Auckland driving

It's about time for a post!

I arrived in Auckland around 2am.

Caryn 'arrived' in NZ two days later when she had finished her gripping book. It was nice to have her back (sniff, weep). I read Room next, so she had to put up with an absent companion too - haha!

When we got to our YWCA hostel we sneaked into our rooms, our separate rooms, which happened to be two-shares with other people. Keep in mind it's 2am. My roommate rolled over and went back to sleep. Caryn's, who had been living there for 6 months, FLIPPED OUT! She screamed! Caryn screamed! The whole floor screamed! Okay, just the little roommate screamed.

Our first day was mostly spent pricing out rental cars. Then I learned to drive in downtown-Auckland-rushhour-standard-left-side-left-side-watch-out-turn-there-turn-around-LEFT-SIDE!! I was only on the wrong side twice, no bigs. Caryn is a super navigator and is comforting when I had a tiny cry. Now I am tot's fine with driving, it feels natural on the left.

Caryn stopped us half way through the drive to go for a swim, which calmed me right down. So she knows me pretty well.

We spent the night at a couchsurfer's. We had tea and discussed birds and the bridge class she leads. Her neighbour's cat comes in her house which she acts grumpy about, but really she feeds it and we saw expensive cat treats on the counter.

We cleared out of Auckland lickity-spilt and headed North to northland.

Mardi Gras parade tips

- If you get there at 2 or even 3 pm you will have a front row spot. The wait goes by quicker than you'd think.
- Set up on Oxford Steet.
- Get milk crates from a convenience store (seriously) or bring $10 to buy a seat. Even though you won't need them to stand on (since you are in the front row), you are sitting waiting for five hours. Also, a milk crate is wider than you are when standing, so you create more room for yourself and don't have people constantly quashing you.
- UMBRELLA -ella -ella -ella -AY AY Ay ay
- they move the fence forward at 6 pm or so. Hold on!

China town bank lions, Sydney. Nothing to do with Mardi Gras, sue me.

Sydney - parade vs. party

"Happy Mardi Gras!"

The wilderness/city opposites of the last post wasn't the only contrast for us in Sydney. Mardi Gras parade was fantastic while the after-party left something to be desired:

We got to the parade site at 2:00 pm (for a 7:30 pm start) so we had front row seats!

By the time it started, the streets were quite literally packed shoulder to shoulder:

Some of the floats were just beautiful and the vibe was awesome - cheering and smiles all around. Some favourite floats include the lifeguards, the giant-cd-fish, the Wizard of Oz, the children and parents, and the general diversity of all of them (like Thai Drag queens, or "Gay Anglicans with our Muslim friends"). We had so much fun!

VS.
In contrast, the after party was disappointing. There were thousands and thousands of people there, so I'm sure many people enjoyed it, but for us, the music was just awful. What's a dance party without good music? Plus, the atmosphere was... well, it felt like a combination of grad+YC+laser challenge+cattle yard+shirtless man-fest. Plus, did I mention the music? The taxi on the way home had better music. Don't get me wrong, I like trashy bar music. But this wasn't even that! Anyway, we had a good time making fun of it all.

[picture your grad after party] (we didn't take any pics, it turns out!)

Sydney - wilderness vs. city

Sydney was a place of opposites for us. First we stayed with local couchsurfer host Sara. Sara was wonderful. She picked us up at the airport, fed us, hung out with us, drove us around and was great to chat with.

Sara took us to nearby national park Ku-ring-gai. Even though it's super touristy in Sydney, we only saw two other people in the park - WAY more big spiders than people. We also saw a lace monitor (think of the evil Joanna on Rescuers Down Under. Man that was a good show.)

We hiked down to the ocean along the Flint and Steel track, where we found our own private beach to swim at. We did another short hike to an aboriginal stone carving site and then got a view of the city from Hunter's Hill.

host Sara near the beach

VS.
Next day we were in the city. Huge contrast: living in busy downtown at big 780 on George hostel, this was all hustle and bustle. We spent our days exploring, one of the highlights being a ferry trip to Manly Beach past the famous opera house.

Manly beach area

Opera house and its reflection in ferry window

Intro to Couchsurfing

An Intro to couchsurfing for the "I've never heard of couch-surfing and it sounds sketch young ladies"

CouchSurfing (CS) is a database website of people who are willing to host travelers or who want to be hosted. You create a profile with what you want others to know about you, but there are also things on your profile that you can't change.

For example, if you are a bad guest and your host writes a negative review about you, that review is locked onto your profile. This is good, because then we can choose to stay with people who have, say, 17 positive reviews and 0 negative reviews.

People are also more legit if they've replied to 100% of requests (even if they say no, at least you know they'll get back to you). You can also see if that person last logged in 2 hours ago, 2 days ago, or 2 years ago.

CS also has a safety system to verify if a person and place are real - these people are "verified." Some people are even "vouched for," another system of checks.

I first couch surfed in Canmore, AB and it was a great experience. Later, two people came to stay with us in Prince Albert (of all places. One was going up to Grey Owl's cabin; the other, Matt, was just touring Saskatchewan in the winter for 3 months. Obviously.) Matt and I discussed CS etiquette at length - how many days ahead you should request, how to figure out if you can attack the fridge or if you need to buy your own food, etc.

Reasons why we want to couchsurf:
- comforts of a home: kitchen, easy internet, laundry, scotch tape, etc
- save money
- **meet locals. In hostels, we realized, you only meet other travelers. With couchsurfing, you get the insiders' advice.

www.couchsurfing.org
to find us, hit the "surf/host" tab, go to "couchsearch," do an advanced search and type in our names (or search for couches in Prince Albert or Edmonton)

Consider setting up a profile and hosting! Great way to vicariously travel through your worldly guests!

The Nunnery in Cairns

When we arrived in Cairns, we showed up at the hostel which we had booked based on a recommendation from Lonely Planet, which regarded the Cairns Women's Hostel as "the best" in Cairns.  It was very clean, the manager Dawn was super friendly, and (as stated in Lonely Planet) she referred to each of her "guests by name.  Alison and i were a bit shocked when we headed to bed at 10 pm on that first night, that 5/6 of the girls in our room were already in bed!!!  This is very ironic, considering at the hostel we stayed during our first week in Australia at Byron Bay (the Arts Factory) has a pretty active party scene, however Alison and I were so Jet Legged it was all we could to to stay up until 9 (and then we were wide awake at 4am, when our bunk mates were just stumbling home from the bar).

As all tourists do in Cairns, we did a one day Great Barrier reef trip, which included an intro dive and snorkeling.  We went with a company called Reef Experience, based on Dawn's recommendation.  They were good.  There were only about 30 others on our trip (if you go with a cheaper trip, you could end up with 100+ people on your boat) and the ship crew were very friendly.  The first reef we went to was awesome- lots of fish and we even saw a shark!! (calm down mom, it was only a meter long!)  The second reef was a bit disappointing as it was very "dusty" due to cyclone that had passed through several weeks ago.  the coolest thing we saw there were "sea feathers"- a type of star fish that looks kinda like sea weed on a piece of coral. 

We also did a tour of the tabletop region, which is the rain forest region that surrounds Cairns.  Our tour guide "Captain Matty" was fun, but also told some pretty tall tales.  For one, he had us all convinced that we needed to beware of "drop bears", a carnivorous cousin of the koala bear. 

Captain Matty and his tour bus

Alison with the Cathedral Fig tree we saw.  It was giant.  And beautiful.

Our day with Captain Matty was full of waterfalls (we saw 5), a couple of trees, a couple nice lookouts, and lots of swimming (Ail was in her glory).  The thing about the rain forest is, 80% of what is in it is poisonous (or so said our exaggerating tour guide) AND IT IS ALSO FULL OF LEECHES.  gross.  I spent the day walking very carefully (this was probably the worst day to wear flip flops.  ever.)  And the tally at the end of the day was:

Caryn: 0 leaches

Alison: 2 leaches.



Alison and some boys from our group swimming in the waterfall.

Here i was being a creep, taking pictures of these people who were definitely not on our tour.  What can i say?  I love polka-dots and photo good photo ops.

Alison on big rock next to the river after one of the waterfalls.

Another thing we did in Cairns was go to the Art Gallery.  There were some really great exhibits.  This one with birds, and a glass exhibit.  Some pictures:

One of our favorites.  These were blocks, and there were bird images on every side of them.  It was pretty stunning.

The Purple Balloon Video

As promised here is the Purple Balloon Video!!!