Appendix

As impossible as it is to give you an account of my after semester travels that do them justice, I will try to just provide a general insight into my experiences across Australia and New Zealand. The past three weeks have probably been the most fun I have had in my life so far. Traveling with a group of friends by ourselves on the other side of the world exploring places we had only seen in media sources was amazing. As we traveled further and further our group dwindled down to the people I had become better friends with in Perth with one exception and a couple of people in other groups that I would not have minded traveling with but I cannot complain at all.

Our travels started right after I took my hardest exam (Vertebrate Zoology practical) at UWA. I came back, finished packing, ate dinner, and headed off to the airport with almost everyone since most of us were flying out to Cairns as the start of our separate adventures. Our group opted to skip Urulu (Ayer’s Rock) due to flight conflictions and general increase in costs that it would have presented. As much as I would have liked to see that rock, one of Australia’s three most prominent icons, our travels brought us to the other two, and .666 is Hall of Fame material. Cairns was the site of the Great Barrier Reef and the main reason for heading up there. We went snorkeling on the second day there for basically the whole day, which included two different dive sites and the two-hour boat ride each way. We decided to spend a bit more and instead of going to Green Island, which is the most popular spot for tourists because of proximity to Cairns’ port, go out to the outer reef. The corals were amazing [see right].

It is really impossible to describe landscapes in words for me so I will resort to pictures to help (but otherwise you will have to put up with my lack of describing ability). I figured that spending a little extra for pictures of the reef would make a better souvenir than any article of clothing I could find that said Australia on it. The other days in Cairns were spent exploring the tropical rainforests around the area, which was a novel experience for me since I have never been in such an environment before. It was extremely humid most of the time and made for sweaty hiking, for most of our group since apparently I don’t sweat according to the others. A lot of this trip involved large amounts of hiking and/or walking. We just view all of it preparation for the Kepler Track, the three-day great walk we were doing in New Zealand. Our last day in Cairns involved a road trip up the coast to Barron Gorge National Park and Daintree National Park. We rented a minivan and a car for the ten of us since only two out of our whole group were 21+. It was unbelievable how important having people over 21 is for renting cars and stuff and how in sort supply they were in our group. Oh well, everything worked out tin the end.

The next stop on our trip was Sydney, home of the iconic Opera House. We got in late afternoon and after doing all the practical things such as checking into our hostel, grocery shopping, and eating dinner we headed up to the harbour at night to get some great views of both the Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was unbelievably beautiful lit up against the dark harbour and I spent a decent amount of time just sitting around on this sandy rock bed looking at them. The next day we decided to go out and explore the Blue Mountains, a two-hour train ride out of Sydney, which was spent tramping all over cliffs and seeing their famous Three Sisters rock formation. Sydney in general was a really nice city. We spend a day on a free, guided tour getting some history and seeing the sites, while others were spent at world-famous Bondi Beach and going around shopping at various markets throughout the city. We even had a delicious Thanksgiving cookout in Centennial Park with another group of friends that were in Sydney the same time we were.

Yes Sydney was very cool and all, as was Cairns, but the part of the trip I had been looking forward to the most all semester was the 11 days we were going to spend in New Zealand. New Zealand had previously been number one on my countries I most want to visit list and now can be crossed off. Those 11 days were amazing. At this point our group was down to six (me, Kevin, Ally, Kelly, Sush, and Brian). We got a relocation deal with Wicked, a hip company that rents out campervans all over the world, which let us hire two three-person vans for us to sleep drive around in. This company has artists paint the sides of the vans to give them character and make them more recognizable on the road; the two were got were called Scarface and Gangster. We basically then spent the next nine days driving around the South Island taking in the views and enjoying life. We hit up Aoraki (Mt. Cook) on the second day and then drove down to Te Anau, the start of the Kepler Track.

This great walk is a three-day 60km hike around Fjordland National Park. The first day was mostly all the work to get up to the top with a walk along the shores of Lake Te Anau to start, the second day was the breath-taking hike along the top of the mountains and down to a forest basin, and the third day was a walk back through the forest to the start. The hut we stayed at during the second day was up in the clouds and they didn’t fully dissipate even after we started late and climbed to the summit of Mt. Luxmore. This walk was probably the highlight of the trip and just an overall great experience walking through nature at its finest. I love mountains more than any other geographic feature and being back in them for basically the whole New Zealand trip was refreshing. After the third day’s hike we drove up to Milford Sound [see below], one of New Zealand’s most highly publicized sites. We didn’t end up taking a cruise because of our gas situation but ended up camping on the side of the road in the middle of the mountains for the night and enjoyed gazing at the southern stars that shown so brightly there. The rest of the trip was more of the same, hiking, driving through amazing scenery. We hit up some glaciers, took a ferry from South to North Island, climbed up the volcanic mountain in Tongariro National Park that was Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies.

I probably won’t end up putting a lot of pictures up on Facebook, mostly because I don’t really like Facebook, but also because they are my pictures and I want to keep them that way. I am more than willing to show anyone who wants to see them, all you have to do is ask me and I will go through any and all of them with you in more detail but in order to give my faithful readers at least a taste of what my travels were like I will upload a picture of the day for the next week or so on here in addition to the ones already in this post for your enjoyment. I know this post is kinda short for all I did, but again I am more than happy to talk to people more in depth. I just felt like something needed to be put up here and I didn't really want to go to in depth for fear of boring my readers!

Cheers,

Joshua Lee


PS. If you have nothing to do in the next 14 or so hours and see me on FB chat or gmail hit me up because I am just sitting in the LAX airport and would welcome a distraction if I cannot sleep. I will have spent roughly 24 hours in this airport today and tomorrow when this is all over with.