This week was a lot of travel, and by travel I mean sitting on planes and trains. I finally shoved off from Darwin. Probably some of the most productive stuff I did there was darken my tan. After a snafu with my hostel booking where they didn't add my last night, I chilled out with some people at the pool bar and called it an early night so that I could catch the shuttle to the train in the morning.
There was a guy from San Francisco and one from Germany waiting for the shuttle who had bumped into each other before and the three of us got to chatting. We were all going all the way down to Adelaide, and we were all actually taking the train to Perth the following week, so I will probably see them in a few days assuming their plans don't change, it'll be interesting to see what they got up to over the week.
I've gotten smarter on my train rides and took about 3 books from the hostel book exchange to read, as well as loaded up a bunch of Stuff You Should Know podcasts so I can get smarter. The only problem with the latter is that if I listen when I'm tired, I always fall asleep cuz Josh and Chuck's voices are just so soothing. Leaving Darwin we made a pit stop in Katherine for a few hours again. Gave me time to charge my phone and get some reading done. Then it was back on the train to head to Alice. We wouldn't get there until the next morning, so we all got to have a nice snooze. It's actually not that bad sleeping on the train. We may not have nice beds or anything, but we have more room than you do on a plane, so that helps. In Alice we had another stop for a few hours, so this time I chatted up people back home for a bit and it made the time go by much faster than it did in Katherine.
After our stop, it was a long ride to Adelaide. I decided to brave the train showers, and it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be to remain vertical. We made a brief stop just after nightfall so we could look at the night stars and stretch our legs. You can see the Milky Way very clearly down here. You can see it better in places like Uluru, just because there's less light around, but it's pretty cool anywhere down here where you see it. After a sleep at night, we got into Adelaide around noon the following day. I grabbed my bags and made the trek to the airport. I had to take a moment to toss out some of my liquids since I'd be flying international this point, but once that was done, I braced through security and made a bee line for Hungry Jacks for some actual food. At this point I was being sustained by peanut butter and wheat bix, that was all I had had to eat for the passed two days on the train. It was incredible to get something with a bit more nutritional value in my stomach. The box of salted caramel Tim Tams that I ate afterwards were also delicious.
I was getting a little worried since I was flying through Melbourne to go to Auckland and only have about 2 hours too transfer to my international Auckland flight once I landed. My flight to Melbourne ended up being delayed about 45 minutes. However, I was flying Qantas, so I got perks that I forgot about. Mainly, food. Nice lamb pie for dinner, rice crackers for snack, chocolate for dessert and wine to drink with my meal. The main down fall with this was that the flight to Melbourne is so short, just over an hour, that by the time I was maybe halfway through my dinner the crew got the call to prep for landing. I slammed the rest of my wine and hoped I wouldn't be too tipsy trying to go through customs and immigration. It didn't help that it was around midnight now too, so I was quite tired. We landed and I booked it as fast as I could to the international terminal. Luckily I had sorted my liquids out already, so I didn't have to deal with. The line for immigration was moving along fairly quickly, but I kept checking my watch. My plane was boarding in fifteen minutes. Great. I got through immigration fine and made it to my terminal about 5 minutes before I got called for boarding. Thankfully I had a few minutes to fill up my water bottle and empty my bladder.
The plane ride was fine. I didn't get much sleep. I watched about three quarters of 'Into The Woods' before I nodded off. I stuffed my face with their goody bag of snacks and tried to rouse myself when we landed so I could be somewhat coherent going through customs. Thankfully that went rather well. They did take my apple that I got on the plane, but nothing else. We got in about 5 am and I wasn't due to check into my hostel until noon. I found a seat in the terminal and managed to get in about an hour of sleep at some point. I eventually hopped the bus to my hostel.
I tossed my stuff in and started to take care of business. I needed to do laundry really badly, so I got change for that and ran out to get some food quickly. I texted my pal in town to see what was going on and I found an Irish pub called Danny Doolans (apparently a very end of the line type bar) with live music and ended up staying much longer than I thought I would - especially seeing as I had been up for almost 36 hours or so straight minus my little nap - but it was still relatively early, about midnight. I was meeting my friend the next day at 9:30, so I knew I needed sleep.
Luckily I passed out pretty quickly and my alarm went off too early. Not really, it just seemed like it to me. We pushed back out meeting time an hour, so I did get a little more sleep. I gathered up my day bag then went out so we could catch the ferry to Waiheke island where we were going around and doing wine tasting. The ferry over gave us some nice views of Auckland. It was a quick 40 minutes to the island. We hopped off and picked up a rental car. We went to Cable Bay winery first to do a tasting. Afterward, we drove in the wrong direction for a bit before righting ourselves and going to what would become my favorite spot, Man 'O' War. I had some really delicious Pinot Gris here and we ended up having two glasses each of our chosen wine and sitting on the beach catching up. I was already feeling the effects of the wine. It didn't help that I had only had a granola bar for breakfast. We met up at another winery with one of his friend for another drink and some olives as a snack before heading back to Cable Bay. We got to watch the sunset and chill out on bean bags while drinking more wine. After that glass, I was quite a bit passed my tipping point. We opened a bottle of red after that, of which I had some while munching on my banana chips and feeding them to the duck nearby who tried to nick my whole bag. The banana chips weren't enough to stop the churning in my stomach though. I was quite drunk. We had more people join us and were going to eat dinner in a bit, but they made the right decision to put me on the ferry back to Auckland. I set my head down and I swear it was only 5 minutes later that we were back in Auckland. Good thing they had guard rails for me. Double good that there was a Macca's on my way back to the hostel. A nice large Big Mac meal with strawberry shake would be just the thing to set me right. I don't think I've ever had any better tasting fries.
When I got back to my room, there were a few new people. There was a guy from Massachusetts that was from a town just outside of where my sister went to school, so we started talking a bit. Or rather, I talked a lot because that's what happens when I drink. It was actually quite early, maybe 9, but I needed to go to sleep to get up for my Hobbiton tour.
I was in and out of sleep, but made it to the bus for my Waitomo caves and Hobbiton tour. You couldn't take any photos in the glow worm caves, but they were really cool. It was like looking up at the night sky. The stalactites and stalagmites were all really neat and it reminded me a bit of going through the black hills in South Dakota. We got a yummy lunch and headed to Rotorua and Hobbiton. They had a nice little tour of Hobbiton for us and we even got to go into a few of the holes. We finished the tour at the Green Dragon Inn where we were treated to a beer or cider. They have a full time maintenance and gardening staff to take care of the place. We had a little bit of time at the gift shop before we rolled out and headed back to Auckland. There were a lot of great photo ops throughout the day and our guide was full of information, most of which I have forgotten.
Tomorrow is my last full day in Auckland. The plan is to visit Mount Eden and look out at the other volcanic cones then probably nip on over to the restaurant my friend works at to say hi and sample some of the fair. Who knows, maybe I'll end up back at Danny Doolan's before the night is over. After that, it's about a half day in Auckland before catching a red eye back to Melbourne, sleeping in the airport, then heading back to Adelaide to catch the train to Perth. I'll get a few days in Perth before flying back to Cairns! But now, it is time for sleep, and lots of it. Until next time people, have a good week!
Cheers,
-Celina
