Sorry for the delay in updating folks but I haven’t had
internet access for the past few days and to be honest I haven’t really had
much spare time anyway. We flew to Sydney on Thursday where we met up with my
friends Ian and Angela who would be our hosts during our time there.
Our first night in Sydney was fairly low-key. We made our
way from the airport to Ian and Angela’s place in Glebe, a short journey from
the CBD. We sat watching the Olympics and catching up for a while, ate some
dinner (Ian was gracious enough to cook two meals because I am the pickiest
eater ever) and then made our way to a pub. We spent the rest of the night
drinking and chatting before eventually heading home to get some sleep.
We woke up bright and early on Friday and made our way into
town to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I still hadn’t caught up on sleep at
this point so I was a bit worried the climb might kill me but it wasn’t nearly
as strenuous as I thought it would be. I think we climbed something like 1,390
steps but it was a very gradual climb and our group moved quite slowly with
breaks along the way so I didn’t feel like my legs were going to fall off by
the time we finished. We weren't able to take cameras with us for safety reasons but were able to pay an arm and a leg for the terrible pictures the guide took for us. I hated pretty much all of the pictures but wanted some sort of evidence of our feat so we ended up buying some anyway.
We decided to climb to the top of
The Pylon immediately afterwards. The Pylon is a tower next to the bridge that
isn’t quite as tall but still offers amazing views, and about a million stairs
to climb. I hated the world by the time we made it to the top but was still
able to enjoy my surroundings, I just bitched a moaned a little while I did it. My legs definitely felt like they were going to fall off long before we even made it to the top.
By the time we had finished climbing stairs for the day we
made our way to Circular Quay to do a bit of exploring and to try and find
something to eat. It was a pretty expensive area so we didn’t find anything to
eat but I did get a few nice pictures of the Opera House. If it wasn’t for a
stupid gigantic cruise ship docked in the harbour I would have been able to get
some shots of the bridge and the opera house at the same time but I’m not that
lucky.
We headed up the street a little bit in search of affordable
food but failed and ended up grabbing lunch at a German restaurant. Jesse had
never had German food before so he was a bit skeptical about eating there but
couldn’t shut up about how good the food was for hours afterwards.
While we were eating Ian and Angela joined us at the
restaurant and we continued on to the botanical gardens where we enjoyed a nice
stroll. We pretty much walked until we couldn’t walk anymore and the hopped on
a bus back to Glebe.
We made up for our expensive lunch with a super cheap dinner
from a Thai takeaway shop on the walk home so I was pretty stoked about that.
From there we didn’t really do much just went back to the apartment and relaxed
before heading to bed early.
Yesterday we woke up early to catch yet another flight. I
was a bit worried that I would end up getting held up at customs since I was
leaving the country on a different passport than the one I came in with but I
didn’t end up having any problems at all. I didn’t even get picked at random to
be screened for residue from explosives, which was pretty exciting because I
had been picked for every other flight so far.
When we arrived in Auckland I learned that New Zealand has some
crazy quarantine rules. If you had hiking shoes in your bag you had to declare
them in case they had carried bugs or soil that had some how been contaminated
into the country. I have been to a lot of countries and I have never seen any
one be this tough.
Once we cleared customs we made our way into the city where
we grabbed a quick bite to eat before climbing a monstrous hill to catch our
bus to Rotorua. The bus journey dragged on forever and we finally arrived at
our hostel around 11:30pm and headed to bed pretty much the second after we
checked in.
Today we slept in because it was the first day since we left
Perth that we didn’t have anything at all planned. This probably wasn’t the
best plan because now we wont have time to do everything we had hoped to but I
guess the plus side of that is that we won’t be spending as much money.
We finally dragged our lazy asses out of bed early this
afternoon (I actually woke up around 10am but couldn’t be bothered getting out
of bed) and made our way into town for some lunch. Once we had some food in our
bellies we went for a walk around one of the areas many geothermal areas to
check out some hot springs and bubbly mud pools. It smelled like rotten eggs
but visually it was quite stunning. We also walked along the shore of Lake
Rotorua and almost cried when my camera battery died along the way.
Tomorrow we dive back into doing stuff every single day and
waking up at the crack of dawn so we are just going to spend the rest of the
night being lazy. I feel a little guilty just sitting in the hostel but I
really do need the short break. Hopefully I will be back to 100% again by
tomorrow but I will be sure to post about our adventures even if I’m not.
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