Our Big Explore: So long Australia.. Good to see ya!

Wednesday 19^th – Thursday 20^th November

Caused our “welcome party” on Tuesday night, we slept until 10.30 and when we finally got out of bed, is was with two sore heads… Malene was feeling exactly the same, so we were all in the same boat, except that she had several plans during the day – and luckily we hadn’t. We still had to buy some groceries for the next 9 days, so we walked the 1 km’s to Ashfield Mall, where we had our breakfast in the food court – I had a Subway sandwich, and Erik had a mega portion of rice and Asian chicken curry.

We were lazy most of the day, but in the afternoon I wanted to figure out what was wrong with my knee, it still hurts when I walk. As I see it there are two options, either too little exercise or the age fact. I ventured out for my first jog in 1½ months, and I manage to jog 6km without knee pain. Problem solved – exercise is the cure! Afterwards I took Erik for a 5km walk to the bay, he needs some exercise as well, but doesn’t need to lose more weight. He already lost too much weight, and I keep gaining weight. It’s impossible to keep a diet while travelling. We live everyday as if it was our last, and at the moment we drink too much alcohol, which doesn’t make it easier to lose weight either.

Thursday was a resting day as well, when I say resting I mean we’re just staying at Malene’s, most of the time here is spend on the internet, watching TV and cooking. This morning we went with Malene to Ashfield swimming pool, swam 1km and was tired for the rest of the day. The last two days we have been more active than the last 1½ month together. It feels good.

Friday 21^stNovember

We figured it was time to do some sightseeing again. I wanted to do a cliff-top walk between Bondi Beach and Coogee Beach. Erik didn’t have any wishes, so he just had to follow.

It was tropical weather outside, 38 degrees and not the most ideal day for a 5,5 km walk in the sun – but armed with a lot of sunscreen, and a big bottle of water, we caught the train to Sydney Central and from there, a bus to Coogee Beach where our walk started. The walk is said to be one of the most exhilarating experiences around Sydney, we passed 5 panoramic beaches and bays, all beautiful and full of friday happiness. We were so jealous on the people in the refreshing ocean, but stupid enough we hadn’t brought our swimmers, I had mentioned it for Erik in the morning, but we had misunderstood each other, so he thought I would bring it, and I thought he said I shouldn’t bring it.. So apparently no swimming for us on this smoking hot day, unless we ventured to the nude beach up north!!

This was probably the last time we would experience the coastal cliffs of Australia, since we’re leaving in 7 days, so we tried to get the most out of this picturesque part of Sydney.

In the end we reached famous and not so crowded Bondi Beach, where everybody fits in as long as they’re wearing swimmers and sunblock, even better if they also carry a surfboard under their arm. We had our lunch on the beach esplanade of Bondi. Then we took a bus up to Watsons Bay to catch the ferry to Circular Quay. We got there just in time to see the ferry leave the jetty, and us swearing it away. We went down on the jetty and had a look at the timetable, it was another 48min before the next and last ferry of the day would depart. Hmm… I turned to Erik and told him how we could kill time, by visiting the nearby restaurant and get something cold to drink, so the 48min went by with queuing up in front of the bar, ordering and drinking our cold beverages - Erik with a beer and me with a fresh coconut.

The ferry tour in Sydney Harbour was magnificent; with views over the city and all the bays and we got to see the Opera House and the Harbour bridge from another perspective than last time we were here. In Circular Quay we did it again, just barely reached the train, this time only 2 seconds too late. Arrgh, it was frustrating to see the train leave right in front of us, couldn’t help thinking what we could have done differently to catch up on those 2 seconds. Luckily it was just 15 min to the next train, so we saved some money on cold beverages this time.

In the evening we celebrated Malene’s sons 11 years birthday. He’s crazy with Lego, and every surface in his room is covered with the latest Lego construction. We sleep in his room, so we know what we are talking about. Anyway we had bought him this random Lego construction in K-Mart, and it was spot on. He was overwhelming happy about it, so it was perfect! Erik had spoiled himself (and me) with an Italian wine, something we didn’t have had since Denmark, so it was hard to get Erik to bed, since he thought it was his duty to finish the 1½ l. wine.

A luxurious cemetry with a spectacular view, but why??

Bondi Beach

Saturday 22^nd – Sunday 23^rd November

I was happy to see there was still some wine left in the big bottle on the kitchen bench. The morning went by with me writing blog and Erik researching about our Fiji tour. In me and Malene’s case also a bit of sunlight on the balcony.

At around 2pm our friend Paddy, who we met on our snowboard holiday in Thredbo in June, picked us up and we went for afternoon drinks in the suburb, Balmain, which is Paddy’s hometown.

He showed us around the different pubs and different beers. Later we were joined by two of his mates, and even later by his girlfriend, Freya and her friend. It was nice to meet some new people and we had an enjoyable time in their company. Before Paddy and Freya put us on the bus around 10pm we arranged to have dinner together and experience “The Escape Hunt Experience” together on Monday, which I will explain later.

We realized that Sydney’s main train station was far behind modern development, I base this on the non-existing information screen in the departure hall. So instead of just a screen that tells you where every train is going, we had to walk to every platform to look at the 10 different screens to figure out which train was going in the direction we had to go. Erik figured it out by asking some train employees, we then found the train and arrived safe and sound in Ashfield. Apart from Erik watching the last Formula 1 Grand Prix together with Rubert (Malene’s friend), there’s nothing interesting to report from Sunday.

Erik with his new mates. Paddy is to the right

Monday 24^th November

After Erik’s late night and a bottle of wine to himself, he needed to recover and wasn’t worth much during the day, I couldn’t even drag him to the outdoor swimming pool for a refreshing dip.

I ventured out by myself, even though it was clear that a thunderstorm was rolling in over the city, the clouds were getting darker and darker as I was swimming and just as I was about to leave the swimming pool the lightning and thunder slowly started.

I didn’t even bother taking a shower, because I was gonna get soaked before I got home anyway. So I put my clothes outside of my swimmers, and biked homed with wet hair and clothes. I looked like a retard (mostly because the rain hadn’t really started yet, and yet the water was dripping of me), I was too busy to put my shoes on, and the sharp spikes on the pedals hurt my feet, but my one and only goal was to get home before the severe rain kicked in. It was unfortunate that I didn’t make it, but it was all right and just as I expected.

Meanwhile Erik had researched more on our trip to Fiji, there was so many choices we had to make, and Erik is very good at double checking everything and he really does his research whole hearted, where as I am much more loose, I don’t have the patience for it, and I’m more old school, I prefer to read it in a book instead of using the internet – there’s too many informations and it gets me confused.

In the evening we had a date with Paddy and Freya, and after circling around in Chinatown in the rain, both getting annoyed, we finally found the restaurant where we were about to meet them. Wagana, a Japanese Restaurant where we ordered our food on a flat screen attached to the table, all the information about the food and drinks was on the screen, so we didn’t have any contact with the waiters, apart from when they delivered our food, which they did very quickly after our orders. I was impressed.

We tried a Sushi-Roulette, consisting of 6 nigiri’s where one of them contained a small handful of wasabi, and the rest contained rice. The plate got a little spin around before we choose our nigiri. I lost, the wasabi was obviously uncomfortable to eat in such a big potion, and I didn’t even eat a quarter of it. Afterwards we went to the evening’s main purpose, The Escape Hunt Experience.

It’s an experience that takes inspiration from computer games, and players are detectives who are locked into a simple room with objects and a little decoration and it feels like being inside a computer game while searching for clues, solving puzzles, and in the end escape. We had picked the theme ‘murder in the pub’ and against the clock (60 min) we had to find the murder through clues, puzzles, the suspect profiles and so on. We were all dressed up as detectives, which was a hilarious part of it. We could ask for help and clues from our game master, and since we apparently picked the most challenging theme, we had to do this several times. It was exciting and a fun way to spend time together. We nailed it, and found the murder just 6 min before our time ran out.

The experience was $40 each (208kr). We found it a bit pricy, which is also why we took advantage of their luxurious lounge area, and solved more puzzles afterwards. We then said goodbye to Paddy and Freya and took the train back to Ashfield.

Tuesday 25^th November

Yesterday we rented dive gear at Frog’s dive, so we were ready to go diving in the morning with Malene and Zandra (the Danish girl that is working here and living with Malene, while she is saving up money for her travels).

Malene recently became a dive master, so she’s familiar with a couple of the dive spots around Sydney, and this day she took us to Bare Island, on the southern part of Sydney.

When we arrived and unpacked all the dive gear, Malene realized that one of the tanks was missing a connecting piece, like its valve. It was retarded because she said that she would bring her spare tank, in case of something like this should happen, but for some reason she hadn’t packed it in the car in the morning. We couldn’t dive without that piece, so Zandra and Malene left to find a nearby dive shop who could fix it, meanwhile the wind picked up and the waves got choppy. Erik and I got the rest of the gear ready and waited for quite a while before they came back with a useable tank.

Then we walked down to Bare Island, and slowly on rough rock surfaces entered the water. Zandra had a problem with her descending , caused by too little weight in her weight belt, I gave her one of mine, but that resulted in me having problems with descending, so I got one of Erik’s, while all this happened, Malene already started her dive, and didn’t even realize what was going on. Sooner or later she appeared on the surface and that’s when our dive could finally start. Quite a tough start if you ask us. Especially for a new diver as Zandra, who only has had around 10 dives. The visibility was only 3-5 meters (our average visibility in all our dives has been 12-15 m.), so it was pretty bad, maybe because the wind had picked us so fast and the waves had become choppier than before.

Anyhow, it was a shallow dive, maximum depth was 14 m. We dived around boulders and some corals. The water was filled with jellyfish, sometimes so many, that the water in front of us was totally blurry, we saw loads of sea urchins, but the fish life was almost non-exciting. I realized that there was plenty of nudibranches to explore, since there wasn’t much else to see I focused on finding these small, tiny, colorful, slimy creatures. They are really magnificent, but usually hard to spot.

I was in my own little world, when I sensed something on the right side of my viewing area, I turned my head and literally screamed into my regulator, the first few seconds I was terrified… An immense blue grouper swam just 10 cm in front of me. Erik heard my scream and as he turned around the grouper was swimming in his direction, and he got scared as well for a few seconds. Oh my god, it was intense… Quickly we realized he didn’t mean to hurt us or scare us away. He swam further on up to Malene and Zandra. Malene started feeding him with sea urchins. He’s apparently so use to divers and since he can’t get into the sea urchins himself he’s begging divers to do it for him. We are happy that we got to see this, and that Malene knew about this shiny-blue friendly and hungry grouper. It spiced up the otherwise boring dive a bit.

Diving always makes us unbelievable hungry, so the first thing we did back in Ashfield was to eat. I then went for a sleep, I had been up early to jog in the morning as well, so I deserved a nap. Meanwhile Erik was helping Malene’s daughter Hannah with finding a roof rack and a bike carrier for her car. After a two hour nab I was ready for the night, and so was Erik after his shower.

This night we met up with my old school friend Rene and his girlfriend Sarah, they’re living in Sydney and have been here the past 3½ year. They both grew up in Erritsø, so Erik also knows who they are, from back then. Sarah was in the class below Erik, and Erik and Rene was kind of in the same outer friend circle back then. It was really funny to meet up so far away from home, and yet we all have our childhood memories in the same little suburb on the other side of the world.

We met up with them on the Oaks hotel in Neutral Bay, and spend most of the evening there with good pub food and plenty of beers. We enjoyed our last beers of the night in their apartment. Rene is working for LEGO and we were lucky to get a super hero LEGO construction box home with us, which we can surprise Adam with.

At midnight we catched the last bus to Ashfield and we were knackered when we arrived. It had been a memorable night in Danish company. Unfortunately we forgot to take a nice picture of us all in the pub, and the one below is pretty bad, but better than nothing.

Bare Island, the divesite.

Sarah, Rene & Erik in the end of the night.

Wednesday 26^th – Thursday 27^th November

Our last days Down Under was spend on getting ready for backpacking again. It was kind of strange to pack our bags, we almost forgot about how little space we used to have, all of a sudden the amount of space we had in the car seemed massive.

We were both struggling a bit to fit all our stuff, and more important the weight of it. Some of the flights in Fiji only allow us 15 kg luggage and 7 kg carry-on baggage. We are both a bit over the limit, which means we’ll have to throw out more before the domestic flights.

We got our Australian bank accounts closed, and can now look forward to a couple of days with a lot of cash on us. We have kept our money belts, so it’s not a bigger problem than using them for a while.

We bought ourselves a couple of early Christmas presents – I got a small board with plastic sheets on, to have around my arm when we dive – so that we can communicate by writing under water, instead of only using sign language, and yelling into the regulators. Erik got a new smart camera light that attaches to our GoPro camera (underwater camera), so hopefully we can make some even better underwater videos from now on.

Erik is acting like a little child these days, not because Christmas is near – but because we have booked 2 dives on the World’s best shark dive, not that I’m not excited about it – I definitely am, but more in the nervous kind of way!!! We feel ready for our next adventure, and are looking forward to the good diving and luxury that waits for us on Fiji. We deserve and needs a holiday away from our travels… How good is life treating us!?

Thursday night Malene paid our fabulous Indian dinner, and we said goodbye to Hannah. Malene’s daughter who is gonna visit us in Denmark when we eventually get back.