We were picked up by the driver from our next stop which was Sideman. Again, it wasn't too far in distance (35km) but it took over an hour. We arrived at Villa Shantiasa which was a small place with only 4 rooms, but they were beautiful with a patio overlooking the mountains and rice terraces and an infinity pool in the gardens - we were the only guests. We decided today was a day of doing nothing, so we swam, had lunch, read, swam again, had a couple of bee...

We left Sanur heading north for our next stop, Ubud. Although only 30km away it would take an hour going direct. Travel is slow in Bali. Of course, it took us longer than an hour as we wanted to make some stops along the way. It was touch and go to start with as we were experiencing our first heavy downpour. However, the rain cleared and we came to our first stop, Tegenungan waterfall. There were quite a few steps down to the bottom but with lots of fun p...

We had stayed at the IBIS hotel near the airport last night as we had an early morning, getting up at 4.00am for our 7.00am flight. Not a bad flight, a little bit of turbulence, but over the 6 hours from Brisbane to Bali it was good. We arrived on time and joined the customs queue for people with disabilities, children or age 60+ so we got through in 10 minutes. We found what we thought was our luggage belt and went to pick up our rucksacks - both saying t...

Kevin was at Brisbane airport to meet us on our return from Tasmania and take us back home to prepare for Christmas and the New Year. Christmas preparations are similar the world over, they involve shopping, cooking, partying and finding a little magic to make it special for the children - Light shows, animal displays with close encounter opportunities, finding streets that had been extravagantly transformed from mundane houses to elaborate Christmas scene...

Today we left for the long 6-hour drive from Strahan back to Hobart which gave us some different scenery as we passed through the mining town of Queenstown surrounded by dramatic hills and mountains - it was once the world's richest mining town (copper). We drove up a scenic spiralling road which Heather read afterwards has over 90 bends - not her favourite type of driving! Having got used to driving through beautiful rainforest, Queenstown confronted us with...