Tasmania prt 2

Hi,
     We awoke to a very cold morning and some rain that hung around for the next 3 days. Our first stop of the day was to take a hike around Lake St.Clair which was only about a 5 min drive away. It was a nice walk through many different types of scenery. From there we starting driving towards the west coast. On our way to Queenstown we found another waterfall to hike to and the rain picked up a ton! Nelson Falls was the coolest waterfall in my opinion it was just awesome, tucked back deep in a lush green forrest with a pretty heavy rain really set an unique mood.

     Driving after the waterfall was quite crazy! So much rain our wipers couldnt keep up, probably not the best time for that to happen because we were driving through the mountains on narrow winding roads. I enjoyed driving in this weather especially because all the rain made the mountains come alive with waterfalls which was really neat. We arrived in Queenstown and got settled in there. The hostel had heated blankets that covered you on the top and bottom, it was perfect after a cold rainy day.

     The next day we got to the west coast town of Strahn and did a hike there and had a look around town. Then we started heading north. Our first stop was at a secluded beach after traveling miles down a dirt road. It was really awesome because on the west side of the island is the Indian Ocean, so that was pretty neat to see but it looks just like the rest . . . . The weather that day was also sub-par but I loved it. Mother nature was really pissed off that day, high winds and rain made for a really cool beach scene. There were white caps for as far as the eye could see and knee high sea foam being blown in in thick walls. Christen and I walked close to the water only to get caught by one of these walls, harmless but it was really fun to try and out run them and not step in the pools of water that had formed.

       From there we stopped at Henty Dunes just up the road. On one side of the road was lush green forest and on the other side were seemingly endless sandunes. We hiked up to the top and found it to be quite windy. The rest of the group went back to the car but I wanted to hike around a bit more. It turned out to be one of the most memorable parts of the trip for me. I really enjoyed the solitude of being on these massive sand dues over looking the ocean. I came across one spot where the sand had been blown into a nice peak ( exactly like you see in movies when people are lost in the desert). Walking across it on the peak was really neat because the sand was so unsupported on the top that I sunk up to my knee or higher with every step, like dry quicksand. The drop off on one side was pretty steep so I made a bit of a platform that I could get a running start and jump from. Needless to say I was entertained here for quite some time doing flips, spins and seeing how big of an avalanche I could make.
      Then we drove to the very very very small mining town of Rosebery. We stayed here for the night at a hostel situated just atop a waterfall. We spent our night making dinner and relaxing
in the common room/kitchen with all the miners. The miners we super friendly and it was great to swap stories with them. One nice miner gave us heaps of information about the rest of the island so we re planned the second half of the trip to see some stuff that he had mentioned, mainly penguins in the town of Stanley on the north shore.  That night there was an AFL game on tv so watching it beside the miners as they cheered and hollered at the tv was pretty entertaining, they were nice enough to try and familiarize us with the rules. (AFL is the Australian Football League and its one hell of a sport. Picture our NFL with no rules and no padding)  This night it was warm enough for me to save a few bucks and sleep in the car so I did. It proved to be a pretty poor decision as I woke up many times throughout the night to guys slamming their cars door on their way to the mines.

- Evan

 

 

Tasmania (prt 1)

Hello world!

     Oh man where do I even start with Tasmania, it was all a blast! Im not sure what drew me to go there, maybe the awesome name or the amazing wilderness, probably both actually, but I knew it was just someplace I had to go.  I bought my tickets flying into Hobart and departing 3 hours north from Launceston 6 days later. At this point I had zero plans and in a worst case scenario I would spend those 6 days just trying to get to Launceston. I began to look into places around there to couchsurf at in Hobart for the first night. For those of you that dont know what couchsurfing is let me fill you in. Couchsurfing is an internet based community that revolves around traveling  (kinda like Facebook where you can "friend" people and see their profiles). This internet community allows you to find other people that will host you at their house for a given length of time and in return you offer those same services to someone who might be traveling around your home area (and of course you have the right to deny people, they dont just show up at your doorstep). So I began looking for a host using this community, then I thought about posting on the community page and seeing if anyone would like to take a road trip around the island. I was looking to hopefully get 4 people or so to travel around and split the costs. So I wrote up a short message and posted it on Hobarts community page, shortly after posting I found a post someone else had made stating the same thing! and most importantly he was leaving out of Launceston the same day I was, PERFECT! (turns out we were actually on the same flight...weird) So this was how I met Adriano a 23 year old bloke from Brazil. We tried to find some more people to travel with us. At one point we were up to 4 people and even had a free VW Bus at our disposal. But if theres always one thing you can rely on its change and before we knew it we had lost the 2 others and our bus...   :(   I was really looking forward to the bus. 

      I caught the train into Sydney and flew off to Tasmania. On the plane I sat next to this nice 20 year old guy named Joe from Sydney who had some awesome dreadlocks (dont worry mom I didnt get dreadlocks....yet). We had some great conversations and he told me all about Tasmania. (Joe if youre out there I lost your contact info, sorry man.) 

       I touched down in Tazzy (as the locals call it) and looked around for Adriano as he was to pick me up at the Airport with the car. . .but things are not always that simple. I got a text from him saying that plans have changed 1) we are now traveling with 4 of us! which is awesome I was super pumped for that! and 2) that they were not at the air port and I was to catch a shuttle to address "X" about 30 mins away where they would be. So I found a shuttle hopped on and off I went. The ride had great views going into hobart and saw                                            (Russell Falls)

my first of many rainbows in Tasmania. I had a pleasant conversation with a lady named Pip whos from south of Sydney but raised in Tazzy. She was very nice and invited me to stay with her family. (Pip if youre out there I lost your contact info, sorry, thanks for the   

offer). Well I got dropped of and looked at my phone and there was another message. Adriano messaged me saying that they had been kicked out of that place and that they were no longer there and I was to walk to the corner of "Y" and "Z" to find him. It was pretty cool I felt like I was on the TV show The Amazing Race just chasing checkpoints around a foreign city! Not to long later I finally found Andriao! He told me that he had met two other people in the hostel the night before that would like to travel with us so we went to go meet them.

       Under an overhang of a building trying to escape the wind I met Monika, a 26 year old female from lithuania who now lives in Denmark. Monika is a great person who made the trip a ton of fun and always had a cool story to share. Working in Copenhagen she has served breakfast to some very famous people including, Prince, Whitney Houston, Steve Wonder and Boyd Tinsley from Dave Matthews Band. Here I also met Cristian a 26 year old male from Chile. Cristians in Australia studying at the University of Queensland. 

       Together we made quite the international group. Its hard to say what places is my favorite of the ones I have traveled to so far, its like comparing apples to oranges. But, I can say that Tasmania has been my favorite method of traveling. Meeting three complete strangers and jumping in a car for a week to explore some of the worlds most impressive and untouched nature was just an amazing experience! I can not speak of it highly enough. 

      So we spent the next few hours walking all round Hobart trying to rent a car. It proved to be quite tricky and we ended up departing a few hours late but it was great to finally hit the road. Our first stop was Mount field National Park. We got there quite late and decided to go for the hike knowing we would return well into the dark of night. We hiked to Russell Falls which is one of the most famous and beautiful waterfalls on the island. It was absolutely stunning! we took some pictures and then continued down the trail onto the Tall Trees Walk. These are the second tallest trees in the world just behind the great Redwoods of California, but they do hold the record as the tallest flowering plant in the world. The trees here are Eucalyptus Trees and are very beautiful. A neat thing happens to these trees, as they get older they shed their limbs on the way up and as the limbs fall to the ground they tare off the bark all the way down kind of like string cheese. So the trees look pretty gnarly sometimes with their bark just all tattered. A lot of times it just sits in big piles at their base and across the trail. Hiking back in the dark  we start to see the wildlife come out. We saw our first Wallaby and it was so cool! Just this little kangaroo like guy hopping around. Then we saw another! and another . . .and another . . . . . .and another . . . . . . . . they were everywhere! We got back to the car park and there was a small field with a good 25  of them or so. 

       We got in the car and drove to Lake St.Clair where we would stay for the night. We pulled up to this magnificent wood and stone building that seemed as if it came right out of no where. Getting out of the car was a bit of a shock as the air had cooled of to about 1 or 2 degrees Celsius. We walked inside and were greeted with the smell of two wood fires burning in the main room. The building was fantastic, it was full of character and made you just want to hibernate in it for the winter. We payed for our rooms and were directed to the hostel part which unfortunately was not part of this main area. The hostel was a trailer fitted into about 7 single units that measured about 5 foot by 10 foot with just a heater, a counter, a small window, and a bed. We made some dinner, got to know each other better and then it was off to bed.

Cheers,

Evan

                   (standing in a fallen tall tree) 

    

New Zealand day 10-14 end

Hello once again,
     Day 10 started with us driving to the humble town of Wananka situated perfectly between mountains and a lake. We arrived just before noon had some lunch and got our rooms and the rest of the day was ours. I choose to take a hike up a near by mountain with some friends. There was a really steep section that provided us with a good hour of entertainments just by rolling rocks down it and seeing how far they would go (despite getting older im still easily entertained). We spent the afternoon just taking in the views from the top. When we got back to the hostel it was time for dinner and then later some Karaoke which got pretty wild!

     Day 11 we said goodbye to Wanaka and headed off to Fox Glacier in an even smaller more remote town. In about 1 hour of driving in this area we went from a beach, to a rainforest, to mounatins and a glacier, talk about seeing it all. Once there they hooked us up with some gear for climbing then bussed us over to the Glacier. This glacier is one of only two spots in the world where a glacier descends into a rainforest. New Zealand has over 3,000 glaciers and this is one of its most famous. I found the drive over the glacier to be very entertaining. Along the way we passed many signs that told us where the glacier had been previously in history, it was incredible to see how much it has receded even in the past 50 years. Also while we were driving our tour guide told us to pay attention to the next little stretch of road ahead and see if we noticed anything. I only felt us go over a medium sized dip in the road but nothing major so I wondered if i had missed anything. Our guide proceed to tell us that that dip was us driving off one tectonic plate onto another, specifically driving off the Indo Australian Plate and onto the Pacific Plate. This contact point is the reasons these mountains and the rest of New Zealand exist. We parked the vans and it was about an hour walk up to the glacier.

 The walk up was spectacular to see how the mountains have been carved out by the glaciers after thousands of years of erosion. There were many mountains that just stopped abruptly and turned into cliffs, you could tell that at one point the ice had been that far down the valley and that high up the mountain. There was even a point in history where this glacier flowed 10km out to sea.  On the glacier it was quite cold and a little rainy but that just adds to the experience. We hiked around for a while and got to see some neat features and even some people doing ice climbing and repelling.

     After the hike we headed off to get settled into our hostel for then night. This was my favorite hostel during the whole trip. Our room was separate from the main area, it was basically our own little house with a private kitchen and living room.  After dinner a group of us spent about 3 hours in the hot tub sharing stories, reminiscing about the trip, and just looking up at the stars which were phenomenal!

     Day 12 was our last day traveling with the tour. We drove back from Fox Glacier to Christchurch and made many stops along the way, including a black sand beach.
     When in Christchurch our bus drive Seagull was kind enough to drive us around and show us the devastation by the recent and powerful earthquakes that have ravaged Christchurch.  During 2011 Christchurch got hit with a string of very powerful earthquakes and their subsequent after shocks. The most damaging of which happened in February of 2011 killing 185 people. An astonishing 75% of the buildings in the city center had to be demolished and rebuit. We drove through the city center and there was flattened properties everywhere you looked. Theres still even a significant number of properties that have shipping containers stacked up 7 high and 3 deep to keep the building from crumbling into the streets bellow. The hostel we stayed at in the beginning of the trip was a black away from an old stone church that had been destroyed. The whole face of the building was gone, it was pretty erie to see clear into a second story room with a table and chairs still set up, a safe that had busted out of the wall, and a single lightbuld barely hanging form the celling. Unfortunately this scene still describes a lot of the structures in the city. Everyone we talked to had their own special stories about the event. One guy was in a bar and he just kept on drinking because he said "you're more likely to get killed if you run out side." Another lady told us about one of her friends that got shook literally right out of her house and woke up on the lawn, and of another person who run outside only to get trapped in their front yard up to their waist because it had liquified from all that shaking. The citys doing their best to come back, making most stuff out of shipping containers, but they've still got a long way to go.

      We then made our way to the hostel which was basically some crazy cat ladies house and spend part of the night there before heading to the airport to fly out.
     Day 13, we got the the airport just after 1am for our 7am flight. No shuttle service would pick us up early enough to catch our flight so we had to get there late the night before to be safe. This mean ending the trip with just the way I had stared it, with a night sleeping on the floor of the airport.

All in all I had the time of my life in New Zealand! I had so many great experiences and got to venture to  hidden gems of the world I never thought existed. I even got to do it with great people who became great friends.

-Evan

New Zealand day 9

Hello folks,

      This next day in New Zealand was hands down my favorite of the trip. The first experience of the day was the famous Shotover Jet. As a kid growing up we had a ski movie that I would watch every time the first snow of the season came, and about 20 times after that. It was a Warren Miller film from the mid 80's titled Steep and Deep. One of the segments featured skiing in New Zealand and included a few minutes of the Shotover Jet. Having seen this countless times as a kid I was really looking forward to doing this even as soon as I found out I would be studying in Australia. They gave us some raincoats and life jackets and then it was on the boat. I was fortunate enough to get a seat at the end of the row and  really got to experience the river up close and personal. The Shotover River is a very narrow river that has chiseled its way deep through the rocks. The river also opens up to some pretty wide spots with nice views, but the catch with these wider areas is that they are quite shallow. No worries though, the little red boats can operate in just 4 inches of water. They're powered by twin jets putting out 8,000 lieters of water a second taking the boat to 85km/hr. Sure many other boats go faster but man going 85km/hr with walls of rock about two inchs away not exaggerating) from the boat you feel like you're going 200km/hr. The ride was absolutely exhilarating and surpassed all my childhood expectations! 

      About 20 steps away from there we hopped into some wet suites to get ready for white water rafting. Then we hopped into a bus and got dropped of on the side of a mountain.... then a helicopter came and picked us up! and that was just awesome!!! I did some quick math and realized if we waited to the end of the groups we would have a few less people in our helicopter meaning better views for us so we hung back until the end. When we got in the helicopter the pilot took off and told us we were in for a treat because we had less weight due to less people and from burning off flue from the other trips before us. It was amazing! flying around the mountains, criss crossing the river, and flying over the occasional mountain bikers. The pilot took us into zero gravity (or pretty dam near zero gravity) about 4 times and did some killer bank turns that drove you deep into your seats. The flights was pretty disorientating with all the crazy turns and no flat line of sight but it was perfect! 

       My day was more than made with the Shotover Jet and the Heli ride all alone or hell just from being in New Zealand but there was still white water rafting left to do! So we rafted up and headed down the Shotover River. The water was so nice and cold and once again it was safe to drink so were just gobbling it up left and right. The rapids weren't as crazy as I was hoping for but that was ok. In the quite stretches of the river we would jump out of the boats and try and pull each other in, it was pretty entertaining. The final stretch of the river was really neat because it had been diverted into a cave by a few Australia blokes back in the day. This meant we got to do some black water rafting and to make it even better exciting the cave let out into the best stretch of rapids the whole day. The rafting ended exactly where the Shotover Jets were earlier in the day so it was really neat having the jet boats zip around us. We loaded up the boats and headed back to return the wetsuits. The day was wrapped up by a nice sauna at the rafting headquarters. 

 - Evan 

NZ days 6-8

Hello,

(sorry for the long time between the last post and now)

     We spent the night in the small lake side town of Te Anau and in the morning headed off to the glow worm caves. The boat picked us up bright and early on a cool foggy morning to take us across the lake to the start of the caves. Once there we divided into small groups and headed in. We spent 15 mins walking up the caves criss crossing over the running water and water falls until we got to a small boat that would take us further into the depths of the cave. It was really neat seeing the worms glowing in the pitch black cave. There was zero light to provide any sort of depth perception so it appeared as if you were gazing into the sky on a starry night even though the roof was only a meter or two over head. Then it was back across the lake back on the bus and back to Queenstown.

     Once back it was Easter Sunday so some celebration was in order. We headed into town and found an all you can eat pizza deal and had ourselves a feast!
     The next day was our free day in Queenstown, there were options of skydiving, canyoning, canyon swinging, hang gliding, and much more but all for an extra expense on top of the trip. I chose to save some money and spend the day doing cheaper adventure filled things. I spent some time in the hot tub, explored the town, felt the worlds softest rug, feed the ducks on the shore, and even play a round of putt putt.
      The fallowing day we headed to the mountain for some activities. We walked to the base  and took a gondola straight up the face to the summit passing right by the bungie jump platform that we would be jumping from later. The platform was a big metal arm that extended out from the side of the mountain and was just a little shaky. Compared to other bungies this one is relatively short, only 43 meters, but arguably has the best view in the world. Standing up on the platform I was very anxious to jump I had been looking forward to this for a while and it was finally here. Once I was all strapped in they let you walkup to the edge to get an awesome view of Queenstown, the mountains, and the lake. Then it was a few steps back to get a running start, a short countdown, and then . . . the jump! It was awesome!!! Its definitely something I want to do another 10 times or so to really get the feeling of it and try some different ways to jump off.
        After bungie jumping we got to go down the luge track that was just a short walk away on the mountain. The track was all down hill so the karts had only three functions turning, breaking and... flipping. Naturally we started racing between a bunch of us and things got a little crazy. After a few collisions, some minor injuries, and a lot of fun we headed back down the mountain and cooked some dinner.
 - Evan




   

New Zealand (Day 4-5)

 Hello Friends, Family and other people I may not know,       

         (To start at the beginning of the trip scroll down to Day 0 - 3). Now that we had made it back to Queenstown it was time to begin the tour! Our bus picked us up from the hostel around 8 o clock and we began our full day drive to Queenstown (The adventure capital of the world). Our tour guided was named Max (a typical name) and our bus driver was named seagull (not a typical name) they were both excellent! On our way we stopped at a local farm to learn about their way of life and have some lunch. We got to walk around the farm and feed some sheep.  Lunch was a very nice home cooked meal full of locally grown food. Then we continued onto Queenstown. 

          Along the way we stopped at many look out points including many glacial lakes. Ive seen some very blue water in the ocean and lakes before but these glacial lakes had a very unique water color, it looked fake in a way.  Just down the road we passed by the worlds largest water sprinkler, its over 1 Km long. (We also stopped in a town and saw the worlds largest knit sweater). We arrived in our hostel just in time to watch the sunset over the town. The backdrop for the town is a beautiful lake and a mountain range called the Remarkables, and they are just that, remarkable!  They are only 1 of 2 mountain ranges in the world to run perfectly North to South.  These mountains are featured in quite a bit of movies, mainly the Lord of The Rings when they light the signal fires across the mountaintops.  The hostel was situated on the side of the mountain, great for views of the town, terrible to walk up to after a long day, but there was a hot tub so all was good. 

      The next day we drove to Milford Sound, which has to be one of the most epically stunning places in the world even on a cloudy rainy day. It was a bit of a long drive but there was plenty to see along the way! There were endless golden fields, reflective lakes, waterfalls, fresh streams, smooth lush green mountains, jagged Rocky Mountains, and glaciers. We stopped at many of these places for a look around and a quick explore. I really enjoyed these stops mainly because I got to fill up my water bottle with some fresh glacial water.  We had some lunch and then it was time to hop on the boat and go explore Milford Sound up close and personal.

     


        Milford sound is actually a fjord and is a World Heritage Site. It is also home to the worlds tallest mountain that continues right into the sea. We took a 2 hour boat tour all around the fjord and out into the open sea. In the fjord you’re surrounded by mountains and water falls 360 degrees around. The mountains are scared with evidence of past tree slides.  The trees grow on the shallow moss all along the steep sides of the mountains and when the growth becomes just heavy enough it gives way creating a land slide wiping out all the growth below it. Its hard to grasp just how large everything is, occasionally seeing a boat or a plane against the back drop put everything into perspective.  We sailed close to the shore and were able to see some seals basking in what little sun there was that day.  The captain took us to the base of a waterfall, which was really cool. Most people stayed up on the drier upper deck but a few friends and I opted for the much wetter bow of the boat. The amount of wind and water coming at us was incredible!When we sailed out into the sea the waves picked up quite a lot and our boat was not very big so it was a pretty awesome ride. Once again the bow of the boat was the place to be. Waves just crashing over the railings and soaking us from head to toe! It was a pretty cold day but it was worth it! We even got to see some more albatrosses so needless to say it was a great day! 

Cheers,

Evan