Diving in the Great Barrier Reef

I forgot the idea about going diving to Cod hole and chose a budget choice instead. Jonas had booked 3-day/2night diving trip through Cairns Dive Centre. The trip included 10 dives and cost a bit less than 500aud in total. Pretty fair price to dive in top spots and live on a boat.

We headed out to the Great Barrier Reef on Tuesday morning with a smaller vessel to meet our bigger boat M.V.Kangaroo. The sea was quite rocky so some people got seasick. When we arrived on the Kangaroo we got a budget cabin with Swedish guy but there was a little leak in cabin so we got a nice upgrade to upper class with big room with a/c and bigger bathroom. Good luck. A/C felt like freezer though because me and Jonas were both used to live in our cars(no aircon).

The wake ups were at 5:30 and the first dive was at 6am. Other dives were usually at 8am, 4pm and nightdive at 7pm. Diving four times a day is really exhausting and even though there was a bar onboard were usually crashed out after a beer or two.

We went diving on three different spots: Moore Reef, Milln Reef and Briggs Reef. The first one was pretty crappy because usually all the day-trips go to Moore reef and tourists had pretty much messed up all the corals. Milln Reef on the other hand was really great with heaps of marine life and good visibility. We saw heaps of turtles, white-tip sharks and other reef sharks, stingrays, lionfish and many other. We were offered a internship place onboard to work out our divemaster degrees. It would take around 75days though and included 41days working. I had to reject in my lack of time but if I would have more time that would be a great option to do.

I'm leaving to Darwin in couple of days. I'm probably gonna pick up two German guys who were looking a lift for Darwin. This should save me a fair amount of petrol costs for almost the 3000km journey.

Cairns

Cairns is one of the major backpacker towns here in Australia. I have spent here few days now with James and there's pretty good parties here regardless of the night. I'm still considering of the scuba diving option to go diving on Cod Hole which is supposed to be one of the best places to dive in Australia and is in top10-ranking in the World. 4 day, 11 dive trip costs 650aud which isn't much for a normal traveller but for a backpacker...Let's see what's gonna happen.

My digital videocam stopped working in Fraser island so I made a little bit research on the internet and was happy to found that Sony should repair it free. I was lucky because I went to video cam repairs as well and they told it's atleast 130aud just to look for the camera. Now I can go there and show that Sony will pay the expenses. All the information about bad ccd problem can be found at:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/badccds.html
http://www.sony.com.au/articles/article.jsp?articleId=3653&categoryId=23816#

I managed to buy my flight tickets to Finland on January. I'm leaving Australia 3.1.2007 and flying to Kuala Lumpur. I have 23 days time to spend in Asia and I'm leaving Kuala Lumpur 26.1.2007 and fly through Vienna to Helsinki. It's exactly a year ago when I was in the Asia last time but now I'm not making too big tentative plans. My only plan is to go to Thailand to see Krabi and surrounding areas and do some diving.

I got some pictures from my previous travels from Abel Tasman national park in New Zealand and the Whitsunday cruise.





The last picture shows Canadian James standing on left, me with a green shirt, Swiss Jonas with gray shirt and German Andy with brown shirt. Captain Andy is standing in the middle.

From Airlie beach to Cairns

It was too windy to do the Yongala wreck dive so we skipped the whole thing. Andy and Jonas wanted to go hiking to one of the islands but they had to wait 3 days and pay 60aud for the ferry to do that. Me and James felt lazy and headed towards Mission beach instead.

Mission beach has a really nice beach but no surf so we were not really interested to spend any time there. We checked out the nightlife on Friday evening and there was around 10 people in the bar. We decided to move on.

From Mission beach we took an inland road towards Atherton tablelands national park and saw really nice waterfalls, rainforests and camped next to a big reservoir lake. I would highly recommend this national park to anyone who is going towards Cairns since you can see so much in one day.

Now we're here in Cairns with James and we're gonna spend some time here because both of us has quite a lot things to take care of. I need to buy my flight tickets back to Finland, service my car and maybe find some persons who would like to travel in my van to Darwin. Andy and Jonas should join us next week and then we're heading together towards Darwin and Western Australia.

Stats: So far I have travelled a month and around 3000kms after I left Newcastle and around 15000kms ahead. I haven't spent any money to hostel nights so the van is paying itself back every day.

Sailing the Whitsunday islands

Went sailing on Whitsunday islands for 3 days/2 nights with Swiss Jonas, German Andy and Canadian James and had a great time sailing, snorkelling and relaxing at the whitehaven beach. There was 24 people onboard and the whole group played together really well.
On the first snorkelling site I managed to spot a quite big maori wrasse called Elvis which I followed for a long time. On the second spot the snorkelling wasn't too special since big tourist groups had pretty much messed up all the corals but it was still fun since I was lucky to be snorkelling with a French girl Bene who was a divemaster(and a swimming instructor) and could spot me some interesting things in water. We also spent some time at the Whitehaven beach which has the most finest sand I've ever seen and it's all really white.


Sailing itself was an awesome experience too, since we had a good 20-30knots wind in the last day. Perfect for the 81ft maxi racing yacht called Condor which really tilted into steep angle when we raised all the sails. "Condor is perhaps the most famous Maxi yacht in history, having won every major ocean race in the world twice. Condor is the only yacht to have achieved this distinction. These races include the Sydney to Hobart, Fastnet, Bermuda races and the World Maxi Championship - just to name a few!"
When balancing on the edge of the tilted ship with seawater splashing on my face, I made a decision to buy a big, fast sailing boat in future when I own a big multinational company and sail across the world.

The whole trip cost me 255aud at the standby rate, worth the money. Now I'm hanging here in the Airlie beach with the guys. James and Andy are planning to do their scuba diving course and we probably leave with Jonas to Ayr in North to dive the Yongala shipwreck. Should be one of the best dives in Australia with incredible amount of marine life.

Carnarvon national park

To make fast, big decisions is the best thing when travelling without too strict timetable. The German Andy and Swiss Jonas asked me to join them to the Carnarvon national park which is located around 450km inland. I thought about the idea for 10 minutes and made my decision to go.

We stayed 2 days hiking in the national park. First day we made around 25km and enjoyed really massive rock formations and gorges made by constantly flowing water. There was some aboriginal(indigenous) art with abo hands and weapons painted on the wall of the caves. There was plenty of small creeks along the track and this is supposed to be a really good place to spot the platypus. We didn't see one. bugger.

On the second day we managed to climb to a nice lookout point which offered awesome views of the whole landscape with cliffs and gorges. You could just think how big the whole Australia is. The weather turned out pretty hot as well, rising up to 30 degrees and some older folks seemed to have problem of staying conscious. Later the ranger put up a sign "Everybody should carry atleast 2 liters of drinking water". It seems that there has to be a sign for every occasion...

The last day I spent pretty much driving from Carnarvon national park here to Airlie beach. I think it was around 800kms, so quite a ride. Toyota eats 10.45l/100km which is pretty decent for a van. Now I should find a good standby offer for one of the sailing trips to whitsundays. We thought about having a little party in the evening and it seems Airlie beach, with tourists and nightclubs, is really good place to have one.

Town of 1770 and Agnes Waters

I'm kinda stuck here in Agnes Waters. I've already been here for 10 days and I still feel like I could spend here another week. 1770 and Agnes waters are two small towns next to each other with around 3000 people in total. There's a pub, two cops - the other drives the only taxi around, and a good surfing beach. What else you need?

I've been hanging around with a Swiss, German and Canadian guy. We have had really good time around here, all living in the cars, and the Swiss and German are actually having same kind of travel plans than me so I'm surely gonna meet them again and again when working my way around Australia. However, probably Airlie beach, 800km to the North, is my next stop. Weather is getting pretty hot already and it's not even the summer...