Today I am writing 33000 ft in the air, some where over Japan. My last 6 meals have been in flight, and when I land in 6 hrs I will have been to 5 different countries international airports in the last 38 hrs. I have seen most of the movies Singapore Airlines has to offer and now Im just chilling to the sounds of Theviery Corporation. One thing that is very important when you travel is music! It has latched itself to the amazing Temples and sunsets I seen, and whenever I hear it I can just go back, like that! I left off last time saying see ya later to Jaclyn, again! She has been so awsome with accepting my travel addiction and even indulging with me in it! I have said good bye to her at an airport 3 times now but I promised that this was the last. I spent 2 days remaining in NZ after she left and got rid of my van during this time. Then straight away I bought my tickets to Australia (Oz)! I was assuming to do the month I had alone but turns out my good friend Amy Bellhumer's brother Sean was in Oz at the time as well! I flew into Coolangata on the Gold Coast first. The heat was a nice change! I surfed for a few days here as its the center for surfing in Oz. Most of the Aussie pros on the World Tour live on the Gold Coast so it was really cool surfing breaks where Kelly Slater and other greats had won contests or just surfed in their free time. One day I was at a beak called Snapper Rocks and just before I got in the water 2 Humpback whales swam not 15m off the break! I was stunned, never had I seen a whale before this! Then as I paddled out there were 5 bottle nosed dolphins swimming in and amongst the surfers trying to catch their own waves! It was really sureal, and to all the locals this was just normal! They said " oh humpback season again".
I moved on to Byron Bay after this and met up with Sean. He was just coming off working in the bonnies of Oz on a farm so he was eager to do some surfing and touring around. We loved Byron, it has this great feel that just makes you wanna stay one more day! We spend our days in the surf and our nights at a Pub called the Rails where they had some great live music! Its a town of leftover hippies so they don't alow any big franchises like Mc D's or KFC in the town which is cool cause the local restaurants are really well run and great eats! We bought a Greyhound bus ticket to Cairns and started off! We spent a day in Noosa to do some last minute surfing and ended up surfing on this nude beach by accident! It was not nice at all, just a lot of extremely brown naked old men and some clean but small waves! We had a great time here the beaches are just stunning around Noosa! ( Minus the birthday suits)
We were booked into a Fraser Island tour next. Fraser Island is one of the worlds biggest sand islands. We rented a Jeep and camping gear along with 8 other backpackers and we were off for 3 days! What a great time we had! The ocean surrounding the Island cannot be swam in cause it is a breeding ground for tiger sharks, but there are some beautiful fresh water lakes. Lake Mackenzie was the best by far, the water was turqoise and the sand a white powder! Despite the rain we had a blast everyone helped cooking and setting up tents or getting the jeep unstuck! Everything we ate got sand in it some way so we just learned to live with it! The major sand dunes were so big and I wished I had my dirt bike a few times! We had to walk for almost an hour to cross one of them! After Fraser we had to say goodbye to all our new mates quickly and board the night bus cause we had another tour booked for the next day! It was much more of a pleasure cruise, called the Witsundays. We boarded a beauty catameran boat called Powerplay that was equipped with a hot tub on the bow and all the food we could eat! The crew was great and took us diving or snorkelling during the day off some beautiful beaches and coral reefs. One beach we walked in the water up to our knees and we could see stingrays and little sharks swimming in the shallows! The food was cooked for us every night and every night after supper we would sit in the hot tub and have a few Tooheys and watch the stars come out. It was a very hard few days, mentally and physically ....well physically anyway, cause we never stayed up much past 10 every night!
Our next destination was a small town called Ayr up the coast a few hours from the Whitsunday Islands. It was nothing special but just off the coast was a sunken passenger and cargo ship called the SS Yongala! We did 2 wreck dives on this beauty of a ship and it as by far the best wreck dive Id done to date! It was a luxury ship that only carried 1st and 2nd class passengers from Melbourne to Cairns. It sunk in 1911 and all 122 passengers perished even a bull and a race horse that were on board. The whole ship was still intact and you could make out the old toilets and the steam engines that were all covered in coral. Really had an eriee feeling too it knowing all those people bones were still inside! Seen some great fish here one Giant Grouper was the size of a VW Beetle car! We swam with a large school of fish and a huge Marble Stingray that must have been 7 ft across! Really great dives! From here we took another night bus up to Cairns. Sean and I were just loving how fast pace the rip was, everyday something new! The first thing we did in Cairns was a white water rafting trip on the Tully River! This was one of the best things I did in Oz, and the sad part is I can do it at home, but never have! We got to ride some rapids just on our backs and some cliff jumps too. We booked ourselves in for 3 dives on the Outer Great Barrier Reef with a company called Silver Sonic. We were really pumped for these dives! The dive boat, a nice catamaran, drove us out to the outer reef and we could see where the open ocean was breaking on the continental shelf! Really something considering we were 33km off shore. The dives were awesome, everything from sharks to barracuda to Nemo's and turtles! It was just full of life and had some of the best swim through caves that I've ever seen! Really enjoyed these dives and got some great pictures to go with them! Sean took some of the best photos of the day!
After this I said farewell to Sean and flew to Sydney. I was so glad we got to meet up for this last month cause I think we pushed each other to get the most out of our last bit of travel! I was up all night before my flight so I was pretty dead when I got there. The City was hosting World Youth Day 2008 when I arrived. I had planned this and was looking forward to seeing what it was all about! The first event I came across was the Pope a Cade! Pope Benedict was doing a tour through Sydney harbour on a boat then he got into his Pope mobile and drove around the city for 3 hours greeting crowds of people! I stood for 2 hrs along with many streets filled with people to see him! There were 400,000 pilgrims that had came to Sydney from abroad for this week. It was great people were flying their nations flag where ever they went and the city had shut down many streets so all the people could walk together as a group to the events! It was like an Olympic event everyday! People filled the street! The next day I checked out the Sydney Opera House and the Harbor Bridge! They were stunning I spent many hours just hanging around the Opera house or Circular Quay area during my time here. The next event I went to was The Stations of the Cross. I followed a crowd of people that filled up the street all marching one direction. I found a big Canadian flag and started crating with it owner. The guy was from St Paul Alberta and knew some people from the Morinville area which was pretty cool! We walked with the large group of pilgrims to Darling Harbor, where I sat and watched on big TV screens set up, the Stations of the Cross. It started out at St Mary's Church with the reenactment of the Last Supper and moved on to Jesus being sentenced and scourged by Pilate on the steps of the Opera House and continued through the harbor area! The actors passed by me in Darling harbor on Jesus way to Calvary Hill. They put him on a Cross with the sun setting behind him and the scene was breath taking and heart wrenching! They did such a great job it was a very moving performance!
I then attended the Evening Vigil with the Pope held at a horse race track. It was amazing, I got very close to the stage and met so many great people from everywhere! There was 500000 people in attendance and I have never seen so many people in one place before! Benedict did a Homily and it was very stirring, its amazing that 500000 people went quiet instantly when he began to speak! After he was finished everyone was shouting Benedicto....Benedicto! When everyone joined in it sounded amazing like an army chant! The singers and dancers were great as well! There was a native Australian dance group that performed and they were the best! Next day mass was held in the morning at the same location and it went much more formal than the night before. There were 2 parts I enjoyed one was when the Pope said a little Homily in 5 different languages, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Latin! Was really neat to hear the reactions of the different groups when he spoke their language! The second part was the communion, hundreds of bishops and priests took communion then they sent out large groups of Priests with bread to give communion to all the people in the sea of people! I didn't expect that. The Pope spoke to everyone in the crowd in some way, he is a very wise intelligent man and definitely spoke to me! It was a very special experience to attend the WYD, and I would recommend it to anyone, believer or not its a powerful experience! I made some great friends in OZ and intend to return some day!
So Thats Almost It....on to my last country (which I didnt even plan on seeing), I am on route to meet Jaclyn again in Denver Colorado for a week or so. With a quick tour of San Fransico thrown in. Then I will be driving back to Canada with her and 2 of her friends! I will give one more update before this lil trip of mine is over! Hope everyone's summer has been going great! Miss you all!
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