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Northward Ho

June 30th, 2007

I am now sitting in Alice Springs midway through my 14 day tour of the red center of Australia. I have one day off here before rejoining the tour for my trip to Darwin. The trip began with a 6:00 am pick up at my hostel in Adelaide. I was the first one to be picked up and proceeded to meet my very energetic guides who had such interesting names as Horti and Doc. These are not there real names of course, but merely nicknames that they have either decided to grace themselves with, or have been given to them by others. We then went around Adelaide and picked up the rest of the people on the tour. The final group consisted of 10 people (8 girls, two guys, and two male guides). The group was made up of two Koreans, two Mexicans, one Spanish, one French, one German, two Swiss, and me. I was the oldest person in the group with the exception of one of the guides who was 30. I belive the youngest person was 21. After completing all the paper work we started on our way. The bus we were in held up to 21 people so we had lots of room to spread out. We began to do the usual things that happen when you throw people together. We introduced ourselves to each other with the help of such musical classics as Ghostbusters to help break the ice. We soon left the city behind and made our way to Parachilna which was our first stop for the night. Read the rest of this entry »

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Adelaide

June 23rd, 2007

I have spent the last four days exploring Adelaide and attempting to wrangle up someone to share fuel costs with for a trip through the Outback. As usual and much to my frustration, I have had no luck in this regard either here or in Melbourne. Despite several promising leads and lots of leg work nothing has materialized. The two girls that I wrote about in my last entry decided to do a package tour despite it being cheaper to rent a car. They said they were scared what would happen if we broke down (a valid point I guess, but the cars are brand new and from a well known rental company). As a result, I have had to cross over to the dark side and book a package tour myself. No matter how I work the math, it is significantly cheaper to do the package tour than renting a car (going by bus means missing out on most of the sights) by myself and traveling to Darwin. I will spend the next thirteen days going from Adelaide to Darwin, stopping at all the interesting points in between. This will be my first multi day package tour I have ever done. It will be fun, but I still prefer to be around fewer people when hiking and viewing natural sights. Read the rest of this entry »

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Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road

June 20th, 2007

On Friday, I caught a Country Link XPT train for the 12 hour trip from Sydney to Melbourne. I passed the time reading and talking to people on the train. For a good part of the trip, I sat next to a doctor from the Philipines. She was taking a job in small town that needed a female doctor. Australia appears to have a shortage of doctors in rural towns. While I was in Sydney, I saw on the news that one small town was offering a signing bonus of $500,000 and a $200,000 a year salary for a general practioner. I arrived in Melbourne late and took the tram to the Melbourne International Backpackers where I was staying. Read the rest of this entry »

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Sydney – The Beginning of A New Journey

June 13th, 2007

A rather turbulent airplane trip over the Tasman Sea (or “the Ditch” as its called here) took me to Australia’s largest city of Sydney. I arrived at the airport and unlike New Zealand I positively flew through customs. I did have one brief stop though. As in New Zealand, my shoes again weren’t quite up to their standards. They were taken from me, washed down with a hose, and then given back to me. This was probably due to the fact that I had answered yes to the question on the customs form that asked if I had been hiking or on a farm in the last 30 days. At the airport exit, I began to look around for Cathie and Trent (friend’s of a friend of my aunt) who were picking me up at the airport. They said they would be holding a sign. For about 20 minutes, I did not see them. I proceeded to ask random mother and son looking couples if they were the people I was looking for with no success. Failing here (and eliminating the people holding signs written in Asian languages), I decided to see if there was another exit to the airport. Soon after beginning to explore, I discovered them at the other exit. They indeed had a sign with my name and had been performing pretty much the same procedure that I had done (except in their case they had to go up to strange men and ask if they were me). After leaving the airport, we went to their house, dropped off my luggage, and whisked back into downtown Sydney. Read the rest of this entry »

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Winding down in Akaroa

June 8th, 2007

This week has been one of my slower weeks since I have been in New Zealand. I spent a day walking around Christchurch exploring the cathedral and the surrounding area. On Monday, I woke up to a beautiful day and caught a shuttle to the train station. At 8:15, I boarded the Tranzalpine Train for the 4.5 hour trip to Greymouth which is on the west coast of the South Island. I found my assigned seat and found that I would be doing the trip backwards. The car that I was in was arranged in groups of four seats with a table in the middle. As I was travelling alone, I was relegated to a table at the end of the car that had one chair (facing the wrong way). At least I didn’t have to fight for a window. The train left Christchurch and made it’s way through the farmland which now occupies the Cantebury Plains. We soon left this behind and began the climb through the Southern Alps to Arthur’s Pass which is the highest point (about 900 meters) on the trip. The train made it’s way up by following several river gorges. The route consisted of four viaducts and 16 tunnels. The river gorges were bordered by sheep farms and the surrounding snow capped Alps. The landscape was full of brown grass and low covered trees as the mountains block most of the rain from getting to this area. I spent my time looking out the window and eating a chicken curry that I had bought from the café car. At Arthur’s Pass everyone got out of the train and snapped pictures or had the much needed cigarette. We then reboarded the train and began the descent to Greymouth. The train made most of the descent through an 8.5 km tunnel which is the third longest in New Zealand. We exited the tunnel and were in a very different landscape. The bright blue sky gave way to one that was full of clouds that had stacked up against the mountains. The vegetation was very green and thick. Read the rest of this entry »

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South and Eastern South Island

June 2nd, 2007

As mentioned in the last post, Jayne and I left Te Anua to explore the Caitlins (an area of remote beaches, lighthouses, farms, seals, whales, sea lions, and penguins) in a vehicle that Jayne was borrowing from her future employer. As the vehicle was a diesel and was being borrowed for free, I was looking forward to a few days of reduced transportation cost. Alas it was not to be. On the first day, as we were stopping at various sites on the way to Curio Bay which was our first stop for the night, we lost fourth gear. One might ask how fourth gear could be lost as it is an integral part of the vehicle. Everytime the vehicle was shifted into fourth gear it would pop back into neutral. We decided to continue without fourth gear which led to some rough shifting patterns. Other than the lack of fourth gear the day continued without any other problems. We spent the night in Curio Bay which has a fossilized forest on the beach. Unfortunately neither Jayne nor I could make it out despite walking on the beach and supposedly on the fossilized forest. Read the rest of this entry »

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Fiordland National Park

May 26th, 2007

After a while even travel and seeing new places becomes routine. It just becomes what you do and obtains a sort of normalcy. It is still fun but you tend to loose the sense of excitement that comes with seeing a new place. It takes something truly stunning to bring back that feeling. Fiordland National Park is definitely one of those places. Read the rest of this entry »

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Helicopters, Hitchhiking, and Hangovers (I needed one more H)

May 20th, 2007

The helicopter ride and glacier walk were by the far the most expensive things outside of airfare that I have done on my trip, yet, but well worth it. (Aunt Rosemary, you said you wanted me to use your monetary gift for something special on the trip, and this was it. Thank you!) I was put in a helicopter with four other people and ferried about halfway up the Fox Glacier. The Fox Glacier is one of the few glaciers in the world that is actually advancing and not shrinking. New Zealand is getting wetter as Australia dries out due to climate change. As I was the only non-coupled entity, I got to sit in the front seat next to the pilot. I had panoramic views of the entire glacier on the way up. Upon landing on the glacier, we slipped and slided our way to the box of crampons. After putting on the latest in glacier fashion footwear, I was able to walk around with no problems. We spent about three hours on the glacier looking in crevasses and walking through ice overhangs admiring the blue ice. The mountains on the sides of glacier were full of waterfalls plunging into the ice. My batteries on my camera quit working in the cold, so I am waiting for others in the group to email pictures. I didn’t have the worst of it, though, as one lady actually lost her camera in a crevice, or crevasse, to get my terminology right. It should make an archeological find one day. The guides had to be on the constant look out for clouds as the helicopters won’t fly when the clouds move in. If this happened before we could get off the glacier, we would have to spend the night up there (an interesting concept which would have definitely lead to great stories). Read the rest of this entry »

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The Heaphy Track

May 15th, 2007

I arrived in Picton after completing a cloudy and windy crossing from the North to the South Island by ferry. The ferry left Wellington at 8:30 am and cruised out of the Wellington harbor into the Cook Strait. The area between the two islands was very windy and rainy. The wind kicked up the waves causing me to get a little seasick. After crossing the Strait, we entered the shelter of the islands on the outskirts of the main South Island. The waves died down and despite the clouds the view was still very pretty. It consisted of many forested islands with steep slopes plunging into a green ocean. Upon arrival in Picton I found the bus to take me to Nelson. Read the rest of this entry »

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Paraparaumu and Wellington

May 8th, 2007

The last week or so has not been as action packed as the last few weeks have been. Upon leaving Wanganui, I made my way to Paraparaumu. This is a beachside town with the Kapiti Island wildlife reserve off the coast. I spent two nights here at the Barnacle Seaside Inn. The first night I spent in a share room but I booked the second night in a single room as every so often I just feel like being by myself. I was going to see about spending the night on Kapiti Island but was put off by the $200 a night price tag. I spent my three days here walking around town and watching movies. I saw Spiderman III at the theater but wasn’t impressed. I went to the nearby Queen Elizabeth park to do some walks. The park is full of sand dunes that is supposed to be what the coastline looked like before development. It is also supposed to be a Lord of the Rings filming spot but I didn’t recognize anything. There were no signs pointing anything out. On one clear day, I got my first glimpse of the South Island which was just visible at the horizon. Read the rest of this entry »

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