Enjoying our life as campers

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Eva

For already three weeks we are now on the east coast of Australia with our camper and our heads are buzzing a little with all the things that we have seen and experienced: we sailed through the Whitsundays, watched whales and dolphins, celebrated birthdays, rode horses to muster goats, petted koalas and lost at horse racing.

But one thing after the other. As if we had planned it, we came through Ingham on August 31, the day the Ingham Gold Cup took place. Horse racing was on our Oz-todo list, so off we went. Though, finding the track turned out to be more complicated than expected: Eva’s brilliant idea to simply follow that car with the horse trailer didn’t quite work out because the driver didn’t know how to get there either (and must have felt tailed our Apollo does stand out a bit). Whatever. At the racing track it proved right what we had heard before: regarding fashion a horse race is the place to show off, we felt as if we were attending a royal wedding. Of course, our suitcase didn’t quite provide the appropriate outfit. Clearly we aren’t good at betting either: When in the third race even Little Miss Eva ridden by Jockey Kirk lost, we gave up on it.

For sailing to the Whitsundays we stretched our budget quite a bit (thanks to our birthdays) and booked with I Sail. Originally we were to go on a 2 days, 1 night trip, but as it turned out we were the only guests on that boat, so our booking was changed to the deluxe catamaran ?URoeOn Ice?UR? and a 2 days, 2 nights cruise 🙂 It was a great group on board (5 Spaniards, 2 Brits, skipper Ben and cook, also named Ben) and we had two lovely days, even though the weather was mixed. Whitehaven beach is as corny as it looks on the photos and the sand really white. And when you encounter 2 meter large fish while snorkelling, it is not as terrifying as one would think.

For Alex’ birthday we went to the Kroombit Lochenbar Station for horseback riding and goat mustering. You need to start somewhere for your outback qualities: for two hours we rode around in the bush, searching for lost goats, only to then yell at them to get them moving back to the farm. You don’t have that every day, do you.

We skipped Fraser Island, instead we went to the coast opposite of it, to Inskip Point and strolled through knee-deep sand, waded through tide land, watched dolphins jumping around just off a sand bank and walked upon the dune “Carlo Sandblow” in Rainbow Beach.

At the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane everyone can see how to live the most comfortable life: sleep, eat, sleep. Here we have a selection of photos from the series “Just hanging”:

In between, we walked on many beaches, played embarrassingly long games of pool, cooked extensively, talked a lot to Grey Nomads (actually mostly listened to them), built a sand castle, developed a new longing (who needs Nutella when there is Lino lada; we heard it can also be bought in Austria, let’s hope so!) and enjoyed camping in general 🙂

We have our camper for almost another week, then we stay in Sydney for 4 days and on the 24th we fly to Tasmania where we’ll work for a week. Looking forward to that!

Northern Territory, part 2

Gallery

Posted on September 1, 2013 by Eva

This gallery contains 20 photos.

After our trial run with the camper in the north of Australia, we took the train to Alice Springs. There we went on a tour with Wayoutback through the Red Center:

Northern Territory, part 1

Gallery

Posted on August 31, 2013 by Eva

This gallery contains 18 photos.

Yes, we know we are a little late with our blog posts but we are pretty busy! For that reason you can take a quick look at the past 3 weeks with our photo story (best to click on the … Continue reading →

Island of roosters, dogs, temples

Posted on August 10, 2013 by Eva

Additionally on Bali there are green rice fields, the blue-turquoise sea, black and “white” beaches, vulcanos and an astonishingly large number of motor bikes.

Tirtagangga Water Palace

We never heard so many roosters do their cockadoodledoo: when one starts, 5 more go along. When they are done it all starts over. We assume that this is mainly due to the way the fighting cocks are “stored”, they are placed separately in upside-down baskets along the road. That probably makes them go nuts. We’ve got a recording of the whole procedure, if anyone’s interested.

Regarding transportation there are about 5 motor bikes per car on Bali. If you also count the number of people that are being transported that way the ratio would be even higher. A small family easily fits on a bike (child stands in the front, father and mother on the seat), but also 4 to 5 people are not uncommon. Also palettes of eggs (which are layered up to 1 meter in height) seem to be perfectly suitable for transport via motor bike.

There are as many dogs on Bali as there are people. Rumor has it that most of them are not stray dogs but belong to someone. We doubt that. They lay at front porches, on the street, sleep or dose in the sun, or are on their way to meet other dogs only to stroll down the beach or to ?URoerescue?UR? a rooster from his basket in order to play with him a little. Or they feed on the offerings that are layed on the front porch of each shop or house.

A typical sidewalk in Ubud

We practically live in a rice field

Hanging up our mosquito net has become a well-trained stunt for the circus, but apart from that we don’t do much sport besides swimming and snorkeling. Except that we did an Eco Cycling Tour from Ubud where we mostly went downhill except the last half-hour uphill. Especially impressive was the start of the tour up on the rim of the crater of the vulcano Gunung Batur (though we were brought up by bus ;)). After that we went to a coffee plantation where we were able to taste the most expensive coffee in the world for 60.000 IDR (ca. 5 Euro). However we determined for ourselves that the difference in taste by the bean going through the intestines of the animal Luwak is hardly recognizable.

At the crator rim

After Ubud we went to Amed for two days, on the north-east coast of Bali. We rented a very nice and small bungalow right on the beach, equipped with a very impressive view of the highest and holiest vulcano/mountain on Bali: Gunung Agung. Amed is quite nice for snorkelling, although the beach is not really well for sun bathing but nice to look at: the sand comes from lava and is therefore black. This made us think of the good pastry at home with poppy.

On the left our Mini-Bungalow, on the right Gunung Agung

From Amed we also did a small trip that we “organized” on the go: we started our way toa Japanese ship wreck 9 kilometers east in our optimistic way by foot, then we took a ride sitting on some oxygen bottles on a lorry, and finally used a bemo to get there. On our way back we first walked and then rode on the passenger seat of another small lorry. By that we proved our travel guide wrong that insisted that you need your own car or taxi to get from A to B on the coast of Amed.

The last three days we went back to Candidasa to relax, have good food and stay in a nice room before our busy schedule in Australia commences.

Yesterday and the day before we went on a motor bike (yes, for 3 Euro a day I through made an exception to my principles) to White Sand Beach, 9 kilometers north of Candidasa. Amazing beach and very good for snorkeling. The only downside was that my fear of waves which I developed on the beach of Krk (?) was proved right. You don’t want to see my scratches on the skin.

We enjoyed our two weeks on Bali very much. Originally we wanted to spend only 12 days but changed that to 14 when it showed that all reasonably priced accomodation in Darwin was already booked because of their Darwin festival (the Hilton was not an option). So now we almost change directly from plane to camper 🙂

Bye bye Malaysia, hello Bali!

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Eva

After Kuala Lumpur (where we found the sunset and the view of the Petronas Towers from the Skybar of the Trader’s Hotel quite spectacular) and the previous main port of Malaysia in Melaka (the Dutch* succeeded after an initial bloom to mismanage the city quite badly and the British concentrated more on Georgetown and Singapore later on), we flew on to Bali on Saturday.

From the Low Cost Carrier Terminal in Kuala Lumpur. An extraordinary experience. Starting with the bus ride there, including 15 minutes of refuelling one kilometer ahead of our destination. Then we were brought to the further away KLIA, only to realize that nobody wanted to go there. Or at least didn’t know at the time. Three Chinese women in the first row (and honestly you can’t really blame them) didn’t get the weird system of this airport with its two large terminals that are a 20 minutes drive apart from each other. It was also interesting to walk 800 meters along and onto the runway, without really knowing if we were walking to the right plane at all. Low cost at its best.

By new we are sitting very relaxed at the pool at Hotel Genggong (thanks to Lux & Kathrin for the tip) and just do nothing 🙂

*Apropos Dutch: we Austrians tend to come across our Northern neighbors (=Germans) a lot while on vacaction but this time the amount of Dutch we came across was almost frightening. Who would have thought that after so many years of colonization that people still want to go there so much. On the other hand we had no explanation for the great number of French.