Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.

Hello loved ones! I am in rainy Sydney at the moment, but am leaving for Bangkok in a matter of hours. After I left the coast, I came down to the city and have been enjoying myself as much as is possible for a traveler with no car in the pouring rain. I was put in a room with these 3 funny British guys and we ended up watching a ton of the British version of the Office, so that, coupled with the addiction Laura and Constance and I had in NZ, officially makes me an Office fan. Watch it!

So in Sydney since I've been back, I saw the Dalai Lama speak (in the pouring rain... I stood for 4 hours until I could no longer feel my fingertips or toes), went to a bunch of films at the Film Festival (including one about Kurt Cobain with a ton of footage of Seattle... so funny to have been watching that in Sydney!), walked through the art gallery, saw a piano performance at the Conservatorium of Music, and saw the hugest pelican (is that a pelican?) on the face of the earth. I was going to have someone take a picture of me next to it, but decided against it, as it could probably eat my arms for lunch. So things have been good, but I'm excited to get out of the rain and off into the Thai heat!

Your Friend, Jacquie Cousteau

Hello all! I wrote that last post a while ago but haven’t had a chance to put it up until now. I am currently in a place called Townsville, and I’ve been having a really fun/crazy week. After leaving Melbourne, I got into Airlie Beach, which is an ugly tourist town, but is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, which are gorgeous. I flew in last Wednesday morning and left that evening on a big sailing boat with about 20 other people. I made friends with a group of Irish people my age right away, and we had a blast on the boat for the next 3 days—sailing around, snorkeling, scuba diving, playing cards, watching Finding Nemo, etc. Everyone else on the boat was really cool, too. Definitely the highlight was the scuba diving, though. We sailed out to the Great Barrier Reef and I went diving three times; the best sights were the whitetip shark (only about 4 feet, but cool all the same), the giant clam that snapped shut when my instructor waved his hand above it, some gigantic colorful fish called napoleon maori wrasses, some crazy-looking white fish with unicorn horns, and some bright red brain-looking coral. I hadn’t been diving since my certification (in Vancouver.. while it hailed, sleeted, and snowed on our surface intervals), so this trip was absolutely an improvement on my past dives.
The day after our dive trip my Irish friends and I just lazed around in Airlie Beach, and then came on the bus up the coast. I stopped off in Townsville, and they went on to Cairns. I got in pretty late Sunday night and left straightaway early Monday morning to do another dive trip, this time to the SS Yongala, which everyone around here says is in the top 10 dives in the world. It’s a shipwreck from 1911, and it was unbelievable—definitely the best dive I’ve ever done. We went down twice and saw turtles, snakes, eels, a gigantic school of barracuda, clownfish (Finding Nemo fish!), and a couple of really majestic, slow-moving manta rays. It was amazing. We swam all around the ship and right next to the masts. You can’t see any of the wood anymore, since it’s all covered in coral, but the structure of the boat is still there. I think about 150 people died in the wreck, and my instructor told me the skeletons were still in the boat until about 20 years ago (you can’t swim inside the ship anymore).

I’m going to take a couple of rest days here and then I fly back to Sydney on Thursday. I’ll just have 5 days in Australia left at that point, and I’m going to go hear the Dalai Lama speak (he’s doing an Oz tour this month), go to the Sydney Film Festival, and walk around some more. Then it’s off to Thailand! I can’t believe how quickly time is passing.

Thanks everyone for the nice birthday wishes and the emails. Hope you all are well and are enjoying the summer!

xoxo,
Sheri

From June 5

Greetings from Oz, loved ones! My last few days in New Zealand were pretty tame—Constance, Laura, and I went for a hike in Glenorchy, stopped for Thai food in Dunedin, walked around the botanic gardens in Christchurch, and made friends with some little blue penguins at the Antarctic Center.








I couldn’t believe I was leaving NZ already! It felt like I had just arrived. Much as I like Australia so far, I still miss New Zealand.

I arrived in Sydney and had a bit of culture shock—even the big cities on the South Island of NZ are pretty small, and Sydney is such a huge, international city. I spent a day walking around, and then left pretty quickly, looking for something smaller. I’ve been in Melbourne for the past 5 days or so, and it’s been nice to be in a city with relatively few sights—I’ve been lazing around, sitting in cafes, walking around, etc for most of my time here. The other day I did go on a trip down the Great Ocean Road, which is meant to be designed after the 101. It was pretty, but the highlight was definitely seeing the koalas in the eucalyptus trees,
seeing two kangaroos boxing in the fields (no joke!), and hearing the kookaburras sing. The last couple of days I’ve been hanging out with my friend Shehan, who I met in NZ. He used to live here, and he’s been showing me around—we’ve seen some really great live bands and have been eating awesome food. Tomorrow morning I’ll leave for the northern coast to go for a scuba trip for a few days. I’m excited to see some sharks!

Hope you are all well! Thanks for the emails and well wishes.

Love,
Sheri