Ryan's Semester Down Under: July 13th 2016 Campus and Mt. Keira

All right, today was a bit of an adventure. It started out with breakfast and I thought I would take the bus to University of Wollongong and explore the campus. I walked out to the bus stop and took the bus to campus (By the way did I mention that the main bus line is FREE?).

I looked around the library which was really nice and then I walked into the student center, which is an area with different banks and restaurants. I stopped had a bite to eat and then continued to walk around campus. All in all, I like UOW's campus more than CSULB. Sorry Long Beach but UOW is updated and just overall nicer.

After exploring campus I figured I would climb the mountain behind campus. I mean it's big but I didn't think it was going to take me as long as it did. I walked my way up a clear and defined path for a while and then when I hit the road. It all turned out to be very cool because I felt like I was walking around a jungle, but the path was not as clearly defined as before. I kept walking and I got to a point where I was under a thick canopy of trees and I felt like I was in Indiana Jones (yes, I know how dorky that sounds but it's true). Various kinds of birds were flying around and calling out to one another. The trees provided so much coverage that it felt like it was almost sunset and light was starting to fade. With the overgrown plants and large rocks all around it really felt like I was in some Indiana Jones movie on my way to a lost temple. I started to think that the trail I was on was not going up to lead up to the summit so I saw another trail that went up, so I decided to take it.

This trail was rather steep and way harder to climb because of all the loose dirt. Only then I realized that an animal had made this trail and it was not meant for someone like me to go up it. I had to keep going through because I lost the original trail and was pretty high up on the slope. I kept going and ran into large rocks and boulders that I had to climb up because the path I was on had ended.

As I climbed my way up the rocks I was able to . Below is a video I took while on the rocks and I was videoing the rocks and I saw a little bit of a view and when I walked over to the point I realized how pretty the view was and how high I actually was.

I heard voices around me so I figured I was close. When I finally did get to the viewpoint I was really tired. I definitely did take the wrong path because at the viewpoint I was on the wrong side of the fence. After climbing the fence I just sat and admired the view, but not for long because I wanted to head back down and have enough sunlight in case I did get lost again.

I started my way back down and tried very hard to stay on a path due to the winds blowing branches and leaves onto the paths and hiding them. There were multiple branches on the ground and I heard trees creaking as they were being pushed around, which pushed me to go faster because I did not want to be around if one fell.

There were a few times I found some cool places to take photos, but I wanted to keep moving. There was one time I was going to stop and take some photos on some rocks but the wind started pushing me around and I didn't want to be near the edge if the wind decided to start pushing towards the edge (don't be worried the wind was blowing the opposite way of the edge).

After jumping onto multiple paths I found my way onto the path I started on and made my way back to the buses.

So I am a little bummed because most of my photos that I took on the hike did not turn out, but here are a few anyways. Also, I did take a couple videos but I am having trouble getting those from my phone so I will try to add those at another time.

P.S. I do realize that photos below contradict what I was saying about the trails but there were some areas that were worse than these.