Alex at penn

Hello! Below are the pictures from our trip to New Zealand and Australia. I accidentally deleted the photos from the first half of our trip from my camera during the trip. I was pretty upset. Fortunately, Ashlee took a lot of pictures throughout the entire trip. I will do my best to give the basic information for the pictures without being too boring. They won't all be in order of the trip though, I'm only human!

To start, the Celelbrity Mellenium docked at Sydney Harbour


Our first Formal Night- Early on the itinerary, there is usually a formal night where everyone gets to play dress up.




At one of the stops, Allison and I went on a mountain bike trip through a national forest park. These pictures were deleted when I accidentally messed up my camera. But! That same day, Mom, Dad and Ashlee went on an Arctic Adventure - I do not think they knew what they were getting into. They went on vacation to get away from the cold!


How fun does that look? By the way, this stop is Christchurch, New Zealand.


Also in Christchurch, we went on a very long autobus ride that took us to a zoo.
Allison and me being weird? I'm not sure, it was probably just me being weird.


Just a lion, living large.


A Rhino


We had the unique experience of feeding giraffes (from a raise platform!)! When giraffes eat, they wrap their long purple/black tongue around the base of a thing branch and pull away. Their tongue strips the leaves from the branch and leaves the branch fully intact on the tree for future growth.






After the zoo, at the dock, ready to move on to the next stop!


Our last stop in New Zealand was in Dunedin. Dunedin is very far south on the South Island of New Zealand. We didn't expect it to be so cold! Ashlee was pretty chilly!




New Year's Eve in Melbourne, Australia! The gentleman on the left was our dinner bar waiter. He was in charge of all the drinks. By the second night, our beers and drinks were cold and poured by the time we opened the menu!


It appears only the ladies are feeling the excitement of the holiday!


Oh, Dad can get into the spirit, too!


The whole family and our waiter, Joel (in the white) , and the head maitre d'.




Happy New Year!


We also celebrated Allison's 22nd Birthday on New Year's Eve. Our room attendant, Andrew, decorated!


A Birthday and New Year's toast!


A view of the last sunset in 2008 from our room balcony.


The next few pictures are from Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne is definitely a city we'd all like to go back to. It was rich in the arts, aboriginal history and natural Australian preservation. It was also just a comfortable, friendly place to be. We even had some great Italian food!

At a wildlife preservation, we were able to see some kangaroos


If you look closely at this one, you can see a baby kangaroo's head peaking out of the mama's pouch


Kangaroos are very territorially, we were able to get 20 yards away from them before they became suspicious.


When they feel threaten, they take off!


This is a bull ant hole. Each of these ants is about an inch in length. The tour guide put a stick in the hole and irritated them. They all flew out and went nuts!


We ran into a lone-Kangaroo, just checking us out.


This is a view of the plains of the national preserve on top of an aboriginal spiritual rock.


Also on top of the rock, we were introduced to the didgeridoo.


The didgeridoo is one of the world's oldest instruments. It is made in northern Australia when termites eat out the middle of a treet trunk. The aboriginal people have been playing the didgeridoo for nearly 70,000 years. Vibrating your lips and speaking into the hollow tree make some incredible noises.


I gave it a shot. Hardly impressive...


We were able to see wild koalas. Koalas are not bears, as is commonly thought. They are marsupials like kangaroos. Koalas are a huge draw for the tourist industry. But, they only sit in trees and sleep. Once a day they climb down trees and walk over to another tree, just to climb back up and sit for another 24 hours. These koalas were perfectly wild and never had physical human contact.




In Sydney, the girls went on a day trip walking tour and the boys went on a bridge climb.
Here's a neat shot Ashlee took of part of the port.


Here is a close shot of the bridge. If you look closely, you can see little dots just to the left of the left most pole in the foreground of the picture. Those dots are people (possibly Dad and me?) climbing the bridge.


Ashlee and Allison in front of the famous Sydney Opera House.


We're all suited up for the bridge climb!


After Sydney, we flew to Cairns in the Northern Territory of Australia. Our first experience was at Hartley's Crocodile and Wild Life Farm.

My mom was convinced that this big boy (the alpha male of the group) was definitely a fake crocodile! But, instead, he was very real, weighing in at nearly 900 pounds. A full grown crocodile can survive in the wild by eating two chickens a year! That's pretty incredible.




This is an aligator. Supposedly, these alligators are friendly to humans. The crocodiles (above) are very dangerous! Our guide said that alligators are fine to swim near and won't cause too much trouble. I'll just take his word for it. You can tell the difference between a crocodile and an alligator by the shape of their heads. Crocodiles have flat, wide heads and mouths. Alligators have long, skinny, triangular heads.


A baby crocodile!




There were also captive koalas here.




This interesting guy is called a cassowary. Cassowaries are extremely aggressive, flightless birds. They look like velociraptors when they run. The flat, mo-hawk looking part of their head is used as a large antennae to receive mating calls from up to 5 miles away.


Here is a spider with an interesting web designed to hit its body from prey. Look behind the white X of web and you'll see the spider!




This shot took about 8 tries. Everyone kept preparing for the picture!


One of the days in Cairns was spent at the Great Barrier Reef. Allison and I went scuba diving for the first time! One of the things to worry about in Australian waters is the jelly fish! We had to wear this full body suits that would protect us from jellyfish stings.




Dinner one of the nights Cairns.


The last signifiant stop of the trip was at Ayers Rock, or Uluru as the indiginous aboriginal people call it. Uluru is in the middle of no where. It is a large rock next in the middle of a flat desert covered in rust colored sand. Here is Uluru from a distance.


We spent an afternoon waiting for the sunset to hit the rock and show its magnificent colors. We all had a good time laughing at this concept, Las Vegas has bigger, prettier rocks and more incredible sunsets! But, it was fun none the less.


There were also thousands and thousands of large flies looking to get into eyes, noses, mouths, ears - everything! We had to wear this nets to limit the annoyance!


Romancing the stone.


A pretty sweet bird.




I didn't realize how neat this picture was until I looked at it on my computer. It is a picture of a Billabong, or a wateringhole, near one of the other rocks near Uluru.


Now, tilt your head to the right. and look at it. I think it looks a lot like a face with a mustache and everything!

And, here is the last sunset shot of the trip.