Rachel and Rebecca’s adventures ����������✈️

Today we went to an elephant sanctuary. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done! This sanctuary rescues elephants that have been abused and lets tourist come play and bathe them. A bus picks you up from the city and takes you about a hour and a half into the jungle of Thailand. Once we got there we changed into our bathing suits and super cool Thai shirts. We hiked about 20 minutes up a mountain where the elephants were waiting for us. There were 6 in total including one baby and one pregnant elephant. The elephants were so friendly and playful while we fed them bananas. Then we went over to a waterfall to cool down because it’s constantly hot all the time here. Then it was time to bathe them. We went into this river with buckets and brushes and washed them off. I think the elephants liked it almost as much as we did. Then we took them over to rub them with mud to exfoliate them, but then we ended up all getting in a mud fight. It was super fun! This sanctuary doesn’t have ...

We’ve made it to Chiang Mai Thailand! We set a goal a few years ago to go to 6 continents before we turned 26 and we’ve offically done it! So far Thailand is really cool. We’re staying at an air bnb in town, there’s lots of markets and street food vendors near us. The pad Thai is $.96 and is so delicious. We’ve been taking these first few days to figure out where things are and the best way to get around. It’s been some trial and error but things are pretty easy to find. Ally got here yesterday and I could not be any more excited that she’s here with us! We’re trying to learn some basic Thai but everyone here knows some English so that helps. We had our first meeting last night and met some really nice people. We’re excited to help out with the memorial campaign and see what else Thailand has to offer!

We left New Zealand a few days ago and flew to cairns, Australia to do the Great Barrier Reef. New Zealand was unreal. The scenery was absolutely breath taking. Everything was so green and lush. We’ll miss it so much. One of our last days we headed out to Milford sound (a fiord in New Zealand). It was so beautiful. We took a bus to get there then went on a cruise around the area. Our last day in New Zealand we decided to hike Ben Lomond again. We loved the challenge and scenery of it that we just had to do it twice We had such a great time at the Great Barrier Reef.  It was so neat! A boat took us about 2 hours out to the reef. It was rainy, which made the boat ride very choppy,  almost every one on the boat got sea sick (except us 😉). There was a marine biologist with the tour company so he took us out and told us all about the fish. We had to wear special stinger suits since it is jellyfish season and Australia has lethal jellyfish. We got to see lots of pretty fish, ...

We have arrived to the South Island of New Zealand! This place is as beautiful and peaceful as everyone says it is. We have a rental car and are learning to drive on the opposite side of the road, which isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We’re staying in Queenstown, which is a super cute little town surrounded by mountains and water. Today we hiked Ben Lomond. It’s a 9 mike round trip hike, the first part is straight uphill. It was pretty tough but definitely worth it! We were nervous because it was 100% chance of rain all day but the weather was beautiful. It was cloudy at the top, so we didn’t get the best view but we get bragging rights for finishing 😝.  The views we got of the mountains and water along the way were incredible. We even saw billy goats on the trail! This place is picturesque, I can’t wait to see what else it has to offer!  View from the bnb