time goes by...איך הזמן רץ כשנהנים

last last nice (acharon acharon chaviv?)

hello everybody,

this time no stories, we'll tell you about Sydney in Hebrew. and we don't really have time, in half an hour we're on our way to the airport.

just wanted to do this "last post from our travel", while we are still in vacation and before we'll be like most of you- working, sweating and jealous in those who have more freedom then us...

but we must say that from here it doesn't sound so bed, this "working" thing... we'll probably change our mind three days from now.

so that's it, see you all next week, in Hebrew, after we'll wake up from our jet-leg sleep.

salamat,

shachaf and ofer

easy peasy

hello everybody!

instead of going straight to a farm, we decided to take a free easy weekend at the Goldshmidts Errol and Zillah, at their home an hour north of Sydney. it was great. we wanted a rest from the long holiday, and we got exactly what we needed. just relax. thank you very much for that!

then we went on to our last farm, for a 'so called' "Havaya Metakenet" of the wwoofing experience.

only few days before the end of our travel and we still learn every day something new...
here, we learned a lot about human beings. did you know that human is a very social creature? people must have company, someone who'll listen to them, someone they can listen to him. not necessary a partner for life, or a great love. just someone ... to talk too.

otherwise... well... it's just not good!

no, we didn't changed our flight and spent some time with the Dali-lama. apparently you can get to the same conclusions just by spending a week (actually it was less then a week but who counts) with a crazy lonesome woman!!!

a little tip for you from us, for free, just because we like you - never go do wwoofing* with a woman who lives alone with a dog named "butterfly"!!!

we used to think of ourselves as very good listeners, we love to hear stories and learn more about... things. but not (!!!!!) when the person (in this case - a crazy woman) who tells them can't stop talking, and keeps repeating himself. lucky for us there was a very nice German girl with us, so we could listen in shifts, you know - 4-8 or so..

we got to her after the very bad wwoofing experience in the desert (look in the previous post), and hoped for someone nice who will talk with us... she was very nice (she really was) but most of the time it seems as if she talk to herself... and to the dog.

so, after a week (or less) of "easy peasy weeding", one "yaniv" game with the German girl, and lots of silence (from our side), we left her with her little dog (it was more little then a chicken!) and hips of unused furniture (which she keeps for no reasonable reason), and came back to Sydney.

we try to take from every experience its best. well - we must say that she was very nice, and we ate pretty good... and after listen to her complains about the whole world (and its sister...) we learned to except all human beings, no matter religion, race or sex. just because we don't want to end up like she did - unaware to our behavior.

we wish you all the same,

never stop listen,

and always have someone to talk to!

see you soon (very soon..)

shachaf and ofer

Life in a campervan isn't as easy as you think, and also life in the desert

hi everybody!

people say that life is all about ups and downs. well, our last days here defiantly had some very big ups which fallowed by very big downs! and by that we don't mean just the regular "down under" which we got very used to.

it all started when we left Adelaide with a 6 people campervan (it means that 6 people can live happily inside it, and we, as we hope you all remember, are only two). inside it we had a kitchen (better than we saw in some of the backpackers we've been to), 3 double beds (we tried only two of them), a shower (hot water and everything) and of course - DVD and PS2, because how can you spend the time in this dessert with out it? that was the 'up' part.. (see ,relocation deal*)

for three days we drove through nothing (really - nothing!). the only reason we couldn't see the end of it is only because the curve of the earth, or the ability of the human eye... any way -

we even didn't have radio and our mp3 died in NZ, so you can imagine the fun... after 48 hours you stop to "enjoy the silence" and start believe that the sound of "ein klita" is a great music. that was the start of the downs, so we thought, only because we didn't know what's waiting for us...

somewhere between "nothing with trees" to "nothing with some bush", we saw that we have a flat tire, or to be more precised - a totally ruined tire that there is no chance we did it to it!!! after waisting almost 3 hours in a place that in the map looks like little town but in reality is just a gas station, we replaced it (actually the replacing thing we did on the road, like in the movies, in the middle of the desert) and even got the money back from the company (200$ doesn't walk on foot, you know) after talking with almost everyone in that company. apparently, when it comes to insurance it's the same all over the world and they would always find the way to make you pay for the damage.

so, you can imagine the down it was...

the day after, we walk up very early ( or very late at night, depends who you ask...) and went to see the sunrise on the Uluru, or Ayrs rock (again - depends... ). which is a huge red rock in the middle of oz, looks and feels like you stand right in the hart of this land. it is a very sacred place for the aboriginal and they even ask you not to climb on it, but then - they built the way up and they take allot of money to see it so we thought - everybody do it anyway and it is a great climb and the money probably goes to the drunk aboriginal in Alice spring so - we walked up and it was great! after it we did a little walk in the "olgas" (or Kata jota..) - another big-red-amazing-rocks-in -the -middle of -the -desert -that -important -to -the -aboriginal, and saw the sunset on them. the thing with the sunset and sunrise is that the rocks get a very special colors in those hours. it is really beautiful. and also - everybody do it so you just can't not do something that all the other tourist do!!!!

next day we went to Kings canyon, a nice short walk in a red canyon. the first place we saw here and wasn't very excited about... it was beautiful but not amazing as everyone say.

now - you need to understand that all of those places are at least an hour drive from each other - it looks close on the map, but we (shachaf..) drove the distance of Israel almost 4 times those days (2400 km!). and we still haven't decide if that was an "up" or"down".

at the end we got to Alice springs. the 'big' city in the middle of the desert. the biggest attraction in it, except the fact that she contains people and not just gas station and a kiosk, is the number of aboriginal there (or the way the locals here call them - the black fellows, very politically correct). we stayed there one night in a house full with french guys and snakes... (we can explain but it's late and it's also much more fun to let you imagine that and brake your head about it).

after a really good experience with the wwoofing* we did, we went to a farm near Alice spring (300 k"m... near. oh - and just 80 k"m off-road into the desert from the main road). now, if until that point we thought that drunk people in the street, flat tire, snakes near the dinner table and a broken mp3 are things to complain about, it's only because we still didn't see that farm. for 4 days we were alone with a weird family, which pretty much treated us as slaves or just as bad workers and didn't really speak with us. the only point of light there was a stuff worker, a nice Cristian boy, that we could actually talk with. but also his relationship with them was... weird.

the woofing is all about both sides give what they can - we work for free, they give accommodation and food. but somehow they didn't see it that way and it took us 24 hours to understand that we must get out of there, or they'll give us to the dingos. we booked a flight to Sydney and asked them to take us to the main road (not a simple task at all! ) and only when we got again to the "french guys and snakes" house, we knew we saved!

now - the french guys house (it's already morning so we have time to explain)is actually a house belongs to john - a really nice and welcoming man we found through the "couch surfing"*. apparently the guy hosts lots of people in his home, when we were there we met Germans, Belgiums, french, Sweden and snakes... a little tip for you - when you're traveling, try to meet people from France and ask them if they can cook dinner, you won't regret!!!!

and now - much earlier then we planed, we are back home in Sydney, at the goldshmidts mark and margo. hoping to find a farm around the city, to finish with good memories from the wwoofing*.

if you don't believe us, or just wanna see it:

http://picasaweb.google.com/shachafby/OZIntoTheOutback?feat=directlink

hag shavu'ot same'ach!!!

eat some milkey for us too.

see you soon,

really soon!

shachaf and ofer and Billy-Joe (the camper van...)

koala in action

Back to the third (and biggest..) island

Hello there everybody,

we found one thing that Israel is better at from NZ - we have a train to our airport and it works all night!!! they don't!

that's how we've found ourselves waiting for our flight from 2200 until 0630... yes, it's a long time waiting for 4 hours flight. good thing we still had some leftovers from our "tim tam evening" (the results of the competition, by the way, were that you shouldn't eat so many kinds of timtam all together. it just make you feel very sick!!)

the next morning we landed in the big flat land of Australia, directly to the gorgeous city - Melbourne.

the start wasn't very good (crazy winds, lots of rain, and a terrible backpacker*, which we left as fast as we could after a night without sleep).

but then we went to a great Sunday market, discovered that we can be excited from the amount of shops just as we were from the greatest mountains in NZ (the gozal almost cried from the Birkenstock store... almost as beautiful as in mt.cook and the cascade saddle...), lost some money in the casino and than earned it back the day after, did some gyro, saw some dinosaurs and other horrible creatures in the museum, met funny Israelis (one that used to work with ofer in aroma!), went to some free jazz festival shows and mostly were very surprised from the numbers of people that live there

Melbourne is huge and we could stay there longer but we don't have so much time here and we had to start the "great ocean road" which is exactly the way it sounds - along the coast. from somewhere after Melbourne and little bit before Adelaide (ye - almost 700 k"m before...).

it's a beautiful road with great views of the ocean (some time you drive really close to the sea and on the same level!) that is actually really good for surfers, because you suppose to stop in the beach and... surf. but we don't really have the time for that and, ya... we don't really know how to surf...

the main reason for us to stop was the koalas, which we saw a lot and couldn't have enough of that nice lazy bear (they mostly sleep all day long after eating the eucalyptus leaves that makes them get high - just like drugs), and saw some shadows that appear to be small penguins colony (that we waited for them for almost two hours and gave up already.

it took us 3 days to get to Adelaide from Melbourne, where we are now... well - 1 hour from the city, here it means that we are just near it.

we live with a very nice family, at their house, and do some "wwofing"* here.

surprisingly, we are the first Israelis they have at their farm so we found ourselves teaching them about the history of Israel and the middle east (from our point of view, of course...!) and even some Hebrew.

on Saturday we are going up north to the desert, the outback - heading to Alice springs. we did a relocation deal, so we have a camper van for 5 days and we pay a ridicules money for that...

from there we planed to go norther to Darwin but than we found out that there are 25 kinds of frogs and sweet-water alligators over there so now the gozal not really sure if she wants to go there at all... so, we'll see.

well, that's it for now.

hope you're all good over there

see you all in less than a month...

shachaf and ofer

Goodbye pork pie, hello OZ

Few hours before we leave this country, to the bigger island in this ocean, we want to say few words..

First, we sold the car, so called Menashe, which was a sad and happy thing, at the first day we tried, in the car market in Auckland.

Second, we re-booked our flight as early as we can.

And third, we relaxed. as much as we could, in this wonderful place in beach-haven, which is a 20min drive on the high-way from the city, but still, a suburb of Auckland.

an amazing-young family with four little boys.

they gave us great hospitality, even when they where gone for two days, and another perspective about rising up children...

so, beside relaxing and baby-sitting, we traveled the big city a bit, had some Chinese food, that seems to be the locals food in this city, visit the museum (also been at the Holocaust room due to the date) and went back home.

during that time, we had to finish all of our spare food, which appear to fill us up, and of course, the Tim-tam event!

today we went to the ANZAC march and service, and experienced a different memorial day.

Now, right before the main part of our journey is about to end, we can say out loud that it was an excellent choice to come all the way over here.

plenty of outstanding-different-powerful views in such a small land, that surprises us every time.

we know that we got a lot to see around the world, and we will, but , still, a good start...

until the next time, from Melbourne

take care

shachaf and ofer