Katie's School!

After New Zealand I flew back to Bond University where Kaite spent this semester studying.  It is in the Gold Coast, which is known in Australia for the magnificent weather and beaches.  This is Surfer's Paradise, and the tall building is the tallest residential building in the Southern Hemisphere.

After Kaite and I hung out at Surfer's for a while, we took a 2 hour walk down the coast to the next beach, Broad Beach.  It was the longest walk I've ever taken on a beach, but I really liked it!

Bond had just finished up its semester, it is on the American system, so Katie and all of her friends had a farewell dinner at The Lake, this kind-of fancy restaurant with incredible food.

I got a pig belly.  This guy suggested it for me because I am from the south.. which I'm not sure what exactly he was implying by that, but I got it anyway and it was delicious!

This is the whole group!

Min, the girl to the left of me, was celebrating her birthday that night as well!

Finally, on one of the last days there, a bunch of us met at this pancakes place where Katie and her friends had yet another last meal.  

 

I finally left and came back to Sydney.  I had been gone for almost a month so I was glad to get back, although I had a lot of work to catch up on.  One afternoon my roommates and I were kind of bored and we had all of this Easter candy that their moms had sent.  So we put this peep.. well really it was a little marshmallow bunny, into the microwave and blew it up!

That next week, before Katie flew back to the states, she flew to Sydney first for a last visit!  We met up with Courtney and Marie, two of the girls we went to New Zealand with, and walked around the city!  

Finally we went to another pancakes place in Sydney one night.  This is Katie and I waiting for our food, we were starving!

Finally Katie left and I had a week before Elizabeth flew in!

New Zealand 6 - The End

When Kaite and her friends left I hoped on a backpacker's bus network called Stray Bus. Mostly students and younger people on holiday (vacation) use this bus system because it is inexpensive and it makes stops along the way to certian desinations. It goes all over New Zealand.

I decided to head further North, where the weather is a bit nicer, to the Bay of Islands for the next day or so until my flight. The busdrivers all have nicknames on Stray and mine was just called #2. So #2, on the way to the Bay of Islands, made 3 stops along the way.

We first stopped at this place where they had these huge trees. They are famous in New Zealand apparantly and he told us the ancient legend behind them. So - this is me hugging the famous tree.


#2 also stopped at Goat Island. The Kiwis (New Zealanders) named their islands after whatever happened to be on that particular island. He said there used to be a bunch of goats here, so they just called it Goat Island.. simple enough. We hopped in the water here, it was freezing, and did some snorkeling before hitting the road again.



Finally, we stopped at place where this guy takes in hurt birds for a while until they are ready to go back into the wild.


The Kiwi bird is the huge thing in New Zealand, it is why the people are called Kiwis. However, the Kiwi is extremely extinct and nobody ever gets to see them. Only a few wildlife parks have them and they are behind glass and expensive to see. There was a New Zealand girl on our Stray bus and she said she had never seen them or knows anybody that has ever seen them...and she has been in NZ her entire life.

Well amazingly enough, this one man has the only lisence in all of NZ to actually keep a Kiwi bird and we were lucky enough to meet him.

This is Sparkey, the 1-legged Kiwi, and #2 sat us down in a circle and the man came and just put him right in the middle of us. Sparkey lost his leg in a trap so this one man takes him around and shows him to elementary schools and nursing homes. We actually got to take pictures with and pet Sparkey, it was really neat and I felt like it was kind of a privaledge.



This is the bird guy with an injured Hawk. I thought it was interesting because he has had no formal training at all with birds, he just has been working with them forever and knows a ton about them! It was pretty neat to watch him pick them up and deal with them.

Finally I got to the Bay of Islands and went to a Moauri Culture show that night. The Mauri people were the first people on the islands and they have tons of heritage and special ceremonies they do. I hadn't learned anything about Mauri culture up until that point, so this show was extremely informative and entertaining.

This is the Bay of Islands.. I tried to get a picture of them. It is basically what it sounds like.. a bunch of little tiny islands that you can go to and snorkle, fish, parasail, kayak, boat around, and just relax on. It was really beautiful. Here are 2 little islands.

Finally, before I hopped back on the bus to catch my flight, I had to get a famous ice cream hamburger that I had been hearing so much about. It was excellent!

And that concludes the trip to New Zealand!

New Zealand 5 - ...3...2...1....Bungy!!

This is our transportation we took all through New Zealand. We wore clothes though, don't worry!


Ok so we finally made it back to Auckland near the top of the North Island (our whole trip started here first, then we flew south.. then slowly made our way back north). Katie and her friends flew back to their school this day, but before they left a few of us just decided to jump off the harbor bridge! Since bungy jumping originated in New Zealand and is a pretty big deal, it was neccessary for us to try it. So, that morning 4 of us began making our way to the bridge.

It was a much longer walk than we had anticipated, so we ran into a shop to see what we should do, either catch a taxi or a bus or something, so we could make our jump time. There were no busses or taxis around though, so people just said to hitchhike! Well, none of us had ever really done that before, but some nicely dressed business people assured us that it was perfectly safe and that we wouldn't have a problem flagging down someone.

So... we started walking down the road and holding out our thumbs and eventually it worked! This New Zealand courrier, Leon, stopped his big red truck and said hop on in... well there were 4 of us and we felt safe and could see the bridge in the distance.. so we did.

Leon - our ride


This is us piled into the back of Leon's van among all of his packages.



So we made it to the bridge finally and geared up to go. It got a little bit more scary as we walked up the bridge and actually got to the top where we were supposed to jump from, but all in all it wasn't that bad. I absolutely loved it and definitely want to do it again very soon.. but from higher up!

This is pre-jump, with our harnesses on. Tensions were high here...




This is Ashley post-jump. I absolutely love this picture of her. She and I both got dunked in the water. This is after they just pulled her up, she absolutely loved it too! It's an exhilarating feeling.. this photo captures it pretty well I think!



Here is the video of my first bungy. It pretty much sums it all up!



After our jump we headed back down the bridge and found a nice harbor-side restaurant for lunch to celebrate! We got these amazing seafood chowder bread towers. They were soo delicious! I also had a fun time playing with the little sea creatures they put in there =)

Finally Kaite and her friends left and I began my few days in NZ alone. This first day I just relaxed, wrote some postcards, enjoyed a chai-tea late from Starbucks, and walked around the city. This is the famous Auckland City Skytower.

New Zealand 4 - Easter Family Fun

On Easter Sunday we traveled all day, we called it "Easter Family Fun". We first missed our bus in the morning because we thought it came at 8 instead of 7, so after working it out with a kind bus driver, we were on the road again (after about an hour of panic).

We then hopped on a ferry that took us from the South Island to the North Island called the Interislander. It was a nice ride and we played cards and just mainly relaxed.



That night we stayed in Wellington. This is our hostel room and what we stayed in everywhere we went in New Zealand. Some were nicer than others, this one was pretty nice and spacious compared to some we stayed in that resembled shoe boxes.



The next morning we woke up early to explore the city of Wellington. This is Courtney and Kaite on the beautiful harbor.



We then hopped on another bus which us took us further up the North Island to Hamilton. I tried to take some pictures out the window of some sheep. This picture really doens't even do it justice though, the sheep are literally Everywhere in New Zealand! (All those little white things are sheep)



The next day we rented an 8 seater van and headed up towards the Aranui and Waitomo Caves. Ashley, in the driver's seat on the right, did an excellent job driving on the opposite side of the road and we all felt extremely safe (well after the first 5 or 10 minutes=)




This is more beautiful scenery. The snow from a week before still hadn't melted off the mountain tops.




Us with our van!



We finally made it to the caves. This is the first cave, the Aranui Cave, that we walked through. These are some stalagmites and weird cave spider things.



After the first cave we took a nature walk up to some lookouts and saw some waterfalls.



This is the last cave we went through, the Waitomo Cave. This Kiwi lady was our tourguide and kept saying "Ok people come this way" and "People look at this".. Right here she is saying, "Goodbye people!" We thought that was pretty funny.

The Waitomo cave is the famous glowworm cave. We took that boat through the this pitch-black dark cave and there were millions of these tiny glowworms on the ceiling. It looked like stars when you looked up, it was an amazing experience.

"Goodbye People!"

New Zealand 3 - Akaroa and the Dolphins

This morning we hopped on a bus to Akaroa with plans to swim with Hector Dolphins. The ride to Akaroa was beautiful and we stopped at a little cafe on the way. We finally got to get up close and personal with some sheep and were able to pose for a few pictures with the scenery.

In Akaroa we put on wetsuits and hopped on a boat to look for the famous Hector dolphins. These are extinct miniature dolphins and are only a few feeet long. There are only 7,000 left of them in the entire world!

These wetsuits were a good inch or two thick and they were soo tight, but apparently they were supposed to keep us warm in the freezing water.



This is us on the boatride out to look for the dolphins. The plan was to swim with them if we found some "suitable, friendly ones". It is illigal to swim with the dolphins who are either feeding or that have babies with them.

Well, as it turned out, none of the dolphins weres suitable enough for us to swim with. We did get to see a whole bunch of them though. It was a slight dissapointment (especially to Katie who is in love with these little creatures), but the water was freezing and we got a partial refund.. so I was alright with it.

Anyway, I tried to take some pictures of them, but it was extremely hard because they moved so fast! We also saw penguins, eels, and a bunch of birds in the water. I was mostly fascinated with the Albatross, which is the great, mythical bird that you read about in all of the legends and stories (like the Rime of the Ancient Mariner). I would have put up a picture, but since it is from so far away it looks like a seagull... and I just didn't think that would be appropriate for such a grandoise bird.. they deserve much more than a simple seagull status!

Finally we got back to the little town and got out of those wetsuits. When we could finally breathe again we stopped at a Mr. Whippey's ice cream van and got some dipped cones. They were amazing!


We spent the rest of that day walking around Akaroa. Katie and I bought a bunch of fudge that we sharred with everyone when we got back to our hostel that night in Christchurch. We got flavors that included Bailey's Irish Cream Liquor, Caramel, Rocky-Road, Passionfruit, Andes Mint, and just chocolate.

This is Ashley and I in our matching New Zealand jackets. It was really cold in Christchurch and I got plenty of wear out of mine for the rest of the trip!

New Zealand 2 - Quad Bikes and Hamner Springs

After a long night's rest in Christchurch, we got up early the next morning and got picked up by our guide, Vailma, in her van. She first took us to Thrillseekers Canyon where we rented Quad Bikes (4-wheelers) and drove them around for a while.


We went through the water and mud and were very messy after it was all over. At one point, when the guide went ahead of us, I attempted to do a doughnut with my 4-wheeler.. but I ended up flipping it over. Although I had a hard time getting it flipped back right-side up and cranking it up again, it was still very worth it

The scenery was absolutely incredible. It had snowed in the mountains a few days earlier and so the tips were still white!

We then got dropped off at Hamner Springs, a town known for its natural thermal pools, and met Vailma in the park for a picnic. She prepared a delicious barbeque for us in the back of her van and we had a lovely lunch.

Katie and I in the little park with the mountains in the background.

After lunch we walked to ther thermal pools. The three hottest pools were sulphur pools and they smelled like sulphur (rotten eggs). They were still really nice to sit in though because the scenery around them was beautiful and it was cold outside, so the hot water felt great!

Courtney and Kaite in one of the pools.

We also got some delicious gelato in Hamner Springs at the Pickled Pig. I got mandarin and lime flavored, so it was very interesting but I loved it!

Vailma finally dropped us back off in Christchurch in the Botanical Gardens so we walked around and took some silly pictures.

We were exhausted after that long day, made pasta for dinner, and went to bed early!