Australia! Land of...

I indulged my wanderlust and was in Australia this past Christmas holiday :) I was mainly there for my friend's wedding, so I took the opportunity to travel the land...here's some snap shots of what I got up to, I'll try keep it concise. Oh, and I was solo tripping (being brave!), hence it's all scenery.

Beautiful sunset and the Opera House (from every angle! In Sydney there's no getting away from it!)

Weird flavour combo... I was curious about what this would taste like, and also it was fun to say!

Kookaburra! They are stocky little birds that made monkey noises! What's there not to like?!

Hehehehe. Some one must be making a joke. There's also a place called Woollomooloo and a suburb called Manly because apparently when the sailors fist landed there they found a tribe living there who were manly. I kid you not.

Koala, they look quite strange in real life. Seeing koalas and kangaroos up close made me realize that they really evolved separate from the rest of the world. Their faces are quite unlike any other mammals I've seen. Did you know koalas have 2 thumbs?

Birds that looked like tree bark!

I went for a walk in Canberra and encountered wild kangaroos! See them all looking at me intently? I was scared of some form of kangaroo stampede!

 I totally geeked out and went to tons of museums, these are some of my favorites...

Eeeeee! (insert much excited arm waving*) Their collection is amazing! Total dream for art students, works by famous artists ranging from impressionism, surrealism to abstract expressionism. There was Monet, Duchamp and Jackson Pollock! All the artists I studied and love! Erm, I sneaked some photos...

Miro! I am such a fan!

This is so playful! Lichtenstein also made a series of hay stacks at different times of the day in his comic style based on the haystack studies Monet made. I love the cross pollination of art :)

Holy crapamo! Its Chuck Close! This painting was huge, those railings come up to my thigh. When you are up close you can see every single pore and hair. I stand in open mouthed awe.

There was a sculpture garden outside - this is Rodin's Burghers of Calais!

Mysterious chrome cone things in the forest glade?

Heads in a pond :D oh modern art, you are so eccentric.

I also went to Melbourne, this was the forest on Mt Dandenong Sky High. It was beautiful, I have never been amongst such immense trees before.

I was with a family friend, we went cherry picking! The sweetest cherries ever! I totally stuffed my face.

On my last day I went to the Australia museum in Sydney. This place is so amazing it needs it's own post, but I'll show you some funny photos for now :)

Behold! The Demon Duck of Doom! Oh dear lord, I die of laughter ^_^ This is apparently some giant prehistoric duck that once roamed the land.

Heehee, square poop!

There was a dinosaur exhibit there, where I found these guys...

They had such funny poses!

I also went up the tower eye, you can see it's shadow here. This is Hyde park in town. Sydney has the best parks and botanical gardens.

So that concludes my Aus trip. All in all I really enjoyed Australia and traveling alone has been a refreshingly new experience. oh hey, I also went by China before returning home, so more travel photo spamming in the upcoming post!

Super useful site for Sydney public transport: http://www.transportnsw.info/

Wonderful website for affordable accommodation: https://www.airbnb.com/

Vic Falls Overlander Trip Part 3

For day 2's mission, we decided to join Daniel (one of the friends we made on the trip!) to walk to Zambia and look at Vic Falls from that side. I was super paranoid upon discovering how close we were to Zambia that I made us get yellow fever vaccines before we left, even though its not mandatory for Zimbabwe. Anywho, this just meant we were safe to go to Zambia, so away we went!

 This is no man's land...It was quite a walk, but not without rewards!

Click through for a bigger picture!

On the other side of the bridge they did bungee, gorge swing, zip line stuff - amazing view!

Going forth bravely in the footsteps of Livingstone!

 We are getting closer!

Rainbow...

It was amazing how close you could get to the falls.

We also caught a taxi to Livingstone town, to try out the famous Mosi beer at Jolly Boys backpackers.

This was very tasty. Though my judgement may have been affected by the heat.

How cool is this? I'm totally going to have this in my house, possibly with a lot more cushions, so I could just jump into it and roll around ^_^ Jolly boys seemed like a really nice place, it was clean, and people were lounging by the pool using wi fi and relaxing.

On new year's eve (our 3rd and last day before we start journeying back), we went to a music festival - the Vic Falls Carnival!

Yay Jeremy Loops! He was in the truck convoy with us, Alex actually heard about this whole trip through his facebook...

Rocking out raaaaw!

Hello 2013! We had a great holiday and wonderful life experience!

Vic Falls Overlander Trip Part 2

We were really active this holiday (compared to our other holidays that mainly consisted of drinking and fishing - which is synonymous with drinking anyways). We booked to go river rafting on the Zambezi the very next day of our arrival. Starting at 7am! Yep we were late night partying, drinking and extreme activity maniacs! (Here follows my snort of derision : pffft!) Now for many pictures of us fooling about in boats... 

 It was so beautiful!

The stoic (but positive) face of determination...

Look at us going into a rapid backwards! Weee!

This wasn't us... We didn't flip and I never fell off unintentionally. I'm kind of bummed about that, it looks like fun :D I think its because we were quite light, there was only 7 in our raft. These guys had 10 people so they were in the water a lot of the time... We were the rescue boat! We paddled about after the rapids picking people up :)

It was so much fun! We paddled for about 2 hours! So it was well worth the money. The views were spectacular, and in some quiet patches our guide let us jump out to swim in the river :D The only thing is that you have to be quite fit to climb back up out of the gorge at the end of your journey. I almost died! It was so hot and a very steep climb (for maybe 30mins?) It felt like an eternity! A guide even asked if I was having an asthma attack I was so unfit :p That aside, I highly recommend river rafting, its awesome!

Here's a map of the Zambezi (click for larger view). We paddled from "Overland truck eater" to "The oblivion" in the bottom left corner.

That afternoon, we were taken by train to a party in the bush. Alex and I were so pooped that by about 9pm we were glumly trying to sleep on the train carriage floor. But here's a pretty picture...

Final part (3) to follow!