One of my favorite things that I did in Sydney was go to the zoo! Of note, this is not the Australia Zoo that the Irwin family runs (you know Steve Irwin). That zoo is outside of Brisbane in Queensland. I make this distinction because I accidentally bought a ticket for the Australia Zoo ahead…

Hello! I know I’m very late posting my pictures from the end of my Australia trip. It was hard to keep up with posting once I got to Sydney since I have a friend in the area and I didn’t have as much free time as I imagined. She put together the most amazing itinerary…

Hello from week two! The weather in far north Queensland was so hot and humid, and it’s not even peak summer. I would hate to be here in January! The first 5 days of the week I was still on an organized tour exploring Port Douglas and the Daintree rainforest. Then for the rest of…

I was lucky enough to go snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef three times during my visit to Queensland. Once in the Whitsunday Islands, once off the coast of Mission Beach, and once off the coast of Port Douglas. In my opinion, the farther north I went the more diverse the reef got and the…

After Cairns, I joined a new group with a different tour leader Michelle. She was from Cairns actually so it was nice to have an Australian guide this time around. After introductions, we headed north to Port Douglas which would be our home base for the next 4 nights as we explored the Daintree rainforest…

I’m going to break down my Australia trip week by week since I’ll be here for over a month. So here’s the recap on my first week down under! I booked a 12-day tour with Intrepid Travel called Brisbane to the Daintree Discovery. The first week was spent making our way from Brisbane to Cairns….

Our next stop was a small town up the coast called Mission Beach. We stopped here to do a day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef for a full day of snorkeling. It was seriously awesome! I snorkeled once in Thailand on a sailing trip, but the reef here is on another level. We…

Hello from Australia! I’ve been here for about two weeks now and I just finished my 12-day tour from Cairns to Port Douglas with Intrepid Travel. It was an awesome trip and I’m looking forward to sharing the pictures here. One of the first places we visited was Whitehaven beach on Whitsunday Island, which I…

This is a long one! I have so many pictures from the last month it was hard to decide which ones to include in this post for each destination. I loved my time on the South Island of New Zealand. It has so much to offer in terms of the diversity of landscapes, wildlife, and…

My last day in New Zealand was spent on Stewart Island, population 408! This island off the southern coast is only accessible by ferry or plane. It took about an hour and a half by ferry to get there from the town of Bluff, and the sea was so rough the day we crossed that…