Craaazzy mid-semester break and more...

Okay, first of all, two weekends ago my friends and I went to a place called Queenstown, which is right near where they filmed a shit ton of Lord of the Rings...it was very rugged and beautiful. The big news from that trip, however, is that my friends and I went bungy jumping! Not only bungy jumping either...the third highest bungy jump in the world! Nearly a 500 ft. fall with 8.5 seconds of freefall...it was sooo crazy...I have a video of me screaming like a little girl all the way down (I started screaming before I was even off the platform). It kind of reminded me of the canyon back home...the jumping point was from a hut hanging between two mountains on a cable, and there was a river at the bottom of the jump...it reminded me very much of looking down from the Foresthill Bridge. Anyway, I'll have to send you pics coz they're kind of hilarious.

Soo, now on to mid-semester break...to start off the break, my friends Sarah and Gillian and I flew to Hobart, Tasmania for 4 nights. The first night, we stayed with a college student we met off of couchsurfers.com named Billy...he's originally from Oklahoma but studying abroad in Tasmania and he was so nice/crazy. When we first met up with him, we offered to take him out to dinner as a thank you for letting us crash at his place...he said no and that his one rule with couchsurfers was that they had to eat all of his food because he got it all for free. We asked him how he acquired so much free food, and he said, "Oh, out of the bins at grocery stores"...red lights started flashing in my head. I asked, "By bins, you mean dumpsters?" and he nodded. I died inside. It turns out though that it's not sketchy at all...all of the dumpster food is packaged so it doesn't touch anything creepy, and none of it is rotten or stale...it's just the food that grocery stores haven't sold by the sell date, and because of preservatives and whatnot, it's all still good for the most part. Apparently Billy and all of his friends go dumpster diving together and then have big feasts two or three times a week...I had the chance to go to two of them, and the food was good! I was shocked. So yes, night one was spent at a feast/party with Billy's friends...I ended up trying mushrooms with Sarah and Billy's friend John, but nothing really happened because the mushrooms were old...I just basically felt stoned. Maybe I'll try them again some other time.

So, day two, my friends and I rented a car and drove out to Freycinet National Park. We set up camp and then the next day hiked to a beautiful beach called Wineglass Bay...it had the clearest, bluest water and whitest sand I have ever seen. After our hike, we spontaneously decided to find a landmark that Billy and his friends had talked about called Totem Pole...it's down south in a different national park, and according to them it was a rock coming out of the ocean in a totem pole-esque fashion next to all these beautiful cliffs...it took us a couple of hours to get to the park, and by the time we did, the sun was setting. We didn't know what to do because we really wanted to hike out to Totem Pole, but it was 4 hours round trip and we had to have the rental car back early the next day. So, instead of setting up camp in the campground like normal people, we decided to put on our backpacks and headlamps, walk the 2 hours to Totem Pole in the dark, camp out, wake up the next morning, and walk back, and drive to Hobart to return the car. It was really crazy...we had to pass campsites on the way to the trail, and as we were about to start hiking, one middle-aged couple warned us not to get lost...we said, "We won't!" and started walking...two minutes later the path disappeared and we were back by their campsite asking them if they knew where the real Totem Pole path was. They told us, but cautioned us against doing it at night because there were cliffs and fallen trees and the path disappeared at points...basically, it would be really easy to get lost and/or hurt ourselves doing it in the dark. We agreed...and then did it anyway. I am soo glad we did...it was one of the coolest hikes I've ever done. First of all, walking to the cliffs, we saw a tasmanian devil, which are nocturnal and very people-shy, so that was exciting. Things got a little scary once we got to the cliffs because we could hear the ocean roaring beneath us but didn't know how far down it was, but we made it out there okay and set up camp on the only semi-flat patch of ground big enough for our tent that we could find...and when I say semi-flat, I mean it was sprinkled with rocks, some big and some small...we didn't sleep much, but at least we didn't fall off a cliff. The next morning we woke up at 6 to watch the sun rise over the ocean and cliffs...it was the most spectacular thing I've ever seen. We also found Totem Pole, which we hadn't been able to see the night before in the dark. Overall, it was an amazing experience and definitely one of the highlights of the trip. After returning the rental car, we went back to Billy's for another dumpster feast and to stay the night before our flight the next day.

Well, that's all I have time to write about right now, but I'll definitely finish up the trip later. For now, I miss you and I love you and I hope all is well. Take care!

~Kae

P.S. Elly and Heff are going out? Omg, how did that happen?!

written by  snookyferrit on April 30, 2008 from Dunedin, New Zealand
from the travel blog: Mel and Kae's Craaaaaaazzzzy Blog
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