Well, here we are... sitting in the Lihue airport about to get on our flight home. I won't say the adventures are over, Raleigh is still full of adventures and new things to discover :) But, I can't believe this particular adventure is over. Five months is a long time to be gone, but like I said it just becomes your way of life... traveling. I can see why some people do it non-stop. However, I'm ready to rest my head on my own pillow. After 35 different beds, I'm ready for my own!
Justin had a good idea to do a summary post, so this isn't the last blog post. I will do a recap one with some of my favorite things... statistics!! haha :) Thanks everyone for following along if you've been reading from the start. We will be in North Carolina in less than 24 hours! (edit: we've been here for a week and seeing all of you / getting our condo back together equated to me not posting this until now!)
Sydney
After saying goodbye to Larry and Tina, Justin and I kind of re-organized, did laundry, and basically just chilled out for a couple days. It was pretty rainy in Sydney, and I was preparing for our engagement photo-shoot (aka spending forever in a never ending mall trying to find an outfit). It was a good rainy day activity though, but it meant everyone was inside at the mall.
Monday was the day, we met our photographer at 11am and spent almost 3 hours walking around the Rocks area and the opera house / botanical gardens. It was a blast, he really made us feel comfortable and it was fun visiting all these places we'd come to love.
If you haven't yet seen our engagement pictures, here's the link:
http://danlukephotography.com.au/engagement-photos-of-sarah-justin-american-couple-travelling-and-exploring-australia/
Once we finished our photos, we had the whole afternoon to spend downtown because we had a Sydney Observatory tour that night. We had taken some pictures on the observatory hill, and decided to head back there since it was so nice.
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| Amazing view from the hill! |
We then walked around some souvenir shops, had some treats in a cafe, and dinner at a cool brew house.
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| View at night |
Our airbnb this time was walking distance to Bronte beach, so we hung out there a few times during our stay. It's a really nice beach that isn't quite as crowded as Coogee or Bondi, but still just as beautiful. Love the Sydney coastline!
And quite suddenly, it was our LAST full day in Australia... I wasn't joking about crying while eating tim tams... hahaha
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| Train snacks |
We headed into the city to Circular Quay, and decided to use our tickets for the Pylon Lookout at the Harbor Bridge. You're able to climb the 200 stairs in one of four columns at either end of the bridge. There was a cute little gift shop on the way up, and some stories about how the bridge was initially designed and then constructed.
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| Never get tired of this view! |
It was a beautiful day, but you could see some clouds coming in out in the distance...
Right before the rain started, we walked over to finally try the Opera House bar... kind of overrated but the drinks were good!
The rain began while we were at the Opera House bar, so we followed the covered paths and took the train to Darling Harbour. We then teared up over pitchers of beer at happy hour... both of us just had such an amazing time in Australia. I swear it's also the first and only time I've ever seen tears fall from Justin's eyes! It's funny you can visit places and enjoy them, but sometimes you visit a place and really fall in love... it truly felt like a home away from home. We knew we'd be leaving a piece of ourselves in Sydney... and as much as we miss home, it just kind of hit us in that moment how much we'll miss Australia.
Our last day we had until about 3pm to get to the airport. The airbnb host extended our check out time, so we used it to explore the coastal walk from Bronte Beach to Bondi. A great way to spend our last day.
The Sydney coastline is just so interesting, and they've really built some great paths to allow you to walk the entire way.
It was fun to reminisce about our favorite memories from the trip along this walk, and really soak in Sydney one last time.
We even saw some cool birds before we left!
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| Tropical flowers on the way back to the airbnb |
Then, before we knew it, we were sitting in the Sydney airport headed back to the USA. Justin had to get one more kebab... even though I know they have that in the US too haha.
Thank you for everything, Australia. We really loved it all. The amazing Great Barrier Reef, the perfect acai bowls on the Gold Coast, Sydney's many coastal walks, the kangaroo burgers in Melbourne, and just your laid back way of life. We love the kangaroos, the koalas, and the sharks too! :) It's never goodbye, it's just until next time.
Kauai
To avoid the long flight back home, why not make a pit stop in Hawaii?? It's perfectly halfway :) We chose Kauai, but I can't say I did the same amount of research as Australia. I'm sure any island is amazing, I had never been but Justin's been to Maui.
First thing we noticed, all the chickens! You don't need an alarm clock in Kauai, the roosters take care of that!
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| Australia got us hooked on Acai bowls... these were amazing |
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| Exploring the East Coast, waiting for check in to our airbnb |
We booked this while in Australia and decided to go with an airbnb here, since that was kind of all we were thinking of while staying in so many of them. Next time I would stay in a hotel or resort for Hawaii... we got more of the local experience which was cool but not your typical Hawaiian vacation vibe. The airbnb was a studio apartment attached to the host's house about a mile from the beach. I would also stay on the south side next time, but we had a really awesome time anyway. The island is so small you can drive anywhere in under an hour, so that made it super easy to explore!
Luau
I wanted the true Hawaiian experience, so I told Justin we had to do a luau :) It was a lot of fun... a good welcome to Hawaii activity.
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| Getting my lei :) |
The luau was on a local family's plantation, they had beautiful gardens surrounding the dining and stage area.
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| The welcome committee showing off |
The first part of the evening included a tram tour of the gardens, then we could walk around and explore before cocktail hour...
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| So mature... |
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| Peacocks everywhere |
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| co-co-nutssss |
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| the Hibiscus flower! Hawaii summed up in one little plant |
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| the owner's dog was dressed for the festivities too :) |
At 6pm the Imu Ceremony began, where they performed a traditional conk shell call and dug up the Kalua pig that had been smoking all day underground. Time to get it ready for dinner! And it was good too.
The ceremony ended, Mai Tai availability was announced, so we headed to the bar and then the buffet :)
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| I literally ate all of this... SO GOOD. SO FULL. O_O |
After dinner it was showtime! It was a really fun show with dances from several different South Pacific cultures, representing the people of Hawaii. And of course that included hula dancing! I especially loved when the guys got up on stage and did a Hawaiian dance... the guy's face closest to us was just cracking me up... he looked like he was having a great time.
The countries represented that I can remember were Tahiti, Japan, and New Zealand (the Maori people). It was fun seeing all the costume changes.
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| New Zealand dance |
The finale involved a fire dance, this guy was hilarious. He would make funny noises and rub his leg where the fire may have touched joking around. He was very good though, he even lit the ends of the torches just using his mouth which was kind of crazy. The dance was all over the place, he was turning in circles and rolling on the ground haha.
East Coast
Sleeping Giant Hike
In our airbnb's description the host mentioned the Sleeping Giant was right in our backyard. Legend says a giant decided to rest on the hilltop after eating a huge meal and never awakened (guess he's still sleeping?). We decided to check it out and do the hike to the top.
The hike took us through a tropical forest, climbing through the trees which was good because it's kind of HOT in Hawaii.
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| The Sleeping Giant |
Apparently we didn't take any pictures on the way up, so ta-da we made it to the top! haha.
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| Justin climbed all the way out to the furthest ledge, I did not. |
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| Gorgeous views, our airbnb was down in that subdivision you can see. |
We took some pics making our way back down, which was almost harder than climbing up with how steep some of the parts were. Almost like rock climbing.
Donkey Beach
We visited a beach called Donkey Beach along the East Coast. After parking in the carpark, a pretty walkway takes you right to the beach. Having to take a path to the beach always means less people, so it felt nice and private.
South Coast
Like I said Kauai is pretty small, so it made it easy to travel to either end of the island from our spot on the East Coast. We definitely fell in love with Poipu Beach on the South Coast... ended up spending today there as well for our last day.
Poipu has a really nice and expansive park area adjacent to the beaches, and we really like being able to lay on the grass instead of the sand. The waves get pretty big in Hawaii so it was fun to watch them crash against the volcanic rocks right by the grass area.
We found a palm tree and camped out for the afternoon...
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| Justin enjoying the waves and body surfing |
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| My view |
Humans weren't the only ones body surfing, the turtles were in the action as well! We discovered this was the local hangout for a bunch of sea turtles. We watched them all floating around for a while. There were over 10 of them all in this one area near the rocks.
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| Acai bowls on the South Coast! |
Near Poipu is a place called the Spouting Horn, Justin seeing a postcard with a picture of this is what brought us to this coast along with extending our rental car... haha.
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| Pretty neat! |
North Coast
The North Coast is a little less developed than the South, there's still a lot of homes and some golf courses, but it felt a bit more rugged. We decided to check out Queen's Bath, kind of like a rock pool area that you hike down to. A little rough for swimming though so not quite what I was picturing! The swell was pretty high and had been for a few days, apparently it came from Japan.
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| Definitely felt very tropical! |
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| Looks like a Jacuzzi tub |
Hiking back to the carpark, pretty waterfalls and we liked how smooth the dirt trail was.
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| Kilauea Lighthouse |
We spent the rest of the afternoon at Kalihiwai Beach (had to look the name of that one up... lol).
The Last Day...
Crazy how some things seem like they'll last forever, and yet somehow we found ourselves on our last day of this trip. We spent the morning souvenir shopping and then laid under a palm tree the entire afternoon at our favorite beach. Every so often we'd go check on the sea turtles body surfing and walk along the edge.
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| So long Hawaii |
Our last meal not in an airport... burgers on the beach!
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| These are just smoothies... but they were really good! |
Then we caught the sunset before driving to the airport... sunset and palm trees is just Hawaii in a picture!
Well, I guess this is the end of this adventure... all I can say is thank you for following along with us it really has meant a lot to us. I really can't believe it's over, and that we've been home for a week exactly now! We are happy to be home though and getting back into our routines. Stay tuned for one more blog post on some cool stats and if we stuck to our overall plan / what we would change or recommend for future long term travel if you are doing some!
I can say for sure that I'm happy to be home, and happy to have been everywhere we went. This experience has taught me more than I probably understand now, and will be with me the rest of my life. It will not be our only trip down under!!
Sarah
"We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home."
~ Australian Aboriginal Proverb
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