Lindsay and Ryan Do the World 2008/09

We got on a bus yesterday and headed to Mount Cook. The bus was packed!!  It was a Japanese tour bus too.  omg.

Mount Cook was beautiful.  It is the highest peak in New Zealand.  Edmund Hilary (the guy that climbed Mt. Everest first) has climbed Mount Cook as well.  30 metres of snow fall on this peak every year.  It has snow on it throughout the whole year too.

We had a two hour stopover at mount Cook and then got back on the crammed bus and headed another 5 hours north east to Christchurch.  This city is nice.  Not too big, not too small. We went and got groceries today and drove around on the free shuttle bus.  We are trying to book our next bus ride to Wellington (north island) today.  We also have a ferry ride tomorrow which is supposed to be very pretty we here.  We are meeting up with a couple of friends we met in Queenstown in Wellington.  That should be fun.

Nothing too exciting has been happening so that is about it for now. I will write again after Wellington.  Miss everyone.  Bye!

Well, we got up at 6am today and went to the most beautiful place!  Milford Sound.  Its about 4 hours away from Queenstown. We took a bus there and the driver was very informative.  He had a lot of interesting things to say about New Zealand. We were exactly halfway between the equator and the south pole today.  That was neat to know.  While we were driving along, there were 1000s of little waterfalls pouring out of the moutains (it was a little rainy the last two days)  We took some pictures but it doesn’t even come close to what it really looks like.  Its breathtaking.  The pictures or videos don’t do it justice.

 We got to Milford Sound and took a small cruise boat out around the fiords.  We saw fur seals laying on the rocks.  We also drank straight from a waterfall!  It tasted good too.  We went out into the Tasman Sea and the waves here HUGE out there.  We were going over them with the boat and the waves were crashing over the front. Ryan and I were standing there and we got soaked! lol.

 We went under neath a waterfall that is 3x the height of Niagara Falls with the same force! Not nearly as much water runs over it but it was still something else.  The mist alone soaked everyone, especially Ryan. haha.

 We got back to Queenstown around 8pm, it was a long, great day. We just got back from pizza.  It may have been the best pizza I have ever eaten.  Sundried tomatoes, chicken and brie cheese. omg. 🙂  We are going to stay in Queenstown one more night and then head to Mount Cook (the tallest mountain in New Zealand).  Should be fun. 

I will write again after that.  Bye.

First a quick comment about the steepest road in the world.  If any one of you saw this hill, you would not have walked up it either.  It looked like it was at an 85 degree angle!  There was no way I was walking up that, especially after riding a bike for almost 10 hours! lol

 Now, about Queenstown.  This is most likely the most beautiful town I have ever seen. Its surrounded by mountains and a terrific clear lake.  No wind here either! Warmer temperatures too. Lots of young people too.  We are staying at a party type hostel.  I didnt know if I was going to like it or not at first, but we are sharing a room with two other Canadian girls and 3 English blokes. They are hilarious.  We stayed up til 1am just talking and laughing last night.  Ryan and I got two top bunks.  Ryan was getting out of bed last night to go to the washroom and he fell right out of bed! LMAO. Made the loudest noise ever.  Poor thing. 😛

 We went to the top of one of the mountains that overlook the town in a cable car type thing.  Awesome views from up there.  Amazing.  Got a lot of good pics and video from up there.

I am not sure how long we are staying in this town, its a little bit expensive but there seems to be a lot to do here (if you had lots of money to spare).  I think our next stop is Milford Sound.  I will write again after that.

Well, its a beautiful day here, about 20 degrees, and I am not wasting it on a computer. Sorry.  I am going to go read my new book by the lake. 🙂  Now, that is the life!

Today we rented bike’s from are hostel. Great idea!! Its the best way to get around. There’s no way we could have gone where we went today. We started heading through town towards the coast. Our first stop was St Kilda Beach. There was some strong winds there. We road our bikes up this hill that overlooks the beach. Well riding along side the road Lindsay almost got blown away. The wind was so strong. I could hardly stay on my bike, thats when I look back to see that Lindsay could not.LOL. I thought she was going to fly away.

From there we went to St Clair Beach. Its was the nicest looking of the hole coast line. They have a nice path and its been the most developed. There was some big waves there, and the water was pretty rough. we didn’t dare go in. Plus it looked really cold.

Then we road through some town streets and hills. After all that riding we decided to go back for some lunch. Lindsay is taking a nap right now. when she wake up we are heading to the steepest road in the world. Lindsay thinks she’s going to beat me up it. ( “rest up little Lindsay rest up”). I will let you know later how badly she looses.

Tomorrow we are jumping on our tour bus to Queenston. There seems like there’s lots to do there so we will probably be there for a few days.

Ttys

Ryan

Hi again so after are little break for lunch we headed back on the roads. we went through town and stopped at the university. On the map it looked like a castle, thats why we stopped but when we got there its just a plan old university. Nothing special. We jumped back on our bikes and peddled to the botanic gardens. It was really nice. Lots and lots of flowers. LOL Next stop was the worlds steepest road where Lindsay had said she was going to beat me to the top. Well well that didn’t happen. In fact she didn’t even make it up. I walked the hole thing and once I got down I realised why she didn’t go all the way up. My legs were on fire and made for a interesting ride back. ( You were right Lindsay). I know that doesn’t happen to often.

Anyways bye for now. I’ll write in a few days

Ryan

We flew into Dunedin, a small little town in the South Island of New Zealand the other day.   This is where we are going to start our bus tour in a few days and work our way back up north to Auckland.  We have to be back to Auckland by December 9 to fly to Australia. There seems to be a lot to do around here in this small town. Its right on the coast so there is water everywhere.  Its quite cool here, about 15-18 degrees during the day.  The wind is quite cold though.  I have all my winter clothes on that I brought with me and I am still cold.  I was talking to this man on the bus the other day and he said that it was 42 degrees in Cairns, Australia, so we better enjoy this cool weather before we get to Australia!

Today we took a CitiBus to Portobello (an even smaller town about 30 mins away) and were going to try and see penguins and seals.  Well…we took the very scenic drive out there and then got off the bus and spoke to a local and he said the coast where the wildlife is, is a 15 mile walk!!! WHAT!!!  So obviously we didnt walk that far, so no seals or penguins were seen. Darn it.  That was a little disappointing.  But tomorrow, we are going to rent some bikes from our hostel ($16 for the day) and try to get to the coast that way.  We will see what happens.

We walked around Dunedin today and saw a lot of really old buildings and churches. They are beautiful. I will put some pictures up when I can.  We are going to go see the steepest street in the world tomorrow too!  I am going to bet Ryan that I can beat him up the hill on my bike! lol  🙂

The hostel we are staying at right now is great.  Free unlimiated internet, close to town and the staff are super friendly.  It is our first time staying in the dormitory type rooms (where we sleep with other people/strangers).  Up to this point we had been staying in private rooms but we want to save some money.  We are sharing the room with another couple right now which is good. Nice and quiet when we sleep.

We arrived in Auckland yesterday and took a very expensive shuttle bus to our hostel. $20/each return. The weather is much cooler which is nice, probably 20 degrees.  We did laundry and went for a walk to get a few groceries last night.  Auckland is a very nice city, clean.  We slept in today and we are trying to set up a bus tour to the south island.  Not much else to do as it  is  rainy.  Its the first rainy day we have had so far.  Calling home from New Zealand is 53 cents/minute!!  I talked to my mom and sister for not even 20 minutes and it cost $10!! lol.  IT WAS WORTH IT THOUGH! 🙂 We are going to start staying in the dormitory hostels because it will be much cheaper.  It seems New Zealand is kinda expensive.

I will write again in a few days to let you know how the bus tour is going. The south island is supposed to be much nicer than the north.

We left L.A on Sunday night at 1030pm, we arrived in Nadi, Fiji early Tuesday morning after a 10 hour 45 minute  flight.  Where did Monday go?  I don’t know!! 🙂  The flight didnt seem that long, I read my book and had a nap and then it seemed like we were there.  But when we got off the plane it was already Tuesday!  Very odd feeling. I felt so messed up, so tired.  So I went to sleep after we got into our first hostel.  The hostel was ok.  Not great, not bad.  We stayed there 2 nights and then this morning moved to a nicer hostel up the street for the same price.  We met a lot of great people at the first hostel. We drank with them the one night.  There was 2 americans, a british guy and a swedish guy.  The swedish guy cracked me and Ryan up! omg. So funny.  We met some professional Rugby players from Tonga last night.  They are HUGE!  The one looked like he could have ate me for breakfast! lol.

We are planning on going to Mala Mala Island tomorrow on a tour.  We get to go there on a big sail boat, snorkel, have a BBQ lunch and lay on a white sandy beach.  The tours are pretty expensive so we are only doing one day trip.  During the days in Fiji there isnt much to do, so Ryan and I go down to the beach (about a one minute walk) and go in the bath-water warm ocean!  I would say the temperature of the water is about mid 80’s!  Its not the refreshing but it cools you off a bit!

We went into Nadi town today to get some groceries for snacks throughout the day. We got some apples, cookies and crackers! YUM.

We tried to call home with our calling cards today from a pay phone but they dont work for some reason. So we have to wait til we get to New Zealand on Sunday afternoon.  Fiji time is 17 hours ahead of Toronto!  Its so weird thinking we are almost a full day ahead of people back home! 🙂

Thats it for now.  I will write again once we get to New Zealand.  The internet is quite slow but we will try again to put pics up once in New Zealand because we are there for 3 weeks.

Bye for now! xo

Thursday we rented a car to drive from Las Vegas to L.A. They gave us a brand new malibu. It was loaded with leather and power everything. it was such a nice drive. fri morning we had to return it at LAX Airport and pick up a new rental from another company. before we were going to return it we went to do laundry, well  are clothes werent dry and we had to go to return the malibu. We dropped of the car and loaded up our wet clothes on our lap, jumped on the tram and took it back to the airport. then jumped on another tram to the new rental place. Ofcourse there was a huge line. so we are standing there with a bunch of wet clothes.FUN FUN!! Finally we get to the front of the line and the lady says she ran out of cars and we have to take a convertible for the same price.”DAMN”. It turned out great for us. I cant believe the luck we’ve had with the rental cars.

Last night we went for a drive to Malibu and Santa Monica. They are both awesome so many nice houses and cars.  we found a street where they have buskers and lots of shopping and restaurants. we went for nice walk on the Santa  Monica pier.

This morning we drove out to New Port beach and Laguna beach. So nice!! anyways that where we are right now. we are going to the beach now, it looks busy.

By the way this is Ryan Not Lindsay. Yes i do write on here.

P.S. We tryed to post pics but it wont let us. we will try again.

The plan yesterday was to get up early, and drive to the Grand Canyon.  So we went to bed at 2am, got up at 7am and started driving. We got about 3 hours and stopped and asked how much further? 3 more hours we were told.  WHAT!!?  It was supposed to be a four hour drive.  Also, it is $25.00 each to get into the park.  To do the skywalk it was 60.00 each, and $20 more for parking!!  OMG, what a rip off.  So we decided not to do it.  Not worth $140 to us.  It was disappointing but oh well.  Now we have an extra day in Vegas and got to stay at the LUXOR!  We will go see the Grand Canyon on our next trip. lol.

We found out that you can get free internet access at libraries, so I am sitting in the Las Vegas library right now!  Its our second day in Vegas.  We have been so busy these last 5 days, I dont know where to begin.

 Calgary was so nice. It was great to see John. He picked us up in his old truck, it doesnt have a muffler, so when he was driving towards us at the airport, it was quite embarassing. lol.  We rented a car in Calgary and drove out to Crows Nest Pass, saw the Rockie Mountains.  The weekend went by really fast with John.  Had $1.99 breakfast!

We flew into Vegas the other day.  It has been really busy here. We have been walking and driving up and down the strip.  Looking in all the hotels.  Its so bright, you kinda need to wear sunglasses at night! (R and C, get it??!!) lol

We saw the Bellagio fountains last night (AMAZING!!), Caesars Palace, and the Venetian. There is soo much walking in Vegas! We found a good deal at the Luxor (pyramid) so we stayed there last night!  So nice.  The room was huge!  So was the bathroom.  We haven’t gambled too much yet.  We are staying in the downtown part of Vegas tonight for a change.  We are going to walk around Fremont Street and drink on the street!  I walked out of a hotel last night with a drink in my hand and it was so odd!  We took pictures of it.  Ryan had a surprise for me!  We are staying at the Excaliber tomorrow night and going the the club LAX!!  OMG! I have always wanted to go there. Looking very forward to it. 🙂

I am sure  I am forgetting a lot of things to say but that is all for now. I am sure Ryan will add to the blog soon.