Best Ideas from Around the World

Sorry for the long delay in posting this update. We were hit hard by reality upon returning home to Washington and just now beginning to come up for air.

This is a collection of ideas that, like the electronic price tags in supermarkets in NZ, made us think, "why don't we have/do that back home?" We're not going to discuss the big, obvious ones like universal health care in Canada, the metric system (how many feet in a mile?) or sugarcane ethanol in Brazil. These are the little ones that it would be relatively easy to adopt and seem like no-brainers.

• Ultra-pasteurized milk - in most other countries they sell milk that doesn't need to be refrigerated until after you open it. It lasts on the shelf for up to 7 months so you can keep extra on hand for emergencies like when you've fixed yourself a big bowl of cereal only to find you're out of milk and realize water is just not the same. Why don't we have that here?

• Big flush / little flush toilets - these toilets, which allow you to choose whether to use just half the tank of water (for flushing liquids) or the full tank (solids), are great for water saving. We found them in almost every country...except the US.
  
  

• Boothless toll roads - taking EZ Pass to the next step, Singapore and New Zealand have completely eliminated the toll booths on highways. In Singapore every car is required to have an electronic tag that is read as you drive along the road. New Zealand's system photographs your license plate and then debits your account or sends you a bill in the mail.

• Pin numbers for credit cards - In Australia and New Zealand, credit card transactions require the buyer to input a four-digit pin onto a keypad (like we do for debit cards) rather than sign. This seems like a simple way to greatly reduce credit card fraud.

• Sim cards - almost every country but the US uses sim cards (a tiny chip that is inserted into the back of a cell phone). The sim card stores all your account information and even your database of phone numbers. This allows you to use any virtually any cell phone with any carrier (no waiting for Verizon to come out with a phone AT&T has had for nine months) and makes upgrading to a new phone seamless - you never have to re-enter all your phone numbers!
  
• ATM Demonimations - in Indonesia we used a cash machine that dispenses multiple bill denominations. When we withdrew 1,000,000 rupiah (the exchange rate was 12,000 to 1 US dollar) it didn't just give us 10 hundred-thousand notes but gave us a few hundred thousands plus some fifty thousands, ten thousands, and five thousands. Imagine taking $100 out of an ATM in the US and getting 3 $20 bills, 2 $10 bills, 3 $5 bills, and 5 singles. Would be kinda nice, right, especially when you then have to buy a $2 metro card and would prefer not to get 18 silver dollars in return.

• Eating pumpkin (year round) - in Argentina, South Africa, and New Zealand people eat pumpkins and not just in pie on Thankgiving (which they don't really have anyway). We learned that historically Europeans thought pumpkin was only good for feeding livestock, which is why we're not accustomed to eating it. But we found it tastes great roasted, in salads, and in soups and apparently it's pretty healthy too.

• DVD rental stores - in New Zealand they have stores where you can go to rent a DVD and bring it home to watch right away. It's like Netflix, but instead of getting the movies in the mail you just go to a store to pick them up. Brilliant!

We did come across a few not-so-great ideas too:

• Restaurant surcharges for Sundays and holidays - they tack on 10-15% extra
  
• Paying for ketchup - I think I spent more on ketchup packets than the fish and chips
• Different shaped electrical plugs - why does every country need their own special shape outlet?
  
• Blue stop signs - I'm embarrassed to admit this was actually in the US (Hawaii)
  
  
  

Vancouver and Whistler

The last stop on our trip was the city of Vancouver, British Columbia and nearby Whistler ski resort. We really enjoyed the city, which has a very cosmopolitan feel but also has great parks, waterways, and beautiful mountain backdrop.

Vancouver also ended up being a great stop for Sarah, who was sad to be missing the cherry blossoms blooming in DC. It turns out Vancouver has 36,000 cherry blossom trees of their own and they were just starting to bloom.

On our way out of town we visit a salmon hatchery. Apparently we've messed up nature so badly we now need to raise baby salmon in tanks before releasing them in the wild to ensure enough will reach adulthood to maintain the population.

We also stopped by this awesome suspension bridge. The first one was made in the 19th century out of hemp ropes. Fortunately this one had steel wires and concrete ballasts.

This was the first time we have skied together and unbeknownst to us we have matching ski jackets. Needless to say we were a bit embarrassed and felt obligated to explain to the people that commented on it that we bought the jackets before we even met each other (but what a tangible sign of our compatibility)!

Whistler just completed this gondola in December that connects the mountain's peak to that of adjacent Blackcomb Mountain. It's quite an impressive piece of engineering. At one point the gondola is 1450 feet above the valley below - that's 200 taller than the Empire State Building. Two of the cars have glass bottoms but we didn't want to wait to ride in one. Here's a photo to give you some sense of how high the gondola is.

A few more ski pictures:

Unfortunately we now need to board our flight back home. We still have a few more posts up our sleeve (including some cool videos we took but didn't have the bandwidth to upload) so keep checking the blog! Can't wait to catch up with all of you.

Hawaii

We were in Hawaii (on Oahu) for a short four days on our way back to North America. We spent the first two days in Honolulu - hiking, snorkeling, and basically anything else our friend Trevor, who grew up there, recommended we do. We then moved up to the less developed North Shore and where the pace of activity slows considerably. Here are a few photo highlights of our visit:

This was the view from the top of a hike just outside Honolulu. The mountains seem to be perpetually in the clouds, which was the case when we arrived at the summit.

This picture was taken while standing on a memorial platform built above the USS Arizona which was sunk by the Japanese during their attack on Pearl Harbor. This was the only ship that was never raised and the remains of 1,000+ sailors are still entombed in the battleship. The dark patches on the water are oil which continues to leak from the boat. Apparently it leaks 2-3 quarts per day and had 300,000 gallons on board at the time of its sinking...so it should stop leaking in the year 3256.

Hanauma Bay near Honolulu. The dark patches in the water are, thankfully not oil, but submerged coral reefs which attract an amazing and colorful array of fish. The snorkeling here is incredible - if only we had an underwater camera!

This North Shore beach is known for basking sea turtles. It may look dead, but it's just relaxing in the sun.

We came across this magnificent peacock was in a botanical garden near Waimea beach.

Now we leave the States again to visit our northerly neighbors (incredibly it will be Sarah's first time to Canada) for some skiing before returning to DC on Saturday. Stay tuned for some trip summarizing blog entries, including the best and worst ideas from around the world!

Kiwis and Lord of the Rings

When you think of New Zealand you probably think of kiwi fruit and the Lord of the Rings movies (or in reverse order if you don't socialize much). Our recent activities have involved both.

On Wednesday we completed a 22.4 km hike through the Tongariro National Park, aka Mordor's filming location for the LOTR movies. The hike was spectacular and we couldn't have asked for a nicer day. This late into the fall hikers are often confronted with sub-freezing temperatures and 30+ kph winds at altitude but we walked the entire trail in t-shirts. The winds were so calm the dust hung on the dirt roads leading to the trail head and even the summit was eerily windless.

The hike was a microcosm of New Zealand's diversity of landscape - the trail passed through valleys of lava flows from past eruptions of the volcano, vivid green-blue mineral lakes, hillsides steaming from the thermal pools, brushlands, and dense forests with rushing streams.

The volcano (Mount Doom from LOTR) in the background. You can see the lava flows (dark brown) from previous eruptions.

The white in the center of this picture is steam from the thermal pools (reeks of sulfur).

These pools get their vibrant green color from the minerals in the water (if you look closely you'll see hikers in the lower left hand corner and get a sense of the scale).

When we arrived in NZ we were shocked to find the kiwi fruits in the supermarkets were imported from Italy. Yesterday we visited a kiwi farm in the middle of the kiwi region to find out the answer to this mystery as well as learn a little more about Sarah's favorite fruit. As she is quick to point out, the kiwi is a super food- one kiwi has the vitamin C of two oranges, the potassium of a banana, and the fiber of a bowl of bran flakes (so don't eat too many or you won't want to leave the house). A Rutgers University study ranked the kiwi #1 out of all fruits for its nutritional content.

So why no native kiwis in NZ? It is just about harvesting time for kiwis here. All the fruit is picked off the vines in April and May when it is still unripened and then moved into cold storage. A kiwi can last up to 10 months in this condition and they recently out of last year's crop, hence the Guido kiwis. We also learned that there are about 10 different varieties of kiwis, although only two are exported because the others don't last long enough (the green variety we mostly see a slightly sweeter and less hairy gold variety). We have been fortunate enough to enjoy one variety that is only available in NZ and only for two months of the year - the kiwi berry. Imagine shrinking a kiwi to the size of a cherry. The skin is soft so and hairless so can pop the entire thing in your mouth...delicious!

In between Modor and Kiwiworld we visited a couple caves. The caves in NZ are much like the caves in the States with one very cool exception - glowworms. The glowworms aren't actually worms but the larvae of a type of fly (apparently they were having trouble attracting visitors to the 'glowing maggot caves' and so they started calling them 'glowworm caves' despite being technically inaccurate). Like spiders, they produce sticky threads to catch their prey, only the strands hang straight down instead of forming webs. The worms then produce a small bluish light from a chemical reaction to attract insects to their traps.

When there are thousands of the glowworms on the roof of the cave it creates a beautiful scene, which is unfortunately difficult to photograph, but it looks similar to the night sky. We took a short raft ride through the caves in carnivorous eel infested waters (being fed goat chunks by our guide in the photo below). I still don't understand why Sarah wouldn't go on the tubing trip through the caves (no joke, this was an option).

We've now moved on some towns along the coast. The scenery and beaches rival that of the Caribbean - we just wish the water was as warm.

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And if you are wondering about the other things that come to mind when you think of New Zealand, yes, there are tons of sheep and you see them everywhere. Flight of the Conchords - they love it. On Air New Zealand we even got to watch the first two episodes of the much anticipated second season. Arf arf! Do the doggy bounce!

Queenstown, Wellington, Rotorua

We've been in New Zealand for about a week now and are having a blast. We started off in Queenstown on NZ's South Island. Queenstown is the extreme sport capital of the world and the location of the first commercial bungy jumping operation. There are ways to scare yourself here than you knew existed. For example, have you ever heard of zorbing or sledging? Zorbing is rolling down a hill inside a large ball. Sledging is like white water rafting only there's no raft, just a small sled you ride down on by yourself. Our participation in the adrenaline activities was limited to jet boating (riding in a boat thrust to 50 mpg by water jets down a river mere inches from the canyon walls) and luging (driving a little cart down a hill).

Queenstown is also an incredibly scenic area and we did our best to see all the best vistas. We did a couple hikes around town - one through a light rain which wasn't that fun on the way up but we were rewarded by a rainbow at the top and another where we stumbled upon a herd of sheep.

On the last day we took a scenic flight in a very small plane to the awe inspiring Milford Sound. The 40 minute flight over the mountains (which shortcuts a 5 hour drive around the mountains) was amazing - 70% magnificent landscapes, 20% harrowing, and 10% nauseating (at least for Sam, the percentages may have been reversed for Sarah). Upon arriving we took a two hour cruise on the sound before flying back over the mountains to Queenstown. For once Sam was glad he wasn't flying the plane:

Milford Sound - to give you a sense of scale, the tiny white dots on the lake near the base of the mountains are large 50+ person boats.

This waterfall is 3x higher than Niagara Falls (although obviously not nearly as wide):

This waterfall is so tall the top is above the clouds. We took this picture from the plane:

After Queenstown we flew to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand for a couple days. The highlight was seeing a rugby match, even though we didn't really understand what was happening. Even without knowing the rules we could definitely appreciate the physicality of the sport - kind of makes our NFL stars look like wimps.

Wellington also has a nice botanical garden, where Sarah showed us what she would look like as a Spanish moss tree.

We're currently in Rotorua, the epicenter of thermal activity in New Zealand. The ground steams in numerous places indicating hot pools. We took a mud bath (not as luxurious as it sounds) and saw some awesome geysers.

Rotorua is also the center of Maori (the indigenous people of NZ) culture. We went to see a traditional performance where Sam was drafted to come on stage and join in the warrior dance. The dance is designed to intimidate the enemy in hopes they'll run away and avoid a battle, hence the protruding tongues.

Finally, under the category of "why didn't we think of that" a grocery store here has electronic price tags, saving paper and eliminating the need for someone to manually change all the tags.

We're now beginning the driving tour portion of our NZ itinerary. Today we're driving into the national park and preparing for tomorrow's 17 km Tongariro Alpine Crossing hike, which is supposed to be the best one day hike in NZ.

Sydney and the South Coast

Here are some pictures from our week in Australia. We started off with four days in Sydney and are already plotting ways to move here - a great city plus amazing beaches! We then rented a car and drove down the gorgeous south coast to an area called Jervis Bay. On the way we even saw a kangaroo on the side of the road - alas, we weren't quick enough to get a picture. Upon arriving in Jervis Bay we couldn't believe how many beautiful, secluded beaches there are and most of the area is a national park filled with incredible hikes and views of the ocean. We rented a quaint seaside cottage which was a great base for hiking, kayaking, and swimming as well as delicious local cuisine (lots of fish and local produce).

At the 3D IMAX theater in Sydney (supposedly the world's largest screen):

The best public toilet we've ever been to - and it was free. A computerized voice guided you in and played soothing music while you were inside. And, in the unlikely event of global destruction, the bathroom can launch into space to recolonize another planet.

Sydney's Bondi beach - so beautiful yet only a 10 minute drive from downtown.

Hiking near Bondi beach. We saw dozens of these lizards / iguanas.

The compulsory shot of us in front of the Opera House (it is breathtaking, especially at night):

On the drive to Jervis Bay we passed over this magnificent bridge built out over the ocean in 2005 to replace a road at the base of the cliffs that was continually subject to rock slides:

The beach where we stayed touted itself at the "whitest sand in the world." It was pretty white but I'm not sure how scientific their study was.

We hiked a few km's into this long and stunning beach which we had to ourselves for a while before some others arrived.

Kayaking on the bay in crystal clear waters.