Spring Break Week 2: Dunedin

      Shortly after returning from Australia I packed my bags to go visit Tyler in Dunedin, NZ.  Tyler owed me a date after winning an intense game of scrabble, so he surprised me by renting bikes for the day.  The plan was to bike to the beach and watch sea lions, seals, and penguins.  He assured me it would be a quick 15 minute bike ride to the beach.  Twenty-two uphill km later (3 hours) we reached our destination.  

           We were both pretty tired, so we decided to finish the bike ride and go to the beach the next day with a car.  The beach ended up being amazing.  After hiking down some sand dunes to get to the beach we were able to get right up close to the sea lions.

      
    
        We quickly learned not to get too close to the sea lions after watching a few fights break out.

          We spent a lot of our time at the beach talking to a volunteer and learning more about the yellow-eyed penguins.  The volunteer later crawled into a penguin's nest for us to take a very close picture.

-Megan Waterhouse

Spring Break: Australia

     After only a month and a half of studying at the University of Canterbury we were given two weeks off for Spring Break.  I traveled with a group of seven international students from Christchurch across the eastern coast of Queensland.  Our 9 day vacation began in Brisbane, where we explored the city for the day and walked around town that night.

Brisbane City

   The next day we woke up early to drive to Noosa Heads.  We all spent the day at the beach relaxing and shopping.  The day after we headed to Bundaberg, hoping to tour their rum distillery.  After finding out it was a bit pricey, we headed to the beach again to play in the

waves.

Noosa Heads

Bundaberg

    The next few days Riley and I stayed in Hervey Bay, while the others went on a tour to Fraser Island.  A couple of the days ended up being pretty rainy, but we were still able to go to the beach and explore the town.  My favorite part of Hervey Bay was trying one of the best meals I have ever tasted.. a kangaroo steak.

After the delicious meal, I decided to go play with some of his siblings at Dreamworld.

  

      Dreamworld is the Gold Coast's largest theme park.  They had an entire theme park, waterpark, and zoo.  For me this was the highlight of the entire trip.  I was able to pet and feed any of the free roaming kangaroos at the zoo.    My camera broke later that day, but I also paid to hold a young koala at the park.

 

-Megan Waterhouse