Taupo and Home

Its been a loooong time since I last updated this thing and I have been home for I think 1 month now. Maybe its been so long because I knew that once I made this last post my trip would officially be over, but it really probably just comes down to pure laziness. Oh well, I dont think anyone reads this anymore but I'll just make this one for me...

With a few days left before flying back home to Toronto, we had some time to kill so we decided to set off for Taupo and make our way back up to Auckland to catch our flight and drop off the car. On the way down to Taupo, we stopped off in a place called Waitomo. On the way there we finally started seeing some of the sheep that NZ is supposedly famous for, which was a relief because all we saw were cows for the first few days. Anyway Waitomo is famous for its network of caves filled with glow worms. Unfortunatly to actually see the glow worm cave they wanted to charge us 30 bucks for a tour so in the true spirit of backpacking we found a free trail and climbed up into some caves. Didn't get to see any glow worms but was still cool anyways.

From there we headed straight to Taupo, which was about 2 hours east of Waitomo. Really the main reason that we put Taupo on our list was because we had bought tickets for a tandem skydive for a place in Taupo. Just deciding to go skydiving and actually signing up to do it was rush, so I could only imagine how good skydiving could actually be. Unfortuantly we spent the only clear-skyed day exploring the caves and we couldn't go skydiving because the clouds never cleared. We decided to wait around Taupo till we absolutly had to leave and book it to the airport. It actually hurt not to jump out of that plane, I dont really know why but I think it took so much to get into the mindframe where I was going to actually go through with it that when I couldnt do it, I was crushed. We didn't completly waste our time in Taupo, we managed to find a natural hot water spring and visited a museum in the area.

On our last day when we found out for the final time that we wouldn't be able to go skydiving we decided to do the next closest thing and go bungy jumping from the place that we had been sleeping in the parking lot in the car that we rented for the past 2 nights. It has definatly been the scariest thing that I have ever done. The whole thing happens so quickly that you don't really have time to take in whats happening. From the time we weighed in till I stood on the platform was about 5 minutes. The lady strapping me in (by my ankles) was telling me all of these things that I was supposed to do and then finally asked me if I'd like to touch the water 154 ft below me. I said sure but just with my hands and she said it wasnt a problem but its not an "exact science" and that maybe my hair would get a little wet. Shuffle my way to the end of the platform, look over the edge at the last thing any sane person wants to see. I don't know what its like to jump out of a plane but standing on the edge looking down, its just high enough that you realize how stupid it is but not high enough that if something went wrong it would be an instant and possibly slightly amusing death...3-2-1-BUNGY!!!! I don't remember much of what happened next except after the initial fall I think i closed my eyes only too open them before hitting the water and thinking how much I had slowed down. As it turned out I hadn't slowed down nearly as much as I thought I had or as the lady had planned for me to slow down because the bitch miscalculated by at least 5 feet and dunked me to my feet! As I was being pulled up my shirt got pulled off my head and I somehow managed to hold onto it and from there the rush finally caught up to me and it was just screaming and yelling from there. With the bigest rush of my life, not to mention headache, I ran up to the top to watch Mike do the same thing...AWESOME!

Pretty much straight from there we had about an hour so we went to Wai-Tau-pei (not even close to the correct spelling). Its basically a huge thermal pool area where there are rainbow coloured pools and volcanic muds and all sorts of things that smell like sulphur and death. From there we drove back through the gorgeous NZ roads to Auckland to catch our flight. Unfortuantly because we waisted so much time we didn't have any time to check out Routoura as well as sneak into hobbiton (my idea!, but mike was game). Made it back to the airport with a bit of time to spare before we caught our flights to LA and then home...

Its really hard to sum this trip up and everyone has been asking me to do just that. Maybe the best way of doing that I can only do now because even though it has been a month I have never had such a hard time adjusting to getting back into "things" as I have had getting over OZ and NZ. Maybe it wasn't the best idea to take a trip like that right in the middle of my studies because school has never seemed so dull as it is now but it was worth it. Its crazy because I spent so much time in australia and a bit in new zealand but I still want to go back and see what I missed my first time through...think its safe to say that I have been bitten by the bug.

New Zealand and expensive apples

I will start this one off with a word of warning to anyone traveling to New Zealand and Australia. That stupid little form that they give you 2 minutes to fill out when you are about to land in a strange, forgein country and have a million things on your mind are taken pretty seriously by customs. I laughed at Mike when he declared his straw hat, hiking boots and wooden ring and did my usual checking off "no" to every answer. As we were passing my bags through the scanner they pulled me aside and radioed someone in. Stuff like this happens all the time and I was thinking that maybe it was for one of the million boomarangs which we were carrying, however the lady pulled an apple from my bag. To make a long and sad story short, it is an on the spot 200 dollar fine to smuggle fruit into the country! The customs official tried to make me feel better saying that he personally has fined oprah for trying to smuggle in whole legs of beef (actually an apple as well), and that she didn't have a problem with it because her manager just payed the fine. But really the worst part was that they confiscated it before I even got to ask if I could eat my 200 dollar apple.

Besides that great start to NZ, things should be getting better here. We landed in Aukland, which is towards the top of the north island and the largest city in the country. From everything that I have heard from people, and seen and read, NZ is supposed to be one of the most beautiful and rugged countries in the world. Because it is right on the ring of fire, landscapes that you would expect to see over an entire continent, are crammed onto these little islands. Anyway, landed in Auckland last night and just walked around the downtown area, which wasn't that big and not that much seemed to be going on for a thursday night.

This morning we rented a car for 4 days, which will be ours until right up until we get on the plane on the 24th and fly home. Today, we drove to the west of Auckland, to a beach called Piha. What really sets it appart from other beaches is that the sand is the black and the finest sand I have ever been on. As far as beaches go, it has to be one of the nicest I have seen because the surf looked incredible, there were hikes around the area and the sand near the water was jet black with yellow ribbons running through it. Also during the day we did a small hike to a waterfall. Really beautiful just had the coldest water in the world, no exageration...really. Painfull to swim in but it was such a rush to jump in and paddle around for a minute or 2. After that we headed back to the beach to catch the sunset over the water. It was really cool because this was the only time that we were on a west coast beach to catch the sunset of the water and we made sure to make the best of it.

From here our plans are to drive our car tommorow to the Waitamo caves and sleep in Taupo. Waitamo is a large cave system with water and glow worms. Taupo is the sight of one of the worlds largest volcanic eruptions as well as the extreme sports capital of the north island, but no worries about the skydiving mom because I instead spent my money on the worlds most expensive apple. After sleeping in Taupo, we will head up to Rautaru, home of some mauri cultural shows and some hot water geysers and make our way back to auckland to catch our flight home. Don't try and search for the names of ANY of the places that I have just listed because there is no way that I got the spelling right for any of them.

Cairns

In cairns we met up with Mike's friend, Ben, from waterloo who had just finished off work in Sydney and flew up to meet us to hang out in cairns.

We got lucky booking our trip out to the great barrier reef. Initially we thought screw it and booked an expensive trip on a good boat so that we would do it right. But the day before we found a package that had everything the same just on a slower boat, but 90 bucks cheaper. So we changed to that boat and when we got to the pier in the morning the seas were to rough for the smaller boat so we were upgraded to the original/expensive one that we were going to go on at first. I guess we were lucky that we got the free upgrade but that also meant that it pretty much rained the entire time and the boat was getting thrown around like the prostitute that we picked up the night before...too much? I'm allowed to get edgey this close to the end. (Picture 1: Mike from the aftermath of meeting our friends from Fraser Island)

Anyways none of us got sick but we had to spend about 30 minutes inside the boat for a dive briefing and it was funny to watch people drop off one by one, to run outside and be sick. The first reef we went to was Norman reef, which was the furthest offshore reef that we went to. The conditions were not ideal because of the low light and waves on the surface, but once we went down in the scuba gear, the bad seas didn't matter. The second reef that we visited was the Hastings reef, which is closer to shore but I didn't really notice much difference between the two. The snorkelling wasn't as good as it was in the whitsunday's because the surface wasn't flat, but we saw clown fish (Nemo's), Giant Clams, a 6 foot eel and a giant wrasse which weighs about 400 pounds and got to spend about 1 hour scuba diving. The second picture is a picture that I took of the picture that the photographer took of me, but we didn't want to pay 15 bucks to buy. He obviously caught us and called us scum but it was worth it. We brought an underwater camera and Ben had a underwater digital but I don't have any of those pictures yet, save this murky one.

That night Ben didn't have a place to stay so the plan was for him to take one of the empty beds in our room. So that night we hung out at the bar in our hostel and they had the worlds smallest bungee jump. It was so small that you could have jumped from the platform without a cord and land on your feet and walk away. Unfortunatly both Mike and myself were 10 pounds too heavy to try it, but Ben made it on. After that we had some beers with our friend Petra from Sydney and her friends until we were going to sneak Ben up to our room. Normally, hostels if they have security are a joke so I told Ben not to worry and we would just walk past the security guard and say that he lost his key...no dice. Ben had to end up climbing the walls half drunk to get to our room, as I looked on thinking how if he fell his blood was on my hands. To top it off partway through his climb the fire alarm went off, which we all thought was a security alarm, so he dove onto his stomach to try and hide while the two of us took left him and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. In the end he made it up in one piece, but I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

The next day we rented the pimpest car that we could find and drove up to Port Douglas and Mossman Gorge. Port Douglas is just a nice little resort town but Mossman Gorge is a rainforest national park with waterfalls and a whitewater river. It poured the entire time we were in the rainforest, which was fitting. The road from Cairns to the gorge hugged the beach and cliffs the whole way and the road was in great shape, so driving our little 90hp daewoo was the most fun I have ever had driving. The best part was that after the 170 or so km that we put on it, it only used 8 litres of petrol...a car after my heart.

Later that night it was our turn to hang out at Ben's place until about 1 in the morning when he drove us to the airport in our sports car. Since our flight was at 5:45 that morning we didn't bother getting a place to stay, we just hung out in the terminal and played with wheelchairs and slept on the benches until our flight left.

Im in Sydney now, staying at the blooms tonight and Mike is staying with his family friends and tommorow at 11:30 am we fly to Auckland, New Zealand for our 3 day extended stopover.

Team D Reunion

In the end we decided to spend the day in Airlie Beach with some of the crew from Fraser Island. So instead of catching the 2 pm bus on saturday to go to a nonexistent full moon party on Magnetic Island we got our bus changed to 2:30 am on sunday morning. It may have been the best decision that we have made all trip. The weather was perfect just about all day so we hung out at the man-made lagoon, which as it turns out is french for "the goon"...maybe a bit of foreshadowing for the coming night? (Pic 1: mmmmm BBQ)

Later that day as the sunset we had a huge barbeque with some cold beers at an outdoor publich bbq, which are so cool and would be great to have back in Canada. After that we headed back to the hostel and everyone got stuck into some goon and we hung out on the porch until it was time for us to catch our bus and the rest of the team to head out for the night. It was hands down a legend of a day and definatly hard to say goodbye to everyone for the second time but I think all will agree that we parted ways in style. (Pic 2: the goons)

Now we are in Cairns, our last stop on the east coast tour and as far as our greyhound bus ticket will take us. Good Riddance! I'm pretty sure in the maybe 30 hours that we have spent traveling on that bus, all of which has been overnight to save some money, I could count the hours of sleep I had on one hand. Just been in Cairns for a couple of hours now, and the town is a lot bigger than I expected but everything is closed for Easter. We are staying in a hostel called Gilligans, which is the nicest hostel that we have ever seen. Tommorow we head out for the Great barrier Reef and 2 scuba dives and about an hour of snorkeling... Should be epic. After that we have tuesday to kill and we catch the redeye early weds morning back to sydney. (Pic 3: After finding out that the english guys [really 2 english and an irish] travel with a framed picture of the maverick, tom cruise, at all times, and the queen? we needed the maverick thumbs up pic to end the night...quite possibly the sexiest picture ever)

Quicksilver

As hard as surfing is, it is almost equally as hard to get a good picture of the 2 of us surfing, specially because we are so consistant : Now that I have the excuses out of the way, these pictures really aren't indicitive of the level that we reached but it was the best that we could capture with my 20 dollar underwater camera.

I know that in these 2 pictures that it looks like we are sinking in tiny waves but just imagine how much skill it took to surf such small waves...besides the ones we normally rode were at least 3 times as large :)

Whitsunday Islands

Fresh off our Fraser Island safari and epic 13 hour bus ride into Airlie Beach we set sail for the Whitsunday Islands. In hindsight I wish that we set aside a little more time for this part of our trip. Its not that spending 8 days in Byron Bay was not great (supposedly it has a tendancy to suck people in there) but we now have so much to do in such a little time, that its becoming a blur. So, while Fraser islands was pretty much a big party with some nice scenery thrown in, the Whitsundays were more of the opposite and I don't think that we had enough time to switch modes.

We sailed on the mighty Reality Is... A old 50 foot catamaran sail boat that we found out was the self proclaimed party ship of the whitsunday islands. We also found out that there were about 30 people on the boat so we both expected it to be a booze cruise. It turned out to be a lot more chilled then we both expected and even more so than Fraser Island. With the exception of the Irish on board, most people were happy to just relax and enjoy the ride. We got really lucky again with the weather, which can change in minutes here. We had 3 rain free days and mostly sunny skies and we would just hang out on deck between our destinations. At night they would serve dinner on the boat and everyone would drink after until they dropped us off at the hostel and everyone would continue drinking and being social. I even partook in the social scene until I found someone's playstation with old nintendo and super nintendo games, which as sad as it was, was like looking into an old album of my life...and much more fun than trying to make new friends.

It has been a long time since I last sailed properly, and even though I didn't get to control our boat it still felt great when the captain turned off the engines and we actually sailed. While I don't think that the Whitsunday Islands are actually included in the great barrier reef when we snorkeled there were still some incredible reefs and fish to see. Unfortunatly as beautiful as the waters are up here they are equally deadly. Everytime we stepped into the water we would have to wear full body licra suits (very sexy), even to just wade through the waters, because of the jellyfish that if they don't kill you, you need to be airlifted to a hospital for morphine for the pain...terrifying. Our package even included a scuba dive, which was really just a 10 minute swim around rocks at a depth of 10 feet. Mike even managed to swim headfirst into a coral reef, it was pretty funny but he cut his head up and had to get it cleaned...but still who swims into a wall anyway?

Other than the snorkelling, scuba diving and swimming, our other day activity was to visit Whitehaven Beach. If you have ever seen a picture of the islands, this would have been the beach in that picture. The sand is bleached white, the water is like a swimming pool and forests run straight into the sand. It is definatly the most beautiful beach that I have ever seen. We spent about 2 hours there and because of the low tides we could walk pretty far out into the ocean and could see sting rays and reef sharks swimming right by the beach edge. Definatly the highlight of the whitsundays trip.

In the end the whitsundays sailing trip was great and very different to Fraser Islands. We didn't form as many bonds as we did on Fraser, even though there were more people, or that could be the reason. But I think that it was better that it was a relaxing sail trip because otherwise it would have been hard to take all of it in.

We just got back into Airlie Beach a couple of hours ago and managed to find what must have been the last couple of beds in the town because its easter weekend. I blame mike for not warning me about easter, he should have known better. Tommorow we were going to head up to Magnetic Islands to meet a friend from Sydney who has been telling us about this incredible full moon beach party, which we thought would be tommorow night seeing that it is the full moon, but as it turns out is next week....go figure. So we were going to head straight up to cairns but we just ran into our truck group from Fraser Islands so maybe we may stick around here for a couple of more days.

Also here is the blog of one of the english guys from fraser island. He has a bunch of great pictures and writes so much more than I do. Should give you a better idea of what we did.

http://www.travelblog.org/Australasia/Australia/Queensland/Fraser-Island/blog-52040.html

of goon

Quoting one of Josh's comments: "Have you heard of/tried the drink called, "foop" or something. I know it has 2 "o"s in the middle and 4 letters in total, something like goog, or moop, or doof, maybe soof? You know what I mean?? Someone told me it is an Australian alcoholic beverage so I thought I'd ask? Tood?"

I have finally realised what you were talking about. What you were told about is the classiest of all forms of alcohol... wine in a box, aka GOON. I'm pretty sure that we have it in Canada (or at least a milder form of it) but here for about $10 (aussie dollars) you can get 4 litres of australia's finest. It works out to be 32 drinks for under the price of a 6-pack and its pretty much exclusively what all backpackers drink. The best part that is that all boxes have under their ingredients: Fish, Milk and Nuts (no joke :). So not only does it get you shlitzed, but its also a square meal. (1st picture: Mike partway through a game of "hello harry", holding his goon brand of choice)

I have heard it being called wine, bag in a box (from swedes), grog, death bag, but it really is goon. Also when you finish the bag you can inflate it and use it as a pillow when camping! So I also got to benefit from its generous bounty. And when you are half way done it and have to remove the bag from its box, everyone slaps it, because anything that bad deserves to be slapped...or so it goes. (2nd picture: Even though I wasn't drinking, hello harry still proved to be a really hard game)

Fraser Island

We only ended up spending 2 nights in Surfer's Paradise. Maybe it was the bad weather that we got for the 2 days but the surf was horrible there. Even though there are over 70 km of beach there, the only good surf is about 30 km south of where we were staying so we couldn't make it out there. As for the nights, the first one we just relaxed in the bad hostel we checked into that day and the second night we moved hostels and met up with some friends from Byron Bay. That night we did a backpackers pub crawl, which was fun but really in the end I don't think that it justified surfer's paradise. We also did such a half-assed job of trying to sell our surfboard that we are now carrying it all the way up the coast and back down to sydney where Mike's family friends want to buy it. Later that day we caught the bus to Hervey Bay, which is basically just a small quiet town, which backpackers use to get to Fraser Island. And Fraser Island is the worlds largest sand island, which surprisingly enough is almost completely covered in forests and freshwater lakes.

Because of the package that we booked we had 2 nights in a hostel in Hervey Bay before we went on the "safari" on Fraser Island. We were put in a room with 3 english blokes (Simon, Chris and Matt) who we made fast friends with and formed our little crew for the next couple of nights and then subsequently (dont even know if that word applies?) for the safari. Both Mike and myself now agree that as far as finding fellas to hang out with, we have had the most fun with the english. This will probably explain all of the "cool" slang words that we are going to bring back to Canada. The ones we lifted off the english.

So the night before we were to set out on our 3 day/2 night trip we met our group (first picture) and we made a good attempt at staying up the night because we had to wake up at 5:30 to get in our jeeps for the trip. We didn't quite make it the whole night but the next morning I was the only one sober enough to drive so I got us going on the trip. The truck had a manual transmission (4x4), 11 people, half inflated tires, top heavy, and 11 people crammed into a car that could safely hold 7 at most. Needless to say picture 3 happended...just kidding mom, but all agreed that it was good fun to drive.

The rest of the Fraser Island trip involved driving through interior 1 lane roads that had 2 way traffic to get to freshwater lakes. There was one in particular, Lake McKenzie, that had crystal clear water and bleached white beaches (5th picture). There was also a cliff area, Indian Head, that is a breeding ground for sharks, dolfins and on the migratory path for whales, unfortunatly none of which we saw but still great to see (4th picture: Mike on Indian Head).

Both nights we ended up meeting up with the other groups from the same company and camping on sand dunes beside the beaches. Both nights we had spectacular sunsets (picture 2) and everyone played drinking and consumed copious amounts of goon (refer to next post). Unfortunatly just about everywhere in australia there are severe and strictly enforced fire bans, so we couldn't have a fire on the beach. Throw in a shipwreck (last picture) and more beach driving and that was pretty much Fraser. It was really so much better then we both thought that a sand island could be, but I think that a big part was that we had a great group and met up with other people that everyone got along with really well.

All of that brings me to where I am now, in Airlie Beach. We got back on the 3rd day of the safari at about 4 pm, showered, went out for all you can eat chinese food with our jeep group and hopped on the greyhound at 8 for 13 hour ride to Airlie Beach : Once again Mike showed his amazing ability to sleep anywhere and I think I managed a couple of hours at best. We booked into our hostel today, only for the night and tommorow morning we leave for another 3 day/2 night trip, this time though its a sailing trip in the whitsunday islands. Will be back in 3 days with more pictures and hopefully a more coherent and better picture numbered blawg (for you josh).

Surfers Paradise

Just got into surfers paradise, which is about 2 hours north of the coast from Byron Bay. We really only have a couple of days here but we decided to try something new after spending the week in Byron. Really haven't seen much yet but wanted to get out of the heat and upload some pictures that i missed from the last post.

Since the computer is so slow here I have some more time here. We didn't manage to sell our surfboard in Byron so we really only have the next couple of days to sell it, unless we want to drag it the whole way up the coast even when we cant use it. The rest of the time we spent in Byron was pretty much the same as the whole time. All there really is to do there is the beach, which isn't a bad thing but thats why we left to come up to surfers even though it is really just a different beach...just more gaudy and americanized. And just to back up the alternative life style of byron bay. Yesterday on our way back from the beach there where about 100 people standing in a circle holding hands, while some hummed and people where playing drums, digeridoos and kids where running around handing out limes. After about 10 minutes birds happened to fly over them which must have been the signal for all of them to throw their hands in the air and yell and then this guy started walking around telling a story the whole time holding a huge bud of marijuana...i had no idea what it was but mike had to explain what it was to me : Some lady told us that it was a peace gathering but it was really a wake for a local that had passed away. Okay the final picture just finished uploading.

1st picture is me at sunset on byron bay.
3rd picture mike doesnt know i was taking.
2nd picture i liked, i took and its my blog...remember that mike!
4th picture...because mike is a tool.