Kia Ora! ( Maori Greeting)

I just got back from 10 days on the South Island of New Zealand, and I thought the North island was beautiful! Holy *&#^!

I left Perth Thursday night. My flight was delayed and I was so worried that I would miss my connection. I almost did but luckily they also delayed my connection because of the cyclone!

I arrived in Christchurch in the morning, so I had plenty of time to explore. The hostel I was staying in was a little out of town so I tried putting my backpack in a locker in the central bus station, but apparently if you don’t do it 100% right after .005 seconds, the locker steals your money! I did that twice then decided I would just carry around my backpack.

Christchurch has some really incredible street art and I saw a lot of it. This was my favourite :

Then I went to the Christchurch museum and walked through the Botanical Garden :

Then I made my way back to the hostel for the evening to meet up with all of the people that would be on this 10 day long bus escapade with me!

On the way back, I saw the Christchurch cathedral, which isn’t so happy looking because of an earthquake that came through three years ago. It is going to cost Christchurch millions to fix it!

The next day we woke up bright and early to go find our bus. It was a charter bus through Stray Travel, and we were all very excited to meet the driver, because he was going to be with us for the next 10 days.

His name was Twinkles and he was really cool, he gave us all easter eggs!

We had a lot of driving to do that day.

Our first stop was Castle Hill, which is also in a scene from Lord of the Rings! We climbed all the way up onto a giant boulder and admired the views.

Then we drove through Arthur’s pass which had some incredible views.

We kept driving and had to go over a long, windy and narrow bridge through the valley. I felt like we were in a movie!

We stopped in a little town called Hakatiki and saw the world’s greatest sock store!

Then we had about a three hour drive to the town of Franz Josef Glacier. On the way there we saw more than 15 rainbows. It was unreal!

We arrived at the hostel, which was the cutest little hostel I have ever seen. The wifi was called ” Free soup,” because they had free soup EVERY night. That was the best part. At the hostel I met this German guy who had just graduated high school, and had no idea what to do with his life, so he just picked up his things and decided to move to New Zealand for a year, how brave is that?!

After settling in, a few of us decided to try and find the glow worm caves which were supposed to be 20 minutes away. After about 20 minutes of walking down a pitch black dirt road, we were beginning to get super paranoid! – But what if Big foot does exist? – But then we started to see glow worms all along the sides of the path on the wet muddy areas. It was so cool! It looked like stars glistening. 20 minutes later, we still weren’t at the cave, but the path started narrowing and one of the girls suddenly screamed and ran back towards us. Of course, all of us knew it was big foot so we freaked out and started running to, but that path wasn’t wide enough for everyone so I fell down and twisted my ankle! Oh noooo! And it wasn’t even worth it because it wasn’t big foot. It was a big, terrifying possum in the middle of the path! We decided not to go any further because we had no idea how far the caves were, and my ankle was pretty swollen, so we headed back. It was still cool because we got to see the glow worms along the way! Running away from the possum had taking all of our energy away so we passed out as soon as we got back, we had a big day ahead!

The next morning, I woke up really early because I had signed up for a horse trek! I’m actually terrified of horse riding, so I was really nervous, but it ended up being really fun and I got to ride a really friendly horse called Apache, and we had some awesome views!

After that, we went and got lunch and headed out for our glacier heli hike!

We had to wear 4 layers and a really big jacket and some big snow pants, along with crampons ( which are the spikes that go on your feet.) Everyone was so excited! We walked out of the back of the reception building through this path in the rain forest, following signs towards the ” helipad.” We all felt like spies.

We had a nice fancy taxi ride up the glacier in this helicopter, then we hopped out and began our hike. We hiked through crevasses and little caves, and even saw an ice avalanche, because the ice is moving very fast ( 2m per day.) The ice was so clean that we even got to fill up our water bottles in a little stream of melted glacier that was running parallel to us. Much better than fiji water!

After our long hike, we all went to the town’s hot pools and chilled out for the evening. Man, what an awful way to spend Easter!

The next day, we woke up early to drive to our next destination. On the way we stopped at Lake Matheson, the mirror lake ( can you tell which way is the right way up?)

And Thunder falls :

I was tempted to go swimming but then realized that the water was absolutely freezing!

Then we drove past lake Wanaka, which is a lake that sits next to the town of Wanaka. Hey! Fancy that !

After driving past the lake, we stopped at the Wanaka tree ( creative names, eh?) The Wanaka tree is usually completely in the water, but the lake was much more dry than it has been in a while! Global warming isn’t real though right?

We were on our way to the hostel for the night when the bus driver made a phone call and realized the company had actually cancelled our booking there! We ended up being split up around hostels and motels across the town. I got split up from the friends I made, but that’s okay because they had extra space in their motel room, and free hot chocolate!

That night, we spent a while trying to find a good place to eat. We saw a sign down a little alley for pizza ( No Maddie! Don’t go down the dark alley!) and went down to check it out.

It was this cute little stone building called “The Cow” with an almost medieval tavern feel to it. They even had a wood stove inside and people were sitting around it. Everyone was so friendly and it was the best environment! I’m so glad we found this little place instead of going to one of the popular restaurants along the waterside.

I woke up at 6am the next day feeling very nervous. I was having an aerobatic flight lesson today! I’m scared of planes and heights! Am I stupid?!?!?!

There was 6 of us going, but I was the only one having the aerobatic lesson, everyone else was having a regular flight lesson… Still pretty cool! They all went up first at the same time in 5 little biplanes, and then once they all came down, my pilot came up and introduced herself to me and brought me over the stunt plane. I was FREAKING OUT. We took off and went up pretty high, and saw some incredible views over the lake. The way the lesson worked is that she would do a maneuver and tell me how to do it, then I would replicate it. Easy as huh?

We did a roll, a flip, a barrel spin and a left stall turn! I thought it would feel like a roller coaster, but it just felt like I was floating. You could not tell you were upside down, it was the coolest experience ever!

We left Wanaka early in the afternoon and headed into Queenstown AKA Adventure capital of the world, and now officially my favourite place on earth.

We settled into the hostel and then all went on an evening boat cruise on the lake. It was beautiful and you could stargaze from the roof of the boat!

After the boat tour, most people on our tour went out to the bars, but a few of us are way cooler than that and went to a cookie place. It’s called cookie time, which is also the name of the brand of cookie itself, and is NZs favourite cookie ! I got an ice cream sandwich with Salted caramel ice cream. Yum ! That filled me up, time for bed.

The next day, three of us woke up really early to go on a day long hike. We took the Queenstown Gondola up as far as it would take us, then we started walking. It was all up hill and so tiring! At one point it started raining, and we almost turned back, but I’m so glad we didn’t because the rain stopped shortly after, and when we finally made it to the top, there were some absolutely breathtaking views. New Zealand is unbelievable. Not only that, but there was a kea ( bird) just hanging out at the top ! Next time you watch Lord of the Rings and think that there is no way the landscapes are real, think again!

It took us about 3 hours to get back to the top of the gondola. At the top of the gondola you can take a luge down, which is basically a descent powered go kart. It was so much fun!

Once we got back to the hostel, we napped for a little, then decided we wanted to watch a movie that night. Unfortunately there wasn’t wifi in the bedrooms, so we went down into the lobby to download a movie, but the wifi wasn’t fast enough, so we spent the whole evening hopping around restaurants using up all of the wifi that they would give us to try and download this movie. We eventually gave up, but at least we got some yummy food out of it ! I had some bolognese pizza, and some poutine ( Canadian dish with french fries, cheese curds and gravy.)

The next day was an adventure packed day. First thing in the morning, we went to the shotover river, to go on the world’s most exciting jet boat ride! The boat basically went through a canyon and we were so close the rocks!

After the jet boat ride, I went back to the hostel and made lunch. Pro tip : Hostels have really good kitchens with everything you could possibly need, and you will save so much money cooking for yourself!

After lunch, I started getting pumped because I was about to jump off the world’s highest cliff jump : The shotover canyon swing ! It has a 60 meter ( 200 ft) free fall that goes into a 200meter swing. The platform you jump off is 108 meters high ! I put make up on so that I couldn’t let myself cry.

There is over 70 way that you can jump/ fall off this cliff. They range from scary, to very very very scary. You can simply walk off forwards, you can ride a trike off, you can slide off, they can Sparta kick you, or you can even got thrown backwards in THE CHAIR. Dun Dun Dunnnnnn. Of course, that one sounded the most terrifying so I picked it.

The jump masters put the harness on me and sat me in the little chair, and messed with my head for about 5 minutes. “Why are you doing this? Are you crazy? Don’t you see the cross down there?” Then one of them pushed me almost all the way and I thought I was going then he grabbed me again and pulled me back up and said “Just kidding!” What a jerk. Then they eventually pushed me while I wasn’t expecting it. It was exhilarating!

I deserved a good meal after that, so we all went down to Fergburger, and waited in like for 45 minutes to get the “World’s best burger.” It was SO GOOD.

We all were in serious food comas, so we went back and passed out.

The next day we left really early because we had a lot of driving to do.

We saw some [more] incredible views along the way!

We arrived at our hostel mid afternoon, and it was in the middle of nowhere! The town we were in only has 100 year round residents! This was the view from our window of Mt Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand :

Mount Cook is what some people call Mount Everests child, and a lot of people come here to climb to the peak as practice before attempting to summit Everest.

Later in the evening, we took an Argo off-roader into the mountains to see the Tasman Glacier, the largest in New Zealand.

Later in the evening, we went stargazing and I saw the biggest shooting star I’ve ever seen.

The next day we left this cute little town and headed out towards Rangitata, which is where a really cool river scene from Lord of the Rings is filmed. In Rangitata, we were staying in this little hut in the middle of nowhere, with triple story bunk beds! Sick !

We walked down to the bluest river I’ve ever seen and hung out with some cows.

Later that night, we all made a huge dinner because it was the final night of the trip. It was sad, you make such good friends on these little trips ! During dinner, we looked outside and saw a possum with a baby on her back, it was so cool.

The next day we left bright and early for the airport, but we had a slight delay …. #NewZealand

We arrived very early at the airport, because most people had morning flights, but my flight wasn’t until 9pm, so I went and checked out the International Antarctic Discovery Centre. I hung out with some rescued huskies, and even went in a storm room and experienced an Antarctic storm for 5 minutes. I will never complain about the cold ever again.

Then I went back to the airport and waited to board my flight.

I had a 9 hour overnight layover in Melbourne, so I decided to just hang out and nap in the airport until my morning flight to Perth. I was a little bit paranoid of someone taking my bag, so my dad gave me the awesome idea of tying my shoelaces through it while I napped! Obviously if you are going to sleep in an airport, make sure you do it in a safe place, like not by the front doors where anyone can just walk in! Most airports also have showers, so make sure to check that out because I don’t know about you, but planes make me feel gross!

The day ( or like an hour later after I woke up from my nap,) I slowly made my way to my flight’s gate. I had gotten an emergency exit seat, woo! Extra leg room ! After another 4 hour flight, I made it back to Perth and napped for a really long time.

What a great 10 days!

Buckle your seat belts, kids! And welcome to the craziest 10 days of my life.

It was a dark and stormy night…..

No, Okay. So it all started on Friday morning. A group of 35 of us were about to get piled into 3 buses for 10 days. We were all so excited!

I woke up at 5:45 AM and went to the bus to find my friends. We got on this awesome bus that looked like it was ready for the outback.

The first part of the driving today was just to get out of Perth, so we all napped.

Our first stop was at a pretty beach called Hangover Bay ( the sign has been stolen multiple times.) The water there was an incredible turquoise :

On our walk back to the bus we saw a huge golden orb weaver! They have really strong webs, you can pluck it like a guitar.

Then we drove a little further and stopped at another pretty beach to make lunch! It was called Dynamite Cove.

After lunch we set off for Geraldton, a town on the coast of Western Australia. In Geraldton, we saw a WW2 memorial. Each seagull on the roof of the memorial represents a life lost on the HMAS SYDNEY.

We set off for our home for the night, a farmstay ! We set up our tents and the farmer drove a tractor around and gave us all a ride to see some piglets and some horses. We even saw a kangaroo on the way!  When we got back, we cooked dinner and watched the sunset.

The stars were also incredible, but no picture could capture that!

Bright and early to see the sunrise over the farm the next day!

After putting our tents away, we got in the bus and headed out for Kalbarri national park. You can see so many different landscapes in this park. On one end, you can see the cliffs:

And if you drive for a couple of miles in land , deeper into the park (maybe seeing emus if you’re lucky), you can see incredible red rocks and gorges:

And all of this before lunch !

We drove by this really cool tree :

It’s like this because the wind blows so hard in one direction over this field constantly! Pretty cool !

Then we headed out towards the stromatolites :

A stromatolite is layers upon layers of cyanobacteria that has built up over millions of years. These stromatolites in Hamilton are the oldest and largest in the world. If you stand on just one, you can do hundreds of years of damage! One of the people in our group dropped his hat and ran on them to get it back! Don’t be that person!

When we got to our beach side campsite, it was so windy that most of the tents wouldn’t stay up ! The wind made for a very long night, and everyone was really grumpy the next morning. But all of that was made up for because we were heading to Monkey Mia to see some dolphins!

We got to Monkey Mia at around 7:30am. The dolphins usually swim by that area at 8:15, but come 9am they still hadn’t come! We almost all lost hope. But there were some emus and pelicans around to keep us entertained. SUDDENLY everyone started running towards the beach! The dolphins had arrived!

There were three of them and they all came very close! They are wild dolphins but they come and visit Monkey Mia because they get fed fish.

In Australia, you aren’t allowed to touch dolphins. The oils on are skin can seriously damage them. If you are swimming in Australian waters and one comes up to you, put your hands up so that if anyone sees you, they know that you aren’t trying to pet the dolphin, you could get in serious trouble !

After hanging out with the dolphins for a little bit, we went on a boat ride. We saw a pearl farm that has recently sunk, some dolphins hopping around, some sea turtles, and a dugong ( which is kind of like a manatee!)

While we were following the dugong around to try and catch a better glimpse of it, our captain beached the boat on a sand dune! We all had to go to one corner of the boat to put the weight on that side and he revved it up as hard as he could and we made it off! Phew.

After leaving Monkey Mia, we went to Eagles bluff, with on one side, an incredible view of the Ocean, and on the other, a crazy lookout of the outback.

Then we went to this place called Shell beach… But not a shell in sight!

Just kidding.

The whole beach is made of little tiny cute white shells.

The water was so clear and you could see lots of little fish swimming around your feet.

We went back to the campsite and went in the natural hot pools! Relaxing! Then we went down to the beach and I have never seen such incredible stars! It was crazy! Our guide told us they would be even better later on in the trip, I couldn’t wait.

The next day, we had a 600km drive! Our bus driver was really smart and told us a lot of cool outback tips. If you see large trees, dig near them and you will find water!

On our drive we saw this really long fence. It runs the whole way across the North of Australia. They have this because a lot of non-native animals in the South of Australia (like feral cats) that kill the small native animals, like bilbies! They want to keep them out so they can repopulate the North with all of these awesome creatures.

We also saw some free-range cattle and some goats on the side of the road, and even a thorny devil (a super cool little lizzard)! Then…..

DUN DUN DUNNNNN

We broke down!

Okay we didn’t actually break down, but it was almost just as bad as that! Our AC STOPPED WORKING! It was actually cooler outside than it was inside the bus by the time we stopped, and that’s saying a lot because we were in the Outback. Fortunately, our bus driver used to be a mechanic and fixed it in no time! Off we went!

We drove through Carnavon, which is where most of Western Australia’s fruit is grown. When driving through Carnavon, you are supposed to throw out all of your fruit that you didn’t by there.

We saw one of the largest rivers in the world, the Gascoyne river :

We kept driving and saw some really cool termite mounds. The termites here are basically ants with no pigment, and they build these huge mounds to protect themselves from the sunlight! If these mounds were hit by a truck, it would destroy the truck before destroying them. Depending on the temperature in the mound when the Queen lays her eggs, the roles of the termites will be different. They could be warriors or workers!

We made our way to coral bay and went snorkeling and saw some pretty cool corals and fish.

We went to bed really early that night because we were going snorkeling with whale sharks the next day!

Everyone was so excited to go see whale sharks today! We got to the place and tried on wetsuits and flippers and put them in these little backpacks and went off to the boat!

They send out a little plane to spot whale sharks, and then once they spot one, they let the captain of the boat know so we can go catch up with them! In the mean time we went snorkeling on Ningaloo reef. We saw hundreds of starfish!

After about 2 hours of waiting for the plane to contact us, we had lunch on the boat. At this point, everyone was getting a little sea sick as the waters were really rough. We all laid flat on our backs on the boat because that is supposed to help ! Which I did, but most of us took a nap too. At around 2pm, we were all starting to lose hope. Everyday since the beginning of the season there had been whale shark sightings in the mornings, but none yet for us! We still kept looking. We even saw some dolphins!

At 4pm, the captain came out and told us that it was time for the plane to go home. It was the first time this season that there hadn’t been sightings and he was really apologetic, but they took us for one more snorkel to make up for it. We went to the cleaning zone ( like in shark tales) where the sharks go to get nice and clean! We swam with about 15 whale sharks and even 2 turtles. It was awesome but so tiring because the waves were so high! We went back to our campsite after that, and everyone passed out right after dinner. Long day !

We left coral bay the next morning with a lot of driving to do! We drove on a road that doubles as a plane run way in case of emergencies, seeing as there aren’t many hospitals out here! We finally hit some hilly areas. It had been all flat until now. The legend says that the hills were made by the rainbow snake sliding through the earth. There is only one plate under Australia, so all the hills are just different layers of dirt on top of each other.

We drove down a little dirt road to eat lunch at a rest area. There was a guy there with his dog. His name was Dennis and he has been travelling for the last 3 years because he has cancer and wants to make the most of his life. (pro tip :stop and talk to people !)

We left the rest area and kept driving. Our driver wanted to take us through a shortcut, which turned out to be a crazy bumpy dirt road with kangaroos and emus!

After driving down this road, our bus was filthy!

After hours of driving, we finally got to Karajini National park. The average rainfall for the area is 2 days per year. Make our first day there one of those 2! We were drenched! We set up the tents, but didn’t put any of our stuff in them because we didn’t want it getting wet! Then we went for a hike.

We walked to a place called Dales Gorge, which was beautiful, and we went for a swim and hung out under the waterfall. The rain almost made it even more surreal.

Afterwards, we all trudged back to camp in our soggy clothes. Luckily it had stopped raining in time for dinner! So we grilled some food and all sat around in a circle, but then it started downpouring! Everyone ran for shelter. The rain was not about to end and eventually everyone grumpily made their way to the wet tents for the night.

We woke up the next day and opened our tent door. We were basically in the middle of a giant puddle! It was still raining! This is the most rainfall the park has seen in years, just our luck ! This trip was beginning to show everyone’s true colours. Everyone was grumpy and cold (except me, I thought this was hilarious), and somehow even though our clothes had been in the bus, they were all damp. We were supposed to stay at Karajini national park for 3 days, but there was a cyclone coming down that way, so our driver made the decision to head back, we were going to have to cut the trip a day shorter than planned!

Before we left the park, we went on one more walk and found some aboriginal carvings in the rocks :

When we got back to the bus, we just threw all of wet shoes and sweat shirts on the floor, man that was going to get stinky!

Even though we cut the trip a day short, we still had 2 more days left on the trip because they couldn’t fit all of the driving into one day! I was excited. I was enjoying this, I thought it was really ironic and funny!

We drove through huge floods. Our bus driver told us than in the 17 years of him driving these roads, he has never seen it like this!

We arrived at our next accommodation later that evening. All of the roads were starting to get blocked because they were all cracking from all of the water! The dry ground wasn’t used to it and the dirt was giving out under the roads causing them to crack. We weren’t sure if we were going to be able to leave the next day! Our tent got flooded that night and my phone got water damage ( pro tip : don’t put your phone on the floor of a tent when there is practically a monsoon outside!) and stopped working. The rain was basically following us!

We woke up the next day and the roads were open ! We had breakfast and were ready to go ! About 90 % of the people on the trip wanted to be home right now, but I was having the time of my life. I found some rice to put my phone in. There was already another phone in there! Oops! We all jumped on the bus and drove straight to our next bed for the night! The rain finally let up, and it didn’t actually rain again once for the whole trip ! We still had to go home a day early though because the rain was still catching up with us and we didn’t want to risk the roads cracking and not being able to go home. We arrived at the sheep farm in the early afternoon. We were sleeping in the sleep shed! And it was dry ! What a luxury! Luckily most of us had fly nets because there was so many of them, it was crazy!

We all started cooking dinner because everyone wanted a feast for our last night! Everyone was happy again because it wasn’t raining and our clothes weren’t totally drenched anymore. We made curry and had smores and stargazed, then we all went off to our communal shed for the night.

The next morning, we packed up everything and went and said goodbye to the sheep and headed out. We drove past the rabbit proof fence and the school used to teach and house the stolen generations of that area. Rabbit proof fence is a movie about 3 children who were part of the stolen generation. The stolen generation is basically put short, when white people first came to Australia, they took all of the aboriginal children away from their parents at a young age, to rip away all of their ties to their culture because they disagreed with it completely. These 3 girls escaped one of the schools ( seen below) and walked 200 km all the way to this fence they recognized as the rabbit proofing fence near their home, and followed it to their family. I highly recommend reading about this, it’s very interesting and so sad that this actually happened to people. So recently that some of these children are still alive now!

To make up for the fact that the trip had to end a day early, we got taken to a really pretty river walk, and to a chocolate factory ! Yum! I got hokey pokey ice cream while I was there : An Australian favourite!

After leaving the chocolate factory, we drove the 45 minutes back to the university. I was pretty sad to be leaving but most people were relieved.

This was definitely the best 10 days of my life, and probably the most eventful !

 

Fremantle is a small town quite close to Perth. As Australians love to shorten words and add Os to them, it is locally known as Freo.  It is bustling on weekends and in the evenings and has a personality of it’s own. It has an awesome atmosphere, and is the perfect place to sit back and people watch.

Here are some of the awesome things you can do in Fremantle :

You can walk along the beach and see some really cool sculptures during certain times of the year :

You can walk around and see the really quirky stores that range from Victorian era themed clothing, to fairy costumes for people of any ages :

You can do a torchlight tour of the Fremantle Prison. Very spooky, be prepared for jump scares! It is listed as a World Heritage Site, and is said to be haunted…

 

You can go to the Fremantle market on the weekend and get fresh fruit, hear music and see all kinds of art work!

You can have a didgeridoo lesson at Didgeridoo Breath, hosting “The most comprehensive range of Authentic, Hand-made Australian Didgeridoos on the planet.” It is really difficult to play the didgeridoo and it gets you out of breath really fast! I have a whole new respect for people who play the ” Didg!”

You can visit the Fremantle Roundhouse, the town’s center for punishment back in the day! This pillory ( the wooden device below,) unlike the ones in Europe that were just used for holding and humiliating people, is used to torture people. Their feet would be tied to the bottom as they were seated and their ears would be nailed to the back of the board… Not fun!

You can go to the Western Australian Shipwreck Museum! Below, you can see the Batavia, a Dutch ship that unfortunately didn’t make it through Australia’s stubborn reefs back in the 1600s. If you go to the site where she washed up, you can still see the damage to the reef today.

You can go clubbing ! The Newport Hotel on Wednesday nights ( student night) is my personal favourite. Be sure to check the bus schedule and plan your way back before going out, if not you’ll have to pay for a cab!

Fremantle is a great place to just hang out and eat yummy cheap food if you have a free afternoon! They also have a lot of festivals and street performances, so be sure to check the calendar if you plan on visiting!