It took us 3 days to get home and despite all the customs, passport checks, security checks, etc. we had to go through, it was surprisingly smooth. Our stop in Honolulu included a fun visit with our friend Jen, and we got to stay in her apartment which overlooked the ocean at Waikiki! Surprisingly, the weather was not great when we were there- VERY humid and rainy. I went for a short jog in the morning before we had breakfast with Jodi’s Aunt (who also lives on Oahu) and a quick walk on the beach before jumping on our flight to LAX.

Waking up the next day in San Diego, I felt much better than expected- and the rain was starting to fall. Ron Paul was in town for a visit so I drove downtown to the rally. Even in the rain and as his campaign is winding down he still got around 400 people who watched his speech and waited in line to get a copy of his new book, The Revolution: A Manifesto autographed. I caught up with a few friends, had lunch with my friend Wes Bertrand, author of the book Complete Liberty, and headed to Mossy Toyota in Pacific Beach to attempt to lease a new car (since I’m carless at this point).

After about 4 hours in the dealership (mostly due to an insurance company mishap), and jetlag starting to kick in, I got myself a deal on a Toyota Corolla (35 mpg), but can’t pick it up until Tuesday (insurance thing).

Other than the gas prices I’ve been thrilled to be in San Diego again! A part of me misses life in Sydney and some of the people there. However, it feels liberating to be back home, being able to drive, and enjoying all the choices this place has to offer (both in food items and things to do!)

Jetlag has just about worn off now and I can’t wait to “start” the week tomorrow and dive into all the things I’m working on (as well as everything I’ve put off since March!).

Well that’s about it for the first “mini-retirement”. Great time, great experience, and total learning experience. I think the biggest mistake was underestimating the cost, and the best things were taking a tour of the south and showing up in the north with no plan.

It’s been fun writing and I hope whoever is reading has enjoyed reading and following our crazy trip. Keep in touch, until the next adventure!

Just rented a car in L.A. for $12/day. I think gas costs more than that now!

Cairns: The day after we went out to the reef, we took a train through the rainforest into the mountains up to the town of Kuranda. Pretty sweet trip, going by waterfalls in an open-air old school coach (while being forced to listen to cheesy Australian country/blues music!). We took a little Bush walk around the town and back down the mountain.  The next day I woke up with a cold, and spent most of the day in the room watching movies. Luckily we had a couple of movie channels to choose from. I think my favorite was Rendition, a fictional account of an Egyptian living in America falsely accused of terrorism and ending up a victim of the CIA’s torture program.

Brisbane to Surfer’s Paradise (Gold Coast): Today we flew from Cairns to Brisbane (about 2 hrs south), and hopped on a train to the Gold Coast. It was definitely a planes, trains, and automobiles day. Luckily, the trains are pretty convenient in this country (although expensive), and we got on one direct to the Gold Coast, about 90 minutes away from Brisbane. We went through the city of Brisbane on the way out. It appears to be a clean city, and newer than Sydney. It’s on a river and apparently touches a bay, but isn’t known for having much in the way of beaches or tourist attractions.

So we finally made it to Surfer’s Paradise later that day. It’s in the northern part of the Gold Coast and is the #1 tourist attraction in the area. We arrived without a plan of where to stay, but immediately spotted a Marriot Courtyard, and got a room for $99 with a spectacular view of the ocean! (I love just showing up in towns without reservations. Almost always the best deals and most interesting adventures to be had this way!)

“Surfer’s” is a bit like Florida, with a little Hawaii mixed in. This day was about 75 degrees with a constant breeze blowing. The first thing we noticed was hearing American accents in several places. Then later, we realized we must be in the off season- there were no crowds anywhere, even on the beach! Good timing. My plan was to sleep a full night and be fully recovered in the morning for a nice surf. Well the recovery didn’t happen and the “paradise” it was supposed to be for surfing didn’t exactly pan out (it looked more like a windy day at Lake Tahoe than an ocean with surfable waves!).

Instead, we took a bus down to Burleigh Heads (about 9km south) and went for a short hike over the beach (pictures coming). With another perfect day of weather, and the combination of beautiful beaches, warm ocean water, and luscious nature, I started thinking we made a mistake by spending most of our time in Sydney! This place seemed to have it all, although it may be a little too touristy to stay there for a great length of time.

Surfer’s Paradise to Byron Bay: That night, we hopped on a Greyhound Bus to Byron Bay, about 1.5 hours south (although it took a little longer with a few stops).

Again, we showed up without reservations at 8 p.m. It’s luckily a small town with basically two major streets. We stopped in a couple of places that were too expensive. Neither wanted to negotiate either! The third one was a nice looking motel and the guy running the place was a friendly aussie who had 1 room left and was happy to reduce the price for us! We ended up with a suite with 2 rooms, 3 beds, a kitchen, only about 100 meters to the beach!

We joked about finding some backpacker to take our second room and help us with the cost. We put our stuff in the room, and headed out to find something to eat. Around the first bend into town, we ran into none other than my buddy Pete (from Melbourne)! I knew from his Facebook page that he was going to be in Byron sometime around then, but he had no idea we were there. Turns out he did need a place to stay, so we split the cost of the room with him for two nights!

Byron Bay has traditionally been known as a sleepy hippy town with great surf, but more recently, tourism has invaded. It still has a lot of the charm, and some of the characters that you would expect, but prices are no better here for food, and no deals to be had on clothes either.

So the next day, Pete and I decided to rent boards and experience the famous surf. We walked about 2 miles down the beach before seeing ANY surf at all (although some unforgettable coastline views of mountains and long, wide beaches)! Finally, the break was looking good enough, so we walked back to town, got a couple of boards, and made the journey back down to the good surf. Jodi had to unfortunately work!

The beautiful thing was that no wetsuits are required! The water was around 80 degrees and someone told me that was actually cold for them! We got out there and caught a few waves. Fun times no doubt, but I had to call it quits a little early as my cough was slowing me down. Still, there is NOTHING like surfing without a wetsuit in an uncrowded break and beautiful part of the world. And, it wasn’t too horrible to have to wait around a bit on the beach on a perfect May day in northern New South Wales.

We walked back into town, grabbed some lunch, and I passed out back at the hotel for a bit.  Finally, a quick check of email at a local cafe and a quick walk around the town. The vibe here in Byron Bay was really good. This town seemed just about perfect to me- “no worries” Australia fully in action. This experience along with our Great Ocean Road tour have been the highlights of the trip for me.

That night we had an average dinner at the Hogsbreath (America-style restaurant), and a drink at the Balcony Bar afterwards (hot chocolate for me!). Everyone was pretty exhausted. Pete just finished finals before coming up to Byron Bay and was on sleep deficit. Jodi had a tough day at work. I still hadn’t shaken my cold. So we ended up back in the room, watched the second half of Rocky II, and called it a night.

The next day, Jodi and I caught a flight out of Byron Bay to Sydney and were happy to be “home”.  Pete had some surfing/hanging out on the beach/partying to do for a couple more days before heading back to Melbourne for school.

Now of course, my cold is going away.  Only 5 more days here and we make our way back to San Diego. My goal is to line up a car before we land in L.A. (sold my Mitsubishi before we left).

Pictures coming soon!

This town is a bit like Waikiki from around 1950′s, but much smaller, and instead of a beach there’s a boardwalk over mud! The weather, the hotels, and the palm trees are all similar to Hawaii. Here, the two main attractions are the Great Barrier Reef (GBR for short) and the rain forest.

Today, we took a boat out to North Hastings on the GBR. Pictures don’t really do this place justice and I hate the way the underwater camera photos turn out so I just attached a generic one from google to this post (edit: scratch that our data limit in this hotel is not allowing the upload).

The trip out, about 1.5 hours, was really rough and Jodi nearly lost her breakfast! I managed to pull it together and went on a dive with the tour group. I haven’t been diving in 7 years but it’s easy as pie, and they gave us the basics to do a pretty shallow (around 10 meters) dive near the coral reef. The fish are fantastic, and I saw a few new ones, but the main attraction is the reef itself. There’s all kinds of coral that looks fluorescent, in crazy royal blue and bright pink colors!

After the dive, the boat took us to another spot about 30 minutes further north on the reef. By this time, Jodi was feeling better and we went out on a snorkel. I saw better fish snorkeling than I did diving! The most interesting was this funny looking caterpillar that sits on the reef. It looks like a caterpillar that we’re familiar with but way bigger and fat.

Cairns is pretty much a tourist town so a couple of rows of restaurants and that’s about it. Well I’m in the hotel room now and I feel like it’s rocking back and forth so will have to call it a night! Tomorrow we’re taking a train through the rain forest and up some mountain.

P.S. Watched “Man of the Year” (Robin Williams) on our movie channel here yesterday, surprisingly pretty good (although cheesy as expected)!

Sure, the U.S. isn’t exactly a free market economy and has many problems with government that we’re well aware of.

But Australia’s government goes even further to get its “fair share” of the loot from the people and discourage progress.

Today, I went to an entrepreneur meeting and confirmed many of my suspicions with a couple of people I talked to. Federal income taxes here are a whopping 40%, sometimes higher. Corporations pay 44% on average to the government! Not many are encouraged to start their own businesses with these kinds of obstacles.

Then you have the government setting up monopolies and duopolies. The biggest problem we have come across here is the internet. Everything is controlled by basically one company, Telstra, who the government has made sure to prop up as THE internet provider (Optus is the other company but doesn’t seem pose much competition). What this means to the people is crappy service, “data limits”, and far higher prices than we have in the U.S. Very few cafes provide free internet because of the problems with cost. Most companies host in the U.S. because it’s less than 1/10th the cost of Australia!

The supermarkets are another glaring example of government-created duopoly. Woolworth’s and Cole’s dominate the market, and their jaw-dropping high prices show how well this is working for the people.

And what do the people get from all this money they pour into Canberra (the capital)?

They get what you would expect. A lot of waste. The government-run transportation here is way overpriced (we’re 10 minutes from downtown but pay $5.50 round trip on the buses, trains are even more expensive).  The security cameras everywhere “for your protection” are an indication of central planning bureaucrats with far too much time and taxpayer money on their hands. Then you have the Australian military stationed in Iraq and Afganistan. Not many here are sure why their troops are in these countries, and Kevin Rudd, although having campaigned on an anti-war platform, now wants to remove 1/3rd of the troops from Iraq to focus on “the real war” in Afganistan (note how Hillary Clinton is beating these same war drums back home).

Next thing the Aussie bureaucrats want to do is force universal government-run preschool on all 4 year olds. To hell with the rights of the parent to choose what education would be best for their children! Government of course knows best on how to raise your child.

One of the factors right now allow this to go on with no one getting too upset is that money is pouring into Australia from China.  China can’t buy enough natural resources like iron ore and coal (which Australia is chalk full of) to keep up with their growth.

Another reason is that the economy is booming (due in part to this resource boom) and there are jobs galore. It seems everyone here is working (for the man!).

A guy in the entrepreneur meeting told me that Australians typically like to just think life is good and as long as they’re able to pay the bills and drink beers at the pub with their friends, no reason to complain or stir things up.

No worries mate!

More interesting, educational times here by the harbour!

Next week May 8th we leave for the Great Barrier Reef, followed by Brisane, the Gold Coast, Byron Bay, and who knows where else?

We found out about this 10km hike from our American neighbor. It goes from Spit Junction (15 min from us) to Manly Beach. So we gave it a go and it turned out to be a really cool walk! It goes though rainforest-like areas and twists and turns through some fantastic vantage points throughout north Sydney. It dumps you off at Manly Harbor.

When we arrived at around 3:00 we sat down at a restaurant and had some Barramundi (fish). Very tasty!

From there we took a ferry back to Sydney, which had some of the best views of the city you can get.

Got a few pics which should be uploaded soon.

My friend Anthony from way back in high school days just happened to move here to Sydney 2 weeks ago and we’ve been hanging out, so we all (Jodi, Anthony, me) went out that night (pics up soon!). First we met some friends from the American Ex-Pat Meetup at this bar. It was crazy crowded and loud so we moved on quickly to go to dinner at a MEXICAN restaurant, with that same ex-pat meetup group.

The company was good, the food was not. Not surprising, they just can’t do mexican food in this country. It was worth the effort anyway, and got to share some laughs with a friendly bunch.

New pictures SHOULD be up soon. I’m not sure what’s going on there. We’re having difficulty with the internet again since we have gone over our “data limit”- nutty Australian thing.

So we spent a total of 4 days in Melbourne, which was plenty. Saturday night, we met up with my friend Pete (from San Diego) who is in MBA school at the University of Melbourne. He lives down in St. Kilda, a young and active area on the beach (bay not ocean). That night we went to an Aussie Rules Football (“footie”) game, where we saw the North Melbourne Kangaroos go up against the Collingwood Magpies. The Magpies were favored and their crowd was equivalent to the Raider Nation (slightly better behaved, although a drunk woman near us got tossed from the game!)

Aussie Rules is played on a large oval field and the goal is to kick the ball through the middle goal posts for 6 points. There’s more to it than that but that’s what google is for!

The game was extremely entertaining, back and forth, and in the end the Kangaroos pulled off the upset, 116-113. It’s easy to become a fan of this action-packed sport. We also ate the famous Aussie meat pies, which will be in the pictures.  Good times! (or “good fun!” as they say here)

Sunday was kind of a free day so we cruised around the city a bit more, went to Target to pick up a few things, and basically ran out of things to do! I was starting to get sick and tired of the huge crowds everywhere and the compactness of the city. I think Jodi’s tolerance is a bit higher than mine in this area.  I enjoyed Melbourne but after all, it’s just a big city with lots of cafes!

Monday morning we got on a tour bus and headed off to the Great Ocean Road with group consisting of Italians, Irish, Japanese, English, and a French lady who couldn’t speakany english, as well as our Aussie tour guide. The guide, Bill, was in his late 50′s and had us in stitches much of the time! He made fun of everybody, gave out nicknames (like the French Lady Who Can’t Speak Any English), made fun of himself,  and overall gave us a fantastic tour with lots of interesting stops and facts along the way.

The tour was the highlight of our trip so far. The first stop was Bells Beach, home of the final scene in the movie “Point Break”, where Bodie goes off to surf the 200 year storm- and to die. (I JUST learned that this scene was actually filmed in Oregon and not on location!)

From there we cruised up the road to many scenic and historic spots. Our favorite was the 12 apostles. Incredible natural beauty!

We also got to see Koalas taking a snooze in some trees on the side of the road!

That night we headed up the hill to a motel/hostel in the middle of nowhere. Our guide took us out on a “bush walk” (australian for walk in nature), and we were able to come within feet of Kangaroos! Amazing experience, although the pictures didn’t come out so well for some reason.

Next day we got back on the bus and got to see some fantastic canyons, and took a hike down into a waterfall area. At 1:00 we got dropped off at a bus stop and took a 6.5 hour ride to Adelaide. We were in Adelaide a total of about 10 hours as we got in around 8 pm and flight back to Sydney left at 6 the next morning!

Today here in Sydney it is Anzac Day, kind of like our Memorial day, but even bigger. We’re headed to a party at a hotel and then a Mexican dinner (yep, they have Mexican food here, I will report on its quality next time!).

So far, Melbourne is an impressive city. It’s much smaller than Sydney yet still a big city with lots to do. Melbourne has a European feel and is notorious for cafes. There are cafes everywhere, and a river that runs through the city lined with more cafes.

I took a run around the Royal Botanic Gardens yesterday (about 4 km). I have to say that’s the most beautiful city park I’ve ever seen! As much as the royalty theme in all these places creeps me out a bit, they do make the best of it when it comes to the architecture. Pictures coming soon.

I can see how many people consider this city “livable” compared with Sydney. It’s super easier to get around on trams and trains, and there are many great running trails around the city.

Last night we tried Kangaroo meet for the first time. This was BBQ’d and pretty good, although not all that different from beef.

Today (Saturday), we’re going to check out the Greek and Italian districts, and walk through more of the parks. Later, we will meet up with my friend Pete (who is here in MBA school), and going to an AFL game (more on this later).

Not much internet access while here but will keep blogging when I can and hopefully have some new pics up soon.

Some other points of interest:

-I went to the beach here yesterday. It’s a pretty small stretch and there are no waves, as it’s a bay not the ocean. Still, it’s nice with restaurants, a running/biking/rollerblading path, and large condo buildings, reminding me of a min-Coronado.

-Lots of young people in this town, I think because the university is right in the CBD. So for the older people it’s just as dressy as Sydney, but you do see more casual clothes here. I even witnessed a few pairs of flip flops, bringing me back to sweet home San Diego!

On Sunday, we attended the Red Bull Flugtag on the harbor, meeting up with a few locals from a meetup.com group we joined, and a few randoms we met at the event. The Flugtag (German for “flying day”) is a ridiculous event where people dress up in costumes and bring their makeshift planes to attempt to “fly” off a ramp into the water, about a 6 foot drop.

Well it’s mostly a lot of crashing and burning and toppling over off the ramp. Pretty funny to see it live but after you’ve seen a few of these “planes” take a nose-dive, the mystery is taken out of each launch attempt and you can watch the rest on YouTube if that floats your boat.

Nonetheless, we had fun with our new Aussie friends and of course forgot the camera, so there will be none of that on this blog!

Monday (which we are taking as a holiday each week), we headed out the Blue Mountains for a hike. This time luckily we brought the camera.

As luck would have it, this was the first day it has rained since we’ve been here. We walked about a mile and a half in the rain to catch our train, and even with an umbrella, got soaked. It’s a two-hour train ride out to the mountains to a town called Katoomba- which turned out to be about 10 degrees colder than Sydney, and we were no doubt unprepared!

First order of business was new socks for Jodi, who was scwooshing around in her shoes at this point. Lucky for us there was an REI-type store right across from the train station, where socks were on special for $29.95 per pair!

Fortunately we did remember the camera this time. So far I have to say this is the most underrated part of the Sydney area. The photos we took (check the flickr) however don’t really do it justice because of the weather.

We went on the “steepest tram ride in the world” or so they told us that, and hiked up about 90 minutes back up the mountain. It wasn’t raining when we started the hike, and despite our best attempts at ancient aboriginal magical weather changing techniques, we could not stop the rain from coming down. The tour guide/bus driver told us the hike might be “a little misty”, and about halfway up the hill and drenched from head to toe, I started to understand what he meant!

Since both of us still had a few dry areas remaining, we went on another smaller hike after that to check out “The Three Sisters” up close and personal.  The theme of the day was “you can be really dry when you’re dead!”

The train ride home was a little rough considering they had the air conditioner on! It was nice to get back to home sweet home Sydney and put on some dry clothes….and bask in the idea that Jodi has some really nice socks.