Hi! I've posted photos from my last three weeks in Australia... two weeks in Queensland and one in Sydney, where I spent Christmas and New Years! Meps came all the way from Canada to hang out (and force me to be her tour guide). Enjoy the pictures!
--
Rob Sz
Taupo, New Zealand
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Karijini Dirties
Editor’s Note: I now seem to be writing about events that happened more than one month ago. I know I’m woefully behind. It’s hard for me, however, to find the time and MOTIVATION to work on this blog. I know it’s for a good cause, but it feels like a huge chore for me. I took a few stabs at it over the past couple weeks to pound out an update, but I ended up puttering around on my computer or making some excuses and making no progress. It is VERY HARD. Wish me luck this time.
December 9, 2008
We resume this distinguished journal in the town of Exmouth near the tip of a peninsula in Western Australia, sticking out into the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean. The nearest city with over fifty thousand people is Perth, some 1200 km to the south. In the other direction, there are NO cities with over fifty thousand people on the north coast of Australia anywhere. There are very few people that live in the distant reaches of this far flung continent.
The land is generally inhabited and used, but sparsely. Huge iron and aluminum (and probably other minerals), mines can be found in the stretches of emptiness. Much of the land is given over to huge cattle stations where real modern-day cowboys still go on regular round-ups. We actually had to stop several times on the road to Exmouth yesterday to wait for dim-witted cattle to clear the highway while Tammy blared Turbo Charlie’s (our tourbus) horn at them.
Anyways, back to the present. We had the special luxury today of NOT having to pack up our stuff in the morning today since we were spending two nights in a row at the same place in Exmouth. Yay!
We still had some driving to do today, though. We would be spending the day enjoying some of available activities in Cape Range National Park, outside of Exmouth. The first stop was a bush walk along Yardie Creek where Tammie showed us several forms of bush tucker (food that you could find growing in the wilderness) and bush medicine. We had some bush plums (actually a kind of fig). We saw some rock wallabies hopping around some rocks in a gorge, and saw big sting rays gliding slowly in the creek water far below us.
After Yardie Creek we got to spend the rest of the day at THE BEACH! And what a beach! We were at Turquoise Bay, where the water was turquoise... and blue, and green, and all sorts of shades in between. It was easily one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve seen.
We were far from the city and there weren’t too many people here. There was great snorkeling off shore (more of the Ningaloo Reef), but I had forgot to put in my contact lenses and my visibility was limited, so I took a couple of tries at it (the water magnifies the scenery to some degree, but my eyes are so terrible that it’s not enough), but spent most of the rest of the time soaking up the sun. The sand was white, powdery (and stuck everywhere, of course). I didn’t really have a beach towel, so I just laid on the sand. Back to basics, for me!
That night, we cooked up some BBQ at the campground in Exmouth. Barry and I drank the rest of our Emu Bitter beers. He was staying behind to do some scuba diving in Exmouth, which is said to be among the best in the world. Edouard was staying behind, too. He was returning back to Coral Bay to do the manta ray diving. Emails, phone numbers, and Facebook names were exchanged and plans were made to meet up again in Sydney.
December 10, 2008
Early start today. We had a LOT of driving. For most of the trip so far, we had been vaguely following the Indian Ocean coast northwards. Today we would head away from the coast farther into the interior of the continent, into a region of the Outback known as “The Pilbara” towards Karijini National Park.
We picked up a second guide, too: Sasha. It was his first time as a tour guide through Karijini NP and up to Broome, and he was along to learn the ropes from Tammy.
The vegetation was sparse. The soil was a rich red colour. This region was iron mining country. The ground was literally made from rusty sand. Tammy told us that drinking and cleaning water out here was limited and the dust stuck to EVERYTHING. It was her advice that we picked out one set of clothes to wear for the next three days. That one set of clothes would probably never recover, so don’t pick anything nice. I designated my crappy old Billabong board shorts and t-shirt to be the sacrificial clothing. I called them my “Karijini Dirties”.
After many hours of driving, we reached the town of Tom Price, a hub town for the mining industry. It was our last chance to buy beer, snacks, and any other necessary items for three days. After a picnic lunch and our shopping expedition, we pulled out of town, and drove the rest of the way to Karijini National Park.
The earth was red, but the vegetation was green. I remarked that the earth was decorated in Christmas colours. I felt festive.
There is a chain of mountains running through Karijini NP, the Hamersley Range. The chief attraction to the park, however, other than the stunning landscape, vegetation, and scenery, was the gorges. There were numerous gorges cut in the sand- and ironstone rock over the millenia etching their way across the landscape of the park. Lots of waterfalls, lots of rock pools, lots of jumping! I was going to love this place.
The first gorge was Hamersley Gorge. We went for a little swim and did some little jumping here. There was a cute little waterfall at one end of a rockpool. For a while near the end, I sat in the water slowly collecting and piling the rust-red pebbles and laying them in patterns on my feet. My movements were slow and deliberate and after a while, it seems the local fish accommodated themselves to my presence and stared swimming in orbits around me. After a while, I counted them: one, two, three, four, FIVE FISH! MUAHAHA! I think lightning flashed around me.
Our campsite was branded as an “eco-retreat”, whatever that means. We would be camped there for a total of three nights. We would be sleeping in “swags”, just as I had back in Australia’s Red Centre back in June. Swags, if you don’t remember, are human-sized canvas sacks with thin mattresses sewn into the bottom. You can roll them up and close them with snaps and straps. With a sleeping bag inside, you had the perfect mobile bed for the Outback.
That night, I made the realization that I didn’t have a sleeping bag for me. Well, I knew I didn’t have a sleeping bag, but since when I booked my tour on the phone I had assumed they would ask me if I needed one or not, where I would have said, “Yes”. They didn’t ask, so I sort of assumed things would work out and promptly forgot about it.
Now I was here and had no sleeping bag. Tammy was super busy and obviously stressy, so I decided not to bug her too much. It wasn’t too cold here (yet!), I could sleep in my swag without my sleeping bag, right? We had the option of sleeping in our swags in a big permanent tent, or on the ground under the stars. Since I didn’t have the sleeping bag to keep me warm, I bunkered down in the tent in my swag. If I got too cold, I would put on my hoodie. Suddenly, some of my tourmates (I think it was Jonathan and Ellen), brought me a sleeping bag! Tammy had extras. They cost AU$50, which is a bit much for the thin bags, but I was happy to take it.
Later, talking to Tammy, it turned out, due to a booking error and some miscalculations, I was able to get my sleeping back for free! Thank for Western Xposure! I hope to be able to put it to good use in New Zealand!
Snore!
December 11, 2008
Today would be a very very good day for a little rock crawler, cliff jumper, gadabout like me, oh yes.
After breaky, we went on a little drive to Weano Gorge. The vegetation at the surface was scraggly and sparse. At the bottom, there was a stream of water feeding a lush eden. It was a beautiful place.
We hiked along the bottom for a while before reaching a point where the shear rock walls narrowed to a path about one meter wide with the stream continuing as a trickle inside. Shoes off! We kept going through. We reached a point where a handrail and rope aided us down a waterfall before we found a rock pool. We got to walk a little farther before reaching a point where the gorge got so steep that Tammy said we would require abseiling equipment before getting out without calling the Search and Rescue people.
The water in the rock pool was cool and refreshing. We took some attempts at climbing the rock walls (with just hands and feet), but I wasn’t very good at it and didn’t get very high before pushing off and making a big splash in the water. There was a place where you could easily climb up to about eight meters and get a good jump into the water. Eight meters doesn’t sound like very high, but it does when you’re standing there at the top looking down. It took me a few three-counts before I decided to jump.
SO FUN. I’ve officially decided that jumping off stuff into stuff is very fun stuff and I need to do it more. This was pure play. Life is good.
After retracing our steps to exit the canyon we drove to another one, Hancock Gorge. This one was a bit harder to get into. We had to climb down some steep steps, down a ladder, and through the gorge a while before reaching a part where the rock walls descended straight into the water. Tammy gave us two choices here. We could try and climb along the sides and get through to the other side (about fifty meters). There were enough places to step on and hold on that even an inexperienced rock climber could go the whole distance if they kept their wits about them. The problem was, Tammy said that you had to do it without shoes since you needed the tactile feedback of your bare feet on the rock if you wanted to make it safely. There were too many places where the foot holds were only a few centimeters across. This wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that the rock had been baking in the sun for hours and was unpleasant to stand on with your bare feet for even a few seconds.
Everyone chose the second choice: give your packed lunch, books, and cameras to Sasha who would carry it across in his backpack. Then you would swim down the gorge while pushing your water bottle ahead of you (or just let it go and let the current carry it downstream).
After running the gauntlet, we ended up in a magical place: Kermit’s Pool. Another rockpool with some jumping (only about three meters), a little waterfall, and lots of places to lay out and relax. Not many other people came through here (it was hard to reach after all), and we were nearly alone for a few hours. We ate our packed sandwiches for lunch and relaxed for hours. Some people read books, swam, jumped, chatted, or slept. I jumped a few times, swam a bit, crawled into a rock crevasse pretending to be a lizard (or a naughty child, as Kerstin said). At first, the sun was still nearly overhead and baking the rocks directly. But since the gorge walls were so steep, it wasn’t very long before the shadows overtook the rocks. Rock surfaces that were too hot to stand on an hour ago were now sweetly warm and perfect to lie on and take naps.
I think Kermit’s Pool was probably my favourite place in Karijini National Park.
The way back was much easier since the sun no longer baked the rocks. We were able to walk (or at least scramble along the rock face) the whole way.
That night, armed with my sleeping bag and swag, I slept on the ground under the stars. It got cool at night, but not nearly as bad as it was when I was sleeping in swags back in July.
Camping here was amazing, though. The moon was full and lit up the entire landscape with an ethereal silvery glow. It was possible to walk around without a flashlight, using only the light of the moon. It’s astonishing to see how much light the moon really sheds when there are NO other light sources to interfere with it.
December 12, 2008
There was an optional gorge this morning: Joffre Gorge. It was in walking range of our campsite, but we had wake up very early to get there. Tammy warned us that it was a demanding climb to get down, but we would be rewarded with the opportunity to do very very high cliff jumps into the water. Sweet. I was ALL IN. Jumping off of shit into other shit was fun, after all! Only about five people from the tour ended up going the whole way. The other half continued sleeping in their swags.
Steep climb down, yeah, used to this now. There was a place where there would be waterfall if there was more water, but this morning it was bone dry. We continued in the other direction. To reach the end, we would have to swim through about two hundred meters of water. We were warned that the water would be VERY COLD, but it wasn’t so bad after all.
My problem, however, was my wishy-washy swimming skills. I can do fine in short distances, but two hundred meters is much to far for me to go in one attempt. I’m too weak. I had to stop and rest by clinging to the walls on the side many times. It’s a good thing that there were lots of places to stop. I don’t think I’m strong enough to swim that whole distance and probably would have drowned if I was forced to. Although I was one of the first people in the water (ever so enthusiastic!), I was the last to come out.
No cameras came for the ride, of course, sigh. Not worth the risk.
On the other side, we got to lay on some rocks in the sun for a while before examining the cliff diving possibilities. Oh, my god. There was a place where you could jump twenty meters into the water. No way I could that one. No one else did it, either. There were a few other places you could jump from lower though. There was one from about ten meters, and another from about twelve. A couple guys did the twelve meter one. Me and a couple other guys did the ten meter one. It wasn’t easy. I was very intimidated by the height. I actually walked to the edge, looked over, took some deep breaths, did some three counts, and chickened out. I didn’t go until I saw everyone else go. Wuss. If any of the girls from the tour were watching though (instead of back at the camp sleeping or sunning on the rocks out of sight), then I probably would have put on a better show...
On the way back to camp, we had to do that two hundred meter swim again. It was even harder the second time.
At camp, we had a proper brunch, we boasted of our jumping prowess to the slackers and headed off to Dale’s Gorge, where we would spend the whole afternoon. This gorge was HUGE and filled with a lush garden of trees, shrubs, flowers, boulders, pools, insects, and amazing scenery.
The weather in the bottom of the gorges is warm and pleasant. The heat and the sun at the top of the gorges was scorchy and oppressive. The sun beat down mercilessly. The air was generally dry and there were little, if any, clouds in the sky. Yes, it can rain here in torrents, but the wet season was still a few weeks away... To escape the heat, it was simple... enter the gorges and play in the water!
We spent several hours enjoying the scenery and serenity at Fern Pool (also called Jubura by the local Aboriginal people, who consider it to be a sacred place), truly a place that staggered me by its beauty.
There were a bunch of drunken local miners who were performing all sorts of horseplay in the water and making a lot of noise, disturbing the tranquility of the place. Why do people have to be so brash and insensitive in places where you it just feels wrong to? I’ve seen both local people and tourist people, Westerners and Easterners alike in lots of places just acting like jackasses and ruining the experience for other people. Every culture has its idiots. Ugh.
We walked through the gorge for a long time before reaching another pool at the other end, Circular Pool. This was our last chance for swimming for the day. We didn’t spend as long here as we did at any of the other pools, but we still got some good jumping in here. There was a place on a rock ledge where warm water dripped steadily from above. It was definitely warmer water that the water in the pool. It was really nice to stand under!
That night, back at the camp, it was the last night together for many of the people on the tour. Only five people were heading north the rest of the way to Broome. The other half would catch a southbound tour bus in the morning for a two day haul back to Perth. Ugh... that’s a LONG way... I was glad I was going all the way up to Broome... In Karijini, we were probably about three-quarters of the way there by now.
We played an amusing game in the campsite, called “Box Munching”. Tammy put an empty cereal box on ground. The lid was taken from the box. The goal was to pick up the box with your mouth without any part of your body touching the ground except for your two feet. After each round of play, part of the box would be ripped away, making it shorter and more difficult to pick up. Many interesting positions and body contortions were attempted. Surprisingly, I was very good at Box Munching, and I was able to pick it up from the flat ground when only about two millimeters of box remained above the bottom flat panel. I did not get removed from the game for touching the ground. We did not finish the game, however. Since as much of the box as possible was removed, we would have to continue by playing on a staircase and putting the box on a lower step. The campsite had no steps, so the game resulted in a draw!
December 13, 2008
I had slept under the stars again. It was hard to sleep in. The sun started to rise around five AM and shortly after the flies started to buzz around your head. You could get a small reprieve by pulling the flap of the swag over your head, but soon it would be hot and a few flies always managed to get inside anyways to interrupt your snooze.
The flies in Karijini were insidious. The flies were ubiquitious. The flies were a pestilence. They were everywhere at any time during daylight. They’d crawl on your face looking for stray bits of sweat and salt. They’d crawl on your lips. On the inside surface of your glasses. You could swat them away, but they’d return within half a minute. There’d be at least a dozen on the picnic table as you had your breakfast. There was a reprieve while in the gorges, thankfully. This was our last morning in Karijini and even though I was sad to leave such an amazing place, I would not miss the flies.
There was one more gorge: Kalamina Gorge. The climb down this one was easy. We had a quick morning dip to freshen up before heading out of Karijini National Park. After a couple hours of driving, we reached a roadhouse on the main north-south highway between Port Hedland (to the north of Karijini on the coast, but still south of Broome) and Perth. We met the other tour bus and said our big goodbyes. I would miss Dave, Inna and Julia. We made promises to meet up again soon!
With the tour group split in twain, we continued north to Broome...
To be continued...
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Taupo, New Zealand
December 9, 2008
We resume this distinguished journal in the town of Exmouth near the tip of a peninsula in Western Australia, sticking out into the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean. The nearest city with over fifty thousand people is Perth, some 1200 km to the south. In the other direction, there are NO cities with over fifty thousand people on the north coast of Australia anywhere. There are very few people that live in the distant reaches of this far flung continent.
The land is generally inhabited and used, but sparsely. Huge iron and aluminum (and probably other minerals), mines can be found in the stretches of emptiness. Much of the land is given over to huge cattle stations where real modern-day cowboys still go on regular round-ups. We actually had to stop several times on the road to Exmouth yesterday to wait for dim-witted cattle to clear the highway while Tammy blared Turbo Charlie’s (our tourbus) horn at them.
Anyways, back to the present. We had the special luxury today of NOT having to pack up our stuff in the morning today since we were spending two nights in a row at the same place in Exmouth. Yay!
We still had some driving to do today, though. We would be spending the day enjoying some of available activities in Cape Range National Park, outside of Exmouth. The first stop was a bush walk along Yardie Creek where Tammie showed us several forms of bush tucker (food that you could find growing in the wilderness) and bush medicine. We had some bush plums (actually a kind of fig). We saw some rock wallabies hopping around some rocks in a gorge, and saw big sting rays gliding slowly in the creek water far below us.
After Yardie Creek we got to spend the rest of the day at THE BEACH! And what a beach! We were at Turquoise Bay, where the water was turquoise... and blue, and green, and all sorts of shades in between. It was easily one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve seen.
We were far from the city and there weren’t too many people here. There was great snorkeling off shore (more of the Ningaloo Reef), but I had forgot to put in my contact lenses and my visibility was limited, so I took a couple of tries at it (the water magnifies the scenery to some degree, but my eyes are so terrible that it’s not enough), but spent most of the rest of the time soaking up the sun. The sand was white, powdery (and stuck everywhere, of course). I didn’t really have a beach towel, so I just laid on the sand. Back to basics, for me!
That night, we cooked up some BBQ at the campground in Exmouth. Barry and I drank the rest of our Emu Bitter beers. He was staying behind to do some scuba diving in Exmouth, which is said to be among the best in the world. Edouard was staying behind, too. He was returning back to Coral Bay to do the manta ray diving. Emails, phone numbers, and Facebook names were exchanged and plans were made to meet up again in Sydney.
December 10, 2008
Early start today. We had a LOT of driving. For most of the trip so far, we had been vaguely following the Indian Ocean coast northwards. Today we would head away from the coast farther into the interior of the continent, into a region of the Outback known as “The Pilbara” towards Karijini National Park.
We picked up a second guide, too: Sasha. It was his first time as a tour guide through Karijini NP and up to Broome, and he was along to learn the ropes from Tammy.
The vegetation was sparse. The soil was a rich red colour. This region was iron mining country. The ground was literally made from rusty sand. Tammy told us that drinking and cleaning water out here was limited and the dust stuck to EVERYTHING. It was her advice that we picked out one set of clothes to wear for the next three days. That one set of clothes would probably never recover, so don’t pick anything nice. I designated my crappy old Billabong board shorts and t-shirt to be the sacrificial clothing. I called them my “Karijini Dirties”.
After many hours of driving, we reached the town of Tom Price, a hub town for the mining industry. It was our last chance to buy beer, snacks, and any other necessary items for three days. After a picnic lunch and our shopping expedition, we pulled out of town, and drove the rest of the way to Karijini National Park.
The earth was red, but the vegetation was green. I remarked that the earth was decorated in Christmas colours. I felt festive.
There is a chain of mountains running through Karijini NP, the Hamersley Range. The chief attraction to the park, however, other than the stunning landscape, vegetation, and scenery, was the gorges. There were numerous gorges cut in the sand- and ironstone rock over the millenia etching their way across the landscape of the park. Lots of waterfalls, lots of rock pools, lots of jumping! I was going to love this place.
The first gorge was Hamersley Gorge. We went for a little swim and did some little jumping here. There was a cute little waterfall at one end of a rockpool. For a while near the end, I sat in the water slowly collecting and piling the rust-red pebbles and laying them in patterns on my feet. My movements were slow and deliberate and after a while, it seems the local fish accommodated themselves to my presence and stared swimming in orbits around me. After a while, I counted them: one, two, three, four, FIVE FISH! MUAHAHA! I think lightning flashed around me.
Our campsite was branded as an “eco-retreat”, whatever that means. We would be camped there for a total of three nights. We would be sleeping in “swags”, just as I had back in Australia’s Red Centre back in June. Swags, if you don’t remember, are human-sized canvas sacks with thin mattresses sewn into the bottom. You can roll them up and close them with snaps and straps. With a sleeping bag inside, you had the perfect mobile bed for the Outback.
That night, I made the realization that I didn’t have a sleeping bag for me. Well, I knew I didn’t have a sleeping bag, but since when I booked my tour on the phone I had assumed they would ask me if I needed one or not, where I would have said, “Yes”. They didn’t ask, so I sort of assumed things would work out and promptly forgot about it.
Now I was here and had no sleeping bag. Tammy was super busy and obviously stressy, so I decided not to bug her too much. It wasn’t too cold here (yet!), I could sleep in my swag without my sleeping bag, right? We had the option of sleeping in our swags in a big permanent tent, or on the ground under the stars. Since I didn’t have the sleeping bag to keep me warm, I bunkered down in the tent in my swag. If I got too cold, I would put on my hoodie. Suddenly, some of my tourmates (I think it was Jonathan and Ellen), brought me a sleeping bag! Tammy had extras. They cost AU$50, which is a bit much for the thin bags, but I was happy to take it.
Later, talking to Tammy, it turned out, due to a booking error and some miscalculations, I was able to get my sleeping back for free! Thank for Western Xposure! I hope to be able to put it to good use in New Zealand!
Snore!
December 11, 2008
Today would be a very very good day for a little rock crawler, cliff jumper, gadabout like me, oh yes.
After breaky, we went on a little drive to Weano Gorge. The vegetation at the surface was scraggly and sparse. At the bottom, there was a stream of water feeding a lush eden. It was a beautiful place.
We hiked along the bottom for a while before reaching a point where the shear rock walls narrowed to a path about one meter wide with the stream continuing as a trickle inside. Shoes off! We kept going through. We reached a point where a handrail and rope aided us down a waterfall before we found a rock pool. We got to walk a little farther before reaching a point where the gorge got so steep that Tammy said we would require abseiling equipment before getting out without calling the Search and Rescue people.
The water in the rock pool was cool and refreshing. We took some attempts at climbing the rock walls (with just hands and feet), but I wasn’t very good at it and didn’t get very high before pushing off and making a big splash in the water. There was a place where you could easily climb up to about eight meters and get a good jump into the water. Eight meters doesn’t sound like very high, but it does when you’re standing there at the top looking down. It took me a few three-counts before I decided to jump.
SO FUN. I’ve officially decided that jumping off stuff into stuff is very fun stuff and I need to do it more. This was pure play. Life is good.
After retracing our steps to exit the canyon we drove to another one, Hancock Gorge. This one was a bit harder to get into. We had to climb down some steep steps, down a ladder, and through the gorge a while before reaching a part where the rock walls descended straight into the water. Tammy gave us two choices here. We could try and climb along the sides and get through to the other side (about fifty meters). There were enough places to step on and hold on that even an inexperienced rock climber could go the whole distance if they kept their wits about them. The problem was, Tammy said that you had to do it without shoes since you needed the tactile feedback of your bare feet on the rock if you wanted to make it safely. There were too many places where the foot holds were only a few centimeters across. This wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that the rock had been baking in the sun for hours and was unpleasant to stand on with your bare feet for even a few seconds.
Everyone chose the second choice: give your packed lunch, books, and cameras to Sasha who would carry it across in his backpack. Then you would swim down the gorge while pushing your water bottle ahead of you (or just let it go and let the current carry it downstream).
After running the gauntlet, we ended up in a magical place: Kermit’s Pool. Another rockpool with some jumping (only about three meters), a little waterfall, and lots of places to lay out and relax. Not many other people came through here (it was hard to reach after all), and we were nearly alone for a few hours. We ate our packed sandwiches for lunch and relaxed for hours. Some people read books, swam, jumped, chatted, or slept. I jumped a few times, swam a bit, crawled into a rock crevasse pretending to be a lizard (or a naughty child, as Kerstin said). At first, the sun was still nearly overhead and baking the rocks directly. But since the gorge walls were so steep, it wasn’t very long before the shadows overtook the rocks. Rock surfaces that were too hot to stand on an hour ago were now sweetly warm and perfect to lie on and take naps.
I think Kermit’s Pool was probably my favourite place in Karijini National Park.
The way back was much easier since the sun no longer baked the rocks. We were able to walk (or at least scramble along the rock face) the whole way.
That night, armed with my sleeping bag and swag, I slept on the ground under the stars. It got cool at night, but not nearly as bad as it was when I was sleeping in swags back in July.
Camping here was amazing, though. The moon was full and lit up the entire landscape with an ethereal silvery glow. It was possible to walk around without a flashlight, using only the light of the moon. It’s astonishing to see how much light the moon really sheds when there are NO other light sources to interfere with it.
December 12, 2008
There was an optional gorge this morning: Joffre Gorge. It was in walking range of our campsite, but we had wake up very early to get there. Tammy warned us that it was a demanding climb to get down, but we would be rewarded with the opportunity to do very very high cliff jumps into the water. Sweet. I was ALL IN. Jumping off of shit into other shit was fun, after all! Only about five people from the tour ended up going the whole way. The other half continued sleeping in their swags.
Steep climb down, yeah, used to this now. There was a place where there would be waterfall if there was more water, but this morning it was bone dry. We continued in the other direction. To reach the end, we would have to swim through about two hundred meters of water. We were warned that the water would be VERY COLD, but it wasn’t so bad after all.
My problem, however, was my wishy-washy swimming skills. I can do fine in short distances, but two hundred meters is much to far for me to go in one attempt. I’m too weak. I had to stop and rest by clinging to the walls on the side many times. It’s a good thing that there were lots of places to stop. I don’t think I’m strong enough to swim that whole distance and probably would have drowned if I was forced to. Although I was one of the first people in the water (ever so enthusiastic!), I was the last to come out.
No cameras came for the ride, of course, sigh. Not worth the risk.
On the other side, we got to lay on some rocks in the sun for a while before examining the cliff diving possibilities. Oh, my god. There was a place where you could jump twenty meters into the water. No way I could that one. No one else did it, either. There were a few other places you could jump from lower though. There was one from about ten meters, and another from about twelve. A couple guys did the twelve meter one. Me and a couple other guys did the ten meter one. It wasn’t easy. I was very intimidated by the height. I actually walked to the edge, looked over, took some deep breaths, did some three counts, and chickened out. I didn’t go until I saw everyone else go. Wuss. If any of the girls from the tour were watching though (instead of back at the camp sleeping or sunning on the rocks out of sight), then I probably would have put on a better show...
On the way back to camp, we had to do that two hundred meter swim again. It was even harder the second time.
At camp, we had a proper brunch, we boasted of our jumping prowess to the slackers and headed off to Dale’s Gorge, where we would spend the whole afternoon. This gorge was HUGE and filled with a lush garden of trees, shrubs, flowers, boulders, pools, insects, and amazing scenery.
The weather in the bottom of the gorges is warm and pleasant. The heat and the sun at the top of the gorges was scorchy and oppressive. The sun beat down mercilessly. The air was generally dry and there were little, if any, clouds in the sky. Yes, it can rain here in torrents, but the wet season was still a few weeks away... To escape the heat, it was simple... enter the gorges and play in the water!
We spent several hours enjoying the scenery and serenity at Fern Pool (also called Jubura by the local Aboriginal people, who consider it to be a sacred place), truly a place that staggered me by its beauty.
There were a bunch of drunken local miners who were performing all sorts of horseplay in the water and making a lot of noise, disturbing the tranquility of the place. Why do people have to be so brash and insensitive in places where you it just feels wrong to? I’ve seen both local people and tourist people, Westerners and Easterners alike in lots of places just acting like jackasses and ruining the experience for other people. Every culture has its idiots. Ugh.
We walked through the gorge for a long time before reaching another pool at the other end, Circular Pool. This was our last chance for swimming for the day. We didn’t spend as long here as we did at any of the other pools, but we still got some good jumping in here. There was a place on a rock ledge where warm water dripped steadily from above. It was definitely warmer water that the water in the pool. It was really nice to stand under!
That night, back at the camp, it was the last night together for many of the people on the tour. Only five people were heading north the rest of the way to Broome. The other half would catch a southbound tour bus in the morning for a two day haul back to Perth. Ugh... that’s a LONG way... I was glad I was going all the way up to Broome... In Karijini, we were probably about three-quarters of the way there by now.
We played an amusing game in the campsite, called “Box Munching”. Tammy put an empty cereal box on ground. The lid was taken from the box. The goal was to pick up the box with your mouth without any part of your body touching the ground except for your two feet. After each round of play, part of the box would be ripped away, making it shorter and more difficult to pick up. Many interesting positions and body contortions were attempted. Surprisingly, I was very good at Box Munching, and I was able to pick it up from the flat ground when only about two millimeters of box remained above the bottom flat panel. I did not get removed from the game for touching the ground. We did not finish the game, however. Since as much of the box as possible was removed, we would have to continue by playing on a staircase and putting the box on a lower step. The campsite had no steps, so the game resulted in a draw!
December 13, 2008
I had slept under the stars again. It was hard to sleep in. The sun started to rise around five AM and shortly after the flies started to buzz around your head. You could get a small reprieve by pulling the flap of the swag over your head, but soon it would be hot and a few flies always managed to get inside anyways to interrupt your snooze.
The flies in Karijini were insidious. The flies were ubiquitious. The flies were a pestilence. They were everywhere at any time during daylight. They’d crawl on your face looking for stray bits of sweat and salt. They’d crawl on your lips. On the inside surface of your glasses. You could swat them away, but they’d return within half a minute. There’d be at least a dozen on the picnic table as you had your breakfast. There was a reprieve while in the gorges, thankfully. This was our last morning in Karijini and even though I was sad to leave such an amazing place, I would not miss the flies.
There was one more gorge: Kalamina Gorge. The climb down this one was easy. We had a quick morning dip to freshen up before heading out of Karijini National Park. After a couple hours of driving, we reached a roadhouse on the main north-south highway between Port Hedland (to the north of Karijini on the coast, but still south of Broome) and Perth. We met the other tour bus and said our big goodbyes. I would miss Dave, Inna and Julia. We made promises to meet up again soon!
With the tour group split in twain, we continued north to Broome...
To be continued...
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Taupo, New Zealand
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
New Photos Posted: Western Australia
It's hard work to catch up, but I'm making progress. Here's photos from my two weeks in Western Australia in the first part of December.
Happy New Years!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
North Sydney, Australia
Happy New Years!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
North Sydney, Australia
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Welcome to the Wild West
December 2, 2008
...continued
So, yeah, even though my passport was in Fiji, I was in Australia. Oh well. My plan was to get the last resort that I stayed at there to mail it to my friend Bendegúz who lives in Sydney. Bendegúz is the same guy that I met in Cairns back in June and I played Axis and Allies and saw some theatre with in Sydney back in August. Assuming that they would mail the passport soon, it would have more than one month to get to Sydney before I took off for New Zealand. My plan is to usually hope for things to just work out. *crossing fingers* It’s a good strategy... it’s gotten me this far, after all, hasn’t it?
So, after waiting around in the airport in Brisbane for a while, I took a flight on Virgin Blue to Perth. Being a five and a half hour flight, it’s probably the single longest possible domestic flight in Australia. Brisbane is almost as east as you can get in Australia and Perth is almost as west as you can get. I landed in Perth just after midnight, got a bus into the city, checked into my hostel (the Emperor’s Crown), and passed out in a top bunk in a four bed dorm room.
December 3, 2008
I was up early, though not because people in my room were noisy (that doesn’t really happen super often, probably usually because I often opt for smaller dorms). It was probably jet lag or nervousness from the whole passport fiasco yesterday. Anyways, today was sort of an errands, laundry, catch up, and sightseeing day for the city of Perth. I had destroyed my cheap flip flops from Fiji and picked up another pair on sale for AU$8 (CA$6.50). I had some good coffee (a long black, please!). I bought a new t-shirt at the Salvation Army (or “Salvo’s” as the Aussies call it).
The most important thing I did today, though, was decide on how to spend my two weeks in the state of Western Australia (or just “WA” as most Aussies call it). I wanted to go south from Perth to sea the coastline, Margaret River, national parks with huge trees and rooftop forest walks, and possibly do some scuba diving (maybe get my certification!). I also wanted to go north from Perth to see the Outback one more time. After some indecisive humming and hawwing I finally made the impulsive decision to book myself onto a ten day overland trip from Perth to Broome on a Western Xposure tour bus, over 3000 km north from Perth. The tour was not inexpensive, at AU$1395 (CA$1150), but it sounded realllly good. The timing was good, too, since it would consume most of my two weeks in WA, and give me exactly enough time to get fly back to Perth to catch my flight back to the east coast. Perfect!
Most of the people in the hostel seemed to be long termers -- backpackers who came to Perth to work for a handful of weeks or months and were basically living in the hostel. There were a few other kinds of people, too. One of the people in my room was Simon, from Napier, New Zealand. He was working in the food services of a mine somewhere in the wilderness of WA and was visiting Perth for his week off. This scenario is actually a common one in Perth. There are MANY mines in WA and Perth is the place people go to unwind on their time off. Also in my room was Jonathan, a Swiss law student who was studying in Sydney. He was going on the same tour as me. We were leaving in two days.
So anyways, I look like this and so does Perth:
December 3, 2008
Perth is the capital of WA and the most isolated capital city in the world, being over 3000 km from its nearest neighbour, Adelaide (capital of the state of South Australia). It’s a financial centre, but more laid back than your busy busy centres in the eastern part of Australia. Sightseeing wise, I had walked around the city centre yesterday. Today I was heading to its famous suburb, Fremantle (or “Freo” as the Aussies call it). Fremantle is the main port for WA and is actually a slightly older city than Perth itself. It’s a very scenic place, and contains the brewery for one of my favourite Aussie beers, Little Creatures. I walked around a bit with Jonathan, did some sightseeing, took some pictures, and met Simon for some fantastic gourmet pizza and microbrew beers at the Little Creatures brewpub.
One fun thing that I got to do in Fremantle happened while we were walking around the old Round House building beside the port. There was a cannon and time ball set up there. In the past, the cannon would fire and the time ball would drop at exactly 1 PM so that the local people in town and the ships in port could set their clocks accurately. This tradition is still continued, even though it’s original purpose is no longer required. Anyways, the volunteers who fired the gun chose me to be the one who fired it that day. They set up the cannon and gave me a remote with a big red button to press. FUN!
One thing that was very exciting about Perth and Fremantle was that they were decorated for CHRISTMAS! Christmas trees, wreaths, and tinsel stars were in abundance in both places. Christmas is super fanstastic and I was going to experience it Aussie style!
Another great thing about Fremantle was the Indian Ocean. I had sort of swam in the edges of the Indian Ocean while I was in Thailand. But that was really the Andaman Sea, not the proper ocean. Here in Fremantle, I could look over over an ocean where there were NO obstacles until the southwest coast of Africa, almost 8000 km away!
That night at the hostel, I took at look at the book exchange shelf. I encountered a disturbing sight. I SWEAR TO GOD that a book I left on the book exchange shelf at The Beachouse in Fiji was here in Perth! The book was “The Day After Tomorrow” (no relation to the movie of the same name). I had carried it around since a Danish couple gave it to me in Samoa, but I wasn’t really that interested in reading it. I unloaded it in Fiji not three days before, and now it was here in Perth. It looked the same... same ratty pages, same faded cover. I discussed this disturbing phenomenon with two of the people who were sitting in the hostel kitchen near the book shelf. They didn’t seem to believe my story... tsk. By coincidence, one of the people was Luca -- an Italian guy who would be on the same tour to Broome.
December 4, 2008
Up at 6 AM in order to get picked up at 7 AM in front of my hostel on my tour. I was excited. There were about fifteen passengers on the bus. Our guide was Tamantha (though everyone called her “Tammy”). Our bus’ name was “Turbo Charlie”. As always, I was the only person on the bus from North America. Most of the people were European (as always). There were also two people from Hong Kong, but they didn’t associate with the other people that much. Otherwise, we were a great and social group. I had so much fun...
So we had something like 700 km to drive today. So, mostly, we sat around on the bus, but there were some interesting stops on the way. The first big stop today was at The Pinnacles, a natural rock formation in some bushland with bright yellow sand. It was pretty cool. There were hundreds and hundreds of eroded limestone pillars scattered around. Tammy pointed out some kangaroo and emu tracks.
On the way out of The Pinnacles, we were driving along when Tammy suddenly pulled over and said “Get out of the bus! Get out of the bus!”. She leaped out and began running towards something back on the side of the road. We had NO IDEA what was going on, but poured out of the bus and started going back towards her. Was there a car accident? Was someone hurt at the side of the road?
She reached something we couldn’t see and called back “Get the first aid kit from the bus!” Our confusion was mounting. What the flip was going on?
When I reached Tammy, it was clear what was going on. She had seen a shingleback lizard (about two feet long) on the side of the road. It was infested with ticks and Tammy needed the tweezers to pull them out. Wow... this was a lot of drama over a lizard, but it was still pretty cool. Tammy had really good eyes to be able to see that little thing beside the road as we were hurtling up it at 100 km/h. She really loved animals (reptiles especially), and really wanted to help the poor guy!
The next stop was the big sand dunes at Geraldton where we got to partake in some sandboarding. Get a skateboard with no wheels, spread wax on the bottom with a candle, have a seat, and slide down a big hill. Fun! I wasn’t very good at it... I kept wiping out...
The farther north we got from Perth, the drier the landscape got. The trees got smaller, and the earth got redder. There was still farmland, but it was getting more scraggly the farther we got from Perth. There were wheat fields here, but the wheat was so short compared to the tall flowing wheat fields in Canada. Tammy told us that the farmers here only expected to have one good harvest of wheat every four years, but that was still enough to live on given the current cost of wheat. Wow... life was tough here. And this was just the beginning.
We spent the night in a little beachouse in the tiny town of Horrock’s Bay. We stopped along the way to pick up beers. I got a whole box (30 beers) of Emu Bitter brew... a cheap Western Australia brew. I hoped that the box would last me most of the way to Broome. Heh heh... given how much the people on my tour were drinking at Horrock’s Bay that night, there was little chance of that!
December 5, 2008
Had to get up VERY EARLY today... like 5 AM I think? I’ve recently discussed how early morning wake ups are very hard on me. Something usually goes awry. This time I lost my 4 GB 2nd generation iPod Nano. Ooops. I was building a playlist of music to put onto it last night, but I guess I had not managed to repack it today. Well, crap.
Anyways, it’s just an iPod. Life goes on. And NORTH!
The first big stop today was the fantastic Murchison Gorge in Kalbarri National Park. This would be the first of many gorges I’d see in my trip up north.
I got to try abseiling down a 23 meter rock wall here. Abseiling (also called “rappelling”) is descending down rock walls using ropes. You get to jump off the walls a long and swing and bounce around. I was nervous at first, but it was really fun after all. The hardest part was the very beginning, when I had to edge over the top backwards and just trust the rope to keep me from plummeting to my death as I crept over the edge.
I’m pretty sure I’ll give abseiling another go when I get to New Zealand!
Driving north from Murchison Gorge, we got to see a thorny devil lizard (another emergency stop!). This one was pregnant and apparently you could feel its eggs in your belly.
The second emergency stop this day was different from the others. As we pulled to the side of the road, Tammy shouted, “STAY IN THE BUS! STAY IN THE BUS!” I looked out the window and saw a huge brown snake slide across the road, under the bus, and into the bushes. It was a King Brown snake (also called a Mulga snake), one of the most venomous snakes in the world. The last time I had seen one of these guys was in the Australia Zoo back in February.
The next actual scheduled stop was Shell Beach along Shark Bay. The unique saline conditions in Shark Bay produce an environment where cockle shells grow in abundance. When the little shellfish die, their shells accumulate on the land and produce a HUGE beach with NO SAND... only shells, each pure white and less than one centimeter big. We swam a bit, but the tide was low and the wind was pretty crazy strong so we kept it pretty short.
The wind! The wind on the west coast was strong and persistent. Perth is one of the windiest cities in the world and wind farms are plentiful. For us, it meant that the hot days weren’t so hot, but the warm nights could be kinda chilly... especially when on the beach!
We spent the night at the YHA in Denham, the westernmost city in Australia. There was more drinking, of course. We also had lots of waterfights. Kerstin, one of the German girls on the bus, had a watergun and was relentless with it. She even used it on the bus! But it was okay. The weather was warm (especially after going on treks in the scorching hot gorges) and the gun was a good relief.
December 6, 2008
Up at 6 AM and onto the bus. It was a short drive to Monkey Mia, a cute little resort town on Shark Bay where wild dolphins came every day at 7:30 AM to be fed by hand by people. We got to line up along the beach, standing ankle deep in water, as wild dolphins swam up towards us and played around before getting fed. Only a few people get selected to actually feed the dolphins, and I was one of the lucky people! I thank my awesome Mos Burger t-shirt from Hong Kong, thank you!
After Monkey Mia, we started to drive away from Shark Bay. Along the way, we stopped at a bluff by the shore where we could look down and actually see reef sharks swimming in the shallows.
At the very south end of Shark Bay, we stopped at Hamelin Pool where stromatolites live near the shore line. Stromatolites are one of the first forms of life on Earth: bacteria-like life that lives in the water. They create oxygen and excrete layers of sediment which build up into rock formations. They don’t look like much, but they’re responsible for producing much of the free oxygen in our atmosphere. If it wasn’t for the stromatolites, we wouldn’t be here today.
More driving. More driving...
The next stop was at the Tropic of Capricorn, the line of latitude at 23°26′ south of the equator. The last time I had crossed this line on land was on the road towards Alice Springs back in July.
There were actually two tour buses from Western Xposure traveling up from Perth at the time same. My bus was going all the way to Perth, but the other one was only going as far as Exmouth. We managed to get to the tropic a few minutes ahead of the other bus. As we were getting ready to get on our way, the other bus started pulling in. Tammy said, “Quick everyone! One thing we do in Australia is moon people! Quick! Moon the other bus!” Good times. For revenge, the other bus gave us a vicious soaking with water guns when we got to our to our backpackers in Coral Bay.
Our resting place that night was, indeed, at a backpackers in Coral Bay, near the south end of the fantastic Ningaloo Reef. Coral Bay was a tiny town... seeming to exist only to support tourism on the reef.
There was much drinking, that night, of course. The entertainment that evening was a game of giant Jenga... our bus versus the other bus. They beat us two-to-one after Edouard (or “Frenchy” as we called him) made the big tower collapse. Even though Edouard sucked at Jenga, he was still a really cool guy. He sat beside me on the bus and we talked alot. Man, that guy could drink wine!
December 7, 2008
We had to wake up somewhat early today, too (around 7 AM, I think), but it wasn’t to go for another long drive. Today I was going on an extra special snorkeling trip to the Ningaloo Reef. This reef extends for several hundred kilometers along the western coast of Australia. Unlike the Great Barrier Reef (which is technically classified as a “barrier reef”), which is separated from the coastline by a huge barrier of water that takes one or two hours to cross on boat, the Ningaloo Reef is a “fringing reef” that lies very close to the shoreline. You could put on a snorkel, mask, fins, step into the water from the beach, swim for five minutes, and be surrounded by a wealth of corals, fish, and other aquatic life.
My snorkeling trip today consisted of a boat ride to three sites on the reef. The first one was just a shallow area to swim between corals. As always, there was an enormous amount of fish. Some people were able to see turtles and reef sharks hiding beneath the rocks, but I didn’t spot anything like that.
The second and third snorkeling excursions were the real special ones. The boat departed the first reef area and sped out into the lagoon in search of manta rays. Along the way we saw a huge tiger shark swimming around in the water. Unlike the harmless reef sharks, the tiger shark was a monster that was dangerous to humans, so we didn’t go into the water there!
Aided by spotter planes and other boats, we eventually tracked down one of the graceful and huge manta rays. They’re not really related to other rays, but are closer to sharks. Unlike rays and (some) sharks, though, manta rays are completely harmless. They lack the stinger that rays have and they don’t have teeth. Instead, they have huge mouths that could swallow human whole! They don’t feed on people, though, since they only eat tiny organisms en masse.
The manta ray that we encountered was probably about three or four meters wide, from wing-tip to wing-tip, and swimming probably about three meters below us. It was swimming in huge barrel rolls, with its gaping mouth wide open in an attempt to feed. There must have been a LOT of food for it there since it kept feeding for a long time. The water was a little cloudy, too (which was the food, I think).
I had a disposable underwater camera and tried to take some pictures. I haven’t developed them yet. Hopefully they turn out!
On the way to the third snorkeling site, we saw lots of sea turtles swimming in the water. The third dive site was just corals and lots of fish again. On the way back, I was very VERY cold since it was windy and I was wet from coming out of the water. I tried to lie in the sun at the top of the boat to get warm. Who though my teeth would be chattering from the cold when I was in the tropics?
In the afternoon, the bus packed up and left for Exmouth, where we would spend the next two nights at a camp ground in town (though we still got to sleep in dorms). For dinner, we picked up pizza and we went to the lighthouse for sunset. There were lots of shenanigans here.
Here’s a picture of me at the lighthouse after having a bit too much sun, wind, and wine:
Oh, I guess the lighthouse and sunset are kind of pretty, too, eh?
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Maroochydore, AU
...continued
So, yeah, even though my passport was in Fiji, I was in Australia. Oh well. My plan was to get the last resort that I stayed at there to mail it to my friend Bendegúz who lives in Sydney. Bendegúz is the same guy that I met in Cairns back in June and I played Axis and Allies and saw some theatre with in Sydney back in August. Assuming that they would mail the passport soon, it would have more than one month to get to Sydney before I took off for New Zealand. My plan is to usually hope for things to just work out. *crossing fingers* It’s a good strategy... it’s gotten me this far, after all, hasn’t it?
So, after waiting around in the airport in Brisbane for a while, I took a flight on Virgin Blue to Perth. Being a five and a half hour flight, it’s probably the single longest possible domestic flight in Australia. Brisbane is almost as east as you can get in Australia and Perth is almost as west as you can get. I landed in Perth just after midnight, got a bus into the city, checked into my hostel (the Emperor’s Crown), and passed out in a top bunk in a four bed dorm room.
December 3, 2008
I was up early, though not because people in my room were noisy (that doesn’t really happen super often, probably usually because I often opt for smaller dorms). It was probably jet lag or nervousness from the whole passport fiasco yesterday. Anyways, today was sort of an errands, laundry, catch up, and sightseeing day for the city of Perth. I had destroyed my cheap flip flops from Fiji and picked up another pair on sale for AU$8 (CA$6.50). I had some good coffee (a long black, please!). I bought a new t-shirt at the Salvation Army (or “Salvo’s” as the Aussies call it).
The most important thing I did today, though, was decide on how to spend my two weeks in the state of Western Australia (or just “WA” as most Aussies call it). I wanted to go south from Perth to sea the coastline, Margaret River, national parks with huge trees and rooftop forest walks, and possibly do some scuba diving (maybe get my certification!). I also wanted to go north from Perth to see the Outback one more time. After some indecisive humming and hawwing I finally made the impulsive decision to book myself onto a ten day overland trip from Perth to Broome on a Western Xposure tour bus, over 3000 km north from Perth. The tour was not inexpensive, at AU$1395 (CA$1150), but it sounded realllly good. The timing was good, too, since it would consume most of my two weeks in WA, and give me exactly enough time to get fly back to Perth to catch my flight back to the east coast. Perfect!
Most of the people in the hostel seemed to be long termers -- backpackers who came to Perth to work for a handful of weeks or months and were basically living in the hostel. There were a few other kinds of people, too. One of the people in my room was Simon, from Napier, New Zealand. He was working in the food services of a mine somewhere in the wilderness of WA and was visiting Perth for his week off. This scenario is actually a common one in Perth. There are MANY mines in WA and Perth is the place people go to unwind on their time off. Also in my room was Jonathan, a Swiss law student who was studying in Sydney. He was going on the same tour as me. We were leaving in two days.
So anyways, I look like this and so does Perth:
December 3, 2008
Perth is the capital of WA and the most isolated capital city in the world, being over 3000 km from its nearest neighbour, Adelaide (capital of the state of South Australia). It’s a financial centre, but more laid back than your busy busy centres in the eastern part of Australia. Sightseeing wise, I had walked around the city centre yesterday. Today I was heading to its famous suburb, Fremantle (or “Freo” as the Aussies call it). Fremantle is the main port for WA and is actually a slightly older city than Perth itself. It’s a very scenic place, and contains the brewery for one of my favourite Aussie beers, Little Creatures. I walked around a bit with Jonathan, did some sightseeing, took some pictures, and met Simon for some fantastic gourmet pizza and microbrew beers at the Little Creatures brewpub.
One fun thing that I got to do in Fremantle happened while we were walking around the old Round House building beside the port. There was a cannon and time ball set up there. In the past, the cannon would fire and the time ball would drop at exactly 1 PM so that the local people in town and the ships in port could set their clocks accurately. This tradition is still continued, even though it’s original purpose is no longer required. Anyways, the volunteers who fired the gun chose me to be the one who fired it that day. They set up the cannon and gave me a remote with a big red button to press. FUN!
One thing that was very exciting about Perth and Fremantle was that they were decorated for CHRISTMAS! Christmas trees, wreaths, and tinsel stars were in abundance in both places. Christmas is super fanstastic and I was going to experience it Aussie style!
Another great thing about Fremantle was the Indian Ocean. I had sort of swam in the edges of the Indian Ocean while I was in Thailand. But that was really the Andaman Sea, not the proper ocean. Here in Fremantle, I could look over over an ocean where there were NO obstacles until the southwest coast of Africa, almost 8000 km away!
That night at the hostel, I took at look at the book exchange shelf. I encountered a disturbing sight. I SWEAR TO GOD that a book I left on the book exchange shelf at The Beachouse in Fiji was here in Perth! The book was “The Day After Tomorrow” (no relation to the movie of the same name). I had carried it around since a Danish couple gave it to me in Samoa, but I wasn’t really that interested in reading it. I unloaded it in Fiji not three days before, and now it was here in Perth. It looked the same... same ratty pages, same faded cover. I discussed this disturbing phenomenon with two of the people who were sitting in the hostel kitchen near the book shelf. They didn’t seem to believe my story... tsk. By coincidence, one of the people was Luca -- an Italian guy who would be on the same tour to Broome.
December 4, 2008
Up at 6 AM in order to get picked up at 7 AM in front of my hostel on my tour. I was excited. There were about fifteen passengers on the bus. Our guide was Tamantha (though everyone called her “Tammy”). Our bus’ name was “Turbo Charlie”. As always, I was the only person on the bus from North America. Most of the people were European (as always). There were also two people from Hong Kong, but they didn’t associate with the other people that much. Otherwise, we were a great and social group. I had so much fun...
So we had something like 700 km to drive today. So, mostly, we sat around on the bus, but there were some interesting stops on the way. The first big stop today was at The Pinnacles, a natural rock formation in some bushland with bright yellow sand. It was pretty cool. There were hundreds and hundreds of eroded limestone pillars scattered around. Tammy pointed out some kangaroo and emu tracks.
On the way out of The Pinnacles, we were driving along when Tammy suddenly pulled over and said “Get out of the bus! Get out of the bus!”. She leaped out and began running towards something back on the side of the road. We had NO IDEA what was going on, but poured out of the bus and started going back towards her. Was there a car accident? Was someone hurt at the side of the road?
She reached something we couldn’t see and called back “Get the first aid kit from the bus!” Our confusion was mounting. What the flip was going on?
When I reached Tammy, it was clear what was going on. She had seen a shingleback lizard (about two feet long) on the side of the road. It was infested with ticks and Tammy needed the tweezers to pull them out. Wow... this was a lot of drama over a lizard, but it was still pretty cool. Tammy had really good eyes to be able to see that little thing beside the road as we were hurtling up it at 100 km/h. She really loved animals (reptiles especially), and really wanted to help the poor guy!
The next stop was the big sand dunes at Geraldton where we got to partake in some sandboarding. Get a skateboard with no wheels, spread wax on the bottom with a candle, have a seat, and slide down a big hill. Fun! I wasn’t very good at it... I kept wiping out...
The farther north we got from Perth, the drier the landscape got. The trees got smaller, and the earth got redder. There was still farmland, but it was getting more scraggly the farther we got from Perth. There were wheat fields here, but the wheat was so short compared to the tall flowing wheat fields in Canada. Tammy told us that the farmers here only expected to have one good harvest of wheat every four years, but that was still enough to live on given the current cost of wheat. Wow... life was tough here. And this was just the beginning.
We spent the night in a little beachouse in the tiny town of Horrock’s Bay. We stopped along the way to pick up beers. I got a whole box (30 beers) of Emu Bitter brew... a cheap Western Australia brew. I hoped that the box would last me most of the way to Broome. Heh heh... given how much the people on my tour were drinking at Horrock’s Bay that night, there was little chance of that!
December 5, 2008
Had to get up VERY EARLY today... like 5 AM I think? I’ve recently discussed how early morning wake ups are very hard on me. Something usually goes awry. This time I lost my 4 GB 2nd generation iPod Nano. Ooops. I was building a playlist of music to put onto it last night, but I guess I had not managed to repack it today. Well, crap.
Anyways, it’s just an iPod. Life goes on. And NORTH!
The first big stop today was the fantastic Murchison Gorge in Kalbarri National Park. This would be the first of many gorges I’d see in my trip up north.
I got to try abseiling down a 23 meter rock wall here. Abseiling (also called “rappelling”) is descending down rock walls using ropes. You get to jump off the walls a long and swing and bounce around. I was nervous at first, but it was really fun after all. The hardest part was the very beginning, when I had to edge over the top backwards and just trust the rope to keep me from plummeting to my death as I crept over the edge.
I’m pretty sure I’ll give abseiling another go when I get to New Zealand!
Driving north from Murchison Gorge, we got to see a thorny devil lizard (another emergency stop!). This one was pregnant and apparently you could feel its eggs in your belly.
The second emergency stop this day was different from the others. As we pulled to the side of the road, Tammy shouted, “STAY IN THE BUS! STAY IN THE BUS!” I looked out the window and saw a huge brown snake slide across the road, under the bus, and into the bushes. It was a King Brown snake (also called a Mulga snake), one of the most venomous snakes in the world. The last time I had seen one of these guys was in the Australia Zoo back in February.
The next actual scheduled stop was Shell Beach along Shark Bay. The unique saline conditions in Shark Bay produce an environment where cockle shells grow in abundance. When the little shellfish die, their shells accumulate on the land and produce a HUGE beach with NO SAND... only shells, each pure white and less than one centimeter big. We swam a bit, but the tide was low and the wind was pretty crazy strong so we kept it pretty short.
The wind! The wind on the west coast was strong and persistent. Perth is one of the windiest cities in the world and wind farms are plentiful. For us, it meant that the hot days weren’t so hot, but the warm nights could be kinda chilly... especially when on the beach!
We spent the night at the YHA in Denham, the westernmost city in Australia. There was more drinking, of course. We also had lots of waterfights. Kerstin, one of the German girls on the bus, had a watergun and was relentless with it. She even used it on the bus! But it was okay. The weather was warm (especially after going on treks in the scorching hot gorges) and the gun was a good relief.
December 6, 2008
Up at 6 AM and onto the bus. It was a short drive to Monkey Mia, a cute little resort town on Shark Bay where wild dolphins came every day at 7:30 AM to be fed by hand by people. We got to line up along the beach, standing ankle deep in water, as wild dolphins swam up towards us and played around before getting fed. Only a few people get selected to actually feed the dolphins, and I was one of the lucky people! I thank my awesome Mos Burger t-shirt from Hong Kong, thank you!
After Monkey Mia, we started to drive away from Shark Bay. Along the way, we stopped at a bluff by the shore where we could look down and actually see reef sharks swimming in the shallows.
At the very south end of Shark Bay, we stopped at Hamelin Pool where stromatolites live near the shore line. Stromatolites are one of the first forms of life on Earth: bacteria-like life that lives in the water. They create oxygen and excrete layers of sediment which build up into rock formations. They don’t look like much, but they’re responsible for producing much of the free oxygen in our atmosphere. If it wasn’t for the stromatolites, we wouldn’t be here today.
More driving. More driving...
The next stop was at the Tropic of Capricorn, the line of latitude at 23°26′ south of the equator. The last time I had crossed this line on land was on the road towards Alice Springs back in July.
There were actually two tour buses from Western Xposure traveling up from Perth at the time same. My bus was going all the way to Perth, but the other one was only going as far as Exmouth. We managed to get to the tropic a few minutes ahead of the other bus. As we were getting ready to get on our way, the other bus started pulling in. Tammy said, “Quick everyone! One thing we do in Australia is moon people! Quick! Moon the other bus!” Good times. For revenge, the other bus gave us a vicious soaking with water guns when we got to our to our backpackers in Coral Bay.
Our resting place that night was, indeed, at a backpackers in Coral Bay, near the south end of the fantastic Ningaloo Reef. Coral Bay was a tiny town... seeming to exist only to support tourism on the reef.
There was much drinking, that night, of course. The entertainment that evening was a game of giant Jenga... our bus versus the other bus. They beat us two-to-one after Edouard (or “Frenchy” as we called him) made the big tower collapse. Even though Edouard sucked at Jenga, he was still a really cool guy. He sat beside me on the bus and we talked alot. Man, that guy could drink wine!
December 7, 2008
We had to wake up somewhat early today, too (around 7 AM, I think), but it wasn’t to go for another long drive. Today I was going on an extra special snorkeling trip to the Ningaloo Reef. This reef extends for several hundred kilometers along the western coast of Australia. Unlike the Great Barrier Reef (which is technically classified as a “barrier reef”), which is separated from the coastline by a huge barrier of water that takes one or two hours to cross on boat, the Ningaloo Reef is a “fringing reef” that lies very close to the shoreline. You could put on a snorkel, mask, fins, step into the water from the beach, swim for five minutes, and be surrounded by a wealth of corals, fish, and other aquatic life.
My snorkeling trip today consisted of a boat ride to three sites on the reef. The first one was just a shallow area to swim between corals. As always, there was an enormous amount of fish. Some people were able to see turtles and reef sharks hiding beneath the rocks, but I didn’t spot anything like that.
The second and third snorkeling excursions were the real special ones. The boat departed the first reef area and sped out into the lagoon in search of manta rays. Along the way we saw a huge tiger shark swimming around in the water. Unlike the harmless reef sharks, the tiger shark was a monster that was dangerous to humans, so we didn’t go into the water there!
Aided by spotter planes and other boats, we eventually tracked down one of the graceful and huge manta rays. They’re not really related to other rays, but are closer to sharks. Unlike rays and (some) sharks, though, manta rays are completely harmless. They lack the stinger that rays have and they don’t have teeth. Instead, they have huge mouths that could swallow human whole! They don’t feed on people, though, since they only eat tiny organisms en masse.
The manta ray that we encountered was probably about three or four meters wide, from wing-tip to wing-tip, and swimming probably about three meters below us. It was swimming in huge barrel rolls, with its gaping mouth wide open in an attempt to feed. There must have been a LOT of food for it there since it kept feeding for a long time. The water was a little cloudy, too (which was the food, I think).
I had a disposable underwater camera and tried to take some pictures. I haven’t developed them yet. Hopefully they turn out!
On the way to the third snorkeling site, we saw lots of sea turtles swimming in the water. The third dive site was just corals and lots of fish again. On the way back, I was very VERY cold since it was windy and I was wet from coming out of the water. I tried to lie in the sun at the top of the boat to get warm. Who though my teeth would be chattering from the cold when I was in the tropics?
In the afternoon, the bus packed up and left for Exmouth, where we would spend the next two nights at a camp ground in town (though we still got to sleep in dorms). For dinner, we picked up pizza and we went to the lighthouse for sunset. There were lots of shenanigans here.
Here’s a picture of me at the lighthouse after having a bit too much sun, wind, and wine:
Oh, I guess the lighthouse and sunset are kind of pretty, too, eh?
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Maroochydore, AU
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Fiji Finished
November 27, 2008
...continued
The story picks back up again at the bus station in Nadi. There were lots and lots of buses puttering around and various crowds of people waiting around, mostly Fijians. I bought a bus ticket. The taxi driver who brought me here suggested that it would probably cost FJ$20 (CA$14) and I’d have to wait two hours for the bus. The reality was different indeed, though. I only had to wait about a twenty minutes and it cost only FJ$7 (CA$5). Just more evidence that taxi drivers around the whole world are pure, simple, inbred scammers.
Unlike the bus system in Samoa, the buses here were very normal looking. No flashy colours. No block rockin’ beats. Boooring.
There were lots of stalls selling Indian sweets, which is probably one of my weaknesses, but I didn’t get any. I was hungry, though, so I grabbed some french fries (though they called them chips!) and sausage for FJ$3.50 (CA$2.40) and a Coke Zero for my lunch. They didn’t have forks, so I had to eat with my fingers, which was somewhat messy, but as least I got to wash my hands in the bathroom after!
I sat at the back of the bus and spent some time talking to the Fijian kids back there. It took about two hours before the bus driver dropped me off at The Beachouse, on the southern coast (advertised as “The Coral Coast”) of the main island of Fiji, Viti Levu. About five minutes before I had to get out the heavens erupted in a torrent of rain. No time to get the rain cover on my pack... I made a mad dash with my 15 kg pack and also-heavy laptop bag to get to the reception. Good thing it was close to the road.
The Beachouse is a backpacker’s resort. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s got a nice beach, stuff to do, but at a backpacker’s level of budget (i.e.: dorm rooms and shared facilities). Yes, it’s true that Fiji is more developed and touristy than other Pacific islands like Samoa and Tonga, but that results in a full range of accommodation options... from backpackers to five star luxury resorts. Fiji is, however, a more expensive country to stay in than Samoa or Tonga, but cheaper than Australia, Canada or Western Europe. I guess that’s why lots of backpackers come here.
Not so many at this time of year though. Yes, it was the rainy season and it was raining out. I was going to stay at The Beachouse for five days (the remainder of my time in Fiji), and it rained almost every day I was here. So, there were only a handful of other travelers when I got there.
I was staying in a six person dorm room, but there was only one other person there: Stefan (from Washington DC). He had a laptop computer, too, but he was running Linux on his. He was a geek! We both had geeky conversations for a while. I didn’t want to get out of practice, of course.
It seemed like most of the other dorm rooms were similarly sparsely populated. When I got to the bar during happy hour, there was only about ten other people there. There were five kids from Sweden, who spoke enough English and were generally chatty with the other travelers. One of the guys, Mattias, had a very low and monotone voice, shaved head and tattoos. We got him to pretend he was Santa Claus and say, “What do you want for Christmas? Come sit on my lap and tell Santa” in his low gravelly voice. He sounded evil and it amused us. Heh heh, evil Santa.
There were also a couple of other Americans there, Annie and Will. They were were studying in Australia for several months and were stopping over in Fiji on their way back to America. A couple of Scottish people were there, Kirsty and her boyfriend Neil. They used to work in vodka bars in England and we got to talk about vodka. It turns out that they’re as big fans of Krupnik and Żubrowka (a couple Polish vodkas) as I am! There was also Tasha from Timmins, Ontario. I asked her if she knew Vince’s wife and sister-in-law, but I guess everyone in Timmins doesn’t know everyone else.
It was mostly these people (and a few other people that came and went) that I spent my last five days on Fiji at The Beachouse. It was chilled. It was relaxed. It was good.
November 28, 2008
Today was a big do-nothing day for me. Reading. DS. Email. Sitting in hammock near beach. Oh yeah...
I finished reading “A Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Marcia Marquez. It’s a book that I picked up when I was staying in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney near the end of my first big trip. I didn’t really get very far into it before I got back to Canada and didn’t read another page until I got on the plane to Los Angeles on my way back here. From then, I had read it voraciously. It’s a great book. I highly recommend it. There was another Marquez book on the book exchange bookshelf there, but it was in Dutch, so it wasn’t for me to enjoy.
I also finished playing “The World Ends With You” on my Nintendo DS. I’d been playing it on and off since probably about July. It’s a good game, I also highly recommend it. Next game: Dragon Quest IV.
It seems like Kirsty and Neil had gone to the neighbouring town of Sigatoka that day for shopping and had brought back some packets of dried kava powder. Yes, it turns out that the drink I had on Tonga was much more popular here in Fiji, at least among the tourists. Neil had devised a drinking game based on the game of Kings where you had to drink the kava (which is non-alcoholic, but still special), and whatever alcohol you had, too. Good times.
November 29, 2008
Stefan and I had decided to make a bit of a day trip to Suva, the capital city of Fiji, today. We intended to catch a bus to get there, so we went and stood by the highway at the appointed time. Within minutes, however, a pickup truck stopped and offered us a ride instead. It was a guy carrying a load of brewer’s yeast from the harbour at Lautoka to the Fiji Bitter brewery in Suva. We offered the guy FJ$10 each for the ride. It’s a bit more than the bus, but he took us there much faster. Stefan, the driver, and I sat in the front together, with me in the middle. It was cozy and my knees got crushed a bit whenever the driver changed gears, but it was all good. It seemed that Fiji was an easy place to engage in hitchhiking, even if it was unintentional!
Suva itself was nothing special. It’s a big, stinky, dirty city. In fact, at about 300,000 people, it’s the largest city in the South Pacific region (other than the cities in New Zealand or Australia). Stefan and I wandered around the shopping district for a bit, bought some local rum, had really cheap curry for lunch, went to the Fiji National Museum, and saw a mongoose. We even ran into a Canadian girl who had been staying at The Beachouse but had left the day before. On our way back to the bus station we stopped at the market and picked up a cornucopia of fresh fruit to bring back with us. The food at The Beachouse was pretty lame, so we needed fresh goods!
The bus ride back was long, crowded and unpleasant. The road was very windy and the bus lurched and swayed from side to side. Ugh. It reminded me of Laos.
That night I watched the sunset with the Americans (Stefan, Annie, Will, and Ian (Annie and Will’s friend that had arrived earlier that day). It was a really good one. We sat on a rope swing that hung on a palm tree that curved out over the water as the waves lapped gently onto the beach. Beautiful.
There were a few dogs that lived at the resort, too. One of them was called Lucy.
Lucy was fun. She watched the sunset with us. There were some local people that were swimming in the water. Lucy would bark at them if they came out of the water, but would stay quiet as long as they stayed in. I was amused. I decided that Lucy was really called “The Bula Dog”. “Bula” is the Fijian word for “hello” and you get to hear it and say it very often since the Fijians are so friendly. It only made sense that this dog was really called The Bula Dog. No one else believed me, though.
More drinking that night. I think I drank too much rum since I felt ill. I don’t think it helped that I didn’t eat enough that day. Doh.
November 30, 2008
I wasn’t feeling great for most of the day, so I made it a lazy one. There was a bonfire on the beach that night, and we sat around drinking beers and kava.
It was the weekend now, and it seemed like there were more people had arrived. Our cozy little beachouse was getting more crowded.
December 1, 2008
Today was going to be a special day!
I got going early and caught a bus to Waidroka Bay (part way between The Beachouse and Suva) for my first scuba diving ever. My ear was feeling better compared to when I was on Taveuni. I was staying on The Coral Coast, so I certainly had to give it a go! Part of me wanted to go whole hog and get Open Water PADI Certification right away, but the rest of me was more cautious and prudent and decided to go on a single introductory dive first to see how breathing underwater agreed with me first.
My dive instructor that day was a lady from Pennsylvania. After demonstrating the equipment and practicing a few essential techniques in the pool (clearing your mask, equalizing pressure in your ears, recovering your air regulator if it falls out), we hopped in a boat and went to the reef.
When we got there, it was time to put on the BCV (Buoyancy Control Vest), tank, mask, put in the air regulator, and fall backwards into the water, just like in the movies! I took my instructor’s hand and we descended down a rope to a depth of 10 metres. I was breathing underwater! I looked up and could only vaguely see the surface! The boat was only a shadowy shape somewhere “up there”. I was surrounded by coral rock reef walls and all sorts of colourful fish.
I was thankful I had an instructor with me. She held my hand the whole time we were down there and lead me around and between the rocky walls made of living coral. When you’re diving, you suddenly have to deal with the third dimension of movement, and I really had no idea how to cope with that. I didn’t have control of my movement since I didn’t know how to move safely without bumping into stuff.
Anyways, it was not a problem since I had my instructor. She pointed out different features to me and communicated to me with hand signals (since it’s not really possible to talk underwater). I saw anemones with cute clown fish hiding between the tentacles peering out at us. We got to feel the underside of the anemone. It was smooth, soft, and slippery. We saw two octopii and one of them squirted ink at us when it tried to swim away. We saw a big ugly stone fish, but didn’t get close to it because it’s venomous. We saw little purple and frilly Christmas tree worms that would disappear into holes if you touched them. And, of course, hundreds of brightly coloured and oddly shaped fish.
After a while I started to feel somewhat uncomfortable. Some salt had gotten into my eyes and my ear was starting to bother me a bit, so I signaled to go back up. I had no sense of time underwater, so I had no idea how long we were down there until I got back to the boat. It turns out that we were down for forty minutes, and would have had about five more minutes anyways if I didn’t end it. So, I think it was a good first attempt.
December 2, 2008
If yesterday was special, then today would be an unnecessary drama. Crappity crap crap.
My flight from Nadi to Brisbane, Australia left the airport at noon. It would take about two hours to get to the airport from The Beachouse, so, in order to give myself sufficient time to make it to the airport, I got up early (6:30 AM). It was too early to book the hostel bus to take me there, so I decided to try my luck at hitchhiking to get to the airport. No problems. After only a few minutes of standing beside the highway, I found a minibus that would take me there for only FJ$15 (CA$10).
I got to the airport about fifteen minutes before the check-in for my Air Pacific flight was opened. There were only a handful of people in line ahead of me. Things had gone very smoothly, until I went into my bag and tried to get my documents in order.
I couldn’t find my passport.
Crappity crap crap.
I unpacked my bag and looked everywhere for it right there in the airport line. The friendly Australian girl behind me in line talked to me and calmed me down (she even invited me to her wedding on December 23 in Brisbane, but I don’t think I’m going to go). I was not freaking out. This sucked, but I had options. I called The Beachouse. It seemed that I had left my passport in the hostel safe. Ugh. I started avoiding those things because I always forgot things in them (like when I left my passport in Byron Bay). I guess I had forgotten my lesson after I had restarted my travels.
It’s these early morning wake ups! Let’s say I’m not a morning person and dislike them. I certainly used to be a morning person, but those days are past. If I’m not working, then why should I have to deal with these early morning wake ups all the time? Ugh. The curse of the budget traveler.
Okay. Thinking. I didn’t have my Canadian passport (the one with my visa for Australia), but I did still have my Polish one. The lady at the check in counter said I could apply for a visa for my Polish passport online and use that instead. I went to the cafe, ordered a cappuccino (I certainly deserved a treat by this point), and applied for another visa online. Thankfully, it was free of charge for European citizens. Yay. Canadians have to pay for their Australian visas. Suckers...
I waited for the rest of my half hour of internet time to wait up to see if the approval email would come. It didn’t, but I decided to go wait in line to check in anyways.
By the time I got to the front of the line, some time had passed but my visa hadn’t been approved yet. In fact, when the check-in lady looked at the computer, it seemed that it had been rejected. WTF. No explanation.
Okay. Thinking. Instead, I showed her a photocopy of my Canadian passport and said that I had traveled to Australia three times already on the same passport and I was a really nice guy if there was anything she could do, oh pretty please. She said would talk to her supervisor and disappeared into the back. I didn’t see her again for forty-five minutes. All the other passengers finished checking in and disappeared. The boarding announcements for the plane were read over the intercom. The last boarding call was made. I was getting very nervous and antsy. I asked some of the Air Pacific staff still at the counter if they knew where the lady went, but they were unsympathetic to my plight.
Finally, she returned. She said that had to call Canberra (the capital city of Australia) and they had granted me special permission to enter the country with just the photocopy of my passport. She gave me my boarding pass as the intercom named me personally and told me to board my plane.
I ran through the airport. Good thing it was a small one. Some of the Fijians laughed to see someone running through the airport. They must have thought it was funny since Fijians are never in a rush.
Immigration was somewhat of a hassle since I didn’t have my Canadian passport for the dude to put my exit stamp into. I showed him my passport photocopy, he typed some stuff into the computer and lazily put the exit stamp into my Polish passport instead. He was in no rush, of course.
Sweating and breathing heavily, I was the last person to board the plane. Yes, I was that guy who gets paged repeatedly on the airport intercom to hurry up and board their plane. I sometimes scoffed at such people in the past (“why would you be late for your plane? come on!”), but know I knew how they felt and I would scoff no more.
The flight was three hours to Brisbane. Thankfully, the nice Air Pacific flight attendants gave me a couple Fiji Bitter beers to ease my nerves. I didn’t look forward to the Australian immigration. I expected a full body cavity search. Rubber gloves. Snap. Bend over. Clench.
Thankfully, the hard part was behind me. Getting past Australian immigration in Brisbane was surprisingly easy. I told the guy I didn’t have a passport and he sent me to the supervisor’s desk. They looked on the computer and it did show, indeed, that Canberra had sent special permission for me to enter the country with just a photocopy of my passport. They gave me my entry stamp in my Polish passport and said I still needed to get my Canadian passport back since that was the one that would have to get my exit stamp. Yes yes sir, I would get it mailed to me. They were very civil and very helpful.
I was back in Australia!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer’s Paradise, Australia
...continued
The story picks back up again at the bus station in Nadi. There were lots and lots of buses puttering around and various crowds of people waiting around, mostly Fijians. I bought a bus ticket. The taxi driver who brought me here suggested that it would probably cost FJ$20 (CA$14) and I’d have to wait two hours for the bus. The reality was different indeed, though. I only had to wait about a twenty minutes and it cost only FJ$7 (CA$5). Just more evidence that taxi drivers around the whole world are pure, simple, inbred scammers.
Unlike the bus system in Samoa, the buses here were very normal looking. No flashy colours. No block rockin’ beats. Boooring.
There were lots of stalls selling Indian sweets, which is probably one of my weaknesses, but I didn’t get any. I was hungry, though, so I grabbed some french fries (though they called them chips!) and sausage for FJ$3.50 (CA$2.40) and a Coke Zero for my lunch. They didn’t have forks, so I had to eat with my fingers, which was somewhat messy, but as least I got to wash my hands in the bathroom after!
I sat at the back of the bus and spent some time talking to the Fijian kids back there. It took about two hours before the bus driver dropped me off at The Beachouse, on the southern coast (advertised as “The Coral Coast”) of the main island of Fiji, Viti Levu. About five minutes before I had to get out the heavens erupted in a torrent of rain. No time to get the rain cover on my pack... I made a mad dash with my 15 kg pack and also-heavy laptop bag to get to the reception. Good thing it was close to the road.
The Beachouse is a backpacker’s resort. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s got a nice beach, stuff to do, but at a backpacker’s level of budget (i.e.: dorm rooms and shared facilities). Yes, it’s true that Fiji is more developed and touristy than other Pacific islands like Samoa and Tonga, but that results in a full range of accommodation options... from backpackers to five star luxury resorts. Fiji is, however, a more expensive country to stay in than Samoa or Tonga, but cheaper than Australia, Canada or Western Europe. I guess that’s why lots of backpackers come here.
Not so many at this time of year though. Yes, it was the rainy season and it was raining out. I was going to stay at The Beachouse for five days (the remainder of my time in Fiji), and it rained almost every day I was here. So, there were only a handful of other travelers when I got there.
I was staying in a six person dorm room, but there was only one other person there: Stefan (from Washington DC). He had a laptop computer, too, but he was running Linux on his. He was a geek! We both had geeky conversations for a while. I didn’t want to get out of practice, of course.
It seemed like most of the other dorm rooms were similarly sparsely populated. When I got to the bar during happy hour, there was only about ten other people there. There were five kids from Sweden, who spoke enough English and were generally chatty with the other travelers. One of the guys, Mattias, had a very low and monotone voice, shaved head and tattoos. We got him to pretend he was Santa Claus and say, “What do you want for Christmas? Come sit on my lap and tell Santa” in his low gravelly voice. He sounded evil and it amused us. Heh heh, evil Santa.
There were also a couple of other Americans there, Annie and Will. They were were studying in Australia for several months and were stopping over in Fiji on their way back to America. A couple of Scottish people were there, Kirsty and her boyfriend Neil. They used to work in vodka bars in England and we got to talk about vodka. It turns out that they’re as big fans of Krupnik and Żubrowka (a couple Polish vodkas) as I am! There was also Tasha from Timmins, Ontario. I asked her if she knew Vince’s wife and sister-in-law, but I guess everyone in Timmins doesn’t know everyone else.
It was mostly these people (and a few other people that came and went) that I spent my last five days on Fiji at The Beachouse. It was chilled. It was relaxed. It was good.
November 28, 2008
Today was a big do-nothing day for me. Reading. DS. Email. Sitting in hammock near beach. Oh yeah...
I finished reading “A Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Marcia Marquez. It’s a book that I picked up when I was staying in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney near the end of my first big trip. I didn’t really get very far into it before I got back to Canada and didn’t read another page until I got on the plane to Los Angeles on my way back here. From then, I had read it voraciously. It’s a great book. I highly recommend it. There was another Marquez book on the book exchange bookshelf there, but it was in Dutch, so it wasn’t for me to enjoy.
I also finished playing “The World Ends With You” on my Nintendo DS. I’d been playing it on and off since probably about July. It’s a good game, I also highly recommend it. Next game: Dragon Quest IV.
It seems like Kirsty and Neil had gone to the neighbouring town of Sigatoka that day for shopping and had brought back some packets of dried kava powder. Yes, it turns out that the drink I had on Tonga was much more popular here in Fiji, at least among the tourists. Neil had devised a drinking game based on the game of Kings where you had to drink the kava (which is non-alcoholic, but still special), and whatever alcohol you had, too. Good times.
November 29, 2008
Stefan and I had decided to make a bit of a day trip to Suva, the capital city of Fiji, today. We intended to catch a bus to get there, so we went and stood by the highway at the appointed time. Within minutes, however, a pickup truck stopped and offered us a ride instead. It was a guy carrying a load of brewer’s yeast from the harbour at Lautoka to the Fiji Bitter brewery in Suva. We offered the guy FJ$10 each for the ride. It’s a bit more than the bus, but he took us there much faster. Stefan, the driver, and I sat in the front together, with me in the middle. It was cozy and my knees got crushed a bit whenever the driver changed gears, but it was all good. It seemed that Fiji was an easy place to engage in hitchhiking, even if it was unintentional!
Suva itself was nothing special. It’s a big, stinky, dirty city. In fact, at about 300,000 people, it’s the largest city in the South Pacific region (other than the cities in New Zealand or Australia). Stefan and I wandered around the shopping district for a bit, bought some local rum, had really cheap curry for lunch, went to the Fiji National Museum, and saw a mongoose. We even ran into a Canadian girl who had been staying at The Beachouse but had left the day before. On our way back to the bus station we stopped at the market and picked up a cornucopia of fresh fruit to bring back with us. The food at The Beachouse was pretty lame, so we needed fresh goods!
The bus ride back was long, crowded and unpleasant. The road was very windy and the bus lurched and swayed from side to side. Ugh. It reminded me of Laos.
That night I watched the sunset with the Americans (Stefan, Annie, Will, and Ian (Annie and Will’s friend that had arrived earlier that day). It was a really good one. We sat on a rope swing that hung on a palm tree that curved out over the water as the waves lapped gently onto the beach. Beautiful.
There were a few dogs that lived at the resort, too. One of them was called Lucy.
Lucy was fun. She watched the sunset with us. There were some local people that were swimming in the water. Lucy would bark at them if they came out of the water, but would stay quiet as long as they stayed in. I was amused. I decided that Lucy was really called “The Bula Dog”. “Bula” is the Fijian word for “hello” and you get to hear it and say it very often since the Fijians are so friendly. It only made sense that this dog was really called The Bula Dog. No one else believed me, though.
More drinking that night. I think I drank too much rum since I felt ill. I don’t think it helped that I didn’t eat enough that day. Doh.
November 30, 2008
I wasn’t feeling great for most of the day, so I made it a lazy one. There was a bonfire on the beach that night, and we sat around drinking beers and kava.
It was the weekend now, and it seemed like there were more people had arrived. Our cozy little beachouse was getting more crowded.
December 1, 2008
Today was going to be a special day!
I got going early and caught a bus to Waidroka Bay (part way between The Beachouse and Suva) for my first scuba diving ever. My ear was feeling better compared to when I was on Taveuni. I was staying on The Coral Coast, so I certainly had to give it a go! Part of me wanted to go whole hog and get Open Water PADI Certification right away, but the rest of me was more cautious and prudent and decided to go on a single introductory dive first to see how breathing underwater agreed with me first.
My dive instructor that day was a lady from Pennsylvania. After demonstrating the equipment and practicing a few essential techniques in the pool (clearing your mask, equalizing pressure in your ears, recovering your air regulator if it falls out), we hopped in a boat and went to the reef.
When we got there, it was time to put on the BCV (Buoyancy Control Vest), tank, mask, put in the air regulator, and fall backwards into the water, just like in the movies! I took my instructor’s hand and we descended down a rope to a depth of 10 metres. I was breathing underwater! I looked up and could only vaguely see the surface! The boat was only a shadowy shape somewhere “up there”. I was surrounded by coral rock reef walls and all sorts of colourful fish.
I was thankful I had an instructor with me. She held my hand the whole time we were down there and lead me around and between the rocky walls made of living coral. When you’re diving, you suddenly have to deal with the third dimension of movement, and I really had no idea how to cope with that. I didn’t have control of my movement since I didn’t know how to move safely without bumping into stuff.
Anyways, it was not a problem since I had my instructor. She pointed out different features to me and communicated to me with hand signals (since it’s not really possible to talk underwater). I saw anemones with cute clown fish hiding between the tentacles peering out at us. We got to feel the underside of the anemone. It was smooth, soft, and slippery. We saw two octopii and one of them squirted ink at us when it tried to swim away. We saw a big ugly stone fish, but didn’t get close to it because it’s venomous. We saw little purple and frilly Christmas tree worms that would disappear into holes if you touched them. And, of course, hundreds of brightly coloured and oddly shaped fish.
After a while I started to feel somewhat uncomfortable. Some salt had gotten into my eyes and my ear was starting to bother me a bit, so I signaled to go back up. I had no sense of time underwater, so I had no idea how long we were down there until I got back to the boat. It turns out that we were down for forty minutes, and would have had about five more minutes anyways if I didn’t end it. So, I think it was a good first attempt.
December 2, 2008
If yesterday was special, then today would be an unnecessary drama. Crappity crap crap.
My flight from Nadi to Brisbane, Australia left the airport at noon. It would take about two hours to get to the airport from The Beachouse, so, in order to give myself sufficient time to make it to the airport, I got up early (6:30 AM). It was too early to book the hostel bus to take me there, so I decided to try my luck at hitchhiking to get to the airport. No problems. After only a few minutes of standing beside the highway, I found a minibus that would take me there for only FJ$15 (CA$10).
I got to the airport about fifteen minutes before the check-in for my Air Pacific flight was opened. There were only a handful of people in line ahead of me. Things had gone very smoothly, until I went into my bag and tried to get my documents in order.
I couldn’t find my passport.
Crappity crap crap.
I unpacked my bag and looked everywhere for it right there in the airport line. The friendly Australian girl behind me in line talked to me and calmed me down (she even invited me to her wedding on December 23 in Brisbane, but I don’t think I’m going to go). I was not freaking out. This sucked, but I had options. I called The Beachouse. It seemed that I had left my passport in the hostel safe. Ugh. I started avoiding those things because I always forgot things in them (like when I left my passport in Byron Bay). I guess I had forgotten my lesson after I had restarted my travels.
It’s these early morning wake ups! Let’s say I’m not a morning person and dislike them. I certainly used to be a morning person, but those days are past. If I’m not working, then why should I have to deal with these early morning wake ups all the time? Ugh. The curse of the budget traveler.
Okay. Thinking. I didn’t have my Canadian passport (the one with my visa for Australia), but I did still have my Polish one. The lady at the check in counter said I could apply for a visa for my Polish passport online and use that instead. I went to the cafe, ordered a cappuccino (I certainly deserved a treat by this point), and applied for another visa online. Thankfully, it was free of charge for European citizens. Yay. Canadians have to pay for their Australian visas. Suckers...
I waited for the rest of my half hour of internet time to wait up to see if the approval email would come. It didn’t, but I decided to go wait in line to check in anyways.
By the time I got to the front of the line, some time had passed but my visa hadn’t been approved yet. In fact, when the check-in lady looked at the computer, it seemed that it had been rejected. WTF. No explanation.
Okay. Thinking. Instead, I showed her a photocopy of my Canadian passport and said that I had traveled to Australia three times already on the same passport and I was a really nice guy if there was anything she could do, oh pretty please. She said would talk to her supervisor and disappeared into the back. I didn’t see her again for forty-five minutes. All the other passengers finished checking in and disappeared. The boarding announcements for the plane were read over the intercom. The last boarding call was made. I was getting very nervous and antsy. I asked some of the Air Pacific staff still at the counter if they knew where the lady went, but they were unsympathetic to my plight.
Finally, she returned. She said that had to call Canberra (the capital city of Australia) and they had granted me special permission to enter the country with just the photocopy of my passport. She gave me my boarding pass as the intercom named me personally and told me to board my plane.
I ran through the airport. Good thing it was a small one. Some of the Fijians laughed to see someone running through the airport. They must have thought it was funny since Fijians are never in a rush.
Immigration was somewhat of a hassle since I didn’t have my Canadian passport for the dude to put my exit stamp into. I showed him my passport photocopy, he typed some stuff into the computer and lazily put the exit stamp into my Polish passport instead. He was in no rush, of course.
Sweating and breathing heavily, I was the last person to board the plane. Yes, I was that guy who gets paged repeatedly on the airport intercom to hurry up and board their plane. I sometimes scoffed at such people in the past (“why would you be late for your plane? come on!”), but know I knew how they felt and I would scoff no more.
The flight was three hours to Brisbane. Thankfully, the nice Air Pacific flight attendants gave me a couple Fiji Bitter beers to ease my nerves. I didn’t look forward to the Australian immigration. I expected a full body cavity search. Rubber gloves. Snap. Bend over. Clench.
Thankfully, the hard part was behind me. Getting past Australian immigration in Brisbane was surprisingly easy. I told the guy I didn’t have a passport and he sent me to the supervisor’s desk. They looked on the computer and it did show, indeed, that Canberra had sent special permission for me to enter the country with just a photocopy of my passport. They gave me my entry stamp in my Polish passport and said I still needed to get my Canadian passport back since that was the one that would have to get my exit stamp. Yes yes sir, I would get it mailed to me. They were very civil and very helpful.
I was back in Australia!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer’s Paradise, Australia
New Photos Posted: Fiji
Sorry for taking so long, but I've finally finished getting my photos posted from my two weeks in Fiji. Enjoy!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer's Paradise, Australia
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer's Paradise, Australia
A Tale of Three Treks
November 24, 2008
Barbara and I were awake early. It was time to climb Des Voux Peak, the second highest peak on Taveuni, at around 1200 m. Technically, it was a simple climb since there was a road that lead all the way to the top. There were telecommunications towers at the top of the peak, so it was possible to catch a ride to the top with the workers who drove up there... but that wouldn’t be fun for us. We decided to walk the whole way.
It was a four hour walk all the way up, and a two hour walk back down. The road was rough and not really paved. Most of it was composed of piles of craggy black volcanic rocks. It’s a good thing we were wearing proper walking shoes, otherwise we would have wrecked our feet. We were astonished to see several groups of local people walking up and down the road in just flip flops or even bare feet. We didn’t know how they did it.
There is apparently a flower that is endemic to Des Voux Peak (i.e.: it is a species unique to that place). We were fortunate enough to be there at the time of year where it was in bloom. Although we didn’t see the plants themselves, several groups of local kids had climbed the mountain that day to pick big bunches of the pretty red and white flowers.
We were treated with gorgeous views on the way up the mountain, but as we got close to the summit, we were assaulted with rain showers. Any possible breathtaking vistas at the top of the mountain were obscured by thick layers of rain clouds and fog. Oh well.
On the way up the mountain, we saw some parrots and heard a strange barking sound emanating from the surrounding jungle. It really sounded like dogs to me. Barbara speculated that it could be some kind of monkey, but I didn’t think any monkeys lived on Taveuni. The sound would remain a mystery until we learned its true source two days later.
That afternoon, we took a bus from our inn in Waiyovo village to Lavena village on the other side of the island. It was a two hour bus ride and we were the only two foreigners on the bus. It cost only FJ$4 (CA$3) Taking a bus with the locals is always fun (of course, I can say that now since the terrors of my ordeals on the buses in Laos are somewhat dulled in my memory).
Part way down the road, it started to rain viciously. By the time we reached Vidawa village, the last village before our destination, a flash flood had overrun the banks of one of the rivers and blocked the passage of the bus. It was dark outside, so it took some time before I could figure out why our forward progress had been blocked. The bus driver edged the bus up to the edge of the rushing torrents of water. There was no proper bridge (Taveuni is too poor to afford many of such luxuries), just a paved ford across the river. I looked out the window and saw the flood waters. It seemed to me like the bus driver was going to attempt to drive across it! Oh god, I thought... I didn’t want to die here! I felt pretty nervous.
Thankfully, the bus driver decided he wouldn’t be able to make it and backed away for a while. Apparently flash floods like this happen fairly often here, and the bus driver has a good sense of which ones he can drive across safely. After about twenty minutes, the deluge had abated somewhat and the bus driver successfully made his attempt to cross it. We reached Lavena village without incident. Whew.
Lavena village was a tiny village, and it felt like the end of the world to me, for many reasons. It was located on a peninsula at the end of a rough road in a remote part of an island in a remote part of the world. It was hard to get to, given the distance required to fly here, and given that I felt like I almost died getting here! It was located on an island with the 180th line of longitude, making it symbolically far from the centres of civilization. Here in Lavena village, I was very very far from the world at large. It was a quiet place, populated with a handful of friendly villagers, and punctuated only the sounds of breaking waves and playing children.
Why would I come here? There were a number of beautiful treks you could do here, and a tiny, basic lodge to sleep in. The rate was FJ$30 (CA$20) for the first night and FJ$20 (CA$14) for each subsequent night. We were the only two people staying there.
November 25, 2008
The first trek we did from Lavena was the Lavena Coastal Walk, a spectacular walk along the coast and up a small river to a gorgeous rock pool with waterfalls. The trail started just outside the lodge itself.
The first part was along the beach itself and the adjoining lush stands of trees. At several places, we had to cross shallow creeks discharging into the sea. It was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen (until the next day...) Occasionally, we see toads, small lizards, or tiny crabs scamper across the path.
Partway down the beach we found amazing rock pedestals that had been eroded by centuries of crashing waves. The tide was low and we were able to find lots of starfish and crabs in the tide pools surrounding the pedestals.
After crossing a little swinging suspension bridge, the path left the coast and went inland up a rock-filed river. The path was lined with cultivated crop lands (mostly bananas and taro) and types of exotic flowers I had never seen before (including some orchids).
The path ended about fifty metres short of the rock pool. It took about two or three hours to reach this point (stopping to take many photos and climb some trees!) We had to swim the rest of the way through the fish filled clear bubbling water, passed sheer rock walls to reach a turbulent pool of water with two beautiful waterfalls plunging into it. The walls of rock were lined with tiny snails and prawns. The lady in the lodge had said that we could slide down one of the two waterfalls, but we didn’t try it since we didn’t want to break our necks.
After departing from the waterfalls, we had our lunch and sunned ourselves a bit before the heavens unleashed a torrent of rain onto us. We got completely drenched. It didn’t matter! The rain was warm. I was in high spirits. Thankfully, I had a waterproof cover for my backpack, so my stuff didn’t get wet... just me! It was fun to splash back in in the puddles in my flip flops on the way back with all the toads hopping through ahead of me. I felt like a little kid.
November 26, 2008
This was our last full day on Taveuni and our last trek. Three treks, three days-in-a-row! Taveuni was fantastic, and truly one of the highlights in all of my travels. I had originally come here to try my hand at scuba diving, but didn’t get to try it at all. It was no problem... I love trekking even more.
Barbara and I had to wake up at 5 AM in order to catch a bus back to Vidawa village, 7 km up the road, where our trek was based. Even though we woke up at sunrise, it seemed everyone else in the village was awake, too. The first bus left at 5:45 AM and it seemed life in the village revolved around this departure time. The bus was filled with people going to work in other parts of the island, and school kids on the way to Bouma village (5 km up the road) to attend classes.
This trek, the Vidawa Rainforest Hike, was originally recommended to me by Catie and Erikas Napjus, from my camp at Burning Man, even though the Lonely Planet guidebook highly recommended it, too. It was fun to look in the guestbook at the Vidawa village visitor’s centre and find their names and comments. It felt like a link reaching out from the first phase of my big travels to this second phase.
We met our guide, Rusi, and began our trek. The first segment of the trek lead through cultivated farmlands, past the remains of the two last locations of Vidawa Village, up into the rainforest, and back. We stopped several times as Rusi found wild pineapples for us to eat. What a treat!
We passed by some weathered stone chairs that the warriors of the old village would sit and watch over the sea, waiting to sound the alarm if war canoes filled with enemies threatened. Here’s a picture of me in one of the warrior’s seats. Yes, I’m very sweaty... but the weather was very hot and humid, and it was hard work climbing up the hills.
We also walked past some ditches that the past villages had dug to defend themselves from attack. It was a very real reminder of the violent lives the ancestors of the current villagers had lived before Christian missionaries converted all the villagers and basically forced them to pacify.
Finally, we reached the rainforest itself, and the trail grew very steep. It was a good thing that we were supplied with walking sticks before embarking on our treks. In the heart of the rainforest was the remains of the first site of Vidawa village. In the centre of the tree-enchoked ruins was a standing stone where people used to be sacrificed before being eaten or buried in the supporting of houses.
In the rainforest, we heard the same barking sound that we had heard before on Des Voux Peak. Rusi told us that it was a pigeon! It was a barking pigeon! I was astonished. How could a small bird be so loud? We also heard and saw the elusive orange dove, which made a quiet noise like fingers snapping. We heard, but didn’t see, wild roosters. Just like the evil roosters of Southeast Asia, they endeavoured to disturb the peace at any hour of the day!
Rusi also showed us how the villagers of the past would hit the hollow roots of the big trees if they were lost in the rainforest. The roots sounded like big drums that echoed through the jungle.
On our way down from the rainforest, we stopped for lunch and some fresh coconut juice on a hill overlooking Vidawa village itself. What a view!
The final stop for the tour was the waterfalls at Tovoro, a few kilometers down the road back towards Lavena. Along the way we saw lots of local kids jumping from a bridge into a river. As soon as I started taking photos of them, they started doing stunts and showing off.
The path to the Tavoro waterfalls was stunning. Apparently it was cleared and then replanted by a movie company that used the waterfall as a film set. I think the movie was “The Blue Lagoon”, or something like that. Again, I felt like I was in one of the most beautiful places I had even seen...
There are actually three waterfalls at Tavoro. We visited the first two. Of course, we were required to swim in the pools. It was a hot day, after all... we needed to cool off!
From Tavoro, we walked back to Lavena village. It was about seven kilometers, and it started raining on us on the way back. Did I mention that it was the rainy season in Fiji? As a result, there were far fewer tourists around, especially on a remote place like Taveuni.
November 27, 2008
Again, we had to wake at 5 AM in order to catch the early bus in order to get to the airport. I was scheduled for a flight around noon and Barbara was scheduled later in the afternoon. Since we got to the airport so early, we were able to get ourselves rescheduled onto earlier flights. Barbara was flying out of Fiji today, onto New York City to visit friends for a few days before heading home to Vienna. We said goodbye and went out separate ways. Thankfully, there were no mechanical problems with the plane this day and I reached Nadi airport without incident.
I got a taxi to take me back to Bluewater Lodge to pick up my sunglasses, then onwards to the bus station in Nadi itself. The taxi cost me FJ$25 (CA$17). I needed to take a bus to my chosen resort on the southern coast of the main island of Fiji, The Beachouse. The taxi driver tried to convince me to let him drive me all the way to The Beachouse for a mere FJ$100 (CA$67). Too expensive for me! I took the bus for FJ$7 (CA$5) instead.
I’ll tell you about The Beachouse in a separate post though.
To be continued...
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer’s Paradise, Australia
Barbara and I were awake early. It was time to climb Des Voux Peak, the second highest peak on Taveuni, at around 1200 m. Technically, it was a simple climb since there was a road that lead all the way to the top. There were telecommunications towers at the top of the peak, so it was possible to catch a ride to the top with the workers who drove up there... but that wouldn’t be fun for us. We decided to walk the whole way.
It was a four hour walk all the way up, and a two hour walk back down. The road was rough and not really paved. Most of it was composed of piles of craggy black volcanic rocks. It’s a good thing we were wearing proper walking shoes, otherwise we would have wrecked our feet. We were astonished to see several groups of local people walking up and down the road in just flip flops or even bare feet. We didn’t know how they did it.
There is apparently a flower that is endemic to Des Voux Peak (i.e.: it is a species unique to that place). We were fortunate enough to be there at the time of year where it was in bloom. Although we didn’t see the plants themselves, several groups of local kids had climbed the mountain that day to pick big bunches of the pretty red and white flowers.
We were treated with gorgeous views on the way up the mountain, but as we got close to the summit, we were assaulted with rain showers. Any possible breathtaking vistas at the top of the mountain were obscured by thick layers of rain clouds and fog. Oh well.
On the way up the mountain, we saw some parrots and heard a strange barking sound emanating from the surrounding jungle. It really sounded like dogs to me. Barbara speculated that it could be some kind of monkey, but I didn’t think any monkeys lived on Taveuni. The sound would remain a mystery until we learned its true source two days later.
That afternoon, we took a bus from our inn in Waiyovo village to Lavena village on the other side of the island. It was a two hour bus ride and we were the only two foreigners on the bus. It cost only FJ$4 (CA$3) Taking a bus with the locals is always fun (of course, I can say that now since the terrors of my ordeals on the buses in Laos are somewhat dulled in my memory).
Part way down the road, it started to rain viciously. By the time we reached Vidawa village, the last village before our destination, a flash flood had overrun the banks of one of the rivers and blocked the passage of the bus. It was dark outside, so it took some time before I could figure out why our forward progress had been blocked. The bus driver edged the bus up to the edge of the rushing torrents of water. There was no proper bridge (Taveuni is too poor to afford many of such luxuries), just a paved ford across the river. I looked out the window and saw the flood waters. It seemed to me like the bus driver was going to attempt to drive across it! Oh god, I thought... I didn’t want to die here! I felt pretty nervous.
Thankfully, the bus driver decided he wouldn’t be able to make it and backed away for a while. Apparently flash floods like this happen fairly often here, and the bus driver has a good sense of which ones he can drive across safely. After about twenty minutes, the deluge had abated somewhat and the bus driver successfully made his attempt to cross it. We reached Lavena village without incident. Whew.
Lavena village was a tiny village, and it felt like the end of the world to me, for many reasons. It was located on a peninsula at the end of a rough road in a remote part of an island in a remote part of the world. It was hard to get to, given the distance required to fly here, and given that I felt like I almost died getting here! It was located on an island with the 180th line of longitude, making it symbolically far from the centres of civilization. Here in Lavena village, I was very very far from the world at large. It was a quiet place, populated with a handful of friendly villagers, and punctuated only the sounds of breaking waves and playing children.
Why would I come here? There were a number of beautiful treks you could do here, and a tiny, basic lodge to sleep in. The rate was FJ$30 (CA$20) for the first night and FJ$20 (CA$14) for each subsequent night. We were the only two people staying there.
November 25, 2008
The first trek we did from Lavena was the Lavena Coastal Walk, a spectacular walk along the coast and up a small river to a gorgeous rock pool with waterfalls. The trail started just outside the lodge itself.
The first part was along the beach itself and the adjoining lush stands of trees. At several places, we had to cross shallow creeks discharging into the sea. It was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen (until the next day...) Occasionally, we see toads, small lizards, or tiny crabs scamper across the path.
Partway down the beach we found amazing rock pedestals that had been eroded by centuries of crashing waves. The tide was low and we were able to find lots of starfish and crabs in the tide pools surrounding the pedestals.
After crossing a little swinging suspension bridge, the path left the coast and went inland up a rock-filed river. The path was lined with cultivated crop lands (mostly bananas and taro) and types of exotic flowers I had never seen before (including some orchids).
The path ended about fifty metres short of the rock pool. It took about two or three hours to reach this point (stopping to take many photos and climb some trees!) We had to swim the rest of the way through the fish filled clear bubbling water, passed sheer rock walls to reach a turbulent pool of water with two beautiful waterfalls plunging into it. The walls of rock were lined with tiny snails and prawns. The lady in the lodge had said that we could slide down one of the two waterfalls, but we didn’t try it since we didn’t want to break our necks.
After departing from the waterfalls, we had our lunch and sunned ourselves a bit before the heavens unleashed a torrent of rain onto us. We got completely drenched. It didn’t matter! The rain was warm. I was in high spirits. Thankfully, I had a waterproof cover for my backpack, so my stuff didn’t get wet... just me! It was fun to splash back in in the puddles in my flip flops on the way back with all the toads hopping through ahead of me. I felt like a little kid.
November 26, 2008
This was our last full day on Taveuni and our last trek. Three treks, three days-in-a-row! Taveuni was fantastic, and truly one of the highlights in all of my travels. I had originally come here to try my hand at scuba diving, but didn’t get to try it at all. It was no problem... I love trekking even more.
Barbara and I had to wake up at 5 AM in order to catch a bus back to Vidawa village, 7 km up the road, where our trek was based. Even though we woke up at sunrise, it seemed everyone else in the village was awake, too. The first bus left at 5:45 AM and it seemed life in the village revolved around this departure time. The bus was filled with people going to work in other parts of the island, and school kids on the way to Bouma village (5 km up the road) to attend classes.
This trek, the Vidawa Rainforest Hike, was originally recommended to me by Catie and Erikas Napjus, from my camp at Burning Man, even though the Lonely Planet guidebook highly recommended it, too. It was fun to look in the guestbook at the Vidawa village visitor’s centre and find their names and comments. It felt like a link reaching out from the first phase of my big travels to this second phase.
We met our guide, Rusi, and began our trek. The first segment of the trek lead through cultivated farmlands, past the remains of the two last locations of Vidawa Village, up into the rainforest, and back. We stopped several times as Rusi found wild pineapples for us to eat. What a treat!
We passed by some weathered stone chairs that the warriors of the old village would sit and watch over the sea, waiting to sound the alarm if war canoes filled with enemies threatened. Here’s a picture of me in one of the warrior’s seats. Yes, I’m very sweaty... but the weather was very hot and humid, and it was hard work climbing up the hills.
We also walked past some ditches that the past villages had dug to defend themselves from attack. It was a very real reminder of the violent lives the ancestors of the current villagers had lived before Christian missionaries converted all the villagers and basically forced them to pacify.
Finally, we reached the rainforest itself, and the trail grew very steep. It was a good thing that we were supplied with walking sticks before embarking on our treks. In the heart of the rainforest was the remains of the first site of Vidawa village. In the centre of the tree-enchoked ruins was a standing stone where people used to be sacrificed before being eaten or buried in the supporting of houses.
In the rainforest, we heard the same barking sound that we had heard before on Des Voux Peak. Rusi told us that it was a pigeon! It was a barking pigeon! I was astonished. How could a small bird be so loud? We also heard and saw the elusive orange dove, which made a quiet noise like fingers snapping. We heard, but didn’t see, wild roosters. Just like the evil roosters of Southeast Asia, they endeavoured to disturb the peace at any hour of the day!
Rusi also showed us how the villagers of the past would hit the hollow roots of the big trees if they were lost in the rainforest. The roots sounded like big drums that echoed through the jungle.
On our way down from the rainforest, we stopped for lunch and some fresh coconut juice on a hill overlooking Vidawa village itself. What a view!
The final stop for the tour was the waterfalls at Tovoro, a few kilometers down the road back towards Lavena. Along the way we saw lots of local kids jumping from a bridge into a river. As soon as I started taking photos of them, they started doing stunts and showing off.
The path to the Tavoro waterfalls was stunning. Apparently it was cleared and then replanted by a movie company that used the waterfall as a film set. I think the movie was “The Blue Lagoon”, or something like that. Again, I felt like I was in one of the most beautiful places I had even seen...
There are actually three waterfalls at Tavoro. We visited the first two. Of course, we were required to swim in the pools. It was a hot day, after all... we needed to cool off!
From Tavoro, we walked back to Lavena village. It was about seven kilometers, and it started raining on us on the way back. Did I mention that it was the rainy season in Fiji? As a result, there were far fewer tourists around, especially on a remote place like Taveuni.
November 27, 2008
Again, we had to wake at 5 AM in order to catch the early bus in order to get to the airport. I was scheduled for a flight around noon and Barbara was scheduled later in the afternoon. Since we got to the airport so early, we were able to get ourselves rescheduled onto earlier flights. Barbara was flying out of Fiji today, onto New York City to visit friends for a few days before heading home to Vienna. We said goodbye and went out separate ways. Thankfully, there were no mechanical problems with the plane this day and I reached Nadi airport without incident.
I got a taxi to take me back to Bluewater Lodge to pick up my sunglasses, then onwards to the bus station in Nadi itself. The taxi cost me FJ$25 (CA$17). I needed to take a bus to my chosen resort on the southern coast of the main island of Fiji, The Beachouse. The taxi driver tried to convince me to let him drive me all the way to The Beachouse for a mere FJ$100 (CA$67). Too expensive for me! I took the bus for FJ$7 (CA$5) instead.
I’ll tell you about The Beachouse in a separate post though.
To be continued...
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer’s Paradise, Australia
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