Tasmania - Day 1

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I'm not sure why they call them "Ocean chairs" because you can't see the ocean since it's an overnight crossing so everything is dark and the only reason I can think of to call them that way is because they are so unconfortable that you think of throwing yourself to the ocean and swim your way to Tasmania instead of spending 5 more minutes on them.

When we first tried them we thought, yeah, I'll have no problem sleeping on this, they are quite confortable...better than the ones you get on a plain, but after a couple of hours sleeping on them everything starts to hurt. It was so bad that I took my blanket and extended it on the floor where they had a free row, I "borrowed" one of the spare blankets from that row and put it on top of me and tried to sleep on the floor which was better than the chair although every time I turned around I would bump into a chair and wake up.

I didn't know this about myself but I tend to turn once every 2 hours while I sleep. :-) I know this because that's the amount of times I woke up due to me bumping onto a chair while trying to turn around. It must be true that thing they say about travelling to get to know yourself better.

After the longest night ever we finally made it to Devonport, Tasmania. We had to wait for an hour for the pick up and luckily enough they were punctual.

Our tour is to go around Tasmania in 7 days. First the West coast and then the East coast but it turns out that in reality these are two independent tours and you can either pick one or the other or both so there was already a group of people that had been travelling together for 3 days doing the East Coast tour when we got to the bus so they already knew each other and they were really friendly and welcoming with these two newcomers.

We also had a new guide, John who had spent the last 3 days touring the East coast with 8 girls and was begging to have some boys in the group since he learnt all he never wanted to know about women's shoes, weddings and some other fascinating issues, so now he had 1! and every time he would say something through the microphone he would start his sentences with ladies and gentleMAN (making a big thing about it) and everyone would stare at me...just the kind of thing you are looking forward to when you are "the new kid on the block" :-) .

Then we went to pick up the rest of the group and for his releave they were two couples, which meant two more boys! I would swear he almost cried right there, I'm not sure the kind of conversations they were having on the bus for those 3 days but after being singled out for the first two hours of the tour with the gentleMAN thing I didn't want to draw any more attention to myself. ;-)

The group that will be touring the East coast with us (from right to left):

Brita from the Czek Republic
Vicky from China
Shizuka from Japan
David and Nayeli from Mexico
Nicole from Canada
Martin and Kara from England
Your humble servant from Spain
Roisin from Nothern Ireland
Kayoko from Japan
Aída from Spain

Photo taken by Emma at Columba Falls

Interesting enough, half of the group also spoke Spanish!, apart from the 4 obvious, Rosin and Kara also spoke Spanish.

In Australia they have a day (25th April) were they honored dead soldiers, usually all towns and villages have a monument to remember all the Australians that died in the many wars since the First World War. Our first stop was in a very small village where instead of building a statue or some other kind of monument like they do in most places, they decided to plant one tree for each of the 9 men (from that village) who died on the first world war, this was right after that war, unfortunatelly by now the trees were gigantic and they were a peril to the nearby buildings so they took the decision to cut them down which proved to be a very unpopular decision with the villagers.

Someone had the brilliant idea to call a local carveman, a handyman with a chainsaw, and instead of cutting the trees down he carved the nine soldiers on the trees leaving everyone happy and attracting tourists like ourselves to the village.

After that we went to St Columba falls. The passage to the waterfall really looks like taken right out of jurasic park.

and the waterfall itself is quite impresive.

It was time to have lunch and this time I was the cook. :-) No worries, only were hamburgers so everyone survived the experience. I knew the months I worked in McDonalds back in the time would come in handy sometime. :-)

And now it was time to hit the beach, so back in the bus and on the road for another 2 hours until we reached the beach that was regarded as the best beach in the world by the Lonely Planet guide in 2009. It was a nice beach but I wouldn't say it is the best. The one we went just before we got to Melbourne was in my opinion nicer than this one, although this was a very nice beach indeed.

I love all the Ozzy signs, basically they all are like You're a grown up, do what you want mate, it's your life!

Apart from the jellyfish, the sharks and the sea flees, there was a strong underwater current and it was a very steep shore so not the best place to have a swim really. But the beach next to it, just by one side of this award winning beach was protected from the currents, the wind, the sharks and the jellyfish...so we had some pictures on the first one and had a swim on the side beach instead. :-)

After the beach we went to Bicheno were we had our accomodation for the night. We had dinner, chatted for a while and I introduced everyone to the fantastic werewolf game, after that, we all went to bed since tomorrow we'll start at 7 am and it promises to be a really packed day.


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