Australia - Backpackers Are A Friendly Lot

My decision to start in Australia mostly stemmed from the fact that I was living in Los Angeles at the time. I booked a one-way ticket from LA to Sydney, and then spent the next five months planning the trip and downsizing my life.

As a newbie to round the world travel, I landed in Sydney without a single friend and feeling a tad lonely. Luckily, backpackers are a friendly lot. I got my travel legs under me by exploring the Opera House, the Taronga Zoo, and the Botanical Gardens. Deciding to stay in the Blue Mountains was a real highlight, and my penchant for getting incredibly lost at the least convenient moments started here. This would become a recurring theme of the trip because, yeah, I get lost a lot.

Shannon O’Donnell (to be continued) 

My trip around the World 13 I Got Way Too Hot

The hotel driver offered to take me on a bit of a drive down around the Atoll, and we drove around for about 90 minutes before heading back. Unfortunately my phone was dead at this point, so didn’t manage to get any pictures. It was interesting to see how even in the most populous part of Kiribati life was still so rural and quiet. Many of the locals had pigs tied up in their yard, and the pigs were eating/drinking out of what appeared to be old coconut shells. There just wasn’t much going on, but that appears to be the pace of life in Kiribati.

After resting, I decided to go for a bit of a walk. I walked about an hour down the atoll towards the airport just seeing sites until I got way too hot. The “administrative centre” of the entire country. Not a very busy place.

My trip around the World 11 Overnight on Tarawa, Kiribati

 My driver from Mary’s Motel showed up, and the car had ice cold air conditioning, which was nice giving the blazing mid-day sun in Kiribati. There is basically one road on Tarawa Atoll, and it runs the length of the atoll.  It’s dozens of miles long, but the Atoll is maybe 500 meters wide at its widest point:

Kiribati is also, according to some sources I read online before the trip, the least visited country in the world. I wasn’t expecting anything to see/do, more just to walk around and take in how life goes on here.

My hotel was in Bairiki which is the country’s administrative centre, and you can see it’s a bit of a drive from the airport. 

Traveldiariesapp (to be continued) 

My trip around the World 12 Kiribati

It took almost an hour, and during the drive I got a lot of insight into the country from my driver. One cool fact is that the road is under construction (it was badly potholed, etc) and that should significantly improve travel options on the atoll. Was also cool to see several large signs from my employer as one of the key financiers of the new road. Hopefully it helps things!

At Mary’s, I played the usual (by now) South Pacific game of musical rooms until I found one that had reasonably functional air conditioning.

It was clean, cool, and reasonably comfortable, and came with a few bonus creepy crawlies here and there, and a few lizards that I occasionally saw crawling on the walls. The towel origami made up for it though.

Traveldiariesapp (to be continued)