Down Unda'

So like usual I have been really bad on updating my blog. I am now in the town of 1770 which is located on the north eastern part of Australia. It is named for the year Cpt. Cook came to Australia. The town itself is very small but there is great surf and sun.
So to fill you all in. I started off 2 weeks ago in Melbourne to visit my good buddy Gleb. We stayed with his folks and had a blast, they were amazing to us and showed us Melbourne, which is a truly awesome city. It struck me as being very European with a hint of San Francisco in there.

We then headed off to Sydney. Sydney is very LA. All the backpackers told me this before but I didn't believe till I got there. It is a cool city though with loads to do. The opera house is much more amazing when you first see it than you expect. We saw a show there as well, an extremely shitty play called the Alchemist. I wouldn't recommend this torture to my worst enemy. Other days we checked out Manly beach and Bondi Beach, which is considered one of the best in the world. It was very cool but I don't see how it's considered one of the best. Major highlight of Sydney was that I got to drive a car :D :D. We went to a party with my brothers friend who he met in Toulouse and the driver was too drunk to drive home. Good ol' responsible me was not and I got the privlege of driving on the left side of the street at night, yay!

We then took a bus to Byron Bay, considered one of the best surf spots in the world. I finally learned to surf there! Everyone kept telling me, "dude if you are from LA how the hell did you not surf already, ....mate" It was friggin awesome and I am addicted to surfing again. I stood up my second time and rode the wave for a while. I thought I was big shit and a natural. Of course the next 6 waves I caught I fell almost instantly and barely stood up, in fact one was such a fast fall I had to bury my face in shame. I did however stand up 3 more time, so go me! I highly recommend Byron Bay to anyone coming down unda. PS we are taking the OzExperience hop-on hop-off tour bus and that is also recommended.

Next destination was Brisbane. Only a few sentences needed for this one. Boring city, shitty dirty hostels. Ok that was 2 sentences but this is the third so bam!

The next part was very exciting, we went to the Australian Zoo. This is the zoo that Steve Irwin started. Everywhere in the zoo there is stuff about him and you really learn to love that guy and realize how much he did for animals. This also had to be the best zoo I have ever been to. The big highlights were the kangaroos, koalas and the tigers. My brother and I met a Dutch guy on the bus and we toured the zoo together. We spent 2 hours just feeding the kangaroos. Best part was the little ones that had the talent to eat the entire feed and leave every single corn kernel there. A joey hopping out of his mother's sack was also sweet as. (sweet as is the kiwi saying that can't get over). Tiger show was super awesome. They had men in the tiger pen playing with them and throwing milk jugs at the window as they jumped for them hitting the water.

We also got to scratch a koala's butt. Lastly feeding an elephant and trying to not let go of the fruit is not the best idea, but highly entertaining.

From the zoo we went to Noosa which had nothing but a few rounds of Ring of Fire, aka King's Cup. From there we went to Rainbow Beach which was the launching platform to the world famous Fraser Island. I have typed too much and I think it's time to hit the bbq up with our newly found british buds. Catch you all later!

New Zealand in a nutshell

Hey all, haven't really posted in a while due to being extremely busy. In the past 2 weeks I spent a week in New Zealand taking a hop-on hop-off bus around the north island, it's very cool. I then flew to Melbourne, AUS where I am now.

Top highlights of NZ were going to a rugby match, auckland blues v south africa sharks. we sat next to an extremely wicked guy from Johannesburg who pretty much made the game. I told him I heard Johannesburg is pretty darn sketch and he just said yep and looked up. I was kinda weirded out because I thought he was ignoring us now but after a few moments I realized he was showing us his GIANT scar on his neck from a knife wound he sustained in S. Africa. At that moment the Sharks scored a try and he got up hecking all the Blues fans by singing "it ain't nothing but a real thing baby." Now that's a celebration!

Kiwis have the weirdest flavor chips in the world as well. A sample of the flavors: Chicken, Lamb & Mint, Mince pie and Cheese. We tried the lamb and mint and it was pretty much that, yuck!

Also trecked to Rotorua where they have geothermal parks where the ground is literally bubbling everywhere and steam is coming out, looks pretty much like hell. Our extremely colorful bus driver then told us a story of an old bus driver telling his passengers that the mud in these baths have healing powers and that they should put it on their faces. They then proceeded to do so. Apparently the mud doesn't burn right away, but a few seconds later the people were running in circles splashing loads of water on their faces to clear the mud. Funny and cruel at the same time.

In Rotorua we also went to a Hangi, which is a Maori dinner and cultural show. The highlight was the Haka, which is the war dance they do. It is insanely cool and the All Blacks (NZ rugby team) do it as well before each test match. The food itself was just meh but all you can eat, so as the poor backpackers we are, we ate alot. Here is a video of the tribal ritual of determining if guests are enemies or friends:



Speaking of food, the following nights consisted of eating 2 kilos of ground beef for a lunch and 2 dinners, quite manly if i do say so myself.

We then trecked around Taupo and Mt Manganui, very cool areas but unfortunatly we had a flight to catch in Auckland so we didn't get to explore as much as we'd liked. Must come back to New Zealand in the future. Ah yes, one of our newly aquired buddies jumped off the auckland bridge to bungy, the rest of us weren't so brave, but next time I shall.

Now I'm in Melbourne about to take off for Sydney on Wednesday. Probably will then take the same sorta bus I took in NZ up to Cairns, the biggest area to go diving out to the great barrier reef. I'll try to update along the way.

I shall leave you with a joke our driver made. How do you circumcise a hillbilly?

... Kick his sister in the jaw.

badabing, badaboom, i'm out.

cross country travels and time is ticking down

::Pittsburgh, PA USA::

Howdy folks,
I felt that introduction was justified due to the last week of driving from Seattle to Pittsburgh through, what could have been, the whitest areas I have ever seen. I did however secure a bangin' chicken fried steak and, more importantly, an insanely good butter roll.

The key highlights of my cross country road trip are as follows:
1. Spokane looks like Texas, and not the cool parts of Texas :o
2. Apparently Gonzaga is in fact in Washington (for all you non-WA peeps out there)
3. Mt Rushmore is very impressive in person. I do recommend just parking on the side of the road and walking up there instead of paying $10 to park. Before you laugh at me, it really isn't that obvious.
4. Crazy Horse memorial will probably never get done. This is more about the fact they charge you $15 friggin dollars, per person!, to see it 1/3 done. It is pretty cool though, so you should go to park and tell them you don't want to pay. A pissed off, old white man, will tell you to turn around at the bottom of the hill, after the gate. Proceed as directed and take all the nice pictures you want before turning around. Voila!
5. There is absolutely NOTHING in South Dakota between Rapid City and Sioux Falls. Literally nothing, we couldn't even find a McDonalds.
6. Gas station bathroom tuna salad sandwiches really do have worms in them. (Futurama reference, as well as the sad truth)
7. Chicago kicks ass. We spent a full day there with absolutely terrible luck. The bad luck was mostly about the fact that it was sunny and beautiful the night we drove in, and storming rain the day we were there. It was so cloudy that the street lights came on at 2pm and you couldn't see a building 30 feet in front of you.
8. Pizzeria Uno is much better at the original in Chicago, but Burt's is a better pizza joint overall.
9. Hot Dougs hot sucks.
10. I am in fact very allergic to cats. Although this is obvious to Deb and Danielle, spending 2 nights at a house full of cats was not the smartest idea. Although it was hella good on my wallet ;)
11. Chicago art museum is awesome, but after 20 minutes it looks like every other art museum in the world. This is something you learn while traveling through northern Italia, where that's pretty much all there is to do there.

So I have much more I want to say but I think that should suffice. I have 2 days left here in Pittsburgh before I board a plane to LA. One day there and I'm off to New Zealand. I am looking forward to meeting Frodo and Gandalf.