Tasmania pictures never seem to end...

...and that's ok with me.

Tasmania Day 4

Bay of Fires.  There are many many beaches in the Bay of Fires, we only went to one, and I can't imagine they got better than this one.  Bay of Fires in general is rated by Lonely Planet as the 2nd or 3rd most beautiful beach in the world.  They expect tourism to Tasmania to sky rocket in the coming years because of this.  We were literally the only ones one the beach, it will be a shame if they become all crowded with tourists (notice how I dislike tourists, but this does not include myself, lol).

I really wish I was better at the jumping pictures!  I just can't jump high, definitely not as high as Melissa, holy geez girl!  From right to left, Marna, Melissa, me, Danielle, and Caitlin. I became really good friends with these girls!  6 days on a bus without tv, internet, phone, work, uni, or any other distractions will do that to ya!

Leave only footprints.  I think this is proof that I have the cutest little feet ever :)

 This one is kind of my favorite, but I didn't realize it would be when I took it.  We just had to walk through this tiny wooded area to get to the giant orange rocks at the other end of the beach.

 

More feet.  I am a Pisces after all.

I like this picture a lot :)

 But this series is better.  I've only included the furthest and closest 

I'm in Tasmania!

Just like the picture of Marna at Ocean Beach...I wish that was me off in the distance.  But it's not (obviously I hope), it's Pavel.

From Bay of Fires we headed to Bicheno, where we had another nice house to stay in and Matt made us a lovely dinner :)

This is by no means a flattering picture, but proof that we did have didjerdoo lessons, and I sucked at it.  It seemed simple enough, until you actually try to suction the mouth piece around your entire mouth and make raspberry sounds with your mouth. Very difficult.

Day 5

The next day a group of us got up early to see sunrise since we were back on the east coast.  We went to find the whalers look out and failed, so we found some nice rocks to sit on instead.  Again with the feet...though this time its cool cuz my shoes match the water.

Bicheno sunrise.  This was all the color we got however because of the clouds.

My friends again :)  Danielle, Caitlin, Melissa, Marna, and Pavel.

About an hour or so after sunrise the clouds cleared, crazy bright sun.

Bicheno Blowhole. Its not actually a blowhole at all.  The waves are pretty powerful here and the rocks are laid out in such a way that the water sprays up.  Pretty cool actually.

Blowhole Chicken.  How close do you dare go?

From Bicheno we went south to Wine Glass Bay.  To get to the look out point you had to climb an even yet quite steep path.  This was your reward:

From there we had to climb down the mountain.  Not nearly as strenuous as Cradle Mountain, it was more like walking down rock stairs for a long long time.  The down part was easy, coming back up took a lot more cardiovascular strength, but the beach was awesome and I got to spend some girly gossip time with Melissa which was also awesome!

Seriously big waves.  (psst..what do you think of my skinny jeans?)

Unintentionally on everyone's part the last part of the trip was heavy on alcohol related activities, lol.

We had been drinking James Boag the whole time we were there, which is a Tasmanian brewed beer, but its not Tasmanian owned.  So we tried this Moo Brew that is both Tasmanian owned and brewed.  Caitlin and I shared one, it had this weird banana like flavor.  It was good though.

Then we stopped at a family run winery.  I bought a bottle of Tasmanian wine, mostly because tour groups get a bad name at wine tastings because people taste and don't buy.  It's good wine :)

From the winery we headed to Port Arthur which has three things, a general store, a penal settlement, and great views:

Just about sunset.

This bay, the name I can't remember, has some of the biggest waves (if not the biggest waves) in the world.  The best surfers in the world will come out here, but you can only get out to waves by boat, and you need a wave runner to get back out.  And those rocks looks freaking scary as hell.  Surfers are insane.  We didn't see any massive waves, but apparently they get up to like 15m (which is about 45 ft)

Remarkable cave.  I think its a clever and straight forward name.  I thought it was pretty remarkable the way there's just a path between the rocks and the waves come all the way in.  Then Matt pointed out the real reason its called the Remarkable Cave.  Which is because the hole between the rocks looks an awful lot like the island of Tasmania.  Pretty remarkable.

We now return to regularly scheduled blogging

Tasmania Day 2

This was my room the first night. Not the most interseting photo, but I did want to show that the accomodation on the trip was actually really nice.  Adventure Tours owns houses in almost every town we stopped in, each one I could have happily stayed in for a week.

Outside the house Matt showed up a Huon Pine.  Google it.  It is probably the most interesting tree you could imagine.  It is a natural bug replent, therefore is the best wood EVER to make boats out of.  And thats what settlers did for a long long time.  Making this tree almost extinct.  Which is also a shame because it is the oldest tree foudn on earth as well as the longest living.  They found one that was 10,000 years old.  Its not illegal to cut down a Huon pine, but they still have some left over from harvesting it before (like 120 years ago) and they use the leftover wood to make crafts and gagets.  They have enough Huon Pine to last 20 years, after that its tough luck, no Huon Pine for you.  I would have bought everyone something made of Huon Pine, but its crazy expensive.  As it turns out, I bought Dad something of Huon Pine, being the horticulturalist that he is...the problem is that I really like it, and may not be giving it up!  It keeps bugs out of my room, smells nice, and holds my pens and pencils!!

Here is a close up of Huon Pine.

This is Strahan.  They have a train. Trains and Huon Pine.  Supposedly after the railway closed down from Queenstown to Strahan, the people asked for a road to connect the two cities.  But the government said it would be too expensive because it would require a lot of bridges.  Strahan asked if they paid for all the bridges, would the state build the road, the state said yes.  The people of Strahan got together with maps and linked all the old mining roads from Queenstown to Strahan, therefore requiring no bridges.  They got their road.  And it is the windiest road in Australia.

Then we went to Ocean Beach.  7km on a dirt road to get here.  No one else was here.  And it was gorgeous.  Even with the drizzle and ominous clouds...I think they made it even cooler.  It definitely did feel like the edge of the world.  This is the west coast of Tasmania, the closest land mass to the west is Argentina.  Because of this they have the purest air and water in the world.  They also have unpredictable and strong weather because there are no land masses to get in the way.

Proof that I was there, lol.

Marna at the edge of the world.  I just really like this photo and wish that was me way out there.

Pavel from the Czech Republic, me, and Danielle from Denver

Henty Sand Dunes.  (they are actually quite steep)

We were waiting our turn to go 4wheeling in the sun shining rain.  By the time it was our turn the rain had stopped!  Which was great cuz we got to dry off!

Can't they make flattering helmets?

Leaving the Henty Dunes we got stopped by loggers deforesting the area.  They took about 4 trees down before letting us cross.  Cool to watch, not cool to kill the forest though!

Matt was pointing out Wombat poop.  No joke.  There some story about it.  It's square. Something to do with evolution. 

 Enchanted Forest walk.

This picture is one of my favorites.  It barely shows how cool and mysterious the forest looked.

A wallaby.  They were all over the place.  After you see two they aren't that interesting and they kind of look like giant rats.

Tasmania Day 3!

I climbed a freaking mountain! 

This is the beginning of Cradle Mountain.  We went about 300m up.  The summit is about 450m.  We didn't go all the way up because the rain made it dangerous, slowed us down, and we wouldn't be able to see through the clouds anyway.  300m was high enough!

The views were great, and this was only about a 1/4 of the way up.

Wombat Pool, not big enough to be a lake.  There were dozens of lakes around.

At this point we're thinking "we're going where?  Oh why didn't we take the exit route?!"

Caitlin is from Jefferson Park!!!  About a mile or less from my apartment in the City!

This part was flat so we flew past it trying to not lose sight of the others in front of us in the cloud. I was really giddy at this point thinking in my head, "I'm in a cloud, on a mountain, in Tasmania!  I rock!"  Even my thoughts aren't modest :)

Filling our water bottles from the mountain spring.  Which is plain awesome. The water is soo clean!  Matt made sure we didn't fill our water bottles until we got to top..no worries, no one was polluting our water source!

We were the last of the group.  me, Caitlin, Pavel, and Melissa.  There was some great team work, and Pavel was our perfect Czech gentleman always going in front and guiding us through.  Maybe I should try to find me a Czech man?!

That strip of land on between the lakes is where we started.

Very very steep and wet

Straight down!  Nothing to hold but the chain.  And its was super windy!

But no worries, I'm all chillaxed.

Not so much from that angle, lol.

After the rocks, we were suddenly in a rain forest.  Crazy Tasmanian mountain!

The view from the bottom :)

Climbing Cradle Mountain is by far the coolest and most rewarding thing I have ever done!  And I owe a lot to Melissa who convinced me that I could do it (after Matt put the fear of God into us).  I kind of feel like now that I've done that I can do anything (though I learned that that is not true after my ocean misadventures this past weekend).