After my diving trip, I started heading south with Priscilla, my van, and a couple travel partners I picked along the way (which almost deserve their own posting). I travel through the rather dull (although recommended by Lonely Planet) Atherton Tableland to land in one of my favorite places on the East coast: Mission Beach.
A couple days later I was dropping my first travel partner at Tully and continued to Townsville, where I spent another couple days in Magnetic Island and dived the S.S. Yongala wreck. Leaving Townsville I stopped at the Billabong Sanctuary for pictures with Aussie animals and finally arrived at Airlie Beach, to sail the beautiful Whitsunday Islands.
New travel partner all the way to Bundaberg, stopping at the Eungella National Park to (try to) see the very elusive platypus. I spent a day at the Bargara Beach before heading for Hervey Bay, to visit the largest sand island in the world: Fraser Island.
And after that, and a day stop at the surprisingly beautiful Rainbow Beach, Priscilla and I arrived at Brisbane, where I am at the time of writing this.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Diving at the Great Barrier Reef (on a military schedule)
After thinking and thinking about it and researching on the Internet, I decided to spoil myself (yes, again, since I don't have anyone to do it for me) and book a 7-day live-aboard diving trip to go to the outter Great Barrier Reef and the Osprey reef, which most people claim is the best one in Australia (but certainly, at about 120 km east and about 200 north of Cairns, not the closest to shore). The stand-by price was quite good and it included 23 (yes, 23) dives. And that was in 5 days, since the other 2 days were spent travelling to and from the reef.
The trip was spectacular, the crew very entertaining and I was lucky enough (again) to have a great group of people. The first day we did 5 dives (including my first, and quite impressive, dusk dive), more than the average number of dives I did in Spain in a year, so although I took with me lots of books and music, I hardly had any time (or energy) left for them.
We saw sharks (although not as many as in Moorea), turtles, lion fish, manta rays and a whole lot of different tropical fish. And I did my first ever underwater photographs, which were much more tricky than I expected. Under 5 meters you have almost no red light left, and the deeper you go the less colors you are left until blue is the only one. You can correct that with a special filter, but I didn't have one so had to play with the white-balance of the camera, but even so you will see most pictures are quite blueish.
And if that wasn't enough, you are trying to capture fast-moving animals, with low light (which means low shutter speeds) while you also move (you're "floating" in water) and in many cases fighting underwater currents. Anyway, I don't mean to bore you with all this, but just wanted you to really appreciate my underwater work :)
Oh, and since we were doing so many dives, I decided to use 5 of them to get my Advanced degree. So watch out divers, I'm now allowed to go down to 30 meters (and deeper).
The complete story soon (I hope).
The trip was spectacular, the crew very entertaining and I was lucky enough (again) to have a great group of people. The first day we did 5 dives (including my first, and quite impressive, dusk dive), more than the average number of dives I did in Spain in a year, so although I took with me lots of books and music, I hardly had any time (or energy) left for them.
We saw sharks (although not as many as in Moorea), turtles, lion fish, manta rays and a whole lot of different tropical fish. And I did my first ever underwater photographs, which were much more tricky than I expected. Under 5 meters you have almost no red light left, and the deeper you go the less colors you are left until blue is the only one. You can correct that with a special filter, but I didn't have one so had to play with the white-balance of the camera, but even so you will see most pictures are quite blueish.
And if that wasn't enough, you are trying to capture fast-moving animals, with low light (which means low shutter speeds) while you also move (you're "floating" in water) and in many cases fighting underwater currents. Anyway, I don't mean to bore you with all this, but just wanted you to really appreciate my underwater work :)
Oh, and since we were doing so many dives, I decided to use 5 of them to get my Advanced degree. So watch out divers, I'm now allowed to go down to 30 meters (and deeper).
The complete story soon (I hope).
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Cairns, Cape Tribulation and Priscilla
Cairns is probably the best town in Australia. If your idea of fun is spending your time with pissed British teenagers, expression-less post-modern Germans or fashionably hippie Japanese (all hanging out with their own community), Cairns is definitely your place. There's absolutely nothing to do in that city except drinking jugs of beer and dancing on top of tables. Every activity in this city (except for the typical Barrier Reef diving or Cape Tribulation trips which quite often are simply an excuse to continue drinking but in a new spot) is geared towards making this party-obsessed crowd drink in your bar. Free meals, free drinks, wet t-shirt contests, (supposely) sexy female dancers with big breasts,... Anything so they can leave their drinking dollars (and believe me, they have lots of them) in your pockets!!
When I asked a nice guy who worked in my hostel why all British seemed to like Cairns so much, his response was "it's just like London!". So Cairns is without any doubt the Magalluf (Mallorca) of the Southern hemisphere.
Anyway, despite this inviting and attractive atmosphere, I decided to dedicate most of my time in the city (after I booked my diving trip, that I will cover on my next posting) to search for a cheap camper-van that would take me out of there as fast as people downed their pints in the Woolshed pub.
I searched for a while, but didn't find much to choose from. A girl was selling her van because it had some minor rust "that could be fixed", but that prevented her from passing the roadworthness certificate which, unfortunately, made it impossible to re-register it on my name. After my scepticsm she texted me later saying that she had double-checked with a mechanical and it was not repairable, but she would give it to me for a third of the initial price (a mere $500 AUS) and I could drive it on her name. I must say that the offer was as tempting as my lack of trust on this girl after all these different stories, so I decided to go for a more expensive, worst looking one but whose owner looked much more honest as he told me (almost) all of the problems the van had.
Independenza (or Priscilla, as I like to call her since the other name disturbingly reminds me of the annoying nationalists we have on Northern Spain) was a 26-year old Toyota van, with over 500,000 km., dirty seats, broken dashboard, rust all over her and a paint job that seemed done by those graffitty "artists" that "decorate" local trains in Spain. She was like a dream come true.
Travelling in Australia is extremely easy. You have excellent hostels, more free travel information and booklets that you could read in your life-time, incredibly friendly people always ready to help you, lots of backpackers around and fantastic facilities. So, if you want to have some sense of adventure, you need to travel in a very old, trashy lookin car, with a wicked paint job if possible (not to mention that cars with these characteristics are usually cheaper). In short, the least it would resemble something I would drive to work in Spain, the better. In addition, after meeting my lovely travel-mates in Cairns, I decided that a camper-van would be better, since it would allow me to get off the beaten track and probably meet people with more similar interests to mine. So, as I said, Priscilla was like a dream come true.
After negotiating with the previous owners (a British and a Swedish who had done the opposite route I wanted to do and who previously bought it from some Israelis who had done 30,000 km. travelling around Australia) and proving again how terrible my negotiating skills are (I got 20% off the asking price, but later had the feeling that could have gotten it for even less than half), I decided to get the van as soon as possible so I could drive it before my diving trip to Cape Tribulation as see if anything was seriously wrong with it, while the previous owners still were in Cairns. That meant buying it without a mechanical check up since it was a weekend and everything was closed, but when you're buying a 26-year old vehicle with half a million km. on it you know it's not going to run like a brand new Mercedes Benz anyway. So I took the risk, and headed for Cape Tribulation, claimed to be the only place where the rainforest meet the sea.
Priscilla handled very well the whole trip, not giving me any problems except some over-heating on the way back that was due to a leak in the cooling system (nothing serious, as it's easily solved by adding water every so many days). I stopped in some of the Northern Beaches, some of the very pretty although the constant wind (paradise, if I had my kite-surfing gear) didn't invite to stay there for a long time.
My next stop was Port Douglas, a very nice upscale town with the lovely 4-mile beach (Australians, or Captain Cook, love naming water-sites by their lenght). A guy named Christopher Skase was the main developer in the city and responsible for the spectacular Sheraton golf resort, but apparently he fled to Mallorca owing over $1 million in debts. And despite most Spaniards have probably never heard this name before, almost all Australians know the story and are not precisely happy with Spain for not allowing to extradite this guy back to Australia (whatever the reasons were, I certainly don't know them).
After enjoying the Sunday market in Port Douglas, which had a surprisingly hippie atmosphere with lots of handy-crafts and fresh fruits being sold (I treated myself with the best thick pinaple juice I've ever had), I headed for the Daintree and Cape Tribulation National Parks, crossing by ferry the crocodile-infested Daintree river. These parks are like domestic jungles, because even though they are just across busy roads and cities, once you walked into them you're suddenly immersed into a real rainforest (in fact, one of the oldest in the world) filled with bird and insect noises, and with incredible mangroves and buttree-root trees growing everywhere.
I did a few walks before looking for a camper site where I would test all the van's electricaly-powered gadgets (mainly the fridge). Unfortunately I couldn't find the power cable to get electricity, so decided to camp in a hostel were I met again Remo, a 29-year old South-African and the first person over 22 and the funniest guy I had met since I arrived in Cairns. He was with another great guy, Retro from Switzerland, who was later joined by his fellow country-mate Daniel. It had been so long since I had been around truly funny and interesting people, that I decided to ditch the night rainforest walk I wanted to do and spent the evening sharing beers with them, witnessing some of the worst karaoke performances ever (only surpassed by the ones in Alice Springs) and eventually meeting two really nice Italian girls. Well, it was actually Remo who met them after one of them did a quite good karaoke performance, he asked her so sign his pants in admiration... and she did!
The next day was still quite windy, so again no beach time. I decided to some more walks, relax by the pool and eventually, head back to Cairns, as the following day I was starting my diving trip.
Not much more to say about Cairns. I did treat myself to a full kite-surfing afternoon that costed me a fortune, but I was really desperate to do it after all this time. I was joined by my Scottish roommate, John, an truly nice 18-year old guy (and much more mature than most of his older country-mates) who was my dinner and drinking partner the few times I ventured into Cairns' annoying night life.
So, everything was ready for my live-aboard diving trip. 7 days and up to 23 dives. Would I be able to handle all that underwater activity? Well, that's another story (and another post)
When I asked a nice guy who worked in my hostel why all British seemed to like Cairns so much, his response was "it's just like London!". So Cairns is without any doubt the Magalluf (Mallorca) of the Southern hemisphere.
Anyway, despite this inviting and attractive atmosphere, I decided to dedicate most of my time in the city (after I booked my diving trip, that I will cover on my next posting) to search for a cheap camper-van that would take me out of there as fast as people downed their pints in the Woolshed pub.
I searched for a while, but didn't find much to choose from. A girl was selling her van because it had some minor rust "that could be fixed", but that prevented her from passing the roadworthness certificate which, unfortunately, made it impossible to re-register it on my name. After my scepticsm she texted me later saying that she had double-checked with a mechanical and it was not repairable, but she would give it to me for a third of the initial price (a mere $500 AUS) and I could drive it on her name. I must say that the offer was as tempting as my lack of trust on this girl after all these different stories, so I decided to go for a more expensive, worst looking one but whose owner looked much more honest as he told me (almost) all of the problems the van had.
Independenza (or Priscilla, as I like to call her since the other name disturbingly reminds me of the annoying nationalists we have on Northern Spain) was a 26-year old Toyota van, with over 500,000 km., dirty seats, broken dashboard, rust all over her and a paint job that seemed done by those graffitty "artists" that "decorate" local trains in Spain. She was like a dream come true.
Travelling in Australia is extremely easy. You have excellent hostels, more free travel information and booklets that you could read in your life-time, incredibly friendly people always ready to help you, lots of backpackers around and fantastic facilities. So, if you want to have some sense of adventure, you need to travel in a very old, trashy lookin car, with a wicked paint job if possible (not to mention that cars with these characteristics are usually cheaper). In short, the least it would resemble something I would drive to work in Spain, the better. In addition, after meeting my lovely travel-mates in Cairns, I decided that a camper-van would be better, since it would allow me to get off the beaten track and probably meet people with more similar interests to mine. So, as I said, Priscilla was like a dream come true.
After negotiating with the previous owners (a British and a Swedish who had done the opposite route I wanted to do and who previously bought it from some Israelis who had done 30,000 km. travelling around Australia) and proving again how terrible my negotiating skills are (I got 20% off the asking price, but later had the feeling that could have gotten it for even less than half), I decided to get the van as soon as possible so I could drive it before my diving trip to Cape Tribulation as see if anything was seriously wrong with it, while the previous owners still were in Cairns. That meant buying it without a mechanical check up since it was a weekend and everything was closed, but when you're buying a 26-year old vehicle with half a million km. on it you know it's not going to run like a brand new Mercedes Benz anyway. So I took the risk, and headed for Cape Tribulation, claimed to be the only place where the rainforest meet the sea.
Priscilla handled very well the whole trip, not giving me any problems except some over-heating on the way back that was due to a leak in the cooling system (nothing serious, as it's easily solved by adding water every so many days). I stopped in some of the Northern Beaches, some of the very pretty although the constant wind (paradise, if I had my kite-surfing gear) didn't invite to stay there for a long time.
My next stop was Port Douglas, a very nice upscale town with the lovely 4-mile beach (Australians, or Captain Cook, love naming water-sites by their lenght). A guy named Christopher Skase was the main developer in the city and responsible for the spectacular Sheraton golf resort, but apparently he fled to Mallorca owing over $1 million in debts. And despite most Spaniards have probably never heard this name before, almost all Australians know the story and are not precisely happy with Spain for not allowing to extradite this guy back to Australia (whatever the reasons were, I certainly don't know them).
After enjoying the Sunday market in Port Douglas, which had a surprisingly hippie atmosphere with lots of handy-crafts and fresh fruits being sold (I treated myself with the best thick pinaple juice I've ever had), I headed for the Daintree and Cape Tribulation National Parks, crossing by ferry the crocodile-infested Daintree river. These parks are like domestic jungles, because even though they are just across busy roads and cities, once you walked into them you're suddenly immersed into a real rainforest (in fact, one of the oldest in the world) filled with bird and insect noises, and with incredible mangroves and buttree-root trees growing everywhere.
I did a few walks before looking for a camper site where I would test all the van's electricaly-powered gadgets (mainly the fridge). Unfortunately I couldn't find the power cable to get electricity, so decided to camp in a hostel were I met again Remo, a 29-year old South-African and the first person over 22 and the funniest guy I had met since I arrived in Cairns. He was with another great guy, Retro from Switzerland, who was later joined by his fellow country-mate Daniel. It had been so long since I had been around truly funny and interesting people, that I decided to ditch the night rainforest walk I wanted to do and spent the evening sharing beers with them, witnessing some of the worst karaoke performances ever (only surpassed by the ones in Alice Springs) and eventually meeting two really nice Italian girls. Well, it was actually Remo who met them after one of them did a quite good karaoke performance, he asked her so sign his pants in admiration... and she did!
The next day was still quite windy, so again no beach time. I decided to some more walks, relax by the pool and eventually, head back to Cairns, as the following day I was starting my diving trip.
Not much more to say about Cairns. I did treat myself to a full kite-surfing afternoon that costed me a fortune, but I was really desperate to do it after all this time. I was joined by my Scottish roommate, John, an truly nice 18-year old guy (and much more mature than most of his older country-mates) who was my dinner and drinking partner the few times I ventured into Cairns' annoying night life.
So, everything was ready for my live-aboard diving trip. 7 days and up to 23 dives. Would I be able to handle all that underwater activity? Well, that's another story (and another post)
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