sbrass
Stephanie Brass Joined: January 27th 2008
Logged in: February 10th 2011
Logged in: February 10th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
Able Tasman National Park
So it has been about 3 months since I last updated this blog. I will try to keep it short because the internet connection I’m on keeps failing me. At the end of April was mid-semester break (aka a random week off) so Eve and I rented a car and drove up to the north part of the south island. We spent a few days hiking the Able Tasman great walk and afterwards slowly made our way back down the east coast. Along the way we stopped at Kaikoura to go swimming with the dolphins. This wasn’t the typical Mexico style swimming with trained dolphins in a small tank. We swam with about 600 wild dolphins out at sea. It was worth every penny. Interacting with the wild dolphins in their natural habitat and having them ... read more
Eve and I kayaking in Milford Sound
I have been very fortunate lately to have had the opportunity to travel for the past couple of weekends. I spent Easter weekend with a few friends in the Fiordland. We stayed in Te Anau, which is a small town that borders a lake. For two of the days, we hiked part of the Kepler Track and splurged for the other day to go sea kayaking in Milford Sound. After I recovered from the 6:45 am departure, the day went perfectly. For an area of the country known for insane amounts of rain (over 7m per year) we really lucked out and had a perfectly sunny day, not a cloud in site. The sea kayaking was a great way to see the sound (the other option being on a boat with hundreds of other people). Not ... read more
St. Clair beach in Dunedin
Well it has been a while since my last entry. In the past month I can say that I feel like I have stopped traveling and am now just living. Classes have begun and my routine has been established. Thankfully, the weather has improved greatly since I last wrote. From what I understand it was just unusually cold, but it did give a scary glimpse into the months to come. The past couple of days have been especially nice with the temperature in the 20-250C range. The way the courses over here that I am taking transfer over I have chosen to take some random courses and get rid of some of my arts credits. I am in 3 courses (still considered full time, but the max number you can take at once is 4): Sociology ... read more
The pier
To travel to our final destination in New Zealand, we took a bus from Christchurch to Dunedin. The trip was fairly uneventful and the countryside not that remarkable under the looming grey sky. The bus dropped us off at the train station. From there we walked with our excessive baggage up to the university to get our keys and then parted ways as we each went to our separate flats. Fortunately, my flat is only about .5 km down the road from Eve’s house and is only a 5 minute walk to the university. When I arrived, the only person home was Sarah (the kiwi host student) and she was on her way out to dinner, so I had the place to myself. I live in a town house with three floors. The ground floor is ... read more
Hiking
After a delayed flight from Melbourne, Eve and I arrived after 1am at our hostel in Christchurch and promptly collapsed into bed. The following day we slept in and decided to spend what was left of our day wandering around town. Christchurch is a beautiful garden city. It has the feel of an old English town (very much like Oxford). There are antique trams that loop around the city and as the name suggests, at the center of the town is a cathedral. Appropriately, Christchurch is known as the garden capital of New Zealand, as there are flowers everywhere. Lining all the houses, streets, businesses are vibrant colors and invigorating scents. Our hostel was perfectly located across the street from the Christchurch museum and Art Center as well as the extensive botanic gardens. The travelers in ... read more
Koala
Melbourne has been a rollercoaster. My feelings towards the city have been, well extreme. We arrived at about 10:30 pm and of course being ourselves, we forgot to look up the address to the hostel, so that’s what we were doing at an internet kiosk when this woman over heard us trying to figure out how to get to are hostel and offered Eve and I a ride with her family. We gladly accepted and so what would have been a nightmare attempting to navigate the city late at night with our excessive amount of luggage via public transport or an insanely large taxi bill turned out to be a free ride right to the door of our hostel. This random family saved us so much time and frustration that we were ecstatic. As far as ... read more
View from our hostel.
To all of you who asked me to keep you updated during my travels, I am writing this blog for you. This seems to be a much simpler method as opposed to sending out mass e-mails. My travels kinda began on the 17th of January when I departed Edmonton, but I was only heading to Vancouver, so not really. There I spent my last few days in Canada for a long while with Allie (Eve when she joined us later on). Naturally, before leaving to the sunny and hot Australia, I had to get one last ski day in, so that’s what we did. Allie, a couple of our friends, and I headed up to Whistler to ski. Most importantly, Allie and I began our attempts to master the backwards telemarking. Now I wont say it ... read more
