A quick hop over the Tasman Sea found us in the middle of what felt like a hurricane in Sydney. We made our way through the pouring rain to our friends house where we were going to stay for a couple days. After drying off, there was a tasty lasagna meal waiting for us – my favorite! It was great to have a real home cooked meal again and to be able to relax in a non-public place.

The rain didn’t let up for a couple days and ended up being the biggest storm the city has seen in the last century! We stayed indoors as much we could and took the opportunity to catch up on necessary business. Unfortunately, we had to venture into the rain briefly to go the the U.S. consulate because I was running out of visa pages in my passport. It was the easiest visit I’ve ever had in a government office! Since we were U.S. citizens, we were able to go to the front of the security line and had a shorter line to speak to an agent. After dropping off our passports to get more pages added, we had about an hour to kill before picking them up.

Even though it was raining, we ventured out to find breakfast and a camera repair shop for Sara’s camera lens which seemed to have sand in the focus mechanism. After talking to a couple camera shops, we finally found a repair center and dropped off the camera for a quote. After we picked up our passports, we headed back to our home base away from the rain.

The next day, the rain finally let up! We headed downtown to finally explore the city. Sara led me around because she had a brief visit for work several years ago. Our first stop was the camera repair shop. It turns out they would have to order a part and it couldn’t be fixed before leaving Sydney – bummer. Then we walked to the Botanical Gardens and had great views of the Sydney Opera House. Sara had remembered seeing large flying fox bats living in the trees but we couldn’t find them. Apparently, they were “encouraged” to leave because they were destroying the trees. It was nice to be outside and finally exploring again!

After being in the big city for a few days, it was time to pick up our next camper to explore the rest of Australia. Due to our experience in New Zealand, we didn’t want to rent with Spaceships again (I thought they were a slimy company). Our experience in NZ also showed us it was easier to camp for free if you had a self contained camper (toilet inside) so we expanded our search to include those. We ended up founding that it was only a few more dollars per day to rent a large self contained RV than it was to get another van. We decided to try the larger option for something different and to be able to camp in more places. I don’t think either of us quite understood how large it was going to be until we picked it up. At 10 feet tall and 21 feet long, we can not fit in a traditional parking spot. But it has everything we could possible need plus extras we did expect like a microwave and television! After a rushed agent showed us how everyone works we headed north…

I was so blown away by the amenities that I decided to make a short video showing how everything I could possibly want is inside this van and we never have to go outside!