one more day in Melbourne ...

Tomorrow is my last day in Melbourne for a while. Tomorrow night I'm taking the train to Sydney. I'm pretty excited because it's been almost a month since I've taken the train. Today I found a really cool bookstore in Brunswick and bought a brand new copy of Exit Ghost by Philip Roth for 5 bucks! I bought two other books the other day at a yard sale in Carlton North so I have to finish this one by the time I get to Sydney, otherwise I'll be carrying a lot of extra weight in my packs. :/ I arrive in Sydney on Thursday morning and I'll be heading straight to my friend Chris's house where I'll drop my stuff and then probably go walking around the city or on another beach walk while he's at work. Hopefully the Lakers/Spurs game will be on one of the cable channels so we can watch it that night. GO LAKERS!!

On Friday afternoon, I'm flying to New Zealand!!! I'm soooo excited! When I arrive in Auckland, I'll be staying with Earl, a couchsurfer I met when he stayed at our house in LA a few months ago. Right now my plan is to stay in Auckland for three days but if I love it there I might stay a little longer. I don't have much time in New Zealand though so I plan on moving around a lot. My friend Joy was in New Zealand recently and did a cool coast-to-coast walk: 16 km from Waitemata Harbour, through Auckland City, to Manukau Harbour -- 32 km or just under 20 miles round trip. Other plans while I'm in NZ include: visiting friends in Christchurch, working on an organic farm in Manawatu and possibly a second farm if I have time, bathing in the mineral pools at the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua, going on lots of hikes, checking out more hot springs, camping, wine-tasting, of course seeing as much of the country as I can possibly see, and this Saturday, getting a massage! THANK YOU SARAH! :) 

I need to go to sleep soon but first I want to fill you in on the past few days. I've been staying with Soo Se and Laura, which has been a lot of fun. On Saturday we went to Sandringham Beach -- of course the locals call it "Sandy." It was only a short train ride away, and it was free for me with the weekly metro pass I'd bought (FYI anyone traveling to Melbourne: if you buy a week pass for Zone 1, you get to travel to Zone 2 for free on weekends. Yay!) The water was pretty warm and we swam around a lot and thankfully we didn't see any jellyfish! That night we watched the women's final of the Australian Open. (I won't comment in case any of you have it tivo'd and haven't had a chance to watch yet. I'm sure everyone who cares knows who won by now, but just in case, I don't want to ruin it for anyone.) On Sunday we went back to the Yarra Valley to do some more wine-tasting and after taking the train to Lilydale train station, we walked out to the road and tried to hitchhike to our first winery. Sadly, before anyone picked us up, the cops spotted us and drove over to scold us. Apparently hitchhiking is illegal here. I believe their exact words were, "If you don't want to get a fine, you should stop doing that." So polite! We were able to catch a bus that was going past some wineries and the driver dropped us off at one winery called Whispering Hills. The winemakers were named Murray and Marie. :) From there we walked up the road and up a long, steep hill to the neighboring winery, Seville Hill. They had a jazz band there and after tasting about 15 delicious wines (for free! so far there haven't been any tasting fees at Aussie wineries), we got a bottle and an antipasto platter and had a picnic outside. It was lovely. Oh and on our way up the hill, we got to pet two sweet horses. On the way down the hill, one of the girls who worked at the winery pulled over and offered us a ride down to the road. Score! Sunday night, we watched the men's final of the Aussie Open. On Monday, Laura and I went to see Black Swan (loved it!) and Monday night we all went to a comedy show in North Melbourne. We got there late so we missed the first half of the show which was stand-up comedy; we caught the second half, which consisted of a dating game and about half a dozen prank calls on audience members' friends. It was pretty funny. After the show, we went on a nice, long walk around the city and finally ended up at a bar called the Worker's Club, where they had $2 beers and 80s music. Today it was over 100 degrees (40 C) so I went to the State Library while Laura and Soo Se went to the zoo. Later, after it cooled down a bit, we walked around Brunswick and I bought my Philip Roth book and got some amazing food at a Lebanese bakery called A1. Tonight Soo Se's friend Indrani (who is from the US and lives in Melbourne) came over and made us a delicious tapas dinner. So that's what's been going on this week. And here are a few pics:

Goodnight everyone!! :)

I finally saw kangaroos!! =D

Yesterday I went to the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary with my friends Soo Se and Laura and we saw kangaroos, koalas, dingoes, wallabies, snakes, birds, platypuses (platypi?), giant lizards and lots of other animals. It was so much fun!! We woke up super early and caught the tram downtown, then took a train one hour outside of the city to Healesville, which is in the Yarra Valley wine region. :) We thought since it was so far that it was going to cost a lot to get out there so we planned to go to the animal sanctuary in the morning and then go wine-tasting afterwards. As it turned out, the end of the train line (Lilydale) is still in Zone 2, and so is the bus route that took us from the Lilydale train station, past several wineries, to the animal sanctuary; that means we each only had to pay $4.80 to get all the way out there! We decided we're going to go back to Healesville sometime this weekend for a day devoted to wine-tasting, which allowed us to stay at the animal sanctuary longer than we had planned. The Healesville Sanctuary seems to be a very nice place for the animals who live there. The property is huge so all the animals have lots of space to roam and everyone who works there clearly loves animals and knows a lot about them. Next to the dingo habitat, they had pictures of each of their dingoes (including one who recently passed away) and little bios about each one, describing their personality and listing their best friend in the den ("den friend"), the way their howl sounds, etc. I almost cried when I read that one dingo named Opal "is coping well since the recent loss of her life-long den friend Harry." :( The staff at Healesville encourages visitors to make simple changes such as switching to toilet paper made from recycled paper to reduce the amount of trees that are cut down since those are homes to birds and other animals. We watched a bird show that featured lots of cool birds of prey and colorful parrots. The birds flew over the crowd and did tricks. Rachel, I could totally see you working there someday. :) We got to get pretty close to all the animals, especially the kangaroos and koalas, and they were adorable!! I decided not to pay the extra $10 for a "Magic Moments" close encounter with the dingoes, even though the girl at the ticket booth told me when she went into the dingo enclosure, a dingo licked her arm. It was a difficult decision but ultimately my need to save money won out over my desire to be licked by a dingo. I am regretting it already. After about four hours at the sanctuary, we started to head back into the town of Healesville for lunch and then a little wine-tasting. We had just missed the bus and the next one wasn't coming for almost an hour so we decided to hitchhike into town. I asked one girl who was just leaving the sanctuary if she could give us a lift but she was following someone else and didn't know the area well enough so she couldn't take us (but she was very nice) so we went out to the road and I stuck my thumb out. About ten cars passed and gave us a thumbs-up but no one stopped. Finally a man pulled over ... he was one of the tour guides at the sanctuary! What a score! He drove us into town and dropped us off at the Cole's grocery store, which was only about a 5-minute walk from the Giant Steps Winery. :D We got some food and then spent about an hour tasting wine (for free!!) at Giant Steps. They had really good wine under three labels: Giant Steps, Innocent Bystander, and Mule. We left at around 4:15 to try to catch a bus to another winery before they closed but it was going to be a while so we tried to hitchhike again. Only a few cars passed us (lots of thumbs up and one middle finger up haha) before a lovely hippie woman picked us up and asked where we were going. We said we wanted to go to Boat O' Craigo Winery (we had passed it on the way in and were intrigued by the name) and she said, "I would take you there but they're not open on Thursdays!" haha whoops :/ We had a winery map with business hours on it but apparently we hadn't read it very carefully. It was already close to 4:30 and we didn't have a backup plan so we just let her drop us off about 20 yards past where she had picked us up and we went back into Giant Steps and tasted (and re-tasted) the rest of their list. It was pretty funny. :D We're going to do an all-day wine-tasting trip either tomorrow or Sunday, so hopefully we can check out Boat O' Craigo the second time around. By the way, Soo Se is an old friend from SLO and Laura is a new friend, also from SLO! She's here visiting Soo Se, who just moved to Melbourne and will be working and traveling in Australia for the next year! We met up at the Verdasco/Berdych match together last week and have watched lots of tennis on TV since then. This morning we went to a (free) circuit training class at a gym downtown. Right now I'm staying with them at an apartment they're renting in a part of the city called Brunswick East. It's only about a 15-20 minute tram ride from the center of town. Last week I was staying with my cousin RIchard's friend in Clifton Hill but on Tuesday he had friends coming to stay from out of town so I got the boot. I sent couch requests to several couchsurfers but no one could host me. Fortunately Soo Se and Laura offered to let me stay that night ... and then the next night ... and the next night. They said I can stay until I find another place, and if I don't find another place I can stay until I leave for Sydney next week. :) Okay here are the animal pics you've all been waiting for, plus a few others from the past week:

I love this dingo!

black-breasted buzzard (they use rocks to crack open emu eggs ~ this guy was about to demonstrate on a stunt egg as part of the bird show)

flying fox

wallaby

giant monitors

kissing kangaroos :)

kangaroo scratching his arm

I love this cool guy!!

koala

koala scratching his bum

koala sleeping

koala on my head :)

CRAPMAN! ~ Healesville Sanctuary's superhero

sometimes I have to take all my bags on the tram; 

when this happens, I'm a nuisance :/

me, Soo Se and Laura at the tennis, 

watching some awesome matches in Garden Square

beautiful Verdasco :)

tennistennistennistennistennis :)

Hello! I don't have a lot of time to post a full blog but I feel like I owe you all at least a mini-blog to let you know that I'm alive and explain what I've been doing over the past two weeks or so. As you probably know, the past week has been devoted to Australian Open TENNIS!! :) :) :) 

It's been my dream for a long time to come to this tournament and it's even better than I imagined. I'm having SO much fun!! Before I left California, I bought a 5-day grounds pass (which was really unnecessary because I don't think they ever sell out of grounds passes, but it made me happy knowing I had a ticket to the Aussie Open in my possession). The grounds pass gets me into the tennis center all day (from 10 am to whenever the tennis is over) and I can watch any match on any of the 21 outdoor courts. The only courts I can't get into are Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena. Sadly, Rafa only plays at Rod Laver, so I won't get to see him unless I want to pay $75 for a day pass to Rod Laver, which wouldn't be very smart because that now equals five days worth of money ... yep, feel free to do the math and you'll know what I'm workin' with for the rest of my trip. :) So no Rafa but of course I can still watch him on TV, and in addition to the outdoor big screens at the tennis center, there's a huge screen in Federation Square, downtown Melbourne. I watched the first set of Rafa vs. Bernard Tomic (18 y/o Aussie kid) there tonight and then went home to watch the rest. I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched yet but it was a very good match. 

An even more exciting match was John Isner vs. Marin Cilic, which I watched today in Margaret Court Arena. Other than Rafa, Isner and Cilic are my favorite boys to watch. I went to each of their first and second round matches, and I was so excited when I found out they were playing each other today. I camped out at Margaret Court Arena as soon as I got to the tennis center this morning and watched the first two matches being played there so I'd be sure to have a good seat for Isner vs. Cilic. Again, I won't tell you what happened in case you tivo'd it to watch later, but it was an awesome, awesome match. :) Today was one of the best days of my entire trip. Tomorrow should be pretty good too. Beautiful Fernando Verdasco has been playing all his matches at Hisense (one of the ones I can't get into) but for some reason they have him playing at Margaret Court tomorrow, so I get to see him, as long as I get there in time to get a seat. He plays third, same as Isner and Cilic did today, so I'm going to spend the whole day there again and it should be no problem. Don't worry -- I'm putting on heaps of sunblock every hour or so. :) 

In addition to the beautiful tall boys, Isner and Cilic, I've also seen the following players: Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Mardy Fish, Andy Murray, Tommy Robredo, Maria Kirilenko, Gisela Dulko, Philipp Petzschner, Santiago Giraldo, Ayumi Morita, Monica Niculescu, Jurgen Melzer, Tsvetana Pironkova, Iveta Benesova, Sally Peers, Robin Soderling, Illya Marchenko, Flavia Pennetta, Agnieszka Radwanska, Radek Stepanek ... and I'm sure I'm forgetting some but that's most of them. And today I saw Fernando Verdasco from only about 30 feet away and was able to get some decent pics. Here are those plus some others from the tennis.

or to view the entire album, go to the link at the bottom of this blog. :)


p.s. I know I completely skipped over the reef trip and I promise I'll come back to it when I have more time and a better computer to write from. For now I'll just say that the trip to the Great Barrier Reef was one of the best days of my trip, and possibly one of the best days of my life. It was amazing. My pictures turned out super lame so I won't even bother getting them online at this point, but there are plenty of pics of the reef online so you know what it looks like. It was fantastic. The trip to Cape Tribulation was wonderful too. Oh and some of you already know this but I would feel like I was cheating my blog readers out of a great and stupid story if I didn't report to everyone that I checked out of my hostel in Cairns and caught a shuttle to the airport and showed up A DAY EARLY. Yes, I booked my flight to Melbourne for Sunday but I thought I had booked it for Saturday so after arriving at the airport, I had to catch a shuttle back to town (thankfully the driver took pity on me and drove me back for free), get another night in the hostel (I couldn't find couchsurfing accommodations unfortunately, but the girl at the hostel did give me my own room. yay!) and basically do Saturday over again the following day: check out of hostel at 10 am, put bags in storage, spend 6 hours reading in and around the lagoon pool, go to airport. Good times :) Then I flew here and began my week of tennis bliss. :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=87920&id=1622315286&l=7fd6f1099b

<3

Cairns

I got into Cairns last night after enduring a 7-hour train ride (from Townsville) in the most foul smelling train car I have ever encountered. Seriously. At first I thought it was the car itself, then I considered the possibility that it might be ME (it wasn't; I smelled great, and still do), and after realizing that the smell got much worse every time someone walked past my seat, I realized that most of the people in my train car had some serious B.O. There were also three 2-year-olds running up and down the aisle, and occasionally screaming their heads off. It was a terrible train ride, but it could have been even worse -- I was blessed with another solo seat, so at least I didn't have any of those stinkers sitting right next to me. Also, when I originally booked my trip to Cairns, the train wasn't running so I was supposed to be on a bus. When I got to the train station, I was happy to hear that the bus had been replaced by a train. =) We left half an hour late, and after going about 100 yards, the train stopped in the middle of a busy intersection and sat there for at least ten minutes. Here are a couple pics of the cars backed up at the intersection (and people finally deciding to drive over the center island and go back the way they came):

My week in Townsville was fun and pretty uneventful. I went to the beach a lot, hung out with friends, took some nice long walks, hiked Castle Hill, and went to the gym one day. On Saturday I took the ferry to Magnetic Island and stayed in the hostel there for two nights. The hostel was right on the beach in Nelly Bay, a short hike to Picnic Bay, which had a stinger net to swim in, and a long hike or a bus ride to the other bays on the island. My room at the hostel was the worst I've been in so far. I shared a room the size of my Avila apartment (actually, I think it was smaller) with 7 other people. I was the last one in the room so I got stuck in the top bunk, right by the door, so when I had my locker open it completely blocked the door. Oh well. I was hardly in the room. There was a pool at the hostel and I swam in that a little but I spent most of my time at the beach. I found a cute little mexican restaurant that had a book exchange out front:

so I was able to trade in the two books for two new ones. I got a great book of short stories by Jeffery Deaver (Twisted) and a 700-page Stephen King book that I'm halfway through right now (Insomnia). Here are some pics from Maggie Island:

After I came back from Maggie, I stayed with my friend Celine, a couchsurfer that I stayed with in November. I had planned to stay with her for two nights, but unfortunately I lost track of the days and when I asked her if I could stay Sunday and Monday nights, I didn't realize that I was due to come back from Maggie on Monday (I thought my third day there would be Sunday). I had already booked my Tuesday afternoon trip up to Cairns so my time with Celine (and my time in Townsville) got cut short unfortunately. But we had a really nice time taking her dogs to the dog beach:

and that night we went swimming in the rockpool at The Strand with some of Celine's friends. On Tuesday I left Celine's and had lunch with my friend Matt. We also took his dogs for a walk and then he dropped me off at the train station. I should have gotten cash when I was in town but I didn't so I boarded the (stinky) train with only $3 cash. That was stupid. I spent the rest of my money on cheese & crackers and a cup of tea. When I got into Cairns last night I had NO money so I couldn't take a bus to the hostel. It was 8:45 at night (somehow we made it to Cairns on time despite the 45 minute delay at the beginning of the trip) and I had to walk about 7 blocks with all my bags. It wasn't very far, but Cairns isn't a super safe city to be walking around at night, so I just walked fast and called the hostel on the way to make sure I knew exactly where to go. I made it to the hostel, checked in, and was given the key to a room on the 4th floor (they call it the 3rd floor but to them, the ground floor is 0). There's no elevator so I got to take the stairs (my fave! but not carrying 20kg of stuff after speed-walking several blocks). Ugh. I went up to Room 301 and it was a 10-person dorm that was nearly full. There was stuff everywhere! No lockers in this hostel. =/ And the only two empty beds were both top bunks so there was nowhere to put my stuff, unless I wanted to put it all on my tiny bed with me, or just leave it in the middle of the room. I dropped my stuff and went back downstairs to see if I could get a different room. Thankfully the girl was really nice, even though I'm sure she was annoyed that I was requesting a room change already. Oh well. She gave me a key to a new room down the hall from the first room and I went back upstaits to check it out. I was sooooo happy! The new room was an 8-bed dorm with only three people in it so far. I finally got a bottom bunk, and the one in the far back corner of the room which gives me all the counter space in the back corner as well as the space under my bed. Woo hooo! And no one needs to walk past my bed for any reason so I feel safer with all my stuff sitting there not locked up. The bathrooms in this hostel are terrible but oh well, at least my room is good. And the price is amazingly cheap. I'm only paying $45 for 4 nights, and that includes a $5 meal voucher every day!! This morning I went downstairs to find a breakfast spot and I also asked the guy at the front desk (an Irish guy who goes by "Irish" haha) about the wildlife park and Kuranda, a cool little rainforest town I heard about that's only about 30 km from here. He told me about a tour that goes to Kuranda but he said he would advise me to skip Kuranda and go to the Daintree Rainforest instead. The Daintree is one of the oldest rainforests on the planet; some of the trees are over 110 million years old!! Irish set me up with a trip on Friday for $105. The bus picks me up at the hostel at 7:30 am (eek!) and drops me back off at 6:30 pm. We go on a scenic coastal drive up to Cape Tribulation, take a wildlife cruise on the Daintree River (wildlife = crocodiles!!), take a guided tour through the rainforest, walk on the boardwalk in Cape Trib, swim at Mossman Gorge, check out Port Douglas, and I'm not sure what else. It sounds awesome!! The tour includes "morning tea" (breakfast) and lunch. I'll be sure to post pics asap. By the way, tomorrow's trip is pretty exciting too. Tomorrow I'm going to the GREAT BARRIER REEF!! I found the tour company online through a random search and booked it while I was at Maggie, and Irish told me I booked with a really great company -- the glass bottom boat that will take us out to the reef is one of the newest boats in town, and he's gone on the tour with them several times and says it's fantastic. They also offer free pick-up/drop off at the hostel, and breakfast and lunch, as well as wine and cheese and fruit on the boat back to Cairns. It's a 6-hour trip and we get to snorkel or dive (I'm snorkeling) at two amazing spots on the reef. I'm so excited!! That trip also begins at 7:30 am so I gotta wake up early tomorrow. I'll post another blog with pics asap. Oh, on Saturday I might check out Kuranda before my FLIGHT to Melbourne. Because of the terrible floods in Rockhampton, Bundaburg, Emerald, and now BRISBANE (!!!), there's no way to get south of Queensland from where I am now. The earliest the railroad will book a trip south is the 20th so I could wait till then and use my rail pass but the Aussie Open starts on the 17th, and the 20th is only a guess anyway. The railroads are still under water in those areas, and after the flood waters recede, they're still going to have to bring out engineers to make sure the railroads are safe to travel on; if the railroads aren't safe, they'll have to fix them, so who knows how long that'll take. I decided two nights ago to buy a plane ticket to Melbourne, and I got a pretty good deal: $181. I stopped in at the Flight Centre (they claim to have "unbeatable" prices on domestic and international flights) while I was walking around downtown Cairns today just to see what a flight would cost ... $269 was the cheapest. Yay! Looks like I booked just in time. So I have an exciting couple days ahead of me and then I'll be back in Melbourne for about 2 1/2 weeks, watching tennis and hanging out. On February 3rd I take the train to Sydney and on the 4th I fly to New Zealand!!! =) Here are some pictures from my first day in Cairns:

:)



So now you're all caught up. I'm going swimming at the lagoon now. I hope everyone is having a great day!! Miss you all!! :)