Out last stop in Australia was Melbourne, a lovely city on the South East coast, a quick flight from Sydney.

I was getting pretty excited about visiting Melbourne as we had arranged to stay with a friend of mine I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade. (Wow, that makes me feel really old.) We were planning to meet up with my friend, Victoria, and her family and head to nearby Phillip Island to relax a bit.

Before meeting up with Vic, we checked out some of the scenes in Melbourne. Personally, I liked Melbourne a lot because it was so “green.” I don’t mean in the environmentally friends sense, although it may be, but that it was literally very green with beautiful flowers everywhere and Gardens to walk around in for hours.

We started with the Royal Botanic Gardens, which was just a short walk from our hotel. We could literally have gotten lost there and enjoyed the colors the whole time. We wandered around and checked out the huge variety of plant species. Everything is nicely labeled, which is awesome so you can know just what are looking at and finding some cool facts out. There are gazebos everywhere for relaxing while taking in the scenery. All around awesome place.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Griffin’s favorite bird of all time, which we found in Melbourne, the Cassowary. We like to call it the Dino Bird because of the oddly shaped crest on the top of its head that looks prehistoric in our minds, if to no one else. Anyway, Griffin has become obsessed with this bird.

After checking out the garden for a while, we stopped in the nearby Shrine of Remembrance, a military museum detailing Australia’s journey to freedom and contributions to world wars. It’s a solemn place of remembrance and touched our hearts even as foreign visitors. The place also boasts a pretty amazing architectural feat, which can be seen in the Sanctuary. A sunken stone plaque which reads, “Greater love hath no man” is read by the visitors in such a way that they much bow their heads to read it. The quote is part of the Bible verse, John 15:13, which states, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Every year on November 11th at exactly 11:00am, the sun shines through a open block in the roof and lands directly on the word “Love.” Daylight savings time has caused the necessity of a mirror to be placed to continue to tradition, but it is no less powerful. During the rest of the year, visitors can enjoy a simulation.

Finally we were ready to meet up with Vic’s husband, Chris, for the ride down to Phillip Island. I was happy to see my friend again and meet her sweet family. We had a great time catching up. As it turned out, we also got to meet Chris’ parents and Victoria’s parents as well, which was a blessing to us.

Vic and Chris offered lots of advice for things to see around the island, so we started with the Phillip Island Wildlife Park. This place is getting up close and personal with all kinds of animals and we loved every minute of it. We got to pet Kangaroos, Wallabies, and Emus and saw Koalas, Eagles, and so many more animals I can’t even think of them all. Basically, I didn’t want to leave there and tried to talk Griffin into letting me have a Kangaroo to take home. He said no. =(

We took an extended family trip with all ten of us to The Nobbies, a nature park with one of the most beautiful coastal walkways I’ve ever seen. There is a small island off the coast with hundreds of seals sunbathing, which we enjoyed seeing as well.

Finally, we had to do it, we went to the Penguin Parade. This is a natural phenomenon that occurs nearly every evening at the same time, when hundreds of penguins arrive on shore after a day of fishing and waddle to their beach homes. These are not just any penguins, though, they are “Fairy Penguins,” tiny little fuzzy penguins that stand about 12 inches tall. They are some of the cutest things you’ve ever seen. People have been coming to watch the penguins come home since the 1920’s and it’s still extremely popular. I tried to talk Griffin into letting me have a penguin to take home. He said no. =(

After a few days of seeing the sites on Phillip Island, we tagged along to Vic and Chris’ home back in Melbourne and had a great time hanging out and playing with her cute kids. From there, we booked a rushed flight to continue our journey in New Zealand!

If your in the area, I can’t recommend beautiful Melbourne or Phillip Island highly enough!

A Little Background

After more than 28 years of life and despite already having visited more than 40 countries around the world, last month Valerie and I arrived in South America for our first time ever. Now the only continent Griffin has yet to see is Antarctica and Valerie will be the same once we visit Africa in about five months’ time! Needless to say we are pretty excited to finally make it down here.

We arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil after flying to the States from New Zealand and spending about two weeks with each of our families in Alabama and Georgia. We are planning to share in a future post how we were able to get our flight via Delta from Auckland, New Zealand to Atlanta, Georgia and then, one month later, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for only 40,000 sky miles each (all of which we earned without flying) and $27.50 per person in taxes! Let us know in the comments if that sounds like something you would be interested in hearing about;-)

About The Photograph

After spending some time in Rio mostly working on a few Graphic Design projects for clients sprinkled with a little sightseeing, we took a 24 hour bus ride over to Foz de Iguaçu, which is the town on the Brazilian side of one of the seven natural wonders of the world and one of the most awe-inspiring sights we have seen in our lives – Iguazu Falls.

The ride was much more comfortable than a 24 hour bus ride might sound as the busses in South America so far have been really nice and some of them even look like first class airplane cabins with fully reclining seats, complementary champagne on arrival, hot meals and more. (We can’t afford the nicest ones on our budget, but it’s nice to dream;-) We slept decently well, but still needed some additional rest upon arriving.

We stayed at, and would highly recommend, the Bambu Jungle Lodge Hostel. It was literally in middle of a jungle type forrest and we saw some wild toucans as well as a weird animal that looked like giant mouse with no tail. The place was nice and secluded, had a pool, awesome paid dinner options, amazing included breakfast and, most of all, a great hostess named Jo, with over 8 years of experience leading tours in South America and the knowledge, hospitality and friendliness that goes along with that.

We had only planned to see the falls, but were told by some of the other hostelers about the amazing Bird Park literally at the end of the road and across the street from the hostel so we decided to check it out. Entry was 26 Brazilian Reais (About $13.50 USD) with a 2 Reais discount provided by the hostel booking vouchers and we thought it was well worth the price. We saw so many different species of birds: flamingos, parrots, and even some hummingbirds. We really enjoyed seeing a small but unbelievable sampling of the amazing creativity and beauty our God has created.

In a few sections of the bird park, we were able to go into a large aviary with the birds, which would allow you to get very close as they seemed to be used to humans from their daily interactions. We took advantage of this to get some pictures of the local birds that would otherwise have not been possible. This one of the Tucan is one of my favorites as it really shows their somewhat curious nature as he checked out me and my camera. Hope you enjoy!

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Photos taken using a Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD LD Aspherical IF Macro Zoom Lens

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As we have traveled around Asia, we have had a lot of fun visiting different temples.  Now you may think it a little strange to have a lot of fun visiting a temple but it is not the temples that were the fun part.  You see at a lot of the temples around Asia have monkeys hanging out at them.  Why?  Well from our understanding, in Hinduism, monkeys are considered holy and even represent or may be gods.

These moneys are very cute, smart, curious and most of all sneaky.  If you have any food, or even just some bright/reflective objects on your person and are not careful the monkeys will take it from you.  Many time we would be feeding one monkey a banana and a greedy monkey who was perhaps his partner-in-crime would come over and steal our entire bag of bananas from right out of our other hand.

Hope you enjoy the monkey postures.  We enjoyed encountering these cute and amazing animals.

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Monkey Forest – Ubud, Indonesia

The Amber Fort – Jaipur, India

Monkey Temple – Kathmandu, Nepal

Batu Caves – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Photos taken using Tamron SP AF 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 Di II LD Aspherical [IF] and Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD LD Aspherical IF Macro Zoom Lens

Travel Photo Of The Week Sponsored By Tamron USA.

For more information about Tamron and the lenses we use, check out our sponsors page here.

After a good night’s sleep, we headed up to meet our hostel owners and have some breakfast. Krishna, the hostel guy not the Hindu god, gave us the run of the city over eggs and toast.

We decided to book a full day tour of the city with Krisha for the following day, meanwhile taking care of some errands.

Our tour day started early as we made our way to the Ganges River for a sunrise boat ride. As you approach the Ganges, there are several things you will notice immediately. Although the Ganges is the holiest river in India, it isn’t treated very well. Garbage swells in every inlet and touts are everywhere trying to sell you some good karma. As Christians, we’re not too worried about karma, but found it funny when a girl became frustrated with us for not buying her flowers and stated, “Whatever. It’s your life.”

Cows are considered holy by Hindu people, and so are permitted to rome the whole of the country freely, including cooling off in the Ganges. Somehow, I always thought that was a myth, but I can assure you it isn’t. So, in the garbage filled river cows drift happily by.

As our boat driver rowed us silently up river, we approached one of several important places in the life of a devout Hindu. They are called Ghats, or more specifically “burning Ghats.” A Ghat is an embankment along the river, but a burning Ghat is basically a holy crematorium. As a tout told us vying for a guide job, “Burning is learning. Cremation is Education.” According to Hindu beliefs, reincarnation occurs over and over until a person dies in the holy city of Varanasi and is cremated at a burning Ghat along the Ganges river. Unless they have great Karma, this is the only way for a Hindu to finally reach Heaven.

You can see the smoke from the Ghats from several hundred yards away and as you get closer you can see the fires burning. Usually there are at least five bodies burning and several more families waiting with the body of their loved one. The families don’t seem sad at all and instead seem happy and relieved as they go about preparing the body and fire.

We were told that in some cases the bodies aren’t burned, but are simply rowed out to the middle of the river and unceremoniously dropped in. In those cases, the person can still reach heaven, even though they weren’t cremated. Examples include the bodies of children, pregnant women, victims of leprosy or snake bites, holy men and those who commit suicide. We did witness a body being loaded up onto a boat, but we got distracted by a guy trying to sell us something, and then we noticed the boat coming back to shore without the body. When we asked our boat guide about that, he said, “snake bite.”

So, let’s see what we’ve encountered so far. Trash, Cows, ashes and dead bodies… oh, and one more thing… people bathing in the river. Now, I know that this river is “holy,” but bathing in there? I’m quite sure I wouldn’t be caught dead in that river.

After the sunrise river tour, we headed back to our hostel for breakfast. Then headed back out check out the rest of the city.

Our first stop was the largest university in the area, Banaras Hindu University. The university is beautiful and has a unique arched campus. The temple in the front serves as a place of worship for its students.

Next we headed to the Durga Temple, also known as the Monkey Temple. We love a good monkey temple! Hundreds of monkeys came to greet us and stalked everyone for food. Note: no cameras or bags allowed inside.

We visited a local silk factory where we watched as some workers used a loom to hand make embroidered bedding. We were taken to a shop and shown the beautiful silk products available to purchase. Sadly, we couldn’t fit any of the duvet covers into our backpacks. =)

Afterward, we were pretty tired due to our early start time, so we passed up another temple and headed back to our hostel.

The next day we boarded the Indian Railway for New Delhi.

Stay tuned for Part II of our Train Tour of Northern India.

See more of our picture from Varanasi in our SmugMug gallery here.

Travel Points:

Hotel: We stayed at the Sabh Laxmi Guest House in Varanasi. It’s truly a family run place. The food is great and the staff are extremely friendly and even game me a free Henna Tattoo. It’s not that clean, but what it lacks in cleanliness is makes up for in friendliness. The owner knows that the place is run down, and he’s working on it as he has the money to do so. Overall, we recommend it.

Transportation: Train trips can be booked online at cleartrip.com. Be warned, the trains fill up weeks in advanced and should be booked accordingly. For more information about the trains, including types of cars and train routes, check out seat61.com and click on India under the Asia category on the left.

Daily Budget: Our daily budget in Varanasi was around $40 (U.S.) for 4 nights and 3 1/2 days. This includes the following: hostel, taxi from the Nepal boarder to Gorakhpur, train from Gorakhpur to Varanasi, full day tour, all admissions and fees, rickshaws and food.

Photo taken using Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD LD Aspherical IF Macro Zoom Lens

One of the fun surprises while visiting Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was a half day trip to the Batu Caves. These Caves are located about an hour outside of the city and can be easily reached by public bus number 11 for about $1 per person. The limestone caves are quite unique looking and one of them even has a Hindu Temple in it, while the other can be explored for a fee and it is full of bats. What made these caves especially fun for us was the monkeys that hang out all around the entrances and on the stairs up to the caves. They are very cute and we found out that monkeys really are curious just like the monkey, named George, we read about as children.
This week’s travel photo is of one of one of the monkeys eating a Rambutan Fruit. I liked the way he seemed to be hoarding the fruit from the other monkeys and the contrast of the macaque, the fruit and the blue textured wall in the background.

Travel Photo Of The Week Sponsored By Tamron USA.

For more information about Tamron and the lenses we use, check out our sponsors page here.