Haven't even left yet, and already have the next trip booked, hahahah! Going to be hitting up Vegas again in May!!! FUCK YES!!! Going to the punkrockbowling music fest, I can't believe I am actually able to say I have tickets to see the Descendents! The weekend is going to be so amazing. So far there are seven people from here going, hopefully the list gets bigger and bigger!
Also, in exactly a week from now, I will be on board my final flight of my trip, from LA to Melbourne. EEEEEEEEEEEEK!
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
I love Couchsurfing!
Seriously. I've found people to crash with in both Exmouth and Cairns. This will make my trip SO much better, cause now I'll have people to show me around in most places i'm in, plus it will give me for money for party time, hahaha.
So my tentative plan below is going to work out it seems!
March 9 - leave Ottawa
March 11 - land in Melbourne
March 11-17 - stay in Melbourne, got a place to stay with Steves friend Matt. Pudge's friend Danny is also here, and that dude I met on Caye Caulker will also probs be here. Party time.
March 17 - fly to Perth (ticket already purchased!)
March 17-20 - stay in Perth with Lisa, who was one of my best friends while I was still in Toronto, she's already made me promise to make her pancakes every day, hahahahaha
March 20 - fly to Exmouth
March 20-27 - stay with some dude I found on couchsurfing. Take the Open Water diving course. Hells yes.
March 27 -28 - make my way up to Cairns, likely stopping in Broome or something along the way
March 28 - arrive in Cairns.
March 28 -April 3- Stay with some dude I met on couchsurfing. Hook up with Tom and Tara. Surf. Dive. Hike around the rainforest.
April 4-April 13- Make my way down to Uluru/Alice Springs/Flinders Ranges, etc. Hello outback! Probs hostel/camp for all of this.
April 14-Head over to Sydney. Possible hookup for a place through Steves friend Cat. Also apparently some dude I may know from Pembroke lives there, may hook up with him. Stay here about 4 days. CHeck out Blue Mountains, etc.
April 18 - head back to Melbourne. Party time.
April 20 - head back to Ottawa!
So my tentative plan below is going to work out it seems!
March 9 - leave Ottawa
March 11 - land in Melbourne
March 11-17 - stay in Melbourne, got a place to stay with Steves friend Matt. Pudge's friend Danny is also here, and that dude I met on Caye Caulker will also probs be here. Party time.
March 17 - fly to Perth (ticket already purchased!)
March 17-20 - stay in Perth with Lisa, who was one of my best friends while I was still in Toronto, she's already made me promise to make her pancakes every day, hahahahaha
March 20 - fly to Exmouth
March 20-27 - stay with some dude I found on couchsurfing. Take the Open Water diving course. Hells yes.
March 27 -28 - make my way up to Cairns, likely stopping in Broome or something along the way
March 28 - arrive in Cairns.
March 28 -April 3- Stay with some dude I met on couchsurfing. Hook up with Tom and Tara. Surf. Dive. Hike around the rainforest.
April 4-April 13- Make my way down to Uluru/Alice Springs/Flinders Ranges, etc. Hello outback! Probs hostel/camp for all of this.
April 14-Head over to Sydney. Possible hookup for a place through Steves friend Cat. Also apparently some dude I may know from Pembroke lives there, may hook up with him. Stay here about 4 days. CHeck out Blue Mountains, etc.
April 18 - head back to Melbourne. Party time.
April 20 - head back to Ottawa!
Three weeks!
In three weeks I leave, in three weeks and two days I land, hahaha! So excited. Realizing I'm totally fucking disorganized though, I still need to buy a backpack, hiking shoes, buy some plane tickets to fly around Australia, book my scuba course, book hostels, hahahaha basically do everything? Mebbe I should get on that. Later!!!!
Friday, January 28, 2011
Plans so far
Arrive in Melbourne March 11. Stay about 5 days. Steve 'introduced' me on facebook to some punks he knows, so hopefully I can crash there. Would be AMAZING to know people right away, and have people to party with/place to crash.
Head out of Melbourne around March 16. Wanted to check out Adelaide at this point, but no time if I want to get to Cairns when Tom and Tara are there. So head to Perth right from Melbourne (hopefully this works for Lisa), get there on the 17th. Stay in Perth about 3 days.
Head from Perth to Exmouth. This should be about the 20th. Here, I'll get my SCUBA certification and dive around coral bay. HELLS YES. Will be here at least 5 days, as the course itself is 4.
From here, I'd like to head straight to Cairns, as thats where Tom and Tara will be from the 28-31. But I can't find any direct ways to get from Exmouth to Cairns. I'll have to get to Broome somehow, and from there I can fly to Cairns. So, if I leave Exmouth on the 26, spend a day in Broome, then get to Cairns on the 28th.
This is where I think I'll spend a LOT of time. Gonna surf with Tom and Tara, then when they leave, I'll want to do a LOT of diving, and might finally skydive as well. And there is just SO MUCH stuff to do around here. Tjapukai, Fitzroy Island, and I get so crazy excited reading about Atherton Tablelands I almost wish I could pee myself. THe more I read, the more time I know I'll need. Lets see... surf/dive in Cairns from the 28-April 2, then spend time in Kuranda (Atherton), until April 7? Goddamn I need to research more.
From Kuranda I'll then head back into the middle, checking out Alice Springs/Uluru, then heading over to Flinders Ranges. This gets me to about April 15. HEad into Sydney, stay there about 3 days, checking out Blue Mountains, then back into Melbourne to leave on the 20th.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhh... okay I think I may be planning a bit too much. I really need to plan this better, I can already imagine I'll have to cut out the whole Exmouth plan and just head straight up to Cairns from Perth, it'll give me more time. But I don't wanna. I wanna do it all!
Head out of Melbourne around March 16. Wanted to check out Adelaide at this point, but no time if I want to get to Cairns when Tom and Tara are there. So head to Perth right from Melbourne (hopefully this works for Lisa), get there on the 17th. Stay in Perth about 3 days.
Head from Perth to Exmouth. This should be about the 20th. Here, I'll get my SCUBA certification and dive around coral bay. HELLS YES. Will be here at least 5 days, as the course itself is 4.
From here, I'd like to head straight to Cairns, as thats where Tom and Tara will be from the 28-31. But I can't find any direct ways to get from Exmouth to Cairns. I'll have to get to Broome somehow, and from there I can fly to Cairns. So, if I leave Exmouth on the 26, spend a day in Broome, then get to Cairns on the 28th.
This is where I think I'll spend a LOT of time. Gonna surf with Tom and Tara, then when they leave, I'll want to do a LOT of diving, and might finally skydive as well. And there is just SO MUCH stuff to do around here. Tjapukai, Fitzroy Island, and I get so crazy excited reading about Atherton Tablelands I almost wish I could pee myself. THe more I read, the more time I know I'll need. Lets see... surf/dive in Cairns from the 28-April 2, then spend time in Kuranda (Atherton), until April 7? Goddamn I need to research more.
From Kuranda I'll then head back into the middle, checking out Alice Springs/Uluru, then heading over to Flinders Ranges. This gets me to about April 15. HEad into Sydney, stay there about 3 days, checking out Blue Mountains, then back into Melbourne to leave on the 20th.
Uuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhh... okay I think I may be planning a bit too much. I really need to plan this better, I can already imagine I'll have to cut out the whole Exmouth plan and just head straight up to Cairns from Perth, it'll give me more time. But I don't wanna. I wanna do it all!
Friday, January 21, 2011
Panic mode ON
Why. Why did I think I could do this???? I'm reading my guide to Australia and every time I get excited thinking 'I get to GO THERE!!!', the joy is followed up by immediately panicking and being hardly able to breathe. I barely 'backpacked' around Belize/Guatemala for TWO WEEKS. Two weeks. On a trip already planned out from start to finish by Sarah, and with 2-3 other people. So of course it makes purrfect sense to then plan a solo, six-week tour all alone, and to buy my ticket as a way of forcing myself to actually do it. Yeesh. Gawdammit!
One kind of sucky thing is that there WILL be some things I really won't have the balls to do. Like a six-day Overland trek. Def can't do that alone. I'm not an experienced hiker at all, and the thought of sleeping in a little tent alone outside makes me want to cry. That's something I wish I had a partner for, because it would be amazing.
So far, plan is: (without adding the smaller stops that I haven't looked in to yet)
Fly into Melbourne. Stay in Melbourne about 4 nights.
Begin heading west. Probably stop in Victoria and Adelaide, but want to look into whats available deeper inland. Want to read more about Lake Torren and Flinders ranges.
Unless I find something I really, really want to do along the way, from here I'll probably head straight to Perth, to see my friend Lisa from Toronto. Hopefully the dates line up for her. She said her boyfriend can help me surf :D
Then I'll start heading north but probably along the coast, I see both Shark Bay and Carnarvon on the map, might look at doing SCUBA certification here if its available, and def stay for some outback coast tours.
From there, heading inland to Uluru. Def dont' want to skip that.
From there, heading up to Cairns This will be end of March, and Tom and Tara from Ottawa will be there. Surf with them a couple of days, then dive in the Great Barrier Reef. Get scuba if haven't done so already. I have a feeling my longest stay will be in this area, anywhere from 1-2 weeks. Want to spend a lot of time in Atherton.
From there, I'll start making my way down to Sydney. Its just awful whats happenign in the rest of Queensland right now, I may look into some short-term volunteer opportunities if they're available and if I can make any difference in just a few days.
Spend a few days in Sydney, then depending on timing may just have to head back to Melbourne to come home.
This is a very, very loose idea, I haven't looked into any transportation things or anything yet. This is just from viewing the map. Also there are possibilities of meeting up with a couple of somewhat familiar faces in and around Melbourne, so this may change my plans a bit. One is this dude Mark I went to high school with, but he's leaving Aus mid-march I think so it may not happen, and that cute Brit J should be kicking around somewhere when I arrive.
I really, really want to visit Tasmania. But it's where the things that scare me the most are. I've been saying for YEARS that my dream vacation is to hike through Australia. Tasmania seems like th best place to do it, but I can seriously see me losing my mind and crying myself to sleep a few times. I dunno. And it would take up at least a week of my time there and I don't have a whole lot of it.
Planning planning planning. Hopefully I'm not just planning my own brutal death by surfboard and shark bite.
One kind of sucky thing is that there WILL be some things I really won't have the balls to do. Like a six-day Overland trek. Def can't do that alone. I'm not an experienced hiker at all, and the thought of sleeping in a little tent alone outside makes me want to cry. That's something I wish I had a partner for, because it would be amazing.
So far, plan is: (without adding the smaller stops that I haven't looked in to yet)
Fly into Melbourne. Stay in Melbourne about 4 nights.
Begin heading west. Probably stop in Victoria and Adelaide, but want to look into whats available deeper inland. Want to read more about Lake Torren and Flinders ranges.
Unless I find something I really, really want to do along the way, from here I'll probably head straight to Perth, to see my friend Lisa from Toronto. Hopefully the dates line up for her. She said her boyfriend can help me surf :D
Then I'll start heading north but probably along the coast, I see both Shark Bay and Carnarvon on the map, might look at doing SCUBA certification here if its available, and def stay for some outback coast tours.
From there, heading inland to Uluru. Def dont' want to skip that.
From there, heading up to Cairns This will be end of March, and Tom and Tara from Ottawa will be there. Surf with them a couple of days, then dive in the Great Barrier Reef. Get scuba if haven't done so already. I have a feeling my longest stay will be in this area, anywhere from 1-2 weeks. Want to spend a lot of time in Atherton.
From there, I'll start making my way down to Sydney. Its just awful whats happenign in the rest of Queensland right now, I may look into some short-term volunteer opportunities if they're available and if I can make any difference in just a few days.
Spend a few days in Sydney, then depending on timing may just have to head back to Melbourne to come home.
This is a very, very loose idea, I haven't looked into any transportation things or anything yet. This is just from viewing the map. Also there are possibilities of meeting up with a couple of somewhat familiar faces in and around Melbourne, so this may change my plans a bit. One is this dude Mark I went to high school with, but he's leaving Aus mid-march I think so it may not happen, and that cute Brit J should be kicking around somewhere when I arrive.
I really, really want to visit Tasmania. But it's where the things that scare me the most are. I've been saying for YEARS that my dream vacation is to hike through Australia. Tasmania seems like th best place to do it, but I can seriously see me losing my mind and crying myself to sleep a few times. I dunno. And it would take up at least a week of my time there and I don't have a whole lot of it.
Planning planning planning. Hopefully I'm not just planning my own brutal death by surfboard and shark bite.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
I love Sarah
Sarah makes me smile. She just said 'the great thing about travelling is that there can't be drama - even when it starts, you just leave town'. SO TRUE!
It's really happening...
I was scared I was going to pussy-out, so when I found a ticket online today for $500 less than I'd expected, I went ahead and BOUGHT IT!!! HELLO AUSTRALIA! Leaving Ottawa March 9, returning April 20. Fuck yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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