Lauren Squared to Lauren and Lauren :(

When it rains it pours! And it poured on our glacier walk!...but it was beautiful. We were given all our gear; pants, jackets, toques, mits, boots and crampons to climb in. We looked good :) It took us 45 minutes from the carpark to get to the base of the glacier. The walk was a little slower than expected cause our guide had to stop and CHISEL steps out of the ice...lots of picture opportunities! It was a full day of hiking, 8 hours to be exact and it was tough with big heavy boots but it kept us warm! The only time we got cold was on our lunch break. Poor LH's cammy screen broke from the water-VERY upsetting. NOT cool to be across the world and unable to see what you're taking a picture of! All in all, a great day and Franz Josef was super cute-definitely one of our favorite places so far!
After 2 days in Franz, we left to Wanaka on the most gorgeous, sunny day EVER-LT was definitely regretting NOT doing a skydive over the mountains and glaciers. One stop this morning was at Lake Matheson-Mirror Lake. We won't say much, just check out the pictures :) Wanaka is the "ski town" of NZ-like Fernie and Banff, where everyone leaves to go skiing. Once again, stunning place...the pictures say it all.
We arrived in Queenstown today, with quick stop at the AJ Hackett original bungy junp bridge (43m) and got to watch some of our fellow busmates jump!! So exciting. LT ALMOST (not quite but it was worth a shot) got LH to do a tandem jump...but no dice. Queenstown is small enough AND big enough...lake meets mountains-beautiful and if we both weren't on time constraint we'd stay here for a long time :)
Now, as you know, LH has more time in NZ than LT, so she's taken advantage and booked the "bottom bus" to the more southern parts on NZ, which means the Lauren squared will end as of Saturday morning :( LT heads north to Christchurch and LH heads south to Dunedin. We're having a tough time with this as it is a fairly recent decision and we thought we'd have until the 25th together...so this is very emotional. Sadly, we're ending our blog here, because it's really not fair to have 1 Lauren write a 2 lauren blog. We'd like to THANK everyone at home (wherever that is) for all your comments and support over the course of our 4 months trip-we appreciate it SO much :) We don't REALLY know how we're gonna cope without each other having been glued at the hip for 4 months. We 'd like to think of it as the end of a good book-hope you enjoyed the journey as much as we did :)

Love and Love,
L&L

Welcome to Kiwiland!!!

SOOO sorry to all the blog followers!! We've been caught in the whirwind that is New Zealand!! Promise we'll try and keep you up to date with everything, but we're just so busy trying to fit everything in we can!!
We got into Christchurch on Nov.5th and stayed the night with Angela, a girl we'd met on our Cape Tribulation tour in Oz. We left early the next monrning on our 1st day on the the Kiwi Experience bus north to Kaikoura. It was our first taste of New Zealand weater and it is COLD!!! So much for 3 and a half months of tan!! :( There wasn't much to do there and the whale watching trips were expensive!! The next day we were onto Nelson after dropping some people off at the ferry to go north. For such a small country, we're spending surprisingly more time on the bus than we thought we would. We make a lot of stops for scenic walks and pretty landscapes! We were really excited for Nelson because it's close to Abel Tasman National Park and it was the first place we'd be staying for more than 1 night! We got tyo stay in an old hostel that they'd turned into a hostel, so it was super clean and REALLY nice.
We booked a 2 day camping trip that had one day of hiking and one day of kayaking in Abel Tasman. There were 8 of us, 2 couples, 2 french guys and Lauren and I. We hiked about 10km the first day before we got to the campsite for the night. Luckily we didn't have to carry all our gear (no repeat west coast trail!) because they dropped it at the beach we were staying at and it was waiting for us when we got there. The campsite was great and we had a huge bonfire that night with the 8 of us from our tour and some other campers. We're quite used to sleeping in close quarters, but LT STILL managed to freeze despite the snuggling! :( Next morning our guide met us at the beach with our kayaks.

The weather was beautiful! We had a full day of kayaing and being the only female pair and working on no sleep we'd say we did pretty well!! We made a few stops on some beaches and even did some "sailing" :) (see pic).
After a good night's sleep in our fave hostel, we headed south down the coast to Westport for one night. The only thing worth mentioning about Westport was the HUGE bonfire we had on the beach. We added a picture of us that we took there before sunset just to show you how pretty we still are :)

ANYWAY....after leaving Westport, we had a full day on the bus, but stopped for a couple of walks on the way. The first was at Cape Foulwind, which was BEAUTIFUL and looked like something we thought you might see in Scotland or Ireland. The second was at the "pancake rocks"....pretty self-explanatory(see pic) .

On the Kiwi bus, one of the exclusive overnight stops is at the "Poo Pub"...an old old hotel at Lake Mahinapua. Every bus that goes through has a theme/costume party. Our bus voted on a Christmas theme (we were all for a helmet party but got outvoted:) With a $10 max budget, LT went as a Jack in the box and LH went as a gingerbread man. We TOTALLY had the best costumes, but didn't win any of the prizes, like a canyon swing or bungee jump..I guess LT might actually have to PAY if she decides to do one!
By this time tomorrow we'll have DONE our full day Glacier hike on Franz Josef Glacier!! Lots of action packed, fun-filled days coming up...Milford Sound, glacier walks, maybe a bungee jump...we'll try to fit a blog in there somehwere!!

Lots of love,
L and L

Certified Divers and the END of Oz!!!

Oh Warren!!! We LOVE Warren!!! He's pretty much THE best dive instructor ever and we miss him already!! K time out...we'll backtrack a little here....last stop on the Oz Experience bus and the END of our east coast travelling!! SO sad!! First things first, just before getting into Cairns we made one last adventure stop at Mick's Croc farm - the man believed to have been behind the Crocdile Dundee film. Wouldn't be hard to believe! He has NO problem sitting on the back of a 3m long crocodile! We also saw some emus, cassowaries, kangaroos..got to hold a mini crocodile and SNAKES!! Although LH didn't actually hold one of the pythons, she did very well being around them!!

The arrival in Cairns was quite a big one...tables were reserved at a bar in town called The Woolshed for us Oz finishers. It was kind of sad actually because it was our last night celebrating with Team Canada!! :(

We had a good 7 days in Cairns and we wanted to see Cape Tribulation and take our dive certification course so we were busy girls!! Cape Tribulation itself was gorgeous, but the day trip was really long...I think an overnighter would have been better. We did get to swim in Mossman Gorge (see pic) though and do a rainforest walk. Cape Tribulation Beach was up there for pretty as well:)

Our dive course was senSATIONAL!! We spent 2 days in the classroom and pool in Cairns with Ron, our on-land instructor. We learned about our gear and the skills we had to perform in the pool before writing our exam and heading to the reef! We learned how to take off our masks and put them back on under water..clear the water from them too, take out our breathing regulators, take off our vests and tanks..AND what to do if we run out of air. This included Lauren and I in hysterics at the bottom of the pool trying to both breathe out of my tank and kick up to the surface:)

Now, because we're backpackers and we're cheap, we chose the "budget"option which meant that we didn't stay overnight on the reef and just did 2 day trips. This seemed to be quite the inconvenience because it's really just easier if the class sticks together...so we had to switch instructors for the open water portion. Enter Warren!! With the budget course, you're only supposed to get 4 15 min dives...I don't konw why or how, but we got at least 25 minutes on every dive and it was just the 3 of us every time. We liked him so much we bought him breakfast (brownie points!) and he stuck with us for day 2. The boat ride out to the reef is about 2 hours and it was SUPER wavy which made for murky water and lots of seasick people!! Thank goodness there was an upper deack! It was just our luck that for the only 2 days we were out there the visibility was pretty limited so we di'dn't see any big fish...or sharks :) We did find some nemos, touch some anenome and saw a turtle! Warren also took us through some cool caves and pretty small openings! SOOO we're now certified open water divers!! Yay!! As soon as we save up for the gear we can do some great diving..Mable Lake maybe? Okanagan?

Unfortunately, during dive courses, you get TIRED and we missed out on Halloween :( So we decided to make our own..and did some "creative backpacker costume making". The result was a couple of makeshift gypsy costumes from asian scarces and the accumulation of our silver jewlery....haha...oh the Laurens!!

Off to Sydney for a couple days (laundry time!!!) before we head off to New Zealand for our LAST leg of the trip!! LT gets 20 days south to north and LH gets a month and a bit. So exciting!! Part III: The Laurs in NZ!!

Love and misses,

L and L