South America and Antarctica

Hola! and Happy New Year to our dear friends and family.

We arrived back in Brisbane on Friday 15 January, having left exactly four weeks previously for a cruise from Santiago de Chile to Buenos Aires, with a pre-cruise stopover in Santiago and a post cruise excursion to Iguassu Falls. We’re not home home yet because of an overrun on the bathroom renovations but we hope to be back in the house tomorrow. We spent Christmas, New Year and Doug’s birthday on board the beautiful MS Zaandam.

My dears, we had a blast. Seriously. And it will take many posts to cover it all, so be patient. But briefly: Continue reading “South America and Antarctica”

Stradbroke Island, August 2015

We’ve been to North Stradbroke island (affectionately known as ‘Straddie’) twice this month to watch whales from the land. (The annual humpback migration north goes right past the east/northest side of the island). Foolishly I didn’t bring my camera the first time because I didn’t realise how beautiful it would be. But the second time, a week later, I did. Both winter days were beautifully warm and sunny, and the ride over on the catamaran a real joy, letting us see dolphins and seabirds each time.

Even from the ferry port, the view was lovely. Continue reading “Stradbroke Island, August 2015”

Taking my new camera lens for a day out

My new Nikon DSLR is great but lugging lenses and swapping them around is a pain in the butt. I ended up not even using the telephoto on our recent trip (although the weather was generally bad enough for that not to matter.) So when I saw the 16-300mm lens I’d been hoping to get before we head to Antarctica for Xmas, on sale, I snapped it up. And then I had to test it, didn’t I 🙂

These are all from Bribie Island. Continue reading “Taking my new camera lens for a day out”

Kumamoto

Our hotel in Kumamoto was the worst of the entire trip, both in room size and facilities, and for breakfast (fortunately the BenKay restaurant where we had our farewell meal was a much higher standard.) Was not pleased. However, it was across the road from one of the bloody enormous Tsuruya department stores (with the biggest food hall I have ever seen in my life), and in the middle of the shopping district, so there was that aspect we hadn’t had a chance to explore in any of our other stops. It isn’t a particularly scenic city, or at least we didn’t see that side of it, but I did do some booze shopping, and on two nights, Doug and I went exploring for food, finding a wonderful tempura place the first night, and a ramen place the second. (Doug has become quite the ramen fan :). ) So we ate good local real food while the rest of the group went off to posher places and came back bitching about too much to eat. Again. Continue reading “Kumamoto”