My final weeks of travelling NZ/OZ (pix to follow)
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2009
1
10
Trip End
Ongoing
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Well its taken me over two weeks to yet again do an entry in my blog. As this is my last week and im due home in a few days this will be my last entry in this blog boo hoo :' (
The reason it has taken me so long to to do another entry is not because i have been busy but actually the complete opposite! On the last few days of our tour of NZ we managed to stop off at another brewery not for the tour but just for the cheap drink. We went to the Tui brewery which is a pretty good beer. We paid $2NZ (about 80p) for a voucher that gave us 3 pints of beer!!! As we only had just over half hour to consume this in we had to neck these back in between. Whilst we were there we got to play around with this big board where u can put up words as if part of the Tui advertising. (look at the pix you will see what i mean). So me Rhys and Mark who we met on the bus decided to have a bit of fun with this and took some good photos.
Unfortunately at the end of our tour on the magic bus we ended up back in Auckland which has about as much excitement as watching paint dry. Ok, so there were two exciting or interesting things to do and see there. One being the sky tower which did actually have pretty good views of the surrounding area and the other being watching Rhys scream like a little girl as he jumped off the Auckland harbour bridge as he did his bungee.
I did not want to spend the last 8 days in Auckland with nothing to do so we decided to get a ferry over to a town called Coromandel. We were there for a couple of nights and to be fair there was just as much to do there as there was in Auckland except it was nice to get away from the busy city and big concrete buildings and get away somewhere quiet to chill out for a few days. Most the time we spend either watching TV or down the pub playing pool and drinking and a few hours where Rhys went fishing. On the second night apparently the pub we were in had an armed robbery which was as exciting as it got there.
As we were only in Coromandel for a couple of nights we unfortunately had to go back to Auckland for the last 3 nights before flying back to Sydney. Our friend Charlotte we had previously met on the Magic bus tour came down for a night to hang out with me and Rhys so we spend a day together and checked out the sky tower. The Sky tower is apparently the tallest building in the southern hemisphere so as you can imagine we got some pretty awesome views of Auckland and the surrounding. From here would could see several of the volcanos such as Mt Eden. That evening there was a bad thunder storm and we could see lightning. One really cool thing we got to see is a lightning bolt hit the top of the Sky Tower in the distance!! unfortunately we werent quick enough with the camera so couldnt get a pic of it :(
On the day i had to come back to Sydney i had to get up at 3.30 am NZ time (so 1.30 am OZ time) as i had an extremely early flight. When i got off the plane to Sydney and got out the airport it felt wierd as i kinda felt as if i was home as i was looking forward to coming back to sydney so much. Fortunately the weather has been amazing so far in sydney so i have had clear skys and fairly hot weather in mid 20's which is much hotter than it was in NZ. When i got settled into the hostel (which is same i stayed at last time i was in Sydney) i went out to Circular Quay and met Vina who we had met on the Magic tour. As Rhys was on a later flight to sydney me and Vina spend the day together shopping at Paddies market in China town which i had been to several times before. I bought the last few bits of my souveniours and i got my self a hat which i had personalised with the name 'Smoo' on it. I know what your all thinking, 'How sick is steve gunna look wearing that hat' and your right. I look pretty damn good in my Smoo hat. Thinking i should start my own clothes brand of Smoo wear....
That evening i bought a box of goon but after one glass it brought back some painful memories of Fraser Island as that was the last time i drank the stuff and you only have to see my photos on facebook to see how utterly plastered i was. Needless to say i was pretty put off drinking it that night and i was so tired as i had been up so long and had so little sleep the night before i decided to passed out by half 8.
The following day i went back down paddies market again with Rhys this time to show him around. By half 2 we were back at the hostel and by half 3 i had some how fallen asleep after reading my book i got from a book exchange 'Lord of the rings'. It felt only right that after going to New Zealand i should read the lord of the rings book. So far im 120 pages through out of 1100 pages so i think i could be reading this one for quite some time! In the evening i found my self in the internet cafe job hunting for when i get home next week and i have already applied for one job so far but i think ill need to apply to alot more than the one but i guess ill worry about that when im home. Rhys decided to go out that evening with some people from the hostel. By 4 am i was awoken by loud crashing sounds as he came stumbling through the door. After watching him trying to stand straight for a moment he decided it would be a great idea to have a snack. I didnt see him do this but i found the evidence in the morning as my rucksack was covered in yogurt. Cheers Rhys... After 2 hours of him coming and going he finally went to bed at 6am. How he managed to get onto the top bunk first attempt when he spent 5 minutes just taking his shoes off i dont know. By the time i finally got out of bed at half 8 i found that half the matress was hanging off the top of the bed and Rhys was literally cm's from tumbling off the edge of the bed so i had to push him and the matress back on the bloody bed with him still asleep on it!
That morning i left Rhys to recover and met my friend Dianne, Donna and Leanne and we did the walk from Coogee Beach to Bondi Beach. This was easier than the Manly to Spit bridge walk we did last month and was only around 5 or 6 km's this time. On the way to Coogee to start our walk some crazy guy who was on our bus decided to pass out on the floor. As he didnt make a sound as he hit the floor i wasnt to sure what was going on when people were kinda just staring at the floor and for some reason thought it was this moth that seemed to bother the girls before except it was a little bigger than a moth and was just the crazy guy passed out.Can you guess who did the least and who was the first one to get off the bus without even looking at the guy?? The bus driver!!! Obviously he had not been trained for situations like this and he kinda crapped his pants and didnt know what to do but some other guy called an ambulance and within a minute of hanging up the phone the ambulance was there. So that was our exciting start to the day (oh and i think the guy was ok in the end but still crazy). After a couple of hours we finished the walk and ended up on Bondi where we met Diannes flat mate and we all went to a bar for a couple of drinks and then got a bit to eat before i came back to Diannes to pick up Dom my Digirodoo and my other bits and pieces i left at hers last month. I been practising playing the digiridoo and im actually getting the hang of it now although the circular breathing bit is pretty hard and i cant really do that yet.
On Monday me and Rhys went on a tour to the Blue Mountains just outside of Sydney. When we got there we got to go on the worlds steepest train which played Indiana Jones theme music as we went down which was pretty funny. We got to walk around for a while and check out the views and see the 'three sisters' which are 3 large rock formations on the edge of a mountain which apparently have some aboriginal meaning behind them and they used to be 3 aboriginal women who were cast out and turned into rocks. OR it could be they are actually just 3 rocks thats look similar, i let you decide....
After the walk around we got the cable car back to the top and then headed for another hour down to the caves to do some adventure caving. I had heard that there were some pretty tight squeezes there and well i aint exactly the skinniest of people so was wandering how the day would play out. I kinda neglected to mention to Rhys about the tight spaces as well as Rhys has a bit of claustrophobia and doesnt like small tight spaces. But i guess its better to face your fears ey! To get into the cave we had to abseil down and i was first up. i was kinda used to abseiling as ive done it sveral time before years ago. The most interesting part of the caving was the fact we had a blind yes a BLIND man not only abseil but also do the caving which i thought would prove difficult but actually he found it pretty easy and he told us how on his honeymoon he did a 150m abseil. Just goes to show you that having a disability doesnt always limit what you can do and i think we were all pretty impressed with the guy. If you looks at my photos of the caving you will see how tight some of the spaces are. There are some where u have to lie on you side to fit through or push yoursefl backwards down a small hole and was a bit challenging at times but it was great fun.
The day after we chilled out down Manly beach for the day and had a lazy one. I also had an old school friend Steph come and meet us who i found out a few days ago just arrived into the country. We hadnt seen each other in like 6 or 7 years so was good to catch up. Yesterday me Rhys and Steph went to Bondi beach for the day and spent my last full day tanning it up on teh beach and chillaxing and in the evening we headed to Darlin Harbour near the city centre and had several drinks and talked crap for the evening.
Today is my last day and in about 6 hours and 40 minutes (from time of writing this) my plane will be taking off and ill be heading home. Im kinda gutted to go home as ive had such a blast these last 3 months but i have missed all my friends and family so will be good to get home and see everyone.
Ive done and seen alot of amazing things and met the most amazing people and definately had some experiences ill never forget. On my trip i have been white water rafting, black water rafting, rainforest tours, great barrier reef tours, snorkelling, sky diving at 14,000 feet, been on Whitsundays cruise and scuba dived, been on a 4 wheel drive tour on fraser island and camped, been to 2 brewerys, been skiing, gone in a helicopter to top of a glacier and hiked it, bungee jumped between a huge canyon and been adventure caving. Not bad for 3 months ey? probably explains why i am coming home so early though as i didnt expect to do and see so much stuff. Im already planning my next adventures but at the moment its just and idea and will take a couple of years of intensive saving if i do it me thinks. Anyways this is the last of my longgggggg entries on this blog so everyone can breathe now!
This is Smoo signing off :p
