The land down under

OZ! Our flight from B.A. went pretty smoothly. I'd still rather spend two days on an Argentinian bus than fifteen hours on a plane though. It turns out we were flying on Australia Day on an Australian airline so most everyone was in a good mood. We got stripped of alot of our tourist gifts though because of the import checks they do here. You need to delcare any seeds/food/wood(?!). Also they check all your hiking shoes for soil residue. I'd brought most of Bolivia on mine so they took them away and dissenfiected them...which was long overdue. I'm surprised they didn't just burn them.

We managed to meet up with Becky's Dad as he arrived the day after we did and stopped over in Sydney on his way to Canberra. We hijacked him for a few hours and went wandering around the city. Sydney has a very pretty city centre, we went and strolled around Sydney Opera House and had a lovely lunch.

We said good-bye to Becky's dad and went into 'Xtreme Shopping Overdrive'. We've managed to restock almost everything that we've either lost/forgot/don't need/broke and feel ready for the rest of our travels. I bought waaaaaay to many books because I was stunned by the selection (they're all in English here!). Also the internet is decent so we've managed to upload some photo's

We meet up with our friends Nick and Lindsey from London (actually he's Kiwi and she's from Winnipeg and they live in Australia now) and went to Manly beach. Aussie's don't see the humor there...it's just a name, but I was giggling every time we walked past any shop that had Manly in the title (Manly rowing club, Manly corner shop, etc). After a day on the beach with my chest fully puffed out we went and had an Aussie Burger (a Manly one of course) for supper...everything I'd ever said about beetroot and fried egg on a hamburger being absurd I take back.

We feel very much like we're being spoilt because in the last week we've bumped into so many familiar faces (Javi & Pablo, Becky's Dad, Nick and Lindsey)!

Australia...check

Next stop...Thailand baby!