Hello all!

I have an especially exciting surprise for everyone today, and that is pictures! I'll add them in the appropriate places, so make sure you do some scrolling down over the next few days.

But on with the update!

So me, Ryan and PK picked up our rental car Tuesday and headed north. First stop was Goat Island Marine Reserve, NZ first marine reserve ever! We did some snorkelling, and some lying on the beach, which was enjoyable. Then we continued north along some serious windy roads until we got to Mangawhai. We stopped there because there was a campground with a pool. Sadly, the use of the pool require that we pay. Boo to that. Instead, Ryan and I headed to the local pub to play some pool. Poorly, I might add.

Next day we got all the way up to Paihia, which is uber touristy. But that's okay, because it's right on the gorgeous Bay of Islands.

So after a fantastic dinner and a fairly early night, we got up early and spent the day sailing on a tall ship.
We got to stop for a bit of a hike on one of the islands, and the views were spectacular, as you can see:

The next day I headed for the Waitangi National Reserve. The reserve is where the Waitangi Treaty was signed in 1840. Signed by the Maori and the British, its still controversial, and the basis of race relations here in NZ today. There's also a huge traditional canoe and meeting house, that were built for the 100th anniversary.


After spending two nights in Paihia, we headed for the west coast, and the tiny town of Apihara. There's not much going on there, except for surfing! So PK and I rented boards for a few days, and Ryan did a trip up to the northern tip of the island, at Cape Reinga.

Sadly, we had to ditch Ryan because he's hideously annoying, and though we did offer to drop him at the nearest bus station, he refused and went off with some Germans.

So PK and I headed south and drove through Waipoua forest, which is a nature reserve with many Pauri trees in it. Pauri trees are amazing. They grow to be super old, and are huge.


That night we camped in the middle of nowhere beside some lakes. Yay for lake swimming!

The next day we did a lot of driving, and ended up in a small town called Matamata. Which no had ever been to until a few years ago. Because the Lord of the Rings filmed there, and now you can go on a tour of Hobbiton. However, the tour was $50, and frankly, I'm not that big a fan. So instead, this morning we hiked up to see a 150m waterfall, which was gorgeous.

We're now in Rotorua, to check out some geysers, and I'll be sure and take some photos for everyone!

Hello all!

Today is my last day in Auckland. Its a nice city and all, but if you're ever in this part of the world, I would say that you really only need a few days here. Since I've been here I have hit up the art gallery, the museum, and the maritime museum.

The art gallery was pretty cool, and it was free, which is always nice.

The regular museum is a $5 donation, but they had a special exhibit about Pacific Ocean navigation that sounded cool, plus a performance by a Maori cultural group that I wanted to see. So that ended up being $30. The museum was pretty interesting, with lots of interesting exhibits about the human and natural histories of New Zealand. The special exhibit was about how Pacific Islanders navigated all through the Pacific thousands of years before Europeans did it, and that was vaguely interesting, if not worth $15. The performance by the Maori group was really cool, though. Its seems like a really interesting culture, and the way they've mostly held their own with the European New Zealanders is really remarkable. I'm hoping to learn more about them on this trip.

The maritime museum was also rather pricey, at $16. And, I might add, totally not worth it. The only cool thing was the re-creation of a steerage compartment from a boat, that actually rocked. Like you were in a real boat! But not worth $16.

Since then I've just been hanging around here in town, trying to organize the rest of my trip here. So far, the plan is thus: me and Ryan (American) and PK (Norwegian) are renting a station wagon for three weeks. We will stay mostly in campsites, with me and PK sleeping in the back of the car (fold down seats), and Ryan sleeping in his one man tent. We'll head to the northern tip of the North Island (where I am now), and then make our way down to the rest of the island. After two weeks, we'll drop PK off in Wellington, where he'll take the ferry to the South Island, where he plans to do the second tallest bungee jump in the world (220 meters!). Me and Ryan will continue up to Auckland, where we'll part ways. He's heading to the South Island (once he gets back here to pick up his bike), and I'm meeting up with my friend Krista, and her boyfriend Stephan. You may remember Krista from such adventures as: November! I'm hoping we can hang out for two weeks, and then I have to head back to Australia.

I'm thinking that what with camping and all, there probably won't be a ton of email checking going on, so I hope everyone stays well!

Well, I'm sad to say that my Tasmanian adventure is over. After arriving in Launceston, Alison and I headed straight to the bar. I don't think I will ever get over the hilarity that is small town pubs in Australia. First off, there are never any women in them. So as soon as you walk in, every head swivels towards you. After about half an hour, the bravest of them comes up to introduce himself, and soon you are surrounded by Aussies, intent on telling how great their particular part of the country is. Gotta love it!

Saturday we headed for Festivale, which is a big food and wine festival, and really, the only reason we were in Launceston. We sampled many tasty wines, and ate: truffle infused venison pie, fresh oysters, mexican food, possum sausage, the best cheese in Tasmania (really, it won the award last week!), seafood chowder, rosti, rasberries and cream, tempura mushrooms, and more that I can't remember. The only bad thing was the mushrooms, which were foul beyond all redemption. We were actually not able to finish them, and threw them out.

After a brief nap, we returned in time for the Robbie Williams cover band. It was a little surreal, because everyone seemed to be singing along to all the songs, and between the two of us, we vaguely recognized maybe three. Later we returned to the bar, and met some very funny underage girls, who couldn't get over the idea that people would come to Launceston on purpose.

Monday we parted ways, as Alison went to stay with a friend of hers in Melbourne, and I checked into a hostel for 12 hours, to wait for my flight to Auckland.

I've only been here about two hours, but here are some useful things to know about New Zealand:

1. You need to have a flight out booked or they won't let you in.
2. Their customs officers have no sense of humour (on reflection, this may be a general customs thing)
3. Their 50 cent coins are a reasonable size (I haven't seen any other coins yet, but I will most definitely keep you all up to date on this pressing matter)
4. Much like Australia, the street signs are invisible.
5. Auckland is very hilly. Don't plan on walking far with a 16 kg backpack.

That's really all I have observed so far, so on that note, I'm off.

Hurray for civilization! And by civilization I mean a place where my phone works. Most of Tasmania is not on the Vodaphone network, which is hideously annoying.

Regardless, my tour of the state was tons of fun. We saw many a waterfall, hiked up several large hills, and saw lots of wildlife. I maintain that it is too cold here for me, though, and so I'll be heading out early next week.

Today I'm hanging out in Hobart doing some laundry, and tomorrow I'm heading for Launceston with Alison. Alison is a Canadian girl I met on the tour, and we're heading up north for Launceston's food and wine festival, which is this weekend. Then on Monday I'll be flying to Melbourne for a 24 hour stopover on my way to Auckland. New Zealand, here I come! I'll arrive there on Tuesday evening, and hopefully by then I will have figured out some kind of plan. I'm not really on top of the whole planning thing, so I'll see how that goes.

On another note, I have some sad news. While on the roadtrip to Adelaide last week, I had all my photos put onto a cd, so that I could finally upload them here on the blog. Sadly, that cd has disappeared. I know, its getting pretty ridiculous. But don't worry! I have a backup plan! I'm going to email everyone I've met in Australia so far, and get them to send me their pictures, and then hopefully one day I will be able to post them for your viewing pleasure.

Okay, off to get some clean clothes!

First things first: Tasmania is bloody cold! Please note that it is summer here and its about 15 degrees out. Summer!

Moving on. The rest of the roadtrip was a great time. The hostel we stayed at in the Grampians was fantastic, and we enjoyed ourselves with a not so lovely box of wine and some jenga.

The next morning we were feeling somewhat worse for wear, but decided to do a six km hike with an English guy we met. Sadly, the trail was closed, so we did a bunch of short walkabouts, and then drove all over trying to find something better till about 4pm. Eventually we settled on lunch, and then headed for Beachport, population 407.

We wanted to stay at Mount Gambier, which has a crater lake and a sinkhole, but the hostel was full. Beachport was... well, it was small. The restaurant was really good though, so that's something. We thought we'd drive back to Mount Gambier the next day to see the sights, but it was cold and cloudy out, so we decided to head for Adelaide instead. We didn't really see much of Adelaide, because we got there after 5pm. Apparently everything closes very early in South Australia, which is massively inconvenient. Especially because things don't open particularly early the next day.

So we crashed Sarah's 21st birthday party in the downstairs of our hostel and scored some free sandwiches and cake, which is always a good time. The next morning we just managed to catch the most over-priced, badly organized ferry ever. For the four of us and our car, the return ferry was $470. I know! But, we thought, Kangaroo Island is supposed to be a truly unique and beatiful place! So of course its worth it!

We got to the island about 1, and after checking into our hostel, headed for the information centre. Where we were informed that everything costs money. When we asked about free things to do the woman almost laughed at us! So that day we went to an organic honey farm and had a look around, and then I bought some really good honey. Then we hiked up a big sand hill on really annoyingly small steps. When we got back to the hostel we drank some beers and watched some tennis, and then when it got dark we headed to the beach to try and find penguins. We could've paid $10 for a tour, but we figured we could see them ourselves. We did see a few, but they're black, and it was black out, so it was tough. I did get a picture of some penguin tracks, but the penguins themselves don't photograph well.

The next morning we woke up early to drive to the other end of the island to check out the national park. $7.50 each, and then we went off in search of platypuses (I can't figure out the plural). Sadly, they remained unseen, but we did see a million kangaroos and also a koala and some pelicans.


Next we drove to the Remarkable Rocks, which are acutally very well named. It kind of looks like somebody just placed a bunch of really big rocks on top of a bluff. Very cool.

I should also note that as we drove all over the island, we saw more roadkill than I've ever seen in my life. Really, I'm sure we saw at least 50 kangaroos and wallabies by the side of the road.

Anyways, after an emergency gas stop we headed for the return ferry and made our way back to Adelaide that night. We all went to bed pretty early as all the walking around had tired us out.

Next morning we drove ourselves to the Barossa Valley, which is Australia's most famous wine region. We got to Tanunda about noon, and booked ourselves an afternoon wine tour. For $25 we got driven to three wineries, and learned a lot about the local wine industry from our guide. We checked out Wolf Blass (very big and corporate-ish with okay wine), Gibson's (small, picturesque family run winery, with too much red, if you ask me), and lastly Peter Lehmann. The last was by far the best, with a really fun and interesting wine guy serving us. The bus dropped us back in Tanunda, and we headed for the local pub to kill time. After variously laughing at the locals and eating deep fried fish we headed out on our overnight drive. Since the car had to be back by 10am the next day, we decided we'd drive through the night, which would also save us money on accomodation. It was brutal, but we did it, arriving in Melbourne about 6am. The four of us went our separate ways for some sleep and showers, with me heading for my friend Laura's place.

After not doing a whole lot all day, we all met up again for my last night in Melbourne at the Espy and heard a couple of live bands, and got rather drunk. Which meant that my six am alarm was not very welcome. But because I am tough, I managed to get myself to the airport by 7.30 am, and have now arrived in Tasmania, where I expect to freeze to death.

Tomorrow morning I'm leaving on a six day tour of the state, and I suspect I won't be checking my email, so I hope everyone has a good week!

Hello everyone! Guess what: I'm not dead!

Yeah, so it turns out that St. Kilda, where my Melbourne hostel was, is a pretty happening locale. Which translates into Ali goes out drinking and seeing live music every night of the week. Literally for two weeks straight, I think I saw at least one band per night. It was fantastic, and other than the weather, Melbourne is by far my favourite Australian city. Also, Kim, please note I went to Pearl on Tuesday morning, but apparently there is no breakfast menu on weekdays (what's up with that?!), so no french toast for me.

But sadly, all good things must come to an end. So yesterday I left the city in a tiny car (Toyota Yaris) with three other people (two German girls and an American guy) and all our stuff and we headed southwest. We spent last night in Port Campbell (only redeeming feature being that its close to the Twelve Apostles. The only pub in town charged $6.60 for a pint: highway robbery!!), and today made it to the Grampian Mountains. Which means we've pretty much completed the Great Ocean Road (spectacular!), as we head towards Adelaide. Tomorrow we're gonna try and find a hiking trail that leads to swiming, and then onto Adelaide Saturday, followed by Kangaroo Island (once considered the most lawless place in the British Empire).

We'll get back to Melbourne on Wednesday, and then early Thursday morning I'll be headed to Tasmania, which should be fun. I'm doing a six day tour, and then we'll see what happens. Apparently its cold, but its also really cheap, which is appealing.

Okay, that's enough parentheses for everyone, isn't it?

So the fam left today, leaving me rather bereft. We had a great almost three week visit, but now the fun has ended.

Our climb of the Harbour Bridge in Sydney was succesful, in that we did not fall off. Sadly, the weather was rather uncooperative though, and we got soaked to the skin from horizontal rain. Which meant the pictures didn't turn out so good. It was highway robbery style expensive, but I'd still highly recommend it, and am thouroughly glad we did it. The views were incredible.

In Melbourne we stayed in a very nice apartment style hotel on the South bank of the river Yarra, which runs through the middle of things. Mum and I managed to get to the Melbourne Museum (so much better than the Australia Museum in Sydney!), and the National Gallery of Victoria, where we saw an awesome millinery exhibit.

All four of us went to the Immigration museum, where we crafted it up, and later to the Aquarium, where we saw a sting ray giving birth! We also spent a day at the zoo, sweating, and looking at very hot animals. Except the platypus, who was in a very nice cool exhibit. Hoohah for the platypus!

We also spent a day checking out the Sunday markets at St. Kilda, of course, we shopped.

Today after mum and the girls left for the airport, I headed to my hostel, which is in St. Kilda, and spent most of the morning loafing around reading my book at a cafe. I went to the NGV again this afternoon, because we didn't nearly finish it last week.

Not sure what my plans are for now, though I do plan on being in Melbourne for at least another week. I'm vaguely thinking about looking for a job, but I do hate job searching. I'll let you know when I figure it out.