from the farthest down under!

I will update with pictures next week!

Hey everyone!

Today I'm calling up from pretty much the farthest place down under I can get before Antarctica! I am writing this while my internet minutes are ticking away under the roof of the Pickled Frog Hostel, which is probably the brightest green building you could ever see!

We left our house in Mlebourne at 4:45am on Monday to get to the airport for our 7:00am flight to Hobart. After forcing down a small breakfast that early in the morning I decided it would be best to pack some apples to eat later...little did I know that when we stepped off the plane in Hobart, Tasmania there would be "Beware of the Sniffer Dog" signs everywhere. Man, I was worried! What could I expect from that? ...a vicious, foaming at the mouth canine that is ready to bite my head off! So, I threw out two of my three apple while scarfing down the last one when we came across the vicious? ...beagle-like mutt on a leash. HA, it was slightly pathetic looking AND I walked right past it with apple stuffed in my face and juice dripping down my hands and chin. Good security, nnnot so sure about that.

Once we were off the plane it was a mad dash to some side of the road airport roundabout where we had arranged a bus pick-up to take us to Cole's Bay. We arrived at the BIG4 Iluka Hostel or something in Cole's Bay and the people there were realllly out  of it and we ended up paying $6 each a night to stay in their accomodation... I'll take it!

Tuesday we there was a bus from the hostel to Freycinet National Park that would take us there, let us exoplorew for 6 hours then return. So we hopped on, only to find out that they weren't doing the return drive. So we would have to hitch-hike back..and we did just that, obviously. Before the hitch-hike home though, we spent the day climbing Mount Amos. When I say "climbing" and "Mount" in that sentence I ACTUALLY mean we climbed a mountain! Not exactly what we expected...we scaled a flat, steep, slippery rock face all the way to the tip-top where we were able to look out over Wineglass Bay, one of the top 10 most beautiful beaches in the world! Boy-o-boy was it ever a sight to see! After taking that in, we climbed down aka shimmied down on our butts and ended with some delicious peanut butter sandwiches in the company of a much too friendly wallaby!

Wineglass Bay from the top of Mount Amos

Wednesday we woke up to the sun shining brightly through our window, for the first time! The weather here is very deceptive and is usually completely dreary and overcast in the morning but always ends up beautiful in the end!! So we lay on the beach after picking a bagful of fresh but not-quite-ripe nectarines off a tree behind our dorm, and lounged there until our bus came to pick us up to drive us back to Hobart where we would spend the next couple days!

We checked into this bright green building and headed out to explore to city. We stumbled upon "Uni Night" at a local bar and each guzzled a LITRE of beer for $5!

So that brings me to now, Thursday (today) and we are booked to go on a Mount Wellington tour... but no climbing involved this time, thankfully. After that we hope to get to the MONA which is an extremely well-known gallery/museum that everyone explains as "full of really weird shit". So I'm super excited for that!

That's all for now, we leave here tomorrow and I plan on sleeping in the airport so I can get there for my 3am check-in for my 6:45am flight to New Zealand... alone -__-

A little nervous, but mostly excited!

Sincerely,
AUS