The Seven Continent Trip Blog

This will be a short entry, we're again in a Internet cafe that has inflated prices of $2 for 15 minutes. However, this time we are in New Zealand, having just arrived last night from Oz.

I'm planning on writing about the second half of our great experience in Australa in better detail soon, but for now I'll just sum it up with a few numbers. We spent 19 straight nights camping, meaning that we slept on the ground with nothing between but our sleeping bags. We camped in 12 different campgrounds for that time. We drank 15 liters of wine (almost entirely from boxed wine casks, the only economical way to drink in Oz) during those camping nights, perhaps as a pre-medication for sleeping on the ground. We put 3475 km (2160 miles) on our Hyundia Getz; I haven't tallied the number national parks that we visited, but it was impressive. I'll also come up with a list of wildlife that we saw, which included several species of kangaroos and wallabies, wombats, at least one species of snakes (maybe two), at least two species of possums, bandicoots, echidnas, lace monitor lizards, common blue tongues, numerous species of skinks, emus, more species of parrots and other birds than we could shake a stick at, and lots of other interesting animals. Australia is like a huge zoo.

We also ate three varieties of kangoroo meat choices: kanga wangas (roo hot dogs), steaks and kebabs. We offered some extra kanga wangas to a French couple camping next to us, as Jess was getting a little nauseous at the thought of plowing through kanga meat with a mob of them eating grass around us. That gave us a good laugh with the resulting conversation:

"Would you like some kanga wangas? You know, kangaroo food?"

"Food for kangaroos?"

"No, no, food of kangaroos."

(Look of disgust that only the French can muster up)

Until next time, be safe.