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I am a new traveling fool. I've been a corporate travel junkie for one too many sales quarters and am ready to spend my hard earned cash... I'm taking a "sabbatical" for a while and hitting the road to travel. The trip should take me to six out of the seven continents if I don't run out of cash early.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

One week in Coogee




Well it has been an interesting first week in Sydney. Paul and I have begun learning the tricks of the trade of back packing. The sad thing is that we're doing "easy" backpacking right now. (sort of like cheater-camping). Everyone speaks english, we can find our way around easily and the hostels are relatively clean. We're over a McDonald's so we have free WiFi (although its a bit dodgy).

Thus far we've found it difficult to stay on budget. I guess we're adapting to being on a budget at all! We keep talking about how we used to use the saying, "we'll make it up in our next paycheck" a lot... well now our next paycheck won't be until 2012. Sheesh!

Here is a picture of our first backpacker hostel "surfside coogee beach"

Basic thoughts about hostels:
  1. lockers are key. this hostel doesn't have them and we're both very weary of leaving anything out... its frustrating and difficult to have a good day when you're sweating if your stuff is going to be there when you get back.
  2. hostel mattresses are rough. Its mostly just a piece of foam.
  3. cock-roaches are normal. Okay so this is a bit over the top b/c we have them back stateside but we've seen a few of them so far. Those suckers can move FAST! Also, they crunch.
  4. We are the only american backpackers we've met thus far. Most of the people we've been talking with are british (manchester), german, irish, kiwi & aussie (duh). It feels good to be an american in a hostel. Don't know why but the novelty is a bit nice. No one seems to have hard feelings about the US other than they all seem to have a few stereotypes that circle around. I'm apparently a mixture of all three!!
That should do it for now. I'll throw up a few more pictures. We've hit the blue mountains (three sisters), sydney harbour & bondi/coogee. Tomorrow we pack up and head down to see Lisa & Sam for a night in Cronulla. It will be good to get out of this hostel for a night or two and see a familiar BUTLER face!





Tuesday, January 4, 2011

dream OZ trip

Quick update before my battery dies...

Last time Paul and I spent two weeks in Australia in 2004 we were able to do Fraiser Island and Byron Bay with our other American study abroad friends...

On that trip we both wanted to take a trip to the whitsunday islands and up to Cairns. Well my friends! This is going to be THAT trip. This morning Paul and I headed over to the local backpackers travel agency and spent three hours mapping our our next three weeks of travel. Here is the rough itinerary:

  • Sunday, Jan 9th - fly to Townsville, Australia - take a bus from Townsville to Airlie Beach (approx 4 hours)
  • Head out on Monday, Jan 10th on a sailboat for a two day / two night sailing cruise to dive and snorkel the magnetic islands
  • On Thursday, Jan 13th we take a greyhound bus from Airlie Beach back up to townsville to our next hostel on Magnetic island. We stay there until Sunday the 16th.
  • Head up on Sunday the 16th to Cairns. Dive in Cairns on the 17th on a boat cruise to the great barrier reef and then take off on the 18th to Auckland NZ!!
  • In NZ we have booked a Jucy Rental and will have the van for 14 days! We'll be driving around the north & south island before we fly back to Australia (melbourne) on Feb 2nd. Check out this SICK RIDE!!
The next few weeks are going to fly by but I have to admit this is exactly the type of travel schedule I've been looking forward to.