Nepal? Again? Really?

Yes, it's true, I've returned to Nepal! I absolutely fell in love with the country and the people the last time I was here, and I just felt truly called to come back here. In all the places I saw this year, this is the one that pulled me back. I couldn't ignore that feeling, so here I am.

I enjoyed the trek I did to Everest Base Camp last time, but this time I wanted to do something more challenging. However, not surprisingly, I don't have the skills necessary to climb on glaciers and ice faces. The solution? Attend a glacier climbing school. I know, I never thought I would be going to school in the middle of my year off, but here we are! I am doing a school that will take 22 days and we will end it by summiting a peak called Lobuche East (not to be confused with the city of Lobouche). The peak is 6,119 meters high (or 20,065 for you Americans), which will make a new high for me personally. It will be a week of sleeping in snow and on glaciers and working my tail off, but I am so excited for it!
After we finish the school, I will be heading up to Everest Base Camp again. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, the last time I went there I was feeling pretty sick, so I was unable to climb the hill of Kala Pattar. This has one of the best views of Everest and I was really disappointed that I missed it, so I wanted to try again. Second, I spent a week in Kathmandu and I am doing the first week of the trek with some people who are attempting to summit Everest and Lhotse. Their stories just fascinate me - how they started climbing, what influenced them to attempt such high peaks, what they are hoping to gain from this experience. I will be able to catch up with them at base camp and see how they are acclimatizing, how their trips up to camp I and II went, and just generally see what it's like to actually be part of an expedition that lives in base camp for two months. I think it will be a wonderful experience!

Once I finish my climb in early May, I am planning to volunteer for a few weeks back in Kathmandu, either teaching english or helping at an orphanage. I think it's going to be a wonderful experience! After that, it is back to Australia for a few days, then back home. Phew! What a great way to end the trip. Can't wait to tell you all the details!

Australia - East Coast

Australia, Australia, Australia. My hub of travel for the last few months, so of course I’m back again. However, this time it’s not just me – I’ve got my sisters in tow! I picked them up from the airport early in the morning and we spent the day exploring Sydney while I played tour guide. I think they were a little angry at me because I refused to let them go to sleep, but how would they ever get adjusted if they went to sleep straight away? See, I wasn’t being mean, I was looking out for them :-)

We only spent one night in Sydney, then we flew up to Cairns for a week. We spent the first day getting ourselves adjusted, figuring out what we wanted to do for our time in this lovely city. We wandered in and out of travel shops and hostels, chatting with people around us to figure out the best things to do. After we had everything booked, we went back to our amazing apartment. We had decided to rent an apartment instead of staying in a hotel and I’m so glad we did. It was so big and spacious and had a great view of the water. It was probably over a million dollar apartment, so we felt quite luxurious!

Of course, one of the first things we did was going scuba diving & snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. I dived on the reef a few years ago but it was before I was certified, so I was really excited to head back there. I found a couple of guys to dive with – one was a pilot from Canada living in Luxembourg and the other was a lawyer from Miami and they were both really good looking, and I had a great couple of dives with them! We saw a manta ray and a sea turtle and heaps of amazing fish and coral. After our dives I went snorkeling with Gina and Sierra and we saw reef sharks and turtles there as well. It was a beautiful day out on the reef!

We also did a couple of different day trips. The first one was up to the Daintree Rainforest. I knew Gina was really looking forward to seeing the rainforest, so I’m happy our day up there worked out. I do have to say that it rained nearly the entire time we were in Australia. We were so frustrated by it, but there’s really nothing you can do but keep pushing on and finding fun things to do. Rain in the rainforest isn’t so bad, but on a beach day it can be pretty frustrating! Anyhow, our adventure to the rainforest was great. We saw some spiders that were the size of your palm (I think Sierra almost walked into one of them face first!), as well turtles, iguanas and in the afternoon we went on a crocodile search. We did see a croc sunning herself on the bank of the river – nice to look at but not to pet!

We spent a day with Uncle Brian’s adventures – what a fun day! It was a bunch of backpackers and they take you up around the tablelands. It’s a day centered around swimming and enjoying all of the trees and the landscape. The first place we went was a river with a huge rock in the middle of it. We asked what it was and the answer was “a natural waterslide!” Our guide said the water was quite high and just under the allowable swimming limit, but that if we were confident swimmers we could jump in and give it a try. A bunch of guys starting climbing in, so of course I had to jump in and represent the ladies! 

After a great lunch we went to a beautiful waterfall. Our guide had us all pose and do these shampoo commercials…you do a hair flip and they take the photo while the water is all flying off. I was not the most coordinated person in the world while taking the photos, but I think they came out pretty good anyway!

Finally, the best part of their trip out to visit me….finding out that Regina is pregnant! She and Andrew are expecting a baby in September! They haven’t found out yet if it is a boy or a girl, but they say that Gabe can’t wait to be a big brother. It will give me something to look forward to once I return to the monotony of regular life. Babies are always so much fun!

As expected, I had a wonderful time when Sierra and Gina came to visit. It was great to be a part of their first independent international travel experience. They flew out and back with no problems and had to learn to deal with some of the cultural differences. Hopefully this sparked something in them and that they might one day again have the ability to travel. I know I loved my time in Australia with them!

New Zealand - Part 2

Yes, I’ve finally returned to finished writing about New Zealand. It’s just been so busy traveling around that I haven’t had time to sit down and do it. Oh well, here we are now. So the last I wrote, I was in Queenstown loving the adventurous culture. There was always something going on or some new adrenaline challenge, I could have stayed there for a month! However, since we only had a few days there, we had to narrow it down to a few of the most important activities. 

One of the things I knew we had to do was go to visit Milford Sound. However, I wasn’t really keen to drive all the way there in our sweet rental van – it was 5 hours each direction, so it would have been one really massive day or it would have taken us two days. However, we got lucky and found a great deal to go on a Jucy bus. I am so glad we did that, because then I could just spend the whole drive enjoying the scenery. In my opinion, the scenery on the drive was better than what we saw in Milford Sound itself.

There were just towering mountains all around you, waterfalls everywhere you looked and such vibrant blue sky above you – just beauty everywhere you looked. The sound itself was carved out by glaciers thousands of years ago, so the cliffs are almost completely vertical. There is no gentle slope, they simply fall from the top all the way into the water below. Truly beautiful surroundings, I’m so glad we were able to see it. 

The final thing we did in Queenstown was the Nevis Swing. For those of you who have never heard of it, it is a huge swing that does a 70 meter freefall, then swings you across the valley for a few minutes. I really wanted to do a bungy jump, but I’m so afraid that my feet will come out of the bindings, so this was a great alternate. The other fun thing is that Zach and I were able to go together. You walk out on this skinny little bridge into a little enclosure that is just floating in the middle of the gorge. I think the walk out there is one of the scariest bits, since the wind is blowing and you have so much time to look down and think about what you’re doing, but once you get out there, it goes very quickly. 

They encourage you to try different ways of swinging, so the first time we went backwards. It is so scary because you can’t see where you’re going! They also surprised us, so there was no countdown or anything, just a drop. It was so incredible, before we were even finished the swing we had already decided to do it again. The second time I decided to be really daring – I went upside down….wow, did that really double the fear factor! Zach went right side up so he could get pictures of us – I really love the one below. I was so terrified and loved it so much that I made Zach go one final time on his own, so that he could also experience the upside down drop. The Nevis Swing was definitely our highlight of Queenstown!

 

After we finished our adrenaline kick, we started working our way up the west coast. First stop? Franz Josef to walk on the glacier.
 I know, more adventure activities for us! I do think it’s funny that I had to come half way around the world to walk on a glacier – we have a few near us in Colorado, but I don’t think they’re anywhere near as famous or exciting as Franz Josef. We did the full day glacier hike and it was amazing. You walk about an hour through the rainforest to get to the face of the glacier. There, you strap on your crampons and charge up the ice. Once you’ve got the crampons on, you can go up and down the ice face, climb the stairs and go along the rocky bits with no problems. The ice is so beautiful and blue, you can’t help but stare up at it. We were able to go into a few ice caves and walk in a few crevices, it was heaps of fun. Some of the crevices were so narrow that you had to take off your backpack and shuffle your feet to get through them – definitely an adventure. 

After Franz Josef we continued our trek up the west coast. We stopped at a few of the towns either to stay for a night or just to grab a quick meal. One of my favorite stops was to see the Pancake Rocks (called Punakaiki). To this day they still have no idea how the rocks were formed, but somehow they grew in layers that cause them to look like pancakes. We were there at the wrong time of day and were unable to see the blowhole in action, but it was still a really cool site. 

Our last couple of days were really calm. We were just enjoying the beautiful views along the coast, where you’ve got rainforest on one side and beaches on the other side. It’s difficult to keep your eyes on the road when all you want to do is look everywhere!  Our final day we had to drive from the west coast, across the “mountains” (I know, I’m really spoiled by Colorado) and into Christchurch. Normally this wouldn’t be a huge deal, but we were in the super sweet campervan, and she just didn’t do well on hills. It also didn’t help that it was pouring down rain – you can see below how much fun it was to drive over the pass that day! 

Finally, we arrived back in Christchurch. It was so sad to say goodbye to Zach! I had an absolutely incredible time with him in NZ, minus the crappy weather we had the whole time. I am so glad he was able to come out to visit – hopefully now that he’s experienced a new country, he’ll keep traveling and discovering new things. If not, at least we had an amazing campervan experience in the South Island!

After Zach flew out, I met up with my friend Angela again. She was kind enough to let me stay with her for a week, and just tag along with her wherever she went. The first thing we did was go to a horse show. She has a sweet horse named Milan (who I got to ride!) that she does shows with. I had never been to a horse show, so I didn’t know just how much work goes into it – they put horse mascara on, put hair extensions in their tails, paint their hooves black and braid their entire manes! It takes hours to get the poor horses ready for these shows. After all this work and effort, I was soooo excited that Angela won Supreme Grand Champion. That meant she won the entire show and got to lead the parade! 

 

Afterwards we went back to her house for the rest of the weekend. It is not a super old house but her landlords are complete jerks, so imagine my surprise when I got e-coli! Yes, I made it safely through India, Morocco, SE Asia and other third world countries without getting sick at all, only to get e-coli in New Zealand. What are the chances of that? Good thing that I had the antibiotics to kill it. Needless to say, I think she’s glad she was already moving out of that place! We spent the rest of the week going up and down the west coast for her job. She sells fertilizer and feed to dairy farms so I got to learn more than I’ve ever wanted to know about dairy cows. I was lucky enough that one of her clients even let me come and help with milking the cows a little bit! Quite an experience and I only got a little bit of poo on me. Finally, at the end of our week of exploring, we went to the amazing Hanmar hot springs. It was nice to relax and just think about all of the incredible scenery I had experienced while in New Zealand. What an absolutely beautiful country!!