The next leg of our trip is from Melbourne, along the coast, all the way to Cairns. We've given us month and a half to do this. It's a lot of driving, but there's no way around in Australia I guess.
Wilson's Promontory National Park - 250km SE of Melbourne. It's a peninsula with protected forests, full of great walking tracks, wild animals and beautiful scenery. The problem is that large section of the park was burned down in the fairly recent fires. The most important consequence it had for us was that most of the really nice walks were closed. We did one of the few day-walks that were open and saw first-hand what impact fire has on these forests - surprisingly rejuvenating. Trees were already starting to grow new leaves, grass was picking up. We were hoping do see wild wombats - we even went for a little track at night, but no luck. Actually I stand correct - we saw about a hundreds of them on the side of the roads, killed by cars :(
Diving at Huskinson - some 200km south from Sydney. This was our first diving stops along the coast. The main attraction was supposed to be the possibility of diving with seals. I can't even express how excited we were after! The first dive we went to Seal Rock (accessible only in winter due to wind dirrection) which is where we got to dive with the seals (as promissed). First half of the dive we didn't see any, so I went to the surface to check where they were - basking in the sun on the rocks the little buggers. But then some of them  went in to check us out and it was absolutely awesome. They're just like little puppies - with very long sharp teeth though :) The next dive was a bit closer to the land where we got to see couple of sharks, eaglerays, etc.To make a perfect day even better, we saw whales like 20 meters far from the boat on the way back. Super awesome.
Bungonia State Recreational Area - 200km SW of Sydney. This uninvitingly sounding name was one of the biggest (nice) surprises we ran into so far. I was just looking for a spot in the Sydney area to do some walking. We've chosen to do a "red track", which was supposed to take us through the gorge, promising huge boulders and so on, classified as Grade 6. The markings were very sparse to say the least (no markings in the gorge, but again, there's nowhere else to go :), but that made the track even more interesting. It's hard to describe how beautiful it was - check out the pictures, but they fail to give you the real sensation. First we had to drop down more than 1000ft through a narrow valley, then walk through the gorge (actually calling it walking is not exact as it was more climbing from one huge boulder to another) and then climb up very steeply back at the end. This was (so far) my favorite spot during our whole trip. There are also quite a few caves to explore in the area.
Sydney. Not to much to write really - we're just not city-sightseeing type of travellers I guess. First day we spent just walking around and also took a cruise through the harbour which was quite nice. Opera house is nice from far, but up close not that much. Most of the second day we've spent in the Powerhouse museum - it was surprisingly entertaining and we had hard time pulling ourselves out.

Boy am I behind with the updates. We're just too busy travelling and I guess I got a bit lazy too :) Oh well, i'll try to catch up now. Last time I wrote anything was when we were picking up our camper from Wicked and were on our way from Melbourne. We've decided on doing something like a big loop - starting from Melbourne, driving north-west, hitting Adelaide, going up north to Flinders ranges, coming back to Adelaide and then back to Melbourne along the south coast. I'll just highlight the really interesting stops we did.
Grampians National Park - located about 250km west of Melbourne. We spent basically 2 days there walking. The first day we went to the pinnacle, which offers great view of the ranges. It was our first longer walk in Australia and not a bad one - we've never seen so many wild kangaroos, plus we found an echidna in the bushes too. The weather got progressively worse though, so we cut the rest of the stay short and moved on.
Flinders Ranges - located about 500km north of Adelaide. It's a very dry region with something what I imagine being Australia's typical scenery. Dry, bushy, reddish rocks. We did 2 major walks here - one to the top of the St.Mary mountain which we almost reached (last couple meters were just too narrov and slippery) and the second day Mt. Ohlssen Bage. Apart from stunning scenery, we spotted shingleback and quite a few dead kangaroos (plus about zillion live ones ;). Oh I almost forgott the most important partt - it was WARM; for the first time in months! :)
Mt. Gambier and Naracoorte - is some 450km SSE from Adelaide and is known as the limestone coast. It was mine prime interest as 80% of the cave-diving in Australia is done here. They actually have a dive-able cave in the middle of town! We went to some sinkholes (the nicest ones are down south, hidden in the woods) which were incredibly huge. We also spent one day a bit north in Naracoorte, where the biggest fosil caves are located - at least it gives you something different to look at other than just formations :)
Great ocean road - follows the coast from Adelaide to Melbourne (well, technically it starts about mid-way, but that's a detail). There are many stops along the road, mostly looking at different pieces of more-or-less narrow pieces rocks sticking out from water. There's one called London bridge, which actually collapsed like 20 years ago - funny thing  is that a couple was on the rock when it collapsed and got stranded on the middle piece for couple hours. Why is that funny? Well, they were both married, but not to each other ;) Oh and we did one crappy beach dive in Warrnambool - totally not worth it (cold, no vis, no life).
Otway National Park - is about 200km SW of Melbourne. There are at least two touristy reasons to go there. First is a Tree Top Walk which was actually very nice, except for the fact that what I recon all the kids from all of Australia were with there with us as well. My salute to the engineers who built it - the sctructure actually survived. Oh and they have some big plastic dinosaurs along the trail too! Second major reason for visit is the fact that you're basically guaranteed to see wild koalas there. And we did and they were sooo cute...
This whole circuit took us about 2 weeks.

We've made it to Australia now and I've seen my first wild kangaroos! Actually, I've seen most of the indigenous animals, that those were in sanctuary, so that doesn't really count :)
We flew from Auckland to Melbourne, where my australian relatives picked me up (thanks!) We're spent with them and their family over a week and it was just perfect. They took such a great care of us that it was hard to leave and get on the road again :) We've seen Melbourne's downtown, the wildlife sanctuary, rode the puffing billy, went to the Yarra Valley wineries, snorkled on the coast (with sharks! yay!), etc...
Now we're on our way exploring the country again. At first we had to pick another campervan, since we had such  a great experience with it in New Zealand. Unfortunatelly, the company we used in NZ doesn't have a branch in Aus. So we narrowed it to wither Wicked or Autobarn. Wicked came up a bit better price plus they had more branches around Aus (which is good in case something happens to the campervan), so we chose them. When we went to pick it up, we almost regreted our decision - the one they had ready for us was, for lack of better words, piece of junk. Really. Again, since it's off-season, we're renting for a long period and they're not busy, they gave us a free "upgrade". It's ok, but the standard is far from what we got used to in New Zealand. Plus now we have to get used to stick! Oh well, it's still a nice camp-ah! and we're on the road again :)

Today we said good-bye to our camp-ah! We'll trully miss it - after 6 weeks together on New Zealand, it became part of the family. It's hard to believe, but it had over 93 thousand miles on the clock when we were picking it up and then survived more than 4,000 miles with us
Sleeping in the camp-ah! was surprisingly comfortable - even for a person of my height. Moreover, the sleeping area can be very easily converted to a dining room, plus most of the space can be used as storage. Whoever came up with this should be awarded a medal. The back section was fitter with a simple "kitchen", with gas stove, etc. Most of the camps we used offered so called "powered sites", where you can plug in an extension cord and turn on the heater. If it had a bathroom, I think I'd exchange it for my apartment :)
Driving on the left was no problem for me - Kacka was struggling a bit in the begining. Good thing camp-ah! had automatic transmittion.
Just in case you'd like to do the same think and would like to have a basic idea about costs - the 6 weeks rental came to about 1000 USD. However, that's primarily due to the fact that it was mostly off-season rate plus somehow we squeezed them for 25% discount on top :) Gas is cheap (~1.30 USD/L) and camping usually ended up in the range of 20-30 USD/night. We could've camped in the free areas w/o the power and facilities, but nights were cold and I'm old :)

I didn't even plan on doing any diving in New Zealand. I've heard about the Poor Knights Island site, but I figured it'd be too cold. Jacques Cousteau called this site no 7 in the world. Despite the fact that he's French, he did know thing or two about the ocean, so it's probably worth checking out. Normally I wouldn't hesitate, however there were 2 important factors to be taken into consideration: (1) ocean here is cold even in the summer, (2) it's winter :)
I booked my trip with Dive Tutukaka - they're the biggest and the only ones actually doing trips even out of season. Plus you get a free hot tea or chocolate after each dive, which makes all the difference on days like this. The dive itself was very nice. I was lucky to meet 2 other visitng diving instructors on the boat, so we buddied together and dove independently of the other people.
Not surprisingly, the water was cold. 62F!. I had two 7mm pieces, but it still got pretty chilly after 30 minutes or so. Luckily, there's a lot of life to keep one entertained and help to fotget about the cold. I was quite impressed by the fact that both of our dives ended up being 60 minutes :) I don't think I've ever seen so many murray eels (5 different types), lots of nudibranches and other "macro" stuff, lots of stonefish, etc. Plus the kelp make the bottom look like one huge meadow.
It was my first dive with the new Olympus Tough 8000 - still getting used to it (especially macro and flash settings are very different from my previous one), but I really like it. The pictures look better and with more color. One of the huge benefits is also the fact, that I don't have to worry about flooding the camera - even if water gets into the housing, the camera itself is waterproof up to 30ft :) Awesome!

Waitomo is one of the few world regions, where you can see the Glow Worms. Those are essentially maggots trying to attract insect in the cave to its glow. I found it fairly similar to spiders, except these dudes use sticky strings. The glow is then produced by their poo (no kidding). So, the true name of the glow-worm caves should be something like Maggots' Glowing Shit Caves :) The maggots live about 6 months, then moskyto-like insects are born, have sex for 2 days, stick eggs to the cave's ceiling and die... Is there still anyone who doubts Darwin?? I mean really, I can't imagine God coming up with this stuff.
Ok, to see the glowing wonders, you have to go into caves - either on nice, warm, all-inclusive, all-taken-care-for trip organized by a travel agency OR you can do it the other way. The way real men/women do it. Before you decide, let me tell you something about May and New Zealand. It's COLD and I mean it - we had frost on the campervan's windows when we woke up that morning. Still up for it? Ok, lets get you started. It's 8am, cloudy, 45F and you have to start by putting on a WET 7mm wetsuit, WET socks, WET helmet - all of that was probably stored in freezer, just to make you more miserable. Then you get to stick around for another 30 minutes, waiting for others to get ready. Just when you're about to give up and call it, they bring in a bucket with hot water for you to stand in - trust me on this, it's heaven! For 3 minutes. As soon as you get out, you're freezing again :)
When everyone is ready, you get transported to the actual cave entrance. The guide briefly explains how to abscail (I hope my spelling is correct), followed by 5 minutes of training and off we go - one by one we disappear into the darkness. It's actually very much fun, plus it's not that cold down in the cave.
You'd think there can't be anything worse than the morning, ha ha! When signing up, we had a vague idea about the fact, that we get to observe the maggots while floating in a tube. Floating, got it? That means being in water. In may. In New Zealand. Doh! You think that's bad? Ohhh, how naive. To get into the water, you have to jump off 10ft cliff (no kidding) while holding the tube on your butt and make the biggest SPLASH possible. I didn't scream, honest, others did tho. I was just swearing a lot (in czech :)
This is followed by relatively quiet floating, during which you're attempting to levitate over the water and enjoy the glowing maggots' shit at the same time. Then you reach picking grounds where hot-chocolate is served (yum!) and the next part is on foot. Sometimes ankle-deep in water, sometimes up to your neck (well my neck anyway, others were submerged I'd imagine :).To finish the trip, you're given the option to either walk peacefully in a very nice, wide dry passage out OR to be a man and... see it coming? Yeah, right, CLIMB two icy cold waterfalls out, because it's FUN! :)
It may look like I'm complaining. It's actually not so - it was absolutely wonderfull and I LOVED it. I can't remember time in my life when 50F water actually felt warm :) I don't think i'll ever forget this - definately one of the highlights of the trip! Finally, below is kacka's descend into the cave.

I knew about this (thanks to Shawn) even before i went to NZ and it was on my list of top-3 things not to miss at any cost. Getting up in the morning at 6:30am is no fun, but we all have to make sacrifices every now and then :)



Overall, GREAT FUN! (don't miss out the photos)

I was kinda hoping to do some paragliding in NZ, but the weather always looked crappy and not having NZ license didn't help either. Somehow I did manage to find a guy who was willing to do a day of flying with me in Queenstown. We've done 3 flights from Coronet Peak - just basic down-hill flying with about 10 minutes fly-time, no lifts or thermos to extend the flight.
However, as the last flight he suggested to do a flight from the gondola and land in the town. AWESOME! Check out the pictures to get an idea. We've started from the top of the hill overlooking Queenstown and then turned a bit, kept flying above the city for about 3 minutes and then landed on a rugby field. And yes, the idea about things going wrong and having to land on some building's roof did cross my mind while being up in the air.

Kacka tried a tandem flight with the instructor and totally loved it. Why people never believe me when I tell them something? :)

Happy flying from Vlad!

Ok, here's the thing. When say "why to jump from a perfectly ok airplane" to explain why not to skydive. It's much harder to come up with an excuse when it comes to swings. I mean what could be wrong with that, right? Well, leave the with Kiwis in Queenstown and they're sure to think of something.
To show Kacka that it was safe, i had to go first :)

Then, with a bit of hesitation she followed:

Word of advice - make sure to do this before lunch! :)
Happy swinging from NZ!

This is the story of us trying to make it to New Zealand - it's pretty boring, so read it only if you have absolutely nothing better to do.

The plan:
Fly to NZ via UK on one-way ticket and stay as long as we like. Then go to Australia.

The preparation:
We've booked tickets Prage -> London, London -> Auckland (fuel stop at Los Angeles).
Kacka brough up interesting question:
Kacka: Do i need transit visa for USA, since we have a stop-over in LA?
Me: Nah.
Kacka: Are you sure?
Me: Yeah, I think. Right Pepino?
Pepino: Yeah.

The reality in Prague:
As we arrive at Prague's airport, the following conversation happens at the check-in:
Check-in lady: I see you're travelling to Auckland through LA, do you have a transit visa?
Kacka: {gives me deadly stare}
Me: Doh!
Now, this is where I'd like to point out that yes, I did say that the VISA is not necessary, but it was also me who had a laptop (geek!) and was able to get online right there and get it in like 5 minutes. Whew, all good now. Or is it?

The reality in London:
We arrived 1 hour delayed, but we still made it to the New Zealand's Air counter on time. Or so we thought. Until we had yet another discussion:
Check-in dude: You need a VISA to go to New Zealand.
Me & Kacka: No we don't!
Check-in dude: Yes you do!
Me & Kacka: No we don't!
{repeat for 3 minutes}. Then he finally figures out what the system is telling him. Problem is that we can't travel to NZ on one-way ticket without having an onward ticket or valid residence VISA. So, we told him that we're planning on going to Australia next and we're willing to book the ticket now if that solves the situation.
Check-in dude: You need a VISA to go to Australia!
Me & Kacka: Ugh! @*&#$% your kiwi #(*$&@#
Anyway, long story short, we missed the plane. We had to book a ticket from NZ to Australia, apply for Australia's VISA (thank god for my laptop and that you can do all this online these days). Only then they'd let us to check-in for the next flight, which luckily was only 2 hours or so later. Oh guess what - this one was through Thaiwan, so we didn't need the US transfer VISA after all :)

Thanks for reading this far - I hope you all are having a good time and we miss you all!
V+K