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Published: March 14th 2007
Hello everyone, sorry I haven't been updating the blog very frequently, but we basically chilled out for a few days (i.e. nothing to tell really) and then have hit the old activities pretty hard for the last 10 days or so.
Myself, Will and Dan are in an internet cafe at the moment sorting out a few photos and emails etc. and it's air conditioned, thank god. Dan and Will will argue that we've been really lucky with the weather but it's been a bit too hot for me, apparently it's been the driest March in decades so far, so instead of tipping it down like it did last year for Rob and Krystal up here, it's prettly much been blue skies all the way. Anyways, keep the emails coming and I'll try to reply when I get a spare sec. Here's what we've been doing in the last couple of weeks.
Travelblog has annoyed me with only letting me upload photos bigger than 1000 pixels (which takes ages), so I'm using another site for now:
www.getjealous.com/doublehard
also check out force's pics here as I couldn't be arsed to upload his again, or the ones from our underwater camera, which are definitely worth a peek:
www.getjealous.com/wilberforce3000
After Tokyo myself and Dan checked in to the Calypso Backpackers and had a couple of days before Will arrived from Alice Springs. We met all the hostel staff and the guys in our dorm, who were both Canadian and pretty sound lads. Doug had dyed blue triple mohawk hair, which looked a bit mad, but he was harmless. The other guy was called Scott and he ended up doing the dive course with us. Scott and Doug both worked at Calypso and Gilligans (bars in Carins) and took us on a night out that involved a lot of drinking and crawling. They have these "power hours" out here where you pay 10 bucks and can drink as much as you want for an hour, which is about 4 squid. The bar staff/door staff seem to be a lot stricter over here about drinking too much, which seems a bit odd when they allow these "power hours". i.e. we were told to finish our beers before we could order sambucas, which would never happen back home. Met some really cool people from all over the place, and both had banging headaches the next day (we actually slept in til 5pm (almost 12 hours sleep) but put some of this down to jetlag as well as the booze.
The next couple of days were spent chilling by the pool and checking out Cairns, which is a bit of a dump if I'm honest. The lagoon area is really nice, but I think that apart from that, it's just a place to organise trips to the surrounding islands, towns and reefs, as well as the white water rafting, bungy jumping (A.J. Hacket was at our hostel when we were there which was pretty cool) and skydiving you can do. We've decided to save these until New Zealand, which may turn out to be a schoolboy error as rafting in freezing water doesn't sound like much fun, but the 7m waterfalls you go over sound pretty cool.
When Will arrived (on the 2nd March) we had another big night out and organised our diving trip the next day, along with various other activities down the east coast such as sea kayaking with dolphins, the whitsundays cruises, magnetic island, fraser island, surf camp and a few other things I can't remember right now.
Our diving started on Monday 5th March, which involved 2 days in the classroom/pool and a 3 day liveaboard trip to the reef where the real fun began. The first 2 days were pretty standard, learning about the reef and the physics of diving, and practising all the emergency procedures and skills etc. Our instructor was called Brett and our group was really small because an Irish couple had to drop out due to not having enogh time between their last dive and flight. So it was the four of us and a weird iron maiden rocker type guy called Dave. Brett was in puppetry of the penis before he became a diving instructor, and was a bit of a joker. The test at the end of the 2 day course wasn't really a test as he let us do it together (dave still managed to get 6 wrong though). He also buggered off for a couple of hours on one day as he had to move house or something. And left us to use up our air at the end of day 1, which probably wasn't in line with health and safety, but never mind.
The dives aboard the Kangaroo Explorer were amazing. We had a total of 9 dives including one night dive, one deep dive, and one navigation dive. To be honest all the dives have blended into 1 but here's a few of the animals we saw whilst diving; sweet lipped fish, clown fish (nemo), seal faced puffer fish, honey comb cod, trumpet fish, titan trigger fish, blue spotted lagoon ray, honeycomb moray eel, white tipped reef shark, sea turtle, baracuda and lion fish.
Out of these, the shark, the turtle and the moray eel were the most impressive. I absolutely loved the diving, and Will and I have already decided that we're going to do a wreck dive (S.S Yongula) a bit further south where you swim with bull sharks (man eaters according to this German marine biologist we met in Port Douglas.
The night dive was awesome too, even if a bit spooky. You basically dive in complete darkness apart from a small torch that picks up anything in its beam. Unfortunately we didn't see much on the night dive, which was a bit dissappointing after hearing stories of being able to 'play God' by shining your torch at smaller fish, revealing them to baracuda that munch them right before your eyes. I tried shining the torch at Baldwin's head, but no baraduca came ;( Dan had to hitch a ride on Brett's back for half the dive as he had used more air than everyone else, probably due to not being able to see your hand in front of your face in the middle of a dark open ocean. I, of course, had plenty of air to spare at the end as I knew it would be the shark who would come out worse if he decided to have a ruck with Danny K.
Swimming with the turtle was the best thing I've done in ages. The dive master tickled its shell and it swam round in circles for a while before it went on its way. Just floating around watching all these amazing creatures was so incredible. Our last dive was Brett's favourite site, and we weren't let down. Moore Reef at the Three Sisters is amazing. The three sisters are big pillars of coral that you can spiral round upwards observing the marine life, the sheer abundance of fish was unbelievable. It was also the first time we'd seen any baracuda and the lion fish (again, have a butchers at Will's pictures if you don't know what one of these looks like).
We paid a bit extra and did a few optional dives and are now all certified to 30 metres with SSI. It's a bit scary to think that Myself, Will and Dan can now go pretty much anywhere in the world and hire scuba equipment and dive on our own now! We had one dive on our own on the reef and to be honest were quite lucky to find our way back to the boat! We decided to take a guide on our other non course dive, and that was when we saw the shark and the turtle, so well worth the 11 bucks.
Now that we're all certified, diving in Fij and Thailand should be very cheap and I can't wait to get back into the water.
After getting up at 5:30 and having 3 dives before midday whilst on the course, we decided to celebrate our new qualifications with a night out on the lash back in Cairns where deciding to skip dinner backfired and resulted in Will and Dan having to help me home. We also met up with Rich, a certified diver on our boat who was off to Thailand in a few days and had loads of useful diving advice and had already done the east coast. The next couple of days were spent relaxing again and on the Sunday we hired a car and drove up to Cape Tribulation on a 3 night road trip. Luckily I'd remembered to pack the old itrip for a situation just like this so we took it in turns to be driver, navigator and DJ.
We stayed in PK's jungle village (we'd stopped there before on our way up the broomfield track when I'd visited Australia before). PK's was nice, but the whole area is a bit quiet, so early nights ensued, which was a good thing as Dan and I had a Rainforest trek booked for 7:30am the next day. Will decided not to come as he had done plenty whilst in the Amazon. We all went on a night walk though, which was just us 3 and a female guide who was telling us stories that made my skin crawl. We went further off track than usual, which I didn't think was such a good idea but didn't want to show her I was afraid, and spiders and snakes can sense fear. We were shown this golden orb weaver spider, which was bloody massive, and we all thought it was a fake joke spider to start with, to scare the tourists, but sadly it wasn't. We ended up seeing loads of these on our walk, as well as many different types of huntsman spiders, water spiders, and the deadly garden orb weaver. We also saw some dragon lizards, a sleeping bird, and a baby brown tree snake that was also venomous. Our guide told us how she was used to huntsman bites and orb weavers crawling on her face. She also told us that a few days ago a woman on her walk had a green tree snake in her backback and it shit her up so much that she ran into a tree and knocked herself out.
Sleeping that night was interesting to say the least, especially as Dan let a huntsman into our dorm, which I had to 'dispose' of as the other two wouldn't go near it. I did 'accidently' chase a huge cane toad into our dorm the following night after a few beers, which didn't seem to impress some of the girls in our dorm, but I got rid of it in the end.
The day rainforest trek took us to a 100 acre private plot, known as the Noah valley. Our guide was this dude called Mick (as in Crocodile Dundee) and we had another guy called Tom, from Leicester in our group of 3. Mick was of Aboriginie descent and he knew his stuff. As we were 3 fit young men, we did a slightly more physical walk, or rock climb as Dan and I thought from time to time, and had a trad. Aussie cuppa at the top of this creek beneath a spectacular waterfall, the tea was a bit weak for me (perhaps Mick had got lessons off of Claire 😉 ) but the views were awesome. It was then back down the creek to this private swimming hole where we had a dip in ice cold water (much needed after the humid rainforest). We were also shown how to spear fish. Dan was first up and after 10 minutes reluctantly handed the spear to me, and after 5 minutes I'd spotted my first fish, a butterfish the size of a dinner plate, swimming underneath a log. I hovered above the log, waiting paitiently, using all my scuba skills I had acquired over the past week. Then the fish emerged slowly, and then BANG the spear shot through the water and through the side of the fish, followed by me snapping the spearhead into the riverbed to finish the job. The fish was a feisty bastard, and even after cutting its throat and draining the blood and gutting it (which I did by the way, and it was pretty dirty) the fish was still flapping about, Mick then stabbed it in the eye to cut the nerves or something and it was still kicking about, Unbelievable. Reminded me of that bit in Austin Powers where that dude won't die. Anyway, as you can imagine, Dan was gutted and determined to find a fish for himself, but after desperate attempts, had to admit that I was the spear fishing master, not only to track down and follow a fish, but to spear it first time. Even Mick looked impressed. He had caught 2 fish prior to my go, but both had got away.
I then scaled the fish and took it home for lunch, but think I overcooked it as it was a bit hard. I also let Dan and Will have a taste, and pointed out that in times of cavemen, dinosaurs and whatnot, I would be the Alpha male, out hunting, and they would be in the caves doing the dishes (or rocks) with the women. You'll have to wait a while for the immense pics of the fish I caught as Dan took that pic, and he's left his camera lead at the hostel, but it'll be worth the wait 😉
After the fish and supernoodle lunch we went for a walk to the beach, Cape Tribulation beach. We had the beach pretty much to ourselves as far as the eye could see, and the water was about as hot as an average bath. You can't swim here at the moment as it's the end of stinger season, so we chilled out on the sand and found a big old log that we all limboed and hurdled for a bit. We then went for a drive to another water hole, where Will and I jumped in amongst some huge fish, a dirty old eel and a big old turtle. We also visited the Daintree Ice Cream place that I'd been to with my family previously, and I had a mango smoothie (delicious) and exotic fruit ice cream. After dinner and a few beers whilst continuing our pool round robin marathon (currently 8 - 6 - 4 wins to Dan with me in 2nd) we headed for bed.
On our way to Port Douglas we stopped on the Daintree River where we took a river boat croc spotting. We were lucky enough to see 2 crocs, both saltwater, one was quite old, about 4 metres long, and only had 6 out of 46 teeth remaiing because he liked fighting the other crocs, and a 1 year old croc that seemed a bit less menacing. We also saw a kingfisher and a kite.
Next stop was Mossman Gorge, again a place that I'd been before with my family, basically a really nice place to swim, and have a walk, where we saw some kind of dragon lizard (any identification is greatly appreciated, see the pics) right next to the path.
Dan then managed to go swimming with the car keys in his pocket, which wasn't too clever. Luckily for us the key still worked and we headed off to Port Douglas where we checked in to Dougies Backpackers which was really friendly and clean, and we met a German guy who was really into his diving and was a marine biologist. We had a chinese and went for a few beers but sadly the town was basically dead, and totally different from when Me and my sister Liz went out there. I think the Iron Bar was actually closed! Back to the hostel we had a few more beers and some goon (basically wine in a box or bag) before getting to kip.
And that brings us up to today just about. We've returned the hire car and are all doig computery stuff, we've also booked our flights to Fiji, which are a bit more expensive than we'd have hoped, but it's a once in a lifetime chance, so we thought sod it.
We're now going all the way to Melbourne (Dan really wants to meet Harold Bishop I think) and flying back to Sydney, then from Sydney to Fiji and back, then to Christchurch.
The time is flying but I'm having an absolutely wicked time out here, haven't managed to fit half the stuff I've done in here, but don't want to bore you any longer.
Cheers for reading guys, and my next update will be in a couple of weeks or so after magnetic island, the whitsundays and frazer island.
Off to mission beach tomorrow, and the the wreck dive with the maneaters :s Hope everyone's well.
Love to all
Dan
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Brian
non-member comment
Hi Dan It's great to read and follow your progress. Can't remember when u said you'd be in Bangkok, but we heard last week that Nicky has got her UK visa, so she'll be coming over here at the end of April. By the look of your route doesn't look like u'll be there until much later. Looking forward to next installment Cheers