Felices Fiestas, Happy Holidays

Australia highlights

Australia highlights Australia highlights 09/12/2009 de Antonio Jose Ver álbum Reproducir diapositivas

Back in Madrid

I arrived back to Madrid on Sunday morning, and after doing the worse thing possible for the Jet-lag, that is sleep 15 hours from 9 am to 24:00. I am now working with the photos.

I have to process about 3000 photos, which will take me very long, for the moment a only a hand full of them are being process

Some panomaric photos, taken from the mobile phone are in the following picasa album, here there are a few pictures I took using the panoramic option from the mobile phone. They are not good quality, but gives a better understanding of some of the spectacular views

Some photos about the 1st day in diving in the great Reef can be seen here I have reduced from 345 to just over 100 photos.

Filo Un anonimo conocido

Day 25 This is the end........

Day 25  This is the end.....

Like the song of The Doors, which is the song I always try to listen before I go to bed before a marathon,  This is the end ....

Today was my last day in Australia, and I have to say that it has not been the most exiting one. Today I had the task to have a peek on Melbourne, which is a city that I indeed liked, lots of cafes, full of people in the street at all times, a city I would be comfortable living in. I went around the city and enjoyed it.

The other task that I had for today was shopping (which is not my most exiting exercise), I have been leaving all the shopping to the very last day, because I could not be carrying staff on all this travel, with packing and unpacking everyday. During all this travel, I have been finding things that were ok, but not buying them, and today,,,, I could only find 3 or 4 crappy souvenir shops with awful staff. And also trying to buy the didgeridoo for my friends, an small one, and all that I have found were crap and cost minimum 70 euros, and they would be souvenirs only (no chance to play nothing).  So I am living it to tomorrow morning in the Airports a couple of things if I find them,  if not .. well,  I'll have to come back again, which I wouldn't mind it.

Basic plan for what it is left, is going to meet the guys from the last trip from Adelaide, (yesterday we stayed till 2 am) to say goodbye, and tomorrow at 6 am wake up since I have the airplane leaving at 10:40.

Next update on the blog from Spain.

Filo Un anonimo conocido.

Day 22, 23 & 24 Adelide- Melbourne Grampians+Great Ocean Road.

Day 22, 23 & 24 Adelaide- Melbourne Grampians+Great Ocean Road.
Day 22
Yet another 6:00 am start today, to being picked up at 7:00. I was lucky to change the clock in my mobile, since there is a 1h difference between Northern Territory and South Australia. If I wouldn't have done it, instead of write about the tour I am in, I will be starting to write about how I missed the bus.
But I didn't missed it.

The 3 days Tour seems like it is going to be good laugh . The tour guide, JP , is a funny Aussie, and so seems to be group, 17 including myself, majority of "chicks", using JP's words.

Today's plan is to go to Grampians do some walks, see waterfalls, and we will stay in a hostel in the Grampians National Park,

The Grampians are 500-600 kms away, so some time in the bus driving was required, but JP every now and then told us a story to entertain us. As well as some decent selection of music (I still remember how dreadful was the selection on the Darwin-Alice Springs was when guide Ipod was on ).

Just after lunch we arrived to the border with Victoria, and again we had to move the clocks forward, this time 30 minutes. That is the 4th clock change since I have arrived to Australia. This will be my last one before departing.

In the Grampians mountains apparently live something like 500.000 kangaroos, and all types of birds. Just before starting the National park we were able to see over half a dozen Red kangaroos & a couple of emus.

The place looks similar to the Blue Mountains, with a high number of eucalyptus trees. There was a huge fire 3-4 years ago, which affected 2/3 of the national park, and the place is recovering, although looks good already. First stop was the Mackenzie Falls, this time no swimming was allowed, so unfortunately I could not add it to the list of water holes/falls I had a swim/bath. Then we went to a look up point The Balconies to admire the beauty of the place.

Then as we were heading down to the hostel, 300 m from it, we saw about 25-35 Kangaroos. In hostel we had a BBQ, and child out with the people having a drink. As someone had cards we did as you would normally do,"Play drinking games", Horse Racing was by far the best one, getting everyone involved.

Day 23
The day didn't started too early 7 am up, 8ish in the bus. With a glorious spring day we went for a 4-5 km trek to the Pinnacle, another look up point of the Grampians, with the usual photo sessions.
After that we went to an aborigine center to see a video of the "Genesis "according to them, interesting, but after seen few in the last 3 a few of them, I preferred to stay in the shop terrace and grab a coffee.

We got into the bus again, and we left the Grampians heading to the Great Ocean Road, stopping for lunch in one of the picnic areas, using the electrical BBQs that are available everywhere in Australia. Not sure if I have talked in the blog about them, basically all over Australia there are free BBQs in picnic areas. They are everywhere, even in mountains. All of the ones I have seen were fairly clean.

We started the Great Ocean Road around 4:30. The Great Ocean Road goes parallel to the coast line, with plenty of spots to see how the ocean has produced funny shapes in the limestone coast. So we went to a couple of those before arriving to the hostel.
Bay of islands
Bay of Martyrs, spending some time in the beach.
London Bridge
We went to the Hostel unpack, and leave to get to The twelve Apostles for sunset. This is one of the places most representatives in the south, so the place was quite crowded but it was still ok. There are no longer 12 standing, since sea has brought some of them down.

The hostel we stayed was quite good, At least the location was, just in front of the beach, at Port Cambell. We had our dinner at reasonable time, that is 9:30, unlike most of the other days on all tours (always far to early), and then we stay till late (2:00-2:30 am) having some drinks, playing card games, etc

Day 24
We started the last day of the tour around 7:00. Unfortunately today was not as good as yesterday, a bit cloudy and windy. We started visiting close locations, "Loch Ard Gorge " and The twelve Apostles to try catch with with sun, unfortunately it was still cloudy.
The day improved as we were going to next destination, Mait's Rest RainForest. To tell you the truth I have already seen so much rainforest, that it didn't impresed me much.

We had lunch in Apollo Bay, not much to say about it.

As we continue with the Great Oc. Rd. Landscape changed, and become more eucalyptus tree forest. We stopped the bus, and we went to look for Koalas since there were many in the area. Walking about 200 m we were able to find a few of them, one of them fairly low, about 3 m high.

We continue our trip stopping a couple of times for small breaks, and photos, for example at the memorial arch for the construction of the Road, or Torquay surf city, home of Rip&Curl and Quicksilver. I didn't buy anything but this should be paradise for surf maniacs.

Arrival to Melbourne was around 7 pm. The sun came out and the wind disappeared, hopefully it will stay like that tomorrow.

I will probably meet the guys for dinner & a drink, and get ready for tomorrows last day in Australia, a combined shopping+visiting session day.

Filo un anonimo conocido.

Day 21 Alice springs to Adelaide.

Day 21 Alice springs to Adelaide.

Yesterday my seven days tour from Darwin to Alice Springs finished.

And the final week in Australia started. The highlights are:

• Monday: Flight to Adelaide.
• Tuesday-Thursday Adelaide-Melbourne tour Great Ocean Road & Grampians.
• Friday Visiting Melbourne + shopping.
• Saturday Flight back.
• Sunday: arrive 7:35am sleep all day,

And cry because I will have to start working again on a job that I no longer enjoy and that I don't see how to make a change.

 

Although the trip is not over yet, and I might end up finding what I'm looking for, or how to change things for good. Who knows, maybe things are already changing but yet not seen it.

 

Anyway, back to story telling. , yesterday I spent evening after arriving from Urulu in the Toddy's Hostel, getting things ready for today's flights, and in the Pub of the hostel dinner+live music and resting a bit cause I needed.

 

After 6.5-7 hours of good sleep I got up and got myself prepared to catch the shuttle bus to airport. To take the flight to Adelaide.

 

I arrived in the afternoon, and after arranging things for tomorrow's trip, I went to the city center to try to see as much as I could before the sun would go down. I liked what I saw; Adelaide is the most Victorian style city I have seen so far in Australia. Mind you that I could not see any of Darwin, but I don't thing it would gave changed. There are a good number of stone buildings, including one that was interesting to see which was a real mason society, I've never seen any mason building, or at least any that wrote it up openly, and after finishing the Dan Brown book, I was expecting to find pyramids, eyes or any symbol, which I did not.

 

For diner I stopped by a Thai & Vietnamese Restaurant. Temperature in Adelaide was 23 C° and I guess 15-16 by lunch time, which after being 2 weeks in the mid 30, and even 40 in Darwin, a Beef Pho with a Shinga beer was the best option. After that back to the hostel, write the blog and go to bed, since tomorrow another early start (and maybe I have to get some warmer clothes).

 

I might not update the blog on the next 3 days. Stay tuned.

 

Filo, A known anonymous.

Day 19 & 20: 2 Days - 1 night trip to Kings Canyon & Urulu.

Day 19 & 20: 2 Days - 1 night trip to Kings Canyon & Urulu.

Day 19

I will start with last night. As I announced we went to have dinner in Bojangles. The place is an American/western bar, with decoration with skulls of animals, boots hanging from ceiling, and a couple of interesting things:

1st There are cameras in the bar which Breakfast live in internet what is happening in www.bossaloon.com.au

2nd if I would have set an id, you would have being able to buy me beers.

Anyway, I chose camel pie for dinner. Camel tastes like beef. Then we had few drinks there, Cheryl , from the Kakadu Tour  join us.

In the end what was going to be a quick dinner was not such and I end up going to bed by 12, in a dorm of 8, again on the top mattress.

I slept very little, I woke at 4:15, to repack and get ready for 5:10 start. Unfortunately the driver was sick so we started about 35-40 min late the already busy agenda as they have to change the Tour Guide.

1st day of the Tour is Kings Canyon and then sleeping in a camp by Urulu, where I have the choice of bush camping or tend. In Cairns I was advice to do bush Camping. It will depend on the weather.

 

The Tour is fairly full. 3 girls from Denmark from the previous tour are in this tour again. There is going to be lots of time in bus today and tomorrow, so I took a seat by the Tour guide which made travelling more interesting.

 

First stop of the day was Kings Canyon. In the way there we were able to see a bit of the fauna here , kangaroos , emus, an eagle that was eaten by the road that  we almost hit, a dingo. But what we mostly saw were dead kangaroos by the side of the road, being hit by cars, we saw 7 or 8 of them.

In Kings Canyon we had a 6 km walk before lunch. Kings Canyon had a few of good shots, but didn't meet the expectations that some people had put on it. The Canyon was form by earthquake and it was interesting to see how some of the photos slow that, flat cracks in the rock.

 

After Lunch we started our way to Urulu. 3+ hours almost non stop to try to get there by sunset. It looks like the Dracula film, when everyone were going to the castle before the sun would go down and trying to get there before Dracula would wake up.

 

We arrived on time, the look-up point is just next to the camping area. We arrived with about 20+ minutes to spare, and of course after the sunset photos, we had dinner, an aussie BBQ with kangaroo, camel sausages, marinade beef and salad selection. After today I think that I only need to try buffalo before I go to Spain.

 

I decided to sleep outside, under the south hemisphere starts, which are quite different to north. I am not an expert but the only constellation I could recognize was Orion.

Tomorrow we have to be up at 4 am so we can go to the sunrise side of Urulu. So we have to be in the bus, everything packed by 4:55 am

 

Day 20

 

I woke up at 3:30 am, with the good piece of news that the moon was finally outs so we could see a sky full of starts. We could see clearly the milky way, the southern cross, a galaxy in the south, and either Saturn or Juniper near Orion.

 

By 4 we" jump out" from the sleeping bag, packed everything, had breakfast and we went to see Urulu at sunrise.

Then we went for a walk around "the  red rock".  I decided to  respect aborigine laws and not do the climbing, also I didn't have time to do both walks anyway. So I did the "Base walk" , 10k walk around Urulu, giving me oportunity to shoot many photos . Maybe some would be ok, but one thing is clear, I will need to work with them in selecting the best "shots", since including the submarine photos I am already in the 2500+ so far, and I still have the great Ocean Road trip.

 

After Urulu, we went to Kata-Tjuta. Another rock formation 20 km away. This time is nota a  single "rock" like Urulu, it is a combination if various smaller  "rocks", as high as Urulu. We did the small 1 hour walk, which was about that we could do before lunch. We didn't have the choice, the other one was 2.5 kms. Which we didn't have time especially at middle of the day.

 

After lunch we started a 5 hours aprox to Alice Springs. Hopefully tonight I would be able to rest, because after so many days on tour, trips, getting up very early, Packing unpacking, hours on the bus, I am starting to be very tired.