Forgive me for taking so long to finish this up! You may be curious how I'm now suddenly in Bermuda but still haven't left Taupo according to this blog! Well let me tell you...
The morning after my skydive I finally got to sleep in! I think this was the first time the whole two weeks I slept past 7AM. I woke around 9am because check out was at 10. After packing up all of my stuff I made my way downstairs to have a bit of breakfast (toast and jelly--how British!) and then I checked out. The wonderful people at my hostel let me lock up my bags while I walked around because I wasn't catching the bus back to Auckland until 330 PM. This was great cause I really was planning on walking a lot and didn't want to be weighed down with bags.
I really didn't know where I was heading so I really just walked around the town. I ended up by the water and then my way toward the tourist shops. Amongst it all I found a grocery store where I treated myself to a delicious chocolate muffin and strawberry milk! Then I made my way out of town to a thermal park that the receptionist at the hostel recommended. I really had no clue where i was going and how long it would take, but it was a cool and adventurous feeling day so I didn't mind getting lost! I happened across the Taupo Bungy spot so I stopped there because the view was gorgeous and there were people bungying. Honestly I am glad I chose skydiving over bungying because it didnt look that great anyway, though it was funny to hear people yell. There were a few people that jumped as a couple--I don't know how they did that I feel like you would smack into the other person. Once they got to the end of the chord they bounced up and down a few times and then a boat went out and pulled them down. this was probably the most entertaining part--to see how they got down. I was kind of hoping someone would be too heavy and then get their head dunked in the water. Didn't happen though, maybe cause its winter and it was cold!
Anyway I kept walking a bit farther and I finally got to the thermal park I was looking for. There were loads of cars here--it turns out there was some kind of running competition going on here. I felt really stupid just walking haha but thats what i did. I found this beautiful spot to sit and watch thermal vents and I sat down and did a bit of writing. Reflecting basically on my whole experience in Australia because this was really the end of it. I got pretty said about leaving and was disappointed when the time came that I had to get up and walk back for the bus.
For some reason I overestimated how long it would take me to get back. But this worked out okay, because I wanted to be a bit of a tourist and go to the shops. So thats what I did! And I bought a cute little dress for 10 bucks! and thats NZ dollars so it was a great deal. I also bought a few gifts for those at home, saved my butt for not having finished that up in Australia! Then it was nearly time so I went back to get my bags and went to wait at the bus station.
The bus I got on was actually a double decker, kind of bizarre, but I guess the intercity bus I went on was a pretty popular means of transportation. The kid who sat next to me was quite odd though. I think he may have been British. He kept taking pictures out the window..but the camera was aimed so close to me that I think he may have been taking them of me. It was really creepy. I think he also wanted to talk but I just ignored him and pretended I had no idea. The journey back was about 3 hours I think--we stopped for a dinner break, though I had been eating the whole time on the bus anyway haha.
When we got back to Auckland I knew right where I was--I was just a few blocks from my hostel--the one I had stayed at so many times before. It kind of felt like my home or something! Anyway I checked in with the same woman as the times before and went to the same room. There was only one girl in there, a German who had been working several jobs--like working in kitchens and fruit picking and stuff like most people I met there. She was nice, and we got a 12 person room to ourselves. She was also on her way home after a long bit of traveling. After talking to her I made my way for the first time to the Nomad Fusion(the hostel) kitchen. I made my last bit of powdered soup and had my last smushed PBJ. I finally realized how gross the food was that I was eating. It was a good thing I wasn't stay for any more time! I actually had a lot of food left over, so I left it in the kitchen in a pile that seemed to be meant for leftover food for public use. So I kind of felt good about myself haha I'm not sure why.
I went to bed relatively early that night just so I could wake up early to take a shower and get to the airport. The next morning after showering and packing up I made my way down the streets of Auckland to find the bus stop. I was really unsure about where to be because it was just like a city bus. Anyway, I managed to figure it out, but the bus driver was a complete jerk. Luckily I didn't hesitate to get on the bus because someone else did and the guy left without him. What a jerk! I got to the airport with plenty of time to spair. Once I got to my gate I even spent 45 minutes doing some tourism NZ survey for this lady. She gave me this mini disk of pics (which I still haven't looked at) as a gift for helping her. Honestly i didnt mind much cause i had so much time to spare and it meant i got to share my experience with someone--and in great detail!!
So the flight back to Sydney was a time difference of 1.5 hours but really 3.5 hours on the plane. When I got there I called Noor who was going to pick me up! I was super excited to see familiar faces before I left again. I am really going to miss that girl! So Noor and her brother picked me up and we met up with my friend Sameer who was in town to say goodbye to me. This was super fun--I seriously feel like I have better friendships with people in Australia than I ever did here...maybe its something about leaving that makes people want to take advantage of the time that you have.
Anyway we went out to lunch at a thai restaurant and just reminisced about the semester and about our fun together. Then we walked around Sydney--went to the opera house--walked around the harbor, took silly pictures gave each other piggy back rides, did silly things and just had a good time. Then we realized it was getting late and almost dinner time so we went to meet up with some other people that live in Sydney. We went to Darling Harbor this for this--which is a beautiful place at night. After mucking around for a while we figured out we would have pizza and then go to the Lindt chocolate cafe for desert! Yum yum! It was sad to say goodbye to everyone --we all made a toast to the semester and gave tons of hugs. I was really bummed to have to leave...
The next morning was an early one because the airport in Sydney is so huge and the flight was so early. Sameer went with me to the airport cause he also had a flight out that morning. It was nice to have some company, especially as I was anxious about going home and its just nice to know that I could leave my footprint in Australia so to speak. Australia I will love you forever!!
Well I hope that won't be the extent of my time in Australia, but for now that is all. Thanks for following my blog. I hope that you someday get the chance to go to Australia too!!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
all around the North Island NZ
Day 4 Auckland to Hahei
This morning I woke at 7 and met my new driver at 745. Our driver is a fairly new driver—actually he isn’t even a Kiwi –he’s from England—but he had to take some courses in NZ to be qualified for the job—as far as I’m concerned he knows his stuff. First stop was at Mt. Eden which is a dormant volcano inside of Auckland city—I am not quite sure which number he said but there are quite a number of dormant volcanoes that make up Auckland. From Mt. Eden you could tell that this was true. We stopped afterward at the Stray office-located in Auckland to go through a briefing of the online booking process. I asked the woman a few questions because I don’t plan on checking online anytime soon. It seems like all these little towns have even more expensive places than the bigger ones. Ironic don’t you think? Anyway after this we were finally on our way. Our first stop was a little town with a great lookout—I actually have no recollection of what it was called. I neglected to take as many pictures of the landscape because really it’s mostly cows and agricultural land—basically a much greener America. I’ve come to notice while traveling with STRAY it’s a much lonelier experience even if you talk to people—I think traveling with a group and really getting to know them is much better—though I just began my second tour so maybe its too early to tell. Anyway its beautiful here but I can’t help think I’d rather be here enjoying it with someone else. It just takes a lot of the beauty out of it. I never thought I’d say that because I always thought I was a lone wolf—but I guess I’m not really.
So we stopped in Thames for some grocery shopping and lunch—I did some budget shopping and even got food by the brand name budget, how entertaining. Dad you’d be proud of me I made myself some gorp! I have a feeling I am not going to each very healthily this week but I figure its just a week so I can do that.
Moving on we got to Hahei early afternoon. By 2:20 we took a walk to Cathedral Cove. I should say, our accommodation is kind of like a campgrounds except we are in little suites about a 2 minute walk from the beautiful beach! Cathedral Cove was beautiful though my camera didn’t cooperate. There was a nice little hike down and back up from it and a few other look out spots. I talked to one of the guys on my trip—he’s from Canada—30yrs old the oldest in our group. Surprisingly I am on the lower end of the group—30, 26, 24, 21, 20 and 19 and the only American! Yay! I am rooming with two girls from the Netherlands and a girl form North Wales—all are nice and friendly yay. There are several people on this tour that were also on my Bay of Islands tour so its pretty nice to see some familiar faces, but I guess subconsciously I wanted to meet new ones! After getting back from the walk I headed for the beach near our accommodation. It was surreal and peaceful. I love the sound of crashing waves. Again though I really felt lonely and wished someone was sharing it with me.
That night we went to a warm water beach about 10 minutes down the road from where we were staying. This place was supposed to have significant geothermal activity so if we searched in the right place we should be able to find boiling hot water under our feet. What I didn’t realize was how far 150 meters is. We had to walk through cold cold crashing waves to find this area where the geothermal activity was. It was quite an event. I was on a mission—prior to hitting the water to go in and dig myself a hot water spa, but as soon as I hit the freezing cold water I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I also made the mistake of leaving my pants on so they got completely soaked, but it was really entertaining to do this with the whole group. Also an adventure tour group joined us who has basically been following our tracks the whole trip so far—only difference is the food and accommodation are included in their price—I should keep track and see which method is actually cheaper. Anyway, their driver is pretty cool—his name is Alibabar, not that that is significant.
When we got back we were all freezing and hurried into our nice heated rooms to warm up. I then went on to make my spaghetti and pasta sauce from a can—which took only minutes to make. Most of the rest of the group had bbq prepared by our driver Tike—but this took forever plus it was a lot of meat so I think I made the better choice in making my own food. Just from experience from the Tassie trip when we all had pizza one night and the pizza to me tasted like cardboard—so I basically paid 10 bucks to eat two pieces of cardboard. At least when I buy myself crap food I don’t feel regretful about it. But it did look like it was a pretty good meal for the meat eaters so that’s good. I did sit and spend time with everyone as they ate, since I didn’t plan my own meal very well (timing wise). It was quite enjoyable, all the people are pretty funny and try to have a good time. Eventually though too many of them started smoking and I just couldn’t breathe it in anymore so I left and went to my room. Then decided to waste a bit of time I ‘d go and have a nice hot shower. The problem is—there isn’t much to do once it gets dark around here because everything is dark—we stay in little towns with about two shops and no street lights. Oh well should get good sleep for sure! I spent about 40 minutes in the shower because every time I tried to get out I got too cold and had to heat back up. Brrr!! By the time I got out it was basically time for bed so I read a bit then slept. Two of the girls in my room have missing stuff from when they flew from the Netherlands so they’ve been struggling to get that back—we got a few calls in the night—finally it arrived.
Just a bit of history –NZ was considered to be uninhabitated until some massive volcano occurred. We know this by the lack of animal and human remains found by archaeologists before this massive volcano. After that the Maori people were first to come here, supposedly they got here by way of a whale from Hawaitaki (or something like that)—watch Whale Rider and that’s basically it. Basically they think this mythical place was probably Polynesia. The first Europeans didn’t get here until the 1600’s and it was a dutch guy, Abel Tasman who landed—he also found Tasmania-hence the name. The last full blood Maori died in 1979—hence to say since then the Maori people have assimilated to the Europeans coming in and now are mixed blood.
Day 5-Hahei to Raglan
Today we were up and moving out by 8:15---got a few pictures of sunrise which sadly in this neck of the woods isn’t until about 8:15 in the morning. Then we drove on heading across the country to the West coast for Raglan. Raglan is known for having the largest left handed swells in the world. It took us about 3.5 hours to make it to the West coast. On our way we stopped off at a Kiwi Reserve—but it was more of like land reserved for them—so we didn’t actually see any. Same as my other STRAY tour we passed by some Kauri trees—this time I actually got my picture with them—and they were twin trees!! How cool!! They must have been quite a bit younger than the other trees because it was almost possible to hug them—well not really—but a lot more likely than the other tree. Our next pit stop was in this little town known for making some famous drink called L & P. Supposedly it is “world famous in New Zealand,” I absolutely died at this thinking…hmm world famous…but in New Zealand..so really no one else has heard of it. The best part is is that it is basically water with lemon in it. How innovative huh? Next we passed through New Zealand’s third largest city called Hamilton home to 277,000 people. Supposedly there was a big push to get tourists here and their slogan was “Its better than you think,” while Auckland’s slogan for it was “its two hours from anything worth going to” or something along those lines. But what is cool about Hamilton is that it has massive flower shows and gardens and also the longest river in New Zealand flows through here—its 423 km running from Taupo (the last spot on my trip) to S. Auckland. The reason Hamilton didn’t get very many tourists is mainly because it is an industrial town so there isn’t much to do but work. Oh well. Our last stop was in a town just outside Raglan for grocery stores and such. The highlight of this was using a toilet that actually talked to me. Not only did it have automatic doors allotting 10 minutes to use it before the doors opened again but it also had automatic flusher, automatic soap, automatic water, automatic hand dryer, automatic toilet paper dispenser and elevator music. When you left you did have to push the exit button—yuck! And the toilet also said goodbye. Pretty funky for a little town in New Zealand—supposedly they have these in Australia too—but never got to try one.
Finaly about 1:30PM we arrived in Raglan—Tike drove through the little town and then drove us up to the beach. The Raglan beach is famous for summertime surf competitions. It is a massive beach, but today the swells were basically non-existent. After driving to our lodging for the night (part of a surf school founded by a Californian) I went back to the beach with a few people. One guy went surfing and the other running while I did a bit of beach walking and shell collecting (hope that wasn’t illegal). Anyway it was quite relaxing and really was a beautiful beach, I even found a seastar! After doing a walk I sat and talked to the guy who had gone running. He’s been travelling a lot and will continue long after I am done. He’s already been to Iceland, Canada and the US and plans on making his way west to Africa before the next World Cup game. Pretty cool—he even stopped in the Adirondacks! Yup so after the other guy (Canadian) left the water we all made our way back up to the bus again. After arriving back at the lodge I just hung around, watched the sun set with some people and then made my way back to make some dinner. Dinner tonight was powder tomato soup and some crackers. I’m treating my self like a queen I tell ya! After dinner we tried to watch a movie but there are these other people staying here (damn Americans) and they are like in highschool so obviously really loud and obnoxious so that wasn’t very successful. Instead we celebrated Canada day with Shaun the Candian in the surf barn—which actually turned out to be pretty entertaining. I mainly played ping pong—learned a new version where you basically run around a table and each person gets a go. Then right before I left I went out with some people to do this thing called the Flying Fox, basically you sit on this disk like thing attached to a zip line and let yourself go. This was kind of crazy as it was already dark outside, but pretty cool just the same.
Tomorrow we head South for Waitamo Caves and then have a Maori Cultural Night! Cool beans! Till tomorrow then.
Day 6-Raglan to Maketu
This morning we actually had to be up and out on time—7:45 AM because we had an appointment at the Wataimo Caves for some caving activities! The drive was nice—the frost on the hills gave a wonderful winter look especially with the cold sun shining down. Far off mountains also had misty fog on them that added to the peaceful scenic look. Unfortunately the windows were also fogged up so I couldn’t get any decent pictures, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. It reminded me a lot of Syracuse and Ithaca in winter.
It took us until about 9:45 to get to Waitamo Caves—Tike explained to us that in Waitamo alone there were about 360 discovered and mapped caves and probably just as many found but unmapped. You should have seen this land—it was incredibly hilly and the craziest part is that its all agricultural land. The cool thing for the farmers is that if there is a cave under them they rightfully own it under New Zealand law so any company that wants to have tourism in their caves has to pay for a lease and also give commission from every caver. Not a bad deal! The cave that I was going in was owned by a family called Haggas—the tour was called Haggas Honking Holes. I guess the farm land had been in their family for 3 generations—I asked our guide when we got down in the cave how long ago the cave had been discovered and he said probably the 1950’s –I thought wow not long ago at all!!
So we had to drive a good distance from the company location to where the cave we were going in was located. There are tons of companies there and beds and breakfasts all geared for tourists. Most are closed due to the season, but I bet in summer its booming. I am quite glad I’m not here in winter because too many people would just ruin the scenery. Its nice to be places all alone. Anyway, back to the tour. When we got on the farm property we again had to drive through rolling hills to get to our spot. There they had their own facility equipped with gear—helmets, wetsuits, lights and boots! First we got a less on repelling to make sure we all understood what we were doing because there were several points where we had to abseil down—including the very first part which was a 30 meter or 90 foot abseil. I was a bit uneasy about this because ya I’ve repelled before but never in a cave and also not very recently. We got to meet the other people on our tour—there were probably 12 of us in total and 3 guides. There were two med students from NYC so that was cool—had a little chat with them. Yup so the cave opening was actually larger than the caves I’ve been in before—however I’ve never had to abseil down into a cave. This was intense because this is a wet cave so you have to deal with slippery surfaces and water in your face.
It wasn’t really hard to abseil down 30 meters but it took a really long time—I kept trying to go faster because it actually hurt my abs—you know you have to lean back so you are basically perpendicular to the surface and then lower yourself down—but I think because the guide at the bottom had me on belay (when they kind of have you on a safety) I wasn’t really able to go super fast. But still I was definitely in control of my own decent. At the bottom was a pool of water—when I looked up and down at about half way down the decent I actually thought the bottom went down forever—but it was just the pool of water. In the end I touched the bottom but also got a boot full of water—ice cold water—but that was nothing to what was to come. The cave wasn’t as narrow as the caves I went in in NY on my caving orientation—but it was definitely more wet and I think this was more threatening than the tiny holes—but maybe that’s cause this is more recent. Anyway I can’t remember all the nooks and crannies we went in but some memorable ones were: had to duck into waste deep water and go under a ledge—while a waterfall is pouring down on you—everyone said when the guide told them to do this they were like you’ve got to be kidding me—and really it was that crazy. Then we had abseil down several waterfalls—which isn’t too bad until you get to the bottom and you are trying to get your feet under you but the water is either pulling your boots off or just plunging onto your head so you get completely disorientated. Then there were several ladder climbs and pure rock climbing where it was just you and the wall and all the bottom below you—this was really heart pounding—even when I didn’t look down I was petrified. There was another abseil in which we only had to go maybe 2 meters down but you couldn’t actually tell at first and the guide just said you had no control he would just lower you down like a sack of potatoes. When I first started going down I had my hands over my head and my legs tucked in and then he just stopped me and was like you are stuck-hold on—come back up—so I look up and then he just instantly drops me—and its only like a half a meter down but it was the scariest thing ever because I didn’t see it coming. Then after that I see everyone else who went below me—about 6 people crammed into this insanely tiny space—and then more people were suppose to come down. I was like what?! But then after me a guide came down and took us away –under another insanely powerful waterfall—mind you you are also walking knee deep in water so if you lose your footing you are basically going to be pushed down into the water—unable to see and unable to hear anyone. Crazy! But then after this we had a few minutes to enjoy the cave. The caves here are actually known for this thing they call glowworms but they are really some kind of fly. In their larval stage they luminesce to attract prey which is basically other flies that come in via the water. And they have these long threads that dangle from where they are that basically acts like a spider web that their prey gets caught in and then they can devour it. The funny thing is they spend 9 months in this stage and only live to be 11 months old. In the other time they basically reproduce as fast as possible, and when this is over the males are basically too tired and end up flying into other larvae’s dangling threads and are eaten. The guy said that 40% of the larvae’s food is their own species! Crazy! Oh and also what luminesces is actually the larvae poop, not sure of the process but similar to other creatures. Oh ya we also learned about the formation of stalagtites, stalagmites and all the different morphologies of them. I didn’t realize this but they are actually made of calcium carbonate the same thing that corals are made of. I guess it makes sense—and they are also affected in the same way as corals—so acid rain degrades them as well as people touching them. They also take thousands upon thousands of years to be formed—so cool. I am sure I learned this a long time ago but I didn’t remember.
What else? So we probably got about 80 meters down. Oh they don’t have bats in this cave and the only native bats in New Zealand are fruit bats. Kinda cool. I guess these caves mainly have spiders and eels though I didn’t see any. We had to crawl through passages that were basically neck high with water—it was cold and also made me go a little crazy with claustrophobia but then again that’s exactly why I do this kind of stuff. I guess you could call me an adrenalin junky. Overall we were down there for 4 hours—but it really felt like it flew by. It was so cool!! Definitely a big adrenalin rush—completely exhausted and chilly on the way out. Tomorrow a skydive is on (hopefully)!
So after this it was about 2:30 and we had to make our way to Maketu where we’d be having a cultural Maori night. Overall it was going to be a great day. We arrived about 5:45 and got a big welcome from the head guy called Uncle Boy who had actually built this Maori meeting house. I guess the big information on this is that in order to go into a meeting house you have to be invited and there is a big ritual that goes along with this—we had to take part in this. Also part of the tradition was to have a meal called hangi—which in the old days was cooked in the ground but they don’t do that anymore. Basically to me it tasted like a Thanksgiving meal. It was really yummy and I was thankful for it as it was probably the only proper meal I would eat here in New Zealand. In all there are 7 Maori tribes in New Zealand and they worship many gods—gods of the elements like the earth, water yada yada.
So when it was finally time to do the cultural experience we all made our way next door to the meeting house. We had to take our shoes off as is tradition. Uncle Boy strongly encouraged video and photography—so I strongly went ahead and listened to him—he even let me stand is a special spot to capture the whole traditional meet and greet. I guess on seeing a tribe (as we were called) Maori people assume that you are an enemy and they blow their horn—which they did. We had to send our chief (the oldest guy in our group 35) to receive their offering. Basically the Maori people did this little dance and then offered a leaf to our chief—John. All captured on a video you’ll have to ask me to see. It was quite impressive. One thing the Maori’s do is stick their tongue out and bulge their eyes—this I guess is done to try and intimidate their enemy. To thank them they spank their butts and also do this nose thing and shake hands—we all got to participate in this (again there is a video). After all this we were supposedly welcomed into their tribe and now part of their extended family, yay! Then they did a dance and show for us and we also got to join in. The girls learned this dance called the Poi-which originally was an exercise that the male warriors did to work out their wrists because a lot of the warrior stuff is swinging around a spear. Then the boys learned the haka which is basically the warrior tongue dance thing. We each had to perform it for the others. It was challenging but quite fun.
So the story of the haka-it’s a trible dance-for males. Basically an old Maori warrior got into trouble with a chief from another tribe and ran away so they wouldn’t kill him. He went to another island to try and hide and his wife had him hide in a hole which she sat over. When the other tribe came in search of him she lied until they left—saying she hadn’t seen him there. When they left and he came out the sun shone again. Yay.
So when the show was over we basically hung around and listened to Uncle Boy tell us more about Maori culture especially its present condition. This was quite interesting—it seems like it is fading quite a bit. Oh yeah the most important part is that Uncle Boy has a Fox Terrior (or so he says it is) and it is the cutest little puppy ever—I couldn’t stop holding him. His name is Powa and he’s only 10 weeks old (again see video). That’s all for now, cross your fingers that sky diving will be on tomorrow.
Random facts of the day—20%of NZ is National Park. The deepest cave here is 898 meters deep and Lake Taupo which I’ll possibly skydive over tomorrow is the 2nd deepest lake in NZ.
Day 6-Maketu-Rotorua-Taupo
Can I just say what a great few days. When I first got to New Zealand I thought it was just going to be crap weather and no fun. It turns out it’s been a hell lot of fun! Woohoo!! So today we kind of were allowed to sleep in but since my internal clock has been waking me up at 7 AM for the last two weeks I again woke at this time. However this morning was different because after going to the bathroom I found the cute little puppy to cuddle up with. Aww how I miss Ursula!! Anyway I laid in bed with this puppy who basically curled up next to my chest and we slept until Uncle Boy turned on ABBA music as he promised he would. Breakfast was delicious because again it was an actual meal: tea-toast-two kiwis (the golden brown type!) and a big bowl of cereal. Yumm. We packed up and were out by 9. Down to the beach for some ocean sunrise pictures as we seem to do everyday and then on our way to a place called Rotorua. Yes I did forget to mention that I didn’t get to say goodbye to my puppy dog friend, awww.
So along the way to Rotorua we stopped at this waterfall called Okere Falls—which is basically home to the largest commercially rafted fall in the world standing only 7 meters high—but I guess this is considered a level 5 rapid. Tourists do come here to raft—none of us had been interested in doing it however. We watched a few rafters and kayakers and then were on our way. When we finally got to Rotorua there was only about 2 hours of time to hang out there before those of us who weren’t staying had to move on to Taupo. Most of the people who had originally gotten on the bus with me got off here, so this was sad as we all had really gotten to know each other and be comfortable together. Anyway it was a good place to get off—Rotorua is known for its unbelievable sulfur smell and its geothermal activity. All over the place there is steam coming out of the ground. There are numerous parks within the township that have hot sulfur pools gurgling and blowing out who knows what (ask for the video!) A few people got off at this geothermal village, where the people who live there are Maori and have to be in some way related to full breed Maori to be able to live there. Anyway it was another tourist attraction but since we had so little time there I didn’t bother paying to see it. Instead I went with the rest of the bus to get a tour of the town—through a little geothermal park, by the Polynesian spas, by the museum and up and down all the shopping streets. Since I hadn’t done any tourist shopping since I got to NZ I decided this was the place to do it. This pretty much took up my entire time in Rotorua. Oh I should mention that when I first got off the STRAY bus in the town I had to pee really bad, having tunnel vision from my current condition I found a public toilet—but you had to pay! How nuts! 20 cents to use the toilet—so you better believe I took some photos of that 20 cent toilet I used. Haha.
So at about 12:45 I got back on the STRAY bus after saying bye to John—one of the English guys who was on our bus—he had been our chief at the Maori culture night. At this spot about6 more people got on the bus—obviously not in any way as cool as the people we had hung out with the last few days. But it was okay. Yup so our next stop was Waiotapu Mud Pool, which was sooooo cool. Basically just a pond of geothermal activity. It was beautiful and extremely stinky and hot! We drove on for a while and as we neared Taupo we took a stop at Haku Falls which are supposedly the biggest tourist attraction in New Zealand. Every 1 second enough water passes down the fall that it could fill 3 olympic size swimming pools. The water of this fall was soo green, it was gorgeous! Haku Falls is 11 meters high but ya no commercial rafters are allowed on it. You can understand why.
Finally we made it into Taupo, however the area looked entirely covered in clouds—not very conducive to skydiving. As Tike stopped the bus and rambled on about Taupo in general I thought that the skydive wasn’t going to happen. But then he said we were headed to the airport and that we were booked in for after 3 oclock. STRAY has a very laid back way of doing things—that keeps an organized person more on their feet than anything. Keeps it interesting! Yup so when we got there there were supposedly 4 of us doing it but two girls chickened out so it was just me and this kid named Andrew from England who had actually been on the bus with me this whole pass, but I never really talked to before this. So that was good—kind of got to do a bit of bonding with everyone.
So the first thing we had to do was fill out a medical sheet—which was actually far less information taking than I imagined. Then they had us watch a DVD of some hyped up girl going on her sky dive. This was actually quite scary. Then we had to decide how high we wanted to jump from. I was going to go with the cheaper deal but figured to just go all out if I was going to do it –when it came down to choosing. Yup so then we waited for a while—talked with three Irish girls—two of which were going to jump out of the same plane as Andrew and I. They were clearly much older but pretty much just as excited. Finally they called us in to get suited up. We got to wear these little blue suites and we had to wear these funny hats and eye coverings. I finally got to meet the guy I was going to be attached to. He was quite young but seemed to be confident in his abilities. It was surprising a lot of the people there as instructors didn’t seem to be from NZ but mine was so that was comforting. Supposedly to be an instructor you have to have at least 1000 jumps. Can you believe that? My guy’s name was Alex. He insisted that I blow my nose so that I didn’t snot all over the place—I found this quite funny but did as I was told. Then we made a bit of a video and took a bunch of sweet photos that I can’t wait to see again. Everyone else was already loaded into the tiny tiny plane which meant that Alex and I were first out. Which I couldn’t have been more happy about, honestly. Oh yea I forgot to mention they told us the position we should be in –the bannna—basically rest your head on his shoulders and tuck your feet under the plane. Tucking my feet around the plane was no problem for me because as soon as he opened the door I was scared to death and thought I was going to like explode with adrenalin. But before I knew it we were out the door-falling fast and then faster and even faster. I couldn’t even breath that’s how fast the air was rushing at my face. I could feel my stomach fly up to my throat. It was so crazy, but so cool at the same time. Alex turned on the video and caught me with some really great expressions—I was definitely having a great time—just couldn’t catch my breath long enough to smile. Finally though I got okay with it and tried to make faces and thumbs up at the camera. Then he pulled the chord and we were floating. This part was actually super relaxing and the view was incredible! The sun was setting on the far side of the Lake and there we were drifting around in the air! How cool!! It felt like we were just hanging at the same height forever, but then slowly the ground came. At no point after the initial freefall did I get scared, which was kind of crazy. When we got close to the ground we both had to lift our feet as high as possible and we kind of just sailed down on our butts. When I stood up I felt dizzy but not in a nauseous way-more like a vertigo thing. It was pretty cool and my stomach was still up in my throat. I wasn’t shaking as much as I thought I would be but wow I was just on such a high. I can’t believe I did that!! And I would totally do that again too!! I really think it would be fun to do with Maggie. And I totally believe that it would be just as insane the second time as it was this time. I am really glad I had the instructor I had—he really made me feel comfortable and he really made it fun. Yay. Afterward we waited around for them to make our trip into a DVD and then we watched the other people’s as well as our own. They were all pretty cool—we got to pick out the music to them so it was interesting to see the combinations and how well they worked with the different parts of the dive. One of the Irish girl’s seemed to hate it—she was crying by the time her parachute came open—she said that she would never do it again. The other girl had already gone once in Australia—she seemed to enjoy it but didn’t really give much expression in her video. Me on the other hand—I tried to rock out with my socks out! WOOHOOO!! I feel great!
Yup so after we all got our dvds, pics and tshirt they took us to our hostel—Taupo Urban Retreat—which is quite a friendly little place—they even have free internet!! Yay. And I had powdered tomato soup for dinner along with some crackers and ya that’s about it! Just a relaxing evening cause I am exhausted!! Tomorrow I will probably walk around Lake Taupo and check out the shops around here. Then I catch a bus back to Auckland at 3:30—and so will end my trip around NZ! See you soon America.
This morning I woke at 7 and met my new driver at 745. Our driver is a fairly new driver—actually he isn’t even a Kiwi –he’s from England—but he had to take some courses in NZ to be qualified for the job—as far as I’m concerned he knows his stuff. First stop was at Mt. Eden which is a dormant volcano inside of Auckland city—I am not quite sure which number he said but there are quite a number of dormant volcanoes that make up Auckland. From Mt. Eden you could tell that this was true. We stopped afterward at the Stray office-located in Auckland to go through a briefing of the online booking process. I asked the woman a few questions because I don’t plan on checking online anytime soon. It seems like all these little towns have even more expensive places than the bigger ones. Ironic don’t you think? Anyway after this we were finally on our way. Our first stop was a little town with a great lookout—I actually have no recollection of what it was called. I neglected to take as many pictures of the landscape because really it’s mostly cows and agricultural land—basically a much greener America. I’ve come to notice while traveling with STRAY it’s a much lonelier experience even if you talk to people—I think traveling with a group and really getting to know them is much better—though I just began my second tour so maybe its too early to tell. Anyway its beautiful here but I can’t help think I’d rather be here enjoying it with someone else. It just takes a lot of the beauty out of it. I never thought I’d say that because I always thought I was a lone wolf—but I guess I’m not really.
So we stopped in Thames for some grocery shopping and lunch—I did some budget shopping and even got food by the brand name budget, how entertaining. Dad you’d be proud of me I made myself some gorp! I have a feeling I am not going to each very healthily this week but I figure its just a week so I can do that.
Moving on we got to Hahei early afternoon. By 2:20 we took a walk to Cathedral Cove. I should say, our accommodation is kind of like a campgrounds except we are in little suites about a 2 minute walk from the beautiful beach! Cathedral Cove was beautiful though my camera didn’t cooperate. There was a nice little hike down and back up from it and a few other look out spots. I talked to one of the guys on my trip—he’s from Canada—30yrs old the oldest in our group. Surprisingly I am on the lower end of the group—30, 26, 24, 21, 20 and 19 and the only American! Yay! I am rooming with two girls from the Netherlands and a girl form North Wales—all are nice and friendly yay. There are several people on this tour that were also on my Bay of Islands tour so its pretty nice to see some familiar faces, but I guess subconsciously I wanted to meet new ones! After getting back from the walk I headed for the beach near our accommodation. It was surreal and peaceful. I love the sound of crashing waves. Again though I really felt lonely and wished someone was sharing it with me.
That night we went to a warm water beach about 10 minutes down the road from where we were staying. This place was supposed to have significant geothermal activity so if we searched in the right place we should be able to find boiling hot water under our feet. What I didn’t realize was how far 150 meters is. We had to walk through cold cold crashing waves to find this area where the geothermal activity was. It was quite an event. I was on a mission—prior to hitting the water to go in and dig myself a hot water spa, but as soon as I hit the freezing cold water I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I also made the mistake of leaving my pants on so they got completely soaked, but it was really entertaining to do this with the whole group. Also an adventure tour group joined us who has basically been following our tracks the whole trip so far—only difference is the food and accommodation are included in their price—I should keep track and see which method is actually cheaper. Anyway, their driver is pretty cool—his name is Alibabar, not that that is significant.
When we got back we were all freezing and hurried into our nice heated rooms to warm up. I then went on to make my spaghetti and pasta sauce from a can—which took only minutes to make. Most of the rest of the group had bbq prepared by our driver Tike—but this took forever plus it was a lot of meat so I think I made the better choice in making my own food. Just from experience from the Tassie trip when we all had pizza one night and the pizza to me tasted like cardboard—so I basically paid 10 bucks to eat two pieces of cardboard. At least when I buy myself crap food I don’t feel regretful about it. But it did look like it was a pretty good meal for the meat eaters so that’s good. I did sit and spend time with everyone as they ate, since I didn’t plan my own meal very well (timing wise). It was quite enjoyable, all the people are pretty funny and try to have a good time. Eventually though too many of them started smoking and I just couldn’t breathe it in anymore so I left and went to my room. Then decided to waste a bit of time I ‘d go and have a nice hot shower. The problem is—there isn’t much to do once it gets dark around here because everything is dark—we stay in little towns with about two shops and no street lights. Oh well should get good sleep for sure! I spent about 40 minutes in the shower because every time I tried to get out I got too cold and had to heat back up. Brrr!! By the time I got out it was basically time for bed so I read a bit then slept. Two of the girls in my room have missing stuff from when they flew from the Netherlands so they’ve been struggling to get that back—we got a few calls in the night—finally it arrived.
Just a bit of history –NZ was considered to be uninhabitated until some massive volcano occurred. We know this by the lack of animal and human remains found by archaeologists before this massive volcano. After that the Maori people were first to come here, supposedly they got here by way of a whale from Hawaitaki (or something like that)—watch Whale Rider and that’s basically it. Basically they think this mythical place was probably Polynesia. The first Europeans didn’t get here until the 1600’s and it was a dutch guy, Abel Tasman who landed—he also found Tasmania-hence the name. The last full blood Maori died in 1979—hence to say since then the Maori people have assimilated to the Europeans coming in and now are mixed blood.
Day 5-Hahei to Raglan
Today we were up and moving out by 8:15---got a few pictures of sunrise which sadly in this neck of the woods isn’t until about 8:15 in the morning. Then we drove on heading across the country to the West coast for Raglan. Raglan is known for having the largest left handed swells in the world. It took us about 3.5 hours to make it to the West coast. On our way we stopped off at a Kiwi Reserve—but it was more of like land reserved for them—so we didn’t actually see any. Same as my other STRAY tour we passed by some Kauri trees—this time I actually got my picture with them—and they were twin trees!! How cool!! They must have been quite a bit younger than the other trees because it was almost possible to hug them—well not really—but a lot more likely than the other tree. Our next pit stop was in this little town known for making some famous drink called L & P. Supposedly it is “world famous in New Zealand,” I absolutely died at this thinking…hmm world famous…but in New Zealand..so really no one else has heard of it. The best part is is that it is basically water with lemon in it. How innovative huh? Next we passed through New Zealand’s third largest city called Hamilton home to 277,000 people. Supposedly there was a big push to get tourists here and their slogan was “Its better than you think,” while Auckland’s slogan for it was “its two hours from anything worth going to” or something along those lines. But what is cool about Hamilton is that it has massive flower shows and gardens and also the longest river in New Zealand flows through here—its 423 km running from Taupo (the last spot on my trip) to S. Auckland. The reason Hamilton didn’t get very many tourists is mainly because it is an industrial town so there isn’t much to do but work. Oh well. Our last stop was in a town just outside Raglan for grocery stores and such. The highlight of this was using a toilet that actually talked to me. Not only did it have automatic doors allotting 10 minutes to use it before the doors opened again but it also had automatic flusher, automatic soap, automatic water, automatic hand dryer, automatic toilet paper dispenser and elevator music. When you left you did have to push the exit button—yuck! And the toilet also said goodbye. Pretty funky for a little town in New Zealand—supposedly they have these in Australia too—but never got to try one.
Finaly about 1:30PM we arrived in Raglan—Tike drove through the little town and then drove us up to the beach. The Raglan beach is famous for summertime surf competitions. It is a massive beach, but today the swells were basically non-existent. After driving to our lodging for the night (part of a surf school founded by a Californian) I went back to the beach with a few people. One guy went surfing and the other running while I did a bit of beach walking and shell collecting (hope that wasn’t illegal). Anyway it was quite relaxing and really was a beautiful beach, I even found a seastar! After doing a walk I sat and talked to the guy who had gone running. He’s been travelling a lot and will continue long after I am done. He’s already been to Iceland, Canada and the US and plans on making his way west to Africa before the next World Cup game. Pretty cool—he even stopped in the Adirondacks! Yup so after the other guy (Canadian) left the water we all made our way back up to the bus again. After arriving back at the lodge I just hung around, watched the sun set with some people and then made my way back to make some dinner. Dinner tonight was powder tomato soup and some crackers. I’m treating my self like a queen I tell ya! After dinner we tried to watch a movie but there are these other people staying here (damn Americans) and they are like in highschool so obviously really loud and obnoxious so that wasn’t very successful. Instead we celebrated Canada day with Shaun the Candian in the surf barn—which actually turned out to be pretty entertaining. I mainly played ping pong—learned a new version where you basically run around a table and each person gets a go. Then right before I left I went out with some people to do this thing called the Flying Fox, basically you sit on this disk like thing attached to a zip line and let yourself go. This was kind of crazy as it was already dark outside, but pretty cool just the same.
Tomorrow we head South for Waitamo Caves and then have a Maori Cultural Night! Cool beans! Till tomorrow then.
Day 6-Raglan to Maketu
This morning we actually had to be up and out on time—7:45 AM because we had an appointment at the Wataimo Caves for some caving activities! The drive was nice—the frost on the hills gave a wonderful winter look especially with the cold sun shining down. Far off mountains also had misty fog on them that added to the peaceful scenic look. Unfortunately the windows were also fogged up so I couldn’t get any decent pictures, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. It reminded me a lot of Syracuse and Ithaca in winter.
It took us until about 9:45 to get to Waitamo Caves—Tike explained to us that in Waitamo alone there were about 360 discovered and mapped caves and probably just as many found but unmapped. You should have seen this land—it was incredibly hilly and the craziest part is that its all agricultural land. The cool thing for the farmers is that if there is a cave under them they rightfully own it under New Zealand law so any company that wants to have tourism in their caves has to pay for a lease and also give commission from every caver. Not a bad deal! The cave that I was going in was owned by a family called Haggas—the tour was called Haggas Honking Holes. I guess the farm land had been in their family for 3 generations—I asked our guide when we got down in the cave how long ago the cave had been discovered and he said probably the 1950’s –I thought wow not long ago at all!!
So we had to drive a good distance from the company location to where the cave we were going in was located. There are tons of companies there and beds and breakfasts all geared for tourists. Most are closed due to the season, but I bet in summer its booming. I am quite glad I’m not here in winter because too many people would just ruin the scenery. Its nice to be places all alone. Anyway, back to the tour. When we got on the farm property we again had to drive through rolling hills to get to our spot. There they had their own facility equipped with gear—helmets, wetsuits, lights and boots! First we got a less on repelling to make sure we all understood what we were doing because there were several points where we had to abseil down—including the very first part which was a 30 meter or 90 foot abseil. I was a bit uneasy about this because ya I’ve repelled before but never in a cave and also not very recently. We got to meet the other people on our tour—there were probably 12 of us in total and 3 guides. There were two med students from NYC so that was cool—had a little chat with them. Yup so the cave opening was actually larger than the caves I’ve been in before—however I’ve never had to abseil down into a cave. This was intense because this is a wet cave so you have to deal with slippery surfaces and water in your face.
It wasn’t really hard to abseil down 30 meters but it took a really long time—I kept trying to go faster because it actually hurt my abs—you know you have to lean back so you are basically perpendicular to the surface and then lower yourself down—but I think because the guide at the bottom had me on belay (when they kind of have you on a safety) I wasn’t really able to go super fast. But still I was definitely in control of my own decent. At the bottom was a pool of water—when I looked up and down at about half way down the decent I actually thought the bottom went down forever—but it was just the pool of water. In the end I touched the bottom but also got a boot full of water—ice cold water—but that was nothing to what was to come. The cave wasn’t as narrow as the caves I went in in NY on my caving orientation—but it was definitely more wet and I think this was more threatening than the tiny holes—but maybe that’s cause this is more recent. Anyway I can’t remember all the nooks and crannies we went in but some memorable ones were: had to duck into waste deep water and go under a ledge—while a waterfall is pouring down on you—everyone said when the guide told them to do this they were like you’ve got to be kidding me—and really it was that crazy. Then we had abseil down several waterfalls—which isn’t too bad until you get to the bottom and you are trying to get your feet under you but the water is either pulling your boots off or just plunging onto your head so you get completely disorientated. Then there were several ladder climbs and pure rock climbing where it was just you and the wall and all the bottom below you—this was really heart pounding—even when I didn’t look down I was petrified. There was another abseil in which we only had to go maybe 2 meters down but you couldn’t actually tell at first and the guide just said you had no control he would just lower you down like a sack of potatoes. When I first started going down I had my hands over my head and my legs tucked in and then he just stopped me and was like you are stuck-hold on—come back up—so I look up and then he just instantly drops me—and its only like a half a meter down but it was the scariest thing ever because I didn’t see it coming. Then after that I see everyone else who went below me—about 6 people crammed into this insanely tiny space—and then more people were suppose to come down. I was like what?! But then after me a guide came down and took us away –under another insanely powerful waterfall—mind you you are also walking knee deep in water so if you lose your footing you are basically going to be pushed down into the water—unable to see and unable to hear anyone. Crazy! But then after this we had a few minutes to enjoy the cave. The caves here are actually known for this thing they call glowworms but they are really some kind of fly. In their larval stage they luminesce to attract prey which is basically other flies that come in via the water. And they have these long threads that dangle from where they are that basically acts like a spider web that their prey gets caught in and then they can devour it. The funny thing is they spend 9 months in this stage and only live to be 11 months old. In the other time they basically reproduce as fast as possible, and when this is over the males are basically too tired and end up flying into other larvae’s dangling threads and are eaten. The guy said that 40% of the larvae’s food is their own species! Crazy! Oh and also what luminesces is actually the larvae poop, not sure of the process but similar to other creatures. Oh ya we also learned about the formation of stalagtites, stalagmites and all the different morphologies of them. I didn’t realize this but they are actually made of calcium carbonate the same thing that corals are made of. I guess it makes sense—and they are also affected in the same way as corals—so acid rain degrades them as well as people touching them. They also take thousands upon thousands of years to be formed—so cool. I am sure I learned this a long time ago but I didn’t remember.
What else? So we probably got about 80 meters down. Oh they don’t have bats in this cave and the only native bats in New Zealand are fruit bats. Kinda cool. I guess these caves mainly have spiders and eels though I didn’t see any. We had to crawl through passages that were basically neck high with water—it was cold and also made me go a little crazy with claustrophobia but then again that’s exactly why I do this kind of stuff. I guess you could call me an adrenalin junky. Overall we were down there for 4 hours—but it really felt like it flew by. It was so cool!! Definitely a big adrenalin rush—completely exhausted and chilly on the way out. Tomorrow a skydive is on (hopefully)!
So after this it was about 2:30 and we had to make our way to Maketu where we’d be having a cultural Maori night. Overall it was going to be a great day. We arrived about 5:45 and got a big welcome from the head guy called Uncle Boy who had actually built this Maori meeting house. I guess the big information on this is that in order to go into a meeting house you have to be invited and there is a big ritual that goes along with this—we had to take part in this. Also part of the tradition was to have a meal called hangi—which in the old days was cooked in the ground but they don’t do that anymore. Basically to me it tasted like a Thanksgiving meal. It was really yummy and I was thankful for it as it was probably the only proper meal I would eat here in New Zealand. In all there are 7 Maori tribes in New Zealand and they worship many gods—gods of the elements like the earth, water yada yada.
So when it was finally time to do the cultural experience we all made our way next door to the meeting house. We had to take our shoes off as is tradition. Uncle Boy strongly encouraged video and photography—so I strongly went ahead and listened to him—he even let me stand is a special spot to capture the whole traditional meet and greet. I guess on seeing a tribe (as we were called) Maori people assume that you are an enemy and they blow their horn—which they did. We had to send our chief (the oldest guy in our group 35) to receive their offering. Basically the Maori people did this little dance and then offered a leaf to our chief—John. All captured on a video you’ll have to ask me to see. It was quite impressive. One thing the Maori’s do is stick their tongue out and bulge their eyes—this I guess is done to try and intimidate their enemy. To thank them they spank their butts and also do this nose thing and shake hands—we all got to participate in this (again there is a video). After all this we were supposedly welcomed into their tribe and now part of their extended family, yay! Then they did a dance and show for us and we also got to join in. The girls learned this dance called the Poi-which originally was an exercise that the male warriors did to work out their wrists because a lot of the warrior stuff is swinging around a spear. Then the boys learned the haka which is basically the warrior tongue dance thing. We each had to perform it for the others. It was challenging but quite fun.
So the story of the haka-it’s a trible dance-for males. Basically an old Maori warrior got into trouble with a chief from another tribe and ran away so they wouldn’t kill him. He went to another island to try and hide and his wife had him hide in a hole which she sat over. When the other tribe came in search of him she lied until they left—saying she hadn’t seen him there. When they left and he came out the sun shone again. Yay.
So when the show was over we basically hung around and listened to Uncle Boy tell us more about Maori culture especially its present condition. This was quite interesting—it seems like it is fading quite a bit. Oh yeah the most important part is that Uncle Boy has a Fox Terrior (or so he says it is) and it is the cutest little puppy ever—I couldn’t stop holding him. His name is Powa and he’s only 10 weeks old (again see video). That’s all for now, cross your fingers that sky diving will be on tomorrow.
Random facts of the day—20%of NZ is National Park. The deepest cave here is 898 meters deep and Lake Taupo which I’ll possibly skydive over tomorrow is the 2nd deepest lake in NZ.
Day 6-Maketu-Rotorua-Taupo
Can I just say what a great few days. When I first got to New Zealand I thought it was just going to be crap weather and no fun. It turns out it’s been a hell lot of fun! Woohoo!! So today we kind of were allowed to sleep in but since my internal clock has been waking me up at 7 AM for the last two weeks I again woke at this time. However this morning was different because after going to the bathroom I found the cute little puppy to cuddle up with. Aww how I miss Ursula!! Anyway I laid in bed with this puppy who basically curled up next to my chest and we slept until Uncle Boy turned on ABBA music as he promised he would. Breakfast was delicious because again it was an actual meal: tea-toast-two kiwis (the golden brown type!) and a big bowl of cereal. Yumm. We packed up and were out by 9. Down to the beach for some ocean sunrise pictures as we seem to do everyday and then on our way to a place called Rotorua. Yes I did forget to mention that I didn’t get to say goodbye to my puppy dog friend, awww.
So along the way to Rotorua we stopped at this waterfall called Okere Falls—which is basically home to the largest commercially rafted fall in the world standing only 7 meters high—but I guess this is considered a level 5 rapid. Tourists do come here to raft—none of us had been interested in doing it however. We watched a few rafters and kayakers and then were on our way. When we finally got to Rotorua there was only about 2 hours of time to hang out there before those of us who weren’t staying had to move on to Taupo. Most of the people who had originally gotten on the bus with me got off here, so this was sad as we all had really gotten to know each other and be comfortable together. Anyway it was a good place to get off—Rotorua is known for its unbelievable sulfur smell and its geothermal activity. All over the place there is steam coming out of the ground. There are numerous parks within the township that have hot sulfur pools gurgling and blowing out who knows what (ask for the video!) A few people got off at this geothermal village, where the people who live there are Maori and have to be in some way related to full breed Maori to be able to live there. Anyway it was another tourist attraction but since we had so little time there I didn’t bother paying to see it. Instead I went with the rest of the bus to get a tour of the town—through a little geothermal park, by the Polynesian spas, by the museum and up and down all the shopping streets. Since I hadn’t done any tourist shopping since I got to NZ I decided this was the place to do it. This pretty much took up my entire time in Rotorua. Oh I should mention that when I first got off the STRAY bus in the town I had to pee really bad, having tunnel vision from my current condition I found a public toilet—but you had to pay! How nuts! 20 cents to use the toilet—so you better believe I took some photos of that 20 cent toilet I used. Haha.
So at about 12:45 I got back on the STRAY bus after saying bye to John—one of the English guys who was on our bus—he had been our chief at the Maori culture night. At this spot about6 more people got on the bus—obviously not in any way as cool as the people we had hung out with the last few days. But it was okay. Yup so our next stop was Waiotapu Mud Pool, which was sooooo cool. Basically just a pond of geothermal activity. It was beautiful and extremely stinky and hot! We drove on for a while and as we neared Taupo we took a stop at Haku Falls which are supposedly the biggest tourist attraction in New Zealand. Every 1 second enough water passes down the fall that it could fill 3 olympic size swimming pools. The water of this fall was soo green, it was gorgeous! Haku Falls is 11 meters high but ya no commercial rafters are allowed on it. You can understand why.
Finally we made it into Taupo, however the area looked entirely covered in clouds—not very conducive to skydiving. As Tike stopped the bus and rambled on about Taupo in general I thought that the skydive wasn’t going to happen. But then he said we were headed to the airport and that we were booked in for after 3 oclock. STRAY has a very laid back way of doing things—that keeps an organized person more on their feet than anything. Keeps it interesting! Yup so when we got there there were supposedly 4 of us doing it but two girls chickened out so it was just me and this kid named Andrew from England who had actually been on the bus with me this whole pass, but I never really talked to before this. So that was good—kind of got to do a bit of bonding with everyone.
So the first thing we had to do was fill out a medical sheet—which was actually far less information taking than I imagined. Then they had us watch a DVD of some hyped up girl going on her sky dive. This was actually quite scary. Then we had to decide how high we wanted to jump from. I was going to go with the cheaper deal but figured to just go all out if I was going to do it –when it came down to choosing. Yup so then we waited for a while—talked with three Irish girls—two of which were going to jump out of the same plane as Andrew and I. They were clearly much older but pretty much just as excited. Finally they called us in to get suited up. We got to wear these little blue suites and we had to wear these funny hats and eye coverings. I finally got to meet the guy I was going to be attached to. He was quite young but seemed to be confident in his abilities. It was surprising a lot of the people there as instructors didn’t seem to be from NZ but mine was so that was comforting. Supposedly to be an instructor you have to have at least 1000 jumps. Can you believe that? My guy’s name was Alex. He insisted that I blow my nose so that I didn’t snot all over the place—I found this quite funny but did as I was told. Then we made a bit of a video and took a bunch of sweet photos that I can’t wait to see again. Everyone else was already loaded into the tiny tiny plane which meant that Alex and I were first out. Which I couldn’t have been more happy about, honestly. Oh yea I forgot to mention they told us the position we should be in –the bannna—basically rest your head on his shoulders and tuck your feet under the plane. Tucking my feet around the plane was no problem for me because as soon as he opened the door I was scared to death and thought I was going to like explode with adrenalin. But before I knew it we were out the door-falling fast and then faster and even faster. I couldn’t even breath that’s how fast the air was rushing at my face. I could feel my stomach fly up to my throat. It was so crazy, but so cool at the same time. Alex turned on the video and caught me with some really great expressions—I was definitely having a great time—just couldn’t catch my breath long enough to smile. Finally though I got okay with it and tried to make faces and thumbs up at the camera. Then he pulled the chord and we were floating. This part was actually super relaxing and the view was incredible! The sun was setting on the far side of the Lake and there we were drifting around in the air! How cool!! It felt like we were just hanging at the same height forever, but then slowly the ground came. At no point after the initial freefall did I get scared, which was kind of crazy. When we got close to the ground we both had to lift our feet as high as possible and we kind of just sailed down on our butts. When I stood up I felt dizzy but not in a nauseous way-more like a vertigo thing. It was pretty cool and my stomach was still up in my throat. I wasn’t shaking as much as I thought I would be but wow I was just on such a high. I can’t believe I did that!! And I would totally do that again too!! I really think it would be fun to do with Maggie. And I totally believe that it would be just as insane the second time as it was this time. I am really glad I had the instructor I had—he really made me feel comfortable and he really made it fun. Yay. Afterward we waited around for them to make our trip into a DVD and then we watched the other people’s as well as our own. They were all pretty cool—we got to pick out the music to them so it was interesting to see the combinations and how well they worked with the different parts of the dive. One of the Irish girl’s seemed to hate it—she was crying by the time her parachute came open—she said that she would never do it again. The other girl had already gone once in Australia—she seemed to enjoy it but didn’t really give much expression in her video. Me on the other hand—I tried to rock out with my socks out! WOOHOOO!! I feel great!
Yup so after we all got our dvds, pics and tshirt they took us to our hostel—Taupo Urban Retreat—which is quite a friendly little place—they even have free internet!! Yay. And I had powdered tomato soup for dinner along with some crackers and ya that’s about it! Just a relaxing evening cause I am exhausted!! Tomorrow I will probably walk around Lake Taupo and check out the shops around here. Then I catch a bus back to Auckland at 3:30—and so will end my trip around NZ! See you soon America.
Bay of Islands-Jack Pass STRAY
Day 2 Auckland to Hahei
I stood outside my hostel for about 15 minutes before the Stray bus came. The things going on in Auckland at 6AM are quite interesting. For one there are street cleaners—both in vehicles and using leaf blowers? Odd. There was also a couple—or what must have been a one night stand thing breaking up in the street. When the bus came both this guy on the corner and I moved toward it. It turned out he was also going to the Bay of Islands. His name was Dave and he is from the UK. He has been in Auckland for 4 days and is traveling NZ for 8 weeks. He was a pretty interesting guy—good stories and interesting pictures. He showed me pictures of pretty much everything that I won’t get to see while I am in Auckland—including an aquarium of Antarctic Exploration. It looks like a sweet aquarium so I am pretty bummed I will miss it. Anyway, at least I got to see pics. There were actually 2 other Americans on the bus that morning—they both went to Penn State and lived in Cali. Quite nice. The others were English, German and perhaps more English. There are so many English here its nuts!! Our drivers name was Hoover and she was a pretty plump but hyper lady. We were on our way within a few minutes but then turned around to get more people we missed on the first go. Stray is quite a bit different than Adventure tours—they don’t stop as much and its also a pretty laid back gig. For one accommodation and food aren’t included. But we did make a stopoff in a town to go to the grocer—I got myself some pbJ, bread and chips—for only 8 bucks—noticed the same cereal I had gotten that morning was there for 3 bucks—rediculous!
Pretty much since I’ve arrived in New Zealand it has been raining but luckily I have a raincoat so it hasn’t been detrimental. Anyway we made a few stops along the way up the island—one stop at a Kauri tree that was 650 years old. Our driver made us hug it—which was actually impossible to do it was so big. Our next stop was at some genetically engineered sheep farm where the sheep are engineered to taste like raspberry—so obviously they are red. Okay so this is a lie, and yes I fell for it too. Our final pit stop was to this world famous bathroom designed by some famous guy—the last thing before he died—I guess his other works are in Spain. I’ve got a brochure on it if you’re interested.
Finally we made it to the Bay of Islands and it was still raining. We were supposed to do a dolphin adventure cruise that came free with this particular pass but unfortunately it was called off for the day—as well as all other activities. Honestly I didn’t mind much because it was raining so nothing was really worth paying for. We got there around 1 PM and I went and checked in at my hostel. I should mention that you could also do this pass as a day pass—but the day packers had to leave on the next bus at 2PM—so it was totally not worth it—I’m so glad I didn’t do that (and I almost signed up to do just that). I was the only one to stay in my hostel—by only one I mean—no one else from my tour or no one else at all was staying there. This sounded great to me –I basically owned the place. It was a really cute place—tucked away behind everything else—called the Pickled Parrot. The owner had 3 dogs a cat and a parrot, it was very home like. I loved it. After settling into my room I decided to take a walk into the town to see what the beach was like and check everything out. It was still raining unfortunately so before heading far I went into a few tourist shops—bought a few postcards---took some pictures of the beach—you know relaxed. Then I made my way up the road to a Maori treaty house—and then a bit further to a walk that was suppose to lead to waterfalls. It was a bit daunting heading down this path as I was by myself and it was pretty cloudy and creepy out. There were some awesome lookouts along the way and some cool creek beds. Once I got to the point where the path was flooded I decided to turn back—plus I still had another 4km to go before I got to the waterfall and it was already closing in on 4PM. It gets dark in this neck of the woods by 530 so I didn’t want to be stuck in a jungle in the dark by myself. On my walk back I stopped at a grocer and got a can of soup, some water flavoring and two cans of fruit for 8 bucks—doing good!! By the time I got back to the Pickled Parrot it was nearly dark—so I think I planned my day pretty well. After sorting through my things and getting my laundry ready to go I went and made my can of soup—and popped in a movie. Then I joined Betsy (the cat) on the couch and enjoyed my meal and the movie 4 Weddings and a Funeral. It was pretty funny. When this was over I was able to put my laundry in and get that done, yay, clean clothes finally!! Then I opened a can of fruit and devoured that over another movie. I had also bought some internet usage before Rose (the housekeeper) went up to her home so I used that—finally got to read my REU offer in print!! YAY, I can’t wait. Ya so it was just a chill evening watching movies and preparing for the rest of my trip—finally it felt like vacation!
Day 3 Paihia
Today I was up by 715 to take a shower and get going for the day. It was pretty chilly so I stayed under the hot water as long as possible. Then I had a free breakfast from Rose—toast, cereal and coffee—gosh I love free things! And again I was all alone—it really felt like I had my own vacation house—and yes I would love this place as my vacation home. I guess I’m moving a bit far as I don’t even have my own home yet.
I left Rose a note as I also left my bags in her living room because I didn’t want to bring them with me on the days events. I had to meet some others from STRAY outside their hostel at 830 so I had to rush off. Met a few of them and we proceeded to the boat pier where the final member was waiting. We got on the boat—which was actually a really nice boat. This dolphin cruise was free with the Jack Pass—so not a bad deal. There was an option to swim with dolphins—but it was dependent on both the weather—which was crap and whether or not their were babies in the pod—which there were—so obviously we didn’t swim with them. The cruise was pretty good—I stood out on the bow nearly 1.5 hours taking photos and feeling the wind. It was good. But eventually the wind and waves were too strong for even me so I went back in. Soon enough another boat was calling us –telling us they had spotted a pod of dolphins!! Yay—so we swung around and went to their location—where I filmed the dolphins—babies and all! It was soooo cool. There are restrictions on how long a boat can hang by dolphins—as to not stress them out—so when our time was up we went off to a port called Russel. We were suppose to go land on some island but the weather was just not working in our favor. Russel was an interesting little port—I guess it was initially founded for the whaling industry, but today it has little tourist shops and cafes. I bought some crackers—1.50NZ—and that was my lunch—cheap but certainly not the best choice—oh well its one week—I’d rather save money than eat properly haha.
When we were finally back to Paihia we had just an hour before our bus was suppose to leave—not enough time to really do anything but not little enough time to not do anything. So I looked around town at more tourist shops and mailed some postcards—then walked really really slow back to my hostel to pick up my bags—still I had way too much time when I arrived back at my pickup point. Finally we were off—and it was suppose to be an express back to Auckland—we made one toilet break and that was it. On the way back Hoover popped in a movie—Whale Rider—really good movie—I never realized it was made by the Kiwi’s and also that it was about the Maori people. Way cool!! Oh yea the Maori people I guess are like the aboriginal people of NZ.
Hoover dropped us back off at our hostels by 530. I ended up being in the same room as two days ago in the hostel—but luckily this time there are actually friendly nice people here so it’s a lot less stressful of a place this go round. My roommates names are Laura and Ellen and they are both from Tassie---there is also a girl Nikky from England. The Tassie’s are quite nice—they invited me to have dinner with them—at Nomad Fusion you get a free dinner—it was springrolls mashed potatoes and salad—the tiniest proportion of each but pretty much all I needed. We sat and talked about Tassie and Australia for a while then I decided to go for a walk around Auckland since it would be my only chance before I left. This was quite nice—I brought my ipod and camera and walked around the city—I thought I would need a map but I did just fine without it. I saw Starbucks and had to go—but this was yummy—and warm so worth the 5.50 NZ to have it. Highlight of my walk were a library and the massive sky tower. Yup tomorrow I head out on the Tom Pass-a 5 day tour. I’ll be back here July 4th—the off back to Australia!
I stood outside my hostel for about 15 minutes before the Stray bus came. The things going on in Auckland at 6AM are quite interesting. For one there are street cleaners—both in vehicles and using leaf blowers? Odd. There was also a couple—or what must have been a one night stand thing breaking up in the street. When the bus came both this guy on the corner and I moved toward it. It turned out he was also going to the Bay of Islands. His name was Dave and he is from the UK. He has been in Auckland for 4 days and is traveling NZ for 8 weeks. He was a pretty interesting guy—good stories and interesting pictures. He showed me pictures of pretty much everything that I won’t get to see while I am in Auckland—including an aquarium of Antarctic Exploration. It looks like a sweet aquarium so I am pretty bummed I will miss it. Anyway, at least I got to see pics. There were actually 2 other Americans on the bus that morning—they both went to Penn State and lived in Cali. Quite nice. The others were English, German and perhaps more English. There are so many English here its nuts!! Our drivers name was Hoover and she was a pretty plump but hyper lady. We were on our way within a few minutes but then turned around to get more people we missed on the first go. Stray is quite a bit different than Adventure tours—they don’t stop as much and its also a pretty laid back gig. For one accommodation and food aren’t included. But we did make a stopoff in a town to go to the grocer—I got myself some pbJ, bread and chips—for only 8 bucks—noticed the same cereal I had gotten that morning was there for 3 bucks—rediculous!
Pretty much since I’ve arrived in New Zealand it has been raining but luckily I have a raincoat so it hasn’t been detrimental. Anyway we made a few stops along the way up the island—one stop at a Kauri tree that was 650 years old. Our driver made us hug it—which was actually impossible to do it was so big. Our next stop was at some genetically engineered sheep farm where the sheep are engineered to taste like raspberry—so obviously they are red. Okay so this is a lie, and yes I fell for it too. Our final pit stop was to this world famous bathroom designed by some famous guy—the last thing before he died—I guess his other works are in Spain. I’ve got a brochure on it if you’re interested.
Finally we made it to the Bay of Islands and it was still raining. We were supposed to do a dolphin adventure cruise that came free with this particular pass but unfortunately it was called off for the day—as well as all other activities. Honestly I didn’t mind much because it was raining so nothing was really worth paying for. We got there around 1 PM and I went and checked in at my hostel. I should mention that you could also do this pass as a day pass—but the day packers had to leave on the next bus at 2PM—so it was totally not worth it—I’m so glad I didn’t do that (and I almost signed up to do just that). I was the only one to stay in my hostel—by only one I mean—no one else from my tour or no one else at all was staying there. This sounded great to me –I basically owned the place. It was a really cute place—tucked away behind everything else—called the Pickled Parrot. The owner had 3 dogs a cat and a parrot, it was very home like. I loved it. After settling into my room I decided to take a walk into the town to see what the beach was like and check everything out. It was still raining unfortunately so before heading far I went into a few tourist shops—bought a few postcards---took some pictures of the beach—you know relaxed. Then I made my way up the road to a Maori treaty house—and then a bit further to a walk that was suppose to lead to waterfalls. It was a bit daunting heading down this path as I was by myself and it was pretty cloudy and creepy out. There were some awesome lookouts along the way and some cool creek beds. Once I got to the point where the path was flooded I decided to turn back—plus I still had another 4km to go before I got to the waterfall and it was already closing in on 4PM. It gets dark in this neck of the woods by 530 so I didn’t want to be stuck in a jungle in the dark by myself. On my walk back I stopped at a grocer and got a can of soup, some water flavoring and two cans of fruit for 8 bucks—doing good!! By the time I got back to the Pickled Parrot it was nearly dark—so I think I planned my day pretty well. After sorting through my things and getting my laundry ready to go I went and made my can of soup—and popped in a movie. Then I joined Betsy (the cat) on the couch and enjoyed my meal and the movie 4 Weddings and a Funeral. It was pretty funny. When this was over I was able to put my laundry in and get that done, yay, clean clothes finally!! Then I opened a can of fruit and devoured that over another movie. I had also bought some internet usage before Rose (the housekeeper) went up to her home so I used that—finally got to read my REU offer in print!! YAY, I can’t wait. Ya so it was just a chill evening watching movies and preparing for the rest of my trip—finally it felt like vacation!
Day 3 Paihia
Today I was up by 715 to take a shower and get going for the day. It was pretty chilly so I stayed under the hot water as long as possible. Then I had a free breakfast from Rose—toast, cereal and coffee—gosh I love free things! And again I was all alone—it really felt like I had my own vacation house—and yes I would love this place as my vacation home. I guess I’m moving a bit far as I don’t even have my own home yet.
I left Rose a note as I also left my bags in her living room because I didn’t want to bring them with me on the days events. I had to meet some others from STRAY outside their hostel at 830 so I had to rush off. Met a few of them and we proceeded to the boat pier where the final member was waiting. We got on the boat—which was actually a really nice boat. This dolphin cruise was free with the Jack Pass—so not a bad deal. There was an option to swim with dolphins—but it was dependent on both the weather—which was crap and whether or not their were babies in the pod—which there were—so obviously we didn’t swim with them. The cruise was pretty good—I stood out on the bow nearly 1.5 hours taking photos and feeling the wind. It was good. But eventually the wind and waves were too strong for even me so I went back in. Soon enough another boat was calling us –telling us they had spotted a pod of dolphins!! Yay—so we swung around and went to their location—where I filmed the dolphins—babies and all! It was soooo cool. There are restrictions on how long a boat can hang by dolphins—as to not stress them out—so when our time was up we went off to a port called Russel. We were suppose to go land on some island but the weather was just not working in our favor. Russel was an interesting little port—I guess it was initially founded for the whaling industry, but today it has little tourist shops and cafes. I bought some crackers—1.50NZ—and that was my lunch—cheap but certainly not the best choice—oh well its one week—I’d rather save money than eat properly haha.
When we were finally back to Paihia we had just an hour before our bus was suppose to leave—not enough time to really do anything but not little enough time to not do anything. So I looked around town at more tourist shops and mailed some postcards—then walked really really slow back to my hostel to pick up my bags—still I had way too much time when I arrived back at my pickup point. Finally we were off—and it was suppose to be an express back to Auckland—we made one toilet break and that was it. On the way back Hoover popped in a movie—Whale Rider—really good movie—I never realized it was made by the Kiwi’s and also that it was about the Maori people. Way cool!! Oh yea the Maori people I guess are like the aboriginal people of NZ.
Hoover dropped us back off at our hostels by 530. I ended up being in the same room as two days ago in the hostel—but luckily this time there are actually friendly nice people here so it’s a lot less stressful of a place this go round. My roommates names are Laura and Ellen and they are both from Tassie---there is also a girl Nikky from England. The Tassie’s are quite nice—they invited me to have dinner with them—at Nomad Fusion you get a free dinner—it was springrolls mashed potatoes and salad—the tiniest proportion of each but pretty much all I needed. We sat and talked about Tassie and Australia for a while then I decided to go for a walk around Auckland since it would be my only chance before I left. This was quite nice—I brought my ipod and camera and walked around the city—I thought I would need a map but I did just fine without it. I saw Starbucks and had to go—but this was yummy—and warm so worth the 5.50 NZ to have it. Highlight of my walk were a library and the massive sky tower. Yup tomorrow I head out on the Tom Pass-a 5 day tour. I’ll be back here July 4th—the off back to Australia!
Goodbye Tassie--Kia Ora New Zealand
Day 7—hobart Day 1- Auckland
My second night in my Hobart hostel I was in a room with three guys—quite different from what I had initially planned—to be in a room with only girls—but as my mind constantly thinks of ways to do things cheaper I didn’t even think about my initial concern of being a girl traveling alone. Oh well it turned out fine—the people in the Hobart Hostel are pretty quiet and laid back—I didn’t feel unsafe at all. They probably wanted to shoot me though because I went to bed late and woke up before them. I had to catch a bus to the airport at 9AM so I got up at like 730. It’s funny I think how I am now on vacation and every day I am getting up earlier than I did during my semester. Anyway it took nearly an hour to get to the airport because we had to stop and get other people. Finally got there and checked in—the guy checked me in all the way to Hobart. I tried to switch my meals to vegetarian but I guess it was too late. In the airport I talked to Sameer who loaded me up on minutes for my phone—thank god. 10:20 boarded the plan and was on my way in no time to Sydney. In Sydney I was a little hectic—I had to figure out how to get to the international airport and I also had to go through all these security things for going international. It was a lot more work than I thought—and I totally forgot about the liquid rule so I had to sort through my stuff. Finally I got through and went to my gate—I thought I was going to be late but it turned out our plane had an hour long delay. While waiting I found a spot to recharge my phone. Again talked to Sameer and Rhona and Miranda before departing. Also while waiting I met this guy who was also traveling to Auckland. He asked me to watch his stuff while he went to the bathroom—I was on the phone and didn’t realize what he was asking till he was already up and moving. Oh well, seemed harmless until he took forever to come back. Finally he did and he had with him two apple juices—one of which he gave to me. I was a bit uneasy about all this, and as a bad stereotype he was also from Ethiopia. Then he started up a conversation with me and asked me about my travels and what not—I returned the questions. He offered me a ride once in Auckland to the city and my hostel. I agreed(with a huge frog in my throat) thinking oh gosh I’m going to be kidnapped. But I said yes because I had heard so much about Kiwi hospitality and figured hey lets test this out. I also figured in the Auckland airport I could probably just lose myself. He ended up being a really nice person though—he offered me a seat switch because there was extra room near him on the plane—I stayed in my seat because I was still a bit uneasy—and also there was a lot of extra leg room (exit seat). When we landed he told me just to wait for him after we got through all the customs stuff, he also helped me sort out what food and stuff I had to throw away in order to get into the country (I think I probably could have kept the food because you can declare it—but whatever) –I realized this guy was safe and waited for him outside. I should mention that I had to go into the biohazard line in customs so they could check my hiking boots and my seashells—safe and I got to keep both haha. Finally the guy came out and he introduced me to his mate who was also from Ethiopia and we proceeded to go to the parking lot. They were talking in their own language, but had some really good music on as we drove off to the city. Yup they dropped me off no problem—it was really really nice of them—especially because the friend had already had to wait for us for an extra hour and he was still laid back and helpful. They offered any more help to me the rest of the week. And that was it—I made it to Nomad Fusion Backpackers—free of charge. Thank you Kiwis!
My hostel was loud and not really inviting on first entering—and my room was an 8 person female with some pretty unfriendly English/sweds. Luckily I was only there one night and didn’t have to carry on the awkwardness for much longer. I had a nice warm shower and went to bed straight away. The switch from Oz to Kiwi land is a 2 hour time difference so even though it felt like 9 PM it was actually 11PM—something I didn’t realize until my roommates were getting up at 4AM to catch their plane. At this point I was like what the hell its 4AM why are they up?! Then I realized it was actually 6AM and that I had to get up shortly too. So actually thank you damn sweds! Got up packed my stuff and was out the door by 715AM. I took a short walk to find some brekky and get out some cash. The store the receptionist had recommended was insanely expensive—I wasn’t sure if this was representative of all Kiwi prices so I bought the least expensive breakfast thing—5.79 for a box of cereal. Nuts!! It was a good thing cause later I found many more stores with reasonable prices.
My second night in my Hobart hostel I was in a room with three guys—quite different from what I had initially planned—to be in a room with only girls—but as my mind constantly thinks of ways to do things cheaper I didn’t even think about my initial concern of being a girl traveling alone. Oh well it turned out fine—the people in the Hobart Hostel are pretty quiet and laid back—I didn’t feel unsafe at all. They probably wanted to shoot me though because I went to bed late and woke up before them. I had to catch a bus to the airport at 9AM so I got up at like 730. It’s funny I think how I am now on vacation and every day I am getting up earlier than I did during my semester. Anyway it took nearly an hour to get to the airport because we had to stop and get other people. Finally got there and checked in—the guy checked me in all the way to Hobart. I tried to switch my meals to vegetarian but I guess it was too late. In the airport I talked to Sameer who loaded me up on minutes for my phone—thank god. 10:20 boarded the plan and was on my way in no time to Sydney. In Sydney I was a little hectic—I had to figure out how to get to the international airport and I also had to go through all these security things for going international. It was a lot more work than I thought—and I totally forgot about the liquid rule so I had to sort through my stuff. Finally I got through and went to my gate—I thought I was going to be late but it turned out our plane had an hour long delay. While waiting I found a spot to recharge my phone. Again talked to Sameer and Rhona and Miranda before departing. Also while waiting I met this guy who was also traveling to Auckland. He asked me to watch his stuff while he went to the bathroom—I was on the phone and didn’t realize what he was asking till he was already up and moving. Oh well, seemed harmless until he took forever to come back. Finally he did and he had with him two apple juices—one of which he gave to me. I was a bit uneasy about all this, and as a bad stereotype he was also from Ethiopia. Then he started up a conversation with me and asked me about my travels and what not—I returned the questions. He offered me a ride once in Auckland to the city and my hostel. I agreed(with a huge frog in my throat) thinking oh gosh I’m going to be kidnapped. But I said yes because I had heard so much about Kiwi hospitality and figured hey lets test this out. I also figured in the Auckland airport I could probably just lose myself. He ended up being a really nice person though—he offered me a seat switch because there was extra room near him on the plane—I stayed in my seat because I was still a bit uneasy—and also there was a lot of extra leg room (exit seat). When we landed he told me just to wait for him after we got through all the customs stuff, he also helped me sort out what food and stuff I had to throw away in order to get into the country (I think I probably could have kept the food because you can declare it—but whatever) –I realized this guy was safe and waited for him outside. I should mention that I had to go into the biohazard line in customs so they could check my hiking boots and my seashells—safe and I got to keep both haha. Finally the guy came out and he introduced me to his mate who was also from Ethiopia and we proceeded to go to the parking lot. They were talking in their own language, but had some really good music on as we drove off to the city. Yup they dropped me off no problem—it was really really nice of them—especially because the friend had already had to wait for us for an extra hour and he was still laid back and helpful. They offered any more help to me the rest of the week. And that was it—I made it to Nomad Fusion Backpackers—free of charge. Thank you Kiwis!
My hostel was loud and not really inviting on first entering—and my room was an 8 person female with some pretty unfriendly English/sweds. Luckily I was only there one night and didn’t have to carry on the awkwardness for much longer. I had a nice warm shower and went to bed straight away. The switch from Oz to Kiwi land is a 2 hour time difference so even though it felt like 9 PM it was actually 11PM—something I didn’t realize until my roommates were getting up at 4AM to catch their plane. At this point I was like what the hell its 4AM why are they up?! Then I realized it was actually 6AM and that I had to get up shortly too. So actually thank you damn sweds! Got up packed my stuff and was out the door by 715AM. I took a short walk to find some brekky and get out some cash. The store the receptionist had recommended was insanely expensive—I wasn’t sure if this was representative of all Kiwi prices so I bought the least expensive breakfast thing—5.79 for a box of cereal. Nuts!! It was a good thing cause later I found many more stores with reasonable prices.
Taste of Tasmania
DAY 2
This morning (June 22) we woke up at 7AM. After freezing my butt off I went into the warm kitchen to have some breakfast. Coffee, toast and cereal, yum yum. The we got all packed up and loaded the vehicle. This morning some others and I were allowed to take out some mountain bikes and go for a ride around town. This was quite enjoyable, made me really miss bike riding. We peddled down the street—passing a cute dog, yes I got a photo- and then heading up a park path to a waterfall. This was fun because the path was bumpy so it kept things interesting, a bit of uphill too. The waterfall was quite pretty and tucked away. We rode back out and down into town, circling around and heading into the other direction to an old railroad station. By 9AM we had to be back up to meet Andy. He took us into town (the one street with like 4 buildings) where we went up to a lookout point to see a good view of the harbor. Then we walked down into a few tourist shops and a really nice woodcraftsmen shop, didn’t buy anything but tempting. By 10 we were headed off for Henty Sand dunes, about 20 minutes outside Strahan. Oh yeah, Strahan is also a mining town. Henty sand dunes was really cool and really cold at first. We walked barefoot up a huge sand dune. Some people did some four wheel driving on the dunes, but most of us listened to a history lesson and walked around. Andy told us that this was the spot in the world where all other places were compared in terms of pollution. I guess this spot is the 0 reading and everything else is compared to that. So we all took a nice big breath. He also told us how if you went of the coast here and traveled in either direction W/E you wouldn’t hit land until South America. That is why the weather here was so crazy and so windy. The West coast of Tassie is one of the most inaccessible points in the world because of this. There are only 3 entry points in all of the 300 km of coastline because it is just impossible otherwise. In light of this, the sand dunes here are quite dynamic—moving up to a meter a day. There were several trees buried in sand—37 meters high. He told us that the sand dunes here ranged from 50-100 meters deep. Crazy! Also there are some of the largest waves here, the ones crashing today were about 3 meters high, high enough that I wouldn’t want to surf!
After this we headed to a place called Zeehan—another mining town, mining tin and cooper. We stopped here for lunch. This town was famous for their theater, which I guess at one point had Hudini in it! Impressive, a crowd of 1500 people, not bad! It was pretty much just as bland as Queenstown, but had a bit more people walking about. After Zeehan we headed up the coast to the top entry point of Cradle Mountain National Park. The views in this drive were stunning, we passed through several more mining towns and saw huge beautiful mountains. The flora began to change too. Wow, I could not believe my eyes, when we enter the park. The landscape was just so surreal. I can’t even describe it—it was just so winter like without snow though—beautiful white dead trees standing high into the sky, mosses covering the ground and just beautiful arrays of color—more color than you would ever see in a winter landscape anywhere else. When we came into the park we headed first to our accommodation point to drop off bags and such. We are staying in kind of a cabin like place, with heat! It’s a pretty nice spot for a national park. Then we headed to the visitors center where we kind of got orientated for the walks we will do tomorrow. There are walks anywhere from 30 minutes to 6 hours and they range in abilities too, lots of preparation. I plan on doing the longest hardest one so I can see and feel Tasmania to its fullest! Next we went to the home of the guy who found cradle mountain. I can’t remember exactly what was so great about him but I have some videos where Andy describes him. The house was beautiful but we were there momentarily before Andy shouted out that we had to hurry quick go to the mountain because the clouds had stopped covering it. This was a good idea as the view when we got there was spectacular. I took way too many photos. We headed back to our accommodation where we all relaxed for a while and had dinner. At dinner one of the Dutch girls told me about her trip to New Zealand and all the cool things she did. I can’t wait to go now, I am looking forward to it.
I guess I should give a brief description of the people here. There are several Dutch people, several Sydney-ans and Adelaidians. Also two from Japan and two from China. I am the only American and there is the mysterious guy who showed up finally—Estaban—who is from Colombia. Yup so that’s all for now. Tomorrow should be a good day of hiking if the weather holds up.
Day 3
Today we had to be up bright and early or more so dark and early. We wanted to be out on the mountain by 8AM so that we would have it to ourselves. It turned out that we didn’t see anyone else on the track until we were nearly finished anyway, but it certainly gives you a nice feeling when you are out on a mountain by yourselves, like you own it. Especially such an exceptionally large mountain.
At first I thought I was ill prepared because it was so so cold. But by mid way through I was down to just a t-shirt. It was a really diverse walk—it was like we walked through all of the seasons –rain, snow, heat, wind –can’t really describe it better than that. There were tough spots where we really felt like mountain climbers, there were slipper spots where I felt like crash bandicoot running across wooden platforms and there were easy spots where you didn’t have to even look at your feet (actually these really didn’t exist). It took us 5 hours and 54 minutes to complete the circuit. We did stop for a 15 minute lunch and had several stops along the way to just take in the surroundings. The last 100 meters of our walk we saw a wombat! This was really really cool as we had been hoping for one the whole time and finally did see one! Yeah hard to describe any more of this—really the pictures are the only way.
When we got done with this we headed on a drive to Devonport which pretty much took the rest of the evening. Finally in Devonport I had phone service. I had 34 text messages, holy crap! It turned out that since I left no one knew where I had gone and were all worried sick about where I was. I felt really bad but what could I do I was on a remote island state in the middle of a national park—no internet no phone service. I’m sorry everyone! Anyway I talked to Rhona, Miranda and Sameer and that was really really nice. I am really missing them but really glad they still care about me to call and worry about me.
Day 4
Today we left Devonport by 7AM and headed East to Launceston where we lost two of our group members who were on their way back to life again. Oh I should also mention we got rid of the older couple in Devonport too so now we are down to 11 people. Today was another big driving day as we basically had to get down the East coast. We stopped at the Bay of Fires for a beach excursion. It is so named because I guess when James Cook first came here he noticed there were tons of fires being set by the aboriginal people. It was a beautiful place with pretty massive waves. Our guide put on a wet suit and went boogie boarding, as you can imagine I was quite jealous, but I enjoyed picture taking along the beach. After about an hour of this we had lunch in the harbor down the street, which consisted of refried beans fried on a hot plate (it looked like poop but tasted pretty good). After lunch Andy (guide) insisted that we play ultimate Frisbee. I insisted that it be girls against boys, and the boys agreed. As you can imagine, we kicked their butts 10 to 2. Next stop was Fallow Beach where we were allowed to do some sea shell collecting! Wohoo, I jumped on this. Most of the areas in Tasmania are part of the state park system and so basically it’s a no take zone, so this was cool that we could take something. (It turns out later this was a pain in the butt in getting into NZ). The drive along the East Coast was beautiful. It was basically an ocean scene the whole way and huge waves. The East Coast was also way more populated—unlike the West Coast where we saw very few cars if any on our drives. That night we stayed in a little town called Bicheno. When we first arrived Andy took us to this spot called the blowhole, which you can imagine what that is. It was right in some rocks—actually in the same place where a colony of penguins was known to be (based on the conspicuous poo left behind). So that night we were determined to see penguins. After we got to the house and settled in, Yoanna and Sissy (the Holand girl and one of the Chinese girls) and I went to the beach to do some penguin spotting. We were there around 4PM and I guess they leave the water to come back to their nests around sunset so we had to wait a while. We did a little bit of peaceful beach sitting and then got antsy so we went to explore for their burrows. We think we found some as we tracked footprints to them but who knows if they really were. Waiting till sunset and beyond we never saw penguins, but it was really cool and exhilarating to try. Empty hearted we went back to our Bicheno home and had a delicious chili meal that Andy had cooked up by himself (it was even spicy!).
Next morning we were up and out by 730AM and on our way to Freycinet National Park. Unfortunately we had a terrible day of weather—it was raining from the start. So when we got to the park there was fog covering everything. The initial plan was to do a pretty hard core walk up to the top of the mountain to oversee the infamous wineglass bay, but because of the rain it was too dangerous a hike to make (I guess its pretty steap). Instead we did a relatively easy and short hike to a lookout point where we still really couldn’t see much. Real bummer because this was one of the most attractive looking spots in my tour book! Afterward we went to a lighthouse and did a walk around that. And then another walk down to the beach. This was pretty because it was a pretty high energy beach. There were huge rocks that the waves would crash in and also it looked like the waves had carved out caves into some of them. Too bad it was raining. We stopped and had an early lunch—veggie burgers and watermelon-oh my! It was still downpouring –hence we stopped where there was an enclosure so we wouldn’t get wet. Our next stop was at the berry farm-Kates Berry Farm (thought this was pretty cool until I realized it was Kate’s not Kates) We had a delicious and well needed warm hot chocolate here. 4 bucks I didn’t mind spending. Then as we made our way to Port Arthur we passed through a town called Doo Town where instead of street names all the houses have a different name with doo in it like.. Doo it or Dr. Doo Little. Quite nifty I thought. As we drove through Port Arthur Andy told us of this horrific incident that happened in Port Arthur in 1996. I won’t write about it here in respect to those affected by it but you can ask me to tell you in person. Before heading to our house that night we made a pit stop at the Tasman Peninsula where there was this massive and outrageously cool cave called Miraculous cave as well as a dark and beautiful view of the Tasman Peninsula. That night dinner was to be late because a few of us were going on a Ghost Tour of Port Arthur. The Ghost Tour was about an hour long and basically brought us through a few of the main buildings. The tour guide told us some stories about murders and deaths. He brought us through an old church, someone home, the surgery room (in a basement cellar) and into the separate prison (where people supposedly went crazy). It was pretty spooky at times mostly because of the weather—which was insanely windy and wet. Near the end of the tour I was taking a picture and this white thing appeared. Obviously I first thought it was a ghost—but then after catching it on video I realized it was just an effect of my camera—still cool—ask me to show it to you. The walk back to our house in the pitch black was actually the worst of it all because it was poorly lit and…no one but the 5 of us were around. Luckily I got to walk in the middle so I felt a lot better hehe.
Day 6
Today we were actually allowed to sleep in—we didn’t need leave the house until 845 since we were so close to the site of interest that day. Unfortunately my body had already gotten so use to it that I still woke up at 7. On the news today was Michael Jackson’s death, how tragic..I’m really bummed to hear it.
Today we headed in to Port Arthur. On entrance we were given a card in which we would be matched up to the life of one of the convicts and we could follow his story throughout the visitors center. My person was actually not really a convict—he was just good at what he did so he was sent to Port Arthur to oversee convicts. In the end he was murdered by convicts because they despised him for what position he was in. I didn’t have a chance to go back and follow other stories-definitely could have spent a lot more time here. At 930 we took a guided tour and basically got a lot of information about the daily lives of the convicts—and a sense of what else was going on in Port Arthur at that time. What caught me off guard was the fact that 7 year olds were legally responsible for their actions and at 9 years of age they could be hung. There was a whole separate prison for younger people—mainly because they hoped to reform them and put them back into society. People could be sent to Port Arthur for a variety of crimes including stealing food or robbing someone—but mainly they were sent because they were habitual criminals rather than for a single action. Again the weather really helped set the mood—cold, windy, dark and grey. After the guided tour Jolanda (a dutch girl) and I went into the library to see if we had anyone with our same last name in the records for being in Port Arthur—didn’t find anyone under Kates but I did under Curran! That will be a mission for Grandma—to figure out if that person is related to us our not. I hope not! After this we ran off to a boat tour of the Port Arthur Harbor—this was pretty boring except that Jolanda bought me hot chocolate and we got to see the Isle of the Dead (where 1600 people were buried). When this ended we had just enough time to skim through the rest of the site. Quite an eerie place.
At 1245 we had to meet Andy to go pick up the others (who went on a cruise) and then head to the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park! How cool!! We got to see them feed the Tassie devils and hear a little about what is going on with them. Currently there is some kind of cancerous disease spreading through them—spread through their biting (which is a common practice) and basically there is no cure for it. The only way to prevent the extinction of the devils is to isolate those that are still undiseased and repopulate them. They are awesome little creatures and have wild characters. Definetly worth the 12 bucks to see them. Also at this conservation park they had tons of cool birds, quolls and kangaroos, all of which definitely brightened the grey day. Before heading back to Hobart we made a detor to another blowhole and more of the Tasman Peninsula. We left just in time because I filled up my entire memory card, whoops! When we got back to Hobart some of us made plans to meet up later for dinner. I met up with Yoanne and we walked to this address my hostel attendant had found online –but it was a café so we found a new spot—we met up with some others at a Thai restaurant and enjoyed a yummy taste of Pad Thai. After some friendly goodbyes Yoanne and I made our way back toward our hostels which luckily were just a block apart.
This morning (June 22) we woke up at 7AM. After freezing my butt off I went into the warm kitchen to have some breakfast. Coffee, toast and cereal, yum yum. The we got all packed up and loaded the vehicle. This morning some others and I were allowed to take out some mountain bikes and go for a ride around town. This was quite enjoyable, made me really miss bike riding. We peddled down the street—passing a cute dog, yes I got a photo- and then heading up a park path to a waterfall. This was fun because the path was bumpy so it kept things interesting, a bit of uphill too. The waterfall was quite pretty and tucked away. We rode back out and down into town, circling around and heading into the other direction to an old railroad station. By 9AM we had to be back up to meet Andy. He took us into town (the one street with like 4 buildings) where we went up to a lookout point to see a good view of the harbor. Then we walked down into a few tourist shops and a really nice woodcraftsmen shop, didn’t buy anything but tempting. By 10 we were headed off for Henty Sand dunes, about 20 minutes outside Strahan. Oh yeah, Strahan is also a mining town. Henty sand dunes was really cool and really cold at first. We walked barefoot up a huge sand dune. Some people did some four wheel driving on the dunes, but most of us listened to a history lesson and walked around. Andy told us that this was the spot in the world where all other places were compared in terms of pollution. I guess this spot is the 0 reading and everything else is compared to that. So we all took a nice big breath. He also told us how if you went of the coast here and traveled in either direction W/E you wouldn’t hit land until South America. That is why the weather here was so crazy and so windy. The West coast of Tassie is one of the most inaccessible points in the world because of this. There are only 3 entry points in all of the 300 km of coastline because it is just impossible otherwise. In light of this, the sand dunes here are quite dynamic—moving up to a meter a day. There were several trees buried in sand—37 meters high. He told us that the sand dunes here ranged from 50-100 meters deep. Crazy! Also there are some of the largest waves here, the ones crashing today were about 3 meters high, high enough that I wouldn’t want to surf!
After this we headed to a place called Zeehan—another mining town, mining tin and cooper. We stopped here for lunch. This town was famous for their theater, which I guess at one point had Hudini in it! Impressive, a crowd of 1500 people, not bad! It was pretty much just as bland as Queenstown, but had a bit more people walking about. After Zeehan we headed up the coast to the top entry point of Cradle Mountain National Park. The views in this drive were stunning, we passed through several more mining towns and saw huge beautiful mountains. The flora began to change too. Wow, I could not believe my eyes, when we enter the park. The landscape was just so surreal. I can’t even describe it—it was just so winter like without snow though—beautiful white dead trees standing high into the sky, mosses covering the ground and just beautiful arrays of color—more color than you would ever see in a winter landscape anywhere else. When we came into the park we headed first to our accommodation point to drop off bags and such. We are staying in kind of a cabin like place, with heat! It’s a pretty nice spot for a national park. Then we headed to the visitors center where we kind of got orientated for the walks we will do tomorrow. There are walks anywhere from 30 minutes to 6 hours and they range in abilities too, lots of preparation. I plan on doing the longest hardest one so I can see and feel Tasmania to its fullest! Next we went to the home of the guy who found cradle mountain. I can’t remember exactly what was so great about him but I have some videos where Andy describes him. The house was beautiful but we were there momentarily before Andy shouted out that we had to hurry quick go to the mountain because the clouds had stopped covering it. This was a good idea as the view when we got there was spectacular. I took way too many photos. We headed back to our accommodation where we all relaxed for a while and had dinner. At dinner one of the Dutch girls told me about her trip to New Zealand and all the cool things she did. I can’t wait to go now, I am looking forward to it.
I guess I should give a brief description of the people here. There are several Dutch people, several Sydney-ans and Adelaidians. Also two from Japan and two from China. I am the only American and there is the mysterious guy who showed up finally—Estaban—who is from Colombia. Yup so that’s all for now. Tomorrow should be a good day of hiking if the weather holds up.
Day 3
Today we had to be up bright and early or more so dark and early. We wanted to be out on the mountain by 8AM so that we would have it to ourselves. It turned out that we didn’t see anyone else on the track until we were nearly finished anyway, but it certainly gives you a nice feeling when you are out on a mountain by yourselves, like you own it. Especially such an exceptionally large mountain.
At first I thought I was ill prepared because it was so so cold. But by mid way through I was down to just a t-shirt. It was a really diverse walk—it was like we walked through all of the seasons –rain, snow, heat, wind –can’t really describe it better than that. There were tough spots where we really felt like mountain climbers, there were slipper spots where I felt like crash bandicoot running across wooden platforms and there were easy spots where you didn’t have to even look at your feet (actually these really didn’t exist). It took us 5 hours and 54 minutes to complete the circuit. We did stop for a 15 minute lunch and had several stops along the way to just take in the surroundings. The last 100 meters of our walk we saw a wombat! This was really really cool as we had been hoping for one the whole time and finally did see one! Yeah hard to describe any more of this—really the pictures are the only way.
When we got done with this we headed on a drive to Devonport which pretty much took the rest of the evening. Finally in Devonport I had phone service. I had 34 text messages, holy crap! It turned out that since I left no one knew where I had gone and were all worried sick about where I was. I felt really bad but what could I do I was on a remote island state in the middle of a national park—no internet no phone service. I’m sorry everyone! Anyway I talked to Rhona, Miranda and Sameer and that was really really nice. I am really missing them but really glad they still care about me to call and worry about me.
Day 4
Today we left Devonport by 7AM and headed East to Launceston where we lost two of our group members who were on their way back to life again. Oh I should also mention we got rid of the older couple in Devonport too so now we are down to 11 people. Today was another big driving day as we basically had to get down the East coast. We stopped at the Bay of Fires for a beach excursion. It is so named because I guess when James Cook first came here he noticed there were tons of fires being set by the aboriginal people. It was a beautiful place with pretty massive waves. Our guide put on a wet suit and went boogie boarding, as you can imagine I was quite jealous, but I enjoyed picture taking along the beach. After about an hour of this we had lunch in the harbor down the street, which consisted of refried beans fried on a hot plate (it looked like poop but tasted pretty good). After lunch Andy (guide) insisted that we play ultimate Frisbee. I insisted that it be girls against boys, and the boys agreed. As you can imagine, we kicked their butts 10 to 2. Next stop was Fallow Beach where we were allowed to do some sea shell collecting! Wohoo, I jumped on this. Most of the areas in Tasmania are part of the state park system and so basically it’s a no take zone, so this was cool that we could take something. (It turns out later this was a pain in the butt in getting into NZ). The drive along the East Coast was beautiful. It was basically an ocean scene the whole way and huge waves. The East Coast was also way more populated—unlike the West Coast where we saw very few cars if any on our drives. That night we stayed in a little town called Bicheno. When we first arrived Andy took us to this spot called the blowhole, which you can imagine what that is. It was right in some rocks—actually in the same place where a colony of penguins was known to be (based on the conspicuous poo left behind). So that night we were determined to see penguins. After we got to the house and settled in, Yoanna and Sissy (the Holand girl and one of the Chinese girls) and I went to the beach to do some penguin spotting. We were there around 4PM and I guess they leave the water to come back to their nests around sunset so we had to wait a while. We did a little bit of peaceful beach sitting and then got antsy so we went to explore for their burrows. We think we found some as we tracked footprints to them but who knows if they really were. Waiting till sunset and beyond we never saw penguins, but it was really cool and exhilarating to try. Empty hearted we went back to our Bicheno home and had a delicious chili meal that Andy had cooked up by himself (it was even spicy!).
Next morning we were up and out by 730AM and on our way to Freycinet National Park. Unfortunately we had a terrible day of weather—it was raining from the start. So when we got to the park there was fog covering everything. The initial plan was to do a pretty hard core walk up to the top of the mountain to oversee the infamous wineglass bay, but because of the rain it was too dangerous a hike to make (I guess its pretty steap). Instead we did a relatively easy and short hike to a lookout point where we still really couldn’t see much. Real bummer because this was one of the most attractive looking spots in my tour book! Afterward we went to a lighthouse and did a walk around that. And then another walk down to the beach. This was pretty because it was a pretty high energy beach. There were huge rocks that the waves would crash in and also it looked like the waves had carved out caves into some of them. Too bad it was raining. We stopped and had an early lunch—veggie burgers and watermelon-oh my! It was still downpouring –hence we stopped where there was an enclosure so we wouldn’t get wet. Our next stop was at the berry farm-Kates Berry Farm (thought this was pretty cool until I realized it was Kate’s not Kates) We had a delicious and well needed warm hot chocolate here. 4 bucks I didn’t mind spending. Then as we made our way to Port Arthur we passed through a town called Doo Town where instead of street names all the houses have a different name with doo in it like.. Doo it or Dr. Doo Little. Quite nifty I thought. As we drove through Port Arthur Andy told us of this horrific incident that happened in Port Arthur in 1996. I won’t write about it here in respect to those affected by it but you can ask me to tell you in person. Before heading to our house that night we made a pit stop at the Tasman Peninsula where there was this massive and outrageously cool cave called Miraculous cave as well as a dark and beautiful view of the Tasman Peninsula. That night dinner was to be late because a few of us were going on a Ghost Tour of Port Arthur. The Ghost Tour was about an hour long and basically brought us through a few of the main buildings. The tour guide told us some stories about murders and deaths. He brought us through an old church, someone home, the surgery room (in a basement cellar) and into the separate prison (where people supposedly went crazy). It was pretty spooky at times mostly because of the weather—which was insanely windy and wet. Near the end of the tour I was taking a picture and this white thing appeared. Obviously I first thought it was a ghost—but then after catching it on video I realized it was just an effect of my camera—still cool—ask me to show it to you. The walk back to our house in the pitch black was actually the worst of it all because it was poorly lit and…no one but the 5 of us were around. Luckily I got to walk in the middle so I felt a lot better hehe.
Day 6
Today we were actually allowed to sleep in—we didn’t need leave the house until 845 since we were so close to the site of interest that day. Unfortunately my body had already gotten so use to it that I still woke up at 7. On the news today was Michael Jackson’s death, how tragic..I’m really bummed to hear it.
Today we headed in to Port Arthur. On entrance we were given a card in which we would be matched up to the life of one of the convicts and we could follow his story throughout the visitors center. My person was actually not really a convict—he was just good at what he did so he was sent to Port Arthur to oversee convicts. In the end he was murdered by convicts because they despised him for what position he was in. I didn’t have a chance to go back and follow other stories-definitely could have spent a lot more time here. At 930 we took a guided tour and basically got a lot of information about the daily lives of the convicts—and a sense of what else was going on in Port Arthur at that time. What caught me off guard was the fact that 7 year olds were legally responsible for their actions and at 9 years of age they could be hung. There was a whole separate prison for younger people—mainly because they hoped to reform them and put them back into society. People could be sent to Port Arthur for a variety of crimes including stealing food or robbing someone—but mainly they were sent because they were habitual criminals rather than for a single action. Again the weather really helped set the mood—cold, windy, dark and grey. After the guided tour Jolanda (a dutch girl) and I went into the library to see if we had anyone with our same last name in the records for being in Port Arthur—didn’t find anyone under Kates but I did under Curran! That will be a mission for Grandma—to figure out if that person is related to us our not. I hope not! After this we ran off to a boat tour of the Port Arthur Harbor—this was pretty boring except that Jolanda bought me hot chocolate and we got to see the Isle of the Dead (where 1600 people were buried). When this ended we had just enough time to skim through the rest of the site. Quite an eerie place.
At 1245 we had to meet Andy to go pick up the others (who went on a cruise) and then head to the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park! How cool!! We got to see them feed the Tassie devils and hear a little about what is going on with them. Currently there is some kind of cancerous disease spreading through them—spread through their biting (which is a common practice) and basically there is no cure for it. The only way to prevent the extinction of the devils is to isolate those that are still undiseased and repopulate them. They are awesome little creatures and have wild characters. Definetly worth the 12 bucks to see them. Also at this conservation park they had tons of cool birds, quolls and kangaroos, all of which definitely brightened the grey day. Before heading back to Hobart we made a detor to another blowhole and more of the Tasman Peninsula. We left just in time because I filled up my entire memory card, whoops! When we got back to Hobart some of us made plans to meet up later for dinner. I met up with Yoanne and we walked to this address my hostel attendant had found online –but it was a café so we found a new spot—we met up with some others at a Thai restaurant and enjoyed a yummy taste of Pad Thai. After some friendly goodbyes Yoanne and I made our way back toward our hostels which luckily were just a block apart.
Goodbye Townsville--Hello Hobart
Leaving Townsville
Saturday morning was probably the hardest day I ever had my whole time in Australia. I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I didn’t even go to bed until 1:30AM and I had to be up at 5AM. Perhaps I got 45 minutes of sleep total. 5AM I took a shower and called up Miranda and Sameer. Rhona rang me and Dylan was at my door soon after. They all got up to say goodbye. They all had spent the night with me until 12AM too. They are such sweet people. We were headed to the airport by 5:40AM after discarding my garbage and double checking I had everything. As we drove to the airport all I could do was sigh-loud and painful. Sameer tried to crack a few jokes but it was hopeless. I was miserable. I started to cry, but tried to hold it in. When I got out of the car at the airport it just came out. I managed to hold it in while I got my boarding pass. I think the guy behind the counter could tell because when my bag rang up as 27 kilos (23 was the limit) he told me just to pack lighter next time. I was so thankful for this because I had had enough stress already that morning and to have to throw down 32 dollars for my extra weight just was not my idea of fine. We passed through security—Dylan and Sameer were searched for explosives (as every man is at the Townsville airport). Then we sat and waited. I held them all: Sameer was holding one hand Miranda the other, Dylan was leaning on me and Rhona was close at hand. It was so sad, we didn’t even have anything to say. The horribly sad sighs continued. The time came far sooner than I was expecting. We went up to my gate and within 5 minutes nearly everyone had boarded my plane. It was so sad-I barely got to say a proper goodbye to them. And as I ran off I started to cry, looking back at my friends I cried even harder and as I got on the plane I could feel everyone staring at me wondering why on earth I was crying so early in the day. The plane ride sucked I was so bummed about leaving. It was over, soooo so soon.
I first flew into Brisbane, where within 5 minutes I had to board another plane headed to Sydney. Neither flight was long because I was sleeping the whole time. I was almost glad I didn’t sleep the night before because then I could escape the reality of leaving. When I got to Sydney I called Sameer, he was really bummed about me leaving. I also talked to Rhona through texts. Soon enough Noor was at the airport to see me, pick up my luggage and go out for lunch. It was raining in Sydney and it was cold—exactly how I felt inside. To see Noor was really comforting. She was dressed in a bright red coat and had a smile and a hug waiting for me. It was probably the nicest gift I could have asked for that day. We loaded my bags and drove off to a thai restaurant her family typically goes to when near the airport. It was delicious—I even bought some food for that night because I wasn’t sure what Hobart would bring. It turned out I couldn’t even finish my lunch, so I ended up bringing both with me. Afterward we hunted down some deodorant in the rain because mine had exploded in my luggage on the flight there. I didn’t mind much because I really was waiting for an excuse to get back on my normal deodorant (roll on liquid deodorant sucks!). Of course the stuff I got was $4.50 and it was half the size of anything that was worth $4.50. But while in the store Rhona called and it was so nice to hear from her!! She sounded really bummed about me leaving, but still wished me luck on my adventures. I am really going to miss her. Before I left, the night before my last exam, she gave me a necklace. It was the first thing she bought when she first got a job. So it meant a lot to her, and she wanted to give it to me. Its beautiful, it’s a silver leaf.
Anyway after this I headed back with Noor to the airport. It wasn’t too sad because I’ll be seeing her again in two weeks, luckily! I had to wait quite a while for my flight—it ended up leaving at about 4PM rather than 3:30. But I did some real good people watching in the airport. Lots of odd looking people headed for Tasmania! The flight was okay, I think I slept on this one too. When I got there and got off the plane I noticed the drastic change in temperature, as well as latitude. It was pitch black and it was only 530PM! This was a bit depressing and kind of scary, I just feel like everything ends once its dark and I was nervous about how I would find my hostel. After walking into the basically empty airport (and throwing away my orange because of quarantine!) I stood clueless. Then I decided to go outside and see if there was some sort of transportation because I had read somewhere that there was a shuttle bus. I found one—it ended up being 25 bucks for a round trip, which was a hell of a lot better than taking a taxi. I had to wait awhile, so I called Sameer who had called me earlier to see if I had landed. Finally the shuttle bus had enough people to leave. He dropped me off first. I walked up to my hostel and went inside. At first I thought it was closed because the lighting was poor and no one was at the desk. But then this really interesting man came through and opened the reception. He turned out to be quite friendly. He had been expecting me since 4PM I guess this is when I had said I’d be there. He offered me a cheaper room so it ended up being 16 dollar and since I was leaving 6AM the next day I didn’t have to pay the key deposit. I booked another room there for my return after my tour. It was a really cold hostel, but it was quiet and I liked this. There were only two other people in my twelve person room. They both seemed nice. I set up all of my stuff to charge and then heated up my food from lunch. Enjoyed that and then received a phone call from Rhona, Sameer and Dylan who I guess were all sitting in my room thinking about me. It was so sweet, but so sad because there is nothing I can do. And I couldn’t hear them very well so when they were being sentimental I felt really bad that I couldn’t hear. After talking to them I decided it was still early and I should check out Hobart incase I don’t get another chance on my return. The man at the counter had recommended a few grocery stores and also Salamanca. I took a map and headed in that direction. I ended up finding it—all of Hobart is probably a 20 minute walk. So this was nice. It was quite a pretty place, you can definitely tell it is winter here. They have bare trees and you can see your breath when you breathe. I took a bunch of pictures-shops, water fountains, parks and the harbor -and when I was pretty sure I had seen everything I headed back to the hostel. I managed to find my way back without looking at a map. I got back and basically got all set for the next day. I was in bed by exactly 10PM. I was really glad of this because it meant I would at least be getting 7.5 hours of sleep. Amazing compared to my 5 hours total from the previous two nights.
At 5:40AM my alarm went off and I got up and took a shower. It was odd because it was sooo so cold and dark and obviously no one else was up. At 6:15 AM I saw a bus drive by—not realizing it was mine I waited longer and a man came to the front door. He was looking for me and so I realized that bus was for me. Meeting him around back I went to the carpark where he was parked. Inside I met Joanna, a girl from Holland who had been studying in Melbourne for the last 6 months. She was really nice and continues to be the person I am most friendly with on my trip. Next we picked up 12 other people, stopping at several hostels and a hotel. Most of the people are about my age, though there are some mid thirty year old guys and a couple that are probably in their 60’s. 14 of us in total and 1 guide named Andy. Andy is an Aussie with quite some character, a good guide, and very knowledgeable about Tassie. After everyone was picked up we went around again in search of this mysterious Esteban guy who hadn’t responded to phone calls or texts. Failing we headed to the office where we had to fill out paperwork, pay and eat some yummy breakfast. This was exciting because I didn’t think we were getting breakfast and I didn’t have any food. So yay! I had to pay $741, not bad I think, I am not sure what that converts to but I think I was expecting to pay about 100 dollars more. We headed off then Andy gave us a little detail on Tassie itself. Hobart has roughly 200,000 people in it and all of Tassie has about 400,000. Scary right! He told us that Tassies has the freshest waster in the world and that it is beautiful regardless of the weather. He also basically said we could have about 16 seasons in one day, that’s how fast the weather changed.
Our first stop was a park called Mt. Field State Park. We did a nice nature walk here ending at a waterfall. It was basically a rainforest landscape. We managed to see several wallabies and get some poor pictures of them. Next we did quite a bit of driving and ended up in the central part of Cradle Mountain National Park. This was beautiful, we were at the entry point of Lake St. Claire. Surprisingly there was actually sand here. Andy described to us how it was formed—glaciers obviously. He said it was about 165 meters deep, the deepest lake in Australia. Next we took a drive to the Franklin River, home to the freshest water in Australia. We all filled our water bottles up here, and I even drank from it with my bare mouth. Cold, but good. We took a walk around here and this was actually a better walk than the one that morning. The forest was covered in moss, it was mystical, almost like a fairy land. Really extraordinary. It is classified as a cool temperate rainforest, which I’ve now declared my favorite rainforest type. Random fact—Tassie is found at about 42 degrees South latitude.
As we got back in the van and headed for Queenstown, Andy described and told us stories of Sarah Island, one of the first penal islands in Tasmania. He told us this one story about a bunch of men who tried to escape and a few of which when to the point of starvation killed a man each night to satisfy their hunger. A few men caught on to this and left the group. After finding the prison guards and telling their story they were put back on Sarah Island with increased times because the guards thought it was just a cover. When it finally got down to one man, he was caught and thrown back into prison, only to escape a little later with another man. Of course he killed him too and ate him, but was caught in the act. Finally being hung for his crimes. Wow!
Queenstown was extraordinary. It is a town solely for the families of miners, or the miners themselves. You should have seen the massive mining mountains, and I wish I had gotten better pictures because these were massive and sooo incredibly beautiful. Tasmania is a place you can only imagine until you’ve been here. Queenstown itself was a depressing little place. Supposedly only 1,000 to 4,000 inhabitants. There were about two streets and absolutely nothing was going on. It was really eerie. I don’t know how anyone could survive. Andy however told us there were tons of things for people and children to do. The government (or someone) had to do something to get miners to stay so they had to find things for families to stay. Mostly in the range of sports and such. After checking this out we headed for Strahan where we would be staying that night. It wasn’t too far of a drive and Strahan itself was pretty small: supposedly only 200-1000 inhabitants. It was dark by the time we arrived so we just headed for our private home on the opposite side of the harbor. The house was really nice-I mean I was expecting a hostel and this place had nice bathrooms, heat, carpeted rug and it was only for us. I shared a room with three other girls and my own comfy bed. We all pitched in for dinner—stir fry. Then we sat around and talked to Andy about his previous tour guides in Uluru, played uno and relaxed. Andy told us about aboriginals, about how they felt about tourism on their sacred rock, how he felt and so on. It was really interesting and I learned a lot. He also told us this creation story from the aboriginals. It was really horrible and I guess we got the kid version. Scary! We went to bed around 11PM because we had to be up by 7 the next morning to get ready for the day. Oh I should mention it is the winter equinox here so Sunday (June 21st-the first day of my tour) it was the shortest day of the year and my guess is that here in Tassie it is a lot shorter than other places in the world since its so far South. It was basically light out from about 8AM to about 5PM, and it was cloudy for the majority of that.
Saturday morning was probably the hardest day I ever had my whole time in Australia. I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I didn’t even go to bed until 1:30AM and I had to be up at 5AM. Perhaps I got 45 minutes of sleep total. 5AM I took a shower and called up Miranda and Sameer. Rhona rang me and Dylan was at my door soon after. They all got up to say goodbye. They all had spent the night with me until 12AM too. They are such sweet people. We were headed to the airport by 5:40AM after discarding my garbage and double checking I had everything. As we drove to the airport all I could do was sigh-loud and painful. Sameer tried to crack a few jokes but it was hopeless. I was miserable. I started to cry, but tried to hold it in. When I got out of the car at the airport it just came out. I managed to hold it in while I got my boarding pass. I think the guy behind the counter could tell because when my bag rang up as 27 kilos (23 was the limit) he told me just to pack lighter next time. I was so thankful for this because I had had enough stress already that morning and to have to throw down 32 dollars for my extra weight just was not my idea of fine. We passed through security—Dylan and Sameer were searched for explosives (as every man is at the Townsville airport). Then we sat and waited. I held them all: Sameer was holding one hand Miranda the other, Dylan was leaning on me and Rhona was close at hand. It was so sad, we didn’t even have anything to say. The horribly sad sighs continued. The time came far sooner than I was expecting. We went up to my gate and within 5 minutes nearly everyone had boarded my plane. It was so sad-I barely got to say a proper goodbye to them. And as I ran off I started to cry, looking back at my friends I cried even harder and as I got on the plane I could feel everyone staring at me wondering why on earth I was crying so early in the day. The plane ride sucked I was so bummed about leaving. It was over, soooo so soon.
I first flew into Brisbane, where within 5 minutes I had to board another plane headed to Sydney. Neither flight was long because I was sleeping the whole time. I was almost glad I didn’t sleep the night before because then I could escape the reality of leaving. When I got to Sydney I called Sameer, he was really bummed about me leaving. I also talked to Rhona through texts. Soon enough Noor was at the airport to see me, pick up my luggage and go out for lunch. It was raining in Sydney and it was cold—exactly how I felt inside. To see Noor was really comforting. She was dressed in a bright red coat and had a smile and a hug waiting for me. It was probably the nicest gift I could have asked for that day. We loaded my bags and drove off to a thai restaurant her family typically goes to when near the airport. It was delicious—I even bought some food for that night because I wasn’t sure what Hobart would bring. It turned out I couldn’t even finish my lunch, so I ended up bringing both with me. Afterward we hunted down some deodorant in the rain because mine had exploded in my luggage on the flight there. I didn’t mind much because I really was waiting for an excuse to get back on my normal deodorant (roll on liquid deodorant sucks!). Of course the stuff I got was $4.50 and it was half the size of anything that was worth $4.50. But while in the store Rhona called and it was so nice to hear from her!! She sounded really bummed about me leaving, but still wished me luck on my adventures. I am really going to miss her. Before I left, the night before my last exam, she gave me a necklace. It was the first thing she bought when she first got a job. So it meant a lot to her, and she wanted to give it to me. Its beautiful, it’s a silver leaf.
Anyway after this I headed back with Noor to the airport. It wasn’t too sad because I’ll be seeing her again in two weeks, luckily! I had to wait quite a while for my flight—it ended up leaving at about 4PM rather than 3:30. But I did some real good people watching in the airport. Lots of odd looking people headed for Tasmania! The flight was okay, I think I slept on this one too. When I got there and got off the plane I noticed the drastic change in temperature, as well as latitude. It was pitch black and it was only 530PM! This was a bit depressing and kind of scary, I just feel like everything ends once its dark and I was nervous about how I would find my hostel. After walking into the basically empty airport (and throwing away my orange because of quarantine!) I stood clueless. Then I decided to go outside and see if there was some sort of transportation because I had read somewhere that there was a shuttle bus. I found one—it ended up being 25 bucks for a round trip, which was a hell of a lot better than taking a taxi. I had to wait awhile, so I called Sameer who had called me earlier to see if I had landed. Finally the shuttle bus had enough people to leave. He dropped me off first. I walked up to my hostel and went inside. At first I thought it was closed because the lighting was poor and no one was at the desk. But then this really interesting man came through and opened the reception. He turned out to be quite friendly. He had been expecting me since 4PM I guess this is when I had said I’d be there. He offered me a cheaper room so it ended up being 16 dollar and since I was leaving 6AM the next day I didn’t have to pay the key deposit. I booked another room there for my return after my tour. It was a really cold hostel, but it was quiet and I liked this. There were only two other people in my twelve person room. They both seemed nice. I set up all of my stuff to charge and then heated up my food from lunch. Enjoyed that and then received a phone call from Rhona, Sameer and Dylan who I guess were all sitting in my room thinking about me. It was so sweet, but so sad because there is nothing I can do. And I couldn’t hear them very well so when they were being sentimental I felt really bad that I couldn’t hear. After talking to them I decided it was still early and I should check out Hobart incase I don’t get another chance on my return. The man at the counter had recommended a few grocery stores and also Salamanca. I took a map and headed in that direction. I ended up finding it—all of Hobart is probably a 20 minute walk. So this was nice. It was quite a pretty place, you can definitely tell it is winter here. They have bare trees and you can see your breath when you breathe. I took a bunch of pictures-shops, water fountains, parks and the harbor -and when I was pretty sure I had seen everything I headed back to the hostel. I managed to find my way back without looking at a map. I got back and basically got all set for the next day. I was in bed by exactly 10PM. I was really glad of this because it meant I would at least be getting 7.5 hours of sleep. Amazing compared to my 5 hours total from the previous two nights.
At 5:40AM my alarm went off and I got up and took a shower. It was odd because it was sooo so cold and dark and obviously no one else was up. At 6:15 AM I saw a bus drive by—not realizing it was mine I waited longer and a man came to the front door. He was looking for me and so I realized that bus was for me. Meeting him around back I went to the carpark where he was parked. Inside I met Joanna, a girl from Holland who had been studying in Melbourne for the last 6 months. She was really nice and continues to be the person I am most friendly with on my trip. Next we picked up 12 other people, stopping at several hostels and a hotel. Most of the people are about my age, though there are some mid thirty year old guys and a couple that are probably in their 60’s. 14 of us in total and 1 guide named Andy. Andy is an Aussie with quite some character, a good guide, and very knowledgeable about Tassie. After everyone was picked up we went around again in search of this mysterious Esteban guy who hadn’t responded to phone calls or texts. Failing we headed to the office where we had to fill out paperwork, pay and eat some yummy breakfast. This was exciting because I didn’t think we were getting breakfast and I didn’t have any food. So yay! I had to pay $741, not bad I think, I am not sure what that converts to but I think I was expecting to pay about 100 dollars more. We headed off then Andy gave us a little detail on Tassie itself. Hobart has roughly 200,000 people in it and all of Tassie has about 400,000. Scary right! He told us that Tassies has the freshest waster in the world and that it is beautiful regardless of the weather. He also basically said we could have about 16 seasons in one day, that’s how fast the weather changed.
Our first stop was a park called Mt. Field State Park. We did a nice nature walk here ending at a waterfall. It was basically a rainforest landscape. We managed to see several wallabies and get some poor pictures of them. Next we did quite a bit of driving and ended up in the central part of Cradle Mountain National Park. This was beautiful, we were at the entry point of Lake St. Claire. Surprisingly there was actually sand here. Andy described to us how it was formed—glaciers obviously. He said it was about 165 meters deep, the deepest lake in Australia. Next we took a drive to the Franklin River, home to the freshest water in Australia. We all filled our water bottles up here, and I even drank from it with my bare mouth. Cold, but good. We took a walk around here and this was actually a better walk than the one that morning. The forest was covered in moss, it was mystical, almost like a fairy land. Really extraordinary. It is classified as a cool temperate rainforest, which I’ve now declared my favorite rainforest type. Random fact—Tassie is found at about 42 degrees South latitude.
As we got back in the van and headed for Queenstown, Andy described and told us stories of Sarah Island, one of the first penal islands in Tasmania. He told us this one story about a bunch of men who tried to escape and a few of which when to the point of starvation killed a man each night to satisfy their hunger. A few men caught on to this and left the group. After finding the prison guards and telling their story they were put back on Sarah Island with increased times because the guards thought it was just a cover. When it finally got down to one man, he was caught and thrown back into prison, only to escape a little later with another man. Of course he killed him too and ate him, but was caught in the act. Finally being hung for his crimes. Wow!
Queenstown was extraordinary. It is a town solely for the families of miners, or the miners themselves. You should have seen the massive mining mountains, and I wish I had gotten better pictures because these were massive and sooo incredibly beautiful. Tasmania is a place you can only imagine until you’ve been here. Queenstown itself was a depressing little place. Supposedly only 1,000 to 4,000 inhabitants. There were about two streets and absolutely nothing was going on. It was really eerie. I don’t know how anyone could survive. Andy however told us there were tons of things for people and children to do. The government (or someone) had to do something to get miners to stay so they had to find things for families to stay. Mostly in the range of sports and such. After checking this out we headed for Strahan where we would be staying that night. It wasn’t too far of a drive and Strahan itself was pretty small: supposedly only 200-1000 inhabitants. It was dark by the time we arrived so we just headed for our private home on the opposite side of the harbor. The house was really nice-I mean I was expecting a hostel and this place had nice bathrooms, heat, carpeted rug and it was only for us. I shared a room with three other girls and my own comfy bed. We all pitched in for dinner—stir fry. Then we sat around and talked to Andy about his previous tour guides in Uluru, played uno and relaxed. Andy told us about aboriginals, about how they felt about tourism on their sacred rock, how he felt and so on. It was really interesting and I learned a lot. He also told us this creation story from the aboriginals. It was really horrible and I guess we got the kid version. Scary! We went to bed around 11PM because we had to be up by 7 the next morning to get ready for the day. Oh I should mention it is the winter equinox here so Sunday (June 21st-the first day of my tour) it was the shortest day of the year and my guess is that here in Tassie it is a lot shorter than other places in the world since its so far South. It was basically light out from about 8AM to about 5PM, and it was cloudy for the majority of that.
End of Classes, Exams and Endless Fun
Not sure where I left off as its now June 21st the winter equinox here in the southern hemisphere, but I think it was somewhere back right after the last day of classes. On the last day of classes I had to give two presentations. One for my conservation course and one for my rainforest course. I was nervous about both, but they both turned out fine. Conservation we had to present our proposal which was on anthropogenic noise and its effects on humpback whales. For rainforest we had to present a group poster, you know those science ones they have posted up in universities. To celebrate end of classes Saturday after Miranda Dylan and I spontaneously thought to make an abstract drawing, something none of us had done together so we thought it would be fun. We took a walk to the hospital where there was a newsstand shop where for some odd reason they had poster paper and acrylic paints which we obviously bought. Then we went back and after Rhona got back from work we made a crazy creation. We each started from a corner and worked our way to the middle. Everyone was really frustrated with it because they didn’t know what to do, it was kind of funny. But in the end it turned out to really show each of our personalities. Josh even pitched in by adding a “kiss” bug in which he kissed the poster with red paint on his lips and then turned it into a bug. This pretty much took up the whole day and of course we ended it by watching a movie.
Sunday was a study day as we all felt guilty about spending the whole day before having fun. That night however we went out for dinner—Rhona, Miranda, Sameer, Dylan and I. We went to this yummy place called Bennies. I had some kind of thai/indian food with coconut sauce and veggies. It was delicious! It was a pretty empty restaurant, but it was nice to have our food fast. The guy who served us knew Sameer and asked if we were his homegroup. Med students have this thing called a homegroup in which the younger students are assigned to an older student who kind of gives them advice and perhaps teaches them a bit too. I laughed at this as we are obviously all his friends, but this guy thought we were out to dinner for study reasons. Pretty funny, I was a bit offended. He also assumed all of us were under 18. I was like actually none of us are thanks. Anyway enough about that. Next we went to Cactus Jack’s—the traditional place where all uni students go out to eat. Our sole mission tonight was to eat some chocolate nachos so despite all of our full bellies we went and got some. It was such a good move too because they were soooooooooo yummy. I wish we had some of those in America. We all rolled back home.
Most of study week I either studied with Rhona or hung out with Sameer—if I remember right we made a lot of maccas runs (mcdonalds). Sameer got a fish tank earlier in the semester and he’s pretty much obsessed with it, but its fun because he let me come to the pet store with him to get new fish and new supplies to redo the design in it. This was a lot of fun as I haven’t really dealt with fish as a pet in ages. Also did a bit of hanging with the Americans. We did another one of their hell workouts, which I felt the burn from that for two days after, yikees, can’t wait to get home and start going to the gym again! Because I really love movies and I really love my friends, Thursday we had a movie night. There were 11 of us there so we obviously couldn’t do it in my room. So it was kind of like a big event—we ended up doing it in the common room of the main Uni Hall building. I ordered pizza’s and Sameer and Dylan helped me go pick them up. At first we were all going to chip into the price but later I decided that I just wanted to give it to them all as like a thank-you. I think this went over well and I at least felt a bit better about not being able to give them anything really meaningful. We watched this Tim Burton movie, Coraline, it was pretty bizarre just like The Nightmare Before Christmas, but it had a pretty good message. I think it may have been a little out of reach for some people to enjoy but the company was good. The Americans brought oreoballs—and those definitely went over well. Ya team America!
At the end of study week on Friday was the monthly night market in Townsville, seeing as this was our only chance to go we jumped on it. The Americans and Sameer went with me, Sameer drove. It was pretty cool, lots of little stalls set up with some beautiful things being sold or really bizarre things like garden characters that said like bottoms up. I took note that there was cotton candy so we obviously got some of that, it was so good. I can’t wait to get home and have the cotton candy mom got me from the field days! That is if she didn’t eat it! Hehe. Anyway, spontaneously we all decided to go to the movies. We saw I love you, man. This is the movie about a guy who gets engaged but doesn’t have a best man so the whole movie is about him finding a best man. Cute. Sometime that week I took a trip with team America to Flinder’s mall to do some tourist shopping. This was a good highlight because I was able to find some pretty good gifts for all ya’all at home. I also bought some warmer clothes in light of my trips to Tassie and NZ (which so far are serving me well!)
Anyway those were the main things I did during study week. Lots of hanging, far more of that than studying. But surprisingly this is an okay thing I think. Here it is a lot easier to have a social life and an academic life. But obviously it probably suffers in balancing the two. But for me this is okay because my grades are pass/fail regardless so as long as I am getting the information I want out of it, well than it is successful. And I think I definitely got a lot out of my classes this semester. They really were pretty cool, interesting and memorable. Finally Wednesday of exam week my first exam hit. It was my coral reef geomorphology exam. I was so ready to get it over with when it came because I had focused on that the most during study week. I was nervous as usual, but it turned out just fine I think. After the exam I went over to Morgan’s room and we had dinner and watched this show they love, How I met your Mother. It was pretty funny I must admit. Scott’s mom had sent him American marshmallows, so we enjoyed a damn good version of a s’more.
One night during exams I am pretty sure the dining hall staff accidently were handing out meat. Everyone tried to convince me it wasn’t but I don’t know I still feel like it probably was, it was too strangely flavored to be vego. Anyway I was feeling really guilty about it and my friend Josh came into my room to talk to me about it. It was actually a really good conversation. Ultimately it really did make me feel okay about it—whether it was meat I ate or not. We talked for like an hour. He’s really good at reading people and helping them understand things. The strange thing though is that a few days later he stopped talking to me, or when he did it was mean. This went on for a while. Finally I confronted him about it, but he wouldn’t talk about it. It was really bizarre and it really made me both sad and angry because I was leaving soon and he wouldn’t even like talk seriously about it. I guess he is still a bit off toward others back at Uni, but no one seems to know why. On my last night he actually came out to dinner with us—afterward he went with some people to the casino. But to make a long story short—he left me a note that night telling me you know nice to meet you and good luck and stuff. But he also said it was a bad idea to wake him up to say goodbye. I was really hurt and surprised by this, that he wouldn’t even wake up for 2 minutes to say bye to me, when he could obviously go right back to bed and sleep in the next day. This just topped everything off for me with this kid. I was really really surprised by his behavior because he’s 23 and he was acting like a 4 year old. Anyway, I guess I’ll never know what was up with him.
Thursday of exam week one Noor, Dylan, Rhona, Miranda and I went to the strand as a farewell to Noor. It was really nice. We took the bus (just as we did the first week of school) and walked along the strand. We ran in the water playground and took pictures and just had a good time. It was really nice to be all reunited one last time before Noor left and before I left. Fingertips!! I’ll miss them. The morning Noor was leaving we all woke up to say goodbye. They all gave me this ginormous card in which they wrote really sweet things to me. They also gave me this beautiful picture frame engraved with fingertips at the bottom and a cute picture of all of us from the first time at the strand. For Dylan it was his birthday the next day so we gave him a card and a really nice pen engraved with Dr. D. Morris. He loved it so that was great. It was sad to see Noor off, but I knew I’d be seeing her again so it was okay. The rest of the week followed with more goodbyes. Annelise and Laura left a few days later, both med students too so their exams were over in the first week.
Saturday June 13th was Dylan’s birthday. In the AM his med friends had a surprise get together for him outside his room. They invited me and I went with the main girl to go wake him up. It turned out he was in the shower and then when he got out of the shower his grandma called and he spoke to her forever not realizing we were going to bring him to a surprise party. This was pretty funny but in the end he enjoyed the surprise. I got going with the rest of my day because I actually had my second exam that evening. I was most worried for this exam because it was worth 60% of my grade and my teacher gave us crap for notes. He printed out his lecture slides but the information was illegible so it was hopeless. I studied previous exams and made a study guide based on each lecture topic and those questions. It turned out to be just fine. I probably didn’t do super good but I am sure I passed. That night to celebrate Dylan’s dinner as well as another friend from townhouse 1 we all went to cactus jack’s. There were probably about 25 of us in total. It was quite nice. I had the only vegetarian thing on the menu of course, and it was yummy, just not filling. Oh well. It was a lot of fun to be there with everyone it was almost like I had been with these people for numerous semesters. I almost feel like I fit in here better than I did at either Cornell or UNE with the amount of friends I made. It is really sad to have to leave them. I actually seriously considered for a few minutes the possibility of staying. But its just too much to think about and I’ve gotten so far with Cornell I want to finish it. Its too bad I can’t live in two places at once. Anyway back to the story. After dinner at cactus jack’s most of us headed over to Monsoon’s a hangout bar type place. It was kind of boring after a while so some of us---Rhona, Dylan, Sameer, Simon and I went to the casino. Now this was fun. Simon was the only one brave enough to gamble. He ended up winning heaps of money only to lose it in switching tables. But it was cool because he got us free cokes (in cool bottles) and he taught me the rules of roulette or however you spell it. Pretty fun. Then we headed into town because Sameer had to go back to Uni to help a friend (kind bummer) but the rest of us went to the club. Most of the people from the birthday bash were there—but they didn’t want to dance, which was a bummer, but I had Rhona and Dylan my dance buddies for life and they were great. We did our thanggg and Simon and his girlfriend joined for a bit. Then later they left, but Sameer came back. It was fun because Sameer had never gone out with us to a club before so it was cool to be there with him. He bought us all drinks, lemon bitters, it’s some non-alcoholic thing that everyone in Australia loves. This was cool because we went up to what seemed like a VIP lounge to enjoy them—we could watch over the dance floor from there. Finally we decided we had to go back because the next day Dylan, Sameer, the Americans and I were going to Magnetic Island.
Alright, so Magnetic Island! What a blast! We woke up kind of late and ran to the ferry terminal but we didn’t make it in time for the 1030 ferry. So instead, we went to this coffee shop that Sameer raved about and got a coffee and donut. Yummm. And then we briefly walked through the morning markets there before heading back to the terminal. Finally we got over to magnetic island, bought our bus passes and headed for horseshoe bay. It was really nice to be going with a group. I mean it was really nice to go with Rhona alone but its really refreshing to know I have several people interested in hanging out with me outside of class (something not so often to happen at Cornell). When we got there we first just hung out on the beach soaking up some sun. Then Dylan, Sameer and I decided we were hot enough to go for a swim. This was fun—the water was chilly and murky—gave it a little extra something. Then we looked over and saw the group that does tubbing and decided we really wanted to do it too. We got out of the water just in time because I was starting to feel like I was getting stung by something (I guess they are sea lice-yuk!) We went over signed up for a time and soon enough it was our turn. Morgan sat on the boat to be our observer and she also took my camera and got great shots of us. The ride was harder this time than the last time I went, and I’m not sure why. But I flew off twice and Sameer flew off once. It was really scary when I fell off the first time I was like oh shoot I’m in the open ocean aaahhh there could be a shark. That motivated me to get back in my tube fast. The second time I flew off Sameer flew off too, this time for me though I held on tight and my hands never actually left the tube. Morgan caught my first fall on video. Sweet. Anyway, Dylan the only one unsure of swimming did not fall off so that was really good, but he looks petrified in some of the pictures. Hehe. We were all exhausted when it was over. We decided it was probably time for some lunch so we went to this little pizza shop that was playing Shakira music. Afterward we all went over to this giant map the restaurant had and marked where we were from. We decided it was probably time to head back for something else, but unfortunately the next bus was still an hour and a half off. Instead we napped on the beach and took a stroll down it, not a bad way to waste some time. When it finally did come we took it to the Forts Walk, which is a walk through the bush up a slightly elevated slope. This was pretty cool actually because we saw several wild koalas and even saw a baby inside its mothers pouch. Cute—until the mom pooped some really soupy poop onto it. I was in a really goofy mood, but I think this was enjoyed by everyone for the most part. I certainly enjoyed it. Definitely on a high! We had to get back for a 530 bus back to the ferry so we had to cut our bush adventure a bit short but I think we saw enough good stuff anyway. It turned out however that the next ferry wasn’t actually until 640 so when we did get to the ferry terminal we still had to wait a good hour. This was fine because in the distance we spotted some rock wallabies hopping around so I went over to investigate and take pictures. We all just sat, enjoyed the sun set and had a good conversation.
Monday and Tuesday I spent studying for my conservation and rainforest exams as well as packing for my trip home and working out details for my trips around Tassie and NZ. For the most part it was again less study and more of anything else. But fortunately both exams turned out far better than I was expecting and though I was a nervous wreck before them I think that I passed them both. Yup so Wednesday was my conservation exam and Wednesday night the Americans came to say goodbye. We had a little get together in my room to see them off. They traveled to Brisbane where they would fly to Hawaii for two weeks, getting home I think the same day I do. Thursday I spent the day cramming for my rainforest exam and also avoiding studying at the same time. I was up late studying for the morning exam, but when it was over, well it was all over so that was okay. I spent the early part of the day hanging out with Dylan and Miranda, basically they watched me pack. When Sameer got home he took me and the others to the shipping place where I was shipping my one luggage to Sydney to Noor’s place. Then we went to Stocklands to pick up a few things. By the time we got back I had to quickly get the last minute stuff together. I tried to make gifts for my friends, but I didn’t really have a great amount of time to do so. Luckily Grandma gave me American flags that I gave to them, so at least they will remember their American friend. Haha. So that night we were going out for dinner as a farewell to me. It was me, Dylan, Miranda, Rhona, Sameer, Simon, Xu, Erin, her dad and Josh came a bit later. It was really nice. I picked a place we hadn’t been to because hey that only makes sense. It was called the Rhino Bar and basically their specialty is tapas, the Spanish appetizer thing. I ended up getting a meal but a lot of people got tapas and seemed to enjoy it. It was quite an interesting little place. Because I was stupid and stayed up so late studying I was really really tired afterward and though we were planning on staying up and partying the whole night away I decided we should just go back. I felt like a real bum, but I was so dog tired. It was okay though because as soon as I got my contacts out of my eyes I woke up again. We enjoyed some popcorn and just hanging out in our common room. Then I had to get down to business and write up information for my mom so that took up quite a bit of time. After going to the ATM at like 1230 in the morning I said goodnight to my friends and went to finish my own stuff. I would see them soon enough. I should mention that the initial plan for the evening was to go out for dinner in town come back and go to drink the club dry then to go back to the city and go clubbing. The first part was the only thing to happen. But honestly I really enjoyed just relaxing with everyone.
Sunday was a study day as we all felt guilty about spending the whole day before having fun. That night however we went out for dinner—Rhona, Miranda, Sameer, Dylan and I. We went to this yummy place called Bennies. I had some kind of thai/indian food with coconut sauce and veggies. It was delicious! It was a pretty empty restaurant, but it was nice to have our food fast. The guy who served us knew Sameer and asked if we were his homegroup. Med students have this thing called a homegroup in which the younger students are assigned to an older student who kind of gives them advice and perhaps teaches them a bit too. I laughed at this as we are obviously all his friends, but this guy thought we were out to dinner for study reasons. Pretty funny, I was a bit offended. He also assumed all of us were under 18. I was like actually none of us are thanks. Anyway enough about that. Next we went to Cactus Jack’s—the traditional place where all uni students go out to eat. Our sole mission tonight was to eat some chocolate nachos so despite all of our full bellies we went and got some. It was such a good move too because they were soooooooooo yummy. I wish we had some of those in America. We all rolled back home.
Most of study week I either studied with Rhona or hung out with Sameer—if I remember right we made a lot of maccas runs (mcdonalds). Sameer got a fish tank earlier in the semester and he’s pretty much obsessed with it, but its fun because he let me come to the pet store with him to get new fish and new supplies to redo the design in it. This was a lot of fun as I haven’t really dealt with fish as a pet in ages. Also did a bit of hanging with the Americans. We did another one of their hell workouts, which I felt the burn from that for two days after, yikees, can’t wait to get home and start going to the gym again! Because I really love movies and I really love my friends, Thursday we had a movie night. There were 11 of us there so we obviously couldn’t do it in my room. So it was kind of like a big event—we ended up doing it in the common room of the main Uni Hall building. I ordered pizza’s and Sameer and Dylan helped me go pick them up. At first we were all going to chip into the price but later I decided that I just wanted to give it to them all as like a thank-you. I think this went over well and I at least felt a bit better about not being able to give them anything really meaningful. We watched this Tim Burton movie, Coraline, it was pretty bizarre just like The Nightmare Before Christmas, but it had a pretty good message. I think it may have been a little out of reach for some people to enjoy but the company was good. The Americans brought oreoballs—and those definitely went over well. Ya team America!
At the end of study week on Friday was the monthly night market in Townsville, seeing as this was our only chance to go we jumped on it. The Americans and Sameer went with me, Sameer drove. It was pretty cool, lots of little stalls set up with some beautiful things being sold or really bizarre things like garden characters that said like bottoms up. I took note that there was cotton candy so we obviously got some of that, it was so good. I can’t wait to get home and have the cotton candy mom got me from the field days! That is if she didn’t eat it! Hehe. Anyway, spontaneously we all decided to go to the movies. We saw I love you, man. This is the movie about a guy who gets engaged but doesn’t have a best man so the whole movie is about him finding a best man. Cute. Sometime that week I took a trip with team America to Flinder’s mall to do some tourist shopping. This was a good highlight because I was able to find some pretty good gifts for all ya’all at home. I also bought some warmer clothes in light of my trips to Tassie and NZ (which so far are serving me well!)
Anyway those were the main things I did during study week. Lots of hanging, far more of that than studying. But surprisingly this is an okay thing I think. Here it is a lot easier to have a social life and an academic life. But obviously it probably suffers in balancing the two. But for me this is okay because my grades are pass/fail regardless so as long as I am getting the information I want out of it, well than it is successful. And I think I definitely got a lot out of my classes this semester. They really were pretty cool, interesting and memorable. Finally Wednesday of exam week my first exam hit. It was my coral reef geomorphology exam. I was so ready to get it over with when it came because I had focused on that the most during study week. I was nervous as usual, but it turned out just fine I think. After the exam I went over to Morgan’s room and we had dinner and watched this show they love, How I met your Mother. It was pretty funny I must admit. Scott’s mom had sent him American marshmallows, so we enjoyed a damn good version of a s’more.
One night during exams I am pretty sure the dining hall staff accidently were handing out meat. Everyone tried to convince me it wasn’t but I don’t know I still feel like it probably was, it was too strangely flavored to be vego. Anyway I was feeling really guilty about it and my friend Josh came into my room to talk to me about it. It was actually a really good conversation. Ultimately it really did make me feel okay about it—whether it was meat I ate or not. We talked for like an hour. He’s really good at reading people and helping them understand things. The strange thing though is that a few days later he stopped talking to me, or when he did it was mean. This went on for a while. Finally I confronted him about it, but he wouldn’t talk about it. It was really bizarre and it really made me both sad and angry because I was leaving soon and he wouldn’t even like talk seriously about it. I guess he is still a bit off toward others back at Uni, but no one seems to know why. On my last night he actually came out to dinner with us—afterward he went with some people to the casino. But to make a long story short—he left me a note that night telling me you know nice to meet you and good luck and stuff. But he also said it was a bad idea to wake him up to say goodbye. I was really hurt and surprised by this, that he wouldn’t even wake up for 2 minutes to say bye to me, when he could obviously go right back to bed and sleep in the next day. This just topped everything off for me with this kid. I was really really surprised by his behavior because he’s 23 and he was acting like a 4 year old. Anyway, I guess I’ll never know what was up with him.
Thursday of exam week one Noor, Dylan, Rhona, Miranda and I went to the strand as a farewell to Noor. It was really nice. We took the bus (just as we did the first week of school) and walked along the strand. We ran in the water playground and took pictures and just had a good time. It was really nice to be all reunited one last time before Noor left and before I left. Fingertips!! I’ll miss them. The morning Noor was leaving we all woke up to say goodbye. They all gave me this ginormous card in which they wrote really sweet things to me. They also gave me this beautiful picture frame engraved with fingertips at the bottom and a cute picture of all of us from the first time at the strand. For Dylan it was his birthday the next day so we gave him a card and a really nice pen engraved with Dr. D. Morris. He loved it so that was great. It was sad to see Noor off, but I knew I’d be seeing her again so it was okay. The rest of the week followed with more goodbyes. Annelise and Laura left a few days later, both med students too so their exams were over in the first week.
Saturday June 13th was Dylan’s birthday. In the AM his med friends had a surprise get together for him outside his room. They invited me and I went with the main girl to go wake him up. It turned out he was in the shower and then when he got out of the shower his grandma called and he spoke to her forever not realizing we were going to bring him to a surprise party. This was pretty funny but in the end he enjoyed the surprise. I got going with the rest of my day because I actually had my second exam that evening. I was most worried for this exam because it was worth 60% of my grade and my teacher gave us crap for notes. He printed out his lecture slides but the information was illegible so it was hopeless. I studied previous exams and made a study guide based on each lecture topic and those questions. It turned out to be just fine. I probably didn’t do super good but I am sure I passed. That night to celebrate Dylan’s dinner as well as another friend from townhouse 1 we all went to cactus jack’s. There were probably about 25 of us in total. It was quite nice. I had the only vegetarian thing on the menu of course, and it was yummy, just not filling. Oh well. It was a lot of fun to be there with everyone it was almost like I had been with these people for numerous semesters. I almost feel like I fit in here better than I did at either Cornell or UNE with the amount of friends I made. It is really sad to have to leave them. I actually seriously considered for a few minutes the possibility of staying. But its just too much to think about and I’ve gotten so far with Cornell I want to finish it. Its too bad I can’t live in two places at once. Anyway back to the story. After dinner at cactus jack’s most of us headed over to Monsoon’s a hangout bar type place. It was kind of boring after a while so some of us---Rhona, Dylan, Sameer, Simon and I went to the casino. Now this was fun. Simon was the only one brave enough to gamble. He ended up winning heaps of money only to lose it in switching tables. But it was cool because he got us free cokes (in cool bottles) and he taught me the rules of roulette or however you spell it. Pretty fun. Then we headed into town because Sameer had to go back to Uni to help a friend (kind bummer) but the rest of us went to the club. Most of the people from the birthday bash were there—but they didn’t want to dance, which was a bummer, but I had Rhona and Dylan my dance buddies for life and they were great. We did our thanggg and Simon and his girlfriend joined for a bit. Then later they left, but Sameer came back. It was fun because Sameer had never gone out with us to a club before so it was cool to be there with him. He bought us all drinks, lemon bitters, it’s some non-alcoholic thing that everyone in Australia loves. This was cool because we went up to what seemed like a VIP lounge to enjoy them—we could watch over the dance floor from there. Finally we decided we had to go back because the next day Dylan, Sameer, the Americans and I were going to Magnetic Island.
Alright, so Magnetic Island! What a blast! We woke up kind of late and ran to the ferry terminal but we didn’t make it in time for the 1030 ferry. So instead, we went to this coffee shop that Sameer raved about and got a coffee and donut. Yummm. And then we briefly walked through the morning markets there before heading back to the terminal. Finally we got over to magnetic island, bought our bus passes and headed for horseshoe bay. It was really nice to be going with a group. I mean it was really nice to go with Rhona alone but its really refreshing to know I have several people interested in hanging out with me outside of class (something not so often to happen at Cornell). When we got there we first just hung out on the beach soaking up some sun. Then Dylan, Sameer and I decided we were hot enough to go for a swim. This was fun—the water was chilly and murky—gave it a little extra something. Then we looked over and saw the group that does tubbing and decided we really wanted to do it too. We got out of the water just in time because I was starting to feel like I was getting stung by something (I guess they are sea lice-yuk!) We went over signed up for a time and soon enough it was our turn. Morgan sat on the boat to be our observer and she also took my camera and got great shots of us. The ride was harder this time than the last time I went, and I’m not sure why. But I flew off twice and Sameer flew off once. It was really scary when I fell off the first time I was like oh shoot I’m in the open ocean aaahhh there could be a shark. That motivated me to get back in my tube fast. The second time I flew off Sameer flew off too, this time for me though I held on tight and my hands never actually left the tube. Morgan caught my first fall on video. Sweet. Anyway, Dylan the only one unsure of swimming did not fall off so that was really good, but he looks petrified in some of the pictures. Hehe. We were all exhausted when it was over. We decided it was probably time for some lunch so we went to this little pizza shop that was playing Shakira music. Afterward we all went over to this giant map the restaurant had and marked where we were from. We decided it was probably time to head back for something else, but unfortunately the next bus was still an hour and a half off. Instead we napped on the beach and took a stroll down it, not a bad way to waste some time. When it finally did come we took it to the Forts Walk, which is a walk through the bush up a slightly elevated slope. This was pretty cool actually because we saw several wild koalas and even saw a baby inside its mothers pouch. Cute—until the mom pooped some really soupy poop onto it. I was in a really goofy mood, but I think this was enjoyed by everyone for the most part. I certainly enjoyed it. Definitely on a high! We had to get back for a 530 bus back to the ferry so we had to cut our bush adventure a bit short but I think we saw enough good stuff anyway. It turned out however that the next ferry wasn’t actually until 640 so when we did get to the ferry terminal we still had to wait a good hour. This was fine because in the distance we spotted some rock wallabies hopping around so I went over to investigate and take pictures. We all just sat, enjoyed the sun set and had a good conversation.
Monday and Tuesday I spent studying for my conservation and rainforest exams as well as packing for my trip home and working out details for my trips around Tassie and NZ. For the most part it was again less study and more of anything else. But fortunately both exams turned out far better than I was expecting and though I was a nervous wreck before them I think that I passed them both. Yup so Wednesday was my conservation exam and Wednesday night the Americans came to say goodbye. We had a little get together in my room to see them off. They traveled to Brisbane where they would fly to Hawaii for two weeks, getting home I think the same day I do. Thursday I spent the day cramming for my rainforest exam and also avoiding studying at the same time. I was up late studying for the morning exam, but when it was over, well it was all over so that was okay. I spent the early part of the day hanging out with Dylan and Miranda, basically they watched me pack. When Sameer got home he took me and the others to the shipping place where I was shipping my one luggage to Sydney to Noor’s place. Then we went to Stocklands to pick up a few things. By the time we got back I had to quickly get the last minute stuff together. I tried to make gifts for my friends, but I didn’t really have a great amount of time to do so. Luckily Grandma gave me American flags that I gave to them, so at least they will remember their American friend. Haha. So that night we were going out for dinner as a farewell to me. It was me, Dylan, Miranda, Rhona, Sameer, Simon, Xu, Erin, her dad and Josh came a bit later. It was really nice. I picked a place we hadn’t been to because hey that only makes sense. It was called the Rhino Bar and basically their specialty is tapas, the Spanish appetizer thing. I ended up getting a meal but a lot of people got tapas and seemed to enjoy it. It was quite an interesting little place. Because I was stupid and stayed up so late studying I was really really tired afterward and though we were planning on staying up and partying the whole night away I decided we should just go back. I felt like a real bum, but I was so dog tired. It was okay though because as soon as I got my contacts out of my eyes I woke up again. We enjoyed some popcorn and just hanging out in our common room. Then I had to get down to business and write up information for my mom so that took up quite a bit of time. After going to the ATM at like 1230 in the morning I said goodnight to my friends and went to finish my own stuff. I would see them soon enough. I should mention that the initial plan for the evening was to go out for dinner in town come back and go to drink the club dry then to go back to the city and go clubbing. The first part was the only thing to happen. But honestly I really enjoyed just relaxing with everyone.
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