A tropical adventre

Late Thursday evening I got back from my second adventure. There is so much to say about it, but I will try to keep it short. I arrived in Cairns late at night Friday the 7th of November. A good 3 hour flight north of Sydney. Had booked a 5 day Diving course. The first 2 days was theory and practice in a pool at the diving school, the next 2 nights and 3 days I was going to spend out on the great barrier reef. While on the trip I extended my basic open water 18m certificate to an adventure certificate allowing me to go down to 30m. We saw sharks, cuttle fish giant sea turtles, lion fish. Doing night dives, surounded by glowing flourecent plankton. It was just like swimming around in an aquarium (or being inside a Future Sound of London music video, or being inside Metroid on 8bit Nintendo). There was fish everywhere, in every shape, size and color you could possibly imagine. It was often hard to tell if it was a plant or an animal. Im afraid the pictures cant justify any of this, but they can give a hint of what it was like. I was doing the dive together with Kamil, another Hyper island guy living in Sydney. We rented an underwater camera and you can see the result as follows, some photos are taken by me and some taken by Kamil. I want to tell you more, but I will do it in person sometime.































Sea Squirt, some very very basic organism filtering water through its body, to capture plankton.




















A very poisonous Lion fish I found on my deep water dive
















































Not sure if this is an animal or a plant.




















































A lot of the plants and animals had really crazy florescent colors.
















A pinaple sea cucumber. These things are big, it was at least 1 meter long.































Kamil and his dive buddy got the opportunity to swim with a turtle for about 5 minutes.





















Giant clam, this one was dead.





















































































The boat we where staying on. 35 passengers and 6 crew.















Fish around the boat waiting for food left overs.




























The reef














Kamil















Cairns, it was extreamly touristy there.















On our way back to the main land.





















Huge bats, called flying foxes they where sleeping like this during the day. At night they where flying around making alot of noise.



























One of the trees the bats where haning in.

The fish market and some birds

Havn't had a chance to write in ages. Still no internet at home. So much hassle. But to day I ran over to the Hotel next door and bought 24 hour access to their wireless network.

Work was crazy all the way till the end of my contract. I must admit I'm very glad its over. It has been quite hectic for the last few months, late nights and early mornings. So I was very much looking forward to a nice holiday. But before I write to you about my holiday I would like to post a few pictures from Sydney.

Its great to have birds like this in town. Its quite a lot of them, they are big, pretty but sounds awful.


























I few sundays ago we went to the fish market to have lunch. They had alot of weird creatures for sale. It was great.











































And finally, my herbs are showing up in my pot on the balcony.

Damn internet

Hi,

On Wednsday I will have internet access... in theory. But then I need to wait another few days for my modem. So more likely on Monday or so.

Anyhow... One thing I have been longin for is a balcony or some other outdoor space. I have finaly got that, but the view is not very pretty. On an inner city back street facing the airconditioning vents of the hotel across the street. Anyhow, I got some pots and seeds. So now I'm growing Rocket, Basil and Parsley. I hope they will survive. Its not much direct sunlight as the high rise buildings are keeping my appartment in the shades for most of the day.

Yesterday evening i put one of my chairs on the balcony to sit there and do some work. I took this picture using my built in webcam.

The blackest black

Hi, This will be a tricky one as I have so much to write but so little time.
The weekend have been superb. It so much to write about. But I will keep it short and only about Saturday even though the other days where brilliant too. I have so many images and they will all be on flickr eventually. But I have atleast provided some.

I start of with this one. I just love it



















Any how... I wanted to do something, and the friends I have got here so far where all going away for the weekend. So I decided to do the same. I heard a lot of good things about the Blue Mountains. I looked it up on the web and found a package with bus to the village of Katoomba to see the spectacular views over the Eucalyptus covered valley and to see the "the three Sisters", (the 3 mountain tops that have quite a spectacular story behind them, but I don't have time to write it down, so if you are curious, go ahead and look it up)
And then further on to the Jenolan limestone caves. I went for the "Extended full tour of the caves where kids under 10 whereat allowed". I thought... "Great, If I'm going there, I want to see it all and I cant be bothered with kids". The bus left 8.15 on Saturday morning. When on the bus we had 2 hours ahead of us to our first stop. The first thing the driver says is "All of you have booked the standard tour of the caves, apart from one person. He has to get ready to wear a hard hat, overall and ropes. And be prepared to get really dirty. He is going down what is named the PLUG HOLE. This was not what it said on the package. I got really worried what I got my self into. And the plug hole sounds pretty nasty (in more ways than one). For you who don't know. I have a great fear of just thinking about getting stuck in a narrow space in a cave. Especially after watching the film The Decent (one of the scariest movies I have ever seen). When we eventually got to our first destination we have about an hour to do what ever we like. But the bus driver says "Every one can wander off and do what ever they like, but I need to have a word with the guy who booked the adventure tour. I need to prepare him for a few things. I seriously thought I was going to freak out. He said I had to get something to eat here in Kotoomba as I would have no time when at the caves. My tour was going to be 2 hours in the caves and I needed to get "kitted up" as soon as I got there. I told the driver that if I'm likely to crawl around in really tight spaces where I could get the feeling of being stuck, I wont do it, then I rather go on the ordinary tour. We decided to talk to the guides as soon as we got there.
While in Katoomba, the weather was quite bad. But I decided to take a trip down to the valley with the worlds steepest train, (53 degrees or something). When I got down under the clouds everything was clear. In the valley there was a rain forest. It felt like being in a Jurrasic park setting. Apart from the valley it self the place was quite exploited to suit touristing families and bus groups, which I didn't like very much. I bought my self a sandwich and got back on the bus after about an hour. We had another 1,5 hour ride in front of us before we reached the caves. Wehn we finally got there the driver asked me if I was going to do it or not. Well, I didn't really think, I said yes. I joined a group of 8 other people to go on the tour. We where all dressed up in blue overalls, with mining lights, and ropes and stuff. We headed further up where we had to vinch our selves in a hole. Then the cave adventures started... full on. We started climbing through these limestone caves with stalagtites hanging down from the ceiling. We got to crawl through very narrow spaces and little holes. At one stage we had to sit down in a big cave room and turn our lights out. That was the darkest dark I have ever experienced. Sorry for sqeezing everything in to a few sentences, there is so much to say. Just a few notes. As soon as I acutally went of the bus I wasn't scared. The guides where phenomenal. And I was never ever, at any stage scared while in the cave. When looking at the photos, I cant believe I actually did it. If I would have seen the before hand I would never have done it. I felt like a hero when we finally came out on the other side. I would love to tell you all the details, and hope to do so some day.
This is the best adventure so far. These are the kind of things that will make me earn my mustache.

The nice mango relative

I have told some of you about it already and promised to send you an image. This is a smal green relative to the Mango. It tastes wonderful. I had one at breakfast this morning, and will have another one tomorrow.