Cairns II: Diving in the Great Barrier Reef (Dec 13 - Dec 17)

We arrived back in Cairns and proceeded to drink our lives away again for a few days. At this point I decided I should probably do something with my life so I booked a diving trip to get my Open Water diving licence. The first thing I had to do was 2 days of in class work, and learning to dive in a pool. My first time using the dive equipment I started to panic and found it very hard to breath, but I eventually got the hang of it and learned to relax and breath normally. It was a strange feeling staying underwater for 45 mins or more learning different techniques and safety measures, but very cool. We learned different hand signals for underwater animals (shark, turtle, clown fish, barracuda, barramundi, etc) and safety signals for emergencies. After the two days we took a test, just like any other certification like this our teacher basically gave us all the answers before and helped us throughout the test (my question sheet actually had all the answers circled on it already...bonus). We then hit the ocean to explore the Great Barrier Reef as newly certified divers. The first part of the reef we explored was Norman Reef.

It felt as though you were transported to another world. You float in the water waiting for the instructor to go down first, then put in your regulator (mouthpiece), deflate your BCD (life jacket kinda thing that fills with air and helps with buoyancy) and sink down into this unknown world below. Our first dive was only 25 minutes long, but still a magical experience. We saw a variety of different fish, including clown fish which seem to excite everyone, "OMG ITS NEMO AWWWW", and all kinds of cool looking coral. As it was our first dive we still had some signals and things to go over while under water. To do this our instructor found a flat-ish area and got us all to kneel down. She would point at us one by one and get us to do the skill or hand sign, one of the skills we had to learn was taking off our mask and then putting it back and getting all the water out (done but holding the top part of the mask and blowing through your nose while looking up).

After we finished our skills our instructor (Rocky, from Japan.. she was really awesome) took us around to see some of the different wild life down there. She had a whiteboard and a marker so she could write down what the things were that she was pointing at, very informative. The next few dives were very much the same, practising skills (cramp removal, regulator exchange, remove/replace weights, underwater navigation, and controlled emergency swimming ascent) and going around looking for cool things underwater. The next place we explored on the reef was Saxon Reef - Twin Peaks. Once we were finished all of our skills we got to buddy up and go on our first dives without a guide. This was an interesting experience, because we don't know the reef as well as the instructors. They know where all the good spots are and the best paths to take, so we were a bit lost. In fact, I lost my buddies twice and had to surface and wait for them.. I tend to drift into my own world and follow fish I find interesting or explore holes and things.

The first night I watched the instructors feeding the sharks off the back of the boat and stood there while all the advanced divers prepared themselves for the first night dive. I was intrigued by this and asked if I was able to do one of those, but I was told I'd have to take my advanced diving ticket to do that. At that moment I decided to do my advanced diving ticket, seeing all the sharks and giant traveli swimming around the back of the boat and the divers just jumping in on top of them, I knew I had to get myself into that situation. So I disregarded the money and just bit the bullet. Best idea I've had so far.

To get my advanced diving ticket I needed to complete a whole new set of skills, which was very exciting and fun. The first test we had to do was buoyancy, to pass this we had to swim through a hula hoop rightside up and upside down (and we did a spinning one for fun). When I did this I couldn't keep my buoyancy after going through the hoop and ended up doing a baseball slide on the bottom. One of the other guys in the course came in front of me and knelt down and gave me a safe sign like an umpire.. funny underwater joke. The next test was the night dive boat location test. This was what I was waiting for, and it did not disappoint. We jumped in the pitch black shark infested waters with our measly flash lights and were immediately engulfed in darkness. All you could see was the light of the boat and the little flash lights roaming around under the water. There were sharks everywhere, not paying any attention to us, just swimming around freely looking for things to eat. We saw three different types of sharks, White tip, Grey Reef, and Wobbegong. There were also giant traveli which were rather large black fish, they followed us around and when you point your flash light at a smaller fish they shoot out from over your shoulder and eat it (fun game to play was pointing at a fish near the reef, then when the traveli comes to eat it you move the light and listen for the thud of the fish hitting the reef). We also saw a giant mooring eel, and bioluminescent plankton in the water, so when you wave your hand around it lights up.

We had two more advanced dive tests, deep dive (diving down to 30 metres), where we saw a bottle being compressed by the pressure, the change in colour because of the darkness, and the instructor cracked an egg and we slapped it around for a while (it stayed together because of the pressure). As we went down an emperor fish followed us, because it knew we had eggs, so before we could play with the egg the instructor had to give it one so it would go away. We also saw a black tip reef shark, which they said was pretty rare to see. The next test, was a navigation test where we had to use a compass to find the boat and navigate through the water only using the compass. During that journey we saw, yellow fin barracuda, two types of puffer fish and another white tip.

The final test was a fun one, there was a choice between three different options (underwater photography, fish identification, or diving from a small boat). I chose to do the underwater photography, but my instructor said we can do the diving from the smaller boat and photography. So four of us jumped in a dingy and we zipped out past our normal area and we got to do a "marine style" entry to the water (hold on to your mask and regulator and roll backwards into the water off the side of the dingy). I felt quite awesome doing this, obviously in my head I was giving myself orders in a marine voice so that was exciting. On this dive I saw a few turtles, a white tip shark and heaps of fish and awesome coral.

After my first diving experience I was really starting to love diving. The feeling of staying under the water for so long and all the animals and coral you see was just breath taking. Imagine walking through a rainforest with twice as many animals running around, it might be similar to that. It also gives another element to travelling, now I can have a goal when arriving in a country, to do some cool diving spots! My next step is to do some wreck diving, that should be a thrilling experience.

Peace & Love

Cairns I: Gooned Up & Vacation from Drinking in the Daintree (Nov 27 - Dec 10)

Note: "Goon" is a slang term used for cask wine. It is the Aboriginal word for pillow, and its called that because you can take out the bag and blow it up like a pillow. That is how you get your "Goon Badge" drink a whole box to yourself then blow it up and pass out on it.... or so I hear...

The initial plan for me and Robert was to stay for 1 week, have a good time and then carry on down the coast. Rob and Ingrid were thinking of staying longer and finding work, possibly getting an apartment or going into a share house together. So we arrived and checked-in to a really nice hostel called Northern Green House (free internet, free breakfast, free BBQ on Wednesdays and pancakes on Saturday mornings ...amazing). We paid for 1 week and began our drunken debauchery, two more dutch girls moved into our room a few days after us so we partied with them for a while. Basically we were drinking at least two boxes of goon every night, then going out to the bar and dancing the night away (..might have just been me dancing).

I also met up with Julius while I was there, I met him through Matt, so he was hanging with us as well. The best place to go out in Cairns was definitely Gilligans, which was a hostel with around 700 beds and the largest club in Cairns at the bottom. After the initial week it was clear that we would be staying longer, so I decided to move to Gilligans hostel, for two reasons; it was cheaper and you get free entry to the club if you stay there. After moving to Gilligans I started to mainly hang out with Julius and whoever was in either of our rooms that wanted to party. I did do some other things while in Cairns, besides drinking everyday, after several days of drinking in a row Robert, Rob, Ingrid, and I decided it was time for a change, so we headed north for a few days of camping in the Daintree Rainforest in Cape Tribulation. This was a great idea. It was nice to get out of the city for a while and get back into nature.

We did a few walks through the rainforest, I felt it looked and felt pretty similar to what I saw in Costa Rica (obviously the flora was different, but I got the same feeling, just dense humid forest....not trying to downplay rainforests here..just sayin). On one of our walks we found a cool rope swing into a semi shallow stream, we got some nice pictures there trying to do backflips off the rope. It was so shallow that Robert, who is around 6'4 hit the ground one time and stood up straight away, he wasn't hurt it just looked really funny. We also visited Mossman Gorge, which looked very nice with a light fog over the water and big smooth boulders distributed throughout the river. The water there was very cold and crisp, it was the first time we could swim in the rivers for a while because of fresh water crocodiles in the Northern Territory, there weren't as many in the water here so it was safe to swim. We camped for one night in a caravan park (left early so we didn't have to pay) and stayed one night in a hostel. The beach and surrounding area of the hostel was beautiful, it was really like being in the middle of the jungle...which it was...There weren't very many other people staying at the hostel, but we met a group who were on a tour and hung out with them that night. There was a girl from near Manchester, a guy from Ottawa and another guy from Holland.

I can't remember the details of how we ended up at the beach, but after a few drinks we decided that it would be a good idea, even though it was raining. So we went to the beach and met some other people who were already down there, and we all watched as the storm moved closer. We sat there for a while, and eventually these other two guys showed up, pretty drunk already, and one of them brought his fire spinning equiptment. So as drunk as we all were, we all did some fire spinning that night, it was really awesome. He even showed us how to spit fire, and I got a cool video and some nice pics of that. The non fire spinning guy was a professional photographer so he had an awesome camera (we found out later that his main gig was doing nude photos, and he showed us some pictures he took of some girls in a bath tub.. he was a bit creepy..he also put a cicada in his mouth..). He still hasn't sent me the photos though, but the video is on facebook, I hope he sends me the pics eventually, they were pretty awesome. It was a nice end to our short visit to the Daintree Rainforest, back to Cairns in the morning.

Peace & Love

Roadtrip Katherine to Cairns: ...Move along, nothing to see here.. (Nov 24 - Nov 26)

We left Kakadu the next day and started our long journey to Queensland via Katherine. We stopped just outside of Katherine for the night at a free camp site and met up with a couple from the US who we had met previously in the McDonalds in Katherine. So we had a nice evening sitting around the fire chatting about travelling and such. We had a pretty late start again the next day and made up for it by driving until about 11pm at which point we stopped at a random truck stop and made some delicious burritos. The truck stop was pretty cool, both in terms of awesomeness and temperature wise, it was the first time in OZ that I had to wear a sweater and a hat (because we were in the middle of the desert). The burritos were amazing, but to cook we had to shine the lights from the car on our stuff which attracted every bug in the area so we had to fight the bugs from our plates but it was worth it.

Another car pulled up after a while, it was a typical Australian tuned up litter box of a car, with blasting dub step pouring out of the windows. This pretty small dude jumps out of the car with a tiny dog and approaches us. Robert was fiddling with something at the back of the car and the dude offered to help. So he takes him back to his car and gets a head torch and explains that he is on his way to Darwin (Sidebar: Darwin is about a 20+ hr drive from where we are) from Sydney! After I heard this and gave the guy a look over, it was obvious that he was some sort of drug runner, I would guess meth or speed. He then told us that he was going to make it to Darwin the next day! Which is entirely possible considering there's nobody on these roads so you can drive as fast as you like. Anyway, this was just a funny character to meet in the middle of no where.

After dinner we chilled out and just looked at the stars for a while, it was a completely clear night so you could see stars all over the sky. Unfortunately there was a large truck idling in the truck stop (a truck at a truck stop...you don't say....) so it kind of ruined the atmosphere a bit, but still quite awesome. It was also fun to watch all the road trains go by, with all the lights and they are going so fast (at least 140 for some of them) it is really quite impressive to see a truck pulling 3-4 trailers booking it down the highway at night.

The next day we drove for around 11 hours (Sidebar: there is nothing but desert between Katherine and Townsville) and ended up in Townsville, which is the next biggest town south of Cairns. It said in the lonely planet that it has a vibrant night life, which we saw upon arrival. It is always funny arriving in a city after a few days on the road, the amount of people is always a shock. Unfortunately for us, it was the weekend and all the hostels were fully booked. So we decided not to party that night (..yes we were still going to go out after 11 hrs of driving..backpacker life), as we had no proper bed to sleep in. We searched for any free camp sites in the area and the best we could find was a Bunnings (like Home Depot) that allowed caravans and camper vans to stay over night. They did have a sign explicitly saying NO TENTS, so obviously I set my tent up right underneath the sign and we had a nice early night so we could escape before any security guards or patrons arrived. One lady from one of the caravans parked there gave me a look in the morning and said "it says no teeee-eeennnntttssss"....to which I replied..."Yes good morning to you too *big smile and wave*".

The drive up to Cairns was spectacular. Beautiful rainforest and tree covered mountains the whole drive. It was a ridiculous change from a few days prior when we were in the middle of the desert. This is one of the reasons I like OZ so much, such a varying landscape, but unlike New Zealand it is spread out over a much larger area, which is good and bad. When we arrived in Cairns we immediately booked for 5 days in a very nice and clean backpackers just to stretch out and relax for a while. We definitely chose the right one too, this place had free pancakes on Saturdays, free internet, and the beds were slightly bigger than a single so I could actually sleep on them properly. I don't think I can stress enough how amazing it was to sleep on such a heavenly bed, it's the little things sometimes.

Peace & Love

Kakadu It! (Nov 19 - Nov 22)

I left with Robert and the gang (Rob from Manchester, and Ingrid who was from another part of Holland) in the morning. We packed up the car with food and water and set off on our adventure. Our first stop was Litchfield National Park, I had already been there with Matt, but I was looking forward to showing my new crew all the cool things I already knew about Litchfield. Of course, by the time we arrived it was pouring with rain. It was still a great time though, not many people were at the nice spots because it was raining so that was ok. That first day we just went to the rockholes and stayed for an hour or two before heading to find a camping spot. It rained all night, so we ate dinner and had a few beers in the car sharing hilarious stories all night, it started off with trying to guess what we each did back home, and got more personal after that haha....pretttyyyyyy funny things were said, mostly from Ingrid LOL.

In the morning we went up to Florence falls, Rob and Robert did some cliff jumping, which was nothing compared to my previous jump off the top of the falls, but still nice..heh.. As soon as we went to go eat lunch the skies opened up and gave us a good lashing of rain to go with our instant noodles and bread..Mmm. At this point we were a bit fed up with the rain so we decided to head to Kakadu National Park. We arrived in Kakadu in the evening, and as it was obviously still raining we decided to stay in the backpackers at the entrance to the national park (Sidebar: Kakadu is ENORMOUS, it is actually the same size as Slovenia, and it has a town inside). As soon as we checked into the backpackers and started to cook, the rain stopped immediately and the skies cleared...smh. Even worse, the manager of the backpackers was a....hmm...*insert Australia's favourite word* but luckily we didn't have to deal with her too much.

There was a tour group there the same time as us, but they didn't look like they were having a great time for some reason. After we had our delicious dinner consisting of rice and vegetables, we sat outside drinking for a while, the tour group started playing a murder mystery game...which sounded pretty lame...But once they all went to bed the tour guide came and chilled with us for a while. He explained that the people in the tour group only bought about 4 beers between 8 people and then complained they didn't have enough beer. Anyway, the tour guide (Brett) turned out to be a really cool guy. He showed us some cool spots to go on the map and basically set up a private tour for us with some places that only tour groups went to. He also told us about a camp ground (with cabins and kitchen area etc) that is normally used by Adventure Tours that was not in use at the moment, so we had a potentially sweet place to camp. Thanks Brett!

We set off quite early to avoid the rain and get the most out of the day. Our first stop was Moline Falls, which was ok, nice and secluded spot, I also got a sweet spider pic while there. Next we went to Motorcar Falls, now THIS was impressive. Really high waterfall, 300ft I think, and nobody else around except a tour group of around 6 people. The tour operator was a bit suprised to see us because this waterfall isn't marked on the map, you just have to know it's there. There isn't even signs at the path, you need to walk for about an hour on a trail then you see one sign that says Motorcar Falls.. top secret falls. This was probably one of the better water falls I've seen in OZ, and believe me I have see A LOT. Of course as we finished our walk and began preparing lunch it started to rain (for some strange reason it always rained when we were eating, regardless of what time we ate), but luckily this time we had a private and free camp ground thanks to Adventure Tours and Brett. This became our home base while in Kakadu, normally to use the camp grounds (with your own tents) you need to pay $10 per night and $25 just to be in the park..Ha..

The one problem I had with Kakadu was the march flies, these devil spawns were relentless and came in all sizes and colours from every direction. The bites hurt AND are itchy... ridiculous. Anyway, we were safe in our cabin, because it was FULL of spiders, we cleared out as many as we could from around the beds we were sleeping in, and I still haven't had any spider babies climbing out of my ears or hair so I think it worked.

The next day we got going a bit late in the morning because we were enjoying our home base too much. It was such a relaxing place and it was sheltered. We eventually made it to a spot called Naurlangle where we saw some rock paintings that were around 1000 years old, there was also an amazing look out that gave a nice view of Dream Rock (just a big rock, with some sort of significance to the Aboriginal people in the area, pretty cool). The next destination was Ubirr, which was a rock art site and an amazing look out, might be the best look out I've been too in OZ. Absolutely stunning views all the way around, it made the march flies and any other inconveniences irrelevant and silly.

We waited at the top of Ubirr for the sunset, which filled the sky with bright orange and purple. But as the sun was going down, a lightning storm was brewing over the trees. This created an epic scene, sunset on one side and lightning storm on the other. As I was standing there not sure which side to watch I tried to imagine how on EARTH could I capture something like this in words and images alone. It was something that your really had to see to understand how awesome it was. After the sunset as we were driving back to home base we went straight through the lightning storm, which was pretty intense, but luckily it was dry at the site.

Before going to Kakadu a lot of travellers told me that Kakadu wasn't worth the effort unless you had a four wheel drive, and that there were too many flies and mosquitoes. But after seeing all that I did there, and having such a good experience I can't say I share their distaste for the place. Just get out there and enjoy it!

Peace & Love

The Eagle Has Landed....I Think.. (Nov 15 - Nov 18)

Matt's first night in Darwin he arranged a date with a girl he met at the bar. She was pretty cute, and spent some time travelling so she had some things to talk about. So in anticipation of this date Matt and I had a gay day, buying clothes and we randomly decided to get some piercings as well. He got 3 (nose, and 1 in each ear) and I got 2 (1 cartilage, and 1 in my right ear), it was quite a lovely day. After getting all dolled up in our new digs and freshly pierced we headed over to The Tap in the evening where Matt was meeting this girl. She invited a few of her girlfriends so I tagged along to play defence. It was a pretty fun evening, all three of them worked in Darwin with some company that was currently doing a study on the army, gathering measurements of soldiers. Her friends were kind of cool, they all kept telling me that I have high energy. I think it was because I talk with my hands a lot more now because of how much I talk to people that aren't completely fluent in english, so it makes it easier to explain things, but now I do it with everybody.

After a while her friends decided to leave, so I decided to bounce as well and leave the daters alone. I ended up going out after solo dolo, first time doing that, and it was GREAT. I was just going to grab a quiet drink and chill before going to bed. I met a French girl named Laura doing a trial behind the bar, I had to tell her my drink order4-5 times until I eventually just pointed at it, she didn't make it through the trial unfortunately. But when she was finished she came to sit with me and we chatted for a while. After a few minutes I noticed an American looking black dude (waves in his head, polo shirt, jeans, air force 1s). So I approached him and asked where he was from etc etc.. of course he was from the US, and after a few more questions I found out he was a Marine and he was here with several other Marines. Then I remembered that Obama was going to be in Darwin to make some sort of speech/do some presidential stuff. So they were here to suss the situation before his arrival (Sidebar: after he told me about this..took him a while he was trying to be very secretive...I realised I'd been noticing "American looking" dudes wondering around trying not to stand out for the past few days).

So this Marine dude brought the rest of his friends over, they were pretty cool, mostly because they were buying us drinks all night. Chilled with them for the rest of the night, I kept trying to get them to introduce me to Obama or at least get me in a position where I could holla at him or something...even just a head nod would have been nice. No dice though, they told me I'd have to become a Marine or an Australian soldier to even get close to him during this visit (Sidebar: they also told me they had my back if anything went down that night... which wasn't even really a possibility, but knowing that 6 Marines have your back kinda makes you want to start fights).

I also met Robert from Holland, we talked for a while and it ended up that he was heading to Cairns and had a seat available in his car. So I secured myself a ride to Cairns, which was a sweet bonus to the night. I'm not sure what day it was but Obama eventually arrived and I caught a glimpse of him in his car...I think...his motorcade was barrelling down the road with what seemed like far too much artillery.

The next day Matt and I went to Crocosauruscove, which was pretty awesome, we got to see huge salt water crocodiles and some cool reptiles as well. I would have rather seen them in the wild but this was good enough for the time being, plus it was raining pretty heavily. Matt was leaving for Bali in a few days, so on his last night we had a pretty epic time which almost made me miss him leaving. But in my half drunken stupor I managed to chase him down at the shuttle bus and say my goodbyes. He left me with a sleeping bag and a tent like a true G.

Thanks for letting me share some of WA and NT with you Matt it was a great adventure.

Peace & Love