Last stop

We were lucky to spend the last part of our trip with family friends in Sydney. We were picked up from the airport and treated like royalty for 5 days. The apartment was right across the harbour from the Opera House, and in the morning Rodrigo took us for a walk past the marina to take a closer look.





It's an impressive skyline, with a lush park containing the botanical gardens at the foot of the glassy skyscrapers and bordering the harbour.





The Opera House is still majestic in spite of its 40 years.



We capped off our day of tourism by visiting the aquarium.

One of the fun things about places like this in Australia is that there are so many strange animals you never would have imagined existing, and for once you're glad that someone's caught a few of them so you have a chance to see them. The platypus is a good example - webbed front feet, clawed back feet, a mammal with fur that lays eggs. They were quite active in their tank and suprisingly cute.



There were a couple of huge tanks with seals and sharks in them (respectively) which had underwater tubes that you could walk through to get a really great view of everything. You could also hear all the noises the seals were making under water.



Thankfully, the tanks were enormous enough that the sharks had room to swim about, and they glided around in sedentary circles while smaller sea turtles and sting-rays poked about beneath them.

Here's a video of another large shark tank (the big ones are nurse sharks).

Another specimen of interest were the lethal jellyfish that had forced us to wear those stinger suits in the Whitsunday islands. Quite beautiful to watch them swim, and a bit creepy.