Adventures in New Zealand

January 29, 2011

Wow, we started this blog entry 20 days ago, but life got in the way and it got put on the back burner. Sorry for the delay.

Enjoy!


January 9, 2011

It's been a whirlwind past few weeks in Australia, as we partied it up in Brisbane, sailed the Whitsundays, Scuba Dived the Great Barrier Reef, explored the Daintree Rain forest, Sea-dooed up crocodile infested rivers, survived floods and even a cyclone! ..oh yea, and also got engaged!

We flew into Brisbane on a Friday and on Saturday night we met up with a few friends from High School (Robyn and Sheena) where we had a great night out on the town soaking up the Brisbane nightlife.

Sunday we were off to Airlie Beach for our 3 day 2 night romantic sailing adventure on the Alexander Stewart leaving first thing the next morning. At 9am we boarded the boat, raised anchor and headed east. It was awesome to be under sail, no hum of motors or generators just the sounds of waves breaking on the bow.


The skipper took us to White-haven Beach, he anchored the boat on the other side of the island where were took a leisurely nature stroll across the small island to a lookout with some spectacular views. From there we made our way down to the beach where we were lucky enough to have all to ourselves! This beach was amazing, white silica sand, clear turquoise water and it was all ours!


We were back on the boat several hours later and on our way to Cid Harbor to anchor for the night. It was raining a bit on the trip to the anchoring location, so we were down in the galley BSing with some other couples. Amanda went up to see if it had cleared up enough to go back out on deck. She came down excited as there was a really "pretty" sunset, so she headed back up on deck and I scrambled down to our quarters and grabbed the ring! I met her out on deck and she was right, there was an amazing sunset between the storm clouds and the islands in the distance. I turned her around to face me, pulled out the ring and popped the question! She stood there shocked repeating: "OMG are you doing this now? Really? OMG! Are you serious?" Eventually I told her to take the ring! And that was it! Sailing into the sunset on our first night on the Alexander Stewart.

The rest of our trip was also truly unforgettable, but I'm sure that this was the only part you are really interested in hearing about!

So, we've put together a short movie of our Australia adventure that hopefully fills in a few if the gaps I've left out from after the proposal!

Enjoy!

Australia from Amanda Bauman on Vimeo.

Engagement FAQs

1) How long did you have this planned?

• It was an 8 month adventure in itself, scheming, planning, researching, more planning, securing finances.. That last part is hard when you share a bank account so I had a secret account opened and I was skimming money off the top of my pay cheques. She had no idea! I had some really good back stories ready if she ever caught on.
  

2) How did you get the ring to Australia?

• The planning for this was very stressful because I've only had experience with the TSA and they are not fun to deal with... I wasn't sure how strict the Aussies were regarding airport security. Where could I put a ring without it getting lost with checked luggage or searched going through security or found by Amanda? I ended up stashing it in my camera bag under my other lens and hoped for the best. I knew Amanda would have no desire to go into my camera bag, so I was all clear there. That bag would never leave my sight anyway, so I knew it wouldn't get lost. And hiding the ring amongst all the other electronics and camera equipment I was fairly certain that the scanners wouldn't need to open everything if it looked like a pro camera bag setup. The security ended up being amazing, no one even cared to ask me to open my backpack. No problems smuggling the ring into Australia!
  

3) When is the big Day?

• No dates picked as of yet, but we're thinking sometime in the Canadian summer of 2012 (It'll be in Canada regardless).

4) Did you get down on one knee?

• No, the boat was kinda rocking in the waves and I was worried I would have fallen over and lost the ring overboard... but also that (being on one knee) would have caused a scene, and Amanda really didn't want me to make a scene.

5) What does the ring look like?

• Click here to find out!

6) Was she surprised?

• Absolutely! It was awesome, she was convinced I'd never be able to surprise her for various reasons, so popping the question where and when I did caught her completely off guard! It was exactly how I wanted it!
  

7) How did you choose the ring without her knowing?

• Since this was in the works for a while I casually would ask her about different designs. Or I'd get her to send me photos of rings she liked while maintaining a non-excited attitude towards it. Over the months I was able to narrow it down to a select few and in the end I settled on a design I knew she loved and made a few tweaks to make it my own, then had it custom made. I also double checked with her sister before I commissioned the ring just to make sure.

8) How did you get the ring sized without her knowing?

• In my infinite planning and recon I was able to get the ring size, but that didn't matter in the end because I mixed up the size and got it made too small.. When we got home the jeweler was able to re-size it and have it on Amanda's finger in just two hours!!

9) Did you get permission ahead of time?

• Yup! It was more nerve racking asking her father then actually asking Amanda!

10) Amanda can get really sea sick, were you worried she'd be sick while on the boat? Would you have still proposed?

• I knew I was taking a fairly big risk by asking her on the boat. If she was too sick I'd have gone with plan B.

11) What was Plan B?

• I dunno..

In case you've missed the links above to the photo albums, here they are for your convenience:

• Whitsundays Sailing Trip
  
• Great Barrier Reef Scuba Adventure (Video)
  
• Daintree Rain Forest Tour
  
• Eco Jet Safari
  
• Brisbane Nightlife

Amanda and Devon