So that's it! Schluss, finito! Six weeks passed and we don't know even how! We caught an early flight from Cairns today morning (waking up time 4.50am!), and departed to Sydney at 6.25am. I know, crazy times, but it was the cheapest (no wonder, with the timing!). Now we are waiting for the flight to our next destination, land of Kiwis and Hobbits - Christchurch, New Zealand.
As the flight is at 6.25pm, we have the whole day to kill.... Wow ! What a change, there is nowhere we have to drive or millions of things we want to see, it is just another airport after all, so I can see relaxed Pedro reading his incredibly thick book, which will remain always a mystery for me :) . Anyway he seems to enjoy it and I am sipping my cafe latte but let's see what the last days in Australia brought to us - I must say that the days have been really busy.
We left our Skippy friends and drove our way North to the Mission Beach, with a view of Dunk Island. Empty caravan parks, empty beaches - just paradise! So we got a nice bottle of wine, prepared the BBQ (barbie in the aussie language), and we spent the next morning in our camping chairs :) in the completely deserted Mission Beach with a fantastic invention - stingers enclosure net - so we could swim away (or at least until the end of the net :) ).
Cairns is getting closer and closer, from the initial road sign indicating 1900kms it is now only 150kms away, which is nothing for us, so we bravely fill up the tank of our hungry campervan again and push the gas pedal (oh boy, it eats like a small baby, every four hours!)
We stayed at the caravan park near the centre of Cairns and the feeling that we leave Australia soon completely overwhelmed us. We started talking to a couple of people (Hannah from Germany and Lee from California). They had some kind of cheap red wine, and unfortunately they shared a lot... so after receiving a fantastic call that morning from Arnaud's leaving do back in Strasbourg, we drank to Arnaud in our own way! It was a good long night! :)
Next day we had an important mission to accomplish, to book our dives to the Great Barreer Reef! We got a deal on a huge boat where normally many snorkels go and only a few divers, so the diving groups are small. As we haven't dived for nearly a year, we had booked an introductory dive and two normal dives and made our way up to Port Douglas where the trip departed from.
I don't want to repeat myself, but the drive was fantastic. It is the coast where the old and always lushly green rainforest meets the white sandy beaches - naturally we have hundreds of photos that it is truly real and not a dream. We were very tempted by the offers of land for sale around this region, but well, it is a long way away from Europe :) As we arrived to posh Port Douglas, we checked out the Marina and stayed in the Caravan park where the only campervan around was our Jabba (we have renamed Abba to Jabba, we liked it better and it reflects its speed and size). It was an early night as we had to get ready for the Nemos!
Gorgeous, sunny day with dazzling turqouise sea it seems as the weather knows we're going diving (looking back, it was the last sunny day we got in Oz). We had a huge boat with only 30 people on it, six divers including ourselves. After we realised we were actually the only experienced divers in our group (and we have dived only seven times!) we cancelled our intro dive and went straight into the normal dives, Wow ! There are no photos to show you the beauty of the GBR, the colours of the reef and the amount of fish we saw - I am not counting the hundreds of Nemos and Dories, manta rays, stonefish, lionfish, cuddle fish (you do not want to cuddle this one), and to my surprise, Sharks!! It was pretty scary but the divemaster was very happy and couldnt stop saying how lucky we were to have seen them. Well, it was fun, if I think back on it now above the sea level :) The dives were just great and we had a fantastic day on the boat!
On our last day we woke up to very nasty weather with lots of rain and wind. We had to start packing so we moved to the camp kitchen where it wasn't raining and switched on the news on the telly. An earthquake in the Solomon Islands and a Tsunami Alert over the Northeast coast of Australia were all over the news. Hundreds of people were leaving the city, schools were closed, there were queues by the petrol stations - everyone still had in mind the last tsunami in Indonesia and the terrible Cyclone Larry which devasted Australia the same time last year so... we stayed put away from the beach in the hills, until the threat was gone. Funny feeling!
But well, Australia is releasing us. We survived all the nasty poisonous animals, swimming with sharks and the tsunami threats and we loved it! Another country we need to return to, there is so much to see! But we are now off to the next destination - less sunny but we are sure with lots to offer aswell!
And to finish for today, Lenka's lovely sis Lucka is celebrating today her 25th birthday so join us in wishing her all the best! Vsechno nejlepsi Lucinko!
As the flight is at 6.25pm, we have the whole day to kill.... Wow ! What a change, there is nowhere we have to drive or millions of things we want to see, it is just another airport after all, so I can see relaxed Pedro reading his incredibly thick book, which will remain always a mystery for me :) . Anyway he seems to enjoy it and I am sipping my cafe latte but let's see what the last days in Australia brought to us - I must say that the days have been really busy.
We left our Skippy friends and drove our way North to the Mission Beach, with a view of Dunk Island. Empty caravan parks, empty beaches - just paradise! So we got a nice bottle of wine, prepared the BBQ (barbie in the aussie language), and we spent the next morning in our camping chairs :) in the completely deserted Mission Beach with a fantastic invention - stingers enclosure net - so we could swim away (or at least until the end of the net :) ).
Cairns is getting closer and closer, from the initial road sign indicating 1900kms it is now only 150kms away, which is nothing for us, so we bravely fill up the tank of our hungry campervan again and push the gas pedal (oh boy, it eats like a small baby, every four hours!)
We stayed at the caravan park near the centre of Cairns and the feeling that we leave Australia soon completely overwhelmed us. We started talking to a couple of people (Hannah from Germany and Lee from California). They had some kind of cheap red wine, and unfortunately they shared a lot... so after receiving a fantastic call that morning from Arnaud's leaving do back in Strasbourg, we drank to Arnaud in our own way! It was a good long night! :)
Next day we had an important mission to accomplish, to book our dives to the Great Barreer Reef! We got a deal on a huge boat where normally many snorkels go and only a few divers, so the diving groups are small. As we haven't dived for nearly a year, we had booked an introductory dive and two normal dives and made our way up to Port Douglas where the trip departed from.
I don't want to repeat myself, but the drive was fantastic. It is the coast where the old and always lushly green rainforest meets the white sandy beaches - naturally we have hundreds of photos that it is truly real and not a dream. We were very tempted by the offers of land for sale around this region, but well, it is a long way away from Europe :) As we arrived to posh Port Douglas, we checked out the Marina and stayed in the Caravan park where the only campervan around was our Jabba (we have renamed Abba to Jabba, we liked it better and it reflects its speed and size). It was an early night as we had to get ready for the Nemos!
Gorgeous, sunny day with dazzling turqouise sea it seems as the weather knows we're going diving (looking back, it was the last sunny day we got in Oz). We had a huge boat with only 30 people on it, six divers including ourselves. After we realised we were actually the only experienced divers in our group (and we have dived only seven times!) we cancelled our intro dive and went straight into the normal dives, Wow ! There are no photos to show you the beauty of the GBR, the colours of the reef and the amount of fish we saw - I am not counting the hundreds of Nemos and Dories, manta rays, stonefish, lionfish, cuddle fish (you do not want to cuddle this one), and to my surprise, Sharks!! It was pretty scary but the divemaster was very happy and couldnt stop saying how lucky we were to have seen them. Well, it was fun, if I think back on it now above the sea level :) The dives were just great and we had a fantastic day on the boat!
On our last day we woke up to very nasty weather with lots of rain and wind. We had to start packing so we moved to the camp kitchen where it wasn't raining and switched on the news on the telly. An earthquake in the Solomon Islands and a Tsunami Alert over the Northeast coast of Australia were all over the news. Hundreds of people were leaving the city, schools were closed, there were queues by the petrol stations - everyone still had in mind the last tsunami in Indonesia and the terrible Cyclone Larry which devasted Australia the same time last year so... we stayed put away from the beach in the hills, until the threat was gone. Funny feeling!
But well, Australia is releasing us. We survived all the nasty poisonous animals, swimming with sharks and the tsunami threats and we loved it! Another country we need to return to, there is so much to see! But we are now off to the next destination - less sunny but we are sure with lots to offer aswell!
And to finish for today, Lenka's lovely sis Lucka is celebrating today her 25th birthday so join us in wishing her all the best! Vsechno nejlepsi Lucinko!
5 comments:
Hi Pedro & Lenka
Wow, you sound like you have had a fantastic time!! So glad you got to see the reef. Bizarre though, I was at Sydney Airport on Monday morning at 6.30 am and had two hours to waste - very bored! You must have walked off your plane from Cairns when I walked off mine from Perth. Damn!! Would love to have seen you again before you left for the Land of the LOng White Cloud!! Hope the weather isn't too bad. Anyway, happy travels, and maybe we will see you in Strasbourg or somewhere in October, love from cath & evan
Happy birthday Lucka !!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello P and L!
Been catching up on ur latest, and it seems ur really having a great time, right out of a roadtrip movie:)
Love the pictures and the stories and have good time in the times to come too. Greetings from Lisbon!
Joao
Your text seems to capture the feeling of leaving Australia. I've left 4 times now, and never really have a happy feeling getting on that plane! People are friendly, life is straightforward and weather is ...fab! Why do we leave?
But on to NZ, enjoy it all .. as from NZ on, you are on your way back. You've reach the turning point of your journey.
Great work.
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