Maria Island

I woke up early to visit an island off the side of Tasmania. The island is named Maria (pronounced like Mariah) and it is home to a diversity of animals. It also used to be a penal colony but now has been turned into a national park. It is extremely remote with no cars allowed (other than maintenance ones) and you are supposed to bring all your garbage off the island with you. There are no stores and barely any water or bathrooms. But, it is beautiful!

I decided not to go here alone but to instead go on a cruise tour with a group. On the boat part of our journey, I saw SO MANY dolphins. Some swam extremely close the boat! It was amazing! We also took the boat close to an island full of seals that humans aren’t even allowed to walk on. The cruise was very pleasant with an excellent guide leading us. She wasn’t much older than me and had studied at the University of Tasmania. We stopped for tea and cakes along the way which was a fun touch.

At the end of the day, we landed on Maria Island and walked around. And there were animals everywhere! I saw so many cute wombats! They aren’t scared of the people on the island but we have to keep our distance to keep it that way. We also saw some interesting geese, a wallaby and pademelons. It was an incredible experience.

I also met a very friendly woman from Peru who now lives in Adelaide and we got dinner together.

The next morning, I had to wake up incredibly early (four in the morning) for my flight to Auckland! I first flew to Melbourne where I learned that I had to switch terminals and go back through security. In security, they had to search my bags and a whole bottle worth of medicine fell out onto the security table. The TSA woman had to put on gloves and put it all back in. Don’t worry, I’ll use another few bottles first while the germs die. The whole thing was quite unfortunate though.

Anyway, I arrived in Auckland and took an uber to the Kiwi International Hotel for my orientation. The cyclone had passed through and the weather was lovely. Unfortunately many of the study abroad students flying from the US had delayed or cancelled flights due to the cyclone so we won’t have the full group for orientation.

It’s amazing after a year and a half of planning and anticipation, I am actually in New Zealand!