Year: 2006

Julie and Raf suggested that I check out Rangitoto, a dormant volcano and Auckland’s youngest (it was created about 600 years ago). They hadn’t been there yet themselves, but they had heard that the walk up the volcano was good and the views of the city from the top would be worth the trek up there.

The day I decided to go was one of the few days that I haven’t been travelling, so I was a big sluggish (needed a break from moving far distances over a short span of time!). So taking the ferry over to Rangitoto Island seemed like a good idea (the pier for the ferry is a very short walk from Julie and Raf’s place, and the ferry ride itself only takes about 40 minutes).

It ended up being a perfect day for a walk up a volcano. The sun was shining and it was warm, but not too hot. A large group of elementary school students was also there, so I let the kids get a head start and then followed up the trails behind them.

The walk was much more strenuous than I had expected! It’s not very steep, but the incline is such that it really tired me out. I kept running into the other stragglers who had let the school group pass them, and then I found out that one of the stragglers was giving up (it was just too much for her, so she headed back down to wait for the ferry).

By the time I reached the crater and the summit, I was tired and hungry. I joined the school group and took out my lunch. At the bottom of the volcano, signs warned about the presence of bees at the top. And those warnings weren’t false – the bees loved being near the students, and our food! I’m not really afraid of bees, but I get very panicked when I’m eating and they won’t leave me alone.

Anyway, it took a while for me to finish eating (I had to keep getting up and moving around to try to lose the very curious bees) so the school group was gone by the time I was ready to walk around the rim of the crater and start the decent. I had put my bags down while I was eating and then noticed that there was a bee on the water bottle that Julie had lent me. I didn’t want to abandon the bottle up there, so I found a way to shake the bag and get the bottle free (I also really wanted the water that was in it!).

The bee then found something much more interesting inside the bag, and really made himself comfortable. I didn’t want to leave the plastic bag there, either, not because I needed it but because I didn’t want to litter. So I waited. When I figured the bee was gone (I couldn’t see it anymore, and I’d kicked the bag a little to check) I picked the bag up and started walking over to the crater.

Suddenly, there was a bee on my hand (nestled between my ring finger and my pinky)! I freaked out, dropped the bag, and started trying to get the bee off my hand. Man, I never knew bees were so sticky. Somehow I managed to get the bee off without getting stung or killing the bee (how, I’ll never know) and it dived right back into the plastic bag. I poured some of my water on the bag to try to get the bee to leave, but that didn’t do anything. I realized that, if anything, my efforts were just making the bee more angry so I decided to cut my losses and leave the top of the volcano. Who wants to be alone at the top of a volcano with an angry (and possibly vengeful) bee?

So I started a brisk walk around Rangitoto’s crater. The volcano has been dormant for so long that there is a lot of vegetation inside the crater (I hadn’t expected this). And by vegetation, I don’t just mean grass. There are tonnes of trees – it’s like looking into a very shallow valley rather than into a hole that once shot out lava and rocks.

I made it back to the meeting spot for the ferry on time (thank goodness!), put a small donation in the box to ease my conscience and hopefully make up for leaving litter behind, and took at look at some of the historic baches along the coast. A bach (sounds like ‘batch’) is a beach house, sort of like a cottage. Families own them and pass the ownership through generations. The baches on Rangitoto Island were controversial, I think because the land became national park land and then it was an issue for people to own property there.

I arrived in Auckland on Saturday night, and after quite some time with the officers in quarantine, finally met up with Julie and Raf. [I had to check off nearly every box on the form they make you fill out: wooden items? (X) dried fruit? (X) hiking shoes that have been through a national park in the past 30 days? (X) – at least they cleaned my shoes for me, which was really appreciated – I had been ready to throw them out, and now they’re like new again!]

Julie and Raf’s apartment is in a great location, right in the central business district. Auckland has really surprised me so far – I hadn’t expected the city to look so new.

It was raining today, so we spent the afternoon in the museum. I was glad to get a bit of an overview of New Zealand, so early in the trip! To be honest, I hadn’t realized what a big part volcanoes have played in the formation of this country. The museum had a lot of information on this, which we really appreciated!

What I normally love most about travelling is having hours of uninterrupted time for reading. (Sounds exciting, I know!) I just love being able to have so much time available to read as much as I like. Luckily, I’m able to read under almost any condition (in cars, on boats, on planes, standing up, in the dark… and noise doesn’t really distract me while I’m reading, either, so I can pretty much read anywhere).

I wasn’t sure how many novels to bring with me for a trip that would be 8 weeks long. Especially considering that most of those 8 weeks would involve long hours spent in transit.

Much to my amazement, I’m nearing the end of my trip and I’ve only finished reading one book. Just one! I’m about halfway through another. And these aren’t even enormous books, since I was really limited with what I could bring along.

So why is this? I think it’s that the scenery has just been too good not to spend hours looking at. And I guess I’ve also done a lot of travelling overnight, so I’ve done my best to get some sleep when looking out the window doesn’t offer much.

Anyway, just had to take note of this since it’s something that has really surprised me.

I didn’t think I would make it all the way up to Cairns.

Aside from the pure distance between Sydney and Cairns (which I didn’t fully understand until about 2 weeks into my time in the country), I wasn’t sure whether it made any sense to travel up to an area that had had such recent and dramatic encounters with cyclones. The road from Townsville to Cairns was actually closed for a few days, and some surrounding areas were without power for quite some time. Anyway, the government wanted to let travellers know that the state of Queensland was still OK to visit – just certain areas (such as Innisfeld, south of Cairns) were not really open for business.

So I caught an overnight bus from Airlie Beach to Cairns, arrived at 6:25 am, and got on another bus at 7:30 am to start my rainforest tour. Within a couple of hours, I was walking through Cape Tribulation and floating along the Daintree River. We saw one crocodile and one tree snake, and lots of rain (so far, it’s rained both times I’ve visited rainforests, and they always let us know that it’s actually just ‘liquid sunshine’ – I guess so we shouldn’t be disappointed).

I ended up really enjoying my time in Cairns. Lonely Planet had described it as being a “backpackers’ carnival” and the truth is that I found it a fun place to backpack in. The city centre (very touristy) is easy to get around, and they set up tour times to coincide with the morning arrivals of the overnight buses. The walk from the bus drop-off point to my hostel was fairly simple (I did lose my bearings a bit, but that probably had more to do with spending the night on a bus and waking up in an unfamiliar city in the rain). What was a little tricky for me is the way that Cairns has these shopping squares – you can walk around a block and not quite know whether or not you are supposed to turn. It’s very easy to lose track of how far you’ve gone.

The rainforest tour I signed up for was great. All the people on the bus seemed to be travelling alone (I love when this is the case – everyone is so much friendlier then). And it was a nice bus of people. Some of the girls I met wanted to meet for dinner the following night and we managed to make this happen. I also ended up signing up for the same Great Barrier Reef snorkelling trip as one of the other girls, and I was glad I had (it was a very small boat load of people, and much nicer trip already knowing someone there).

The weather wasn’t great, but it was worth it to finally see the Great Barrier Reef. The visibility was 10-12 (metres, I guess) and much better than it had been when I snorkelled at the Whitsunday Islands. I was suprised by how big the fish near the boat were – it’s creepy when you can see their jaws move. Speaking of jaws, I wasn’t quite sure what to do when I noticed that I was swimming directly above some sharks… The tour operators seem a bit frustrated when we panick, though (I got back on the boat fairly quickly) – since the sharks were only little reef sharks, apparently they have very little interest in humans.

My last night in Cairns I got to sample the backpacker nightlife. This involved going to ‘ladies night’ at the Rhinobar (free champagne – term used loosely to describe cheap sparkling wine with raspberry flavour thrown in to disguise the taste) and then accidentally stumbling into the Wool Shed (which my Lonely Planet had warned me about – they mentioned the nearly unavoidable dancing on tables and benches, and I really should have remembered about this before entering… I was thankful that I either missed the wet T-shirt contest or that there just wasn’t one that night). But I was glad that I was with the people I had met on the Cape Tribulation tour, and it was fun to see how a lot of backpackers spend most of their time in Australia. One place I had heard a lot about along the way was Byron Bay (roughly speaking, near Brisbane) – a lot of backpackers plan to be there 3 days and end up staying for a week or more. I didn’t go, and when someone at the Wool Shed exclaimed “This reminds me of Byron Bay!” I knew just what I’d been missing…

The next day I did some shopping around Cairns and met up with people from the tour again (for lunch). We said bye at the lagoon and I caught a taxi to the airport to head back to Sydney. I didn’t really feel ready to leave Australia but I was looking forward to finally reaching New Zealand.

I’d read a bit about Fraser Island before booking the 2-day tour I just went on, but I must admit that I didn’t really know much about what the tour would involve. Since I’d opted for the version with a guide, all I knew was that I wouldn’t be the one who would have to do any of the planning (or driving).

It ended up being a great two days! Fraser Island is an incredibly relaxing place, and I think all of us on the tour were happy just being there. The first day we went for a swim in Lake McKenzie – the water is warm and still and has a very low pH level (so it actually cleans you and any jewellery you happen to be wearing). It felt like being at a spa! I didn’t expect this. Normally, this lake is a clear blue but it was a very overcast day so the water was dark and grey instead. While we were swimming, we could actually see the rain approach us over some nearby hills – it was very neat, and fun when the light rain ended up reaching us (it was like a mist rolling in, then totally drenched us when it reached us). We were still swimming at the time and ended up getting out and trying to dry off while having the coffee and snacks the driver had prepared for us under a large tarp (nice to be taken care of!).

The rest of the tour around the island was beautiful. We walked through sub-tropical rainforest (which has no koalas or kangaroos – little to no animals, actually, which seems strange) and had some close encounters with dingos. My favourite part on the second day was when we stopped at Eli Creek. The creek is actually a freshwater spring that you can float down. I was so glad I decided to do this part! The water was extemely shallow – you’re just a few inches from the bottom and can just glide along, looking at the sky and the vegetation along the shore.

After arriving back at Hervey Bay last night, I caught an overnight bus to Airlie Beach. Thankfully, it turns out that I can sleep on the bus! I arrived at Airlie Beach this afternoon and go sailing around the Whitsunday Islands tomorrow. The weather seems quite nice at the moment, so hopefully that holds out…