What is hot, sticky, and gets rained on while lying in bed? The World Ramblers!
Yes it is true! Our delightful little van has decided to show us another one of its challenges. Our pop top on the van leaks especially during the huge downpours that we have been having everyday and all night in Cairns. Jonathan and I agreed that was the first time we had ever been rained on while lying in bed, hope it never happens again!
So we are now in Cairns up in the Northern part of Australia and we are enjoying it very much! We even got to get into a salt water swimming lagoon right off the Esplanade! We have taken refuge in the shaded parts of the lagoon almost every day we have been here! It really is a fabulous city!
We took a trip up a little farther north to Cape Tribulation. We really wanted to be able to explore the Daintree Rainforest, which is a Wet Tropics World Heritage site. It was wonderful. We stopped at the Daintree Discovery Center which had loads of great information on the different types of plants, animals, and other life in the rainforest. We were fortunate enough to spot a large Cassowarie bird off the side of the road. They are a huge black flightless bird, with a helmet structure on their heads and bright blue and red warblers. Jonathan went swimming and caught a turtle in the big swimming holes which are crocodile free and safe to swim in! We had local ice cream at the Daintree Ice Cream Factory, four delicious flavors; macadamia, blueberry, jack fruit and something else that we just cannot remember! All of that in just two days in the rainforest! After the Daintree we spent a night at Tinaroo Lake which was absolutely beautiful. However, the mozzies were so thick we couldn’t stay for more than one night.
We than headed back to Cairns and ended up staying at a really nice caravan park. It was actually a “Resort Tourist Park.” It was certainly the nicest place we have slept and showered since we have been on the road. They had a really nice pool and free mini golf and really nice facilities. They even offered free water aerobics which Jonathan and I went to while we were there! And of course when you are in Cairns you at least have to get out to the Great Barrier Reef…and so we went!
We decided to do a 2 day/1night live aboard with the same company that did Jonathan’s Advanced Open Water Certification back in 2002. Jonathan of course was diving and I was going to do some snorkeling. We spent the first day on Reef Quest and Jonathan did two dives and I went snorkeling twice! Okay so here is the most impressive part. Most of the time when I snorkel I get a little freaked out and have some trouble breathing for the first little bit and I won’t go out into the water unless someone is holding my hand. This time I didn’t have Jonathan there since he was out diving and I figured if I wanted to see the reef I was going to have to JUST GET IN. And so I did. I jumped off the back of the boat all by myself, I didn’t panic and I swam around on the reef for a little over an hour the first time! Of course there were a ton of other snorkelers around the boat but I got over a lot of my huge fears and did it by myself! Damn I’m a big girl! Throughout my snorkeling I got to see lots of turtles and tons of beautiful fish and amazing colonies of coral!!! And I even saw a shark! Ahh! I was so excited I squealed into my mask! You are SUPPOSED to keep calm and not make any noise, yeah whatever I was so excited! And for the record you could definitely get a great feel for the reef even if you are just snorkeling! Jonathan did a total of seven dives over the course of two days but I will let him tell you all about his experience and what he saw! *enter Jonathan* The diving was amazing as expected. The corals here and sea life are truly second to none and at this point I feel quite comfortable saying that! I shot some pretty good pics and vids of the underwater world including 3 new species (to me) of nudibranchs and several underwater worms! They are hard to spot but you’ll see that they’ve some of the most amazing colorations ever! My night dive was spectacular as I got to witness Travelli’s hunting by the light of our underwater torches. They were whisking so close to me that a couple of times they actually brushed my sides and shot out between my legs! WHOA! I also perfected my buoyancy and completely ditched my weight belt! But despite the massive quantities of fish, sharks, corals, urchins, nudibranchs I was most amazed at Tara – snorkellin’ all over creation SOLO in the Great Barrier Reef! She saw sharks AND turtles before I did and even pointed a turtle out to me when I came out to meet her. I’m way proud of her Well that’s it, the boat life was good and the bed was a welcome reprieve from the van! *Jonathan out*
There is so much rain up in Northern Queensland. Enough that we are stopped in traffic waiting for the tide to go out so that we can hopefully get through the town and continue heading down South. But you will know we will made it safely it you are reading the blog! And the fact that it took us two weeks to get this blog onto our site…oops!
http://picasaweb.google.com/WorldRamblers/TripToTheGreatBarrierReef?authkey=Vol7C1sjFFw
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
East Coast Journey!
Knock knock
Who’s there?
The Police
Ah hell…
and that’s how we started our day a few days ago. I suppose you’re somewhat of a bonafide wanderer once you’ve been told by the local police you’re getting a warning for parking overnight in a ‘no overnight’ zone. The fine for this is $375. Ouch! Get just one of those bad boys and so much for saving money on a room by sleeping in your van. Tara and I have been movin’ on up in the world, instead of carrying our home we now drive around in it. We eat where we sleep, we sleep where we wash, we wash where we sit and we sit where we cook. We have one room, it is our livingkitchendiningbathbedroom, it sits on 6 tyres and once you add two people it is about the size 2.5fleas x @$# I just hit my head. This makes dorm room living feel like the 100th floor penthouse spread. Welcome to Australia on a shoestring. After working for a week, Evan and I made so many improvements to the van it’s crazy! New tyres, mounts, brackets, rivets, sides, hinges, battery – you name it and it’s been done! Tara and I are lovin’ it and guess what? We just got electricity in our house! Yup, a whole 300 watts @ 240 volts is flowing like soy milk and organic honey from our 2nd deep cycle battery. WOW! That trickle charged juice can run a 15cm fan at night, charge a laptop or even a camera battery. CRIKEY! We’ve retrofitted our water system and we now have a portable shower with a whole 5 gallons of water. That’s like enough water for four whole showers. CLEAN!
So aside from fixing up our home we’ve been enjoying our time in Oz very much. We’ve covered about 2500 miles and still have another 300 to go before we reach our costal destination, the city of Cairns. After that we’ll have covered the entire east coast and will head to the outback. The beaches have been beautiful and we’ve really enjoyed Queensland. As we have moved up the coast though we’ve encountered a harsh reality of summer here…jellyfish. The little bastards are about the size of a chicken bullion cube and their stings can be fatal. The other day we were camping next to the beach and I got in the water. I noticed a strange looking fenced in area down the way. It looked like a dog run and everything else was deserted. I entered the water to my waist and then got out quickly because I got a bad feeling (I always listen to that feeling). I went and asked a local and guess what? You can only swim in the fenced area because there are crocodiles. Did I mention this is the ocean? I love wave crashing and I love diving b/c I feel I like I belong in the ocean and can synchronize with it. But walking in and swimming on some deserted stretch like a lunatic just isn’t my idea of fun. You know what kind of people do that? Food. There’s the tropics for ya– sure the picture looks pretty but everything bites, stings, pushes, punches and scrapes like a barbed-wire tumble weed in a hurricane. We are both excited for the Great Barrier Reef though! We’ve visited the Ginger Beer Factor, Ginger Processing plants, the Crocodile Hunter’s Zoo and much more. It’s the little gems that shine like finding the Alaskan Malamute breeders at a random rest stop or the best meat pies ever! Well that’s all for now – we’ll write again soon enjoy the pictures!!
Jonathan and Tara
Australia Part Deux
Who’s there?
The Police
Ah hell…
and that’s how we started our day a few days ago. I suppose you’re somewhat of a bonafide wanderer once you’ve been told by the local police you’re getting a warning for parking overnight in a ‘no overnight’ zone. The fine for this is $375. Ouch! Get just one of those bad boys and so much for saving money on a room by sleeping in your van. Tara and I have been movin’ on up in the world, instead of carrying our home we now drive around in it. We eat where we sleep, we sleep where we wash, we wash where we sit and we sit where we cook. We have one room, it is our livingkitchendiningbathbedroom, it sits on 6 tyres and once you add two people it is about the size 2.5fleas x @$# I just hit my head. This makes dorm room living feel like the 100th floor penthouse spread. Welcome to Australia on a shoestring. After working for a week, Evan and I made so many improvements to the van it’s crazy! New tyres, mounts, brackets, rivets, sides, hinges, battery – you name it and it’s been done! Tara and I are lovin’ it and guess what? We just got electricity in our house! Yup, a whole 300 watts @ 240 volts is flowing like soy milk and organic honey from our 2nd deep cycle battery. WOW! That trickle charged juice can run a 15cm fan at night, charge a laptop or even a camera battery. CRIKEY! We’ve retrofitted our water system and we now have a portable shower with a whole 5 gallons of water. That’s like enough water for four whole showers. CLEAN!
So aside from fixing up our home we’ve been enjoying our time in Oz very much. We’ve covered about 2500 miles and still have another 300 to go before we reach our costal destination, the city of Cairns. After that we’ll have covered the entire east coast and will head to the outback. The beaches have been beautiful and we’ve really enjoyed Queensland. As we have moved up the coast though we’ve encountered a harsh reality of summer here…jellyfish. The little bastards are about the size of a chicken bullion cube and their stings can be fatal. The other day we were camping next to the beach and I got in the water. I noticed a strange looking fenced in area down the way. It looked like a dog run and everything else was deserted. I entered the water to my waist and then got out quickly because I got a bad feeling (I always listen to that feeling). I went and asked a local and guess what? You can only swim in the fenced area because there are crocodiles. Did I mention this is the ocean? I love wave crashing and I love diving b/c I feel I like I belong in the ocean and can synchronize with it. But walking in and swimming on some deserted stretch like a lunatic just isn’t my idea of fun. You know what kind of people do that? Food. There’s the tropics for ya– sure the picture looks pretty but everything bites, stings, pushes, punches and scrapes like a barbed-wire tumble weed in a hurricane. We are both excited for the Great Barrier Reef though! We’ve visited the Ginger Beer Factor, Ginger Processing plants, the Crocodile Hunter’s Zoo and much more. It’s the little gems that shine like finding the Alaskan Malamute breeders at a random rest stop or the best meat pies ever! Well that’s all for now – we’ll write again soon enjoy the pictures!!
Jonathan and Tara
Australia Part Deux
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)