Epilogue
Well two months have come and gone and I am back from the South Pacific. It was a good trip and I would go back if I had the chance. Fiji was my favourite place that I visited - the tropical island setting, the laid back, relaxed lifestyle, and the people. It makes me want to visit other islands in that area. New Zealand was interesting - jammed full of activities like caving, skydiving, luging, hiking. The blackwater rafting was a favourite of mine, as well as the hike through Tongariro National Park. If I had more time I would have loved to go to the South Island, because the pictures my brother took while being down there made it look amazing. Australia was fun although the scenery got kind of monotonous after a while, but the warm water for swimming and surfing made up for it. Plus scuba diving, hiking with lots of waterfalls, seeing and touching wild australian animals and driving a landcruiser were some of my favourite activities there.
Its good to be back home for Christmas, although now that Christmas is over, I should probably start looking for a job.
*Unfortunately I just figured out that the settings on this blog were set so that only members could comment, but now I set it so anyone can comment.
Oz Pictures
Here are some of my favourite pictures from Australia.
These two are from the Great Ocean Road at a place called the Twelve Apostles.
If you're in Australia you have to see kangaroos.
There are birds like this all over the place in Queensland. Some of them are quite annonying at night if there are large multitudes of them in the palm trees while you are trying to sleep in a playground outside since there was nowhere else in the town to sleep.
Let me tell you about pelicans. They are a lot bigger than I imagined, so I wanted a picture of how big this one was so I went and squatted down beside it so Kevin could take a picture. But this pelican was hungry or annoyed or something and while I was looking at the camera the pelican decided to take a bite of my arm. It was quite a surprise and fortunately my brother caught it on film. I think this is probably one of my favourite pictures of my trip.
On a small place called Magnetic Island, we hired some scooters and explored the island.
This is one of the nicest beaches I have ever seen. The sand is almost pure white and super fine, with crystal clear water. The only negative is that we couldn't swim due to warnings and fear about dying from a jellyfish sting.
This is a non agressive nurse shark. If this is what the non agressive sharks look like I never want to see a tiger or great white shark.
When we were hiking in this national park, these fat lizards about 1 foot long were rustling in the dry leaves all the time, making us think they were snakes.
This is Purling Brook Falls, about a 109meter drop or so. I would say that this is one of my favourite waterfalls due to the size of it, the rainforest setting and the fact that you can walk over the top of it before it drops and you can walk behind it at the bottom. You can see how big it is by looking at the white spot beside it which is my brother.
A place by Byron Bay, the beach was only 2 min walk from where we were staying. The surf was good for a day.
Wild cockatoos in Sydney.
The Sydney Opera House.
Sydney
Well I'm leaving Australia tomorrow to fly home on a 13.5hour flight - ugh. I just had a 13hr bus ride to Sydney a couple of days ago which actually didn't seem that long, perhaps because we stopped twice for 30 minutes and I slept for 6 hours.
Sydney kind of reminds me of Vancouver, maybe a combination of Vancouver and Toronto. Its a nice city, good to walk around in and explore. There is this $10 CD store where all the CDs are $10, so I bought the latest Dave Matthews CD.
We spent a few days in a place called Byron Bay. We basically just relaxed at the beach. Finally there was some good surf so of course I went. The board that I hired was probably the nicest I have ever ridden. It was an Australian made 7'6". I went out in the morning since the swell is best then. I had this one ride which was just awesome. It is rides like that why I love surfing. You see this wave coming and you paddle and you're on the top of it looking down the wave face and then you stand up and then drop down the face of the wave and then beside you is this wall of green water and its like 5 ft tall and you're just riding along.
...and then something happens, like the wave breaks and dumps on you and you're engulfed in white water and your board hits your elbow and your arm goes numb and when you get in to shore your tricep is bleeding because the fin of your board cut it, but you just had an awesome ride so you want to go out again. That's what I love about surfing so much. When the water is warm enough so you don't need a wetsuit that is great too, but the benefit of the wetsuit is you don't need to sunscreen yourself so often. That's one thing I'm not going to miss - sunscreening myself everyday. Without sunscreen you burn in 30 minutes. You can feel your skin burning without sunscreen.
The weather in Byron was kind of interesting as it would be so hot during the day and then around 4 or 5 the dark clouds would roll in and there would be a thunderstorm with raining pouring down (like it does in November in Vancouver) for a half hour or hour, and then it will be sunny with a perfectly blue sky. We got caught in one of these as we were riding bikes out to the most easterly point in mainland Australia. We got soaked, but it was nice to cool off from the heat.
I think that's all there is to write.
Fraser Island
This was a while ago now that we went to Fraser Island - the world's largest island made entirely of sand. It has vegetation on it, but underneath it is all sand. We did a self-drive 4x4 safari thing which means you are grouped together with 9 other people who signed up for the same thing and all fit into an old model, but new (1999) diesel Toyota Landcruiser. We went camping over there on the island so all our gear went up on the roof rack since inside was full of people. Our landcruiser was parti ularly full due to the copious amounts of alcohol these 5 scottish people brought. When I say copious I mean 120 cans of beer and 20 litres of wine for 2 and a half days. THey didn't end up drinking all of it, but they did drink most of it.
The island itself was interesting, the long expanse of beach (75 continuous miles) which you could not swim in the ocean due to a colony of tiger sharks, some fireweed which apparently gives you 3rd degree burns and hazardous currents. Some of the lakes on the island were crystal clear with pure white sand. It was quite a picturesque place.
But one of my favourite things had to be driving the right-hand drive landcruiser on the beach, through creeks, and up sandy hills. I've always wanted to drive a landcruiser off road and now I've done it.
Bloody Leeches
If you know me, then you know how much I love hiking. Especially when there are waterfalls to view. Well Kevin and I hired a car (a small little Hyundai Getz) and drove from Surfers Paradise up to a place called Springbrook National Park. This park was the ultimate waterfall hiking place. The first hike we did took us to this 100m (~350ft) waterfall over a vertical cliff into this rainforest gorge. We got a good view from the top, but the best view was when we hiked down to the bottom and walked behind the waterfall. It was a nice way to cool down.
The second hike we did also involved waterfalls, quite a few, like maybe 5. None were as impressive as the first waterfall, but were intriguing nonetheless.
During the hike there were these large black, shiny, fat lizards that would slither slowly into the bush just as you would walk by. Fortunately for us they weren't snakes. After our second hike Kevin noticed that his leg was bleeding in a couple places and knew that it was leech bites since he was with someone who had encountered them before. Later on when we took off our boots, sock was all bloody and Kevin's was as well. Some how the leeches had got into our shoes and taken a bite. The leech wasn't there any more but due to their saliva the blood does not clot properly and bleeds for an annoyingly long time. You don't even notice when they bite you. We cleansed our wounds in the saltwater as we went surfing. Probably not the best idea when there are tiger sharks around...but I think they do have shark nets.
Gold Coast
So it seems blogger has deleted all my but most recent posts. Crap. What can you do, but post new ones. We're here on the Gold Coast which has supposedly some of the best surf in Australia, but at this moment the conditions are poor and its pouring rain. We'll still probably go tomorrow though.
Some highlights of the past few weeks:
-kayaking up a river in Noosa
-driving a 4x4 Landcruiser on the beach and through the rainforest on the world's largest sand island
-cruising the Whitsunday Islands and relaxing on a pure white sand beach with crystal clear water
-diving on the great barrier reef.
