here in the end i put some of the tourist pistures for you to see =) Ans day after tomorrow well have a flight to Sydney, here we come!
*hugs* to you all <3
PS. By the way all these pictures came by total random since this computer is working on chinese and i dont know how to have the preview pictures from here, hehe! And some of them are on the side since i dont know how to turn them =D
 |
| stuffi market |
 |
| some temple in the middle of all the sky scrapers |
 |
| Fish market with living fish in the buckets |
 |
| funny two-storey trams in in the Hong Kong island |
 |
| view from the hong kong peak. Unfortunately the air it totally smoggy although the sun was shining. The view could have been something else on a clear weather (which might nit be happening so often..) |
Thursday, January 27, 2011
We have the flights!
Jeejee!
Hello world, here we come =) After fighting six weeks we managed to buy the flights today. Before telling what we bought and from where, im gonna tell you what NOT to buy and from where.
We started searching the RoundTheWorld flights after Christmas when we were in Finland. Finnair was the first one responding with some kind travel plan and prizes (which was going to be 700e more expensive in the end) so we decided to go on with them. What a mistake! Dont EVER buy RTW-flights from the flying companies directly since they have absolutely no experience how to build them up. Better stick with travel agencies who have no preferences to flying companies and their only job is to find you the best connections, which they do really well.
Well, we thought that since Finnair is part of the OneWorld stuff they must have some nice connections and nice prizing - and techically they do but in practice we were forced to add one continent more to our destinations since they wanted us to have one long-haul connection with Finnair, and that was New York - Helsinki. Why not to go to New York for few days, except adding one continent in the list increased the prize with 500e... Huhhuhh...
Maybe the biggest problem with Finnair was that all the emails we sent, went to the customer care center queue, and in total there was five persons trying to arrange the flights for us. And if you wanted to call to the person and talk about the modifications we wanted, you could call to the call center and from there they absolutely couldnt connect you to the person you wanted to reach. So the people working there trying to arrange the flights have no phone numbers and no personal emails. Thats what they call a good customer care - my ass... With this fancy system we spent four weeks trying to get the destinations and times and prices so that they were ok.
The last drop maybe was that we wanted to fly from Auckland to Santiago de Chile before Rio, and one of the ladies had mixed up SCL with SLC, and suddenly after the tickets were payed, and we saw for the first time the names of the aeroports written open, we noticed that we had a flight from Auckland to Santiago and the next one from Salt Lake City to Rio! We immediately sent an email to the lady telling the mistake (of course not possible to call) and she said that "iiiiits oukei, the codes are just similar (SCL versus SLC) but that our flights are ok". Well, hell no! And then when she finally called us and understood the problem she "corrected" it by making the flights Auckland-Salt Lake City-Rio!
After making all the corrections when we were ready to pay, the credit card company didnt want to accept the second payment done by Finnair, since the pay limit for one day was over already due to the one round of cancelled payment. At this point we decided NOT to take the flights from Finnair and thats it! And this was two days ago..
Some people buy their RTW flights months in advance, we now barely bought them in days advance =) First we contacted Travel Nation and they responded immediately giving personal emails and phone numbers. The girl found nice connections in less than one hour, but the only problem was that we should have had to start our journey from London. And with all this other hassle we decided to contact Kilroy and ask from them. We called there this morning and four hours later we bought the flights - with normal bank transfer and not with Visa =) And this is how they look like:
7.2. Helsinki - London - HongKong (arrive 8th)
12.2. Hongkong - Sydney
14.3. Cairns - Melbourne
17.3. Melbourne - Auckland
24.3. Auckland - Santiago de Chile
5.5. Rio - London - Helsinki (arrive 6th)
The idea is that we will travel in Australia during one month from south to north - from Sydney to Cairns. And during the other month in South America we will travel from west to east - from Santiago to Rio. If someone has some nice travel tips or other must see -things where we should stop during our way then we are definitely interested =)
And finally since the time went so tight, thanks to bloody Finnair, the tickets stopping in Bahrain and Taipei ended up being super expensive. Sorry Sonia and Rheda - we will come and see you latest when you have built up youre house in Tunisia or before that in Paris =) And Jeff, Alissa and the girls - you all we luckily met just at the new year =)
So thats all folks. We have our flights from Paris to Helsinki booked (already before the actual RTW-flights) for next wednesday the 2nd. Due to the travel insurance stuff we have to start our journey from Finland but thats ookoo - then we might have time to see some of you all there.
Now my travel fever is finally rising a bit - or is it the normal fever since i have horrible flu, dont know.. In the middle of the worst circus when arranging the flights we really thought that we should maybe stay just at home. That maybe someone was trying to tell us something. But luckily we didnt give up and le Tour du Monde is about to begin, at last =)
*bisou*
Hello world, here we come =) After fighting six weeks we managed to buy the flights today. Before telling what we bought and from where, im gonna tell you what NOT to buy and from where.
We started searching the RoundTheWorld flights after Christmas when we were in Finland. Finnair was the first one responding with some kind travel plan and prizes (which was going to be 700e more expensive in the end) so we decided to go on with them. What a mistake! Dont EVER buy RTW-flights from the flying companies directly since they have absolutely no experience how to build them up. Better stick with travel agencies who have no preferences to flying companies and their only job is to find you the best connections, which they do really well.
Well, we thought that since Finnair is part of the OneWorld stuff they must have some nice connections and nice prizing - and techically they do but in practice we were forced to add one continent more to our destinations since they wanted us to have one long-haul connection with Finnair, and that was New York - Helsinki. Why not to go to New York for few days, except adding one continent in the list increased the prize with 500e... Huhhuhh...
Maybe the biggest problem with Finnair was that all the emails we sent, went to the customer care center queue, and in total there was five persons trying to arrange the flights for us. And if you wanted to call to the person and talk about the modifications we wanted, you could call to the call center and from there they absolutely couldnt connect you to the person you wanted to reach. So the people working there trying to arrange the flights have no phone numbers and no personal emails. Thats what they call a good customer care - my ass... With this fancy system we spent four weeks trying to get the destinations and times and prices so that they were ok.
The last drop maybe was that we wanted to fly from Auckland to Santiago de Chile before Rio, and one of the ladies had mixed up SCL with SLC, and suddenly after the tickets were payed, and we saw for the first time the names of the aeroports written open, we noticed that we had a flight from Auckland to Santiago and the next one from Salt Lake City to Rio! We immediately sent an email to the lady telling the mistake (of course not possible to call) and she said that "iiiiits oukei, the codes are just similar (SCL versus SLC) but that our flights are ok". Well, hell no! And then when she finally called us and understood the problem she "corrected" it by making the flights Auckland-Salt Lake City-Rio!
After making all the corrections when we were ready to pay, the credit card company didnt want to accept the second payment done by Finnair, since the pay limit for one day was over already due to the one round of cancelled payment. At this point we decided NOT to take the flights from Finnair and thats it! And this was two days ago..
Some people buy their RTW flights months in advance, we now barely bought them in days advance =) First we contacted Travel Nation and they responded immediately giving personal emails and phone numbers. The girl found nice connections in less than one hour, but the only problem was that we should have had to start our journey from London. And with all this other hassle we decided to contact Kilroy and ask from them. We called there this morning and four hours later we bought the flights - with normal bank transfer and not with Visa =) And this is how they look like:
7.2. Helsinki - London - HongKong (arrive 8th)
12.2. Hongkong - Sydney
14.3. Cairns - Melbourne
17.3. Melbourne - Auckland
24.3. Auckland - Santiago de Chile
5.5. Rio - London - Helsinki (arrive 6th)
The idea is that we will travel in Australia during one month from south to north - from Sydney to Cairns. And during the other month in South America we will travel from west to east - from Santiago to Rio. If someone has some nice travel tips or other must see -things where we should stop during our way then we are definitely interested =)
And finally since the time went so tight, thanks to bloody Finnair, the tickets stopping in Bahrain and Taipei ended up being super expensive. Sorry Sonia and Rheda - we will come and see you latest when you have built up youre house in Tunisia or before that in Paris =) And Jeff, Alissa and the girls - you all we luckily met just at the new year =)
So thats all folks. We have our flights from Paris to Helsinki booked (already before the actual RTW-flights) for next wednesday the 2nd. Due to the travel insurance stuff we have to start our journey from Finland but thats ookoo - then we might have time to see some of you all there.
Now my travel fever is finally rising a bit - or is it the normal fever since i have horrible flu, dont know.. In the middle of the worst circus when arranging the flights we really thought that we should maybe stay just at home. That maybe someone was trying to tell us something. But luckily we didnt give up and le Tour du Monde is about to begin, at last =)
*bisou*
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Voie Vert
Heippa all,
Quite some time has passed and no texts have appeared on the blog. From one simple reason - we havent beer traveling anywhere. Nojoo, we came to Finland for the Christmas to spend some time there, and it was truly nice. Big kiitos for all you who took us to sleep or spend time on your sofas. It was super nice to see you all <3 And sorry for the ones who we didnt have time to meet. Next time then ;o)
But now we have been spending the last few days traveling a bit. Not around the world yet, but around the French countryside and especially Charente and Gironde. By bike! We went last Friday with our C.Car to Brunos grandmas palce in Sy Hilaire de Barbezieux where we left the car to spend the winter. We had our bikes with us as usual, and on Saturday after eating lunch with grandma we jumped on our bikes and drove for four hours and 50km to Angouleme to spend the evening with Brunos friends Clement and Alexandra.
The landscape was lovely, the sun was shining and it was really nice to bike along all the small countryside roads which went though small villages, wineyards and fields of Charente. Lovely!The day after the way back to grandmas place was somewhat more though since after all the first days biking at least i was a bit tired from the legs, but anyhow the sun was still shining and the view was nice.
On Monday after lunch again we started biking to Laruscade to Chris' and Isas place, which was just perfectly placed on half way between Barbezieux and Bordeaux. And that was suhch a nice +50km ride aswell, since most of the way was called Voie Vert, which means Green Way, and it is an old steam train track that has been transfered as a biking and hiking road. Jubii, still nice view but no tough up and down hills. And then yesterday after breakfast we biked the last part home to Talence. So atleast it was a small trip and worth to write here i think =) Unfortunetly i didnt have my camera with me, so no pics this time =/
And also i can now tell that we really havent buried the idea about flying around the world, but it just seems impossible to be in a good contact with Finnair to be able to fix some nice Round The World flights. Now after over three weeks of exchanging mails with the lady in the customer service we are closer than ever in actually getting the bloody flights... But lets see, the last nail hasnt been hit in the coffin yet, as they say in Finland... I will let u all know as soon as the flights are in our pockets =)
Untill then!
*bisou*
Quite some time has passed and no texts have appeared on the blog. From one simple reason - we havent beer traveling anywhere. Nojoo, we came to Finland for the Christmas to spend some time there, and it was truly nice. Big kiitos for all you who took us to sleep or spend time on your sofas. It was super nice to see you all <3 And sorry for the ones who we didnt have time to meet. Next time then ;o)
But now we have been spending the last few days traveling a bit. Not around the world yet, but around the French countryside and especially Charente and Gironde. By bike! We went last Friday with our C.Car to Brunos grandmas palce in Sy Hilaire de Barbezieux where we left the car to spend the winter. We had our bikes with us as usual, and on Saturday after eating lunch with grandma we jumped on our bikes and drove for four hours and 50km to Angouleme to spend the evening with Brunos friends Clement and Alexandra.
The landscape was lovely, the sun was shining and it was really nice to bike along all the small countryside roads which went though small villages, wineyards and fields of Charente. Lovely!The day after the way back to grandmas place was somewhat more though since after all the first days biking at least i was a bit tired from the legs, but anyhow the sun was still shining and the view was nice.
On Monday after lunch again we started biking to Laruscade to Chris' and Isas place, which was just perfectly placed on half way between Barbezieux and Bordeaux. And that was suhch a nice +50km ride aswell, since most of the way was called Voie Vert, which means Green Way, and it is an old steam train track that has been transfered as a biking and hiking road. Jubii, still nice view but no tough up and down hills. And then yesterday after breakfast we biked the last part home to Talence. So atleast it was a small trip and worth to write here i think =) Unfortunetly i didnt have my camera with me, so no pics this time =/
And also i can now tell that we really havent buried the idea about flying around the world, but it just seems impossible to be in a good contact with Finnair to be able to fix some nice Round The World flights. Now after over three weeks of exchanging mails with the lady in the customer service we are closer than ever in actually getting the bloody flights... But lets see, the last nail hasnt been hit in the coffin yet, as they say in Finland... I will let u all know as soon as the flights are in our pockets =)
Untill then!
*bisou*
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