On Tuesday the 7th we embarked on our Whitsunday cruise aboard the majestic Condor, a maxi racing yacht (i.e. a huge sailing machine -- 23 meters long). We were to be on board for 3 days with 12 fellow travelers and a crew of 4 taking care of us, the sailing and keeping the sharks away (just joking about the last part).
The 74 Whitsunday Islands make up a Maritime National Park on/within The Great Barrier Reef, which makes for great sailing and adventure territory and the type of cruise we went on is a typical way to explore the region. And what a great way -- we had heard from quite a few people that their Whitsunday Cruise was the highlight of their AU trip and we now understand why. Basically the entire marine park looks like one of those Bounty (chocolate) commercials from the eighties - turquoise bays, white sandy beaches, nothing around but a few yachts and people having a good time.
Our yacht cruised at a leisurely pace from island to island, with breaks for snorkeling, beach walking and swimming, only interrupted by food breaks when the crew served us goodies fresh off the barbie (yes, they actually call it that, but no, they mostly do not grill shrimp...). It was pure relaxation and just a wonderful vacation experience.
Hmm. Since I know you are all in to wildlife stories, I should probably add a bit of info on what we saw and / or avoided... The snorkeling was indeed spectacular (it's the G.B. Reef after all) - better than anything I have seen before, tons and tons of fish that will swim with and next to you and the reed itself is just beautiful, so many colors, so many different types of coral. We also swam with turtles and had the chance to see dolphins and sharks, the latter we lured to the boat at night with flood lights and grilled chicken. So what did we avoid? Well, they will make you wear a so called stinger-suit when swimming (and you will want to wear it!) in order to avoid a couple of scary jellyfish, mostly the Irukandjis which are know to cause excruciating pain and possibly death, while being tiny and invisible... I won't go in to more detail on the deadly dangers of the AU tropical waters (-- I believe Mikhail's blog has more info, if you really want it) but will say that this suddenly made me feel much better about the blue bottles we encountered in Sydney, as these will 'only' cause excruciating pain...
Saturday, March 18, 2006
coastal service part 2 - queensland (QLD) coast towards the whitsundays
We left Cape Trib Sunday night about 2 weeks ago now. Plan was to drive the beloved wicked (our "cowboy delux" camper van) down to the "Whitsundays" a collection of beautiful, lush and green islands that sit smack dab in the middle of the great barrier reef, about 800 KM south of Cairns.
The drive itself included certain challenges, we had gotten fairly used to the whole 'driving on the wrong side of the road' thing in NZ, but it can be a very different experience on narrow coastal roads in the middle of a tropical storm... A few of you have commented in e-mails and phone calls, that you had heard of flooding and massive rains in NE Australia, let's just say that we can confirm that these events took place. We did have a bit of a discussion about what would be the best approach to take, if/when we get stuck on a flooded road (we saw up to about 30 cm / 1 foot of water on the roads at times) within a croc zone - do you get out and try to push? Or do you just wait for the water (and potential crocs) to go away?!
We reached our weather low point near "Tully", a place we got to late at night Sunday and where we decided to camp for the night, because we just couldn't take it anymore. After a good night's sleep we ventured out for breakfast, only to discover from the local tourist info material that we had in fact spent the night in the place that has officially been declared 'Australia's Wettest Place', suffering the largest amount of rain per year :) -- Ironically it was bright and sunny that morning, however I must not forget to mention that Tully is also the home of "The Large Gumboot" - the Australians seem obsessed with large objects to be placed at the town entrance (the large squash, the large mango, the large you-name-it) an interesting fact which Carmine had kindly informed me about back in Seattle.
The further south we got, the more the weather cleared and we drove through landscapes that surprised us by looking more like African Savannah (or what we would expect that to look like I should say, never having been..) than 'the outback' - something that was later confirmed by one of our Whitsunday sailing mates, who had just come from the Kruger National Park in SA. Not entirely unexpected probably given that we were driving along the coast and that this region was formerly known as "the wet tropics", a name they recently changed, which is probably a good thing for the local tourism industry...
The drive itself included certain challenges, we had gotten fairly used to the whole 'driving on the wrong side of the road' thing in NZ, but it can be a very different experience on narrow coastal roads in the middle of a tropical storm... A few of you have commented in e-mails and phone calls, that you had heard of flooding and massive rains in NE Australia, let's just say that we can confirm that these events took place. We did have a bit of a discussion about what would be the best approach to take, if/when we get stuck on a flooded road (we saw up to about 30 cm / 1 foot of water on the roads at times) within a croc zone - do you get out and try to push? Or do you just wait for the water (and potential crocs) to go away?!
We reached our weather low point near "Tully", a place we got to late at night Sunday and where we decided to camp for the night, because we just couldn't take it anymore. After a good night's sleep we ventured out for breakfast, only to discover from the local tourist info material that we had in fact spent the night in the place that has officially been declared 'Australia's Wettest Place', suffering the largest amount of rain per year :) -- Ironically it was bright and sunny that morning, however I must not forget to mention that Tully is also the home of "The Large Gumboot" - the Australians seem obsessed with large objects to be placed at the town entrance (the large squash, the large mango, the large you-name-it) an interesting fact which Carmine had kindly informed me about back in Seattle.
The further south we got, the more the weather cleared and we drove through landscapes that surprised us by looking more like African Savannah (or what we would expect that to look like I should say, never having been..) than 'the outback' - something that was later confirmed by one of our Whitsunday sailing mates, who had just come from the Kruger National Park in SA. Not entirely unexpected probably given that we were driving along the coast and that this region was formerly known as "the wet tropics", a name they recently changed, which is probably a good thing for the local tourism industry...
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Updates, Updates, Updates to come...
I've been offline for a little while (-- what a nice experience!) but have now arrived at Monique's house in Byron Bay. Staying here includes the luxury of having limitless internet at hand and a chance to upload more photos, so stay tuned dear readers...
Saturday, March 04, 2006
James Blunt
I wanted to add a comment on our trip's "sound track": James Blunt is the tune of the day down under and we have taken quite a liking to it. Check him out if you haven't already. Oh and for some reason they are also really in to the "Curious George" sound track (Jack Johnson)...
Into the Wild - Cairns, Kuranda & "Cape Trib"
Just a quick little note to let you know that we have made it up to the north end of the Australian east coast (and no, we didn't drive all that way so quickly - we flew up to Cairns and will be driving back down, so that we can end up in Byron Bay with Monique for the last part of our AU visit.)
After spending a day in Cairns, which was probably the most touristy place we've been so far (people trying to sell you "the OZ adventure" on every corner), we spent a day in the Kuranda Rain Forest via Skyrail (sort of like a ski lift gondola) & Scenic railroad, which was our intro to the rain forest. Turns out, some of the world's oldest rain forest is right here and even though it seems like there is plenty of it, i actualy only takes up 0.01% of the Australian continent (statistic fact of the day :). In Kuranda we also got to cuddle Koalas - yay! - something we have extremely cute pictures of which i will post when i get a chance.
From the Kuranda experience, we've driven north so that we are now in "Cape Tribulation", which is pretty much as far north as you can go without a 4-wheel drive. This place is the home of the Daintree rain forest, Kuranda's older brother by several million years and the place is spectacular. Lush green rain forest everywhere and beautiful white sandy beaches. No swimming however, due to deadly Box Jellyfish and Crocodiles! To give you a bit of imagery, this is the campground where we stayed last night : Cape Trib Camping
After spending a day in Cairns, which was probably the most touristy place we've been so far (people trying to sell you "the OZ adventure" on every corner), we spent a day in the Kuranda Rain Forest via Skyrail (sort of like a ski lift gondola) & Scenic railroad, which was our intro to the rain forest. Turns out, some of the world's oldest rain forest is right here and even though it seems like there is plenty of it, i actualy only takes up 0.01% of the Australian continent (statistic fact of the day :). In Kuranda we also got to cuddle Koalas - yay! - something we have extremely cute pictures of which i will post when i get a chance.
From the Kuranda experience, we've driven north so that we are now in "Cape Tribulation", which is pretty much as far north as you can go without a 4-wheel drive. This place is the home of the Daintree rain forest, Kuranda's older brother by several million years and the place is spectacular. Lush green rain forest everywhere and beautiful white sandy beaches. No swimming however, due to deadly Box Jellyfish and Crocodiles! To give you a bit of imagery, this is the campground where we stayed last night : Cape Trib Camping
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Terra Australis
By way of third party complaints of blog update infrequency have reached me - alas, I must confess to being so smitten with our latest destination that I simply have not had the time to create a blog entry worthy of this continent... It is simply "grossartig" (German word for those not knowing :) in so many ways.
Anyway, we have indeed arrived in Sydney after a quick little 3.5 hour plane hop from New Zealand. Bjoern, one of our kind hosts here, picked us up from the airport and immediately after that introduced us to the 'Australian Way of Life': drinking cold beer on the deck while watching the parrots fly by, ah yes, quite pleasing in many ways!
Agnes, Bjoern & Cille, the family we are staying with, live in what is called 'the northern beaches' more specifically in Narrabeen beach, known as one of Sydney's prime surf spots. As stated, it is 'wild' here - being a suburb and all Narrabeen features a decent amount of lush greenery (of exotic kind seen with EU eyes) and plenty of wildlife of equally exotic nature. Mind you, the phone book delivery here includes a special book on which potentially lethal insects and critters to avoid while enjoying the local scenery (to be honest however, we haven't seen any snakes yet, just a few spiders and a decent amount of bats, the latter however in the botanical garden, which i guess doesn't really count ;)
Here is what we have been up to so far:
Tuesday: Visit to downtown Sydney: arriving to breathtaking views via Ferry from Manly (which is close to where we are staying) and spending the day hiking through the city from The Opera House, to The Rocks, to Harbour Bridge, the Observatory, George St, Hyde Park, Botanical Gardens and back to the Opera House for sunset cocktails and dinner (which included a crocodile + kangaroo appetizer!)
Wednesday: Beach day: hiking the beaches of Narrabeen and Dee Why, learning what rock pools is and trying to be cool with the local surf crowd (ok, maybe not so much, but it was worth a try...)
Up next: tomorrow Bjoern & Agnes will be taking us to the Kuringai National Park, which should be both quite exciting and exotic -- i recommend going to their website and/or checking out this link under which you'll find a list of all animals found in the park...
And now, I am off to work on adding some pictures - stay tuned!
Here we go - pictures! ->
Anyway, we have indeed arrived in Sydney after a quick little 3.5 hour plane hop from New Zealand. Bjoern, one of our kind hosts here, picked us up from the airport and immediately after that introduced us to the 'Australian Way of Life': drinking cold beer on the deck while watching the parrots fly by, ah yes, quite pleasing in many ways!
Agnes, Bjoern & Cille, the family we are staying with, live in what is called 'the northern beaches' more specifically in Narrabeen beach, known as one of Sydney's prime surf spots. As stated, it is 'wild' here - being a suburb and all Narrabeen features a decent amount of lush greenery (of exotic kind seen with EU eyes) and plenty of wildlife of equally exotic nature. Mind you, the phone book delivery here includes a special book on which potentially lethal insects and critters to avoid while enjoying the local scenery (to be honest however, we haven't seen any snakes yet, just a few spiders and a decent amount of bats, the latter however in the botanical garden, which i guess doesn't really count ;)
Here is what we have been up to so far:
Tuesday: Visit to downtown Sydney: arriving to breathtaking views via Ferry from Manly (which is close to where we are staying) and spending the day hiking through the city from The Opera House, to The Rocks, to Harbour Bridge, the Observatory, George St, Hyde Park, Botanical Gardens and back to the Opera House for sunset cocktails and dinner (which included a crocodile + kangaroo appetizer!)
Wednesday: Beach day: hiking the beaches of Narrabeen and Dee Why, learning what rock pools is and trying to be cool with the local surf crowd (ok, maybe not so much, but it was worth a try...)
Up next: tomorrow Bjoern & Agnes will be taking us to the Kuringai National Park, which should be both quite exciting and exotic -- i recommend going to their website and/or checking out this link under which you'll find a list of all animals found in the park...
And now, I am off to work on adding some pictures - stay tuned!
Here we go - pictures! ->
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
