Category Archives: Adventure

Adventure, Life, Travel

Elephant Riding and Bathing in Luang Prabang

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So excited this morning. After a bit of a sleep in I got up and had a shower and got dressed for the elephant camp. After breakfast I sat in front of the building and waited for the driver to come and pick me up. I was waiting…. And waiting…. And it was fifteen minutes past the time that they had told me and I was starting to get worried. I saw a van go past and it was full of people. It pulled up further down the road. I was curious as to whether they had gotten the wrong place and as I looked down the road and saw the sign outside of where they were parked and it had the word Maniphone. I picked up my bag and started sprinting down the road as the driver got back into  the vehicle. I threw myself into the open window of the driver  seat and asked whether he  was from the All Lao Elephant Camp and he said yes. I told him that I was from the Maniphone Guesthouse as written on my form and not the Villa Maniphone. I almost missed out because of this. Lucky I was on the ball.

The journey was very French. The entire car was filled with a French family and all of the kids. I was starting to feel like maybe I should have gone with the others but when I arrived I met Amelie, a German girl who was also glad there was someone other than a French family here. We were paired off to share an elephant.

After much waiting and anticipation, we could see the elephants coming over the hill and we moved up towards the platform so that we could get on them. It felt really unsteady as my foot brushed over the rough skin covered in splinter like hairs that were very coarse. I sat down in the carriage and Amelie sat beside me locking the bar over so that we couldn’t fall out. Our mahout sat on the neck of the beautiful beast and gave him the command ‘bai’ meaning go, and off we went. It was such a weird feeling and I couldn’t stop smiling the entire time. The elephant wobbled from side to side and I felt like I was going to fall out at times, especially when we were going down the hills.

Amelie, Huong Huol and I

Her name was Huong Huol and I later found out that she was one spirited elephant. She liked to stop off and have a snack or a drink as we were moving along and occasionally she decided to go her own way instead of the way chosen by the mahout. I laughed so much. He was yelling at her ‘sai’ (left) and ‘kwaa’ (right) and ‘bai, bai bai’. It was one of the coolest things ever.

Shotgun seat! Riding up front!

The mahout jumped back and allowed Amelie to ride on the neck of the elephant and it was really wicked. I was hoping that I would get a turn. As luck had it, Amelie had sore thighs from the elephant hair rubbing her legs and she let me up front. This was even more cool and more wobbly than before. I sat with my legs wrapped tightly around her neck, dangling behind her ears. To manage to balance and stay on her neck I had to lean forward with my hands on the top of her head. I stayed on her neck like this until we got back to our starting place.

So pretty and precious she is!

The hour and a half went too quickly and the experience was somewhat surreal. I was so glad that I had the opportunity. We said goodbye to Huong Huol and headed down for lunch at the hut. After shoveling down lunch, we sat in eager anticipation of bathing. After about twenty minutes, we were told that it was time to go. We walked half way back around the track to the river and there were our elephants waiting for us. The woman took our bags, shoes and cameras for us and we went to climb aboard.

To get up on the elephant, the mahouts told them to sit down for us and we climbed up onto the necks. The elephants then walked down the steep hill into the river where they waded out for a fair way until it way deep enough. Then they were given the command, and their trunks went into the water, sucked up the water, and sprayed it at me as I was sitting there. I was completely drowned and I have never laughed so much in my life! The elephant kept doing it over and over and I gave his neck a wash by rubbing his thick, coarse skin. She sat down at one stage and when she reared up with her trunk I almost fell off and the mahouts were laughing their arses off. This was the most amazing thing ever and if I though that my day could not have gotten any better after the ride I was completely mistaken. This is one of the most incredible things I have ever done, and like all good thing, it was over too soon.

Elephant shower!

The elephants started to get out of the water and the woman took photos with my camera as we went. The elephant knelt down to let me off but before I could it was standing back up again and I literally slid the whole way down the side before thumping on to the ground. I said goodbye to our elephants and then headed back up the hill, completely elated, and completely drenched.

Completely drowned! Couldn’t be happier!
After attempting to dry off and waiting for an awful long time for someone to take us back to our guesthouses, we eventually found a driver who said he would take us back to Luang Prabang.  He didn’t know very much English and he didn’t know where our guesthouses were so we used the commands that we learned today with the elephants to get back. Sai for left, kwaa for right and straight with hand movements for straight ahead. It was quite the experience but we got back to our places eventually and said goodbye.
Adventure, Life, Travel

Living The Arctic Life! Electromagnetic Storms, Ice Hotels And Partying With The Locals.

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The sights of that night will be forever imprinted on my mind…. I don’t think I could forget it if I tried….

After the excitement of dog sledding, my friends and I wandered down to the local store to have a look around at what we could find. In among gloves, hats, hardware tools and all kinds of other strange objects, we found a glorious plastic dish that was to serve as our entertainment for the afternoon.

So off we went, sliding down anything that looked even remotely hill-like, including giant piles of snow that the locals had removed from the roads with the excavator. No surface on an incline was left untouched as we tried to make our way down these slopes on our makeshift sled. At one point we even managed to become airborne and slam our buts into the ground of one giant pile of snow.

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Attempting to sled down a mound of snow removed from the road….

It left us fairly tired so we went in for our afternoon nap in anticipation of some more northern lights hunting and then heading down to the pub where a band was playing… the one night a month when they get live entertainment to Abisko and all of the locals come out in force.

Post nap, I was in the kitchen eating my usual northern meal of brown cheese and crispbread when somebody runs inside and says ‘you totally have to go outside right now!!’ Hurriedly the snowsuit goes on and I burst out of the door to be standing underneath a sky so vibrantly bright with green waves dancing across it that it was unlike anything I have ever seen in my life. We had struck gold, and timed our visit with an electromagnetic storm which was heightening the activity of the aurora. The lights were so bright that I managed to take a few pictures of them with my point and shoot camera, a feat almost unheard of when it comes to taking pictures of the northern lights.

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My point and shoot camera picture of the Northern Lights

We stood outside and ‘ooh’ed and ‘aah’ed for hours. At one point I lay down in the snow making snow angels while the purple and green hazes danced over the top of me. We then tried to take some group pictures of the amazing night sky with a professional camera, writing our names and other words like ‘Abisko’ with a red head torch in the sky below us. I never did wind up with copies of the pictures, but what my eyes saw that night will be forever etched into my mind and I am almost glad that I didn’t have a proper camera as it allowed me to experience it in life without feeling the need to be constantly behind a lens to catch it.

After what seemed like hours outside, and not being able to feel our toes or half of our bodies anymore, we decided to make our way down to the pub to see the band. I learned many things from my experience at the pub. Firstly, the international symbol for ‘you’re hot’ in northern Sweden is a raised eyebrow and a thumbs up. Secondly, you should not accept the strange man’s offer of four doubles of spiced whiskey shared among three because between that, the minus twenty degrees and the passionfruit-flavoured sparkling wine I consumed, I was incredibly drunk. The band played and we danced with some local boys before making our way back up the hill to the hostel for more consumption of Bailey’s and the attempted making of snow angels on the kitchen floor. After a laughing fit, where my friends tried to convince me to get up to mischief and I was sensible enough to not succumb to the peer pressure of annoying others for amusements purposes, I finally went to bed.

The morning was a somber and sorry day for all. We had to leave. And not a single one of us wanted to. Noon rolled around, we said goodbye to Abisko and we made our way to Kiruna on the train where we had a couple of hours to kill before our flight back to London. So of course, we went to visit the famous ice hotel.

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The train station in Abisko… taking us away 😦

The ice hotel was unlike anything I had ever seen. There were so many different sculptures and elements to the building it was amazing. I had a minor nap on the reindeer pelt in the makeshift ice chapel on one of the pews before running around the place with Indy taking silly pictures of us with the ice sculptures. Before we knew it was time to get back in a taxi and head to the airport. My adventure in the Arctic Circle was over…. for now.

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Napping in the chapel!

All I know is that I love this place. It is one of the most amazing places I have been in the world. There is no way on this planet that I will not get back there. It is just a matter of when… and I will of course take my place on the Ice Throne, become the Abisko Ice Queen, and never leave!

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The Ice Queen on her Ice Throne!
Adventure, Life, Travel

Living the Arctic Life! Cross Country Skiing, Dog Sledding and Learning About The Sami

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So after I arrived into Abisko and I met up with my friend we decided to go for a walk and check out the scenery. It is incredible in Abisko. The trees look like icicles covered in thin sheets of shiny ice on the tiny branches. Everything is white as far as the eye can see. There is on dip in the mountains where you can barely see the sun as it struggles to make its way to just above the horizon for the smallest amount of time again before it disappears and darkness sets in.

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The extent of sunrise….

By the time night fell I was starting to get super excited about the one thing I had been chasing across Canada for years that had up until that point evaded me. The northern lights! So we wandered down to the frozen over lake, stood at the edge of the ice and waited. Before not too long this faint green haze wandered over the hills in front of us and it was one of the most beautiful and surreal things I had ever seen. At that point I was happy. But I had no idea about what a full on aurora could be like. I was going to learn in coming days.

My second day in Abisko was spent learning to cross country ski during the daylight hours. It took me about half an hour to actually figure out how to clip the skis on before I went attempted running in them along the ice and fell so hard on my butt that the resulting bruise was both excruciating and impressive.

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First time Cross Country Skiing… prior to the bruise 🙂

Annette and I went flying along the course with Tim trailing along behind us taking photos and documenting the ridiculousness. Annette having skied quite a bit before kept falling over in the tracks as she was trying to go down the hill because she was trying to control the movement. Me on the other hand, flying down the hill at stupid speeds relying solely on good balance to keep me upright as I do not know how to ski (it is on the bucket list) and haven’t been since that one time when I was eleven. At one point they dared me to go down the massive hill…. and while I contemplated it, I decided that if I broke myself I wouldn’t be able to go dog sledding so I put the hill on the back burner for a later date. The daylight hours were waning and as such there wasn’t much left for daylight hours activities. It was time to return to the hostel and consume my standard Norwegian meal of crispbread and brown cheese – all I ate for about three days…

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Smashing the odd hill….

For that night I booked a photography tour to go and take pictures of the northern lights. They picked me up on the motorized toboggan and I sat on my reindeer pelt as we drove along in the snow up the hill to a place that was flat, dark and quiet. We stood about in the snow and set up our cameras to take pictures of the stars and waited for the northern lights to come. And they never came. It got so cold at one point that our guide took us into the traditional teepee set up with the fire in the middle and we sat around drinking hot chocolates and listening to stories of how the natives of this land, the Sami, existed, used the land and the reindeer to survive in the harsh winters of the north. As we were about to pack up and give up for the evening, we poked our head outside of the tent and low and behold, there it was. The familiar green haze from the night before painting the sky with its stunning beauty.

At this particular point in time the camera I was using decided it didn’t want to work very well. I couldn’t get it to take any pictures. I was fortunate enough that the guide put my memory card into her personal camera and took some photos on that. My favourite photos from this is a still picture of me standing under the northern lights. One of the most amazing pictures I will ever have in my life.

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Under the Northern Lights

I went back to the hostel on a high. I was super elated, excited and ready to get some serious shut eye for dog sledding in the morning… right after I consumes some Bailey’s at the kitchen table with the rest of the crew.

The following morning was best described as like Christmas day for big people. The whole lot of us going dog sledding lined up in the kitchen in our suits raring to go. We walked up the hill to the cages where the dogs were kept and they could feel the excitement in the air. They just wanted to run. So we got them out of the cages and one by one we had to walk the dogs over to the sleds they were working on and hook them up to it. Then we got allocated our sleds, and we were ready to go!

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Dashing through the snow… just like Santa, but my dogs are way cooler 😛

For two hours we sped through the snow fields with the dogs leading the charge. There were many things about dog sledding however that I did not realize. Firstly. They just poo everywhere. Sometimes they poo while they are still running. Sometimes the others behind them stop to eat the poo. Some of them make quite a hurrah about the whole situation. It is quite disgusting. Another thing I did not realize is what happens with cornering. Literally where you get thrown from the side of the sled and roll around into the trees as the dogs just go off at their own pace dragging the sled behind them and trying to overtake any other sledder in front of them. It was so funny. I didn’t do too badly with regards to falling off, but some members of our group were hilarious and literally couldn’t stay on their sleds.

Before we knew it, we were back, putting the dogs back into the cages and patting them to say goodbye. It was so much fun and it set the tone for the high for the rest of the day.

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Me and my team. Love these pups!

Hungry we went out for buffet lunch at the pub before we settled back in for a rest. The evening was bound to be a huge on as it was also the last. Little did I know it was also going to be the best…….

For the last installment of my adventures in the Arctic, stay tuned…

Adventure, Challenge, Learning, Life, Travel

On The Wagon and I’m Hitchin’ A Ride… Across The Arctic!

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To go or not to go, that is the question……

I am sitting in Canada talking to my friend, Tim, in England on Facebook and he is trying to convince me to come to Europe. So I said to him, “There are things I haven’t done here yet that I need to do before I go. I want to see the Northern Lights and I want to go dog sledding.” Well he told me he would deal with this and I should just book my flight. So I did.

Enter this amazing trip to Abisko National Park in Northern Sweden. My friend planned and organized all of the finer details because he is a planner and I am very much not a planner. All I had to do was book my flight from Oslo to Narvik, get on the train at Narvik that goes to Kiruna, get off at Abisko. Easy enough. Or so we think……..

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Views over the fjordlands of Norway from the plane

As Murphy Law would have it, again, (I swear Murphy and I are besties these days), I find myself rolling around the floor in the airport bored to tears for a solid two and a half hours while my plane is delayed. Now given that I had allowed myself that 2 and a half hours to get to the train station for the last train, it was known and accepted that there was to be no train for me that day. As I arrived into Narvik, I trotted off to the Tourist Information Center to assess my options. They were as follows:

1. Spend $1000 AUD on a taxi to get to Abisko

2. Spend $500 AUD on a hotel in Narvik if I could actually find one because the backpackers hostels are closed as it is not the season.

3. Stand on the side of the road til the following morning and freeze.

4. Hitchhike…….

So I asked the woman behind the counter for a piece of cardboard and a permanent marker. I scrawled out the word Abisko and headed down the road to go and find me a car to ride in with my map in hand.

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Me and my hitchhiking sign… hurrah!

Generally when hitchhiking it is a good idea to know which side of the road to stand on. I misunderstood the directions I was given and spent a good half an hour standing on the wrong side of the road before some lovely gents pulled over and pointed this out to me. I felt like a massive moron but laughed anyway and headed over to the other side of the road.

It didn’t take me too much longer from here to find a nice guy named Sven (yeah I know right!) and he told me he would drive me down the road to the junction where most of the trucks go by in very broken and hard to understand English. He got onto his phone and was ringing his friends to see if any of them on the truck route were going that way but no luck.

So after this, Sven decided he would drive me past this intersection and on to the Swedish-Norwegian border another forty minutes. We chatted along the way about whatever his broken English would allow and while we go along I am starting to observe my surroundings and the thermometer in the car. As we got progressively further down the road, the thermostat in the car told me that the outside temperature had dropped from the -7 degrees it was in Narvik to a now nippy -20 degrees…. We also had not seen any cars coming in the other direction as the road took us higher into the mountains and all we could see around was snow. I was starting to wonder whether I had made the right decision about this but then figured… OK, border, there has to be shelter there, I will be fine.

When we arrived at the border there was a tiny hut on the side of the road and a couple of trucks. Sven recognized one of them and he told me to wait for him while he went to talk to his friend. After two minutes he ushers me over and introduces me to his friend, Cornelius. Cornelius said he would love to drive me the rest of the way to Abisko and so next thing you know, the shoes are off and I am lifted by two men up into this luxuriously decked out truck equipped with microwave, fridge, bed, speaker system and stereo and heated seats!

I said goodbye to and thanked Sven for his amazing kindness and we started out drive to Abisko. Cornelius was one of the most incredible people I had ever met. He is a Dutch National and has amazing stories about flying helicopters in different wars, racing horses in Spain, driving truck fleets in Germany, his small kids. It was one of the most enjoyable conversations I had had on the road in Europe and before I knew it, my time was up and we were pulling into a shop on the side of the road. He pointed up the hill to me over the train tracks to where the rest of the town was and I jumped out of the truck, thanked him and wished him well on his journey delivering dairy to the northern most parts of Norway and was left on my own on the side of the road.

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Happily arrived in Abisko, not dead 😀

I eventually found the backpackers hostel. I arrived about half an hour before Tim coming in from the other direction on a high because I did not know I could actually do it and yet I did. That was the start of my Arctic Circle adventure and it set the tone for the rest of what was to be my last couple of days overseas before returning home to Australia for the first time in two years. It was one of the most amazing places on the planet. And one of my favourites……

Read more about what I actually got up to once I made it to the Arctic Circle in the next installment!

 

Adventure, Life, Promotions

Being the Edo Elf

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So for those of you who aren’t familiar with this story, I found myself becoming somewhat of a Canadian celebrity of sorts. I wound up becoming the face of Edo Japan’s Christmas promotion to help out people and give back to the community. I am sitting at the hostel one day going through my emails for different promotions jobs and I get another email requesting for people to dress up as Elves and run around doing good deeds for people. They also wanted two people to do some photos and to do a small video showing off the good deeds for Youtube. Information wasn’t overly forthcoming but since I will literally give anything a try, I wrote back and said I would do it. They wrote me back and said. good work, you have been chosen. Meet us this day at the office and with hair and make up done and we will do the photos.

I arrive at the office and the usher me off to a professional photography studio with my friend Marco where we get fussed over to the max with heaps of direction and people playing with my clothes and hair and hat and it goes on and on. Massively professional photos to go on the webpage and in the restaurants. I am starting to get suspicious of the magnitude of this campaign….

Two days later and it is even more full on. There were hair and make up artists waiting for us with all of the camera crew at the Sunridge Mall and I am thinking, “Holy hell this is a production and a half!”. And it was. This is Marco and I hanging about waiting for the filming to begin and getting all doled up and elf like.

Marco and I spent all day filming different scenes of us helping out people that were set up and then they let us go about trying to get reactions from people in the mall. I call this phase ‘scaring the shit out of people’. We are skipping, clapping, singing Christmas songs at the top of our lungs, scaring people as they come out of elevators and just being all round excessive. It was amazing fun, and come the end of the day we had our interview…. one problem however. “Ummm…. we thought you were a Canadian. We didn’t want an Australian elf…. Can you do a Canadian accent?’ And so I gave it my best…. The shoot wrapped and I didn’t hear anything else much of it until about a month later when I am working handing out samples of Almond Milk at the womens show and I ran into one of the producers who had gotten the video sent to her the day before and she showed me. I was hysterical. I had no idea how good it was going to be or what it was going to be like, but this wound up to be the final product….

Spot The Edo Elf Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4RhYvVBtD8 

After going up on youtube, my friends thought this hilarious. People would play it, laugh at it, and play it again. It got to the point where that jingle song at the start of the clip became the sound track to my life I heard it so often.

About another week later I was working another promotion with a giant penguin at the airport when it happened. I found my first Edo Japan store since the photos got used in store. It was really strange and surreal at the same time. I kept staring at the jangly mobile thing on the ceiling as the workers stared at me and I said to them ‘That is me!’ and they said ‘No, it isn’t! It looks nothing like you!’ and so it continued. My first real trip into a proper store though was with Lisa and I was crazy. There were stickers of me on tables, trash cans, windows… it was mental! I did not imagine when I answered the email the magnitude of this campaign. I took cheesy pictures inside and even Elfed myself in Marco’s cardboard cut out 🙂

After this I got to do some of the street promotions. We spent another morning filming a segment for a news program to promote Edo Japan giving donations from their gift cards to the food bank over Christmas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ8oNsuXJfw

And then it began. The wonders of Stephen Avenue…. Stephen Avenue is full of the weird and wonderful. Marco and I all elfed up met a leprechaun, a man who told us he works for the Massad, a UPS guy who’s trolley we looked after, friends that came to point and laugh at us, and a whole array of homeless people or people who kept asking us what we were giving away for free and then told us to piss off when we said ‘help’. It was hilarious.

After a shift as the Edo Elf one afternoon I went to pick up my friend Lucas in the hospital after his surgery and he had been showing people the video when I roll in with my stick and sack full of costume. I got to meet and talk with some lovely people in the hospital and help to cheer them up. It was really nice to be able to give a gift card to some parents to go and have dinner courtesy of Edo Japan while they waited for their daughter to sleep in recovery. It was a super humbling job to help people doing things, but I have also discovered how little people like help these days. They always assume that you want something back in return for doing something nice, and maybe we as people can learn to give without expectation, but also how to be gracious in receiving.

Elfing people in the carpark by paying their parking meter fees!

Post this they gave me a whole bunch of stickers that I used to Elf people with around the hostel. I even tried to elf my friend while he was sleeping by putting stickers on his face. All around it was probably one of the funniest promotions jobs that I have had the pleasure of being a part of  and the best part is, nobody recognizes me or believes that is me! (Especially with the Canadian accent :P)

Adventure, Camping, Challenge, Life, Travel

Woman vs Wild meets Murphy’s 1st Law – Dano vs Algonquin Provincial Park

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Murphy’s 1st Law: “What can go wrong, will go wrong”.

Well I have to say that it appears that lately all good ideas start in Walmart…. sadly they also seem to end in Walmart. The original idea was to go there for cheap cereal and a $15 brie cheese wheel (850 grams, hell yeah, what a bargain!) Somehow, this wound up in the sporting isle staring up at a box on the top shelf containing the ‘Seahawk 2’, an ingenious vessel that was not only on sale for cheaper than you can hire a canoe for the weekend, but was destined to take us into the far reaches of the Algonquin Provincial Parks canoe routes for ‘the best and most adventurous weekend ever’. Or so we think……

Day one it starts hammering down with rain in the afternoon. So much for getting there early to set up, you can barely see the road in front of you trying to drive there and as such, we were delayed getting there until at least 8pm, just in time to set up right before dark.

So far, Nature 1, Woman 0.

Given that we were so late getting there, we did encounter some pretty spectacular things on the side of the road on the way. One of which was a turtle who had hiked his way up the side of the river bed and was starting to dig a hole in the sand in which to lay eggs. In the grand scheme of all things turtle/tortoise, he was named ‘Curtis the Turtoise’ (despite being a ‘she’ – as far as I am concerned, they are all named Curtis…. Jamie Lee Curtis is a girl…. anyway) and Curtis was just adorable.

“Curtis the Turtise 1, burying eggs in the sand”

We almost ran over another Curtis in the middle of the road. We literally scared the piss out of this little guy. He urinated the entire way off the road as we chased him away from the ‘squash zone’ and down the hill into friendlier territory.

Scared pissless – Curtis 2 crossing the road

After the Curtis hunt, we arrived at the park gate and tried to pick a campsites for the two nights we would be there. First night, easy. Second night on the paddling trip, we were like “yeah, we’re fit, we can row a blow up boat 10km down the stream to the Opulescent site out of the Barron Canyon! No problem!” It was the next day that this again proved to be a little optimistic, and the real ‘fun’ began.

Day Two of Dano vs Wild. We get up, pack the tent and all of the equipment we need into the blow up boat. It is at this point that things start to look dubious. To be honest, I don’t know how the hell we even decided that two people and a whole stack of food and camping gear for a night would fit comfortably in a blow up boat. Nonetheless, this is the outcome.

Covered under piles of gear in the boat. Cannot steer….

And after rowing no more than 2km down the way before realizing that not only is trying to row 10km in a Walmart blow up nearly impossible, but it is downright impossible when you have to portage through a stream of jagged rocks. In a kayak this would be possible. In a blow up Walmart boat, it is most certainly not. One may say this left me some what deflated…..

Reflecting on poor life choices….

Nature 2, Woman 0.

And so it was decided that the night would be spent at the last spot along the river before the rapids started and we dragged the boat up and set up home. The campsite was really awesome, very pretty and everything was set up fine and dandy. Then the dusk sets in and this is where woman vs nature really begins.

Let me firstly address the insects. Not only did I have Australian grade 40% DEET bug spray on me, but this seemed to no avail for some of these bitches. Whether it is the deer fly, the spiders or whatever supernatural mosquitoes, I managed to wind up with two golf ball sized swollen bites behind my ear and on the back of my neck, and one tennis ball sized swollen lump with two red fang marks in the side of my body.

Super venom kicking my arse… serious welting

Nature 3, Woman 0. 

And so then it starts getting on the dark side of life which then poses the question, what to do with the food and the scraps. It is bear country and I don’t particularly want to become bear food. So we took the tow line off the boat and tied a rock to one end in the hope of putting it over a tree to tie the food up. Then this happened……

The tow line of the boat stuck in a tree with a rock on the end of it….

Nature 4, Woman 0. 

I am pretty sure that by this stage Murphy is out there somewhere laughing his arse off. I sure was. For those of you whose eyes aren’t good enough to see, that is our rope stuck in the tree with the rock on the end of it. Which now poses the problem of what it is we are actually going to do with the food so that the animals and the bears don’t get it. So I come up with this amazingly inventive idea of burying the food and rubbish under a pile of very heavy rocks, which we finished building right as it got dark.

Can’t see our food? Awesome… totally hidden from bears and other animals…

The hope here was that there would be breakfast for tomorrow morning. But just in case a bear came, not that it would really have done anything much at all, we were equipped with bear fighting tools, ie. 1 big stick to poke him with, one biggish rock with which to throw at him, and one giant set of lungs with which to scream and yell and then run for your goddamn life.

Bear fighting tools

The sticks came courtesy of a beaver dam that had washed its way down the shore and this had landed just down the way from where we were camping. It made excellent firewood and so we burned this to stay warm despite the at times torrential downpour that we thought would hinder the process of making a fire whatsoever.

Nature 4, Woman 1.

And so it was time for bed. In the morning when waking up it was kinda like Christmas. Time to go and unwrap your rock wrapped presents to see if you can have breakfast this morning and much to my happiness, I found that despite the minor bite marks of the chippies through the rock crevasses, that food and garbage was all still intact and I got to eat my beef stew ration, chocolate milkshake and chocolate pudding desert for breakfast.

Yes! Still have food! Despite the tiny hole from the chippies

 

Nature 4, Woman 2. 

By this stage, despite Nature still having the upper hand in the situation, I felt like I was winning. How can you not be winning when you have food? So after a quick pack up it was back in the blow up boat and see you later to our home of a night as we let the current pretty much drift us half of the way back to the Achray lake entrance. It was a nice, workless float 🙂

Home on the hill

Nature 4, Woman 3.

So we made it back finally in our blow up boat, vowing never, ever again to attempt such a stupid thing in a blow up Walmart boat but to be non-stingy and invest in hiring a canoe next time. I also vouch to bring ten million cans of permethrin to kill any living insect (I am a nature lover, can’t you tell), and to also wear sunscreen on the way home in the boat. Nature had the last laugh you see by giving me sunburned thighs in retribution for my lack of paddling efforts on the way home. Not only that, but when I got home and took an antihistamine to make all my swollen bites go down, and all this achieved was in sending me into a drug-induced coma in which all I could mutter was ‘huh, whaaa, waaateerrr’. So in the end I think the final count was Nature 6, Woman 3. And despite Nature and Murphy having the last laugh, I was still also laughing because if you don’t laugh you cry right? That and the whole thing was just outright funny. I can say for sure though, I most likely haven’t learned my lesson, and that at some point in time, most probably in the near future, I will again embark on yet another bout of ‘YEAH!! That sounds like an AWESOME idea!” And if the past is anything to go by, it will be yet another hilarious disaster.

Til then x

 

Adventure, Challenge, Life, Travel

Bungee Jumping

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“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy” – Martin Luther King

And so I found myself standing at the end of a bungee platform. Words cannot express my terror. I was shaking. To jump or not to jump. The demon every bungee jumper is faced with. But despite my fear, my destiny was already predetermined by the decision I made in my mind. I WAS JUMPING.

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Standing on the ledge looking down. Terrified. Determined.

During the summer before I headed back to study my Graduate Diploma of Education at university, I decided to go on an adrenaline packed and whirlwind tour of New Zealand. I booked myself onto one of the hop on/hop off buses and was on my merry way. When we arrived in Queenstown, the bus stopped at the Karawau Bridge bungee, the first commercial bungee jump opened in the world by AJ Hackett, dare devil extraordinaire, and standing at 43m distance. Many of the people on the bus flat out refused to go. Only a couple of people out of twenty of us accepted the challenge of doing the jump. I was not one of them. I stood, in sheer terror watching as people one by one, hurled themselves off this bridge, including a 90 year old man who looked so frail that me might snap from the force of it. And then I did the only thing I know how to do. I made a decision that despite the fear I was going to do it. But I was not going to do the bridge jump, if I was going to do it, I was going to do the biggest one. I swiftly booked myself a ticket for the Nevis Highwire before I could back out and headed to my accommodation with the others.

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Karawau Bridge Bungee – the worlds’ first commercial bungee jump

In an attempt to take my mind off it, I went out to the pub for the night with my friends and returned home at about 2am with the knowledge I might get 6 hours sleep before I had to get up in the morning and go meet the bus for the dreaded bungee. But sleep was not to be. I tossed….. I turned…. I had knots in my stomach… I couldn’t breathe. Overnight I had worked myself into such a sheer state of panic that I didn’t know whether I could go through with it.

I got up and my friend walked me down the road to the bus. I hopped on it on my own with no support from friends I was with. This was my challenge and I needed to meet it head on. The entire way along the road the bus driver played ‘inspirational music’ for the bungee that consisted of ‘Jump’ by Van Halen and ‘Jump’ by Kris Kross and every other song that contained the word ‘jump’. It was then and there I decided. It didn’t matter how afraid I was. I was going to do it. On three, I had to relinquish control of my body and just go. There was no such thing as failure. I acknowledged the fear demon, but I wasn’t going to let it rule me.

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Waiting for the cable car to take us out the that small suspended hut… the bungee platform!

As we arrived and they put us into our harnesses that went over my legs and chest and then onto the cable car that took us out to the jumping platform. I had settled with an odd form of calm, of purpose. There were 18 of us jumping. And we had to jump in descending weight order. Being a tiny 61kg at that time, I was the second last person to jump. I had to wait and watch every other person before me go. And as more of them jumped, the pressure to jump myself continued to mount. And then finally it was my turn…..

I sat in the chair as they strapped the cuffs around my ankles and buckled me up. They stood me up, gave me my instructions and walked me out to the end of the ledge where I stood staring at a 134m bungee jump, the third highest bungee in the world at that time. Despite telling me not to look down, I did. It was an incredibly long way. “Mind over matter remember…. just breathe….” And so the count began. I looked forward. 3, 2, 1……. and then I just fell forward and let go…….

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The moment I let go of everything

The initial feeling of falling was a shock to the system. My stomach went straight to my mouth and I was freaked. Eight seconds of freefall. Just enough time to freak out, come to terms with what is happening, start to enjoy the speed, start freaking out about the fact that the bungee chord hasn’t taken yet, consider death, have your life flash before your eyes, and then the bungee chord takes up and there is relief, the realization that you are indeed not dead and that “wahoooooooooo!!!”, this is actually quite fun.

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After doing two bounces on the bungee chord, I had to reach up, pull the tag and release my feet so that I was held upright by the harness around my midsection. Once sitting upright, I got to take stock of the valley and the beauty around me while they pulled me back up to the platform. My face was bloodshot. Never before has that much adrenaline coursed through my veins. I had done it! I had faced one of my biggest fears, and I had won!

For the rest of the day I was so ramped on excess adrenaline I did not sleep for another 24 hours. It was the biggest buzz I have ever had in my life. Needless to say, this started the addiction I now have with bungee jumping. I went back to do the Karawau Bridge jump, just so that I could be dunked into the water at the end of it. It was a minor buzz compared to the Nevis Highwire but a buzz nonetheless. It would be years until I would come across my third bungee, the 143m Extremo Bungee in Monteverde, Costa Rica. The nerves were there, but the fear had lessened because I knew I could conquer it.

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Spot the adrenaline junkie… Waaaayyyy too much adrenaline!

But despite my lessened fear with these, but still fear nonetheless, there is still one thing left to do. The tallest bungee in the world. While this one is technically 230m tall and in Macau, China, my fear of Chinese safety standards has me somewhat concerned. So I agreed with my friend to go and do the 220m Bloukran’s Bridge jump in South Africa, the second tallest bungee in the world. But to make up for the extra ten meters and to see how much of a bad ass the other can be, this time we have upped the ante. He says he is going to do it naked. And he wants to be wrapped in snakes and scorpions to be extra bad ass…. somehow I think the snakes and scorpions won’t be allowed. But if you raise me a 220m bungee, I will see you that raise, and I will see you there naked!

Adventure, Challenge, Hiking, Travel

The Overland Track Part Three – The Final Descent

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Day Four

After climbing Mount Ossa it was time to get a move on to the Kia Ora Hut. My shoes and my pants were drenched from climbing Mount Ossa in the snow, namely from falling in holes and sliding down it on my butt. We were on limited time, my feet were aching and the track was terrible. There were many places filled with deep mud puddles, tree roots and really unstable track. I started to fret that I was not going to make it to camp as it got darker and darker outside. It got to the point where I could barely see where I was going and about to take my headlight out of my pack. With five minutes of daylight to spare, I rolled into the hut, cranky, tired and thankful that I was not trying to navigate bush in the dark .

The surroundings of the hut was full of animals and I saw a wombat and a couple of possums fighting with each other up a tree. Given the atrocious state of my shoes, I cut up my seating foam and made a pair of makeshift flip flops. My body is starting to adjust to the long distances and the pack. I actually felt pretty good at the end of the day before heading to bed.

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A possum kicking around the water tank

Day Five

Today was themed ‘Waterfall Side Trip Day’. The walking distance was only 9km between the huts but there were several small side trips to different waterfalls along the way. Despite the drenched shoes, I made pretty good pace and was feeling quite good.

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Du Cane Hut

The first waterfall that we went to visit was D’Alton Falls which were just spectacular. I could stand on the ledge that is the viewpoint all day and watch. The Ferguson Falls along the same track were also amazing, but not quite as good as these. Waterfalls in Tasmania are world class. As good as any I have seen travelling the world and totally pristine.

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D’Alton Falls

After a quick lunch, we moved on to the next waterfall, the Harnett Falls which were difficult to see at points, but the boys managed to scale their way down and along the river to get to a good vantage point.

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Harnett Falls

Another hour or so saw us arrive at the Bert Nichols Hut, which I must say is the Hilton of Overland Track huts. The place was huge, decorated with beautiful art decorations on the ceiling. On the walls was information about the man for which the hut was named. Bert Nichols, the pioneer of the Overland Track, the man who knew the countryside here best and mapped the track. Described as one of the “most cunning and most cleverest man who ever was” for his keen poaching and survival skills, Bert is one of the biggest reasons that this walk exists and it is now known as one of the best in the world today.

The only issue with this stunning hut is that there was no gas and as such, no heating at all throughout the entire building and the thermometer was reading at one degree celcius at six in the evening… It was destined to be a freezing cold night.

Day Six

The morning was stunning and clear with an immaculate view over the valley. It did however present with a few problems. Namely that overnight it got so cold that is froze solid both my shoes and my socks. It took me a good ten minutes of working the shoes with my barely warm hands to get them to become flexible enough to slide on my feet. And then so began the walking with feet that I couldn’t feel for a good part of the morning in the ice blocks.

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Morning view from the Bert Nichols Hut.

With lack of feeling in the feet, I managed to smash it out to Pine Valley Hut in record pace. The walk through was stunning and over the top of a couple of swinging bridges and through orange fields and beautiful rain forest along the way. We were hoping that it would be clear enough to climb to the top of the Acropolis, but by the time we got there the familiar cloudy haze had set back in and there was nothing to see from the top so we decided to go down the path a short way to a waterfall where the boys decided to entertain themselves with yet another underpants shot.

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Waterfalls on the Acropolis Trail

For the first time in six days, we had a coal heater with coal actually present in the hut. So the ten of us there hung all of our stinky clothes and boots out to dry and ramped up the heat. We sat around, played Yaniv, ate the last dehydrated meal of the trip and enjoyed the knowledge that there was only nine more kilometers to walk in the morning and it is all over.

Day Seven

The last day and it was the worst day for my feet. I woke up swollen from the top of my Achilles all the way down through my feet. It was painful and uncomfortable to walk but for some reason, the adrenaline of having nine kilometers to go and the familiarity of walking on sore feet made my body and mind adjust to the task before me.

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The stunning path with orange plants along the Pine Valley Trail

Within three hours retracing our way back along the Pine Valley Hut trail and then legging it the south on the trail we made it to Narcissus Hut and called the ferry to come and collect us. We sat out on the dock in the rain waiting for the boat that drove us across Lake St. Clair. It was over and we had done it! 90km. 6 days of walking. An amazing adventure! All that was left to do was to drive over the Central Highlands home via a stop at The Wall at Derwent Bridge, an amazing 100m long wall of wood carvings by a local Tasmanian artist detailing the history of the Tasmanian Central Highlands, and at the Deloraine bakery to devour two meat pies. Real food!

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Off the ferry at the end of the Overland Track, Lake St. Clair

Looking back on that week feels like a haze. It was one of the most mentally challenging and incredible weeks of my life. One that I am glad I decided to do. All there is left now are the pictures, the stories and the amazing memories. The pain of knees and feet and the mental slog lessens as the days have progressed until there will be no memories of that left at all. Just the memories of spectacular views, “going deep”, frozen shoes, cheeky birds and some amazing company along the way. This is what it is all about. This is life.

Adventure, Challenge, Hiking, Travel

The Overland Track Part Two – Mount Ossa, The Top of Tassie

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So I had to Google Mount Ossa and what it actually looks like later when I had gotten home because it was so overcast and cloudy that I could barely see most of it on the day we decided to climb it….. I didn’t know where the summit was, I had no idea where I was going. All I knew, was that I WAS GOING……

Mount Ossa on a clear day. Source http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Mount_Ossa_Tasmania.jpg

Day Four

Day four started with me spending half an hour strapping my feet with bandaids and sports tape to try and protect them, a feat which I later discovered was futile. It was a two hour journey from the Pelion Hut up to the Pelion Gap. From here you can do two side trips. You can chose the path to the left which leads you up to the top of the stick pile on the hill that is Mount Pelion East, or you can choose to be bad ass and take the path on the right which leads to the summit of the tallest peak in Tasmania, Mount Ossa, standing at 1617m…. despite not being able to see it.

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Mount Ossa somewhere in there…. obscured by quite a lot of low level cloud

So in the grand tradition of ‘don’t think, just do’, we took the path to the right. Firstly though, we had to cover our packs. Warning signs had been placed on the trails warning of the cunning currawongs, these glorious black birds that have evolved to learn how to undo zips on bags and go through all of your stuff. I put my pack cover over the top of my bag, put my bag down and started on my way.

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Cheeky Bird Warning

Not being able to see what it is that you are climbing exactly makes things a little ambiguous. At first I thought we were going up Mount Doris. But then I realized that it was not high enough and going to be too easy, so around the side of Mount Doris we went and there we were, at the foot of Mount Ossa, ready to go.

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Round The Side Of Mount Doris

About half way up, we started to encounter the snow and the low level cloud to the point where it became difficult to see anything more than the footprints in the snow in front of you, more snow and some rocks sticking out of it. The wind started roaring and it became difficult to climb. At one point I thought to myself, “I can’t do this. It is too dangerous. It is too windy. I can’t get up this channel that the wind is just beating down in”. Some of the girls we had been staying with in the hut came around the corner at the top and told us that the wind is not bad on the other side and all we had to do was to make it to the top of the narrow and windy alley. So we persisted. Slowly. Carefully. And eventually rounded the top of the wind tunnel into the haven of the wind-free other side of the mountain.

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On the face heading towards the central channel. The infamous wind tunnel….

From here it was another half an hour of walking. As the days had progressed we had laughed about ‘going deep’, a term that we used every time somebody stepped into a puddle so deep that the muddy water seeped over the top of your boot and down into your shoes. This half an hour of walking took the term ‘going deep’ to a completely new level. At times the footing was so unstable you would find yourself ass deep in snow with your feet stuck and you would literally have to climb your way out.

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“Going Deep”

At some point, the footprints in the snow stopped. And after consultation with the GPS, we realized that we were indeed at the top. 1617m, and the top of Tasmania. The boys took part in customary underpants photos and we started our way back down the hill.

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At The Summit of Mount Ossa, 1617m

Given the downward momentum and that it was pretty hairy trying to walk down for fear of ‘going deep’ it was easier for the most part to slide down the snow on your butt trying to avoid rocks. It was actually really fun and in some places you could work up a bit of speed. We rounded the bend into the giant wind tunnel again, managed to get down safely and continued back down the hill.

An hour later, the rest of the world appeared out of the bottom of the clouds and the surreal feeling of being in the snow in a white out disappeared. It was back to business as usual, back to the packs, and back on the trail to get to the next hut, the Kia Ora hut.

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The world reappearing from the under the bottom of a cloud

Only one thing was problematic….. those cheeky Currawongs! They had managed to evolve further to chewing through elastic to remove my pack cover, open my top zip, disperse my phone, wallet, toothpaste, hand sanitizer, toilet paper and anything else they could get their grubby beaks on all over the platform. Despite not being the only one who had their pack broken into for the day (it happened to about five people), I would never hear the end of it. “Forget being smarter than a fifth grader, because you aren’t smarter than a bird”.

Stay tuned for the final installment of the Overland Track……

Adventure, Challenge, Hiking, Travel

The Overland Track Part One…. And So The Adventure Begins

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6 days. 4 boys that call themselves the “Trail Smashing Mega Blokes” and a girl. Approximately 90km. Four waterfalls. One mountain summit. Voted one of the top ten walks in the world. Welcome to the Overland Track, deep in the heart of the Tasmanian Wilderness!

The Start Of The Overland Track At Ronny Creek

It had been on the bucket list for years and this time I decided that while spending some time at home I was going to do it! So I put out the call for others to come along on Facebook and found some friends from high school I hadn’t seen in years who were keen. That is it! We’re going! It’s on!

Day One

And so I set off in the 4WD through the amazing Central Highlands from Launceston to Lake St. Clair to meet up with the others coming up from Hobart. After meeting we drove the winding roads up through to the small mining town of Queenstown for lunch before continuing on to Cradle Mountain National Park.

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Queenstown Main Street

Post checking into our accommodation and organizing all of our packs and who was carrying what, came the last supper. Dinner consisted of a giant BBQ plate of meat, a luxury food not afforded to us for the next 6 days followed by the most ridiculous game of ‘spoons’ you have ever seen (spoons literally flying around the kitchen) and the last nights’ sleep in a real bed.

Day Two

I started the morning off with a Redbull poured into a glass and handed to me while I was still in bed. It was freezing and motivation at that point to get out of bed was low. Add the caffeine kickstart and we are up and at ’em!

We started at the Ronny Creek Car Park at 7:30am. Spirits were high, there was excitement in the air. We hiked through the grasslands up into the rain forest and then up around to the stunning views over Crater Lake. The packs were heavy and foreign on the backs but not too bad at that stage.  We persisted climbing up the side of a steep hill, hauling ourselves up with the chains supports to Marion’s Lookout with the incredible view of Dove Lake and the amazing Cradle Mountain, renowned for it’s cradle-like shape in the middle.

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Cradle Mountain

The steepest ascent and toughest part of the day was done. From here was a flat stroll through low level grasslands with some of the most breathtaking valley views I have ever seen in my life. To the left you hiked along the side of Cradle Mountain and to the right, there were the valleys and the amazing Barn Bluff, a mountain of jagged and sheer rock sticking up out of a curved hill like a pile of sticks.

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Barn Bluff

We followed the trail down until we reached the Waterfall Valley Hut. This is technically the end of the first leg of the Overland Track and we were here by noon and decided we would stay on for lunch. We were joined by a crew of three from France who had just summitted the Barn Bluff and we sat and ate together. At one point, we saw a random guy who was wearing nothing but a singlet, a tiny pair of shorts and a headband running around outside being all Rambo. For the rest of the trip, he became known as the ghost of the Overland Track from the 80’s. Nobody saw him again after that. Nobody knew where he went.

Given how early it was, we continued to proceed on the next leg of the Overland Track to Windermere Hut. It was a struggle and a hard push towards the end. The feet were starting to hurt. The pack was wearing through on the back. But 8km later we made it. It was around an 18km day of hiking, and putting the pack down had never felt better. With some herb and cheese gnocchi for dinner smashed down, it was early to bed with the thirteen of us in the hut and a pretty restless sleep.

Day Three

The longest single leg of the Overland Track from the Windermere Hut to the Pelion Hut was today. The weather unlike the day before was average with little to no visibility. So it was a long, hard and incredibly muddy slog, through the Pine Forest Moor, through the Frog Flats and down to the Pelion Hut. At one point I started freaking out that I was not going to make it there before it got dark considering that my feet had gotten so sore that they were slowing me down quite a lot. We eventually arrived though and I had never been happier.

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Through the Pine Forest Moor

The views from the balcony overlooking the mountains from Pelion Hut were incredibly calming and beautiful. I chose to sit out here and pop the many blisters I had acquired that day in an attempt to dry them out for the next day. There were around thirty people staying at the hut including quite a few families which surprised me given that it is quite perilous hiking the Overland Track in winter. The boys and I sat, ate an amazing dehydrated Laksa for dinner and I taught them how to play Yaniv, a game we became well acquainted with during the trip. Sleep was easier on the second night, but still fairly restless.

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Views out from the Pelion Hut

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Overland Track……