NEW ZEALAND, SYDNEY, BYRON BAY

Hey guys!

First I just wanna say that I’m not gonna post photos here anymore, because it takes take forever, but all the photos are on my facebook, and you get to it if you click HERE

Alright let’s get started..

We arrived around 6 pm and tried to find a hostel through the airport’s free wifi. Buuuut smart as we are we did not check that the exact week we were going to Queenstown was the same week the New Zealand Open golf tournament was held there as well.. Sooo any free beds? Nope. We chatted with a really nice guy, Ty, behind the information counter and he spend about an hour calling every single hostel in town to find us a place to stay. We had almost given up when he managed to get us the two last beds in town for the night (Holy shit, thank you Ty, we love you and I will always owe you big time). This is where our lucky strike for this trip starts. You’ll hear more about that later.

We knew that our week in Queenstown had to be filled with cool extreme stuff, since this is the number one place in the world to it. So the following day we went and booked river rafting, a day trip to Milford Sound (to see some more of the country), skydiving and canyoning. We were set, and excited. However the weather was shit, and neither of us had brought any clothes that fitted 10 degrees and rain. First we went for a hike to one of the great view points. Half way it started porung down though so you couldn’t see shit. We decided to turn around, since we were soaked and freeeezing, and we wouldn’t be able to see anything after all….We went out that night and had some fuuuun, and some not so fun, since Christina lost her phone. We don’t know how we managed, I mean, it is me and Christina… But we had to go to the police station and filled in a lost phone form thingie and could just hope. We stayed at a hostel called Xbase, and it was our first hostel experience. It was a bit hard for Christina especially to get used to the dirtyness of these places, but obviously we survived ;-) it was good though! We stayed in a 8-person dorm for the week and we had bunch of nice people coming in and out. Although I must admit that I’m so excited to come home and sleep in a room for myself. Them snoring people are driving me freaking crazy, oh my…

Monday it was veryyyy cold. That means 4 degrees, not really what we expected and we were both a bit scared of river rafting in 4 degrees and rain. We drove for a bit to go to the river, got in our wetsuits and then in the water. I’ve never done river rafting before, so it was quite an experience. So much fun! Even better because you’re in control and actually have to work to make it through without tipping the boat over. It took around 2 hours, and at the end of it we couldn’t feel our fingers. But fun fun fun. There was a sauna afterwards and that was probably the best part haha! Monday evening we just chilled, cooked our dinner and relaxed. Tuesday we had to get up super early, since we were going on a day trip to Milford Sound. We got on the bus before the sun came up, and slept for the first couple of hours. Then we started getting to some really stunning scenery, and it was just amazing. We arrived to Milford Sound around the afternoon and oh my god. It cant be described, you’ll have to see the pictures. It was amazing. We went on a boat cruise and sailed around there, and it was absolutely amazing. We drove back the same way and we were exhausted haha. Back in Queenstown around 7 pm, and then crashed in our dorm with chips and sweets ;-)

Wednesday was the most exciting day of all. SKYDIVING! We had amazing weather, so clear and the sun was out. We went to the place and sat and waited for a bit like “what the hell are we doing?”. We got our gear on, and said hi to our instructors. Mine was Will and he was pretty cool. Then we all went in the small plane, took off and we got tied up and ready to jump. Will tried to scare me bunch of times to see if I was nervous, but I think my excitement ruled over every other emotion at that time, I never got to feel nervous haha. Christina was the first to jump.. or more like getting pushed out the plane, and hahaha so good to just see her fall. I started laughing at this point and didn’t stop until I hit the ground again. Then it was my turn. Will placed me with my legs and feet hanging out the plane, and the feeling of just sitting there knowing that you had 4.5 km under you until you would hit the ground again, it was just so awesome. Then he pushed, and we just fell. I WAS FLYING! IT WAS SO AMAZING! We had about a minute of free fall just flying through the air, through clouds, like holy shit it was the best feeling ever. I’ve never felt anything like it. That’s the most alive I’ve ever felt. We had a second jumper that was there to take photos (hahahaha, I look like a bald albino black person with asian genes), but as Will was about to release our parachute the other guy was right beneath us. So when he released it kinda pulls your entire body, so my legs went flying and hit the other guy right in the face…. I just looked down and saw him spinning towards the ground thinking “shit, I just killed the guy…”. He was fine though, but haha. When the parachute was out we were just flying over the amazing landscape. It was so amazingly beautiful, snowy mountains and crystal blue lakes underneath you. Breathtaking. I was laughing the entire way screaming “I’M FLYING!!”, it was so amazing. Then it was over. But seriously, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

Wednesday night we were supposed to go to a bar crawl, and we went to the place to meet up. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough people to actually have the bar crawl, but the 6 of us that showed up still got the discounts and we all went out together. Ended up at Buffalo’s, which was right next to our hostel pretty much and got prettyyyyy drunk. It was such a fun night. And so much easier to sleep in a room full of people when you’re drunk haha!

Thursday we woke up pretty late, and actually had no plans. That was good because we were both hungover and just wanted to relax. The weather was good and we went for a walk and then just chilled in a park and listened to some live music with a coke next to us. We then decided to go to the police station just to check up on Christina’s phone that we had been searching for the entire week. And the lady comes out with what? Christina’s phone. That’s our lucky strike here. Someone had handed it in 3 days after she lost it, so who knows where it’s been. If phones could talk…. We had another early night, because Friday morning we were going canyoning! It’s a thing where you jump/zip line/slide/swim through a river/waterfalls that goes down a canyon. It was honestly so much fun. The water was 7 degrees, but we were packed in wetsuits and everything, so the only place it could be felt was your hands and your face. We went with a group of 8 danish guys, which was a complete coincidence, but fun. The scenery was so beautiful as well, it just looked amazing, and riding down natural slides backwards was a great way to experience it. Definitely worth it! This was a day trip as well, as it was an hour away, so when we got back we cooked some food, packed our stuff and got ready to go to the airport on Saturday to fly to Sydney!

Oh there was also two really drunk guys that decided to wear my bikini bottom and then lift one of them in them… they ripped. I had to sew them back together.. And they were not working very well after that hahaha.

We flew over Auckland to Sydney and arrived in Sydney around 7 pm. You would have thought that we would’ve learned from our last hostel experience that you should book ahead (and we actually did try), but we didn’t have a hostel booked when we arrived in Sydney. After a chat to the information guy and countless calls to different hostels we concluded that our best option was to spend the night in the airport (oh well, didn’t have to pay for accommodation then haha). We had a shower and wanted to lock up our bags and go into town for drinks, but we found out we couldn’t really get back, so that didn’t work.. Well we found a nice spot in a designated area and actually got to sleep for some hours (thank god for our sleeping bags), so it wasn’t too bad! Of course we booked our hostel for the two next nights so we knew we had a place to sleep the next few nights haha. We woke up early Sunday morning, had a coffee and tried to figure out where we were going. A nice couple then approached us, asked if we were gonna stay in the city for a few days because they had transport tickets (bus/train/ferry) that lasted for a few days more, so we could have them. See that was really awesome, since now we didn’t have to pay $63 each for one, and also it expired the day we left soooo.. see, we’ve been lucky. After that we took the train into town and found our hostel, which was called Maze Backpackers. We then headed into town to see some of the stuff you have to see when visiting Sydney.. Opera house, Harbour Bridge etc. It was fun to finally get to see it. However it looked nothing like I thought. Oh well I guess it looked like the pictures, but the surroundings and all? Yeah, no. I don’t know, but it was still a really nice place. We walked the Harbour Bridge to get to the other side where North Sydney is situated and found a market with all sorts of stuff (+ a clothes sale thingie with stuff for $5.. My heart was bleeding…). We visited Luna Park, a small amusement park, and then took the ferry across to the other side again. When we got back we went grocery shopping and went back to the hostel and talked to the families back hoooome, which was good.

Monday we got up early and went to Bondi Beach! Weee, our first real beach day on our trip. The weather was super nice, and we just chilled there for the day. Christina got suuuuuper burned, like it was super bad. Several days of pain. Poor thing haha. We took a stroll in Bondi and I found myself a new bikini weeee (after the Queenstown incident, I kinda had to…). We also got frozen yoghurt, because it’s so good. When we came back we bought some goon (cheap “white wine”, if you can even call it that… papvin) because we were gonna go out with the hostel that night. There was a free BBQ at the hostel as well, and free food is greatly appreciated when backpacking. We sat for a bit and got prettyyyy drunk, and then we were off to the club with one of our French roommates and his friend. We just got in, had our free drink and talked to some people when Christina turns to me and goes “Tanja, I wanna go home… I’m not feeling too well”. And then she was gone. When walking back to the hostel (which luckily was very near) she said “I don’t even want food. I just want a bed”: See when that is said by either Christina or me in a drunk state it is reallyyyyy bad. She didn’t feel too well in the morning either, and we had to check out at 10 haha!

So yeah, next morning we had the entire day in Sydney before we had our first bus trip, and started our trip up the east coast for real. We spend the day walking around town, getting more frozen yoghurt, having a nap in the botanic garden, took the ferry to darling harbor and went to Sydney Aquarium (so gooood), had a nice dinner (=steak and ribs) at a nice little restaurant at the harbor (we decided that we wanted to have at least one really good meal while traveling), and finished the day off with the sunset over Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. A really nice day considering the night before! Our bus left at 11pm, and we then had to drive the entire night (about 13 hours) to Byron Bay.

The bus trip was nice, we both got some sleep. I really enjoy riding a bus and could do it for days I think haha. Just listening to my music looking out the window and thinking about life. It’s so good. We arrived in Byron Bay (and had of course booked our hostel in Sydney – we did learn after a bit!). Byron Bay is a really nice small surfer town that has a bit of a hippie vibe to it. They don’t want any tall buildings or stuff like McDonalds there, so it’s a really cool place. First encounter after getting off the bus was a small group of people sitting on the side walk playing music and singing. Quite an experience, but a nice one! It made you smile and was a good welcome I think haha. After finding our hostel we went to figure out what else we wanted to do on our trip. We decided that we would like to plan the rest of the trip, since we had found out that backpacking Australia in summer/autumn means that you can’t really just go with it, go wherever you want and just find somewhere to sleep. We also found out that our “hop on/hop off” bus really wasn’t living up to its name, since there’s so many people travelling with Greyhound at the moment that you have to book your buses several days ahead. So we went to an agency to see if they could help us arrange the rest of our trip including and we spend a couple of hours organizing and booking everything. When we were done we had everything booked including trips to Fraser Island, Whitsundays and scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef. We also got all our accommodation sorted out and the next day we booked all of our buses. It felt really nice to have it all planned, and we could both relax a bit more and just enjoy it, which was really nice. So even though we don’t get that really spontaneous experience, I’m really glad we did it this way.

The rest of the day we spend on the beach and checking out the town. At night time we went to a place called Cheeky Monkey since we had a free backpacker meal there. It was super small though, so we ended up buying another meal for $5 – backpacker specials. We loved it so much we came back the next day for dinner as well. I mean $5.. You can’t make it cheaper yourself haha. We decided not to go out that night because we were both so tired, so we just went to sleep really early. The rest of our dorm (mainly an English group) felt the same, so we were all pretty much asleep when to german girls arrive around 11pm. They quickly get into their tiny tight dresses and high heels and then leaves. At 3 am we wake up to the entire room shaking pretty much, and a bunk bed across from ours that sounded like it was gonna break any moment. First I didn’t realize what was going on, but after a few seconds the rhythm in the squeaky bunk bed noises mixed with a German girl screaming made it pretty clear what was going on… So the entire dorm (10 people) are awake and Christina and I start having a loud conversation to make it stop, but apparently that didn’t bother any of them, so they just continued on. We decided to go to the toilet and hoped the guy she brought home was a premature drunk so they would be done when we came back. And yay, all asleep when we got back haha. The next morning the girl left at 6 am, and apparently changed dorms. Hahaha, I would too if I had been her. According to a guy in our dorm both girls were actually in the bed at one stage.. So, it’s not just snoring you have to deal with staying at hostels. We learned that in Byron Bay hahah.

Next day we got up and went to the beach for a bit, and then we had a surf lesson booked for 4 hours in the afternoon. We all got in a bus and drove to another beach, got suited up and got out surf board (which is huge by the way…). We had a few instructions and then we hit the waves. It was so much fun, and not at all as hard as we both had imagined. We were both up on the board the first time, and rode the waves like pros! (okay, maybe not exactly, but it felt like it). We surfed for some hours, and then we went back and decided to go back to Cheeky Monkey for dinner. Haha hurray for lazy people and cheap good food. We went out for a couple of drinks with the people from our dorm as well, but had to go back to pack our stuff and get a decent sleep haha.