Great Adventures of a Green Goddess

Homeland holiday

So I went back to good old kiwiland for a quick trip to see the family and pick up some warm clothes. NZ hasn’t changed much, I did have to look at the money as it was quite unfamiliar (they came out with new coins just before I left) and now they have freeview TV which I didn’t know about at all, but that didn’t stop Lady from trying to get me to tune her’s in for her!

Anyway I arrived via Hamilton airport at 11.30pm and Lady and her boyfriend were nice enough to stay up late and come pick me up.

When we ventured into Hamilton during daylight hours I went to a great Chinese vegetarian buffet place where they charge you by weighing your plate. So yummy and I even got some packages of fake meat.

Flew down to Wellington with Lady and took a really cool photo of the planes shadow with a rainbow around it.

The trip to Welly was to see the rest of the family (plus I had a nice lunch to catch up with the big banana). Well my Dad wasn’t there as he is in Malaysia and Ayla was only there part of the time as she was going on holiday to Rarotonga, suddenly my family have turned into a bunch of jetsetters!

I finally got to meet my niece and saw my nephew for the first time since he was 6months old and puked on my new t-shirt. He is now 2.5 years old and didn’t puke on me!

Both kids are actually pretty cute. But they are troublesome to travel with. For example one day we went into the city centre and were going to go to Te Papa (the museum) but ran out of time as the child needed a nap. Not that I was worried as I have been there before and we did go to Midnight Expresso where I had the superfab vegan hashstack (and then got some takeaways for later from Auntie Mena’s) so it wasn’t a wasted trip.

Encouraging news is that my nephew liked devil duckie (the corruption has begun…). He likes the colours red and orange so Tulip will actually use food colouring to give him orange bathwater. Devil duckie liked it too.

I bought a lotto ticket just like everyone else in the country since powerball had reached $30 million and had to be won. And I won!

I guess I should have specified that I wanted to win first division powerball not sixth...

But $70 is better than nothing, I’m still a winner!

Hooray for Hippies!

I visited Eggy and not only was it wonderful to see my friend but the area that she lives in is pretty cool too.

Her fab location is in northern NSW. It’s in the heart of hippieland and thus full of much veggie food goodness.

A lot of the time I just hung out at Eggy’s house while she was at work but it was nice and relaxing. I had her dog for company who is very cute but admittedly he has issues (he is a fuzzy wuzzy landmine) and is not too social. But he didn’t try to make a meal of me and actually came out of his under the bed lair, wanting to hang out with me just before I left.

Eggy and I did go on some trips to local towns on her days off.

We went to Nimbin, which was on my list of places to go since it’s famous as an alternative town, well yeah mostly it’s famous for the drugs. It’s the marijuana capital of Australia. Of course I was offered drugs on the street but as the drug dealer wasn’t wearing tie dyed clothes I did not partake in a purchase as it wasn’t authentic enough for me.

We went to the local museum which was very groovy and perused the extensive collection of drug related paraphernalia in the local shops.

Another day, another town. This one was Byron Bay which is favoured by backpackers. Eggy and I didn’t plan the trip to well and spend most of our time searching for a veggie restaurant.

We did finally eat at one and then went to the beach. I saw a guy making a very impressive sand castle (I so want to try that). And took photos of the lighthouse.

We then resumed our random searching, this time our target was a vet or pet shop to get some stuff for the dog.

That task achieved we headed home satisfied.

On a Sunday we went to the Channon market, this is only on once a month and Eggy thought it was the 3^rd Sunday but luckily she was wrong and it was on when I was there. I loved the market as I could have quite happily spent a day just eating my way around the market. There were so many vegetarian/vegan friendly stalls it was a joy.

Eggy is so spoilt for choice with the various veg options in her area.

It makes me want to move to that area when I go back to Australia.

On my last day in Australia we went out for lunch at a café near Eggy’s house and then had lunch at a vegetarian café in a nearby town on the way to the airport. Eggy even bought me a copy of a vegan magazine to read on the plane.

My flight was the first of my series of flights on Air New Zealand (I’m so patriotic). I had been wearing many layers of clothes and carrying an extra jersey with me as they weighed my bag but no what I was wearing (my bags were 21.9kg and the limit was 20kg but they didn’t charge me extra) I actually ended up wearing the jersey as the flight was quite cold!

I watched a movie about Angus, thongs and snogging. I had ordered a vegan meal but the banana cake had egg in it and I have doubts that the sauce in the meal was dairy free (the meal was definitely supposed to be a dairy free vegetarian at least!).

I had issues when I went to fill in my arrival card and my pen decided instead to leak great big drips of ink all over where I was supposed to write. I asked the flight attendant if I could have a new card and borrow a pen. She gave me a pen but not new card. So I kept the pen and grabbed a card when I got to the immigration line. Filled it out in the line which actually moved quite quickly so I had to let people behind me go ahead so I could finish filling it out.

It worked out and they were nice enough to let me back into my home country. Plus Lady was nice enough to pick me up from the airport.

Trip up north in tropical Queensland

Well after actually getting around to packing I finally left the hostel I lived in for a year. Yes a whole year, I still can’t believe I was there so long!

A guy from the hostel gave me a lift north as he lived in a little hick town further up the coast. Woohoo free ride plus it was good as we stopped along the way so that he could show me the sights.

The highlight was Frosty Mango as I think my dad would love it because when we were in Malaysia he would point out every mango tree to me. This place could be his Mecca. Although it did have other fruits on offer like jackfruit, dragonfruit and mulberry.

 

Other highlights of the journey were hopping after some wallabies and see an above ground cemetery.

 

People thought that my new chauffer was a serial killer just because he has a beard. Seriously someone was even like haven’t you heard of Ivan Milat!

But Mr Not a Serial Killer is actually a really nice guy. So I survived the trip (although it was a bit close when we passed murdering point winery). This included spending a night at his house. No it wasn’t a mountain shack it was on the coast…

After my brush with the far reaches of death I wandered along the pier and beach of the little town before catching an afternoon bus to Cairns.

On the bus they even showed a movie, Cast Away or as I like to call it the world’s longest FedEx ad. It was funny as I had been thinking of that movie recently when I read a travel article about Fiji where it was filmed.

I arrived in Cairns that night and walked the block to my hostel. I stayed at Gilligans which is a huge flashpackers. I walked in to my dorm room and (as you do) immediately got into a conversation with a drunk, mine truck driving, free spirited new age girl…

After a wonderful sleep in and booking some tours I went for brunch at a great veg café that I found by simply looking out from my room’s balcony. It was called the Lilipad Café and specialised in vegetarian fare so I had to go. It was super delicious!

I wandered around the city which was full of tacky souvenir shops so I got a couple of little things to take back for the family.

I dedicated a day to going up to Kuranda and back. I went via Train there and skyrail back and they were the highlights of the trip. The actual town was nice and I liked the butterflies and markets but I was hoping that such a hippie kinda town would have more in the way of veg food places.

I woke up early to check out of the hostel for I was off up to Cape Tribulation, I got a deal where I got 2 nights at a hostel up there for the price of one. On the way we went on a croc spotting cruise on the Daintree River. We did see a small one hiding in the undergrowth on the bank but the only thing being attacked was me by mosquitoes.

There wasn’t much to do up in Cape Trib but relax. I went for a night walk in the rainforest (sweated a lot and saw some creatures) and kinda learnt how to play Texas holdem poker (since it was with stones and I didn’t care I would just bet big, go all in yeah baby!).

 

On the way back to Cairns we stopped off in Mossman gorge and Port Douglas. Got back at night and crashed at a hostel with the dodgy name of Njoy. I wasn’t there long enough to enjoy it thou as I had to get up at 4am for my 6am Virgin Blue flight to Brisbane.

 

Isn’t it funny how their inflight magazine is called voyeur!