Our Washington Adventure

As part of the almost free vacation we got a complementary Deluxe City Tour which we decided to take on the Tuesday. The downside of the tour was that we had to get up very early as the mini bus was picking us up from the hotel at 8am! The first few stops were at other hotels to collect other guests and then we went across to Cabo San Lucas – about 25 minutes across from San Jose del Cabo which is where we were staying.

The first part of the tour was meant to be a trip on a glass bottom boat our from the marina to the main “thing” that Cabo is famous for – it’s iconic lands end rock formation. However when we arrived at the marina, we met big Lenny our tour guide and he told us that the boat tours were cancelled because the harbor authorities had closed the marina due to high winds. With this being one of the main highlights of the tour this was a rather disappointing turn of events which being told we could spend 30 minutes looking round some shops full of Mexican tat couldn’t compensate for! We looked briefly round the tat but spent most of our time looking at the pelicans that were chilling out by the water. I don’t know what it is about pelicans but I like them – I think I’d like to come back as a pelican!

After boarding the bus we set off back out of Cabo towards San Jose to a place called Chileno Beach. This beach is one of the few along this stretch of coastline where you can swim in the sea – most areas are too dangerous due to the currents that exist between the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean. Chileno beach is also very popular because it is home of a large area of coral reef. This makes it a very popular location for scuba divers but it was only a paddle for us! The water was warm crystal clear and considering the benefits it offers it was surprisingly quiet – mainly because tourists don’t often know about it. The locals obviously do though because there were security guards up in the car park to make sure people weren’t pinching the coral!

 

As we boarded the bus to leave the beach, big Lenny informed us that the harbor had been opened again and we could go back and take our boat ride if we wanted to, which of course we all did! Back on the bus, we set off back from where we had just come and on to the boat. On the way back to the marina Harry and Toby were trying to get their heads round glass bottom boats. They couldn’t quite understand what the would look like and why they didn’t sink – because glass sinks.

 

As we went out of the harbor we saw lots of California sea lions flooping about and then as we got further out we started to see fishes appearing under our glass bottom. There were some parrot fishes, yellow fin something or others and many other multi-colored fishes. We then went on to the famous rock formation at lands end (the end of the Baja peninsula). Although there were lots of other boats around it was actually a pretty impressive formation/sight with lots of small beaches all around – all of which are only accessible via the boats. 

 

The rock formation, if you have an imagination is meant to look like a dinosaur putting its head down into the water to take a drink:

 

With the boat trip over it was back into the bus, with beers and sodas provided for all (apart from the driver) and we set off in the direction of San Jose del Cabo again. Next stop was a glass blowing factory where we watched the professionals creating an attractive/ugly glass fish and then we watched a couple of slightly less professional glass blowers creating something which resembled more of a big bubbly mess until they blew so much that they exploded (the glass bubbles not the blowers)!

After leaving the glass blowing we walked round the corner to a local, traditional Mexican restaurant. We all sat down at the table and the owner kept plying us with glasses of tequila – hoping that we would buy some later! I wasn’t overly interested in the samples however the host was most insistent and wouldn’t let anyone (apart from the boys) not drink it! It was much smoother than tequila we have tried in the past and then there were probably 6 or 7 other flavors to sample including apple, pear, mango and coffee which were actually quite nice – although slightly sickly after the first 4 or 5!

With lunch finished there was just time for a short walk around some of the town and then it was back in the bus and a return to the hotel. It had been an eventful morning and it was good to have taken the tour and seen some of the Mexico outside of the hotel but it was also nice to escape the heat and get into a nice refreshing pool! What a tough old day!

The rest of the pictures can be seen here.

What we had expected on our vacation was sunshine and some relaxation time by the pool. What we hadn’t expected was a bonanza of wild and marine life. If only I’d bought the camera with the big lens! Nevermind.

First of all it has to be said that not all creatures were captured on camera however all were witnessed by everyone so there is no disputing their existence!

As we were still in north America our first sighting was an eagle as we drove from the airport to San Jose del Cabo. They were everywhere throughout our stay and, according to our cab driver, it was a fish eagle. Although we saw plenty of these across our few days this particular creature was one that did escape the camera. We’re also not 100% sure it was a fish eagle but we have no other suspects so we will run with that.

We also saw a large number of another odd shaped soaring bird which looked like this:

We’ve no clue what it is but we will rely on Russell to let us know! There were plenty of them though.

Other birds that were not particularly rare but sighted by us included the pelican (one of my own personal favorites):

And the woodpecker, who we saw at the beautiful Chileno beach:

Also at Chileno we saw a lizard of some sort:

We wouldn’t make very good wildlife commentators because, again, we have no idea what it was, other than our tour guide said it was a lizard and we agree with him!

Off the land and into the water, we saw another collection of interesting things!

The biggest sighting was one that we have no photographic evidence of as we had just gone for a walk a long the beach and didn’t take the camera, however it was, until the last morning, the most spectacular. We stood on the beach going “oooo” and “aaaahhhh” as if we were watching a July 4th firework display. What we were in fact watching, out on the horizon, was at least one and maybe several grey whales leaping out the water and crashing back in with a massive splash. It was pure chance that we had seen them – we first spotted what we thought was the blow of air shooting into the air – but then after watching a bit longer and moving a bit higher up the sandy beach we saw the whales leaping and saw lots of whale watching boats zooming towards them. Even with my best lense I’m not sure we would have got a great picture but it was amazing to see nonetheless!

Moving on to somewhat smaller aquatic life we did get a slightly imperfect picture, on our boat trip, of some “yellow fin fishes”! I’m sure they have another name but I’m not sure what it is! Here they are though:

Also on our boat trip we saw Californian sea lions a-plenty both swimming in the water and being pretty stinky on some rocks:

Away from our boat trip and on walks along the beach in the morning from the hotel we had spotted manta rays leaping out the water. They seemed to congregate each morning along the beach from our hotel and for some reason they would just leap clean out the water, do a little spin and then flop back into the water. We had initially thought they were fish but as they did their spin, mid flight we saw their flappy wings. It was very entertaining but again we managed to get no photographic evidence of the leaping. We did however get evidence of the rays and pretty spectacular (and lucky) it was too!

On our last morning we had claimed our sun loungers in the pool and while Tracy and I lay in the sun Harry and Toby went to the beach to play volleyball. After a while Tracy went to check they were ok before arriving back to tell me that there were rays in the sea playing in the waves. Harry and Toby had seen these and decided that although numerous people were watching this event it wasn’t worthy of telling their parents – they’d just carried on playing.

When Tracy and I got down to the beach we saw the amazing sight for ourselves – and it was so good that it was the single best moment of the holiday! With the waves crashing onto the beach the sun was still at a low enough angle that the light was shining clear through the waves as they rose from the sea. As it did there were tens (if not hundreds at times) of rays playing in the water and surfing their way into shore right in the middle of the wave.

Although I have used the word several times already it really was amazing to see and even more amazing was the fact that I managed to get some pictures! Because the sun was still at a fairly low angle I couldn’t see a thing on the camera screen so I just pointed at the water and kept on taking pictures! Here are a couple but there are more available here:

So there we go! That was our wildlife extravaganza! The only other creature we should mention was a nasty little wasp that lay on the beach and stung Toby when he trod on it. It was a whooper of a sting but it came out nicely although it did reduce our big brave Toby to heap of tears. Fortunately we weren’t far from the hotel so we went to the pool bar and got him a kids Pina Colada and everything in the world improved!

 

Leading up to our Mexico vacation we had watched a UK TV series that tracked the migration of the Grey whale from the Baja peninsula to northern Alaska. Inspired by the fact that we now found ourselves at the base of the Baja peninsula Harry decided to perfect the art of being a grey whale.

After some hard graft in the pool I think you will all agree that for a casual observer he could easily be confused with a whale:

httpv://youtu.be/kpW3RWMgEpc

Toby wasn’t as keen on being a whale – he much prefers talking to them (and is very good at that) – so he just decided to spend some quality time on a body board that some random person had given to the boys as they left:

httpv://youtu.be/XERuWta0xgg

Toby’s smooth moves on his body board caught the eye of a drunk American lady (term used loosely) in a bright yellow bikini who decided to join him as he went up and down the pool. He seemed very pleased with himself although we’re not sure this bodes well for later in life!

Harry also took a selection of pictures to accompany the holiday journal that his teacher had asked him to write. The journal may make it onto the site one day but for now, we will all have to make do with this wonderful selection of photo’s (with the full set here):

As Harry takes such a good photo he’s been given one of our other cameras to use now so expect bigger and better photographic treats from him in the future!

 

While we were in Australia, on the occasions that Toby remembered to take his camera he took a number of photo’s. The following are a selection but you can see all of his pictures here:

You may notice once you’ve seen them all that Toby does still like to take a sneaky picture of bottoms when he gets the chance!

On our final day in Sydney we had one last trip to make before we set off for the airport and that was up the Sydney tower. It was only a couple of blocks from the hotel so we walked through the shopping center, stopped for a bacon and egg sandwich, bought our tickets, skipped past the queue of about 20 Indian tourists and got into the lift to the top of the tower.

These are the fun facts about the tower:

• It is Sydney’s tallest free-standing structure
• It is the tallest observation tower in the Southern Hemisphere
• It opened to the public in August 1981
• It is capable of withstanding earthquakes and extreme wind conditions
• 56 cables stabilise the tower (although I didn’t notice them!)

After taking in the views it was back down the tower and to the hotel to pack our bags. Sydney was officially complete – we had been up the tallest building and been on a boat. As long as you do those two things then you have officially visited a destination!

With bags packed it was time to head to the airport. Fortunately there were no 7 hour wait times – just a couple of hours – which allowed us to grab a glass of wine and a lemon lime bitters – which is my new drink of choice! After walking round the shops and having a small bite to eat we started to board our plane. We eventually took off an hour late which was going to start eating into our layover time in LA. Instead of having 3 hours we were going to have just under 2 now which would normally be ok but we were having to go through US border control which can take forever. Any way there was no need to worry about that – we had a 13.5 hour flight ahead of us which we had to sit through first.

The flight was reasonably uneventful. Luckily I had no-one sat next to me and there was a non-stop supply of very nice food – possibly the best airplane food I’ve had – mineral water, pasta, yummy chocolate pud, (I ate mine and then wanted Tracy’s but she ate it), a Boost bar, hot chocolate with a marshmallow melted in it, then a mango ice cream bar. And apparently while I was asleep they came round with slices of pizza but we all missed that!

After waking from our reasonably short sleep we were soon starting our descent into LAX but not before Toby managed to get a nice bit of sick out all over the toilet floor. Lovely child – there will be no more flying for him soon. I don’t think it is plane sickness though – more tiredness sickness but we shall see next time we go on a plane!

We landed at 10:30, two hours before our next flight was due to depart. We than had to walk upstairs, downstairs, upstairs, downstairs and along endless corridors to get to border control. Bloody border control. Luckily the queues didn’t look too bad so our confidence of making the next flight rose. However you can always rely on border control to mess things up! Because our flight had been quite empty our border control guard clearly decided to take his time. Once you get to the checkpoint it’s normally pretty fast to have your documents processed but this time we stood there for about 25 minutes watching our bags go round and round the luggage carousel just 10 yards away from where we stood!

Just as we thought he couldn’t drag it out any longer he decided to take Harry’s fingerprints even though he didn’t need to. He took Tracy’s fingerprints and photos twice and got me to fill out parts of the immigration forms that I’ve never had to fill out before.

When he finally let us through we grabbed the two cases and ran from this terminal to terminal 1 where our next flight left from. We dropped our bags off a couple of minutes before bag drop closed but only after having to rearrange things because one bag was 6lbs over. The checkin lady said you should just be able to take a pair of shoes out and that will be the 6lbs. Really? Who has a pair of shoes that weigh six pounds?
Anyway, we got there in the end and by the time we were through security our flight was boarding – it was all a very close shave!

After the short flight back to Seattle, we sped through the airport, collected the car and went home. Luckily the house was still there – I always worry and think the house might not be there when we get back from a holiday! It always is but you just never know!

With the car unloaded I offered to sort dinner. So we all got back in the car and went to Red Robin! As we had our meal we reflected on the lovely holiday we’d had and we asked Harry what his favorite thing in Sydney was, to which his reply was, “the museums”. We didn’t go to any museums. Nothing is wasted on Harry.

After polishing off the burgers it was back home so we could all go to bed and recover. There was just time for Toby to have a cookie and a glass of milk before bed and then he made himself laugh because he “burped into his milk”. It was the “funniest thing he’s ever done with his milk”. He didn’t want to finish drinking his milk though because it “had burp in it”.

Oh dear oh dear! Still it was nice to be home again!

The time had come to leave Jervis Bay and it’s beautiful beaches. As the weather had been horrific on the drive down we had the choice again of beautiful coastal route home or Kangaroo Valley – and we decided to go with Kangaroo Valley. Jeremy had told us it only took about 10 minutes longer but clearly he had no idea about timescales as it took a lot longer.

First stop after leaving our house was Camberwarra Mountain Lookout. It gave a good view of the valley below but it was a little hazy so we continued on our way towards the Valley of Kangaroos. Despite lots of signs promising us kangaroos and wombats we didn’t actually see any which was a little disappointing but then I guess it was probably quite unlikely anyway – it was nice to just see the real life signs though!!

Kangaroo Valley itself was lovely – and very English. The towns were full of campsites, garden centers and little shops – it had a strong feel of Derbyshire about it – but although it looked lovely there was no stopping until we reached Fitzroy falls. Again there were signs talking about wombats or platypus but unfortunately they are all sleeping in February (allegedly) and as a result there was no sign of them. There was, however, a pretty impressive waterfall and view along the valley too so we shouldn’t grumble:

After leaving the falls we continued up to Bowral where we stopped for lunch. Bowral looked my kind of town with some very nice houses on the outskirts – not sure how expensive they would be there but they were very nice.

We stopped for lunch at a wild food cafe which was very nice and then we filled the car up with gas and then set off back to Sydney. We left Bowral at about 13:15 and at 13:19 Harry was given a talking to about the inane prattle that falls out his mouth continually once he is in a car. At 13:24 he was told off again for starting to make that very same drivel again. By 13:32 he was in trouble again and we turned the radio on in an attempt to drown out the noise. I don’t know what it is about Harry and sitting in a car but it makes him talk utter nonsense!

At just before 4pm we arrived back in Sydney at our next and final hotel – the Swissotel. It was right in the middle of Sydney and would be a good base for our last few hours in Australia. We unpacked what was required for the remainder of our stay before heading out to the streets of Sydney for some last minute shopping. Then it was back to the hotel where we took advantage of having a proper sized bath before heading out to find something to eat. Although it was clearly a premium price for the tourists we ended up in the circular quays – down near the Opera House – where we found what looked like a nice Chinese. Luckily it turned out to be an excellent meal that was only nearly ruined by Toby having a tantrum about not getting a king prawn dish. Fortunately the crispy shredded beef dish made up for the lack of prawns which should come as no surprise as the best crispy shredded beef was the best that Tracy has ever had – high praise indeed; the chinese van in Turvey needs to raise  its game!

After a short walk to the Opera House to take a few pictures we walked our way back to the hotel and collapsed into bed for our last sleep in Sydney. Shame!

A few extra pictures here…