Lo primero, un poco de geografía...


Sydney: 3 al 10 de Mayo de 2002

El vuelo entre Christchurch y Sydney son solo 3 horitas asi que se nos hizo bastante cortito. Ademas, las vistas de la ciudad desde el avion son impresionantes. A punto de aterrizar, podemos observar el emblematico Opera de Sydney y el Harbour Bridge...Hey, que estamos en Sydney, en Australia!!!

Tenemos la suerte de tener casita, una amiga de Annemarie que vive aqui con su novio. Asi que nos reunimos con ellos en su apartamento en la zona de Ballmain. Estamos justo al exterior del nucleo de la ciudad. A 15 minutos en bus del pleno centro.

Domingo toca paseo turistico, primero por las calles del centro y luego por Bondi Beach, caminata hasta Bronte Beach. La verdad que la  ciudad mola. Es bastante grande, casi 4 millones de habitantes. Pasamos una semana en Sydney y de lo que visitamos, recomendaria la Opera y los jardines botanicos que estan justo detras. Manly y su playa tambien vale la pena, aunque cuidado con las gaviotas ya que una me robo la mitad de mi bocata cuando lo tenia en la mano..si si, llego por detras, por encima de mi hombro y hopp, adios bocata J.

El sabado por la noche fuimos a tomar unas copichuelas al pie de la Opera y debo decir que tiene su encanto tomarse unas copas al aire libre con vistas como esas... Eso si, al dia siguiente nos tuvimos que levantar a las 5.30 de la mañana para pillar el tren a Melbourne, y casi nos morimos.

Sydney
After spending 5 weeks in New Zealand, we left the Kiwis for the Aussies, and flew in to Sydney 3^rd May. I was really excited about going to Sydney, yes of course to see the famous Opera House and Harbour Bridge, but even more so to catch up with Katie and Declan, two friends from university. They decided to extend their world wide trip and set up home in Sydney for a few years, so it was great to see them again. Our first night in Sydney was very special as Katie and Declan treated us to a yummy home cooked dinner to celebrate our reunion, and of course with lots of wine to wash it down!!! This was one of many delicious meals they spoiled us to during our stay with them. We hadn’t eaten so well in a long time! Thanks guys!!!  Then the following day we all went on a sight-seeing walk of the city and as most tourists do we took tons of photos of the Opera House, Harbour Bridge, Bondi Beach etc. It was amazing to see the Opera House for real, having seen so many photos of it in the past; it actually looked kind of familiar. We also went for a walk from Bondi Beach to Brunte Beach which was really pretty and sunny. All in all it was a great day and our hosts brought it to an equally good end by having a good ole aussie style barbie. Even after just one weekend in Sydney, Ant and I could easily see why they decided to set up home there. Although we were only planning to spend a few days in Sydney we ended up staying the whole week. Katie and Dec made us feel really at home and it was so good to catch up with them again. During the week we did more sight-seeing around town (Botanical Gardens, Kingston, Harbour etc) and we even made it on the ferry over to Manly. Manly was a great day trip and coming back into the city at night seeing it all lit up was quite the sight. Ant did have an encounter with a thief though on Manly Beach…..a rather cheeky seagull who stole his sandwich right out of his hand!  Having bought some bargain train tickets on a Mother´s Day special we were due to get the train to Melbourne on Saturday morning, so of course the night before we went for dinner and drinks. The food was fab and the drink was flowing, we ended the night with numerous bottles of wine in the Opera Bar with Katie, Dec and some of their friends. I would def recommend it as there is something quite magical about having a few drinks with the Opera House all lit up and hovering the background. Good craic was had by all, but oh how we suffered the next day getting up for our 7.20am train to Melbourne!!!! At least we didn’t have to say goodbye to Katie and Declan as we will be back with them again in July if they will have us. See you soon guys and thanks for being such great hosts.

Melbourne

Llegamos (Annemarie, yo y nuestras resacas respectivas) a la estacion de trenes de Melbourne despues de 13 horas de viaje. Si, en el mapa parece que Sydney y Melbourne estan al lado pero debe de ser que la escala del mapa no era el que solemos emplear para los mapas españoles.... En Melbourne tambien tenemos casita. Si es que a los Irlandeses les encanta Australia. De echo, me pregunto si no son más aqui en suelo Australiano que en Irlanda...Enfin, gracias a Yvonne y su novio Adrian, tenemos una camita en St Kilda, un barrio de Melbourne bastante majete.

Repetimos el plan de la semana anterior. Nos levantamos el Domingo listos para ir a tomar el Brunch y pasear por St Kilda. Al igual que en Sydney, el solete nos acompaña y hace nuestras caminatas por la ciudad una experiencia muy agradable.

Melbourne es mas pequeño que Sydney. Federation Square es un buen punto de partida para visitar la ciudad, sobre todo que hay un centro de informacion al turista en la misma plaza.

Viernes por la noche: Football night! Pero no el football como lo conocemos nosotros, sino lo que tambien llaman Ausie Rules. Una mezcla entre futbol y rugby. Fuimos al estadio Telstra para ver un partido entre St Kila y Collingwood. Es entretenido, rapido, con mucho movimiento en el campo, mucha gente en un campo bastante mas grande que un campo de futbol. Una buena experiencia.

Una de las cosillas que tuvimos que hacer durante la semana, fue buscarnos un disfraz. Os preguntareis por que...Una amiga de Yvonne celebraba su cumple y habia organizado una fiesta de difrazes. El tema: “Portada de cd”. Asi que fuimos a una tienda de cds y despues de un rato buscando, decidimos de que nos ibamos a disfrazar. Nos lo pasamos muy bien en la fiesta y nuestros disfraces tuvieron bastante exito. La peña hasta se penso que la peluca que llevaba era mi verdadero pelo...Por cierto, a ver si viendo las fotos, adivinais qué portada de cd habiamos elegido para nuestro disfraz...

De vuelta a nuestras personalidades, y caminando por la ciudad, nos acordamos de aquel joven autraliano que habiamos conocido en San Salvador y con quien nos habiamos vuelto a cruzar en Nicaragua. Residente en Melbourne, nos conto que trabajaba en un hostel grandecito, en el centro. Nos nos acordabamos del nombre pero al tenerlo apuntado en algun lado, decidimos mirarlo al volver a “casa”. Media hora mas tarde, vemos el cartel que anuncia el Melbourne International Backpackers. <<Hey, no era ese donde trabajaba Taz? Creo quie si, vamos a ver...>> Y efectivamente, ahi estaba el colega...una verdadera coincidencia ya que solo trabaja ahi un dia a la semana...Que bueno, resulta gracioso estar ahi charlando de nuestras aventuras. 5 meses despues... Le comentamos que tenemos intencion de alquilar un coche para ir a recorrer The Great Ocean Road, una carretera que bordea la costa entre Torquay y Port Fairy. Taz nos ofrece su coche para que no tengamos que alquilar uno. Un volvo familiar amarillo de 1981. Si señor! Asi que 2 dias mas tarde, teneis a vuestros dos aventureros recorriendo la costa australiana...

Melbourne

Even though I was not feeling the best and our supposedly 11 hour train journey turned into a 13 hour trip, the minute we arrived in Melbourne my excitement rose once again. Coming to Australia was quite the treat for me as not only did I get to catch up with Katie and Declan in Sydney, but I was also staying in Melbourne with one of my close friends from home who I hadn’t seen in 6 years! Yvonne said goodbye to us 6 years ago to do a years travelling and decided to stay in Australia forever. This country def has a spell to win over the hearts of the Irish! Seeing Yvonne again was incredible, it looked like Yvonne, it sounded like Yvonne, but it was hard to believe that it was her after such a long time apart. However nothing had changed and we got on as if we had never been apart, Antoine and Aidy (Yvonne´s Irish boyfriend) couldn’t believe that we were capable of talking for hours, days on end, and still have stuff to talk about! It was good to finally meet Aidy as well since Id been hearing lots about him. Once again we were made to feel totally at home and we had a great stay with them both. Thanks you two!! I found Melbourne to be a really charming city, I loved the trams and particularly loved Chapel Street, a trendy street in St Kilda. We had lots of fun trailing up and down the Opportunity Shops along Chapel Street to find clothes for a fancy dress party we were invited to. In the end we went as Kylie, Madonna and Marilyn Manson….what a laugh! Antoine was well into his roll and people actually thought that his wig was his real hair!  Aidy very kindly organised for us to go to a match of Aussie Rules, St Kilda vs Collingwood, which was deadly. It is like a mix between soccer and rugby and really good fun to watch as there always seems to be tons of people on the pitch, running in every direction. The stadium was packed, the atmosphere was good and we loved it. We saw another familiar face in Melbourne as well but totally by luck. Ant and I were walking around the city doing some sight-seeing when we remembered a really sound guy from Melbourne who we met travelling in El Salvador, and once again by chance in Nicaragua. Born and breed in Melbourne, he told us he worked in a hostel but we didn’t have the name of it with us. Literally as we were walking and talking we came up to a hostel and on seeing the name we both had the same thought “that sounds familiar”. We went in and sure enough there he was, apparently he only works there 3 hours a week and had changed his shift this week so we were really lucky to have got him! After a nice catch up chat we mentioned our plans to rent a car the following week to do a road trip along the Great Ocean Road and he immediately introduced us to Valerie, his fab yellow Volvo, who became our road trip partner!! Thanks Taz!

After spending over 2 weeks in Melbourne time came to say a very sad goodbye to Yvonne and Aidy, and we booked our flight up to Cairns to start the east coast. Yvonne it was amazing to see you again, remember our plans for 2010!!! Thanks to you both for everything.

The Great Ocean Road

 Que pasada de paisajes. Por fin salimos de las grandes ciudades y podemos respirar el aire puro del mar. Pasamos por Bell’s Beach, mundialmente famosa por su competicion anual de Surf. Observamos por primera vez a unos kankuros y koalas que andan sueltos en la naturaleza. Que graciosos son los kanguros, pengando brincos para un lado y para otro. Nos acercamos de una madre con sus dos kangurillos. Estos dos estan tan concentrados en comer comer comer que no se dan cuenta que Annemarie se esta acercando por detras y le acaricia el culete a uno. Eso si, al tocarlo pego un bote... Y los koalas, que monos son los cabroncetes.

La segunda noche nos paramos en Apollo Bay y nos hospedamos en el YHA. De los mas de 50 hosteles en los que hemos estado estos ultimos 7 meses, debo de decir que este es uno de los mejores en los que hayamos estado...salon con fuego en la chimenea, television de plasma con dvds a disposicion, cocina super moderna...una pasada. Nos sale por 27 Aus$ la noche cada uno (unos 17€) asi que decidimos quedarnos una segunda noche. El tercer dia nos queda por ver la parte mas representativa del Great Ocean Road: The Twelve Apostoles. Se trata de 12 formaciones rocosas que estan en frente de la costa, rodeadas de agua. Durante miles de años, el mar a ido escarvando las rocas, haciendo retroceder la costa y formando acantilados. Pero algunas partes se han quedado en pie y se han visto abandonadas por el resto de la costa  (seguro que lo entendeis mejor viendo las fotos que leyendo mis explicaciones...).

Añadimos estas imagenes para la saca de recuerdos de nuestro viaje y nos volvemos a Melbourne city. Tenemos unos dias en la ciudad antes de despegar hacia Cairnes el 26 de Mayo. Con un poco de suerte va a hacer mas calorcito en la costa Este...    

The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road which follows the southern coast of Australia was our first taste of Australia outside the big cities. We spent our first night in a holiday caravan which Taz´s family own along the coast and then on our second day we followed the sea and came upon some amazing beaches. One of which is the famous surfing Bell’s Beach, where the world championships take place. We also passed through Torquay, which is the birthplace of numerous surf clothing brands, it wasn’t easy to resist the temptation to do some shopping but we managed it! Further along the road we got our first taste of the Aussie wildlife when we saw loads of kangaroos! Of course this called for numerous photos to be taken and I even got close enough to touch a baby one. So cute! We spent our second night in a YHA hostel we found in Apollo Bay, and what a find, it was without a doubt one of the best hostels we had ever stayed in. After 7 months of travelling that is saying something! It was super clean, super modern, had an open fire, free DVDs and huge  plasma screen to watch them on etc…and we had a dorm all to ourselves J In the end we stayed there an extra night and took advantage of an extra day to do some koala hunting….don’t worry, by hunting I just mean finding them! Antoine turned out to have a much better eye for finding them than I did and we got to see loads of the little things. Cuter than the kangaroos?? Yep I think so. On our last day we did the most well known and most impressive part of the Great Ocean Drive, The Twelve Apostles. It is made up of huge big rock formations protruding out of the sea, due to years of erosion.

 So after 4 days seeing the sights of the southern coast, meeting our first kangaroos and koalas, it was time to drive back to Melbourne for our last weekend before heading north. Lets see how the tropical climate of the north compares to the cooler south.

Cairns – Cape Tribulation

Despues de tres horas de vuelo, aterrizamos en la ciudad de Cairns. Vaya cambio con las interminables horas de bus de America Latina. 3 horitas de avion y acabamos de atravesar Australia de Sur a Norte...

Pillamos un hostel llamado Tropic Days y dejamos nuestras cosas. Estamos los dos en un dorm para 3, con un poco de suerte no va a venir nadie y estaremos como en una habitacion doble. Esta es la primera vez que tenemos que pagar para hospedarnos desde que hemos llegado a Australia. Menos mal ya que una cama en un dormitorio son entre 21 y 25 A$, que son entre 13 y 16€ por persona...asi que nos gastamos un minimo de 25€ por noche para los dos, unas 5 veces más que lo que pagabamos en America Central y algunos paises de America del Sur.

La ciudad de Cairns es muy turistica pero tiene su encanto. Despues de un buen paseo, optamos por ir al cine, hace bastante que no vamos a ver una peli...

Una de las mayores atracciones de la zona es ir a descuburir la barrera de coral. Bien sea buceando o haciendo snorkel. Segun nos comentan, cuanto mas al Norte estes, mejor. La barrera de coral esta mas cerca de la costa y hay menos gente. Asi que decidimos alquilar un coche e subir hasta Cape Tribulation. Despues de este punto, ya no hay carretera asfaltada, solo se puede ir mas al Norte con un 4*4.

Cape Tribulation es casi como estar en America Central. Solo que hay paneles de señalizacion y que la gente no va por la calle con machetes. Estamos rodeados por bosques lluviosos y hace calorcito.

Despues de pasar nuestra primera noche en Cape Trib, nos levantamos prontito para embarcar en el Rum Runner e ir a descubrir The Great Barrier Reef. ¿Sabiais que la barrera de coral es mas grande que la muralla china? ¿ Y que es el unico elemento vivo que se ve desde el espacio? Obiamente no os puedo garantizar que sea cierto pero eso si, confirmar que es espectacular y es precioso. Hay una gran diversidad de vida marina, colorida y muy activa. Una pasada. Con zonas de varias decenas de metros de fondo y otras en la que el coral sale del agua, exploramos la zona en dos sesiones de una hora cada una. Anque el agua no este muy fria (unos 22-23º), salimos del agua tiritando, pero encantados. Una pena que no tuvieramos una camara acuatica para sacar fotos...

De vuelta hacia Cairns, nos paramos en Port Douglas para pasar la noche.

Despues de devolver el coche de alquiler, teniamos que decidir cual iba a ser nuestro plan de accion. Comprar un billete de bus de Cairns a Brisbane en el que te puedes subir y bajar en diferentes ciudades? En este caso, cual? Puff, para poder salir el mismo dia, teniamos que comprar dos billetes de 269 A $ cada uno...hufff. Annemarie propone: ¿Por qué no bajamos haciendo auto stop? Pues si, por que no... Asi que despues de caminar un rato para ir a la calle principal, sacamos una hoja con Mission Beach escrito en letra capital... No sabiamos que en este mismo instante ibamos a darle un toque surrealista a nuestro viaje por la costa Este de Australia!

Despues de unos 10 minutos, se paro un tio para decirnos que no estabamos bien colocados, que si no ibamos a la autopista que estaba a varios kilometros de donde estabamos, no ibamos a conseguir nada. Asi que nos llevo hasta la autopista. Despues de 5 minutos plantados ahi, un obrero se paro con su pick up y nos ofrecio llevarnos hasta Innisfail, que esta de camino a Mission Beach. Un tio majo. Una vez en Innisfail, y habiendo repostado en KFC ( sin comentarios por favor...) nada mas levantar el dedo y un camper se paro. Que facil es hacer auto stop en este pais..o es la suerte del principiante? Pronto lo sabremos...

Cairns – Cape Tribulation

After a nice three hour flight we left the south of Australia behind and landed in Tropical Queensland, Cairns. The comfortable flight sure made a change from our mammoth bus journeys in Latin America! We found a nice hostel in Cairns called Tropic Days, another difference between Aussieland and Latin America, the price of the dorms, here just for a bed in a dorm it is around 15 euro…we could have had a suite for that in Central America and parts of South America!  Feeling a tad lazy after the journey we avoided any sight seeing the first night and headed for Mc Donalds. The Aussies seem to love their Mc D´s so it was our way of integrating into their culture…when in Rome! The next day however we did do some walking around Cairns and saw pretty much everything there is to see there. The main attraction up north is without a doubt The Great Barrier Reef, as one tour guide pointed out, it isn’t called “The OK Barrier Reef” or “The ALRIGHT Barrier Reef”, it´s “The GREAT Barrier Reef”, so you cant not take a tour out and do some snorkelling and diving. Turns out that the further north you go the better the reef is (quieter, in better condition etc) so we rented a car for a few days and did a road trip up to Cape Tribulation. The Captain Cook highway between Carins and Port Douglas (really posh tourist town where even Kylie goes on holidays!) is amazing, its one of the most beautiful drives in Australia and no wonder…you have got tropical rainforests on one side and white sandy beaches on the other almost the whole drive. After Port Douglas to get to Cape Tribulation you have to pass through Mossman Gorge and then get a barge over the crocodile infested Daintree River…the whole trip is well worth it and it lets you see how isolated and wild the north east of the country actually is. In fact it is so undeveloped up there that after Cape Tribulation there are no tarred roads so you can only go further if you have a 4x4…we didn’t! We got an idea of what its like though as even at Cape Tribulation there was pretty much nothing expect for a few hostels in the middle of thick rainforest and coral reef beaches….very beautiful. So once we got to Cape Trib and had a not so sound nights sleep in the party hostel Pk´s Jungle Village, we got up the next day to go on our Rum Runner Tour to spend the whole day snorkelling on The Great Barrier Reef. What can I say…the crew were hilarious, the group we got were sound and the snorkelling was out of this world. I never realised that so many different types of fish existed and in so many colours! Once you put your head under the water you were transformed into another world. There were even turtles and sharks in the water although thankfully I didn’t get up close and personal with any sharks...apparently they are friendly sharks…but to me the word “friendly” and “shark” just don’t go together?! After another night with no sleep in our party hostel (fun for Antoine as it is usually him and 6 girls in the dorms…don’t know where the guys are up here, they must have got eaten by sharks as its 99% female backpackers) it was back down the coast to Port Douglas for the night (didn’t see Kylie L ) before arriving back to Cairns again to leave back our car and decide what next. Once we left back our car we headed for the bus station planning to buy a Greyhound ticket that lets you get off and on and make your way gradually down to Brisbane. However we did´nt like the idea of paying 269 Aussie dollars each just for a bus ticket, and finding that things in Australia were almost too easy compared to the unknown of Latin America travel that we were used to, we decided to try our luck at hitch hiking. Neither of us knew if it would work our not, but we decided to set ourselves the challenge of hitching to Brisbane. Little did we know the adventure that awaited us! So we walked towards the outskirts of town to what we thought was the highway and held out a piece of paper with Mission Beach scribbled on it. After about ten minutes roasting in the midday sun a really sound guy stopped for us to tell us that we were in the wrong place and would never get a lift from there. Oops, not off to a good start! He actually past us, felt sorry for us (dumb tourists!) and came back to give us a lift to the real highway. So once out on the real highway we got up our sign again and crossed our fingers. We didn’t have to wait for long as within 10 minutes an Australia labourer in his pickup pulled up for us. It was a bit of a squeeze the 3 of us in the front of the pickup but he was sound (in a weird backward kind of way) and he took us as far as he was going, to Innisfail. Since this whole hitch-hiking idea was rather unplanned (like 99% of our trip so far) we weren´t even sure if Innisfail was on the way to Mission Beach where we wanted to go, but our new buddy said it was, so we hoped for the best. All the standing in the sun and holding out your thumb does work up an appetite so we thought we deserved a KFC when we arrived in Innisfail, the guy left us opposite it so it would have been rude not to go in! (yes more excuses for eating junk, we had been overdoing the Mc Donalds recently so we made an agreement to stay away from it for a while, but we didn’t say anything about KFC!!!). So with our tummies full of chicken (just a pity KFC doesn’t do Mc Flurrys L ) it was time to get back on the road and see if we were going to make it to Mission Beach or not before night. We didn’t have to wonder long as the minute we put our bags down on the road a camper van stopped for us..yipee! It was a lovely young Aussie couple from Melbourne on their holidays. Not only did they leave us right to a hostel door in Mission Beach, but we also agreed to meet up with them that night for drinks….this hitch-hiking beats the bus anyday! Although we were worried that it was just beginners luck and since Brisbane was a still a long way away we didn’t want to get too cocky.