Elizabeth and I arrived into the Auckland airport at 5 am Sunday morning and were greeted by the crisp morning wind they like to call autumn and boy was that a shocker. It's hard to reverse out of barrier reef beach life and back into cold weather and school life. I would be ok with dealing with just one of those, but both is a bit much to handle. So I will be going back to Australia, hopefully one day in the future you will hear from me again..... unless I get eaten by a crocadile, or deadly jellyfish and killer insect. On that note, Australia is deadly. But the view is killer too, so I guess it all works out. I'm going to sum that country up with a few sentences, and then regress into the great art of letting the pictures tell the story, which I know you have all been waiting for :) We got to Australia around 10 pm and pretty much went straight to bed, so we could wake up the next day and explore Cairns. I was expecting the beach, but it turns out that Cairns is actually on a harbour, so its mostly just mud and the beaches are about a twenty minute drive. Anyways, that didn't stop us! We spent the next day being tourists and going into the souvenir shops and eating gelato and seafood :) The next day, we arrived at the marina at 8 am in order to go out on the great barrier reef for the day! This was definately one of my favorite parts of the trip! I actually got to scuba dive without a certification! We spent thirty minutes underwater exploring about 10 meters down. We had rented a digial camera from a store, and it ended up working out amazingly! I will get the pictures off of the disk soon, and show off all our awesome photography skills. After scuba-ing, <--spell check? Anways, after scuba-ing we got to go out and snorkel for the rest of the day, which would have been a lot easier if it wasn't so windy! We were getting tossed around like fragile airport luggage. Anways, the next day we did a "rainforest tour" which turned out to be a trip to the wildlife refuge, which was still really awesome, becuase I got to pet a kangaroo :) We then went on a boat ride down the daintree river and then up into the rainforest for a small walk along the boardwalk. The next day it rained and we decided to be lazy and it paid off because the day after that was absolutely gorgeous and we spent the day on the beach :)
anywho, these are the rest of the pics from the south island, the pics from cairnes are on the blog after this :)
On the drive with Ben and Elizabeth to Queenstown from Franz Josef. We stopped for lunch beside lake Wanaka, which was absolutely gorgeous. I would have been happy sitting by that lake for the rest of my life. The best part: the lack of houses surrounding the lake. There is nothing but nature and one street with a few stores and restaurants along the water. How big is the lake? 42 kilometers in length, covering 192 km squared total. It's HUGEEEE
Our first day in Auckland, exploration nation :)
Out on the harbor in Auckland, it's a real steamboat!
The Auckland Harbour bridge behind us :)
The view of Auckland from the harbour, check out how big sky tower is!
We stopped for two hours on the volcanic island of Rangitoto and explored the forest and volcanic rock.
The view of the city from the island.
Our first rainbow of the trip :)
Countdown to the Rugby Worldcup!
On the bus from Nelson to Franz Josef. Up ahead, the road is carved out of the rock. During a flash flood once, the water level rose above the road!
On the bus trip, we stopped off at the Pancake rocks which had natural geysers when the waves came in!
Ah, the rainbow found me!
Elizabeth, what a champ!
The start of the glacier hike at Franz Josef! When I say hike, I mean serious workout!
The ice was really dirty because it hadn't rained in so long!
A naturally made ice cave, which started out as a small drainage stream and grew over time with the help of wind!
To bring the size of this glacier to scale, check out how small the glacier rock climber guy is on top of it!
On of our stops with Ben on the drive down to Queenstown! Absolutely gorgeous, eh? But we had to pay for it with the attack of sand fleas, they took up refuge in our car when we weren't looking and are quite hostile little creatures!
One of the many waterfalls we had to stop to admire along the drive. A road trip in the middle of our trip was a great break from all the buses!
At the bottom of the canyon after our jump!
This is the view of the canyon while hanging from a rope!
Elizabeth took this photo of me before I jumped off backwards!
And I'm off!
At the dock in Queenstown, they have an underwater room built out of glass and the fish and eels and ducks love it! (mostly because of the constant food source)
They look cute behind glass, but I wouldn't want to run into these guys out in the water. Less dangerous than anything in Australia though :)
We roe the gondolas up to the top of the mountain by Queenstown and this is the lovely view we were blessed with!
On the ride to Mount Cook, the lake is almost white from the silt let off by the glacier.
This is taken from the Mount Cook visitor center. Sadly, it was too overcast to see the summit, but the area is absolutely gorgeous, and completely desolate :)
Here is a close up of the lake at Mount Cook, it looks just like milk!
An ode to the sheep dog!
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