I have long since adopted this philosophy since I met a very wise and drunk Irish friend in New Zealand that there is no plan is a good plan, but instead it should be an outline. One of those hazy wiggly lines with which you can bend about to fit things in without shading in the entire shape to make it solid and inflexible.
So my flexible wiggly outline this time involves a one way ticket to Indonesia, and a booking to hike Everest Base Camp at the end of March. When originally sitting down to plan my way back off to the glorious travel land, I was going to head back to Canada through Hawaii because it is cheaper to go via Hawaii than direct and then I would head to South America to teach English and learn more Spanish.
My friend Bec then messages me one day saying she wants to go on a holiday and how do I feel about Asia somewhere in the school holidays? So after sitting and researching all of the amazing temples in Java, the spectacular volcanoes, komodo dragons, beaches, I set my heart on Indonesia. And then Bec told me she didn’t have enough holidays accrued at work. So I planned other things and figured I would get to Indonesia on my own when I left Australia and then it would be cheaper to go through the Philippenes back to LA and then down to South America…..
One random Friday afternoon after work, Jetstar announced a 4 hour only sale of $99 one way tickets from Melbourne to Bali. And so I messaged Bec, said ‘will you have enough holidays in December?’ she says yes and on a random whim we book cheap tickets. And so ‘planning’ part one had begun.
I also a couple of weeks after this in amongst the height of other friends carrying on about the giant deal and stress of pending 30th birthdays and how old we are all getting and the rest, another friend messages me with this 66% off Groupon to go and hike Everest Base Camp. So I was like, well, I will be in Asia, that is close enough. I can’t think of anything else better to do for my birthday than hide in the Himalayas where I don’t have any internet and don’t have to deal with the fuss of it. Let’s go hike Mount Everest! So in a random spur of the moment event, I booked that.
At this point in time I realize that I am now further away from Hawaii, the Philippenes, South America… all the places I planned on going originally and that this is going to put me at a point where I will be in my last years of potentially having work visas. And so the squeeze of 30 finally sets in. Not because I feel old, but because the governments of specific countries stipulate that over 30 is too old.
So now I sit with the idea that “Well, I am in Nepal, so I may as well go to India and travel there. Then I may as well go get a work visa for either Canada or the UK again. Hell! Why not get both just to keep my options open!?” And so all of a sudden I find myself getting further and further away from the original plan of South America and yet I am still super excited! I know one day South America will happen, but given my flightiness, my need to get as much done with work visas while I still can, and my constant deviations of original ideas, I guess ‘planning’ a trip is one of those things that I am good at and yet not good at. I somehow spontaneously managed to come up with this outline. What I will do when I get there is yet to be determined, but there is an outline nonetheless…. I am sure that that outline will get more contorted somehow, but either way, it is going to be a fun ride! And you can follow along with me to see just how contorted ‘not planning’ can become!
Sometimes in this life you need to recognize when the higher powers are throwing lemons at you and saying ‘Come on! Juice me! Make lemonade!’
So on this one particular day I am making my way down the street on my way home after getting little work flyering during the week and having just paid my last rent check for a week. I have ten dollars burning a hole in my wallet and this is literally all I have to my name. That and the eighty one cents that I have in my bank account that I probably can’t withdraw. The plans are wandering through the brain…. “What exactly can I get in Chinatown for ten dollars that will feed me for three and a half days until I get paid? Mmmm…. 5 for $1 rice vermicelli noodles, Mr. Noodles, maybe even splurge and get a banana….. a person does need some vitamins.”
As I ponder these things I walk past a restaurant which has in the window ‘dishwasher for tonight needed’. “Oh hell yes!” I think to myself and I walk inside. “Hi! You need a dishwasher?”
“Yes. Are you a dishwasher?” he responds.
“I can be. What is the going rate?” I say.
“Ten bucks an hour for 8 hours. Maybe more. It is our closing night before we do renovations” he tells me.
“Feed me and you have yourself a deal.” I said.
‘Done! You can start now”.
So before I know it I am hustled up to the back of this kitchen and decked out in aprons and other fun things that are ‘chef like’ that are way too over-sized for me. Then I am shown around the kitchen. “Here is your hose to wash things off, here is your dishwasher, here is your bucket with a cloth, start washing walls”. Argh, shitful…. anyway. That is when the fun started and Alberto says “What would you like to eat?”.
So I tell him “I will eat whatever”. So my new best friend Alberto comes back with this salad with balsamic vinegar soaked strawberries and prosciutto that tastes more like heaven than any salad I have ever had in my life. I ate like a woman possessed who hadn’t been fed in about ten years and got back to cleaning some dishes. Then Roberto says to me ‘before it gets busy, maybe I can make you some food?’ Ummmm…. hell yeah you can make me some food! So then I wind up with a pasta covered in parmesan and olive oil with prawns and garlic. Amazing!
So then the real work began. And it was flat out. It was such a busy night that I struggled to keep up with things, but what made it all the more fun was that I got to listen to flamenco music playing live from just outside of the kitchen and it was incredibly uplifting. I was floating on air given that several hours earlier my options were Mr Noodles, Mr Noodles and more Mr Noodles. So I washed and danced in a state of merriment and before I knew it, it was getting on towards close time. Things were winding down. They had some desert left over from the night. Hello caramel flan!! I will have two of you thank you!
What is even better is that at the end of the night they had food in the fridge that they were going to throw out as they were closing for the renovations. Like a mad woman hoarder I am stuffing sliced oranges, tiramisu, chopped vegetables, half a prosciutto leg and whatever else I could get my hands on into multiple shopping bags. I must have looked like the biggest scab of a homeless person ever. If I felt that I could have carried more I probably would have stuffed another flan in my bra! But needless to say I finished up my night of washing, thanked them kindly for everything and headed home at 2am with my $80 cash in my wallet and my bags of goodies.
It is funny to think of how quickly the tides can turn in some situations. Eight hours ago I was walking down the street contemplating Mr Noodles flavours, and at 2am, I am happier than a pig in shit trotting down the street with all of my food and money with a flamenco music band dancing around in my head shaking my booty. Most of the patrons on the street probably thought I was drunk I was so goddamn ecstatic. Life couldn’t have been better! And neither could my stomach!
Ugh, pack, unpack, repack, need this, don’t need that, oops, maybe I do need this, now that doesn’t fit, unpack, repack……. rinse, lather, repeat. You would think by now that for someone who has done this for years at a time that I would have this shit sorted, but me!? No way, I still always pack waaaaayyyyy too much, and a whole bunch of crap that I don’t need and hoard for ‘just in case’ because I am like my mother.
So anyway, I have this whole journey planned out so far that you can stay tuned for in upcoming years let alone months, because lets face it, when I go, I actually go proper! In not coming back for quite a while and trying to plan for all of the potential adventures I may get up to, I have to seriously think about what I pack. So far on the list of my first six months gone I have plans to go to Indonesia, climb a couple of massive volcanoes on overnight hikes, take a boating trip through komodo and make my way overland to Jakarta where I will fly my way out to Nepal, probably through Thailand. In Nepal I will then hike to Everest Base Camp and then spend some more time in Nepal trekking before I make my way to India. After India, who knows….
Anyway, I need to think about what to pack for everything from trekking mountains in -25 degrees Celcius, to sitting on a beach in a bikini. So I have made a giant list of things that I will need including, sleeping bags, roll mats, liners, thermals, hats, gloves, scarves, bikinis, sunscreen, bandaids, duct tape, towel, hiking boots, going out shoes, flip flops, jeans, shorts, t-shirts, long sleeve shirts for mosquito ridden areas, shorts, socks, bras that don’t shrink in dryers, underpants, travel medications……….. ugh! And so the list goes on…. Even bigger than the list of things to pack is the list of things to do before I go and it is even more overwhelming.
My recent two week holiday with travel sized suitcase has seen me purchase too many things whilst gone and having to pay for luggage on the way home because it is no longer under 10kg and somehow in this weather I don’t think I can get away with hiding laptop computers down my pants, phones and cameras in my pockets and all heavy objects in my handbag disguised given 1. It is too damn hot and 2. There has recently become quite stringent checking process in some Australian airports given that both airlines are running at a loss. (The laptop down the back of the pants did happen by the way on a Ryan Air flight in Europe… thank goodness it was -20 outside… easy to hide under winter coats!)
The other issue that I have with packing is that I am literally an ox. A pack horse. My friend says to me all the time, “if you pack it, you carry it”. Well my issue is that I can carry approximately 50kg, a substantial percentage of my body weight and if I don’t learn to curb my spending and excessive packing I will be like I was coming home from Asia with a whole new wardrobe, bed spreads, presents for nieces and nephews… I am like, only a month to go, I can carry it! You couldn’t even see me hidden underneath the piles of bags that I was carrying.
So this time I don’t want to do this…. I don’t want to overpack, I don’t want to carry it just because I am strong and I can, and I don’t want to overpurchase. So I guess what I am trying to say is… “HELP!!” Kill my teacher need to be excessively overprepared for all situations and get my pack down to 12-15kg! And so the challenge begins……..
For any long time traveler out there, you will know exactly what it is that I am talking about. The Backpackers Big Four are those four big questions that all backpackers seem to ask each other as we live in this giant little bubble that serves to isolate us as we trek on down the road. A standard first conversation will generally go something like this….
Backpacker: “Hi! How are you? Where are you from?”
Me: “Australia”
Backpacker: “Oh cool. How long are you traveling for?”
Me: “Don’t know. One way ticket.”
Backpacker: “Oh my God, that is so amazing! Like, so where have you been so far?”
Me: “From Mexico down to here in Costa Rica.”
Backpacker: “That is crazy! Where are you going next?”
Me: “Don’t know. Probably back to Canada.”
Backpacker: “That sounds so amazing!”
I don’t know about you other long term backpackers out there, but I have had this conversation about a million times. And as we would say in Australia, it gives me the shits! (No I do not have diarrhoea, this literally just means that it annoys me immensely).
The Backpackers Big Four Questions are:
“Where are you from?”, “Where are you going? “, “Where have you come from?” and “How long are you travelling for?”
Note that in among these questions, one of the most basic common courtesies gets left out. And that is the question “What is your name?”. Half of the time people don’t even ask. They just drop the big four and everyone goes off to the pub and has an awesome time.
There are multiple issues that I have with this standard structure of backpackers introduction. Firstly, it often does not allow for or lead to any kind of in depth discussion for the most part on deeper topics. Half of the people I meet traveling don’t even know where to take a conversation after the Big Four and this is frustrating because it never allows you to get to know a person with any kind of substance. You never really get to know a person at all based on these questions.
My second issue with this standard structure is that once you get off the road after a year and try and go back to normal society, you seem to lose your conversational skills. Meet someone in a bar that is kinda cute and you want to go talk to them…. well you can’t drop the Big Four at them, because we are no longer in ‘Travel-land’ so how do you go about this? Ummmm…. I don’t know…. I apparently lost my conversation opening skills…..
As a traveler/backpacker, I implore you to think outside the box. Try asking people about their family, their passions, their challenges. Talk about history, culture, scientific discoveries, current affairs. Talk about things that you are passionate about. Make a joke. Talk to locals about their lives and what is going on in the area. Discover. Or otherwise you are just feeding into the never ending cycle of tourists who go on these trips, spend their entire time on the road drunk, learn nothing about the people they are with or about life and think they know and understand everything about the world.
To grow, you need challenge. So think up some new conversation topics and give them a go. Try and try again. Develop your ability to have conversations with people in a rich and fulfilling way that doesn’t feel like groundhog day every time you set foot into the next backpackers hostel. Have conversations where you can learn something new and of substance. Have conversations that will challenge your ways of thinking about things and that challenge and change who you are. And better still, when you start these conversations, open with the most important question that you should ask every time and never forget….. “What’s your name?”
Once upon a time in a land far away there was a group of backpackers from countries all round the world that would congregate in backpackers hostels and discuss life, politics, culture and important issues that faced them in this growing world. They would talk to locals about issues that faced them within their society. They would take an interest in volunteer projects, the environment and discovering the world around them. They were respectful of cultural differences and wanted to learn about how others live. They learned the languages of the people they were going to encounter so that they could communicate with as many people as possible in order to learn and grow within themselves…..
Unfortunately, this story doesn’t end with the happy ever after that most fairytales begin with, rather it continues with today’s generation making a mockery of the legacy that the founders of backpacking laid before them. Today backpacking has morphed into this disgusting display of cultural insensitivity as backpackers move their way from place to place on their Contiki tour bus with the main objectives being getting as drunk as one possibly can, getting high on cheap drugs and having sex with as many different nationalities as possible AKA the “International Whoring Mission” (or IWM for short).
Now while I won’t sit here and be a hypocrite and say that I haven’t engaged in some of these activities while I have been travelling, this does not shape my entire outlook of what it is that travel should be as it does for quite a large number of people. The amount of times I have met people who are all about getting smashed every night of the week and never actually make it out during the day time to experience their surroundings is huge. The only place they ever seem to go is the pub and when you ask them what good attractions there are to see around the place, the only thing that they can tell you about was ‘how cool the bar I went to last night’ was. They actually appear shocked when they ask how your day is and you tell them you just got back from surfing, rock climbing or caving and they want to know how you managed that hungover…. ummm… well I didn’t because “shock horror”, I didn’t drink last night! (OMG!)
Now while these people sit around nursing their hangovers, I generally scour the place for people to actually have an adult conversation with that aren’t sitting there with their heads buried so far into Facebook, their phones, some form of downloaded television or other technological device. It appears that the definition of being social these days has gone from ‘sitting around and actually talking to people’ to ‘sitting around and talking to people on the internet instead of the people that are sitting right in front of you’. I get so frustrated with this that I want to scream at people ‘put your goddamn phone down and actually be present where you are!!!’ It is annoying, it is isolating, and it defeats the entire purpose of travelling to meet people if all you are going to do is sit on your arse and type away to people at home.
Speaking of being present in your situation…. Back in the days where people didn’t have iPhones and digital cameras, they used to think very carefully about what they were taking pictures of and these were respected and valued. After they took their one photograph, they were present in their environment and what was going on around them. It is one of the most amazing experiences to “just be” and to let your eyes see and filter the spectacular things going on around you. It is in a way spiritual. In no such way does this spiritual event occur when you are living your life through a lens, which so many people today do. They just sit there taking photo after photo after photo and don’t open their eyes to actually see what is in front of them because it is more important to catch it on film so you can post it to Facebook or Instagram to show people how cool your life is in an attempt to gain as many ‘likes’ as possible for your own self gratification.
One of the biggest changes in backpacking between it origins and now is that key word ‘RESPECT’. Some people who read this may be like ‘what does she mean by RESPECT?’ Well here is what I mean…. Firstly, put some clothes on. If you are in a conservative country, the locals don’t care to see you running around with your arse hanging out of your shorts as you parade around in your bikini tops or boardies with no shirt on. If you want to carry on like that, go home. All it does is alienate the locals and make them hate tourists. Take Bali, Indonesia for example. Majority of the population there are Hindi and Islamic and quite reserved. And yet so many backpackers view this place only as a place they can go to get pissed cheaply every night and run around with no clothes on. Look at the locals. What are they wearing? Do they run around wearing practically nothing? If not, maybe you need to assess whether this is respectful and start dressing like the locals do when you are out and about in public.
Secondly, I meet people who go travelling long term and still can’t speak a word of the language that the locals speak despite having been there for several months. I am sorry, but you can’t just go around expecting that everyone will speak English or your native language just to accommodate your needs as and entitled backpacker. It is just not on. At least make an effort. Get a phrase book, take a course for a week if you are planning on staying for a while and bother to make the effort. Not only will it endear you more to the locals, but they will be more likely to want to help you and get to know you if you actually show an interest in who they are, their language and what they are about instead of where it is you are going to get your next beer from. It is a part of the fun and challenge of travel. Get the brain flexing. Learn something. Start with the language.
Thirdly, I would like to address what is commonly known as ‘PDA’s’, or ‘public display’s of affection’. I don’t care where it is that you live in the world, nobody needs to see you groping and dry grinding another person in public. Yet for some reason when people find themselves overseas and on ‘vacation’ or ‘holidays’, this small courtesy to the rest of society seems to go out the window with the first vodka. And so begins the ‘right’ for drunk travellers to basically ‘do it’ wherever they are because that means you are cool and it is what everybody else does. Like, YOLO! (dripping sarcasm intended).
Next time you embark on a trip, seriously think about what it is that you are going for. If you are going somewhere merely to get wasted, hook up, behave poorly and disgrace yourself and your nationality, maybe you should consider staying at home instead because these are all things that you can do there. It is an embarrassment to the small minority of us left that like to travel like those of old with eyes wide open, hands to ourselves and in a conscious way that respects the cultures of the locals in the countries we choose to visit. It is a sad and sorry day for those who pioneered backpacking ventures so that we could explore our beautiful world, it’s surrounding and celebrate and share the differences between our cultures. It has now been molded into a giant drug and alcohol-induced orgy where people learn nothing about where it is that they have gone to visit. If you choose to behave like this when you travel, then maybe you need to consider a change in your perception and the ways in which you travel. Either that, or stop embarrassing yourself and just go home.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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…….
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Thomas Takes On.... 