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

The Homestretch and an older LT

Ola!!
We left our canadian team in Airlie Beach to visit Jessica, a friend of LH's, who's living and working in Townsville. Townsville is a few hours north of Airlie and we spent 2 nights there and got to celebrate Jessica's birthday with her. Once again, having connections pays off...it was fantastic to stay in a house with a kitchen and TV and MOVIES all to ourselves!!! For free!!! Then we jumped on the ferry to Magnetic Island - and us being used to Canadian ferries (slow and easy) did NOT expect the launch from the dock across to the island in a mere 20 minutes! Like seriously...no standing allowed!
We were pumped to stay on the island because it is one of the sunniest places in Oz (300 days a year on average) but arrived to the isolation that was our hostel!! Don't get us wrong, the hostel was sensational - super clean, huge, right on the beach, pool, bar and fantastic music all day. At night it turned into a bar of sorts, which was cool. However, the "strip mall" (grocery store, liquor store, coffee shop) was a good 15 minute walk on the one main road! Needless to say, we got some walks in ;)
LT got to spend her 23rd birthday on the island..reunited with team canada, we decided to rent a "topless mini" car for the day to do some touring!! LT didn't mind being the only driver :) The only inconvenience was that you're only allowed 4 people in the car at a time so we had to do a few trips for everyone to see everything. We DID get a chance to do one of the many hikes on the island - it took about 2 hrs but had perfect weather and got some really pretty views! That night, all the girls got together and bought LT a birthday cake (with candles!!) and some paper maskd to celebrate the occasion :) For a change, we got to enjoy some Aussie-made Bundaberg Rum instead of our typical "goon" (remember the boxed wine?). The free "hangover" breakfast was a good treat the next morning ;) We also managed to fit in a kayak, and some sun bathing by the pool.
Zooming back to mainland, we headed up to Mission Beach, famous for its skydiving and white water rafting. Our bus driver, Trigger, for this part of the trip suffered, we think, from severe ADH...H...H..HD. We've never heard somebody talk so much into a microphone!! Aussies aren't very good with road signs either...the "attention to wildlife" signs were a little different than at home...
Mission beach was a little bit like Magnetic....fantastic hostel, but not much around. Our hostel had a bar attached to it so we managed to keep ourselves busy - I think we like our shirts too much :) We DO have to brag about the beach here though, because it was one of the prettiest we've ever seen! We're going to go through beach-walk withdrawal when we get home!!
Homestretch!! Only one more stop on the OZ experience - onto Cairns for diving!!! Eeeeeeee!! We have a good 8 days in Cairns..hopefully a trip up to Cape Tribulation (the rainforest of the north) and then our dive certification course and then we fly back to Sydney!! We will for sure update you with some diving pictures!
Misses from Oz!!
Love the Ls

Coffee and Sunsets: Whitsunday Islands

Sailing on the Whitsundays was definitely one of the highlights of our east coast trip. "Broomstick" is an ex-racing yacht that we were lucky enough to spend 3 days & 2 nights on. There were 26 of us and 3 crew members on a relatively small boat so it was pretty snug. We slept 6 to a cabin and ate all our meals on the top deck because there wasn't enough room beside the "kitchen". That being said, the food was sensational and we got as much coffee and teas as we wanted...mmm ;) Because the crew was so small we also got the chance to help put up the sails, so we got that true "sailing" experience!

Day 1 we took off from Airlie Beach around lunch and did some sailing to our first night's stop. In the morning we got to snorkel (very cool!) and made our way to White Haven Beach for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We should point out that White Haven Beach is the 6th prettiest beach in the WORLD- not hard to believe it! It did start to rain a little while we were there though, so we didn't get to lay on the white sand as long as we wanted. Later on that day we got to do a second snorkel. We saw TONS of cool tropical fish and even managed to find a sting ray!!

Nights on the boat were fun, they played fantastic music, we enjoyed some wine and we got to watch the crazy Italians on our boat do some dancing. On the last day we got the chance to do one more snorkel before we sailed back to Airlie.

All in all it was a great time, really relaxing and refreshing from all our bus travels! We were really lucky to have lots of sun for our trip which also made for some gorgeous sunsets :)

That evening, once we were back in Airlie, one of the backpacker hostels reserved us a table with free beer so we had one last chance to hang out as a group before we took off to Townsville.

Love and hugs,

L & L

Kroombit (Cattle Station) and Airlie Beach

After one night's recovery from Fraser Island and a FANTASTIC sleep in a dry bed, we had an early morning off to Kroombit, otherwise known as the Cattle Station. Lucky Carmen (one of our canadian girls) got to spend half her birthday on a bus! We got there mid-afternoon in the sun and were checked in right away so we could begin some real "cowboy" activities. As you can imagine, us Calgary/Alberta girls were right at home :) Our first activity was goat mustering on horseback, which basically means us herding goats from a huge field into a small pen by yelling at them. Picture this...oh and we were wearing helmets :) Just when we were finishing, we realized that ALL the gates were open, so we really weren't herding the goats into anywhere at all...it started to POUR, we got drenched, horses got spooked..it just really wasn't a successful mustering attempt at all!! We weren't too keen on anything being soaked and all, but onto other activities such as firing a shotgun, learning to lasso (which has proven to be quite difficult!), goat wrestling and learning to crack a whip (also harder than it looks). Dinner was so yummy and after we all sat and watched people attmept the mechanical bull - sorry to say that neither of us tried it to save ourselves the embarassment of falling off after 2 seconds:) yay Sam!!! As it was Carmen's birthday, the crew at Kroombit made her a cake (along with the other birthday guests - there were 3!) and we all sang them happy birthday around their oil drum fire!

Another early start the next morning off to Airlie Beach which was the longest bus we have had to endure on the east coast route! 7am to about 4:30....ugh. Good thing we have ipods! Airlie beach is the starting point for the Whitsundays Sailing trips and we didn't spend too much time there. The town is pretty cute though, a lot of cafes and tons of bars to suit all the backpackers going through there, not to mention the 80% male population...a lot of "footy" teams I think. Not that we're complaining..;) We got a chance to do some walks on the boarwalk along the coast..check out the colour of the water!!! Then we set off for the Whitsundays!! BUT...we'll save our sailing adventures for another time because it definitely deserves it's own blog!!

Until then...

Laur and Laur

Fraser Island

Fraser Island DEFINITELY needs its own blog. What a beautiful, fantastic place!! It wasn't ideal because we DID get rained on and pretty much slept in a puddle the second night...it's tough when Australia chooses to end it's draught when we're CAMPING...yeah...thanks.

Group dynamics are an interesting thing...our group consisted of 10 people...us 5 canadian girls (with kickass handmade Team Canada shirts we might add), one canadian guy, one american guy and 3 swedish girls. There was some tension, no doubt about it, which happens when groups are thrown together and have to navigate, drive and set up camp together...but by the end of the 3 days, we knew each other fairly well:) Only LT and the american guy were over 21 and able to drive a stick, so LT pretty much drove the majority of the time on the island! Didn't matter that they drive on the other side of the road...AND the car...AND the stick shift is in the other hand, AND we're in 5 feet of sand...no prob!!!

First day we arrived via ferry in the afternoon and the adventure began! We had to do a grocery shop before we left and load in all our gear, and even though no one had anything bigger than a backpack for the 3 days, we were FULL. Small reminders of being jammed into tuk tuks in Asia....ANYWAY, driving in the sand is harder than we thought!! We stopped at a VERY cool lake called Lake Mackenzie, which has gorgeous white sand without the salty ocean water. We made our way to the other side of the island to set up camp for the night on the beach!! It was SO weird driving a 4x4 on the "highway", or the beach!! Team Canada, aka the 5 canadian girls, crammed into one tent, so it was a little squishy, but we managed.

Day 2 was a LOT of driving...up to an old rusty shipwreck, and then up to Indian Head, a lookout point on the northern part of the island. In the afternoon, we went to Eli creek, which is a flowing fresh water creek that you can float down..luckily it got sunny for that!

Night 2 was a bit of a challenge because of the rain, so we got a little wet....and so did ALL the camping gear we had to pack into our truck the next morning..ugh. The last day we hiked 45 min in to Lake Wabby, which is a really quiet Lake that is slowly being filled in by the giant sand dunes pouring down into one side of it. Interesting bit of info for ya; the lake is actually so deep that they can't find the bottom of it...kind of eerie! Definitely a unique scene! We had to make our way back to the ferry, so we decided to stop off again for lunch at Lake Mackenzie because we liked it so much :)

And that was it!! We survived Fraser Island, SO happy we did it, had a great experience! We leave for Whitsundays tomorrow, yay!Wish us well and good weather!!

Love and hugs,

L and L