Now my travels have reached a point where one quarter of my overall travels in Australia, New Zealand and East-Asia are done. Considering how many places I’ve already seen this one fourth seems like a lot longer time. Especially when starting to really miss all my friends back home. I’ve met some wonderful and awesome people during my stay, some of them I’m lucky enough to see during my travels again, but it still is not quite the same as seeing all those dear faces of my friends and enjoying their company. To be honest, one of the things I missed in Murdoch was a thing we like to call “TuKY-spirit”. For those of you who don’t know what it means, it is the spirit we have in our student union of Turku School of Economics. It is just magnificent, and during my travels I have got to understand, how much I in fact value it. All that effort by tens, even hundreds, of people who create the atmosphere and the best parties I’ve seen. In six weeks I’ll by seeing you all again!
What comes to my travels, leaving Cairns was just sad. I truly fell in love with that place and know I will be going back there many many times during my lifetime. The relaxed, or chillaxed, atmosphere, the laidback friendly people, the beauty of the nature and my personal favorite, diving at the Great Barrier Reef was just pure awesomeness. Or like some of my friends would say: “WICKED!!!” =) Everybody knows those bucket-list type of lists where you list the things you want to experience and see before you have to go. Well, I already have one, and diving at the Great Barrier Reef was the number one. It was just an amazing moment, and I truly loved it. For some funny reason I actually felt like I had accomplished something. Maybe it was just the feeling of reaching something one has defined important to oneself. The next days wondering in the rainforests with some outback “nutty” guides and exploring some caves partially underwater maid the stay even better, even when being successful enough to hit my hand on a bush called “the stinging tree”. A very annoying bush, which gives you these tiny, microscopical spikes you can’t remove, and which will give a burning sensation every time there’s a temperature change. Luckily it’s not that bad, a bit funny actually. In two days I managed to get stung by a jellyfish and a stinging tree :P
From Cairns my trip took me to Brisbane, which was, honestly, a big disappointment. I don’t know what I was waiting from the city, but once I got used to the relaxed atmosphere of Cairns, arriving to the busy business-styled Brisbane it didn’t felt good at all. There isn’t that much to see in Brisbane, no landmarks or anything. It’s pretty much like any other big western city. I’m sure it would open up a lot better to me, if I’d stay there for several weeks and actually thoroughly explore the city, but in a few days with partial rain: No. I was rather happy to take a bus down to Surfers Paradise, which proved to be a lot more than I had expected. Somebody told me a month ago that Surfers Paradise is like Australia’a Las Vegas. That it wasn’t, atleast in my opinion, but it certainly was Australia’s Miami! Long beaches, the feeling, nightlife, girls in bikinis everywhere, sun, waves, everything! Five days there went fast in surfing, watching a couple of movies with the people from the hostel, chilling by the pool, exploring the beaches, seeing the kitesurfing world championship races, enjoying the nightlife and pubcrawls… I even missed my bus the buy some time and took the evening bus just to have a couple of hours more time to enjoy that place rather than Brisbane. I got to visit Australia’s only Hard Rock Café currently and got one of those HRC pints with my. Number 19, I reckon=) And also visited the tallest residential building of this hemisphere, the QDeck reaching all the way as high as 325.5 meters. The views from there were pretty spectacular, I have to admit!
After leaving Surfers Paradise I just had a quick sleep in Brisbane and took the 5 am. train to the airport. And then the chaos started. Massive amount of people queuing to check-in. I got told to go directly to the oversize luggage desk, because I was traveling with the surfboard. Once I got there and thought it actually might go well, in front of me was a big group of Asians, who just couldn’t keep their thing together. I don’t mean to be racist, and I’m not sure where from Asia they were from, but it was just a huge catastrophe. They came too late to the airport and their check-in took for ages. Every moment somebody of them was missing or their luggage was just not clear or something such a like. Watching the clock and realizing my boarding time is about to get really short, it was a bit nerve wrecking. Finally, having about 10 minutes left of my check-in time, which would have been just sufficiently enough, I find myself being asked for my ticket out of New Zealand, as they can’t let me in without knowing I’m coming out on a certain date. Well, you can have a wild guess if I had that or not. Being booked by my friend, I obviously didn’t. And because of that, I could now be let to my flight. And that moment I felt pretty good, it’s a nice way to start your morning not being allowed to get on your flight.
The problem was finally solved by my friend sending me the itinerary and I got to the next flight, which was only 1,5 hours later. I’d still have a solid 1,5 hours transition time In Sydney from the domestic terminal to the international and to my flight. And, have to admit, I was a bit smiling, because this delay had caused me to get into the Premium class of the airplanes and on window seats, which I usually tend to never get. So, I wasn’t too bothered. Finally getting to Sydney just a bit late, I started to make my way to the international. Being hungry and actually a bit confused with the terminal, I went to get a Subway. Though that didn’t take more than 10 minutes, next I found myself first going to customs to get out of Australia and then again to an another check-in. Both worked actually fairly well, but I was still in a hurry having only 10 minutes before my scheduled flight. I thought I’ll be pretty O.K. just getting to the gate directly, but as I started walking pretty soon I ran into a stewardess asking people of they’re going to the flight to Auckland. I was the only passenger, others waiting for me. I literally ran faster than probably ever just to get to my plane. And I was a bit ashamed; luckily the flight attendants weren’t thinking it as such a bad thing, since I finally made it running. Now I’m sitting in the plane in seat 1F, so pretty much better place I couldn’t get. Funny in a way that basically by screwing up your things you get the best seats. Well, I’m not complaining. Though, rather hoping there will be no catastrophes anymore today and I have a pretty good feeling I will have a chat with the New Zealand customs authorities about my gears, they’re a bit more interested in what you’re carrying especially when it has something to do with soil or water or sports of that kind. But until then, I’ll just relax, have a cold beer and enjoy my first row window seat with the scenery of flying from Australia to New Zealand.
