This weekend Bobbi and I headed to Australia for the weekend. We bought the tickets on a sale that Air New Zealand was having one week and booked the tickets on a spontaneous suggestion and we booked it within an hour of talking about it. We found out that we had to get visas in order to get into Aussie two weeks before we left, but by the time the time came we were all ready to leave and explore a new country down under!
After school on Friday, Bobbi and I hopped on the bus and took a two and half hour ride changing buses and navigating through Auckland to get to the international airport. When we arrived and checked in our flight was delayed and Bobbi's visa hadn't gone through so she has to go through the process of purchasing another one. When I got to the border my birthday was incorrect on my visa so I got questioned by the Australian government about my visa. Eventually, we finally made it past security and made it on the plane.
When we arrived in Brisbane, we missed the last train out of the city and caught an uber, after a 45 minute ride, we realized we had given the driver the wrong address and had to get another uber to right hostel we were staying at. By the time we made it to the hostel, everyone in our room was asleep, but we were exhausted from the travel and jumped right into bed and fell asleep.
The next morning we woke up early, with the time change it was 9 in the morning in Auckland, even though it was only 6 am in Brisbane. We walked through the city square and ate breakfast at McDonald's since it was the only thing open that early in the morning. We decided to head to the Gold Coast and started attempting to navigate around the public transportation to get to the coast.
After about 3-4 hours of running around trying to find where we were going, we finally made it to the Gold Coast! When we arrived, we walked to Burleigh National park and hiked around the bush for awhile.
After working up quite the appetite, we ate lunch at a cafe in the town. We walked around the shops and enjoyed the mood of the city. We spent the rest of the afternoon swimming, falling asleep on the beach, watching surfers, and reflecting on our experience here in New Zealand. It truly has been a once in a lifetime experience over in paradise and it's hard to believe that we are nearing the end of time abroad.
After watching the sunset, we grabbed some dinner and started our trek back home. After riding on the bus for awhile, we realized we didn't have enough money to get on the next train so we stopped at the local dairy at a bus stop and grabbed some change. When we got to the train station, it ended up eating some of my money and we jammed and shut down the refill station for our public transit cards. Luckily someone was still working the booth for the night and helped us refill the cards, making it back on the train with only a minute to spare! We slept on our way home since it was very late back at home and we had been up and moving for hours that day.
The next morning, we woke up and walked over to McDonalds early in the morning. We bought some souvenirs when the stores finally opened in the morning. I really wanted to see kangaroos since we were in Australia so we went to lone pine koala sanctuary and went on another journey through public transportation to get to the sanctuary.
When we arrived, Bobbi and I were classic tourist in awe at every animal we saw. Koalas were everywhere, they were a lot more fluffy than I anticipated. We saw birds, lizards, tasmanian devils, Dingo dogs, and many more various Australian animals.
When we arrived at the kangaroos we realized we were allowed to feed them!! Bobbi and I quickly bought kangaroo food at the general store and ran to the gate, we were pumped and squealing like little school girls for how excited we were to feed the kangaroos. We spent a long time feeding, admiring, and observing the kangaroos.
After the sanctuary, we started on our long journey back home. We took a bus back to the hostel to grab the rest of our stuff and took a train to the airport. Turns out, at the end of the line we didn't have enough money to pay for our ride to the station, but luckily the train manager just let us go since we had a flight to catch. After checking in, we found out our flight was delayed and we sat and ate dinner at the airport spread out along the floor. We felt like true airport travelers with our stuff everywhere on the floor.
After the flight, upon entering New Zealand, I got denied at the border and had to be questioned since my passport didn't seem to be registering with the system. After awhile, they let me go and we made it to biosecurity and Bobbi got stopped by Biosecurity and charged with a hefty fine for the apple that was still in her backpack. Note to anyone traveling to pacific islands, biosecurity is nothing to be messed with. We made it home and was in bed by 230 in the morning ready to smile and teach on Monday morning!
The weekend was a whirlwind and quite the adventure! Although a lot of things went wrong, we laughed through it all and made some incredible memories in the land down under!
