Road Trippin'

The next morning we got up early and drove in our pajamas towards Glacier Country.  We stopped in the small town of Fox Glacier and filled up with gas.

We then drove to the Fox Glacier and took a little walk up to the view point.  It was freezing there!

We then got back in our van and drove to the other glacier, the Franz Joseph glacier.  This is me walking towards the view point.

This is the Franz Joseph glacier!

Then we left glacier country and headed on up the road to a town called Hokitika.  It was known for it's Jade, which is a green stone, and there were Jade shops all over.  We walked around this town for a little while and experienced our first Walnut Crumble ever from a small bakery...and it was delicious.

We then found this little beach and decided to have a picnic for lunch.  We had the whole place to ourselves and it was really neat.  Eliz made us some ramen noodles on our little cooker in the back our van and we ate it on the beach!

Finally we pulled ourselves from our cool picnic area and got back on the road.  

I liked how you could see the reflection of the mountains in this picture.

We thought this was funny.  This cow was trying to escape!

Not quite sure what these animals were... but we definitely had to take a closer look at them.

That evening we got to Greymouth and walked around for a while.  This was the biggest town we had come to so far.  After visiting the information center, we decided to take a walk that would lead down to a waterfall.  It was supposed to be a lot like what you would see on Lord of the Rings (it was filmed in New Zealand).

It was getting dark pretty fast so we ended up running back through the trail so we could get to the coast and watch the sunset.  We liked this beach area, so we ended up camping there that night after a good meal of seafood pizza in town.

This is what the back of our campa van looked like when the bed was all made up.  We would just park, button up all the windows, and got to bed every night!  Here we were watching our DVDs from our bungy jump.

New Zealand - Juicy Style

On a Tuesday Elizabeth and I headed to the South island of New Zealand.  We had planned on flying into Queenstown (the adventure-seeker's town of NZ) and then picking up our camper van that we would drive and live in for the next few days.  

The weather was bad, however, so we ended up getting to Queenstown later than planned and missing our van pickup.  We ended up walking around the town that night and eating at Fergburger, a delicious place that served these massive hamburgers.  We also stayed that night in the Black Sheep hostel, it was Elizabeth's first one ever!

At the hostel..

That next morning we had an appointment at the Nevis Bungy at 8:00AM so we headed down to our meeting place pretty early.  It was our first time seeing Queenstown in the daylight, there were snow-covered mountains all around us and it was unbelievable!

Finally, after a 45 minute drive up a mountain, we arrived at our jump-site and did the bungy, it was the 3rd longest in the world (3 times as high as the one I did last time in NZ).  

It was freezing when we got up there and the wind was blowing like crazy.  Although tensions were high for a little while, we both got through it successfully and loved it!  This jump has a free fall of 6 and 1/2 seconds, so it was much smoother than the short one I did before.  Elizabeth also took the jump like a champ and did a massive dive, it was very impressive (especially since her 1st one was so high)!

This is a picture from Queenstown when we got back from the Bungy, we liked the yellow tree!

After the jump we got things sorted out with Juicy Rentals, picked up our camper van, and headed on up the road.

New Zealanders call them "campa vans", so this is our awesome campa van and home for those next few days!

We switched off driving.  It was a little difficult at first to get used to driving on the left side of the road, also the steering wheel is on the right side of the car.. but we got used to it eventually! 

Our first stop was Lake Wanaka.

We had no time schedule to speak of, so we just drove and stopped whenever we felt the need.  This was one random spot where we stopped and took a little walk to this waterfall, some Asians took our picture here.  After we were done, Eliz and I just started running back up the path to get in our van, mainly because it was getting so cold.. and these Asians just started running right along with us, like they were racing us.  It was so funny.

Finally, when the sun started to set, we ended up in a little town called Haast where we decided to stay for the night.  Just to give you an idea of the size of Haast, it made Clinton look like a big city!

We parked in a lot with this sign for the night!  There was another camper parked there too, though, so we figured it would be ok.

The next morning we woke up really early, at 6:00 am, and started heading down the road again.  We drove while the sun rose, along the coast and it was beautiful!

Sand Dunes, Camels, and Dolphins

Elizabeth and I booked a dolphin watching tour with 3 of my housemates and one other girl.  The tour also came with camel riding and sand-dune sliding.

This is on the bus on the way!

From left to right are: Erika, Tillie, Kristen, and Keara.  I live with the first three.

We first stopped at some massive sand dunes on the beach.

This is Eliz and I with our camel, Ruby.  She played in the movie Nim's Island that recently was released in the States, so she was kind of famous!

Ruby liked her close-ups.

The camels walked over the sand dunes and onto the beach.  It was pretty cool.  This is the other girls on their camels.

Elizabeth and I on Ruby, taking the lead!

Also at the dunes we did perhaps my favorite thing I have done so far, sand-dune sliding.  They give you these board type things, and you put wax on the back of them and slide down the giant dunes.  This is us at the top of the hill!

We raced down!

I almost ran into Eliz at the bottom!

The only bad part about this whole thing was the walk back up the hill after you slid down!

Anyway, finally we got to Port Douglas and got on our dolphin-watching boat.

We saw a bunch of dolphins and they were much bigger than the ones I saw in New Zealand.  I think I saw Flipper!  

I thought this man was so cute with his 2 dogs and their matching lifejackets, I think they were Beagles.

I took a few pictures of him, he really didn't want those dogs to drown!

This was such a great day, we had a ton of fun!

A Little Sister Time

One night Elizabeth went to see the Nutcracker at the Sydney Opera House.  I only had one ticket and, since I have already seen some similar shows and operas, Elizabeth went in my place!  She liked it but said the actual ballet was kind of boring.

The next morning we woke up and headed out for Manly Beach.  There is a famous walk in Sydney called 'Spit to Manly' that goes from the Spit Bridge to Manly Beach, so we decided to do it .. but backwards, so we started in Manly.  

This is at the beginning of our walk, the walk that we did is the Manly Scenic Walkway (the sign says that).  It was 10 km and took us right under 4 hours.   

This is on the trail.  Some parts were easier than others.  Needless to say, though, at the end we were exhausted!

The walk took us along the Harbour so we passed by a bunch of warfs and bays where people docked their boats.  

We stopped here and and rested while we ate our lunch.    

It was also pretty neat because across the harbor you could see the city of Sydney.

At one point we saw a sign for a 800 meter detour down to a lighthouse so we headed off the path to check it out.  We were picturing some beautiful structure on the water and wanted to get a picture of it for Nan because she loves lighthouses.

Well, it turned out that it was quite a hike downhill and the lighthouse ended up being pretty small.  We still took a picture for you though Nan!

Anyway, but we did end up staying down there, close to the water, to take pictures and to just relax.  

We just kind of sat there for forever until we realized that it was getting dark and there were no lights on the trail.  Also we had quite a little ways to go!

Finally, after leaving the pretty view, we got back on the trail and eventually finished our walk!  We were tired when we got home and so we cooked and went to bed.  (This seems to be the reoccurring theme of the trip)

That night it was poppy-seed chicken, broccoli, and pumpkin.  I have been eating pumpkin all the time here and wanted to try cooking one... and it turned out great!

The next day we were still tired from out walk and I had classes and labs, so we stayed around the house.  Later that night, though, we decided to try out Hillsong Church's Wednesday night service.  It is the famous, more contemporary church in Sydney that is on tv.  

We took a bus from the city to the church and back.  It was an extremely good service and we liked it a lot!  The music was especially good!

Somehow it got kind of late and we were still making our way back home.  We ended up having to wait 45 minutes for a bus back to school, so we ran into a store and got some groceries... then ate them on the bus on the way home!

Since Elizabeth has been here we have gone through 4 boxes of Weet-Bix.. which is a type of cereal here, 4 things of milk, and 4 jars of crunchy peanut butter!

Finally, after our feast on the bus, we made it home and put up what was left of our groceries.

The next day we went to the Sydney Olympic Park and walked around.  It was kind of like a deserted ghost-town, we thought it was kind of weird.  Apparently they still do have athletic events in the huge arenas and fields though, and it was easy to picture how the area used to be packed with athletes and spectators!

There was a giant fountain and Eliz and I found some benches and sat there for a while just enjoying the weather.. we also fell asleep for a few minutes =)

That night we came home and made a mexican creation consisting of rice, beans, chicken and tortillas.. yum!

The next day we woke up and went to Paddy's Markets to get some souvenirs for Eliz to take back home.  The markets are indoors in this massive warehouse type building and it is stall after stall of stuff.  
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We did some shopping and walking around, but most importantly Elizabeth got to try her first meat pie and ginger beer (just an Australian soft-drink).  These are both famous to Australia and she liked them a lot!