Brissie & Hong Kong

With Christmas rolling around, I'd jagged a little leave so we headed to Europe to spend Christmas with Maria's family - but on the way we stopped in Brisbane to see my family and then Hong Kong (twice) on our epic saga to get to Verbier for Christmas!

We left after saying good-bye to Serge & Nadine - thanks for the AWESOME time at the U2 concert the night before guys!!

We stayed with Nic for a few nights in her wonderful (almost!) restored qld'er with Xena & Lucy...

We also headed out to Mum & Dad's where the weather was a little unsettled!

It was great to see the family for a Christmas dinner at Tania's too, although it was in the dark due to the above mentioned weather! We then tried to launch London, but got nowhere... After spending another night at Nicole's we relauched out trip and made it to Hong Kong! It had been about 7 years since I'd been last and Maria had never visited so we stayed in a tiny room in Wan Chai and saw a few sights around town, namely the Night Markets over on Kowloon and we took a stroll around Lan Kwai Fong...

We were to late to make it too the peak so we had a few beers and headed to bead late. It was great to feel the hustle & bustle of hkg again, it was even better to be on the QF 29 bound for a snowy London! That was until 4 hours into the flight, when we turned around to go back to hkg! Bloody Heathrow couldn't get their act together & deal with a little snow so they closed & we had to go back. Weird. With nothing improved the next morning, we found some cheap tickets with El Al to Geneva via Tel Aviv which worked quite well for us so we finally made it!

repairs for the red mist

Well, as luck would have it, I snapped a gear change cable on my scooter last week... Not too bad, managed to crawl home in 1st and picked up a new cable for cheap yesterday and the fix went off pretty much without a hitch! Amazing!

The problem! 

 So, step 1, remove headlamp & speedo to reveal the frayed cable that was my 'up' gear selector.

Remove rear cowling, and pull through the old wire.

The new one!

... now, just thread it through the cable sheath...

... so far, so good...

Now, take the nubbin end through it's support there and into it's bracket, shown below - make sure the gear selector matches the transmission end!

Success! 

Adjust for tension, then put it all back together. I was fortunate to have nothing left over when it was put back together.

And she's back on the road again! 

photo shoot

Well, It's been pretty rainy lately so, apart from a couple of surfs here & there, it's been pretty quiet for me. But today Serge & I headed up to Barrenjoey (again) and had a good time before he had to go back & keep packing for his NZ trip - I hope he packs his rainjacket! Anyway, boring, as there is no pics.
But, we went for a cruise on the scooters up to North Head, great day for it! The guy I bought the scooters off (ricky at powderscooters) has asked for a couple of pics of the bikes for his website so I snapped a couple.

Iguazu Falls

OK. Last of the slide shows! This is a major pictorial feast, squarely aimed at my Grandmother, the queen of slideshow nights!

We ducked up to Iguazu for 2 nights, not too much to the town, it lies at a river junction the marks the borders to Paraguay & Brazil, from one bank you can see both other countries - neato. And one of the rivers is called Rio Parana, very exotic.

After a tropical start to the day (thunderstorms) we headed out to the park and spent the whole day wandering about taking picture and getting wet, we did a boat ride through the falls which was pretty cool, not much to see though - picture a fire hose in your face... In any case, the waterfalls are amazing!

Paraguay on the left, Brazil on the right

hmmm flood guage - 33m!

On the boardwalk heading out to the top of the main falls

approaching the maelstrom

that tower is on the other side - Brazil

Glad we had the wide angle lens! This is both of the main sections.

The boat ride under the torrent.