11/18/2013

November 18^th isn’t a particularly interesting day but I got to do it twice and I was flying the entire time! Well 26 hours of it. We had really bad weather leaving Sydney. It was the first time I was really afraid on an airplane. We had a couple drops that put my stomach in my throat and then went up pretty steeply to try to get above the storm. It finally evened out a few hours later. The plane food was fairly average, pasta, salad, etc.  United has actually changed several of there policies that make it much more customer friendly. There are now outlets on planes, they allow you to use small electronic devices throughout the flight(i.e you never have to turn off your phone) and they have free WiFi on the planes. I was also able to get into all of the united clubs for a change. So it was a surprisingly good 2 days of flying. Additionally I had an empty seat next to me for 3 of the 4 flights. BONUS!

So United did customer surveys earlier this year and realized that everyone hates them.  They have changed many of their policies and are actually much better now. Yay for me! I had an unexpected powerpoint under my seat, free WiFi and they didn’t make me turn off my phone, ever! Pretty sweet! But I wasted most of my 26-hour flight dreaming about how hot you are, so I didn’t get caught up on any of the work I meant to do. Oops. 

11/12/2013-11/17/2013

I had a pretty uneventful week. Just running around trying (and failing to fix my phone), studying for my 2 hour exam on Thursday, taking my exam on Thursday, going out for end of semester celebration with my class after the exam, running around getting things ready to go home and to Israel in December and Ironman training. Friday night Kat and I did Wii and movies. I had a birthday party to go to on Saturday night for my friend Sylvie. It took me forever because the trains weren’t running but it was a good time and I enjoyed catching up with my non-physio friends before leaving. Sunday morning I ran a 14km race. Groan! Much too fast. Don’t want to do one of those again but it made my workout much more enjoyable. Then my classmates were holding a fundraiser for Cambodian orphans so Kat and I went. Then just last minute packing and a trip to tea too. 

11/9/2013-11/11/2013

Hobart

The hostel that I was staying in was called the pickled frog, and it was very green. It was a typical youth hostel with 16 bunks in a room. Since I had gone to bed so early I was up early as well. I went to Salamanca market. It is a fantastic market that Hobart puts on every Saturday. I tried tons of things and I bought things that I thought I needed but I didn’t really. I also went to a few small galleries in the area. I really liked women’s art gallery. There was another gallery, I didn’t care for it but they had a parrot who was pretty cute.  Next I walked up to Cascade Brewery. I missed the tour but I ran into the med students from the hike and we had lunch together. After lunch they headed back into the city for a pub-crawl and I went on a theatre tour of The Female Factory. I think got the better deal. Louisa’s walk was a fantastic production that really brought the historic women’s prison to life. I went out to dinner for a really nice steak at the Ball & Chain and afterward I was supposed to do a ghost tour of battery point and the harbor. Dinner was amazing but I was miserable afterward.  I don’t know if I got food poisoning or if my stomach just wasn’t used to it but I was doubled over in pain. I caught a taxi the 1km back to the hostel, took panadol, and went to sleep. I woke up really sick a few hours later but after that was fine.

The second day in Hobart I went to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). I caught the ferry over at 9 and stayed till it closed at 6. It is an absolutely amazing place. They block out all of your senses and then flood the ones that they want with art of all types. It was incredible. I had to take a break every hour or so.  MONA is owned by David Walsh a gambler who wade Millions and then invested in art. He is very eccentric and has some interesting views on life. He wanted to attract women and leave a legacy so he opened MONA. The museum has transformed Hobart positively in terms of art and tourism. It loses about $3million annually.  This may seem like a bad thing but David doesn’t mind. The main reason is that admission is free for Tasmanians and low for everyone else. The museum gives you an iPod, which gives you “helpful” information about each piece. They give you at least the title and artist information for each piece of art but then there are extras like artist interviews, art facts, poems, David’s thoughts, and music to accompany the art. You can look at my tour here. http://mona.net.au/theo/ My iPod died toward the end of the day so it missed a few of my viewings. The virtual tour doesn’t do it justice at all but at least you can get an idea. MONA also brews their own beer and makes their own wine. If I had to pick a least favorite part of the day it would be the food and wine. It was fine but not as spectacular as everything else. When I got back I curled up in a ball to recover for a bit. MONA really is confrontational to all of your senses. You leave amazed and in need of a hug. After a bit of recovery I went on the ghost tour that I had skipped the night before. Not one of the highlights of Hobart. Oh well.

Last day in Hobart I took a bus ride up to Mt. Wellington the mountain that overlooks Hobart. It is also the 49^th tallest mountain in Tasmania. I think a few more on the overland track are in the top 10 but other than that I don’t know the list.  I walked the 4 hours down the mountain and back into the city again with my pack because I was headed to the airport. I would have walked to the airport too but I didn’t have time to walk 18km so I booked a bus and got a sausage roll instead. It was no normal sausage roll; It was an absolutely amazing Moroccan lamb roll with tomato chutney. I had heard about it from the med students and it totally lived up to reports. Then off to the airport and back to Melbourne, where my fantastic housemate picked me up. 

11/4/2013-11/8/2013

Sorry about the delay. It has been much harder to keep up with the blog without having a working phone. Over the first week of November I hiked the Overland track which goes through central Tasmania. The track starts in Cradle Mountain and goes to Lake Saint Claire. It is a 65-90km walk depending on whether or not you take the ferry across Lake Saint Claire. There are 10 huts along the track: 7 that you can stay in the others are for emergencies only. The recommended walk is 6-7 days which would give a hiker amble opportunity to do all of the side trips. I did the trip in 4 and a half.

Day 1: I started at Dover lake which is a beautiful park. The first day is the hardest hiking with steep inclines. I also had the worst weather of the hike on day 1. There was a good deal of mud too. There was mud all along the track but on day 1 I wasn't used to it yet so I spent a good deal of time and energy trying to jump over puddles. I didn't get to climb cradle mountain because a park ranger recommended against it since it was overcast. I got to the first hut in Waterfall Valley at around 3pm and went for a quick dip in the pond. The waterfalls were pretty but nothing spectacular. I ate an early dinner of couscous and went to bed around 7pm. One of the best things about camping/hiking is the shifted time perception. No staying up late to work, just sleep when it's dark(or a little beforehand if you're tired).

Day 2: The second day was a big day for me. I snuck out of the hut at 6:30am without waking up many of my 9 hut-mates. I got to walking and made it to the next hut at Windermere Lake at 9am where I met another group of hikers and had breakfast. I made pancakes because I am a gourmet hiker. They didn’t flip very well but they were still tasty.  I was back on the track quickly. It was a beautiful day. I did well for the next few hours but started to fade around 1pm. I was looking for the frog flats hut for lunch and was beginning to get discouraged. I caught up with 2 other groups and none of us could find the hut so eventually I just picked a nice log for lunch.  I found out later that frog flats is an emergency campsite only and that there isn’t actually a hut there. I was feeling good after lunch, put my pack back on, took 2 steps and fell in a mud hole. It went up to my mid-thigh. After that I was just walking to get to Pelion the hut where I was planning on sleeping.  It was a total of 24km on day 2.  After I dropped my pack I found a river (arm river) to wash off all of the mud that I had accumulated during the day. I spent the rest of the day lying in the sun. I had an early dinner again but was a bit more social and talked to a woman named Anna who was also from Melbourne and needed a bit of a walk to clear her head of a bad relationship that she had ended the week before.

The people that I met along the track and met up with several times were: Anna, who I have just described, Jim a middle aged Jewish man doing the walk in 3 days, Tom a real life Bear Grills who slept in a waterproof hammock, 2 brothers on a birthday party walk, 3 guys from Adelaide meeting a friend in Hobart, 3 mothers from eastern Melbourne, 2 older men who walked for 11 days and did all of the extensions probably an extra 100km, and 5 medical school students.

Pelion was a beautiful hut there was a few additional groups who had done day hikes but we were all in bed early.

Day 3: Day 3 was going to be my lazy day I didn’t have nearly as far to go but the Melbourne mothers were up early and were making noise. I still had a leisurely breakfast before heading out. It was a 2-hour walk up hill to the base of Mt. Ossa the highest mountain in Tasmania. I dropped my pack on the platform and climbed over Mt. Doris and up Mt. Ossa. Mt. Doris had a track but Mt. Ossa was covered in snow so it was scrambling up rocks and trekking through snow most of the way.  I made it to the top by 11am so I climbed around and ate lunch at the summit. It was beautiful, I could see all the way back to Cradle Mountain.  After about an hour, I made my way back down the mountain just as the next few people were getting close to the top. Down was much more fun than up, I sat down and did a (several) bum slide(s) most of the way down. The recommended time to climb the mountain was 6 hours return. I did it in 4 counting an hour for lunch. After picking up my pack it was only another 1.5 hours to Kira Ora Hut. I considered pushing on and making it to the next hut but after going for a swim and putting on my dry clothing I couldn’t talk myself into it. I hung out with the med students for a while and the Melbourne mothers. Jim also caught up to us. It was a fun evening in the hut.

Day 4: Another big day of hiking but today was net down hill and had plenty of stops.  I left just before 6am.  I hiked to Du Cane hut for breakfast. It is an emergency only hut but it was one of my favourites. Can you spot the toilet in this picture? 

It was just a pit under a stump.
 
I really liked Du Cane.  The next stops were Ferguson and D'Alton Falls.

 They were spectacular.  I walked a bit further and got to Harrison falls. They were less spectacular but good for a swim.  The trips to the falls gave me a good break from my pack and I was back on my way. I made it to Bert Nicoles hut for lunch just in time to see the 3 boys from Adelaide as they were leaving. I was a bit soaked from rain by this point so I dried off rested before heading off.  It was a nice hut but I was glad that I stayed at Kia Ora instead. I hiked on and made Narsicca Hut by 3:30. I had planned on having dinner there but it was early so I had a snack and a nap instead. Just before I left Jim and the brothers on the birthday trip got the coal heater working so I dried out all of my  clothes before heading out. They were all catching the ferry from Narcissica to the visitor’s center the next morning. I hiked through the rain forest to Echo Point. Echo point is a tiny hut for only 4 people. Very few people stay there because very few people walk around the lake and those who do typically start from Narcissica and walk all the way to the end in 1 day.  So there were only 6 of us there. The 3 boys from Adelaide and the two older men on the 11 day hike. We had a fun and warm evening with the coal heater.  I had dreams of mice and bugs in my sleeping bag but woke up to find everything was fine. 26 km total today.

Day 5: The last 11km of the hike . It rained pretty hard the entire time. This part of the trail is not very maintained so I lost it for a bit and walked along the shore/through the edge of the lake for about an hour before finding the trail again. I was told that lake St. Claire is comparable to Lake Louise in Alberta but it was so foggy that I didn’t really see the comparison. When I was about half way I took my phone out to take a picture and found that mice had gotten to my waterproof pouch and chewed a hole so that instead of being dry my phone had sat in water for the past 2 hours. It was ruined. I tried to fix it. I took it to someone in Hobart, I took it 3 places in Melbourne. The phone is completely lost. When I got to the visitor’s center at Lake St. Claire I ate a pizza, had a coffee, and a bowl of wedges.  I rode back to Hobart with the boys from Adelaide and got all sorts of insider information on Hobart, Adelaide, and MONA. I checked in to the hostel, showered, went to the store and got a litre of cookies and cream ice cream and went to sleep.