Meesh
Michelle Kim Joined: October 20th 2005
Logged in: February 3rd 2010
Logged in: February 3rd 2010
Travel Blog Posts
I've long since returned from my globetrotting Down Under. After five months of traipsing about Fiji, New Zealand and Australia I returned to the States broke, tired and extremely dusty. I spent close to two months recuperating on a couch at home in New Jersey. Occasionally I would stir myself out of my cable television induced stupor to visit college friends in Boston. My biggest complaint while travelling was the painfully absence of close friends, so to be surrounded by them again for a few weeks was what I had been aching for over several months. It's a cliche for a reason: there is no place like home. Of course, after a few weeks of couch surfing New England, my adventure-bug fired up once again. Luckily walking through Harvard Square in Cambridge, I had spontaneously ... read more
Hi everyone, Made it Melbourne safe and sound early Friday morning. I took an overnight Greyhound from Sydney Thursday night. I might have managed a few hours of sleep with all the tossing and turning. In this sleepwalking state, I wandered around the city center looking for breakfast with my huge pack and tried to kill off a few hours. Still, I managed to be half an hour late meeting my friend Sarah by the Royal Botanical Gardens, but luckily she's nice and agrees that there should only be ONE Park Street in Melbourne. Whoops! Anyhow, it was great to see an old friend. I haven't really spent any time with her since she graduated from Wellesley in 2003 (a time that was quite possibly the most fun I've had in my life) so we had ... read more
Crocs! Crikey!
Hello everyone! I'm writing from the town of Katoomba in New South Wales, about 1 hour west of Sydney. I spent two noisy and sleepless nights at the hostel in King's Cross, the red light district of the capital. Tired and overheated, I decided that I needed a break from it all and get into the mountains again. Just a few days removed from New Zealand, I was already suffering withdrawal. Luckily, the transit system in Sydney is fantastic. Think clean double level trains, wide flatscreen displays above the platform and branches to every possible destination. I took a ride out to the Blue Mountains, a beautiful and extremely popular weekend getaway for city dwellers. Katoomba is just one of many small towns scattered across the main highway that winds its way through the nature reserve. ... read more
Ego Boost courtesy of NZ Customs
Hi everyone! Made it across the Tasman safe and sound and now we're in Sydney for a few days. In our last few days in Christchurch, New Zealand I managed to unload my guitar on trademe.co.nz which is like eBay in the States. We also sold Chippy to a guy Caitlin met on Stewart Island. We didn't get too bad a price and I was just relieved to sell the car in such a short time. Stu and Barabara, the couple we were staying with, lent us their car to drive to the airport. I was amazed by this immediate generosity since they had only known us a few days. In speaking with them at dinner (and sharing a bottle of wine with them), I learned quite a bit about true Kiwi hospitality. They live by ... read more
Fermentation Vats
This is Australia Eve, the end of the New Zealand chapter of my travels. Tomorrow afternoon, I board a plane from Christchurch and fly into the cosmopolitan sprawl of Sydney. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the finality of it all, leaving my home for the past four months. It is hard to make sense of my experience and also difficult as I am not quite sure what I am going to do in Oz. After the Catlin's Coast, Cait and I drove up from Bluff to Dunedin. We stayed at a fabulous backpackers in Milton where the hostel owner played jazz and classic rock, did our dishes for us, tended an enormous book exchange and kept a guitar in the living room. Quite lovely and right around the corner, cheap ice creams at the local dairy. ... read more
Doubtful Sound
I'm writing from the city of Invercargil, New Zealand's southern-most city. Also, the location of Burt Munroe's home in The World's Fastest Indian. I've had an amazing past week, so get comfortable. It began the night before my a three day expedition of Doubtful Sound with Fiordland Wilderness Experience. I met my expedition group with the owner, Bill. He briefed us on our trip and gently broke the news of our pre-6 am wake up times. Ouch. To Doubtful Sound from Te Anau, there was 3 hours of van travel and boat ride across Lake Manapouri before we could think about our paddle. We were getting our money's worth, he insisted. The next morning, not so bright but very early, I sat with my gear on a dark curb under a flickering street light, trying not ... read more
Just in Case
Since heli-hiking up Fox Glacier, Cait and I have made our way down the West Coast down into Fiordland. This is the New Zealand that I day-dreamted about my last semester at Wellesley when I should have been studying. Snow capped mountain peaks, crystal blue lakes, glacial fiords, tons of hiking and kayaking. Woohoo! Throw off the shackles of tourist traps and into the wild! We met up with Caitlin's friend from Picton, Alice, a soccer player from Haverford. I can't tell you how nice it is to have someone who is so similar to our backgrounds (athletes from small liberal arts colleges in the Northeast). I know we are supposed to meeting new people, but we've been doing that for 3 MONTHS! It was surprisingly nice to hear someone else who says "like" and "you ... read more
Scenery Unparalleled
Hi everyone! Last time, I promised pictures of glaciers and here they are. Quickly first though, we did a little day hike around Lake Matheson. It's a famous spot for viewing Aoraki Mount Cook, the tallest point in the country. Nearby is Mount Tasman. Both are named after major European explorers who helped discover of New Zealand. January 26th marked Caitlin's 23rd birthday and her first in New Zealand with perhaps more to come in the distant future. As a birthday gift, I had gotten a bottle of Marlborough sauvignon blanc that we drank the night before our adventure. Combining this hangover with my intense (but waning) fear of heights and Caitlin's fear of anything loud and mechanical (just teasing, actually, it's of helicopters), we were asking for a rough ride. To complicate matters, I had ... read more
Abel Tasman Beach
Hi everyone! I have a bit of catch up to do so bear with me... I start about two weeks ago when I left Akaroa to meet up with Caitlin in Nelson. I picked up Chippy in Picton where she'd been oh-so-lonely for a week or so. I think she may have enjoyed the rest after all we've put her through. I picked up Cait at her family friends' home in Nelson, where I met the cutest baby in the entire world and had a cuppa before we moved on to Marahau, a little town nestled at the base of Abel Tasman National Park. We booked a double kayak and two nights at campsites along the Coastal Track of the park making a three day, two night trip. The first day and a half, we paddled ... read more
I'm writing from a bar/cafe/internet outpost in Westport on the West Coast. I THOUGHT this blog would be about the amazing time we had in Abel Tasman or the revisiting of Shambhala, but instead, I'm going to b*tch about our car troubles. Bear with me. Cait and I had pulled off to the side of the road to look at the map and see where we were going to stop for the night. We left Shambhala and the Golden Bay. After deciding to keep on going on to the Pancake Rocks down the West Coast, I pulled back onto the road to travel another hour or so. That's when we heard an awful clang and a scraping noise. "Shit," we both said at the same time. I stopped the car and we took a look under ... read more
