Surfers Paradise, Australia
WOW,
What has been going on since I last updated? Alot.
I am sitting in the office at my dads house in Surfers Paradise, Australia right now.
I'll summarize from when we left Nelson at the start of October and headed back West to Vancouver.
From there we went North to Squamish and Whistler - they are just STARTING to prepare for major ski season(you can ski all year round there in the mountains) so it was really dead - beautiful though!
Unfortunatly, it was a mission to find a place to camp because we were almost into Winter at that point, all the campgrounds are shut down. We found a little place under the powerlines though (I HATE CITIES) and settled in for a few cold nights!
We then went even MORE West, by jumping on the ferry accross to Vancouver Island.
We stayed with friends in Victoria - B.C's capital. A gorgeous city on the Pacific - how strange it was to be in the Pacific again! There were sea-lions and Killer Whales all around the island and it's very common to see them - very cool!
We travelled the island in the storm season. We went out to different coasts and little towns that had been shut down at the start of October. Some seemed like ghost towns - Tofino, Ucluelet, and Nanaimo. The surf was incredible out there though, even though the water was so FREEZING! It was just beautiful out there - we were there in the middle of Fall, and the massive Fir trees were changing - it was SOOO beautiful!!!!!
After the island (and some more painfully cold camping experiences!) we started to assess the possibility of tommy not receiving his NZ visa at all due to medical crap (let alone before October 31st, when my Canadian visa was up). So I booked my flight to Australia for October 31st, and we headed back to vancouver to sit and watch the phone and wait for news on tommy's visa.
While in Vancouver it was Halloween weekend - CRAZY celebrations. About 10,000 people came out of the woodwork to crawl vancouvers streets in a Parade of the Dead. We went with a group of people and Tommy's friend Kala (who we were staying with) went to school for Movie Make-up. She used latex which actually wrinkled our skin to "age" us so that we looked like we were 80 or 90 years old!
After adding some granny and grandpa clothes from the Salvation Army (and Tommys tasteful addition of a Trach-Tube) we were ready to go.
That weekend we also got the call that we'd been waiting for! Tommy has been approved for New Zealand! So all we had to do, was wait for the car to sell....
Anyway, I was still leaving on October 31st, so we drove down into Seattle to spend a few days looking around the city before I flew out.
Neither of us had ever been here before and we just LOVED it!
Boston-like red brick buildings everywhere, SanFrancisco-esque streets, the ocean, the biggest farmers market in North America, Jimi Hendrix's Grave (he was from Seattle), the EMP (Experience Music Project) which is a huge Music Museum also dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, the home of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and grunge music in general as well as an insane Jazz and Blues scene, Seattle is also home to the very first Starbucks ever - the original logo had the mermaid bearing her breasts for the world to see - they shouldnt have changed it!
There were also more crack-heads there than usual, who seemed to entertain us day and night with their antics - not just urinating on everything humanly possible, but screaming about blackpower and swapping narcotics at main intersections aswell. always a treat.
SO Seattle was awesome but it was a sad goodbye to North America, and to Tommy since we didnt know how long we'd be apart for.
I'm doing a favour for my dad in Aussie right now and am looking after his business while he goes away on holiday to New Zealand..
It's quite a tease to be so close - in Australia, but not to be home yet.
It's SUCH a weird feeling to have left Canada after a year and a half - and just North America in general. SO much of my time has been spent up here in the last few years that has definatly become my 2nd home.
I'm so pleased that I really did Canada "justice" and travelled the country top to bottom, east (almost!) to west.
And I'm so happy that we did it in the hardcore way! Camping every night, in a little two man tent, just us two, for 5 months, through summer, Fall and into winter!! OUCH
There were some majorly hard times, like when it would rain for days and days and everything - the tent, clothes, blankets etc. were saturated.
Or when we found out about the chance that tommy wouldn't get the visa due to the cancer.
Or driving all day and all night in the rain and when we'd have to pull over off the highway at 2am and try and pitch the tent in the muddy ditch in the rain and darkness haha! jesus....
at least I can laugh about those times now!
Some of our most incredible times included seeing (and being tormented by) all the wildlife up here - we saw COUNTLESS bears - grizzlies and black, Moose, deer, elk, wolves, beavers, sea lions, sea otters, picas, arctic foxes, coyotes, golden eagles, racoons, squirells etc etc.
Another awesome time was when we realised that we had an awesome system going on: When we'd pull into a campsite, get firewood and start a fire, pitch the tent and make the bedding and have dinner cooking, all in 15mins.
I really loved the Yukon. Dawson City was a town that I will remember forever, because of the crazy people and the 24hour sunlight. Other major buzzes included living in Nelson for 6 weeks, the Arctic and the Northern Lights.
I'll miss my second home in the little town of St. Catharines, Ontario most though.
Our first apartment, our friends and all of Tommy's family made it an incredible time.
It's pretty exciting to be starting a new life all over again! Terrifying as well - of course! I can't wait to get home to my family, dogs, old friends, potential new friends, university, the beach and just my country in general!
Tommy arrives on Tuesday (3 more days!) and he got an AWESOME price for the car (officially out of debt!! woohoo!!) and then we head back to NZ on November 30th.
Who's going to come and visit?!
What has been going on since I last updated? Alot.
I am sitting in the office at my dads house in Surfers Paradise, Australia right now.
I'll summarize from when we left Nelson at the start of October and headed back West to Vancouver.
From there we went North to Squamish and Whistler - they are just STARTING to prepare for major ski season(you can ski all year round there in the mountains) so it was really dead - beautiful though!
Unfortunatly, it was a mission to find a place to camp because we were almost into Winter at that point, all the campgrounds are shut down. We found a little place under the powerlines though (I HATE CITIES) and settled in for a few cold nights!
We then went even MORE West, by jumping on the ferry accross to Vancouver Island.
We stayed with friends in Victoria - B.C's capital. A gorgeous city on the Pacific - how strange it was to be in the Pacific again! There were sea-lions and Killer Whales all around the island and it's very common to see them - very cool!
We travelled the island in the storm season. We went out to different coasts and little towns that had been shut down at the start of October. Some seemed like ghost towns - Tofino, Ucluelet, and Nanaimo. The surf was incredible out there though, even though the water was so FREEZING! It was just beautiful out there - we were there in the middle of Fall, and the massive Fir trees were changing - it was SOOO beautiful!!!!!
After the island (and some more painfully cold camping experiences!) we started to assess the possibility of tommy not receiving his NZ visa at all due to medical crap (let alone before October 31st, when my Canadian visa was up). So I booked my flight to Australia for October 31st, and we headed back to vancouver to sit and watch the phone and wait for news on tommy's visa.
While in Vancouver it was Halloween weekend - CRAZY celebrations. About 10,000 people came out of the woodwork to crawl vancouvers streets in a Parade of the Dead. We went with a group of people and Tommy's friend Kala (who we were staying with) went to school for Movie Make-up. She used latex which actually wrinkled our skin to "age" us so that we looked like we were 80 or 90 years old!
After adding some granny and grandpa clothes from the Salvation Army (and Tommys tasteful addition of a Trach-Tube) we were ready to go.
That weekend we also got the call that we'd been waiting for! Tommy has been approved for New Zealand! So all we had to do, was wait for the car to sell....
Anyway, I was still leaving on October 31st, so we drove down into Seattle to spend a few days looking around the city before I flew out.
Neither of us had ever been here before and we just LOVED it!
Boston-like red brick buildings everywhere, SanFrancisco-esque streets, the ocean, the biggest farmers market in North America, Jimi Hendrix's Grave (he was from Seattle), the EMP (Experience Music Project) which is a huge Music Museum also dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, the home of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and grunge music in general as well as an insane Jazz and Blues scene, Seattle is also home to the very first Starbucks ever - the original logo had the mermaid bearing her breasts for the world to see - they shouldnt have changed it!
There were also more crack-heads there than usual, who seemed to entertain us day and night with their antics - not just urinating on everything humanly possible, but screaming about blackpower and swapping narcotics at main intersections aswell. always a treat.
SO Seattle was awesome but it was a sad goodbye to North America, and to Tommy since we didnt know how long we'd be apart for.
I'm doing a favour for my dad in Aussie right now and am looking after his business while he goes away on holiday to New Zealand..
It's quite a tease to be so close - in Australia, but not to be home yet.
It's SUCH a weird feeling to have left Canada after a year and a half - and just North America in general. SO much of my time has been spent up here in the last few years that has definatly become my 2nd home.
I'm so pleased that I really did Canada "justice" and travelled the country top to bottom, east (almost!) to west.
And I'm so happy that we did it in the hardcore way! Camping every night, in a little two man tent, just us two, for 5 months, through summer, Fall and into winter!! OUCH
There were some majorly hard times, like when it would rain for days and days and everything - the tent, clothes, blankets etc. were saturated.
Or when we found out about the chance that tommy wouldn't get the visa due to the cancer.
Or driving all day and all night in the rain and when we'd have to pull over off the highway at 2am and try and pitch the tent in the muddy ditch in the rain and darkness haha! jesus....
at least I can laugh about those times now!
Some of our most incredible times included seeing (and being tormented by) all the wildlife up here - we saw COUNTLESS bears - grizzlies and black, Moose, deer, elk, wolves, beavers, sea lions, sea otters, picas, arctic foxes, coyotes, golden eagles, racoons, squirells etc etc.
Another awesome time was when we realised that we had an awesome system going on: When we'd pull into a campsite, get firewood and start a fire, pitch the tent and make the bedding and have dinner cooking, all in 15mins.
I really loved the Yukon. Dawson City was a town that I will remember forever, because of the crazy people and the 24hour sunlight. Other major buzzes included living in Nelson for 6 weeks, the Arctic and the Northern Lights.
I'll miss my second home in the little town of St. Catharines, Ontario most though.
Our first apartment, our friends and all of Tommy's family made it an incredible time.
It's pretty exciting to be starting a new life all over again! Terrifying as well - of course! I can't wait to get home to my family, dogs, old friends, potential new friends, university, the beach and just my country in general!
Tommy arrives on Tuesday (3 more days!) and he got an AWESOME price for the car (officially out of debt!! woohoo!!) and then we head back to NZ on November 30th.
Who's going to come and visit?!