Queenstown or Bust!

After our glacier adventure, we headed off on a five hour drive to Queenstown, NZ. Queenstown, known as the "adventure capital of the world", is where we would be spending the next four days skiing and, potentially, doing other crazy things. Of course, when we finally arrived Queenstown was just as beautiful and scenic as every other place we'd seen thus far... like a freakin' postcard. The first full day we spent in Queenstown also happened to be my (second) 25th bday- so it was automatically extra special. First thing in the morning we headed to The Remarkables ski slopes to take some "refresher" lessons. See, I had been skiing one time before this trip, but that was when I was in high school and I guess I'd forgotten how tough it actually is... man, was I in for a surprise.
The lesson was very helpful, but during it there was a really bad snow storm and by the end everybody's suits were covered head to toe in a snow. Also, the snow was so hard that my entire face, except the part covered by my goggles, was beaten and covered in red dots. It was so bad that we had to cut the day short and head back to the hotel. But that's okay because my legs were going to commit suicide if I didn't get out of my boots anyway.
That night, for my bday celebration, Jackie took me to a Mexican restaurant in town, and afterwards we met up with some friends from the tour for drinks. We went to this bar called, World Bar (they have one in Sydney but I've never been to it), where they serve the cocktails out of tea pots. We went a couple other places too, but that's when it starts to get hazy. :)I got over my hangover the next morning on the slopes of Cardrona. This is where I learned, after many face plants, that I am not a natural skier... go figure. But I gave it my best and continued to try long after I wanted to quit. I did have fun playing in the snow though, especially at the top of the ski lift where the snow went up to my knees!! I will definitely try skiing again, but perhaps I will need a full day of lessons... and I will need to ski with someone at my same level. Jackie is a really good skier and the whole time I felt like I was weighing her down.

More to come...

Fox Glacier, New Zealand

Our first group activity was to visit the world famous (says the website) Fox Glacier. Jackie was smart and took the helicopter tour to the top of the glacier, but I (in an effort to be frugal) decided to do the hiking tour.It doesn't look like much in this picture, but trust me it gets better. My group hiked for over an hour to the site of glacier. Along the hike there were several streams and pools of melted glacier ice. For some reason these pools were a crazy neon blue color (see pic), but also totally clean fresh water. I tasted some and it was actually pretty good.
After the most exhausting hike of my life- we had to hike up the mountain in order to gain access to top of glacier- we finally got to glacier. There we were given walking sticks and had to put crampons on our boots to give us more traction on the ice.
It was pretty crazy on the actual glacier because there were all these places where the ice was really thin and would crack under pressure. Jackie said on her tour one girl stepped in one of these areas, and fell into a pool and got soaked up to her knees.
At one point on the walk, we went to this ice cave where we crawled under the ice. Everything was very blue colored... oh and very cold!
All in all, an awesome experience in Fox Glacier.

More to come...

Contiki - Ultimate Winter Adventure

One of the strangest things about the Contiki Tour was that of the fifty or so people, Jackie and I were the only non-Australians. This was made apparent when we checked in and our tour guide, Nathan, high-fived us when he saw we had different colored passports than everyone else. I thought this a bit strange since we were not in Australia and you'd think a bunch of internationals would be doing Contiki... but whatever, at least we stood out.
So, after a quick breakfast we boarded the coach, which was actually pretty sweet- probably because it was a brand new bus, and our driver Richie took off towards Franz Josef and Fox Glacier. On the six hour drive Nathan told us about NZ culture and the places we were passing, and at one point we did a "speed dating" type activity to get to know everyone on the bus... awkward.
But the best part was that Nathan was himself a New Zealander and so we got to learn a lot of the local lingo. My favorite is "Sweet As, Bro!", which is said by New Zelanders at least once every fifteen minutes. Translation: "What you just said is good by me". And you can add the word "as" after basically any adjective... Drunk As, Sore As, Tired As... all of which I said at one point or another on the trip. In these cases the "as" just means "very"...

Anywho... we finally got to Fox Glacier that evening and had a nice buffet style dinner. By the way, all of our included meals were buffet style which is bad news for me... (ie. "Stuffed As")!! And that night the bar at the hotel we were staying at had karaoke night so everyone was there drinking and having fun. Jackie and I even met some cool locals who were trying to teach us how to play this game "Coin Abuse", but it wasn't as fun as our own drinking game... "Liver Abuse" :) Sadly (at the time, but funny now), the night ended on a sour note when one of the local girls, who obviously had a thing for the guys we were talking to, tried to pick a fight with us by calling us "Snobs, who use guys for free drinks". Lucky for her we decided then it was time to call it a night, especially since we had to be up early to see the glacier.

More to come...

Christchurch, New Zealand

The first stop on our New Zealand Adventure was Christchurch, the largest city in the Southern island. It was kind of late when we got in, so after dropping our stuff off at the hotel we went in search of food and drinks.We found this cool bar, called Coyote, that had fire pits built into the tables outside ...this was perfect because it was freezing out, but we wanted a good view. So we had some wine and an amazing dinner of fish and chips (or as New Zealanders would pronounce it: "Fush and Chops").

We noticed that a lot of the bars in the area had live music, which is something we've been missing much of in Sydney, so we stayed out pretty late listening to a fun cover band and got hit on by creepy old locals. It's really fun when a weirdo from across the bar yells "Where are you from?" and you have to scream back, "America!!", in a crowded room of non-Americans :)

The next morning of course we knew we had to be true tourists as we would be leaving with our tour group first thing the next day and may not get a chance to see Christchurch again.So in true tourist style, we hopped on a trolley to take us around and see the main sites. On the trolley we got some fudge samples and Jackie told me a little about the New Zealand rugby team called the "All Blacks"...weird name but whatever. We got on the subject in the first place because all around the city were these signs like the one below.So apparently the All Black team is the very best (...after the South African team... says Jackie who is South African), and I guess they are undefeated at their home arena, nicknamed the House of Pain, which is also located in Christchurch. Oh, and what I thought was weird was they never go by the name "New Zealand" because everyone knows who the All Blacks are. Like a game will be advertised as Australia vs. All Blacks., instead of Aus vs. NZ... hmmm...
So anyway, awhile later Jackie spotted a good place to get off the trolley and we went on the Christchurch gondola ride to see the city from up high. This is where is real beauty of New Zealand set in and the view was crazy!
At the top of the gondola, apparently we were above the clouds. Underneath those white clouds in the pic is a small town and a lake, which were totally covered. Weird huh? We only knew there was a town underneath because of the maps on the look-out deck. Anyway, it was a pretty early night for us because we wanted to be bright and cheerful when we met our Contiki tour group in the morning.

More to come....

Back to "Reality"

I just got back to Sydney... a little older, and none the wiser. Sadly I did not run into Frodo or Bilbo Baggins on my trip to New Zealand. Did you catch that? Its a Lord of the Rings joke... as it was filmed in NZ. Duh!

Anyway, it was amazing- probably the most beautiful place I have ever been to. There is absolutely no way my simple pink camera or lame attempts at photography will do it justice, but here is a pic of the scenery anyway. Very LOTR wouldn't ya say? I will blog about my trip tomorrow when I am not exhausted, but in an effort to keep you entertained, my sis made a slide show of her experience in Sydney. Check it out... she's a much better photographer than me and there are even captions at the bottom!

New Zealand Bound

Guess what? I'm heading off to New Zealand tomorrow morning. Jackie and I are going on a ten day Contiki trip around the southern island of NZ. So, I won't be able to blog for awhile, but stay posted because I'm sure I will have some amazing stories and pics to share with you.

Also, I hope the zero degree Celsius weather doesn't kick my ace! Blog to ya later!!

Sisters in Sydney

I just took Melissa to the airport a few hours ago... sad! But we had a blast even though her visit was much too short. In fact she ended up getting delayed in San Francisco on the way out, so her trip was one day shorter than we'd planned. But we did manage to get a lot in and here are a few of the highlights:

Tour of the Opera House when we were so deliriously tired that we were suckered into buying the tourist photo at the end- but totally worth it because we also got cool Opera House postcards with our pictures on them.
Deciding the Bridge Climb was too expensive so instead walking across the pedestrian path on the Harbour Bridge. There were so many runners out that we probably totally annoyed them by stopping every 5 meters to take yet another picture of the Opera House.Finally stepping foot on Bondi (pronounced Bond-ee) Beach, even though it was totally cold. Then having an amazing sea-side lunch and walking along the coast until the sun set. How romantic! :)Taking the ferry to Watson's Bay and seeing The Gap. True, this is where people go to commit suicide, but even with its ugly history it was beautiful!!
Taking a two hour train ride to the Blue Mountains. So cold!! We went on a short hiking trail which took you right to the Three Sisters (pictured below), but it was such a steep climb that I nearly died trying to get back.Having a long dinner with my school friends, and then Orbit Bar for a 360 degree view of the city.What an excellent trip! Meli, thanks for letting me show you around my new city... and for cooking for me. Love you!!

My First Visitor

In just a few short hours my sister will be on a plane headed to Sydney. She is currently in flight to San Francisco, and I am SO excited!! Wish her a safe journey on her long flight to Australia.

Twilight... Not too bad

So, I made all of April's dreams come true and finally read "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer. Now I should preface this by saying that I went into this venture with a few negative pre-conceived notions. Perhaps it was the fact that after April read the entire four book series in like one sitting, she became like a crazy obsessed fan. She would rave about it and saw the movie like 10 times the first week it came out. And then all of her friends followed suit. And truthfully I did not want to get sucked into this alternate universe that most Twilight readers seem to be sucked into.... and all over what to me was a book about vampire love! (Insert eye roll here).

Well, I read it and it was okay... I mean I read almost the entire first book on the plane ride from Hawaii. Now this book is probably written at an eighth grade level, but it is 500 pages so it was quite an accomplishment. I will admit that the book did keep me interested (I mean I could've been watching "Confessions of a Shopaholic" on the plane), but it was basically exactly what I thought it would be. Also, I kinda wish that I had read it before the movie because all I can picture is Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart- both of whom I am only luke warm about. But all in all, I think I will continue reading the series- the second book, "New Moon", for sure because I already own it. And maybe one day I will even watch the movie with April because I'm sure she bought the DVD the minute it came out... maybe.

Happy Birthday Jason!

For the first time in ten years (sick!) I won't be celebrating with my best friend on his birthday. Ten years?... We must've met each other when we were 11 or something. :) So sorry I can't celebrate with you... but I'm thinking of you and love ya lots!!
Oh the memories... probably better to forget most of those! Not sorry we're hot!!!

Goodbye Family

I'm back home - to my Sydney home - and looking at some pics reminiscing about my excellent trip to Hawaii. I got some sun, ate lots of Mom's awesome food, watched movies and TV I'd missed... and overall had a very relaxing time! Here are some of the memories from the island:Boogie boarding with Dave and Deed at Hapuna Beach where the waves were so big and strong that I nearly drowned (multiple times), David messed up his neck and can longer lift it completely straight, and Deedee lost her top! :)

Not only getting to drive again, but more so getting to drive a silver Jeep around the entire perimeter of the island. We decided to take the walls of the Jeep off because the weather was perfect, but then we got caught in a rainstorm and I cursed myself for deciding to take the walls off!Seeing a real live volcano - the Big Island currently has two active volcanoes. But we only saw it from a far distance and only the smoke coming out of the hole not actual lava. We did however, walk through an old lava tunnel, stood over active steam holes, and hiked down to the floor of an old volcano devastation site - all of which was cool... except maybe the hike back to the top! Punalu'u Black Sand Beach. We stopped there randomly on the way back from the volcano, just as the sun was going down. The sand was gorgeous... tiny smooth midnight black pebbles. And even though there were signs that warned not to take any of the sand, Dave still did, and now has to face the wrath of Pele.

Snorkeling and snow cones at Kahaluu Beach Park. The fish were beautiful, and we even saw a sea turtle, but Deed and I both got bit by a fish! Can you believe it? First it was Deed and I didn't really believe her, but as she was showing me the mark, I got bit too. And it hurt so bad! We both started screaming and splashing around to keep the fish away, but this only seemed to anger the fish more and it actually started chasing Deedee. It was actually pretty funny. And then Dave swam closer to us trying to get bit...crazy!! We asked the snorkel lady about it and she said it was probably the Humuhumu (or reef triggerfish) protecting her babies. Check out Deed's bite on her foot... this was taken like 8 hours later!All and all, it was a very fun trip and it was totally worth the sun-burnt skin and fact that I may have gained ten pounds!