Days 378-379: Cusco Pt II and Puno

We had a day to relax after the hike back in Cusco before moving onward.  I'd already covered a lot of the more obvious places, so this was a bit of a relaxed day for me.  I went to a small chocolate museum, which you may remember was the second such museum of my trip.  It was interesting to see how the topic was covered differently in Peru (which was one of the early countries to grow and trade it to Europe) compared to Belgium.

There were also some protests going on in town, which became a bit of a reoccurring theme through the rest of my time in South America.  This one was entirely peaceful, but it did give a different feel to the city center.

The next day was largely travel as we took a 6 hour bus ride southeast to Puno, a city on the shore of Lake Titicaca.  We only had time to explore the city a little and we didn't really get too far beyond the main commercial area and market.

Not a terribly exciting couple of days overall, but after the hike a few quiet days were nice before a busy day exploring Titicaca.

Days 361-363: Phoenix

Phoenix isn't much of a travel destination, and most of the travellers there are just passing through. I did my best to see the few sights around, going to the main art gallery for a couple hours before switching to my second hostel. Since I was going to be coming back to the first one the next day I left most of my things there and just took a few clothes to the other one. Downtown Phoenix isn't very big, and it only took a couple of hours to look around and stop by the different sports' stadiums. My favourite part of Phoenix was the Art District around Roosevelt Row, which was full of neat little galleries, cafes and alleyways of street art.

On my 3rd day, when I was back at the original hostel, I spent the evening hanging out with the hostel owners and some of the other guests. We played some board games and ended up going to the nearby park to play ultimate frisbee. When I played ultimate frisbee on the beach in New Zealand I was probably the worst player there, but the difference between playing with a group of very fit people who play 3 times a week and a group of fairly out of shape people who haven't played in years is pretty dramatic, and this time I got to be one of the stars. We spent the evening hanging out and drinking, and overall it was a really fun group of people to end my time in the US with.

My plane the last day didn't leave until late at night. I was taking a really budget airline (the only 2-star airline in North America), and they charged a lot extra for extra bags. By this point I have a backpack, my disintegrating messenger bag and another tote, and I really wanted to get that down to 2 items to save about $30 on the flight. I solved the problem by finding a duffel bag at a goodwill store for $4 and using that to combine two of my other bags. The airport I was flying out of wasn't actually in Phoenix, but in nearby Mesa, and I said my goodbyes in the evening and began the streetcar + 2 bus route trip of about 2.5 hours to get to the airport.

Days 359-360: Sidetrips and Leaving Las Vegas

My original plan when I decided to go to the United States for a few weeks included a few days spend at the Grand Canyon, ideally doing a hike across it. Unfortunately the didn't work out. Part of the problem was that I originally planned to spend about 3.5 weeks in the country, but changes to when I left New Zealand and when I booked a flight into South America meant that I only had about 2 weeks, so everything got condensed. The other issue was that about 3 months prior I tried to book a bed at the hotel at the base of the canyon, but it was already completely full. Basically it's just too hard to juggle planning for all the things I want to do, and a few things have to get left out.

Since I wasn't going to be able to do any real hiking at the Grand Canyon, my consolation was to do one of the day trips out of Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon. Most of the day was taken up driving there and back, but we did get in a quick visit at Hoover Dam, and around 2.5 hours at the Canyon. Our drive/guide talked for much of the time, and while he did have some interesting information and good anecdotes it was buried in hours of corny jokes and repetition that left me wanting to smash my head on the window repeatedly.


The Grand Canyon itself was pretty cool. I probably would have been a lot more awed by it a year ago, but the scope of it is still enough to impress me. I've found that for natural things I really react strongest when I can enjoy them on my own, isolated from other people, and that was simply impossible with the 2.5 hours we had. I had been hanging out with a German girl who was in my hostel in Las Vegas, and we took the shuttle bus around to a few of the different view points, but there wasn't enough time to get too far off the main paths so everywhere we went there were more tourists. It was still worth the trip out, and hopefully I'll get a chance to do the hike I want sometime in the future.


The bus got back pretty late in the evening, and I only got a few hours of sleep before I had to get up again around 3am to walk back down Freemont Street to the Greyhound station to get my bus from Las Vegas to Phoenix. I got a little sleep on the bus and spent the rest of the time enjoying the changing landscapes and got into Phoenix early in the afternoon. There are only 2 backpacking hostels in Phoenix, and one was only open for the 1st and 3rd days I'd be there, and the other only on the 2nd day, so I knew there would be a lot of moving back and forth. I checked into the first hostel and spent a bit of time exploring downtown, but mostly just relaxed at the hostel and tried to catch up on sleep.

Day 356: Freemont Street

My bus got into Las Vegas in the afternoon. Instead of staying on the more recently developed Strip I was downtown on Freemont Street. Freemont Street is the old part of Las Vegas where the original, mob-run casinos were, and now it's largely filled with bars and casinos that are a bit less extreme than the famous Strip ones. The afternoon desert heat was quite nice after the chill of San Francisco and after walking down the street, out far past where anything truly touristy was, to drop off my things at my hostel I explored around downtown a bit more.


Also now on Freemont Street is the (in)famous Heart Attack Grill, where I went for dinner. Heart Attack Grill has become famous on serving some of the most unhealthy food in the world, and making a point to take pride in just how unhealthy it is. If the name wasn't enough of a clue, the staff are dressed as doctors and nurses, and they put a paper hospital gown on your when you step in, just to drive the theme home. There's a scale out front of the restaurant for people to weigh themselves, because the restaurant has a standing offer that if you weigh 350lbs or more, you get to eat for free.

The quadruple-bypass burger has a world record for the most calories in a burger - about 10,000. Even worse, in the menu there's an 8-layer octo-bypass burger. If you get the burgers with bacon they add 5 strips per level, so that's 40 pieces of bacon just added on top. I kept things reasonable by only getting a double-bypass burger, without bacon, and a coke instead of their butterfat shake. I've probably regressed somewhat in health since leaving Asia, but I'm not looking to reverse a year of constant exercise quite so easily. It was delicious, but I'm glad the restaurant is in a place that I won't be visiting often.

Days 354-355: Leaving San Fran

On my next day I explored further south in the city, mainly around the Mission and Castro Districts. There isn't much in the way of big sights around here, but there were a lot of cool little shops, and in the Mission District especially, lots of art. I also spent a chunk of the afternoon back downtown. I visited a small cartoon museum, which wasn't really as good as I'd hoped. I was hoping for more comic art, but it was largely either art from newspaper comics or from Bugs Bunny.

I had most of a day in the city the next day as well, since the bus I was taking out was a night one. There were no rides at this time of year directly through the mountains to Las Vegas, so instead I had to go all the way back to Los Angeles then transfer to a bus heading up into Nevada. I booked my ticket a few days in advance this time, so I at least got to go with Greyhound. The weather in the city was cold and cloudy before I had to leave, and I didn't really feel like walking around after spending the last 3 days walking almost non-stop. Instead I popped over to the San Francisco Public Library, picked out a book somebody had recommended that I'd been meaning to read, and just read through it all. To my amusement the book (which was an urban fantasy mystery, for lack of a closer genre) was set in San Francisco, so all the major locations in the book were places I'd visited in the last couple days. When I was finished the book I headed back to the hostel to get my bags out of storage and walked to the Greyhound station and eventually got on my bus.

Day 351: Crossing California

My morning was a bit rushed. I was taking a fairly early bus out of Los Angeles, using some small independent Vietnamese bus company that was going to pick me up in China Town. The main issue was that I had to have a printed copy of my ticket, which I had forgotten to do in advance, and I had to wait for the staff at the hostel to get up (they tend to party pretty hard, and normal office hours weren't until 11am), and then we had problems getting the printer to work. Once we finally got things working it was a pretty quick ride to China Town since it was on the same subway line as where my hostel was, so I managed to get there in time. The ride wasn't very good. The bus was cramped and completely filled, with only 5 people that weren't Asian.

We got into San Francisco in the late evening, and by the time I got to my hostel the sun was down. The hostel I stayed in was huge, and one of the few real organized hostels I've encountered in the US. It must have had a few hundred beds, and had other perks like a fully-equipped industrial kitchen, pool tables and even a small movie theater. It was right on the border of the nicer part of downtown and the much less nice Tenderloin district (you can't expect much from a district named Tenderloin) which was full of beggars and homeless. Since it was already evening by the time I settled in I only went out to get a pizza, and then spent the rest of the evening trying to plan out what to do in San Francisco.

Day 348: The Longest Day

I was sitting out in this little park/plaza on my tablet with my backpack and bags piled around me in the middle of the night. It's sort of in the middle of the bar area, and it was a Friday night (or very early Saturday morning) so there were lots of really drunk people stumbling around shouting a lot. A few came over to talk with me, but it's New Zealand, so nobody really gave me much of a hassle. Finally around 3am I walked to the corner and caught my shuttle bus to the airport. There were only 2 other people on board, and the ride was a lot faster than it had been when I flew into Auckland due to there being nobody getting on or off and no traffic. I checked in and lounged around the airport and read some more. My flight path was a bit strange. It was cheaper to go to LA through Melbourne than direct, even though going through Melbourne meant flying for hours in the wrong direction first. I'm more concerned with money than time, and spending long hours sitting in a vehicle is routine by now.

The issue in Melbourne was that I was transferring between two airlines (JetStar and Qantas), and they weren't going to transfer my backpack to the second flight automatically. This meant that I had to get my bag, queue up to go through border control, go through another queue at customs (which is very thorough in Australia), go to the Qantas desk to get my boarding pass and check my bag for the new flight, then go through more queues back through security and border control again. There was only about 1:15 between when the first flight landed and I was supposed to board the second flight, and with all the long lines that time disappeared quickly and I was feeling a little nervous (and rather tired since I still hadn't slept). Ultimately I did get there in just under the time I needed, but it turned out to be moot since there was some sort of equipment trouble and boarding was delayed 40 minutes anyway. Finally we got on the plane and it was time to head back the way I'd just come, flying east over the Pacific.

The person sitting next to me on the flight was a blind Australian who was eventually heading to Venezuela to visit hospitals and orphanages as a clown with Patch Adams. That, combined with me having been travelling the world for a year made for lots to talk about. I also watched a few movies, and got a couple hours of much needed sleep. American border control is known for being pretty thorough, so the lines were slow. When it was finally my turn, I got grilled. My passport is by now rather colourful, which seemed to make him suspcious (in Australia, people going to backpack around the world is almost part of growing up, in America, not so much). This led to him asking for additional identification, which hasn't happened anywhere else in the world. I gave him additional identification, but of course since it's me the names didn't match exactly since all my IDs are slightly different. This led to more questioning about all my aliases (no, I've never gone by the name Rico Martinez Miller) before eventually letting me continue on. I finally got into the main terminal about 7:30am on March 7, the same time and date as I'd left Auckland like 20+ hours ago (gotta love the date-line time travel flights). I took my time getting a shuttle to Union Station, and since I was still really early decided to walk to Mariachi Plaza instead of taking the subway. My hostel was across the Los Angeles River, and in a rather poor and run down Mexican/Latino area. The hostel itself was a small independent one, but the staff was friendly and it was right next to the subway. I was pretty exhausted still from all the travel and not getting much sleep on the plane, so I napped a little and just spent the day in the local area, talking with other guests in the hostel and finding some nice little restaurants in the local area. After months of craving Mexican food, bein in the Mexican part of LA certainly gave me a lot of options. I managed to put off going to bed until late, partially since it was Saturday night and there were a lot of people coming and going. Finally I got some well deserved sleep.

Days 346-347: Waiting to Leave

I took my last bus ride of New Zealand from Taupo, back up through Rotorua and finally to Auckland. During our hike across Tongariro our group had a lengthy discussion on New Zealand meat pies, which seem to be something of a national dish. One of the places that came up was a little bakery in Rotorua that had delicious pies, so when I happened to have an hour between transferring buses around lunch in Rotorua I managed to hunt the place down and get a few award-winning pies.


I had purposely booked a hostel a bit closer to where the buses come and go, mostly so that I wouldn't have so far to work at the dreadfully early hour I had to go at to catch my plane when I finally left the city. I didn't really have much I wanted to do in Auckland, but I did hang out in the city for much of the second day, just browsing through comic and book shops and sitting around in parks or by the water. Although I booked 2 nights in my hostel, I ultimately only slept there once. My flight from Auckland to Los Angeles left around 7am, and between the few hours early I'd have to get to the airport, the bus to get there, and the walk from my hostel to the bus stop I'd have had to get up around 3am to do everything comfortably. Instead I just walked to a nearby park where I could use wifi (my hostel was charging $10 a day to use wifi - one of the things I really hate about New Zealand) and just spent the night reading a book on my tablet and planning out the next few weeks a little.

Days 341-342: Wellington to Taupo

I spent a day hanging out in Wellington to recover a bit from all the non-stop travelling. The weather in Wellington has been pretty amazing every day I've been there, and it was a nice warm sunny day. I didn't have any real plans or objectives, and was happy to just explore around downtown and along the harbor. The only really notable encounter of the day was with a tiny baby penguin that seemed to be wandering alone in the rocks down along the water, but it was unfortunately one of the times I didn't have my camera with me.

The next morning I took the morning bus from Wellington up to Taupo, where I was going to be meeting some locals to visit Tongariro National Park. Taupo is another fairly small town (similar to Owen Sound in population), sitting on the picturesque Lake Taupo. Our accomodations and transportation for the hike at Tongariro was entirely set up by Claire, who I think is the only person I've met in 4 different countries now - China, Hong Kong, Nepal and New Zealand (I can only think of 4 people, 3 of whom are family, that I've even met in 3 countries). She lives fairly close to Taupo and had been wanting to do the hike, so when I got to New Zealand we picked a suitable date and she did all the hard work, which was especially notable because the weekend we picked happened to also be the weekend of the Taupo Iron Man competition, and almost everything in town was booked solid. In the end our group was 5 people (including 3 of her friends from nearby Hamilton), and we met up in the evening at our lodging for the night before going out to pick up some groceries for the hike.

Days 339-340: Northward Blitz

It was now time to blitz back across New Zealand, or at least the south island. I first took a long bus ride from Queenstown up to Christchurch, delayed slightly be a huge herd of sheep that wouldn't get off the road.

I was curious to see what Christchurch would look like now, after it suffered so much destruction from the earthquakes. At first, it doesn't look that different, but then you start to notice all the empty lots and the fact that there really aren't many buildings more than 2 stories tall. The hostel was nice enough to come pick me up from downtown and drive me to the hostel, and the driver/owner was pointing out all the buildings that have been torn down, or are going to be torn down because the foundations are no longer safe.

The hostel itself was... interesting. Because there's been so much damage to the infrustructure there's a combination of not enough accomodations in town and a lot of people coming into the city looking for construction work, causing a huge shortage of beds. The hostel I was in had addressed this by having tents spread all through the backyard, with big outdoor communal areas under tarps. I was in a more traditional dorm room inside the house, but spent the evening hanging out with a lot of the campers. It had a very hippie commune vibe to it, and included lots of random drum circles and impromptu sing-a-longs.

My bus in the morning was at an annoying 7am, so I had to take a taxi from the hostel. About 2/3 of the way to Picton the bus came to a sputtering stop, and died. The driver tried a few things, but ultimately gave up and told us that they were looking for an alternative, but that anybody going to the ferry was going to miss it. I was mentally trying to figure out all the things I was going to have to shift, when one of the other passengers who happened to be a mechanic managed to get the bus going again. We rushed on north and I managed to catch the ferry and cross back over to Wellington. I just had time to get to my hostel, drop off my bags and have a quick shower before I met up with my childhood friend Alan and his girlfriend for dinner, as they happened to be heading down south as I was coming north. If you can't reconnect with old friends on the other side of the world, where can you?

Overall, a really long 2 days.

Day 334: Queenstown

The bus from Franz Josef didn't leave until the afternoon, but it was another nice drive further south, getting deeper into the mountains and woods and parks. We got into Queenstown in the evening around 8pm. Because its surrounded by beautiful mountains and water it's a pretty touristy place, and the city center is full of restaurants, bars and travel companies. I had been planning to do a fairly big hike out of Queenstown, and had planned to get here a day earlier to get the gear I needed and get organized. Unfortunately that got delayed because of the bus being full, so I had a shuttle scheduled for 8am the next morning without a lot of the things still to be figured out. I managed to at least change my shuttle to 12:30pm, which would obviously mean I started the hike later but would give me time in the morning to get organized and buy supplies before I headed out.

Day 328: Ferry Crossing

I got up early in the morning to catch the 8am ferry from Wellington, across Cook Straight to the town of Picton on the southern island of New Zealand. Ther ferry ride is about 4 hours long but it's at least pretty comfortable.

Once we got into Picton I took a shuttle to where my bus was waiting and continued on west to Nelson, which was another 4 hours away. This drive was getting into the part of New Zealand that has nice scenery, and much of the road in was winding around wooded hills and mountains. So much of the north island is rolling grasslands that it was nice to see wide stretches of trees for a change. Nelson is small enough that I found my hostel pretty easily once I was there, and after walking around a bit to get some dinner and do a little exploring I spent the evening in the hostel talking to people and watching movies.

Day 322: Bay of Islands to Rotorua

This was another day of travel as I took the bus from Paihia, back down to Auckland and south through Hamilton to Rotorua. Rotorua is another rather touristy town (like apparently almost all towns in New Zealand). The main attraction in the area is all the thermal pools and hot springs, but it also has built something of an adventure tourism market with things like skydives, rock climbing and jumping in big clear plastic balls half full of water and rolling around obstacle courses.

The hostel I was in was really cool. It shared a building with a basement cinema and a rock climbing gym with big windows connecting the hostel lounge with the gym so you could look in as everybody was doing the climbing. The town itself was pretty quiet, but it was large enough to have quite a few shops, and it sits next to Lake Rotorua, so there were more nice water views.

By the time my bus got in it was too late to do much beyond explore town a bit and get dinner, but I was already making plans for what to do with my time there.

Day 321: Russell

In the morning I went up a short walk of the hill next to town and decided that there really wasn't all that much to do in Paihia. Most of the tourism draws involve boating, either by sailing out into the bay or going on fishing excursions, and neither of those were interesting enough for what it would cost me. Instead I took the ferry across part of the bay to visit the town of Russell. Russell was also small, but I spent an hour walking along the beach and shore and found a trail heading up into the forest. The area around here was protected kiwi grounds and I saw a handful of kiwis running about, although they were quite shy and none stuck around very long. The trail ultimately came out in a little neighborhood of maybe 10 houses completely cut off from everything else, and I had to follow along the road for awhile. Eventually I found another trail heading up to Flagstaff Hill (I think), which gave a nice lookout down at the town and over the bay.


After getting back down I had a late lunch and sat by the docks, watching the fishing parties come back with their catches. The day's winner? Definitely this guy.


That's an 82kg striped marlin, for those interested.

Eventually I took the ferry back to Paihia and spent most of the evening chatting with my roommates and just generally lounging around.

Day 320: Bay of Islands

I began my bus blitz around New Zealand heading up north to the costal town of Paihia on the Bay of Islands. I didn't really have a reason for doing this, but I wanted to go somewhere north first and people had told me it was a nice spot. I got into a lengthy chat with an American on the bus who had spent the last 3 years in India. He was travelling with one little bag that had all his personal things, and one large pack that contained mountain climbing gear that he carried everywhere. He'd spent the last month on the south island, so I got a lot of tips on some of the things to do when I got down that far.
I'm going to be spending a lot of time on buses in New Zealand, but luckily it's famous for some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, so at least there's something to see on the trips. The trip north was largely hilly grazing lands, but New Zealand is pretty amazing for how open and empty it is.

It was a nice sunny afternoon when we got to Paihia and the place is small enough that it only took a couple of minutes to get to my hostel and check in. I spent the last part of the afternoon checking out town and picking up some things to eat, but didn't try anything too adventurous.

Days 317-319: Auckland

I had an early morning flight out of Sydney, so I got to New Zealand with still quite a bit of time left in the day. My hostel wasn't as central as a lot of them have been, but despite being by far the largest city in New Zealand it's still pretty small by international standards, and walking around is pretty convenient. There really wasn't all that much I wanted to do in Auckland. It's just another city, and I'll be in it again to flight out anyway, so I spent my days there focused more on planning out other upcoming things. I bought a bus pass with Naked Bus, which is one of the discount coach bus lines in New Zealand. New Zealand has really nice intercity bus systems, and the bus pass I got gives me 17 rides from anywhere to anywhere in New Zealand (excluding crossing between islands as part of a trip) for about $180 CDN. I very much doubt I'll be able to use all 17 trips, but I'll definitely be using enough to make the pass worthwhile. I also bought a cheap New Zealand pay-as-you-go cell phone since it makes the bus stuff much, much easier, and it will help with some of the national park bookings I need to do.

I did manage to see a fair bit of Auckland just walking around when the weather was nice. It's art gallery, while not as large and impressive as the ones in Melbourne and Sydney still had a nice collection. The museum was pretty far away from the city center, and while I vaguely tried to find it once it apparently cost quite a bit to get in, and I wasn't interested enough to really pursue it when I couldn't find it easily. Auckland also has one of those sky tower things vaguely like the CN Tower that pretty much every country seems to have now.

Day 312: Katoomba

I wasn't in too extreme of a rush since trains run pretty often out to the Blue Mountains, so I had an early lunch before heading to Central Station for the train. There's a suburban train line out to the mountains so the trip out is only about $8. I still don't really get why a 10 minute trip to the airport costs twice as much as a 2.5 hour trip out to Katoomba, but that's how things are. Katoomba is a small town right at the edge of the Blue Mountains National Park, and many of the hiking trails in the area begin from it. The hostel I'd booked was pretty amazing, and the only real downside to it was that you were only allowed 60MB of internet usage a day, which burns up fast even with just normal web browsing.

I was on the opposite side of town from the canyon down to the park, but I could walk there in about 40 minutes. Since it was already afternoon by the time I was checked in I didn't want to do anything too ambitious, so I walked down to the lookout at Echo Point and followed the edge of the cliff around past the 3 Sisters formation and popping out between Katoomba and the nearby town of Leura. It was about a 3 walk in total, and I good way to get a feeling for the town and get a few vistas out at the gorgeous view of the park.

Day 298: Flight to Queensland

My flight out of Melbourne was a pretty relaxed one. The plane didn't leave until 3:20pm, so getting to the airport wasn't as rushed as it sometimes is. The flight to Cairns was lower than a lot of the others I've done, so I got to see quite a bit of the terrain as we flew over.

Cairns itself is pretty small, and without anything much to do. The evening I got there I wandered around a bit to get some dinner, but other than little travel shops and restaurants there isn't anything exciting. For tourists it's mainly just a launching point to get at some of the interesting things in the area, which is what I also planned to do.

Day 296: Healesville Sanctuary

Since the bus schedule was more convenient on Monday I attempted my trip to Healesville again. It was a 20 minute tram ride to the city center, then maybe an hour by train to Lilydale. The bus at Lilydale was waiting when I got there, so it was just another 40 minutes to Healesville and a final transfer for another 15 minute bus ride to Healesville Sanctuary. In simplest terms Healesville Sanctuary is a zoo - one of 3 in the Melbourne area. Unlike the other two, however, the one in Healesville only contains Australian animals. Since the animals are in their natural habitat it's pretty open. It also contains a large animal clinic that nurses and looks after both animals from inside the sanctuary and other wild animals that are brought in with injuries. Since I'm probably not going to get a chance to go deep into the outback to see all the animals in the true wild, I figured this would be something of a compromise.

I've always loved animals, and been fascinated by marsupials. I'm not going to go through animal by animal, but here's a mix of pictures from the sanctuary.

I had an seconardy reason for wanting to visit the place as well. I've mentioned Belgian street artist Roa a few times when I was travelling around Europe. One interview I had read with him explained how he always paints animals native to the country he's in, so he really looked forward to being able to travel to Australia or Africa or something to have new, interesting animals to paint. Well, in November he came to Melbourne to do a show and while he was there he visited the Healesville Sanctuary and did some paintings!

The first three are from buildings at the sanctuary, and the last one is from the cafe at the National Victoary Gallery in Melbourne, which led to me finding out about all the Healesville stuff in the first place.

Days 294-295: Idling

On Saturday I was supposed to meet up with my second host in the city for his 21st birthday party, then go to his house in the evening. Due to unexpected circumstances that plan fell through, the birthday party got cancelled and I stayed at my original spot for an extra night to make things easier. The party was supposed to be at the botanical gardens, and even though it got cancelled I figured the gardens would be a nice place to take it easy and relax after a few days of pretty extensive walking. The botanical gardens were more of a big park with lots of open green space for lounging and picnics. Unfortunately the weather had gotten cooler again so while it was still nice out, it was a bit chilly to just lie around.

The following day I tried to make it to the town of Healesville, outside of the city, for something I had been wanting to do. Unfortunately Sunday is a horrible day to try to use the bus system around Melbourne, and I ended up spending about 4 hours trying to get there before giving up and coming back to the city. I gathered all my bags from where I'd been staying and took the train and a tram to get to the new place I'd be staying at for the last few days in Melbourne.