Dan's World Trip: December 2006

Wednesday, December 27

Sky diving!!!

The plane that flew me up to 15,000 feet.

The initial exit from the plane.

In the middle of a backflip.

Cheeks flapping everywhere, falling at 200kmph - terminal velocity.

Taking in the view of Lake Taupo...

...and beyond.

And finally the freefall came to an end.

NZ part 1

Auckland's sky tower.

Digging a pool on Hot Water Beach.

Mining ruins and bridges in the rainforest.

Hobbiton village where some of Lord of the Rings was filmed. I've never read or seen any of LOTR though...

Zorbing - the 3 of us in a giant inflated ball filled with water rolled down a big hill!

A geyser in Rotorua.

NZ part 2

Our black water tubing crew.

The Huka Falls just outside Taupo.

The KIWI bus I'm travelling the country on.

Mount Doom - the coldest I've been in 10 months actually needing a wooly hat!

River on our walk around Mt Doom.

River Valley - backpacker hostel in the middle of nowhere with a really cool zip-wire platform across the (freezing cold) river.

Cairns and Cape Tribulation

The lagoon where we chilled out in Cairns.

Goldfish racing at the infamous Woolshed bar.

Drinking before going out one night with my friends from way back in Surfers.

A swing bridge in the middle of the rainforest in Cape Tribulation.

The fresh water lake there.

A saltwater croc we spotted on a riverbank on a little boat trip.

A cassowary before and after - the top sign was originally a speed bump.

Big moniter lizard on the beach.

Eating a green ants bum - they taste kind of citrusy!

Playing volleyball with Tom, Dick and Harry (yes, really).

The Whitsunday Islands and Magnetic Island

View from the highest point on Whitsunday Island - could have been a better day.

On Whitehaven Beach.

There it is.

Sailing along as the sun sets one late afternoon.

Mooning other boats as we pull into the harbour, upon the captains instructions of course!

All of the lads from the boat in Airlie the night we got back.

We never worked out why...

Beautiful view from an old WW2 army lookout on the top of a hill on Magnetic Island.

Mine and Mono's bikes that we used to get around the island.

Some really old and random photos

Sign I saw on a bike ride once.

Beachside grafitti in Newcastle.

Sydney Harbour from the boat going over to Manly.

Sunrise as I got of a bus in Batemans Bay.

Old school petrol station in Lakes Entrance.

Some pelicans there.

And a view from the top of a hill I climbed.

Monday, December 25

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Monday, December 18

That night I slept in a friends apartment for free - bargain! I had to be up early for the bus which was a bit of a killer after a 20 hour session :-s I was sat next to Ben again, the guy who I kept ending up sitting next to on buses. I got off in a town called Ayr and was picked up and taken to the middle of nowhere to my hostel. When I say hostel it was actually a house with a couple of bunk beds put in. It was really nice actually with a proper kitchen, TV room with comfy sofa's and I even had my first bath for about a year! I was only here for one reason anyway, scuba diving.

The two dives were on the Yongala Wreck, which is rated as being one of the top 10 dive sites in the world. And it isn't hard to see why... the boat ride out there was the closest I've ever come to being sick on a boat; at first it was really fun shaking from side to side and getting air off massive waves in a small over-powered boat but after a while and once we'd come to a stop at the site it suddenly hits you! I sat for a couple of minutes before entering the water, still feeling sick (5 out of the 11 of us were!) and we began making our way down the guide rope. Not even 30 seconds into the dive I was taken by suprise seeing the biggest fish of my life, though it wouldn't be by the end of the dive. Then you begin to make out the outline of the ship, though you can't really work out where the boat starts and ends because of the unbelievable amounts of coral and fish. On the first dive you kind of forget that you're diving around a historic shipwreck because you're so overwhelmed with everything surrounding it. We saw three types of turtle, one who was resting on the sea-bed, one who was eating coral and one who was just crusing along next to us. The one on the sea-bed was at least as big as me. We also saw stupidly sized fish which were definately bigger than me. I saw a school of barracuda, every coloured fish you could imagine, too much to list really. On the second dive we paid more attention to the ship itself, and i also saw a 2m diameter, 4m long eagle ray - similar to the one that recently killed Steve Irwin. Scary stuff! These were definately the best dives I've done and I urge everyone to take up scuba diving just for this dive!

When I hopped on the bus I saw my good old Irish friend (Mono) so sat down next to him and we headed up to Townsville together. We made our way through this scumhole of a town, seeing 3 people getting arrested on our 30 minute walk and arrived at the ferry terminal to go over to Magnetic Island. Here we also met up with the 5 lads from the boat trip, we were all over there for a full moon party. The party itself was a let down, there were a quarter as many people as there were supposed to be and a tenth as many people as the previous month. The island was really beautiful though and myself and Mono rented bikes for a day and cycled around the island. We cycled about 30km in the heat, a lot of it being up hills, which with a 7km walk completely wore us out! We also made our way to a Wildlife Sanctuary only to get there and be confronted by an old grumpy lady who told us to leave her property or she'd call the police - very odd. But we did see a little snake and 2 koala's in the wild on our walk through WW2 buildings.

My final stop Down Under was Cairns where I headed with Mono. From there I did a 2 day 1 night trip up to Cape Tribulation, the real rainforest. On the way we stopped at Mossman Gorge which had a fresh water river that I had a swim in. After that we went on a boat trip on the Daintree River where we saw a female saltwater croc on one of the river banks. We also saw a python, though it was dead and being eaten by ants. The ants that were eating it are have green heads and green bums with a red body and you can actually eat the ants, which I have been doing. Well, you only eat the bum and it tastes kind of citrusy, quite nice. That was the weirdest food chain I'd ever come across with the python being at the bottom! I went on a walk up the cape with 3 Swedish guys and we spent the rest of our time there messing around by the pool and playing volleyball in the heavy rain.

Then back down to Cairns and into the crappy hostel that I'd unfortunately booked into in advance. It was a rip-off, miles out of town, the staff were the most unfriendly people I've ever met... you get the picture. Plus the first time me and Mono were put in a room with this weird, old (60 odd) Hobbit like man who sat watching TV all day and had nothing but the clothes he was wearing and had apparently been there for 6 weeks already. Mono only stayed the one night and then luckily I was moved into a room with 2 Ozzie guys who were there just partying. Every time I came back to the hostel they were on the balcony drinking and offered me a beer! I had a great time in Cairns because everyone I had travelled up the coast with since Sydney made it up there before I left. So there was me, Mono, the Canadians from Surfers, the lads from the boat, the English and Dutch guys from Surfers and more. Had some really good nights, my favourite being when we did the challenge of drinking 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes. In the end though only 3 of us accepted the challenge, one went out on 69, one just made it to 100 and I kept on going to 122! 2 hours of drinking a shot of beer every minute, I was proud :-D Shot glasses are bigger in Oz too, being 35ml not 25ml. But before I knew it, it was sadly time to say goodbye to all my new friends and leave Australia.

Let the party begin in New Zealand...!

Sunday, December 10

I caught the bus up to Surfers after Byron, this time staying in a place called Surf N Sun as opposed to the gay place (literally) I stayed in here before. Excellent choice too, it turned out to be probably the best hostel I've stayed in in Oz. Caught up with some friends from Byron - John and George, it was early afternoon when I arrived so the three of us went down to the beach with a football. It was a bit too windy so we didn't stay long and on the way back me and George decided to get a box of goon (wine in case you forgot) for that evening. We got back to the hostel and decided to just have one glass... then one more... and so on and so on! Until we'd drunk the whole thing (4l) by the early evening and were both in bed by 9! But it was okay to get a good nights sleep because I had told two Swedish girls from my room that I would go to Wet N Wild with them the next morning. And that's just what we did; a little hungover at first. Had a really good day, with rides including races on mats, a vertical drop, the black hole, but all of our favourite being one where you get 'dropped' into a giant cone and go up and down its sides like a half pipe. The girls were good company and we had a really fun day.

On Saturday 18th I made my way up to Brisbane for the Rugby League game between Britain and Australia. I had high hopes with us having won the previous match but Australia came out on top this time. It was great fun and a bargain at only a tenner. The plan was to then continue north, but I really wanted to go back to Surfers. So I woke up early and changed my flights and other things I'd booked and was on the next train back down - everyone was suprised to see me back! We then all had a few days of relaxing by the pool and nights partying 'go hard or go home' style. On Wednesday we also all went on the 'Backpackers Big Night Out' with about 200 other backpackers which was great fun. I than really wanted to go to the Ashes (another reason I changed my plane ticket) but tickets and accommodation in Brisbane were scarce and very expensive so I ended up having to skip it out and head straight on up to Noosa. But this meant I was going up with 2 friends...

I just spent one full day there and 2 nights. Both nights we spent in the hostel's bar which featured the local legend Jimmy who danced like crazy on his own! I managed to win 3 jugs of beer from some games they played :-D In the day I went with Roy to the National Park where we walked for around 4 hours, spotting several lizards and 2 koalas and walking along the beaches etc.

Next stop was Rainbow Beach as a gateway to the infamous Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world. And the trip didn't disappoint. We were put into our groups of 11, I was with 2 couples and some German girls who were really quiet but it was still a good group of people. We were up early to load up the 4x4's and set off at around 10 to the ferry. We had to drive across the beach to get to the ferry and the first car managed to get stuck on the first bit of sand! So we showed them how it was done and drove past them as they tried to push start. There was a couple of hours driving on the first day, both on the beach and inland tracks which led us to Lake Mackenzie - the most beautiful lake I've ever seen. Unfortunately we only got an hour to spend them, swimming in the freshwater that you can see in perfectly. Then we were back in the 4x4's heading down the beach to set up camp for the night. As the sun set I climbed onto the roof and opened the esky to crack open the first beers of the night. We set up camp with the other 5 groups opposite the Maheno Wreck just before dark then myself and James starting cooking up a feast for everyone. After dinner the drinking games began including my ladder climbing game which I won! We were all tired after a long day however and in bed by midnight. Good job too as it was near impossible to sleep after sunrise the next morning at 5.

So we got an early start with our breakfast before being slapped with camping fines for being somewhere we weren't supposed to be. But we were clearly told in our brief to stay there so complained when we got back and the company covered it. We drove up to the top of the island where there was a lookout hill. From there we saw several giant turtles and a group of dolphins. They weren't jumping though, just swimming along a little way in the distance. It was again soon time to climb the roof for the beers! This night we set up camp with just one of the other groups on a real camp spot. As dinner was ready the dingo's turned up wanting some for themselves so we had to scare them away, they can be really vicious.

On the final morning we drove then walked our way to Lake Wabby, set in the desert among the rainforest. On our toilet break we found a massive spider (see picture). It was great fun running down the sand dunes at full pace into the lake at the bottom! As we left I shook off my towel, forgetting I had put my camera in the middle and it flew straight into the lake. SH*T! I left it until the evening before trying to turn it on so it had a chance to dry out and it didn't work. On the way back to the ferry I got a chance at driving along the beach! So much fun and I hadn't forgotten how to drive! Then we had to floor it on the bumpy inland track to get back in time because we were going to miss the ferry and ended up breaking a spring and having the exhaust fall off in the process. I left that evening and on the bus was sat next to a guy I had met in my room. It was an overnighter and in the morning he told me I had been trying to sleep on him - oops!

I checked in for my boat on arrival then met up with some friends who were still there that I had met in Surfers with Mat a couple of months ago (remember the Canadian and Irish guys Mat?) I'm actually still sat next to the Irish guy now up in Cairns! One of them was working in a travel shop there so he gave me free internet and burnt me 2 CD's for free - it's not what you know, it's who you know! I spent the rest of the day hanging out at their van and went out with them that evening.

The next afternoon I was setting out on my sailing trip around the Whitsundays. Just before I checked out I decided to give my camera another shot at working because I desperately needed it to for this trip... and it did! 3 days later and it just started working, I was so happy jumping around the room. I guess Canon can now advertise their camera's as being waterproof! I got on the pick-up bus and who was the first person I should see but the guy from the last hostel and bus ride! We hadn't even realised we were on the same boat. We sailed for the whole afternoon on the first day, all getting involved to help out lifting the masts etc. We were given nacho's as a snack and they were really nice, as was all the food the the rest of the trip. That evening we had steak and mashed potato, mmm.

On the second day we were already parked up just off the Whitsunday Island so we went across onto the island and walked up to the lookout. Amazing views, just a shame it was really cloudy. We then made our way down to Whitehaven Beach where myself and some of the lads had a good game of football. Then we put on our stinger suits and went swimming with the stingrays! Only little ones though and they were all scared of us. We also saw 4 baby tiger sharks which were also scared of us! Back on the boat cruising along before stopping for 2 snorkels in different spots. Did a couple of swim-throughs and saw some cool fish. We also saw a turtle pop up when in the boat but by the time we had jumped off and swam over in that direction it was nowhere to be found. We then watched the sunset before being treated to some more delicious food and sitting around drinking and chatting. Everyone on the boat was really cool and we all got along. That night I dreamt that on the third day I woke up and started drinking straight away and when I told a couple of the English and Scottish guys it was decided it had to be done, there was quite a bit of beer still in the esky anyway so we started drinking at 8am! (Mum, Dad, grandparents etc... don't worry, I'm on holiday - ok!) We got off the boat at 11am (after all mooning another boat under the skippers strict instructions!) and me and 2 others made our way to the pub where we sat for the rest of the afternoon watching the cricket (and of course carrying on drinking). Then at 7.30 everyone from the boat (and no-one let us down, the whole crew of 28 turned up, just shows how good a group it was) met at a bar in town and we all had a brilliant night out. Some other boat crews had also met in that bar and we were the loudest of the lot! I will write the rest next time as I have to go now!