Before leaving New Zealand I want to talk about some things that I noticed were different from Peru. In some cities of NZ you can find electric powered transportation's  The bus is connected to a cable which goes through the main streets. This saves a lot of fossil fuels and pollutes less; remember that a lot of the electricity in NZ is produced by wind and hydroelectric power. On the other hand kiwis save electricity by using electric outlets that have a switch control the electric power consumed by appliances when they are switched off. This is called phantom load. I think this is a really good idea but if you are not used to this and you plug in something (like your camera battery) and you don’t turn the switch on when you go back to get them you’ll get a big surprise.

 Another thing that is really different is that they drive on the left side of the street.

The driver is on the right side of the car and we always mess up when we want to seat in the copilot seat because you go to the driver’s side. At first you feel that the cars are going to crash into you because you are “in the wrong side” but after a couple of week I feel normal. One more thing…You know how in Lima you see a police officer really often? Here in the last 10 days I have only seen two police officers. And when I asked about these they told me that police in NZ don’t even carry guns. Even though there are not so many policemen I feel really secure. Finally, one thing that is also different from Peru is the trash in the streets. Here you don’t find any trash on the ground and there are recycling bins all over the country. Unlike in the USA here there are no signs telling you that you will get a fine is you litter on the streets. It seems that people just know that it is the wrong thing to do.

                We have had an awesome 10 day adventure traveling through NZ. Now we are heading farther north to Australia. The flight to get there was only three hours and I had a great time watching a movie. When we arrived to Sydney we visited the Opera House, and the botanical garden. That day we went to the vivid light festival which was in downtown Sydney. In this festival they celebrate artists that use light to create art. It’s hard to explain but for example they projected a movie on a house and it seems like it was falling down, changing shapes or moving (special light effects). I really liked that festival. After the festival we took a bus back to the hotel and when we were walking to take the bus we saw a flying fox which is the biggest bat in the world. They only eat fruits so they are harmless.

                 The next day we went to a national park called Morton National Park in search for platypuses and lyre birds. Even though we searched quite a bit we were not successful. Even though we didn’t find them I learned about them. The platypuses are mammals that lay eggs. Something that really caught my attention was that they fed their babies milk even though they don’t have nipples. The babies lick the milk from the mother’s hair. The males are the only ones that have poison which is located on their back legs. This animal seems to be a mix of ducks, beaver and an otter. The lyre bird is a bird bigger than a chicken that feeds on the ground and imitates all kinds of sounds such as chainsaws, other birds and even the alarm of a car. In this park we were able to see a huge waterfall called Fitzroy Falls.

                At dusk we went to Booderee National Park to try to find some kangaroos and wombats.

We drove through many of the roads in the park until my grandma spotted a kangaroo. I got really surprised because I thought they were going to be huge. After taking some pictures, we experimented and opened the cars door to see if it would jump away and we succeeded. It is amazing how fast they can jump, how long their jumps are and how much they use their tail. Like my grandmother said “If you see one, you’ll see all.” After that we saw many more and one of them was about my height. That’s the kangaroo I was expecting to see.

In this side of the world the sun sets at 4:53. It is really early. At 6 you are already sleepy because it’s so dark and quiet. To try to avoid sleeping so early my family has organized game nights. We play many card games such as: “Cucu la lora”, “Mano sucia”, “Ocho Locos”, Spot It, “pobres y ricos” and many more. We also played a board game called Settlers Of Cattan; this game is extremely addicting and people get a little too obsessed with winning (in a good way).