Our Pack

Where's the ball Wes?  

Ah, the best part...our pack!  It's always so amazing how easily we are excepted into the family by the pets.  They seem to sense that we are there to take care of them and be their friends.  A couple of shakes, a few good throws, a belly rub or two and we're all old buds.  

There's Wesley - he's the youngest at two and the most energetic.  At dinner time he jumps off of all 4 paws, straight up into the air about four feet off the ground.  At the mention of a ball, he becomes maniacally obsessive - pure lab!

Then there's little Koda.  She's seven and a bit of a busy body who must greet every dog she meets at the park.  She chases after Wes trying in vain to keep him out of trouble. She also rides shotgun in the car making certain that Rick stays on the correct side of the road.

The grand dame is Jesse.  At 16, she's earned the title. She may be a little bit slower than the other two (well, okay, maybe a lot) but she still loves to run and play. She's the alpha of the pack and keeps Wes in line. She has roasted chicken for dinner every night befitting her status! 

Wesley may talk tough at the dog park but he has his sweet side too!

2013

Howick Saturday Market

One of the first things we do when starting any new house sit is scope out the local markets. We like to cook (and love to eat) so shopping for food is something we take pretty seriously! Our favorite places to shop are the local farmer's markets and our little village of Howick has one of the best we've come across.  Artisan cheeses and homemade jams, fresh honey and eggs, salami, sausages, smoked salmon, fresh caught fish, breads, pastries, a variety of ready made ethnic foods, flowers, herbs, and the best selection and prices on fresh vegetables that we've seen in a long time. Popular and packed, the market is an elbow room only affair.  Of course that doesn't stop us from sampling our way across it, debating what we can make with this and that, all thoughts of the diet we're supposed to be on a distant memory.  Saturday has suddenly become our favorite day of the week...

Wishing You Happy Holidays

Peace Prayer

Summertime Christmas in Auckland

Auckland's skyline 

Welcome to Auckland, a.k.a. the City of Sails.  So named because it is almost completely surrounded by water and boasts more boats per capita than anywhere else in the world.  Of course, then there is Auckland's other name, its traditional name Tamaki Makau Rau. Versions vary as to what this means but the tourist literature seems to like the "desired by many" translation. Since Auckland is New Zealand's largest city and home to a third of the country's population we'll go with that!  

Santa and his Reindeer welcome shoppers downtown.

It is summertime in New Zealand and Auckland is all decked out for the Christmas season. An enormous Santa and two Reindeer watch over the Queen Street shopping district while just down the street a Raggae band gives a lunchtime concert to folks sprawled in lawn chairs.  It's a bit strange for us - we're enjoying sunshine, wearing shorts, and applying sunscreen liberally while listening to Christmas music on the radio.

Downtown lunchtime concert in the park.  We've been told that there is a
hole in the ozone layer above New Zealand and to always use our sunscreen.

Auckland's Sky Tower is the tallest tower in the southern hemisphere.
For a thrill, you can bungee jump off the tower over the downtown traffic.

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The easiest mode of transportation into the city from our village is the ferry.
It runs all day long and drops off right downtown at Auckland's old Ferry Building.

Flying over Australia's Whitsunday Islands

Australia's Whitsundays are a group of 74 islands located between

 the mainland and the Great Barrier Reef

We booked our trip with Air Whitsunday on the fly...a pun just too hard to pass up...literally walking off the cruise ship into Airlie Beach and into a tour agency.  They arranged the flight and gave us directions for taking the bus out to the airport.  Colleen volunteered to ride shotgun in the 10 passenger Cessna while Rick grabbed a window seat at the rear of the plane.  As you can see, the views define the word spectacular!

We tried, but these photos as pretty as they are, can't compare to the real deal - it was awesome!

Our pilot buzzed our cruise ship for us!

Hamilton Island

Although we booked this ride last minute, flights do fill up ahead so we suggest booking earlier.  Reservations can be made on their website (48 hour advance notice needed) at www.airwhitsunday.com.au. 

Australia - it's a Big, Big Country

Brisbane's Story Bridge

Three weeks in Australia and we've seen as much as we could see, but there is still so much more that we just couldn't get to in the time that we had.  Sigh...

The day we returned to Sydney we boarded the Rhapsody of the Seas and began an 11 night cruise north with stops in Newcastle, Cairns, Airlie Beach and Brisbane.  In route, we anchored at Willis Island (280 miles offshore in the Coral Sea) where there is a weather station installed and staffed for the purpose of early cyclone detection.  It was a brief stop and we're really not quite sure why it was on the itinerary...  From Cairns we made an excursion to Green Island to do some snorkeling and take a trip in a glass bottom boat.  We'd assumed the "glass bottom boat" was going to be sort of hokey - but it was actually really great for underwater viewing.

The highlight of the trip was cruising the Great Barrier Reef and flying over the Whitsunday Islands.  We'll post our flight photos for you in a few days.  In the mean time, here's a few shots from our other ports of call and the glass bottom boat.  Ahoy mates! 

The Brisbane River, which has caused so much flooding havoc in recent years, cuts through the heart of
the city.  A variety of vessels are available to tour the city - making stops at various docks along the way.
We opted for the little red "City Hopper" and enjoyed a free hour and a half tour of Brisbane from the water.

Sights along the Brisbane River.

Downtown Brisbane

Newcastle

The Willis Island weather station is an early warning monitoring station for cyclones.
Staff pulls six month shifts in this remote locale.

From the glass bottom boat ride at Green Island in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
Note that the fish in the first photo is about a foot long so that gives you
some idea as to how "giant" the giant clam is!

Waters surrounding Green Island

Australia's jellyfish are prevalent and it's "stinger" season!

The birds are spectacularly colorful and very loud and chatty.

We Were Hacked!

Just wanted to update everyone to let you know that we have been able to reactivate our email account so we can be reached at our casaray513@att.net address once again.  Turns out that we were hacked and that is why ATT suspended our account.  Whew!  What a relief to be back!  Of course, it made us realize that we need to back-up all of our contacts, travel docs, etc. into Word files rather than relying upon our e-mail folders for storage...

Emergency E-Mail Contact Change!!!

Hello everyone!

We have just arrived in New Zealand to begin our latest house sit.  Unfortunately, ATT has locked us out of our e-mail account and we cannot access any e-mails, contact numbers or e-mail addresses and many of our travel documents.  So far, costly phone calls, on-line chats and endless hours on ATT "help" internet site have not resolved the problem.  So...until we can fix this (and hopefully we can because it is sort of a disaster) you will not be able to reach us on that account.  In light of this issue, we've established another e-mail account with Google.  Please contact us at casarays@gmail.com.  To all of our friends and family - we currently do not have your e-mail addresses so if you could send them to us for us to begin rebuilding our "contacts" that would be very helpful. Miss you all - will post some great pics from Australia in a few days!

Rick & Colleen

Oz

It wouldn't be Australia without the Roos!

It has been a whirlwind of a week.  We've driven almost 2000 miles.  (Well, really, Rick's driven almost 2000 miles!)  We took the inland route from Sydney south to Albury and then the Great Alpine Highway over the Snowy Mountains with a stop at the historic mining town of Omeo.  Then, it was off to the Yarra Valley and its grassy rolling hills, vineyards and fine wines.  A quick day trip into Melbourne by train and then we were back on the road to our most southern destination - Australia's 90 mile beach.  Our route back was along the coast - a beautiful but winding 10 hour drive to Jervis Bay where we spent out last night before returning to Sydney.  While we enjoyed the cities and small towns, it was the natural beauty of this part of Australia that we will remember the most.  So, before we head north to Queensland, we thought we'd share a few pics from the trip thus far.

Verdant valleys and the Great Alpine Highway over the Snowy Mountains

Vineyards of the Yarra Valley and Australia's native Bottle Brush

While it is the end of Spring here after one of the wettest winter's on record
evidence of the 12 years of drought and subsequent bush fires were evident.

Lorikeets and Gulahs are common sites in backyards and birdfeeders

Good On Ya!

G, 'day to ya from sunny Oz! Let's avago at some Ozzie lingo.  A greenie mate suggested a few days in the bush so we gave it a bit of a yabber.  Colleen was having a bit of a dummyspit and puttin the heavy on me.  She likes camping, but doesn't really care for the dunnys and such.  Plus, back o'Burke, we'd need a portable barbie for the tucker. She wasn't trying to be a wowser but there really wasn't a Buckley's chance mate. To be fair dinkum, she said she'd rather have a good plonk and a chook than head out into the woopwoop.

Just to clear things up.... a plonk is a glass of wine, a chook is chicken, and woopwoop is the boonies....

Welcome to Australia

The Sydney Opera House

Old and new Sydney

Flying into Sydney Australia during the day gave us a chance to see the city from the air.  It's a huge city with a population of 4,635,000 and looking at it from above, we lamented that we'd not allowed enough time in our plans and that there would be much we wouldn't see.  Then, upon arriving at our hotel, we were informed that we were a day late for our reservation. Yes, we'd failed to allow for crossing the International Dateline.  (We'd made the mistake of using the date on our airline reservations which did not reflect that we'd be arriving an entire day later.)  Live and learn...but we were bummed - we'd lost an entire day!  We knew then that we were going to have to focus on just a couple of sites so we chose the old historic center of the city known as The Rocks, the waterfront area with its views of the harbor and bridge, and touring the iconic Sydney Opera House.  It was a busy day and evening made more interesting by the rapid weather changes that ranged from hot and sunny to thunder, lightening, hail the size of marbles, pelting rain, and then steaming condensation rising from the streets when the sun reappeared.  Here is Sydney in a day and a night...

A clear and sunny morning at the waterfront quickly changed...

into booming thunder, lightening, hail and rain.

Over the course of a few minutes, the bridge almost disappeared from view.

Harbor view from inside the Sydney Opera House

The Opera House roof, which we'd always thought was made of sail like fabric
(similar to the Denver airport) is actually made of over a million tiles.

A few shots of Sydney by night...

We were treated to an amazing lightening storm.

Iconic by day and night - Sydney Harbor Bridge

A bit blurry with out the tripod but the lights were to pretty not to share.

Fall Farewell to Vancouver Island

Cordova Bay

The entire time we've been in Victoria, we've had sunshine. Very unusual this time of year, but what a gift it has been. We've been able to explore so much more of the outdoors in this area than we expected.  Now though, the change has arrived.  The crispness of fall is in the air and the colors of the trees are changing.  The island views are misty gray scenes in the distance one minute and clear the next.  The squirrels in the yard are gathering more nuts to store away and they're eating all the plums that the wind knocks from the tree in the backyard.  Now that the rain has begun, the dogs don't want to go out in the yard to do their business.  (Yet, when the leashes come out, they are out the door in a flash, rain or not!)  

We've a few more days here before we head south to warmer weather. Our plans are to spend a couple of weeks visiting family and friends before we head off to Australia and New Zealand.  We're excited about seeing each country and having the opportunity to learn more about them.  In Australia we'll be three weeks on our own, exploring the east coast area from Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef in the north to Melbourne and the wine country in the south.  Then, it's over to Aucklund, New Zealand to house sit into the new year.  Before leaving New Zealand, we'll be taking a trip to the South Island to view its spectacular scenery.  

We will have many wonderful photographs and stories to share along the way and we're planning to teach you some good old Kiwi and Aussie slang.  So, don't forget to lob in now and again for a chinwag and a corker.  We promise, it's gonna be a beaut.  G'day mates!