Monday, February 2, 2009

Tasmania

My adventure to Tasmania started last Friday, very early last Friday. I had to get up at 4am, to take the first train downtown at 5am, connect with the skybus at 5:30 to make it to the airport on time for my 7am flight. It was a little close and caused a few nightmares but I made it there in one piece (after an hour flight, you can also take the ferry, a bit cheaper but 12 hours long, ew).
I landed in Hobart (Tasmania’s capital), took a shuttle to the CBD, where I booked a bus ride up to Mount Wellington (1271 m AHD over the city), where it was very cold but offered great views of the bay and city.
In the afternoon I was pretty tired, I did the lonely planet walking tour of the city, relaxed in a few parks, walked along the harbour, picked up some fish n chips and visited the free Tasmania and maritime museum. Oh I also decided it would be a good idea to find a place to spend the night, they phoned about 5 places and they were all full (it being a Friday night of the Australia day long weekend), luckily the last place they tried at the info centre had a bed for me. I went there, played some cards and crashed pretty early.
Saturday I went to the Salamanca markets… so many people and such a variety of things to buy. I then met up with 2 ladies I had contacted from a website to organize car pooling in Tasmania. I then joined Diane(Quebec), Hannah(Quebec) and Hussy (turkey) on an afternoon adventure to the Royal botanical gardens.

Sunday morning we picked up our rental car (Caroline from France, Diane from Quebec) and headed east and then up the coast. It was gorgeous, we stopped many times along the way to take pictures, had a lovely picnic before arriving to our destination at Bay of Fires (near St-Helen town). We relaxed at the beach for a while and then went to a lovely dinner on plastic bags, and drank goon out of Tupperware containers. Sweet! Diane and Caro had a tent to sleep in and I got to sleep in the car, not to comfy and pretty cold but for one night, it’s fine.
Monday: woke up early to watch the sunrise, had a small breakfast and then we hit the road, west and in land now through the mountains. We stopped at St- Columba falls, a Cheese factory where they had free taste testings (yum), in Derby (population of 302) we stopped to have a delicious iced coffee and around 5 we made it to Launceston. I booked a hostel here, left my stuff to then walk around the tiny downtown (which was deserted because it was Australia day) I then did a nice sunset walk along the cataract gorge. I also, after debating for a long time, booked a tour to Cradle mountain (the must see of Tasmania) for Tuesday. I was a little scared because the tour was from 7:30am till 6pm and my flight was at 7:50 pm (for which I wanted to take the shuttle bus and not a taxi).

Tuesday: I got up early and joined a tour to Cradle mountain. I was with 7 other girls and our driver was great. We first stopped in Deloraine to walk around a bit and find some lunch for later, our driver thought she would try something new and bring us to Alum cliffs (it was a 20 minute return trip to a nice gorge, we saw a few wallabies), we then drove for about 2 hours through the winding roads and made it to cradle mountain. We could chose between 3 walks, we chose a mountain walk (Hanson Trail) that was at the time only somewhat in the clouds (I hiked with Chloe from England, Danielle from Holland and our driver), it was quite a steep climb. We enjoyed our lunch at the top and as we walked down the clouds finally started to clear, we sang for the mountains a bit and they let us see the peaks. It was quite gorgeous, and again so nice to be in the middle of nowhere, breathing fresh air.
On the way back we went to visit the little chalet of the founder of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (where cradle mountain is), Gustav Weindorfer and walked through a very ferny forest.
We then stopped at the gorgeous Cradle mountain lodge for some coffees and then headed back to Launceston via Sheffield (the town of murals). I made it back in time to catch my bus to the airport and my flight wooohooo. Successful trip. I think there is still so much to see though.

here are the pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2222318&l=78cf7&id=121500314