Tremendous Tassie

When last we left our unlikely heroes, they were torn between going to work on a farm and travelling around the Apple Isle some more.  How did they get out of this sticky situation?  To find out stay tuned for this week’s thrilling episode of “Into the Good Life”!

What do you think happened, of course we kept travelling!  We wanted to see what Tasmania had on offer that we hadn’t got around to seeing yet.  Just for the sake of research of course, so we could tell future visitors our honest opinion on planned Tassie itineraries and make useful suggestions.

Cor on the South Cape

So in pretty short order we went to southernmost point of Tasmania at Cockles Creek and walked an overnight to South Cape Bay.  We were rewarded with an echidna snuffling by the trail, some brilliant geological formations and some amazing views south towards Antarctica.  Though again I disturbed TWO tiger snakes, screamed like a girl, hitched up my skirts and legged it, leaving poor Cor trailing in my wake.  Really have to do something about that reaction, it’s getting embarrassing….. but it DID hiss at me!

Our echidna!!

We popped by the Hastings Caves down there as well, very interesting caves, saw a cave cricket, glow worms, a type of cave spider and by the trail outside, two lyrebirds and a platypus paddling away in the creek, bold as brass.  Awesome ornithoryncus anatinus scenes.

Just a tiny bit of the awesome geology on the South Cape coast

We then opened up the throttle on Chuck the truck, heading up to Strahan on the west coast (rainy!) via St Claire Lake (on the south end of the overland track – crowded!), then up to Wynyard and Stanley in the north, and across to Arthur River in the west.

We went for a cruise on the Arthur River up in the Tarkine wilderness.  You may have heard about this as being a bit of a contentious area in relation to planned mining of iron ore in this area.  Some of the people in Arthur River were odd to say the least.  I had a difference of opinion with one of the tour people on the boat.  Credit to him, he was doing a job trying to keep the mystery of the Tarkine wilderness alive by saying that Tasmanian tigers could still be in this pristine wild area, citing unconfirmed sightings in the 70’s.  My thought is that it is this very thinking that allows people to shuffle off responsibility for the man-made extinction of the tigers, right when the Tasmanian devil faces a not-too-dissimilar fate.  Even if there were some tigers left, the same guy then argued AGAINST World Heritage listing for the area.  He suggested that World Heritage status for the Tarkine would stop the locals up at Arthur Creek from “going where they want and doing what they want” and that is why the majority were against it.  To hear one of these locals talking about driving along in a boat shooting cormorants for fun gives you an idea of what he means.  They don’t tell anyone when they find Aboriginal sites, as any outside interest may interfere with (their ideas of) personal freedom.

We then got to experience the opposite personality type in Geoff of Kings Run Wilderness Tours.  Geoff’s family used to run cattle along the coastal heathland near the Tarkine, but when he found it tough going he was a willing audience for a biologist friend who told him he had something special in his section of coastline, and more importantly, there were people who were willing to pay to experience it.  Geoff picks you up in his ute, driving you to a deserted beach shack with a slightly incongruous 3 metre wide double glazed window in the side.  After walking about the beach for a bit Geoff takes us for a walk around the area, showing us the middens left by the original Manegin Aboriginal people, their tool-making areas, places where they hunted seals and their hut depressions.  His property has just been accepted for World Heritage status, and this has allowed him to stop 4wd access to the beach where these sites are, earning him the vitriol of locals who would like to 4wd and ride four-wheelers all over the place.  You can see old tracks nearly running right over 900 year old fur seal hunting pits.  Despite this you can see his pride in being able to share this special place with people.

Kings Run on the West Coast

Around dusk we adjourn to the fishing shack, Geoff breaks out the wine and nibblies and turns on the baby monitor.  You see, just outside that incongruous window, is some roadkill staked to the ground with a light on it and a baby monitor hidden in the grass nearby.  After an hour Geoff hears a noise, and after getting ourselves settled in our seats (with wine in hand of course), turns out the lights in the hut and opens the curtains.  There he is, a beat-up looking Tasmanian devil proceeding to go to town on the possum carcass out there.  We sit and watch this guy munch away, gradually getting fatter and fatter.  He looked like he had already eaten, and was just topping up, but it was great.   We watch this guy for about an hour, before he scarpers and shortly thereafter another male turns up, a bit bigger but with more white on his body.  After an hour of furious demolition the devil manages to get the carcass off the stake and scarpers with it, running straight into another devil out in the dark and proceeding to have a bit of a set to.  That was our cue to go, so we jumped in the back of the truck and spotlighted some animals on the way to the gate.  It really couldn’t have been a better conclusion to the evening, or to one of the best experiences we have had in Tasmania.

Oh you devil!

After Arthur River we trucked across the country, and spent a couple of nights around Launceston, catching up with some people my sister Elisa introduced us to, Kate and Amy.  These two have been travelling and working around Tasmania for a few months and had some great stories to tell, and some great advice too.  Check out their blog at www.wrightemery.wordpress.com.

The world's largest motorboat at the Cherry Shed

We now find ourselves in the Bay of Fires in the north east.  We are going to do some walking and camp overnight out there tomorrow, with a view to making our way back down to Hobart and start WWoOFing next week (if someone will have us).

I promise to be more regular with this blogging thing, the only problem has been that despite supposedly having Australia’s fastest internet with the National Broadband Network, no bloody place we stay is actually connected to it!  Plus the fact that this travel shit keeps you pretty busy.

Palya peeps!

On a clear day you can see Antartica (no, not really)

Pura Vida!!

I am sure anyone who has done a blog post about Costa Rica has titled it like this, and there is a reason. Pura Vida means pure life, and is a real echo of our "good life" philosophy. The Costa Ricans hustle, but they know why they are working hard: so that they can enjoy pura vida with their families. It's a bit of a cliche but I think we too often lose sight of this.

Now this will be a pretty long post, contrary to the wishes of a few people who apparently lead busy lives, but there is sex in this post so stick with it and it will be worth it.

We left the dive boat, (PICTURES NOW UP!!) picked up a 4WD hire car and did some travelling around Costa Rica with James (who had been diving with us on the Wind Dancer and found himself at a loose end for a few days).

First stop was La Fortuna in the shadow of the active Arenal volcano, which only appeared in 1968, a reminder of how quickly the planet can change without any help from us. We did some zip-lining (essentially flying-foxes set in and up to 200m above the forest canopy) and on one got up to 70km per hour, and on another travelled the better part of 800m across a massive gorge. Adrenaline pumping stuff. We did some walks on the suspension bridges and we did some wildlife spotting at the Danaus Ecocentre. We saw sloths (with a little help from the people at the centre), poison dart frogs, caiman crocodiles and leaf cutter ants. Sloths were smaller than I was expecting. I was expecting large animals but they grow to weigh 7kg at the absolute maximum, which gives them the edge over their predators in that they can hang out on some pretty small branches. The three finger sloth looks stoned and happy, while the two fingered sloth looks permanently cranky. Upset about missing out on that extra finger maybe! That they could create this paradise Danaus in just 15 years is amazing to me and the effort they are still putting in to making it better yet is fantastic.


It's a sloth!

We also sampled the hot springs of the local ticos after getting wet on a forest walk, and as we soaked our troubles away in the 44 degree water we were treated to a lightning show as the storm that drenched us rolled over the volcano.

Arenal volcano puffing away

That night James put his dive instructor cred on show with one of the girls from Oregon we met at the hostel. Anyone who has met a dive instructor knows what I am talking about. That's right folks, our blog just got raunchy!

After some challenging driving uphill, over some very rough roads for a couple hours, we made our way to Monteverde, home of some of Costa Rica's most pristine cloud forest. We did some excellent bird watching with a local guide and saw toucans and the elusive three wattled bell bird, among oh so many others. The toucan eats eggs and the young of other birds! That's why they have those massive beaks. Freaky stuff eh?

Hummingbird

After Monteverde we dropped James off in the crazy San Jose (don't drive here - no street signs and suicidal drivers) and headed to the tourist trap of Jaco on the coast. Most Costa Ricans shrink in horror at this as Jaco is a gaudy tourist trap full of prostitutes, but we were destined for a week at School of the World to learn how to surf (me and Cor) and Spanish classes (Cor). Coreen was inspirational in her work at Spanish and was quickly my go-to translator, while I was learning my way in the waves, with hardly any prostitutes at all. Cor hurt her back so didn't surf after day 2, but thank goodness her back is starting to loosen up now. Not even my mad acupressure massage skills could help at the time.

I'm up!

What I learned surfing: you have to work to put yourself in the right place at the right time (do nothing and you catch 90% fewer waves); fear of getting dumped by a wave puts you towards the back of your board, which only makes it more likely your fears will come true as the wave catches you not the other way round, so man up and get forward; and relax, it's only water. Thank you Riccardo and Alonso!

After our week in Jaco we farewelled our Escuela mates, then we caught a ride, two chicken buses and a boat to swap the Pacific ocean for the Caribbean. We crossed the isthmus in just one day. Remarkable (both that we did it in a day AND that I used the word isthmus)!

Tortuguero wasn't the white sand Caribbean beach town we were expecting, more like a river shanty town with a few touristy afterthoughts scattered about. We did some canoe trips in the river
and saw howler monkeys, capuchin monkeys, spider monkeys, caiman crocodiles, Jesus Christ lizards (they run on water? Jesus Christ!!), and oh so many birds. The guide James recommended, Francisco Bonilla, was absolutely tops, and any good photos we have were down to his excellent work in positioning the canoe.

Jesus Christ lizard

But the real reason people come to Tortuguero is for the turtles that give the place its name. Last season it was estimated that 50,000 turtles nested on this 18 mile stretch of beach, mostly greens but

also leatherbacks, loggerheads, hawksbill and olive Ridleys. The black sand beach looks like the woods around Bastogne post World War 2, full of massive holes, and each night new tank-like tracks of turtles emerge from and return to the water. Some turtles will nest up to eight times in a single season, fertilising her eggs as she needs to from a little chamber where she stores the sperm from her last male she shagged. I'm pretty sure there has been a court ruling about this, it's definitely psycho ex-girlfriend behaviour.

And the biggest danger to her eggs once she has buried them in this war zone? Some other dopey turtle digging them up while making their own nest! Egg breakfasts were definitely on the menu for lots of the local wildlife.

One night we were on the beach being pelted with sand from a couple of nesting turtles as they covered their eggs, it was a real privilege to witness it such a special event. And then, on the morning we left for San Jose and our flight, we took a 4:30am (!) stroll down the beach, and were lucky enough to see a nest of green turtle hatchlings boil out of the sand and make a mad haphazard dash for the ocean. As I learned in surf school, sometimes being in the right place at the right time takes work! There were so many we didn't know where to look, and all we could do was give these little dudes the best possible chance by keeping the birds off them until they made the water.

Escape!

So that is it for now. It has been an amazing few weeks in Costa Rica, and now we are in the USA doing some rock climbing. So until next time, whether it is online, on the rock, beneath the waves or at the bar, Pura Vida baby!