I heart travel

Beaches and Zorbing

2008-01-23T14:17:00.000+10:00

I can easily see how someone could become bankrupt in New Zealand. There are way too many adventure activities to try that all cost lots of money. I am beginning to think if I had come here first I would have never made it to Australia and had to go home after a month. Luckily I had a nice (cheap) week with my friends Dan and Penny. We spent a few days at Penny's family's beach house along with Dan's cousin and her boyfriend. The drive to the beach took us past plenty more sheep and introduced me to one of my new favorite activities- honking at sheep and watching them run away. Hilarious every time! The beach was gorgeous, surrounded by hills and with an old lighthouse, although a bit cold. We went swimming and body boarding, hiked up an extremely steep hill with some amazing views that made it seem like you were at the end of the world, and consumed lots of rum playing drinking games at night. Penny and I also baked my new favorite cookie, the afghan. They are chocolate biscuits with cornflakes inside and frosting on top. After 3 days at the beach we headed back to Palmerston North and the next day I said goodbye to everyone and got a bus to Rotorua.
Rotorua is surrounded by geothermal ponds, hot springs, geysers, and mud pools and has the lovely smell of sulphur wafting through the air. It is also full of adventure activies and other money sucking tourist activities. My first day here I went to Te Puia, a Maori cultural center. I went to a performance to see Maori song and dance and walked through a few exhibits. Te Puia has the Pohuto geyser which seemed to be going off the whole time I was there along with plenty of smelly, bubbling mud pools. I got to eat some corn that was put in a mesh bag and cooked in a hot spring. I also got to see a few kiwi birds. They have several mammal characteristics (including cuteness and not scaring me like birds do) but are also pretty rare to find nowadays.
After my day at Te Puia I got dinner and a movie and then came back to my hostel to read a book and go to bed. Three teenage Canadians and two English guys were staying in my room. The Canadians were very drunk and the Englishmen very bored and it was soon decided that everyone in our dorm room was going out, including me and another poor guys who was already asleep. Once I was offered free drinks I decided to join them but sleeping guy did not seem so happy with his invitation. Rotorua's nightlife on a Tuesday evening was a bit sleepy and soon after a group photo session in a bar the Canadians were crying and fighting in the streets. The Englishmen and I managed to round them up and get them to bed while police cars drove past us and stared. You have to love the people you meet in hostels.
Today I went to the Agrodome and went on a farm tour and to a sheep show. On the tour we drove through a kiwi grove and sampled some fruit and kiwi wine and played with llamas and lambs. The sheep show involved watching a sheep get shearedm a cow get milked, and dogs run across the backs of sheep. All very exciting stuff. I then headed down the road to try some zorbing. Zorbing involved jumping into a giant plastic ball filled with water and then rolling down a hill. It is like a cross between a roller coaster and a water slide. You are supposed to bring along extra clothes because you get very wet but I was not thinking ahead. The ride was great and I am glad to have done it but I did have to spend the next hour soaking wet until I made it back to my hostel.
Tomorrow I leave Rotorua for Waitomo to go abseiling and blackwater rafting in some glowworm caves. After that I head to the Poor Knights Islands for some diving and then to Auckland for a couple of days and then I begin my loong journey home. Next time I update will probably be back in New Orleans.

Goodbye Australia, Hello New Zealand

2008-01-16T08:03:00.000+10:00

I have been in New Zealand about 4 days now and am staying with some friends through the weekend before I head up north to see glowworm caves and to go zorbing. It was pretty sad to leave Australia but I did have a good last week, despite the continuing rain.
When I got to Byron Bay I arrived at my hostel, the Arts Factory, and met up with Eline (whom I had met on Magnetic island and again in several other places throughout Oz). She was working at the hostel for free accomadation. The hostel is pretty big and very unique. I slept in an old covred wagaon which was next to a teepee and a doeuble decker bus that also were full of backpackers. The wagon was without power and was also home to several large spiders. The hostel also had yoga and didgeridoo classes, hammocks, a turkey and a giant lizard that wandered around, and lots of other interesting amenities. I styaed for 3 days exploring the hostel and the town of Byron Bay. The city is on the beach and is known as for being full of hippies and having a cool lighthouse that is the easternmost point of continental Australia. Now it is full of hip cafes and shops and lots of backpackers. I went on a day trip to Nimbin, a nearby town that is known as the marijuana capitol of Australia. It was an interesting place but unless you want to get high there is not much else to do. They do have the Nimbin Museum which is supposedly a history museum devoted to the counterculture but I think the people who built it were on drugs and it made absolutely no sense to me. On our way back to Byron we stopped at the home of an old American hippie who had moved to Nimbin in the 70's. Paul met us at the end of the road wearing a Yosemite Sam button down shirt and Hawain print sweatpants and showed us his junk sculpture garden he had been working on for the last ten years, made of computers and televisions and such. We then went and sat on his porch and ate watermelon and cracked macadamia nuts while it rained. We then went to see a waterfall but didn't stay too long thanks to the weather, before heading back to Byron where I made dinner with Eline and some other people at the hostel.
After three relaxing and mostly sunny days in Byron I headed up past Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast to stay with Amy (Flutterby) my first co-counselor at camp who hadn't seen in over 3 years. We had planned to hang out at the beach and do some hiking but that was not to be since it rained every day I was on the innapropriately named Sunshine Coast. We did manage to see most of the towns on the coast and get very wet trying to do some sightseeing anyway. It was good to catch up and after a big night in with Amy and her friends I flew away the next day to New Zealand.
I arrived in Wellington around midnight and headed to my hostel. The next morning around 6 I woke up to one of my dorm-mates having a very loud cell phone conversation from her bed in an Eastern European language. I am not sure if I yelled at her or not but hope that I did. I spent the morning at the Te Papa museum which was amazing. It's the national museum of New Zealand and was full of very cool and interesting exhibits about anything you could ever want to know about New Zealand history, culture, and ecology. I then walked around the city admiring the harbor and all the cafes. I did see a few Lord of the Rings relics but did not get to go on a tour to see them all. I then took the bus to the town of Palmerston North to stay with two more camp friends (Kiai and Frizzle or Dan and Penny.) It was a beautiful ride through a gorge. It was also full of sheep everywhere. I haven't done too much sightseeing yet but am excited to keep exploring New Zealand! I can't believe I only have two weeks left before I fly back to New Orleans.

The Not So Big Banana

2008-01-05T11:20:00.000+10:00

On the morning of New Year's Eve Guy and I headed into Sydney to have lunch with Sarah and her friend Kate. The city was already pretty crowded and we found a cute cafe to get some food. Unfortunately our waitress appeared to have been out celebrating a night early and it took us almost an hour to get our sandwhiches. All of us are the kind of people who get very grumpy when not fed so instead of a nice catch-up lunch it was a grumbling where-is-our-food-why-is-our-waitress-walking-out-of-the-restaurant kind of lunch. After we finally did eat we said goodbye to Guy who going to a concert and the rest of us went to find a nice spot from which to watch the fireworks. We decided on the botanical gardens which are right next to the opera house and have an amazing view of the harbour bridge, where the fireworks would be set off from. We sent Kate in to get a spot and Sarah and I went shopping for provisions, since we would have close to 8 hours of sitting around waiting for the show. We bought more sandwhiches, chips, fruit, and some Tim Tams. We also had 3 bottles of champagne that were not allowed in our viewing area. The botanical gardens would be selling wine and beer and there was no BYO. We decided that that was ridiculous and that we would be bringing in our champagne. We bought a bottle of Sprite and sent Sarah to the bathroom to empty out the Sprite and fill it with the champagne. Our flaws in this plan included that champagne bottles make a very distinct popping noise when opened and that angry ladies waiting to use a toilet are not very patient. Somehow Sarah managed to get all but a quarter of the 3 champagnes into the Sprite bottle, hurry out of the stall when a cleaning lady began knocking, and run down to the food court to find me and get the hell out of the mall we were in. When we got to the botanical gardens we had to go through two checkpoints and wait an hour to make sure we were not bringing in any contraband. When we got to the second checkpoint we saw several bottles of confiscated Coke and Sprite and realized that we were not the only geniuses with our great sneaky plan. Somehow the guard decided that our Sprite bottle actually contained Sprite and let us through. Sarah and I then found Kate and spent the next several hours sitting directly in the sun drinking warm champagne and eating chips and melted Tim Tams while waiting for the sun to set and the fireworks to begin. There was a skywriting plane which added some entertainment as it spelled out words and phrases like "Dance at 10". "sagm", and "Jesus." There was also a couple making out in front of us for most of the wait which was also very entertaining. At 9 a first set of fireworks went off and were incredibly cool. Then some barges flotaed around with lights on them around the harbour and then at midnight the second set of fireworks went off. They were amazing! It lasted almost 15 minutes and shot out of the bridge and from both sides of the harbour and the tops of buildings in the city. there were even heart shaped and cube shaped fireworks.
Almost immediately after the fireworks ended guards began coming through and telling us to leave. Kate and Sarah and I had planned to sit around for an hour and wait for the crowds to die down before trying to push our way onto a bus to Bondi. No such luck. We did somehow manage to get on the first bus we saw and climbed aboard along with a group of very drunk Brazilians who proceeded to sing loudly as we drove to the beach. Our bus driver was not so happy about this and would slam on his brakes whenever we hit a red light, sending me flying into the laps of a honeymooning couple across the aisle. When someone yelled at the Brazilians to shut-up they took it as a request to sing the Black-Eyed Peas song "Shut-Up." Finally the seriously pissed-off bus driver screamed for everybody to get off that he wasn't going any furthur.
Even though it was New Year's Eve and there was a huge concert on the beach all of the bars were shut and the only open establishment was Boost Juice. We got some smoothies and headed to the beach. We watched security guards wearimg shirts that said "safe Event" flirt with drunken teenagers. It was all very entertaining and we found a patch of grass to sleep in. As the sun was rising a wine bottle rolled down the hill and hit Sarah on the head so we all woke up and enjoyed the views of the sunrise over the beach and bottles and trash and sleeping revellers everwhere. The three of us began an exhausted walk along the cliffs to find a place open for breakfast, which we did in the town of Bronte. I then said goodbye to Sarah and Kate and continued on the cliffwalk back to Jenny's house where I fell straight to sleep on my bed made of sofa pillows. Guy and his friend arrived home not long after me and then Sarah called and asked if she could come sleep for a little while longer. All the beds and floor space of Jenny's house was taken up with sleepers.
That evening, once everyone was mostly recovered and caught up somewhat on sleep, Jenny, Guy, and I went to the city to see Elton John's new musical Billy Elliot. It was great! After the singing and ballet dancing was through we all went straight to bed, our first day of 2008 finished.
The next day I left Sydney behind and boarded a train to the beach town of Coff's Harbour. My neighbour for the 8-hour train ride was a 4 year old Indian boy who wanted to talk and play with me for the whole ride. Ignoring my head phones and magazine he made me watch him play games on his dad's cellphone and shouted "damnit" whenever he lost. After an hour or so he was climbing on top of me and singing High School Musical songs and begging to listen to my ipod. His mother, who was sitting behing me with his younger brother, kept yelling at him to leave me alone but he would yell back that I was his friend. He finally fell asleep and I few hours of peace before I made it to Coff's.
One of my reasons, other than breaking up the trip to Brisbane, for stopping in Coff's Harbour was to see the Big Banana, a giant banana on the side of the road. I thought this sounded very exciting and set off the next morning an hour walk across town to see it. Once I arrived and saw it across the highway I realized that I was expecting a much, much bigger banana. Maybe one ten times the size of what I was actually seeing. It was disapointing but since it was beginning to rain i crossed over and went on the banana experience tour. I learned all about the history of banana farming and the health benefits of banana before touring the plantation and eating some tasty samples. When that was over it was still raining so I sat down with my book to read and wait for the rain to stop. 3 hours later it was still raining so a lady in the gift shop called me a cab and I headed back to my hostel. Coff's Harbour is a beach town and other than seeing the big banana there is not much to do other than be at the beach. Luckily I had some cool girls in my hostel room and we chatted and had some beers while the rain poured down. The next day was not any better and I was very happy when it was time to board the train for Byron Bay that afternoon.
Well that is all the typing I can handle for today so I am off to explore Byron Bay, the "hippie" town of Australia.

Rain Rain Go Away

2008-01-04T10:52:00.000+10:00

I am currently in the beachside town of Coff's Harbour enjoying my second day of nonstop rain. Perfect weather for blog updating but not so good for anything else.
So the day after I arrived in Sydney I met up with my friend Guy. He had just arrived back to Australia after a year and a half of working and travelling all over the place. We walked around the city and then got picked up by his uncle and drove two hours north to Newcastle where I would be spending Christmas with Guy's family. Everyone was incredibly nice and so it was a great place to spend Christmas away from home. We went to the beach and for boat rides and while it was strange to celebrate Christmas in the summer it was not at all unpleasant. By the time Christmas rolled around the house was full of people and dogs sleeping in beds, on the floor, and in tents in the shed and backyard. There was lots of champagne drinking and chocolate eating, particularly out of one of the cousin's chocolate fountains. On one of the boating trips I even got to swim with a shark. We had been swimming in the estuary and had all just gotten back into the boat to nap (minus 14-year-old Oscar who was floating on an inner tube) when the shark was spotted gliding past our boat. Oscar was quickly pulled in and we followed after the shop for a while taking pictures. That night we poured over marine life books trying to determine what kind of shark we had seen and decided that it was a bull shark, one of the more dangerous varieties.
A few days after Christmas I left all the nice people in Newcastle to head back to Sydney for New Year's with Guy and his aunt Jenny, who has a house close to Bondi Beach. That afternoon I met up with Sarah (or Tiger, who I had stayed with in Perth and was now traveling after finishing up her semester.) We went to Bondi and I was amazed with how different it looked from when I was there in September. In the winter there had been hardly anyone at the beach but now it was packed with sunbathers and looked like it does in all the pictures. We then did the cliffwalk back to Jenny's house and went out to dinner with her. Early the next morning Sarah and I went on a bus tour to the Blue Mountains. Our first stop was at yet another wildlife park. Both of us had been to about 5 since we had been in Australia but we did manage to enjoy watching the echidnas eat out of bottles sticking out of termite mounds. We then went on a small hike to see a waterfall and when we got back on the bus to drive to lunch discovered that its brakes were not working. An hour later some vans picked us up and brought us to our lunch spot. No worries. We used the time to call some hostels and soon realized there was no chance we would be able to get a bed. After lunch we went and looked at the famous Three Sisters (rock formations) and then went to Scenic World, home of the world's steepest, and most terrifying, railway. I am not sure how hundreds of people have not fallen out of this train and slid down the mountain. When we returned to our new rental bus we discovered that it was stuck on the curb due to complex suspension issues that I don't really understand. Close to an hour later the situation was resolved and we were back on the bus speeding to make it to the Olympic Park and to get on our harbour cruise. Instead of a leisurely stroll around the park we had a quick drive through and then ran onto the boat. Despite all the hassles of the day the cruise was very relaxing and scenic.
The next day I decided to finish the Bondi-Coogee beachwalk. It was about a half an hour from Jenny's place to Coogee but it was excruciatingly hot. Coogee beach was just as crowded as Bondi but was full of cute cafes and shops. I went to see the movie Atonement to escape from the heat and the dragged myself back along the cliffwalk to Jenny's house where everyone went to bed early to be nice and rested for New Year's eve the next day.
I am about to run out of internet time so I better go get some more credit. New Year's Eve and trip to Coff's Harbour coming soon!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-03T15:41:00.000+10:00

I know it's been forever and now I must pay for my laziness by trying to write about a whole month in one sitting. Here goes.

Melbourne - I spent a week with camp people for my friend Vanilla Ice's (Tim, but I don't think I've ever called him that) 30th birthday. He lives with his very cool roommate Vicki and a very cute but not very smart puppy named Bear. Other camp people came from New Zealand and other parts of Australia and we all had a great time talking about the kids and counselors. The week involved lots of tv watching, (I discovered the hilarious Australian tv show Summer Heights High and rediscovered the also hilarious first season of Beverly Hills, 90210,)playing with the dog, and singing karaoke. After saying goodbye to everyone I checked into a hostel in Melbourne for a few days to be a tourist. I was woken up my first morning in the hostel by the girl above me deciding to have an early morning cell phone conversation in her bed. I managed to block it out but when the same thing happened my second morning I was not feeling so nice anymore. Luckily the girl checked out that day. While in Melbourne I walked around some of the different neighborhoods, went to the Melbourne Gaol and saw where the hung Ned Kelly, and went to the very cool Melbourne Museum and saw lots of interesting things none of which I can remember at this point in time. I had a great dinner with one of my dad's dental friends at a cafe on the water with a great view of the city and the sunset. I could have spent plenty more time exploring the city but I had booked a tour to get me to Sydney.

Melbourne - Sydney - I was picked up entirely too early in the morning by Bones, my tour guide, for a 3 day bus trip that would take me to Sydney via the Snowy Mountains, Wilson's Promontory, and Canberra. Our first day we went hiking in Wilson's Promontory to a place called Squeaky Beach. We also went trough a walk to a field to look at kangaroos and wombat holes. I was already feeling a little kangaroo'd out but this walk included running from an angry magpie which is one of Australia's most dangerous animals. I am already not a big fan of birds so did not appreciate this one swooping towards my head with its sharp beak. This field was also covered in kangaroo poop, which meant so were everyone's shoes when our little wildlife walk was over. We then walked along another beach to see the sunset, which didn't actually occur until an hour after we finished our walk, and then went to bed to prepare for another early morning.
The next morning we all climbed into our bus and headed out to the Snowy Mountains to see Mt. Koscziusko, the highest peak in Australia, and do some hiking. A few hours into our drive along twisty mountain roads it began to rain and the dirty roads began to turn to mud pits. Our bus then became stuck in the mud pit and wouldn't move. Bones then informed us that the buses weren't supposed to be on the roads when it was raining and he was going to call the company and see what they reccomended, until then we should sit tight. For the next two hours we all sat in our freezing cold bus waiting. A few other cars then showed up with some vacationers who could not continue on their trip as long as we were blocking the road. It was decided that everyone should get out of the bus and walk a few kilometers down the road to where it was less windy and Bones were drive the lighter bus down to meet us. This did involve my whole tour group having to push the bus until it became unstuck and then walk through the mud pits while it continued to rain. Soon we were all back in the bus and onto paved roads again. Sadly do the rain and mist we could not hike up Mt. Kozzy, or even see it for that matter. We went on a shorter but still very wet hike and then got to our hostel a few hours eaarly to warm up.
Our last day involved a stop in Australia's capitol city, Canberra. Canberra has a reputation for being boring and for being the only place in the country where it is legal to buy porn and pot. We went on a tour of the capitol building from which the only thing I remember learning is that one of the houses passed a bill so that they (and only them) could have green exit signs rather than the required red ones so that it would match their color scheme. We then drove to Sydney and I decided that I had enough of bus tours and hiking for the moment. I cancelled my planned stay at the nearby Blue Mountains and decided to head up to Newcastle, where I would be for the Christmas holidays, a few days early.

Ok, I think I will have to save Christmas and New Year's for later today. I hope everyone had a great New Year's and is enjoying 2008!

Tasmania

2007-12-13T17:17:00.000+10:00

So I really wanted to write while I was in tasmania but internet there was ridiculously overpriced and there computers had weird keyboards that were difficult to type on. So I will do my best to remember what happened for the week I was there. I spent a day walking around Hobart before heading off on a 7 day tour to see the rest of Tasmania. The first day we went to Wineglass Bay, voted the best beach in Australia. To get to the beach you had to walk 1.5 hours up a steep hill and then down to the beach. While on the down part a girl from my group fell down and I told her not to worry, that I fall down every time I hike. Ten minutes later I was true to my word when I tripped on nothing and fell down. I ripped my pants and cut both of my knees. I walked and bled the rest of the way down to the incredible beach where I cleaned myself up and relaxed on the beach a while. It was then time for another 1.5 hour up and down climb from the beach back to the bus. This time up I passed a crazy guy doing the hike (barely) with his huge backpack and ran into a guy from my great Ocean Road trip. That night my group stayed in a little seaside town called Bicheno. Most people payed twenty bucks to go see little penguins (which by the way, used to be called fairy penguins but must now be referred to as little penguins because fairy is supposedly offensive.)Since I had just seen the little penguin parade and wanted to save twenty bucks I stayed behind and watched Australian Idol with an Irish girl named Geraldine. i also manged to rip my pants in a second place and with no sewing kit used some tape to make them wearable for the rest of the trip.
The next day we walked along another pretty beach in the bay of fires. it was rainy but still a very pretty walk. We spent the evening in the city of Launceston. Apparently this city is famous for its gorge. I had no idea it existed until after we left the town so i did not go see it. After we checked into our hostel I went and got dinner. I returned to find the hostel in chaos. A dog had gotten into the hostel and was chasing the owner's cat through the dining area. people were either standing on tables yelling or chasing after the dog. It was finally caught and dragged outside, only to make its way back in through another entrance a few minutes later. Poor Geraldine had been bitten or scratched by one of the animals as they fought on top her legs while she was eating dinner and had to go to the hospital. i spent the night talking with a Belgian girl and a deaf girl from Japan who could speak and lipread both Japanese and English.
The next two days were spent on the west coast of Tasmania walking through rainforests and visiting factories. We went to a chocolate and a cheese factory with very generous free sampling and to a paper factory and art studio. We spent the night at Stanley in a hostel right on the beach where we went for a sunset walk. The next morning we climed the Stanley "nut", a big Uluru type looking rock which has a short but VERY steep climb to the top. A few people paid to take the chairlift up and down and by the end I was wishing i had too. The views from the top were amazing. Around lunchtime we stopped to get fuel and ended up spending the next two hours at the gas station. Our driver experienced a brain fart and put diesel into the van. The fuel tank had to be drained and refilled. Luckily this was a very scenic gas station right by a river with a nice walking trail. I also got to drive the van about 10 feet which was very exciting since it was my first time driving on the wrong side of the road. Once the van got going again we went to another river to try and spot some platypus. None were spotted. We then headed to the city of Devenport for the night. We got there about 4:30 and thought we would have about an hour to walk around and see the shops. While not a very exciting place to begin with the whole city was shut down early for some sort of festival. i discovered this as I angrily walked down the streets wondering why all the stores and restaurants were closed over an hour before there signs said they would. I then tried to watch some Tv in the hostel. About every 2 minutes the clear reception would give way to static. I eventually gave up and went to bed early.
The next day we went to Cradle Mountain. This part of Australia is usually rainy and cloudy. It only has about 30 sunny and clear days a year. By some miracle we were there ona gorgeous day. I did a 2 hour walk around a lake at the base of Cradle Mountain and then a 3 hour boardwalk from the mountain back to our campsite. I am usually not good at taking pictures but I took tons along the walk. At dusk we went wildlife spotting and saw a womabt family including babies and some wallabies kickboxing.
The next day we drove to a waterfall. We were told we had a 3 hour hike there and back to get to the waterfall. Once you got the waterfall there was a very skinny suspension bridge to walk across. Once across two German girls and I kept walking thinking that the track was a loop. An hour and a half later we began to have our doubts. We got to a fork in the road and chose right and walked down a muddy yellow track. Half an hour later we decided maybe we should have tried left. We went back and past the fork another half an hour. Now an hour late from when we were supposed to be back at the bus we realized we would need to hike all the way back to suspension bridge and back down the path we had come, which would take another 3 hours. We had not eaten since breakfast and none of us had food or water. Somehow we practically ran back down the track and made it to the parking lot in two hours. Our whole group was sitting around and the driver had gone to the check out the places where we would have come out if we kept going down the road. All in all we hiked somewhere between 20-30k in 6 hours. The day was not over yet. We drove to a sand dune and had to climb up a very high and steep cliff of sand for some pictures and sand jumping. Very pretty and would have been fun but my legs felt like they might fall off at any moment. We also went to another beach to watch the sunset and look at dolphins through binoculars.
The last day of our tour involved more rainforest hikes and waterfalls and stopping in a town whose claim to fame was that they painted all the buildings with murals. We arrived back in Hobart late and my two German hiking buddies and I went looking for dinner. We walked around in the rain for an hour before we realized that Subway was the only open restaurant in the whole city.
The Cadbury Chocolate factory was not far from Hobart and had told people back in Melbourne that I would bring them chocolate so I booked a tour there the next day. I found out which bus to take and climbed on. I assumed that the bus would stop in front of the factory and that it would all be very obvious. After a while I asked the bus driver how much longer and she told me that I should have gotten off a while ago. When she heard what time my tour was at she told me I should get off now and call a cab. I got off in the middle of a Hobart suburb and could see the factory in the distance I decided to run there. Somehow 20 minutes later I arrived panting and sweating just in time for my tour. It was pretty cool to see and I ate way too many free samples. When i got back to Hobart one of the Germans and I made vegetables for dinner and then watched tv and went to bed. The next day I flew back to Melbourne. I will have to write about my time in Melbourne later since I am on my way to dinner!

pictures!

2007-12-13T17:01:00.000+10:00

I know it has been forever since I last wrote, but Internet cost exorbitant prices in tasmania and then I was without internet at my friend's place in Melbourne for another week. I will write about all the exciting things I did in Tassie and in Melbourne, but until I get around to it here are all but a few of my pictures so far.

Sydney

http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018864&l=fa2e8&id=15400598

Outback

http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018869&l=610eb&id=15400598

Brisbane and the Whitsundays

http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018867&l=327ce&id=15400598

Queensland

http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018895&l=f5301&id=15400598

Top End

http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018896&l=f4707&id=15400598

Western Oz

http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019723&l=171c4&id=15400598

Southern Oz

http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019726&l=45a8b&id=15400598

Victoria

http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020115&l=325fb&id=15400598

Tasmania

http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018864&l=fa2e8&id=15400598

Little Penguin parade

2007-11-24T15:54:00.000+10:00

I had already seen the world's littlest penguins on kangaroo island and on the great ocean road, and I will probably see them again in Tasmania, but i still was very excited to go the little penguin parade on Philip Island to see the largest colony in Australia. On KI we only saw about 5 of them and on the GOR we were so high up the penguins looked more like beetles than birds. I went with Autopia tours and our first stop was at a wildlife sanctuary. I must say I am no longer excited by kangaroos or koalas but this place had a baby wombat and an albino kangaroo so it was worth going to. Next we went to the penguin visitor center where there was a boardwalk around the ocean. I decided to go for a walkdown it even though there were about a million seagulls swarming and signs that said don't feed them because they attack. I decided that since I had no food I would be safe. I had just stopped and taken a picture of them and remarked to myself that it looked very Hitchcockian when I was attacked. A baby seagull was on the path and the birds must have thought i was standing to close to it because several swooped down out of the sky towards my head screeching at me. I ducked and hit my head on the boardwalk trying to protect myself. I then ran back to my group who were not faring much better. One woman had her finger bit by a seagull trying to steal her biscuit and another had been pooped on. Luckily we soon all boarded back in the bus for pizza and then onwards to see the penguins. Sadly you are not allowed to take any pictures of them because they are blinded by the lights so I bought a few postcards and went and sat on the beach to wait. Apparently this is Australia's second biggest tourist attraction after the Great Barrier Reef so like Uluru at sunset I was surrounded by hundreds of other tourists. The penguins wait until sunset and then cluster together in the waves. They send one penguin out first and if he is not eaten by a bird he runs back into the water and the little penguins make their way onto the beach and then to their burrows. For about thirty minutes I watched a few clusters of penguins get swept onto the beach and then swept back into the water a few times before they finally began scurrying up to their burrows. After that I walked around on the boardwalks and watched penguins mating and walking around. There were lots of school children very excited by the mating penguins and I even heard one teacher say that they would go see how many birds they could find "doing it." After about an hour we all boarded our tour buses and began the 2 hour drive back to Melbourne.
I am staying at a small hostel in old mansion in St. Kilda, a beachside suburb of Melbourne. St Kilda has plenty of funky shops, cafes, restaurants, and cake shops. It also has an old amusement park and a vegetarian curry place that I am obsessed with. I have already eaten there 3 times. My first day here it was cold and rainy so I saw a movie (Michael Clayton, very good) and then walked to the Victoria markets which were supposedly open Wednesday nights. When i arrived the markets were completely empty and I sadly walked back to the tram in the rain and hurried to my curry place. Yesterday i walked around the city and found myself at the Australian center for Moving Images. They had a display by a performance artist who made videos. Most were too weird for me, but there was one that was 4 screens of different films with people singing, dancing, and playing instruments that i enjoyed. There was also one where you stood in the middle of 4 screens that had been synchronized with scenes from 4 different movies(I only remember terminator 2 and Pulp Fiction) that involved shootouts. I must have arrived at the end because as I stood there 4 gunmen aimed at me and began shooting. It was a bit too realistic so I went back to the safety of the musical exhibit.
I just spent a while putting the rest of my pictures on facebook so I will add some links to them soon. Happy weekend!

Thanksgiving and the Great Ocean Road

2007-11-23T17:10:00.000+10:00

I celebrated my last day in Adelaide by making Thanksgiving dinner for Max, Myst, and her family. This turned out to be a more challenging farewell than anticipated. It was decided that Pat would be in charge of the turkey since neither Myst nor I had any idea how to cook one. That left us in charge of pumpkin pie, cornbread dressing, and sweet potato casserole. The sweet potato casserole got canceled pretty quickly when it was discovered that half of the dinner party refused to eat sweet potatoes. The cornbread dressing idea got nixed when I remembered how much work it involved and realized that there was no Jimmy Dean sausages in Australia. The pumpkin pie was deemed essential but would require cutting up and boiling an actual pumpkin since there was no canned pumpkin to be found anywhere. Pat picked me up Friday morning and drove me down the street to the grocery store and vegetable shop since it was a boiling hot day and we didn't want any spoiled ingredients. She explained that she had called all over and was unable to find a whole turkey. She had found a turkey roll and a whole chikcen but decided that having a whole bird on the table was more important than having an actual turkey. Once Myst and I finished cooking and decorating the table with "fall leaves" (in actuality some dead, brown one) we pulled out the bottles of pink mink champagne to finish. Two bottles later the guests arrived and we ate our feast. Since there are no conversion recipes for making a real pumkin into a canned one I had guessed and my pie suffered. It still tasted good but we had ouor dessert in bowls since my pie had failed to solidify in the oven. The rest of the night involved Myst and I having a dance party to the Joan Armatrading song "Rosie" on repeat, singing along to the unappreciated Grease 2, and having a deep conversation until 3:30 in the morning when we decided it was time to go to bed since I had a bus to catch at 6:45 the next morning. Myst and I dutifully set 3 alarm clocks before parting ways. Of course none of them went off. Maximus woke me up at 6:30 which meant the next 15 minutes were spent frantically finsing my stuff from all over their house and backyard, packing my bag, and finding the tour company's number to let them know I was running late. It all ended up wroking out ok and I was able to board the bus that would take me to Melbourne. It was not easy leaving Myst and Max but they'll be in Melbourne with me in a few weeks so I wasn't too bad. This is the bad part of having great friends so far away from your home.
The next three days were spent on a trip to the Grampians National Park and the Great Ocean Road. The first day involved me trying to stay awake while hiking up and down waterfalls and mountains. I fell asleep pretty early that night and woke up to go on another mountain hike in the Grampians before we drove on the magnificent Great Ocean Road. My descriptive writing skills are lacking so I am going to copy from my guidebook here. "The Great Ocean Road is one of the world's greatest driving experiences and one of Australia's proudest tourism showpieces. The 175km road snakes around celebrated surf beaches, through forests clinging to the edge of cliff-tops, across windswept coastal plains, all the while passing through idyllic hamlets, vibrant beach communities, and national parks teeming with plants and animals." Tons of ships have wrecked off the coast and we must have stopped a gazillion times to admire some stone formations just off the coast, the most famous being the 12 apostles, of which there are only 8 left. Being constantly hit by waves from the Southern Ocean means that the stones sometimes get knocked over back into the sea. A few years 2 people got stranded on a new island after the "London Bridge" formation collapsed. Turns out the two were having an affair and did not appreciate the media attention they received after being rescued by helicopter. In addition to lots of beaches and big rocks we saw some koalas in the wild and a parrot colony that liked to sit on people's heads. I think I will have to write about the little penguins and Melbourne tomorrow. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Kangaroo Island

2007-11-15T17:25:00.000+10:00

I know it's been a few weeks since my last post, but like I said my time has mostly been spent watching movie musicals, drinking wine, and discussing Harry Potter. I have managed to squeeze some tourist activities in though. I spent a day visiting a few museums and art galleries, where I saw some giant whale skeletons and learned about the history of migration in Australia. We went wine tasting in the Barossa Valley and discovered the wonder of Pink Mink Champagne. It is pink and doesn't taste very good until you have had a few glasses, but the bottle is pink and has a picture of a woman who looks like Barbie on it. This weekend Maximus, Myst, and I drove to Victor Harbor which is a little town on the beach that has a granite island you can walk around. There have been many visits to various malls and movie theatres (to see Stardust which was great and Rogue which was not so great but is Australian and has some very nice scenery shots of Kakadu National Park before it becomes a stupid killer crocodile movie), and one eventful evening spent at IKEA picking out furniture for our future homes. I also accompanied Myst and her mother to a wedding expo where I sat through an hour long bridal wear and lingerie fashion show. Thrilling stuff.
This week I decided it was time to start being a backpacker again so I left Myst and Maximus for a 3 day tour of Kangaroo Island. The island was recently named the 7th best island in the world (and 1st in Asia/Pacific)by National Geographic magazine. The islands were rated accoring to beauty and stuff to do there but also on their ecotourism practices. Monday morning I was picked up at the train station by my dreadlocked guide before heading to the Mclaren Vale wine region for some more wine tastings (I think I will be an expert on wine before I leave this country) and a picnic lunch. We then drove to the water and unloaded all of our stuff onto a fishing boat that would take us to the island. The boat ride took about an hour and was extremely wet, but we did have dolphins jumping beside us for part of it so I didn;t mind so much. When we got to the island and loaded all of our stuff into another van and then headed off to explore. Our guide had heard about a beach he wanted to check out so we drove around until the road ended and decided to walk in the direction of the supposed beach. We had to carefully hike through a path overrun with prickling nettles and kangaroo poop. We gave up on finding the beach a half an hour in and headed back to the van. On our drive to the campsite we saw the first of many kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, possums, and goannas (crazy looking giant lizards) that inhabit the island. They weren't as annoying at the Rottnest island quokkas, but they were still everywhere.
We spent the night in an eco hut by the beach sleeping in swags. The campsite had one of the coolest bathrooms I have ever seen. The two toilets and two showers were both in big round rain water collecting barrels and a solar powered radio played in the background. The showers did not have ceilings so you could wash under the sky while singing along to the radio. The next day we explored the island more, visiting a few (amazing!) beaches, a eucalyptus oil distillery, and seal bay. At seal bay there were a few hundred giant sea lions hanging out on the beach. The pups were chasing seagulls while the males were getting ready for mating season by fighting over the females and occasionally running towards my group. We would have to quickly move away and watch the sea lion plop down on the spot of sand we had just been standing on. Next up we drove to a place called Little Sahara to try sand boarding. I didn't bring my camera with me on this part because I was warne dit would get full of sand and possibly break, but it was basically a large area of sand dunes surrounded by trees. Sand boarding is kind of like sledding down sand dunes and is loads of fun until you have to climb back up the giant sand dune you just zoomed down. It was hard work! We then set up camp at another cabin and after dinner drove to a bay to see some little penguins that only come out at night. Thet don't get any taller than a wine bottle and are super cute.
The next day involved more beaches, including Stokes Bay which was voted 3rd best beach in Australia where I went swimming in the Southern Ocean. I now only have the Arctic ocean left and I will have swum in all the world's oceans. The water was pretty cold and had some pretty strong rips so I didn't stay in too long. We then drove to see the creatively named "Remarkable Rocks" which are a bunch of giant, weather sculpted boulders precariously perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean. After lots of pictures we drove to the even more remarkable Admiral's Arch which was a stone archway over the sea that is home to a colony of surprisingly agile fur seals. It was then time to drive back to the fishing boat for another wet ride back to the mainland and onwards to Adelaide.
I have only a few days left with Myst and Maximus before I continue my travels and this makes me very sad. We are off to the grocery store to do some shopping for our Thanksgiving feast I will be attempting to prepare tomorrow. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Happy Halloween

2007-10-31T15:37:00.000+10:00

I've been in Adelaide for almost a week now but still haven't actually seen Adelaide. I have been seeing plenty and hanging out with two of my favorite people in the world, Myst and Maximus from camp, so I am not complaining. Plus it looks like I might be here for a while so I have plenty of time to see everything (which apparently isn't too much) in the city. I arrived in Adelaide last Thursday morning after flying all night from Perth so I spent most of my first day sleeping. When Myst and Max got home from work we began to catch up on everyting that had happened in the past year, since this was their first summer not at camp in 5 years. Friday I ended up lounging around their house again and then we all went out to dinner with Myst's parents and brother at the Chinese restaurant that they "always go to." The three of us arrived at a restaurant and waited a while before calling Myst's family to see why they were late. The conversation, which I heard one sided from Myst's cell phone, went a little like this. "umm, are you coming? What do you mean you're there, we're there. Where are you? Umm, that is not the Chinese restaurant we always go to, we've been there once and we've been here about 20 times. Fine, we'll see you soon." We quickly exited the almost Chinese restaurant we were at for the new restaurant that Myst's family "always eats at." Dinner was good and it was fun to meet relatives and afterwards Myst and I went out to a pub with her brother and his friends. Myst quickly discovered that she and I and the girls her brother was friends with shared a love of musicals and invited them all over for a sleepover. i should mention that Myst is the world's most fun drunk. The next morning we both woke up on the couch and had to get ready to go to Myst's godsister's engagement party. It was another day meeting friends and relatives and eating lots of barbeque and desserts. We also discovered from Myst's father that she had broken a toilet the night before. We were both very confused and decided that she must have broken one at the pub and forgotten it and that her brother had told her dad. It turned out she had broken one in her house in the middle of the night by slamming the lid down and then woken up Max to tell him. Oops. The next day we all went to lunch at one of Myst's friends' houses where I met a bunch of her high school friends. This was another full day of eating and drinking champagne. After the luncheon max and I dropped off Myst and her friend Vanessa at their house and then went on a spree to find an open grocery store (a difficult task in Australia on a Sunday evening since most stores close at 5) so that we could bake chocolate chip cookies. We got back home a little over an hour to find that Myst and Vanessa had already drank a bottle of champagne and had started on the next one and were having a concert. After eating cookies and more champagne the three girls decided to watch several movie musicals and sing along while Max went to bed. we stayed up until 4 in the morning when i finally went to bed and left Myst watching the Phantom of the Opera for the seocnd time that night. It was a sunday night so the next morning i woke up and joined Myst on the couch where she was calling in sick to work. She then proceeded to sleep until about 2 in the afternoon before we watched more movies together until Max came home from work. Yesterday Myst's mother, Pat, picked me up in the morning and brought me to see a pioneer village that she had been to about 10 years ago. The village was made up of a bunch of old buildings, cars, and artifacts from around South Australia. It had seen better days. Most of the buildings were full of cobwebs and birds's nests and it was obvious no one had touched the place in many years. Pat was dissapointed but there were some interesting things to see. Next we headed off to Hahndorf, a German village. It turns out that besides British convicts there was also a large number of German settlers who came to Australia. The town had a bunch of cute shops and art galleries and German restaurants. Back at Max and Msyt's we had cheese on toast for dinner and an hour long discussion/debate about Dumbledore being outed by J.K. Rowling. There is a great article at ew.com for anyone interested. Myst and I decided to watch Harry Potter at around midnight since she was not working in the morning the next day. Sadly, we both managed to sleep until 11 today and myst still had to be into work at 3 today so our plan of seeing a museum turned into going to the mall and buying dvds and looking at travel brochures. She dropped me off at the library before heading off to work and I picked up a few books and am finally updating this blog (happy mom and dad?)Adelaide is great but don't expect too many exciting blog posts that don't involve musicals and champagne as long as I am here.

Attack of the Quokkas

2007-10-23T18:44:00.000+10:00

So since I have taken a week off from blogging my life I am going to do my best to remember what I have been up to this past week. Western Australia has been great, and reasonably cool which I've enjoyed after the tropics of Queensland and Darwin. I've been spending a lot of time just hanging out in my friend Sarah's flat and talking with college students studying abroad here. Sarah and I spent a day in Perth where we climbed to top of the Swan Bells. Its a glass bell tower that was built in 1988 to hold some old church bells from England that were going to get recast. It was a pretty building but not the most exciting tour and we didn't even get to hear the bells ring. We then went to King's Park, which is bigger than Central Park, and climbed about a million stairs to get there from the bus stop. We had lunch at a war memorial and it promptly began to rain on us. We ran to the gift shop and spent the next hour reading a book about experimental travel and waiting for the rain to stop. After that we decided to try one of the experimental travel gamesd where you pick a random person and follow them and see where you end up. We chose a middle aged couple with canadian flags on their bags and stalked them through the city until they turned into their hotel. Luckily they had led us to the center of Perth where we did some shopping (or looking in my case) before meeting up with some of Sarah's friends for dinner. We ate at an Indian restaurant where the food is cooked and served by volunteers and you pay whatever you feel like. It was good food and we ate a lot and did actually pay for it before heading out to Northbridge to check out the nightlife. One of the girls, Jacqui, had her heart set on going to a tiki bar she had read about so we spent about half an hour asking all the bouncers how to get to the Hula Bula bar. None of them had heard of it. During our trek I began to notice that the streets were full of Americans, especially American men. I had only met about 2 other Americans total elsewhere in Australia so I was a little confused. It turned out the US Navy was docked in Perth for a few days after touring Iraq. This meant the streets were soon full of loud drunken sailors. We finally gave up on finding the Hula Bula bar and settled a pretty cool place called the Brass Monkey which had a wine bar attached to it. We didn't stay too long, thanks to the sailors, before heading back home. The next day I was planning on spending in Fremantle again but broke my retainer off eating an apple and spent the day finding my way to a dentist instead.
Sarah had been saving up some of her Perth area tourits activities for when I arrived so she, Jacqui, and I spent Friday on a wine tour of the Swan Valley. Everything we had was very good but I don't think any of us learned anything except that we really like wine and cheese and chocolate. Of course we had Navy people on our tour but they were very civilised. After the tour ended and feeling pretty great Jacqui and I decided to try and find the Hula Bula bar again. We asked at about 10 places before we finally discovered it and were not disapointed. The drinks were really yummy and came in bowls and had plastic toys in them to play with. I think in total we spent over an hour trying to locate the one bar.
This weekend we went on a camping trip to Rottnest Island, a 30 minute ferry ride away. The island was named "Rat's Nest" by the Dutch explorers because it is full of quokkas, which lool like giant rats but are actually small wallabies. Apparently the Dutch used live quokkas as soccer balls because when kicked they rolled up into balls and didn't try and run away or defend themselves. We were about to learn that these are the dumbest animals around and it is a miracle they have survived evolution. Sarh, jacqui, Rachel and I got to the island mid afternoon and headed to our campsite to set up our borrowed tent. Our borrowed tent turned out to be bright green with flowers and the words "hippy hut" painted on the side. Also, it turned out to be made for two people instead of four. While putting it together we saw our first quokka and got very excited and took lots of pictures. We had broken the zipper of our tent door (oops) but thought we were good to go rent some bikes. When we returned we found two quokkas inside of our tent eating our food. We screamed and yelled and even threw a stick at them but just looked up at us and stood there unfazed. Quokkas were starting to lose their cuteness. We tied our food up in a tree and fixed the tent zipper before heading off on a 3 hour bike ride of the island. I have not really ridden a bike in 10 years but it is true that it come back to you. We rode up and down hills around the coast looking at beaches and cliffs and lighthouses. back at our campsite we cooked potatoes and fish on the grill and watched about a million quokkas come out as it got dark. We played cards for a while before trying to squeeze all of us into the hippy hut. It was maybe the most uncomfortable night's sleep I have ever gotten. Between having no space and no sleeping bag and dumb quokkas occasionally running into our tent I maybe got 3 hours sleep total. The next morning Sarah and I got up to go on a dive. We ended up being the only two people on the dive boat. maybe because the water was still freezing. We had full wetsuits on but after 45 minutes underwater were both turning purple when we got out. It was worth it since we saw a big fat stingray which came out of nowhere and almost gave us and our guide heart attacks. We got to swim inside of a cave and saw lots of pretty little blue fish and colorful seagrass. Sarah brought her underwater camera so I will actually have some pictures to show. After the dive we went and took a nap on a beach, grilled dinner, watched the sunset, and watched the movie Ratatouille before braving the quokka infested streets and attempting another night's sleep in the hippy hut. We took and early morning ferry before all falling asleep for a few hours in real beds. Tomorrow night I wil be leaving for Adelaide to hang out with Myst and Maximus, two of my favorite camp people! I'm off to help make tacos for dinner!

west coast

2007-10-16T20:50:00.000+10:00

I got the shuttle bus from my hostel to the Darwin airport Sunday afternoon. When I got off I discovered that a giant grease stain had mysteriously appeared on the front of my shorts. NOt only was it somewhat embarrassing to walk through the airport but it also means that my one pair of shorts is now ruined and I still have no idea where the grease stain came from. When I checked into the airline the lasy asked me the standard question of if I wanted a window or an aisle seat. Then she asked me who I wanted to sit by. Did I want to sit next to a nice handsome man she asked? I laughed but she said the last guy she checked in wasn't bad and she would sit me next to him. When I got to Perth I got in trouble because a produce sniffing dog discovered that I had an apple in my bag that I had completely forgotten about. You are not allowed to bring fruits and vegetables across state lines. I got a small lecture about that but they seemed to believe that I was forgetful and wasn't deliberantly trying to sneak a lone apple into Western Australia from the Northern Territory.
I am staying in a suburb of Perth with Sarah (or Tiger) another camp friend. She is studying abroad here and has kindly offered me an air mattress and some floor space for as long as I would like. I would like to stay here a long time. She is about a 20 minute bus ride from the town of Fremantle, my favorite city so far in Australia. It is full of coffee shops, bookstores, Italian restaurants, and funky clothing stores. I want to move here. Our first night we went to a microbrewery called Little Creatures which according to my guidebook "offers the best beer in town and the trendiest set of Freo locals." It had some amazing ale and cider, great views of the harbor, and a very cool atmosphere. After that we moved to the Newport hotel for some delicious pizzas. We got back to Sarah's dorm room and decided to watch Finding Nemo. I have been wanting to watch this since Cairns so was very excited. However I ended up falling asleep after Nemo's mother gets eaten, basically 3 minutes in. I might try again tonight while Sarah's at the library.
Today I went back into Freo and walked around and fell more in love with the place. I had some fish and chips and sat in a coffee shop before going on a tour of the Fremantle prison. It was built by the convicts in the 1850's and closed down just 16 years ago. I saw where people were tortured and hung not too long ago. It was pretty interesting. Tonight after dinner I finally got to try the Tim Tam slam. Tim Tams are a delicous chocolate covered and filled cookie that is kind of like what Oreos are to America (although I think much better tasting.) For the Tim Tam slam yo ubite an edge of both ends of the cookie and then dip one end into a cup of coffee. YOu then suck on the other end and as soon as you feel liquid you drop the cookie into your mouth and it is all melted and mushy and wonderful. I also spent today starting to get my pictures online (yay!) It has been more difficult than I expected so I still don't have all of them online, but here are links to some of them!
Sydney http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018864&l=fa2e8&id=15400598
Brisbane and the Whitsundays http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018867&l=327ce&id=15400598
Queensland http://colby.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018895&l=f5301&id=15400598

I will post pics of the Outback and the Top End as soon as possible!

Kakadu Dreams

2007-10-14T15:28:00.000+10:00

On Tuesday I left behind the Great Barrier Reef and flew to Darwin, a small city at the top middle of Australia. It was bombed pretty badly by the Japanese during World War II and then destroyed again by a cyclone in the 70's. I arrived at my hostel around 9 pm and quickly realized that I would not ever be picking a hostel that was not in my guide book again. The place was pretty gross and my bed was a very thin mattress in a huge dorm room. I decided to spend the night doing laundry and going to bed early so that I would be well rested for my camping trip leaving the next morning. Sadly that was not to be the case. Around 11:30 just as I was about to fall asleep the very drunk Irishman in the top bunk next to mine rolled out of his bed and landed with a thud onto the floor. He let out a few whimpers but would not wake up when the person under his bed and tried to shake him. We decided to leaving him sleeping on the floor in between our beds, which meant that I had him snoring loudly practically next to my face. Eventually he rolled under my bed and got stuck there and kept kicking the bed. I tried shaking him again and considered kicking him in the head but it was still uselss. It was almost 2 am at this point and I was still not asleep and needed to be up at 6 for my trip. I decided that i couldn't take it anymore and called my friend Caitlin back home to complain. After that I found an empty room and brought my sheets there and got about 3 hours of sleep before checking out of the hostel. When I told the girl at the front desk what had happened she let me know that the room I had slept in was unoccupied because it was infested with bed bugs. I quickly booked a new hostel for when I returned from my trip and then hopped into a van to get taken to Kakadu National Park.
According to my guidebook kakadu is Australia's most famous national park. There were 9 people on my tour plus the tour guide. We all sat in the back of a 4 wheel drive on bench seats and bounced around throughout the wilderness for 3 days. Our first stop was a river cruise to see jumping crocs. Basically a lady tied some steaks to a big stick and held it out over the river and the crocodiles jumped a few times as she dangled it over there heads before letting them have it. Pretty cool. We then headed to the town of Humpty Doo (hehe) to pick up spme supplies (lots of beer) and then drove to our first hike. We climed up some boulders and such to a waterfall and for swimming in some springs. It was as hot as New Orleans in the summer and I don't think I have ever sweated so much. I jumped into the first sping expecting to hot some cool, refreshing water. The water was pretty much the same temperature as the air. We climbed up through a series of springs until we got to one that actually felt cool and then jumped from spring to spring back down. We arrived at our campsite and had some kangaroo for dinner and I fell asleep immediately upon hitting my sleeping bag about 3 hours before everyone else, thanks to the drunken Irishman.
The next morning we drove down some incredibly bumpy roads to see some wetlands and then another waterfall. Since the back of the 4 wheel drive did not have seatbelts we were all required to use one (or two) hands to hold on to the ceiling and try not to get thrown out of our seats. It was about 800 degrees plus humidity but we wnet another hike/boulder climb to see the falls. The falls turned out to be black streaks on a cliff where the water falls during the wet season. (Weather in the Top End is divided into two seasons, the wet and the dry, right now it is the end of the dry.) The scenery was still amazing though. We swam once again in pool the temperature of a hot tub and then climbed over some more rocks to a largher and actually kind of cold pool! However, to get there we climbed barefoot on boiling hot boulders. My feet still burn several days later. We spent maybe an hour swimming around before hopping and swearing back across the boiling rocks and then clmbing back down the trail. Most bodies of water are closed for swimming in kakadu thanks to crocodile infestation. At one point of the hike their were showers that pumped water out of the no swimming allowed river to cool you down and prevent people from choosing death by crocodile over death by heat and not being allowed to jump into the water. That night we camped out by a billabong where 5 years ago a tourist was eaten by a croc when her tour guide led their whole group for a swim. Also, we saw a wild boar on our drive in and were warned that snakes were everywhere in the grass so that you needed to bring a buddy with you anytime you went to the bathroom. Feeling very safe and secure we set up our camp, had dinner, and then went on a nature walk to look for wildlife (i.e. crocs and deadly snakes.) Not really wanting to go but not wanting to stay behind alone at the campsite I chose the walk. About 2 minutes into it a brown snake slithered in front of my feet. I was pretty excited to be the first one to spot anything and also not to have stepped on the snake and got bitten and died. It turned out to be the 3rd most poisonous snake in the world. We saw another one and then saw a snake lying very still in the road. It was the non-poisonous kind and it turned out it was dead because we had driven over its tail. Everyone posed for pictures with the dead snake and then began trying to finsih the beer. In the middle of the night the other girl in my tent and I woke up to pee thanks to the beer. We opened our tent and saw a snake lying right outside of it. Due to being half asleep and somehwat drunk we stared at it for about a full minute before realizing it was the dead snake that someone had kindly placed in front of our tent. Now too afraid to walk all the way to the bathroom we decided to just squat on the other side of the van and get back into our tent as quickly as possible. The next morning we drove away from the terrifying campsite and went to see some ancient aboriginal art painted on the sides of rocks and then to another croc free billabong for some swimming and canoeing.
We got back to Darwin and i checked into my new (much nicer and guidebook approved) hostel before heading out for dinner with my group. Darwin might not have a lot to do but it does have a very interesting nightlife. We were greeted at the place where were having dinner and drinks by a group of girls dressed in underwear and cowboy chaps and very little else. We competed in some interesting competions to win free drinks (sadly we were not winners.) The cowboy girls then began dancing on the bar and we decided to move on someplace else. I ended up at a gigantic nightclub called Discovery and danced the night away until 4 in the morning. I am not a nightclub fan but this place was amazing, and also had some hilarious people watching. The next day I did laundry again and then decided to walk around Darwin. I made it to the waterfront but then decided I was going to melt away so I spent the rest of the day finding air conditioned spots to read and write postcards in. In the evening I met up with Kerstin from my trip to go to the Deckchair Cinema. It's an open air movie theatre on the ocean where you sit in deckchairs and eat dinner and have some drinks and watch a double feature. We first saw the Simpsons movie and the lightning in the sky before it began to rain towards the end of the movie. We got wet but the rain passed pretty quickly and we then saw a movie called Black Sheep about killer sheep in New Zealand that was pretty terrible. I then went straight to bed. Today I tried walking around the city again but couldn't really find anythinig to do. I am off now to the famous (here at least) Mindil beach market to watch the sunset and have some dinner before flying off to Perth tonight. Hopefully it will be exciting!

who needs sleep?

2007-10-09T11:09:00.000+10:00

Apparently not me because the world seems to be conspiring against me getting any. I was in bed at 9 the night before last only to hear the beginnings of a very loud concert. Two Australian bands, Silverchair and Powderfinger, were having a hige concert in Cairns pretty much next door to my hostel. So while I did not get to sleep I did get to hear the whole concert for free! I eventually did fall asleep only to be woken up not much later by a very drunk Frenchman who was making very loud kissing noises into his phone. Finally someone got up and told him to be quiet much more nicely than I would have and after replying that it was his best girlfriend in the world he did either hang up or move his converation elsewhere. I was again very excited to get lots of sleep last night since I had no tours or classes to be up for but around 7 one of the hostel's neighbors decided it was a really good time to play the drums. I might just have to wait until I get home to catch up on sleep.
Yesterday I went on a tour to the Atherton Tablelands, which I thought was going to be some good hiking to see some waterfalls. It ended up being just a few short walks to see the impressive Cathedral fig Tree and two waterfalls. sadly, i dropped my camera onto the cement at lunch and it would not work for the rest of the afternoon (it is working again now) so i have no pictures of the waterfalls. Nor do I have any pictures of the wild cassowary we saw, a huge, scary bird that is extremely endangered. Again the trip was nice but a little rushed and I wish i could have spent a few days exploring the tablelands. I am leaving Cairns this afternoon for Darwin, at the very top of Australia, to go on a three day tour of Kakadu national park, so I won't be writing for a few more days. I have decided to wait until I get to Perth in a bout a week where I will have free internet to post pictures.

never smile at a crocodile

2007-10-07T18:40:00.000+10:00

So this is my second post in two days and I am feeling very productive! I just got back from my day trip to Cape Tribulation, where the Daintree rainforest meets the Great Barrier Reef. My plans for the rest of the evening include writing this blog, finding dinner, and going to bed. I have not gotten more than 5 or 6 hours of sleep any night this week and almost stayed in bed this morning deliberating whether or not going on the trip that I had already paid for was worth more than sleep. I met up with Yanni and some of his friends last night and watched the Australia vs. Englad rugby game at a casino. Apparently the game was a really big deal, but while watching it I began to wonder how any rugby players live past playing one game. It was another late night but I figured I would just sleep on the bus. Sadly that was not to be. The had to sit in the front next to the driver and didn't want to be rude and go to sleep while he was talking, so I just felt like I might die of tiredness throughout most of the morning. The trip was nice but nothing to amazing. We went on a river cruise and saw two crocs, a big one and a litle baby one, and lots of birds. We did a rainforest walk and saw a crazy looking lizard and the kind of ropes that Tarzan used to swing on. We went swimming at this gorgeous water hole that was croc free, and then went to Cape Tribulation to see the famous rainforest/reef meeting point. It was pretty but no prettier than any other beach. My favorite part of the trip was eating some crazy expotic tropical fruit and then having crazy exotic tropical fruit flavored ice cream. My favorite was chocolate pudding fruit, which looks and feels a lot like chocolate pudding (which I don't like) but tastes like a fig. I did befriend a couple from China who were pretending to be on their honeymoon so that they were able to get a visa. Also, I learned that it is very difficult to buy souvenirs when travelling from China internationally because all the cheap ones are Made in China. This was a problem that I think is kind of hilarious. I also talked to a German girl for a while whose non English speaking mom and aunt were visiting her and driving her crazy. Even with my limited German it was easy to see that she was not happy with anything they did. She seemed happy to vent to me aboutthem for a while. Tomorrow I have another day trip to go hike around some waterfalls but the next day I have no plans and am very excited about that. It's off to find some dinner!

Finding Nemo.. and other creatures of the Great Barrier Reef

2007-10-06T17:07:00.000+10:00

I think I may have just found a way to spend even more money in Australia. Just what I needed, but diving is worth it. I just got back from my 2 days on the live aboard boat and am now a certified scuba diver. We spent two days in the classroom and the pool before getting taken out to the boat yesterday at 7 am. We were almost immediately thrown into the water to snorkel around a part of the reef called "The Whale" and immediately saw a turtle. Pretty soon after that we did our first dive and it was incredible. I did seven dives overall on the boat and saw more turtles, a shark, giant Maori Wrasse fish that can bite off your arm, stingrays, these cool slug like worms whose name I can't remember, giant clams, the beautiful but poisonous lionfish, and lots of little Nemo clownfish. Ever since my first dive I have really wanted to watch Finding Nemo and might try and see if my hostel has it (I know I am a loser). I did learn that the plot of the movie is very unrealistic because in the reef in Nemo's mom had died his dad would have soon changed sex and become his mom. I got to do a night dive which was kind of scray but very cool. I saw a fish eat another fish and saw these weird underwater creatures that you could only see when you shone the light on them. My guides had never seen it before. Sleeping on the boat was interesting and not very enjoyable. My roommate and I decided it was like being rocked in a cradle, which was nice until the person rocking the cradle went crazy and you went bouncing against the walls and almost fell out of the bed. I did not get very much sleep, especially since we got woken up at 5:30 am to do a sunrise dive and watch the coral and fishes wake up. I wish that I had more time in Cairns because I would have stayed on the boat and got my advanced diver certificate. I still really want to go to a shipwreck. My next two days are full of day trips to Cape Tribulation to see the rainforest and the Atherton Tablelands to go hiking to some waterfalls. I am excited for them but really just want a day to sleep! So now I am going to go read my guidebook and find all the other places that I can dive in Australia and spend my money even faster!

Tropic Days

2007-10-04T17:36:00.000+10:00

Sorry, it's been a few days and this is going to be a quick post cause I am sleepy. I got into Cairns Monday night and have been staying at the cutest hostel, Tropic Days. My room is huge and only has three beds (no bunks, much more exciting than I ever would have thought) and has hammocks and a pool and a dog named Chil Pepper. I have also been taking a scuba diving certification class. There are only two other people in my class and we have two instructors so it has been pretty nice. Tomorrow I head out to the reef and spend the night and get to do 5 dives, including a night dive. I can't wait! I have also met up with my first camp friend and from here on out I think I get to see camp people all the time (yay!) Yanni and I went on a mini pub crawl and I learned that international drunk dialing doesn't really work (stupid time difference.) last night I got to watch some fine Australian tv and eat a delicious dinner made by chef Yanni. My roommates in the hostel were two fun British girls who kept me from going to bed last night and has resulted in me being very tired and ready to go to bed even though it is only 6 pm. There is a pizza party tonight at the hostel but I think I can make it to sleep by 9 if I am lucky. Also, I am very happy because this is the first time I have written on this blog and the directions have been in English. They are usually in Chinese (I think) which has been tricky to figure out, but I seem to have done an ok job at guessing what to do. I am still waiting to find a place where it costs under 4 dollars an hour to use the computer so that I can post photos, but until then Amy has put hers on facebook and tagged me in them, so you can see some there if you have an account.

i really want a snowball!

2007-09-30T16:27:00.000+10:00

So I spent my first day of solo traveling in Townsville, which I had been warned was not a very exciting place. It wasn't. I did stay in a very cute hostel, Reef Lodge, which was painted with sea creatures all over it and full of very friendly people. For my first morning I went to the Reef HQ aquarium, which was nice and had some gigantic fish, but was not as exciting as seeing the actual reef. After that I spent the day walking around the town and the beach and trying to find something else to do. I didn't. I went back to my hostel and watched some tv with the other backpackers. I finally understand how Deal or No Deal works, but it took about 3 people to explain it to me. Around 6 a ranger from a wildlife sanctuary showed up with a giant snake for everyone to hold and take their pictures with, which helped me add another check to my list of Australian animals I must hold and pose with. I signed up for a trip to the sanctuary the next morning to hold even more creatures. I was supposed to meet up with Aoife from my outback trip for dinner at 6, but around 7 called her cause I hadn't heard from her yet to discover that she had been trying to call me and text me for over an hour and my stupid phone that i still have no idea how it works was not giving me the messages, even though I had checked and was in an area with reception. She had just left for home so no more dinner plans. I had also been invited to go out with some of the girls in my dorm room but they had already left. I went back to tv watching and discovered that all 3 tv's in the hostel were tuned to the same show about antique hunting. I read for a while before someone put on the Devil Wears Prada dvd. It was a very exciting day in Townsville indeed.
The next morning I got up early and took the bus to the Billabong Sanctuary outside of Townsville. Most of the animals were still asleep, including a mother and baby koala who were hugging each other in a tree branch. It may have been the cutest thing I have ever seen. Around ten the nonstop shows and animal picture posing began. I listened to talks about and then held and smiled for the camera with koalas, wombats, sugar gliders, snakes, lizards, and crocodiles. The same guides lead each lecture and the crocodile show was much more exciting than the one at the huge arena at the Australia Zoo. I took the bus back to the hostel, collected my stuff, and boarded the ferry for Magnetic Island, about 20 minutes away from Townsville.
Once on the island I met Eline, from Holland, and we decided that we would walk to our hostel rather than wait for the bus. 30 minutes later as base backpackers sign was finally in sight we were regretting our decision. The hostel itself is amazing. Instead of one big building it is a bunch of little cabins on the beach. It turns out the night before the whole island had a huge full moon party and everyone was in recovery from it. I did get invited to a party at a picnic table (their words) by a group of still drunk Germans but decided to shower and make dinner instead. Eline and I then met up at happy hour and talked with some Canadian girls for a few hours, sharing some chocolate cake, and watching the just full moon at the beach. I then went back to my room and chatted with a guy from Sweden staying in my dorm about books for a little while before going to bed. Around 6 in the morning I was woken up by incredibly loud squawking birds and was beginning to like the beach cabin a little less.
I did fall back asleep a little bit before getting up for real and going for my introductory dive! Holly, my guide, gave me a little rundown on all the gear and then I suited up and walked down to the water to get started. The tank was very heavy and I am still impressed that I didn't fall over from the weight. Once in the water it was weightless though. Since it was a guided dive I had to hold Holly's hand the whole time and she did all of the work. I saw stingrays, a giant crawfish, and more rainbow coral and fish, who swam all around us. It was incredible! Holly let me swim around on my own a little but I kept floating up and she would have to yank me down again. When we got back to surface a half an hour later I was ready to sign up for a certification course. I think I will have to do it when I get to Cairns. I am in love with the Great Barrier Reef.
After the dive Eline and I took a bus to go on a hike at a national park on the island. We somehow ended up on an army forts hike rather than the hike to the beach that we wanted. It was still a great walk. The island was used during world war II and is full of old army forts and other stuff. The walk had some great views and we met a nice girl from Adelaide and ran into my Swedish roommate at the top. Eline had had enough walking so she caught the bus back, but I really wanted to see the beach so I hiked up and down a very steep road to Florence Bay, which was definitely worth it. I lay on the beach and read for a few hours before beginning the arduous hike back up and down the hills. On the way one car stopped and sprayed me with squirt guns which was much appreciated. I made it back to the hostel and went straight to the kitchen for food to find Eline with a half eaten package of Tim Tams that she forced me to take away from her. They are the best cookies ever. Well I am off to shower away the sand and grab some dinner and enjoy more of the beach!

"Hamlet of Hedonism"

2007-09-27T19:47:00.000+10:00

We did it again. Once more I received an early morning phone call wondering why I was not getting on the bus for a day trip. This time Amy and I double checked our alarms and woke up with (we thought) and hour to spend getting ready, but our leisurely morning turned into throwing things into bags and a repeat run across the hostel grounds due to writing down the wrong meeting time. Basically we suck. Thankfully I have my cell phone or me would have missed out on ocean rafting. Instead of doing a sailing trip around the Whitsunday islands (almost a requirement) we decided to try ocean rafting since it advertised itself as seasick-free. On the bus we met Thomasina who was traveling from Ireland with two friends who decided to spend the day in bed. Our raft sped around the islands and stopped at an aboriginal cave and then off one of the island's shores for some snorkeling, my new favorite activity. Most people were geared up in wetsuits but I thought it was pretty warm and decided I could save ten dollars and just go in my swimsuit. The water here really is turquoise and perfectly clear. I followed a school of giant rainbow fish through the multi-colored coral and used Amy's amazing underwater camera to take some pictures. I didn't think I would be so amazed by the reef, but I am so I will be shelling out even more money to try scuba diving and see a famous shipwreck and more fish and coral this weekend. I reluctantly got back on the raft and we sped away to Whitehaven beach. The sand looked and felt just like flour. We had a picnic lunch on the beach that was not very fun because the terrifying seagulls were trying (and often succeeding) at stealing the food from our plates. I hate birds. Despite my best sunscreen application my back managed to get even more burned while swam around. We then sped back to Airlie Beach and raced against another ocean raft which made me happy I chose this over sailing.
Today we checked out of our hostel and I said goodbye to Amy, since she has to return to the real world and I don't. I took the greyhound to Townsville and listened to a very entertaining fight between twin sisters when one of them realized she had accidentally booked her ticket for two days ago. For the next half and hour while waiting for the bus the one twin yelled at the other for being an idiot and repeatedly threatened to kill her sister if they could not get on the bus. Luckily for them, the bus driver didn't seem to care. Tomorrow I am going to try and hold a wombat at the wildlife sanctuary in town, go to the reef aquarium, and meet up with a girl from my outback tour who is working here. My new goal is to cuddle as many Australian animals as possible. If I can figure out how, I am going to post a few pictures my guide sent from the outback tour.

salty dogs

2007-09-25T18:00:00.000+10:00

This morning started when my phone rang and I looked at the clock and realized it was 8:30, the time we were supposed to be meeting to go on our sea kayaking trip. I jumped up, threw on clothes and grabbed my toothbrush before running out the door to try and catch up. Amy had sprinted ahead of me and we managed to provied entertainmentto all the other backpackers sitting around the courtyard of our hostel as they yelled words of encouragement to us. Not surprising our bus was gone and Amy and I headed to the information desk to find out about getting a taxi. At that point we hear someone shout Amy's name and find that the bus has come back. The driver had decided to come back and look for us one last time and was able to pick us out by the panicked looks on our faces. I am very happy about her decision because the trip was amazing. We had a pretty small group and kayaked out to a few of the islands and had lunch, snorkeled, and relaxed on the beach. Most of the group were only kayaking for half the day. The only others on the full day trip were a couple on their honeymoon from Boston. Our guide, Anthony, is according to some random people who recognized him on the beach, one of the most famous kayakers in Australia. I am not sure how many famous kayakers there are, but Anthony has kayaked from Australia to New Zealand and done some other very long solo kayaks. He told us stories about almost being eaten by a crocodile and sleeping on remote island beaches that were covered with lightbulbs, tvs, and Japanese whiskey bottles. We also discussed the difficulty of being a famous person, which doesn't sound that bad to me. The one letdown of the day is that I managed to get sunburned, which doesn't surprise me since I am incapable of applying sunscreen correctly. I am also still trying to figure out how to use my new mobile service, since right now I am only able to make calls to people who have sent me text messages. Hopefully I will have that figured out soon because it is very annoying, especially when trying to call back the bus driver who woke me up at 8:30 in the morning to say that I am on my way. I don't know if next time we will be so lucky.

First week down under!

2007-09-24T17:41:00.001+10:00

So I have been in Australia over a week now and still can't believe I am really here doing this. When I first got to the harbour at Sydney I just started at the bridge and the opera house pinching myself occasionally. I have a lot of catching up to do and will try to write more frequently to avoid novel length posts like this one is going to be.

Day 1: Sydney-
Amy I arrived in Sydney at 6 in the morning after almost 24 hours of traveling. My knees are sore from the lack of legroom in airplanes and even though I took 3 sleeping pills over the course of the flight I did not get much sleep. We took the train to our first (of so, so many} hosetls, the YHA Railway Square. It's a pretty cool place with rooms in old railway carriages. We drop off our stuff and head out to explore the city. Amy I walk about 30 minutes to the harbour and stare and take way too many pictures of ourselves in front of the opera house and the bridge. Amy and I spend about an hour fruitlessly searching for the way to get onto the harbour bridge before giving up up. We then meet up with some of Amy's friends from a Contiki tour she did a few years ago, Vicki and Vinh and their adorable 3 year old son. They take us out to lunch at the Sydney Cafe which allows to stare some more at the harbour. The food was just as amazing as the view. We have huge platters of seafood and leave stuffed and ready to walk some more. We drive across the harbour bridge and visit Luna Park, a slightly creepy old amusement park. From there we say goodbye to our hosts who point us in the right direction so that we can walk back across the bridge, for even more staring and photos of the harbor. We then walk to Darling Harbour where we eat some kangaroo and more seafood for dinner, play in the fountains, catch the end of a didgeridoo show, and try not to collapse from exhaustion. We walk back to the hostel and force ourselves to stay awake until 9 pm.

day 2- Sydney

Amy and I are both awake at 5 but don't get out of bed for a few more hours. We then walk back to the harbour and go on a tour of the Sydney Opera House, which is very interesting. I am excited for my next time in Sydney when I can hopefully go see a show. We then take a bus to Bondi Beach. Optimistically we pack our swimsuits even though it is sweater weather. The beach is beautiful but freezing, and we only manage to get our feet wet while we watch the few brave souls surf and swim. There is about an hour long cliff walk with amazing views that takes you from Bondi to Coogee beach that we end up doing in lieu of swimming. Sadly, our jet lag is not over yet and we take the bus back to our hostel and crash while eating dinner. It's Amy's birthday but we are unable to get ourselves next door to the bar or stay awake past 9.

day 3 - Alice Springs

Today we wake up and fly to Alice Springs. Getting off the plane we are greeted with a blast of hot air and quickly change from long pants and sweaters to shorts and t-shirts. On our shuttle to the hostel we meet another boy from New Orleans,proving that it really is a small world. Our hostel, annie's place, is really cute with a smimming pool, cheap restaurant, and porn on the bathroom walls. Amy and I walk around town and enjoy our favorite Australian treat, an iced chocolate (ice cream, cream, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, and chocolate shavings) before swearing that we will never have another and getting lost on the way to Anzac Hill. We discover a kangaroo rescue center and get to hold a joey named Abigail in a manmade pouch and learn all about how to save joeys when there mothers are hit by tour buses and die. It's another early night for us, since we leave at 5:30 the next morning for our tour of the Outback.

Day 4 - Outback

We get up way too early and meet everyone on our tour. There are 21 of us and the only Americans are Amy, myself, and Evan the other New Orleanian. The others are German, Dutch, Japanese, Swedish, Irish, English and Belgian. Our tour guide is named Scotty and over the course of the trip will be insulted when told he looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo and excited when told he looks like Where's Waldo (turns out he has the full Where's Waldo costume that he enjoys wearing out.) I first sit next to Mia from Sweden who is traveling with her brother Eric. They had just had all of their stuff stolen at their lost hostel, so using the money from travel insurance Eric bought himself a new wardrobe consiting of crocodile and kangaroo themed t-shirts. Not too far down the road we stop at a camel farm where Amy and I spend 5 dollars to ride a lazy camel named Mona around a pen. Our next stop is King's Canyon, where we hike up a very, very steep hill and swim in the Garden of Eden watering hole. We spend the night sleeping in swags (mini personal tent kind of thing) under the stars around the fire.

Day 5 - Outback

We set out fairly early and drive to Kata Tjuta (large domed rock formations. We hike through the valley of the winds and up and down a very steep cliff. We then have a picnic lunch with views of Ulluru (Ayer's Rock) and get educated at the Aboriginal Cultural Center. We then walk around part of the base of the giant rock, which is much more impressive that I expected. The rock is full of grooves and caves and other distinguishing marks that are missing from photographs. After listening to some creation stories we drive to the sunset viewing spot to watch the rock become very red along with a thousand other tourists. It's beautiful but ovewhelming due to the massive crowds. Our group was the first to arrive so we claimed the one table in the whole area and ate dinner and shook our heads as bus after giant tour bus pulled up. After the sunset we head to a new area to spread out our swags, play some drinking games, and get a little sleep before being woken up to go get prime seats to watch the sunrise.

Day 6 - Outback

We are woken up at 4:30 (ouch) and drive back to the same area we went to see the sunset. Everyone else is at the sunrise viewing area so since we are at the sunset viewing area we get the place pretty much to ourselves. We then go walk around the whole base of Ulluru. When we first arrive, the climb to the top is closed due to high winds and hot weather. The aboriginals ask that people do not climb up Ulluru because it is sacred to them, but even if they hadn't asked I don't think I would have been able to make it up. It is crazy steep and 35 people have fallen to their deaths over the years. As we finish up our base walk the climb has been opened and I stare at all the crazy people risking their lives. We then climb back into the bus for a very long ride back to Alice Springs. None of us have showered and we are covered in red dirt. On the way back we see wild horses, camels, and bulls. We get back to our hostel and all go for a swim in the pool, shower, and meet up for dinner and drinks. Later on we head to a nightclun down the street, Bojangles, where the dance floor is webcast every night. After a few hours of dancing one of our members decides to dance on a table and is pulled down by the bouncers and we all decide it is time to make our exit.

day 7- Brisbane

I wake up early the next morning to have free breakfast and spend some time on the internet, but discover that everything has been eaten and the internet is closed for the next few hours. I go for a walk with a few fellow tourmates before saying goodbye and heading to the airport to fly to Brisbane. It is sad to leave everyone but hopefully I will get to meet up with some of them again over the next few months. In Brisbane we are picked up by Clare, another of Amy's Contiki friends, who drives us to the Gold Coast town of Surfer's Paradise just as it begins to pouring rain. We walk along the beach anyway and get a beer before heading back to the city. We stop along the road to try some meat pies, an Australian specialty. Clare drops us at Bunk, our next hostel, which is connected to a very happening and very loud nightclub. Amy and I decide to do laundry rather than drink and make friends with the guy folding sheets in exchange for a free room. he lets us use the dryer for free, but we feel obliged to talk to him and help him fold sheets which means another late night. Around midnight we shove earplugs in and try to sleep even though the nightclub is still hopping.

Day 8 - Brisbane

Today we catch the train and head out of the city to spend the day at Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo, yay! I am very excited about this. We get to the zoo and walk through a park full of lounging kangaroos whom we pet and pose for photos with. I find my new favorite animal, the wombat. See some wallabies and remember that I wanted to volunteer at a rehabilitation center for them. I cuddle a koala for the obligatory photo and decide that I need one for a pet. Amy and I then go to the big croc show, but sadly there is no croc wrestling yet there are lots of big scary birds flying around the arena. We then find the petting zoo and fight lots of small children to pet piglets and lambs. There are old circus elephants, playful tiger cubs, and the crazy looking yet very cute echidna to stare at. At 2:30 we leave the zoo and get back to our hostel 4 hours later due to our inability to navigate public transportation. It is not fun and I am now in a bad mood and extremely tired. Clare and some of her friends meet us back at the hostel and we go eat some Chinese food in the very fancy looking Chinatown. We then decide to check out the loud and happening nightclub, but since it is Sunady night it no longer happening, just loud.

Day 9- Whitsunday Coast

We get up for yet another flight, this time to the Whitsunday Coast. We share a limousine with a few other backpackers from the airport to the hostel. This sounds nice but since I am sitting facing backwards it is not a pleasant ride and I get to Magnum's feeling sick. AMy and I have decided to get a double room instead of the dorm so that maybe we can get more sleep and can leave our stuff lying everywhere! We walk around the beach, eat some barrimundi, and book our sailing and kayaking days for the next few days.

Phew, that was a lot of info. Hopefully I will never have that much writing to do at once again. Internet time is not cheap!