The Exhaustion

After some amazing adventures in Tasmania, arriving in Melbourne was dismal to say the least.  The countless trams and city streets reminded me of San Francisco, and I could not help but feel like I had travelled to the other side of the world only to arrive in a city that reminded me of home.
 
Tasmania was three weeks of living in the moment.  My biggest life decisions were: do I want to go hiking or spend the day at the beach?  Should we cook dinner now or later?  Nights of camping felt limitless, and the future shined like the sun, a beautiful luminosity with a powerful magnitude that you would never have to confront outright ...or hopefully never. 
  
When I arrived in Melbourne, five months of travel caught up to me like a sickness.  The first two weeks in a new city were lucid and panicky, like holding my breath under water.  This is the secret that travellers never mention: the exhaustion.  Find a job.  Find a place to stay.  Figure out your way around the city.  Stay positive.  Smile.  Employers love happy people.  Act confident.  Stay focused.  Don't get stressed out.  Don't get stressed out.  Don't get stressed out.  


The exhaustion is physical too.  When you are staying in hostels, couch surfing at friends' houses, and camping for nights on end, you never really feel clean.  I mean, you do feel relatively clean, but you never feel three star hotel room, fresh white towel, mini shampoo and conditioner clean.  You certainly do not feel routine lifestyle, leave in defrizzer, favorite fluffy pink bathrobe clean.  The cleanliness that you feel is akin to a badly mopped bar room floor, the dirt is merely pushed around to appear clean and no one seems to notice it, but you do.    


Then there is that voice inside your head with that evil, threatening, ominous question.  The what if question.  What if I can't find work, and I can't support myself, and I have to fly home, and move in with my parents, and I can't find work back home either and then one day I wake up and I am forty-five-years-old and I still live with my parents and I have no money and no drivers license and no friends and nobody loves me and everybody hates me and I die an excruciatingly slow death which begins when I am healthy and takes decades to commence and nobody comes to my funeral and five minutes after I die I am neither loved nor hated; I am only forgotten.  Okay.  Breathe. Breathe.  We are above water again.  Everything is okay.  Don't get stressed out.  Nothing has happened yet.  Just breathe.  


Months ago, in Sydney, I met an Irish guy with a tattoo that said: "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."  When I asked him who originally wrote it he gave me a condescending you-should-already-know-this look, before answering: "Abraham Lincoln."  Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that I did not know Abe all that well, but that quote just did not sound like something he would have said. Also, there was the absurd fact that I learned about a quote by a great American president because it was tattooed on some Irish guy's bicep.  Anyway, the words stuck with me and I liked them so much that I asked Google and yes, Abraham Lincoln did in fact say this:


 "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."   

I like it.  I know that it is a bit cliche.  I like it anyway.  It makes sense to me and it relaxes me.

Tasmania Road Trip

I am a person with a lot of pet peeves.  I admit it.  Most people who know me well would probably admit it for me.  Out of all of my pet peeves, I find that few things are more boring than listening to descriptions of other people's amazing vacations.  Everyone has that friend who seems to only throw dinner parties in order to open up the 258 picture digital slide show, or worse, pull two massive photo albums off the shelf and recount in excruciating detail their family trip to Hawaii in 2005.  I resolve to never be one of those people.  That is why I am going to warn you right now, before you get too far into this entry and regret ever starting it:  If you are a person who hates hearing about other people's amazing vacations that you yourself might never go on, DO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY.  Though it consists of several surprises and unplanned adventures, there are no conflicts and there are no problems.  There is only one incredible road trip through what is arguably the most beautiful place in the world.  


It all started around four o' clock on the 31st of January.  It was my fourth day in Hobart since I had finished the Overland Trail and I was getting antsy.  I knew that I could not leave Tasmania without exploring the East Coast.  If I wanted to see it all, I had to figure out something fast.  This was going through my mind as I took a seat next to Chris at the computers .  Chris is originally from Iowa.  He had spent some months in Tasmania passively looking for work, meanwhile, he was living in The Pickled Frog for way too long.  I don't know if it was his warm, unpretentious demeanor or his American accent, but Chris was an instant old friend -- the kind of person that you feel like you know before you know.  Here is how the conversation went:


Me: What cha doin' (seeing full well what he was up to)
Chris: I'm buying a ticket to Melbourne
Me: Don't do that!  We should go on an adventure instead.
Chris: Looks at the computer screen, then back at me, then back at the screen again.  He finally closes out the window.  What kind of adventure were you thinking?  


I suggested a road trip, conveniently omitting the fact that I don't drive, don't have a driver's licence, and have only a vague knowledge of the logistics that a Tasmania road trip would entail.  I decided that those things were only minute details that would work themselves out in the planning process.  We pulled out a big map of Tassie and weighed out which direction to start.  


Rewind to a couple of days before this.  I met a woman named Kim.  Kim was also planning a road trip only her plan actually included a vehicle, passengers, and a hypothetical itinerary.  Kim is from Wisconsin.  She is a friendly person who will talk to anyone.  Kim has a habit of telling run-on stories, you know the kind of stories that give birth to side note stories, so that anecdotes branch out like tree limbs and the final conclusion ends up miles from the original topic.  And there is always a conclusion.  It usually goes something like: "...and that's when I learned never to ask Aunt Sally for a watermelon."  Or the classic: "...and though I blah blah blah, I will never regret my choice in college/first drinking experience/trip to Amsterdam."  Anyway, Kim had plans to travel with a German girl named Michaela and one of the most easy-going people ever: a French guy named Mathieu.  Chris and I decided to take the fourth and fifth seats in the car, and so started Chapter One of an amazing adventure.  


Chapter One:
I do not have the time, nor the patience to describe this portion of the trip in detail but since I am a big fan of character driven plots I will describe to you Michaela.  Michaela is a nineteen year old from Germany.  She is a gymnast, a house painter, and she has recently been awarded Miss Craftswoman in Germany (yes there is such a thing).  Most entertainingly, however, Michaela is one of those people who will never directly tell you what she wants.  Example A: "Should we start boiling the water for dinner?" Translation: "I'm hungry."  
Example B: "Chris, could you maybe not drive so much like rally car style?"  Translation: "Chris, slow the fuck down!" 


These were the events of the beginning of our road trip. 
Day 1: Drove south to Cockle Creek.  On the way we stopped in some "thermal springs" that were disappointingly cold.
Day 2 (my birthday): We hiked through forests, ferns, and open fields to the southern most point in Tasmania.  Next we hopped in the car and drove to Lake St. Clair.
Day 3: We hiked to Platypus Bay.  Then we set off for Cradle Mountain .  We made multiple stops along the way to hike and see waterfalls and panoramic views.
Day 4: We hiked the Dove Lake Circuit.  Then drove up to Devenport.


Chapter Two:
We dropped off Michaela in The Big D (our pet name for Devenport.  Some others are:  The Dev, D Town, and my personal favorite: Devies).  Devenport is the northern port of Tasmania.  I Wikipediaed it to see if there was anything interesting that I could add in, but I didn't find anything.  Anyway, we spent exactly one night in Devies.  We met up with Grant, our new travel partner, in the morning.  


Grant is originally from Southern England.  He has that accent that makes anything he says sound super intelligent.  He chooses to waste this, however, by whinging in those negative hyperbolas that British people refer to as sarcasm or dry humor.  Grant will make fun of anything from your choice of wording to your walking pace, but it is all in good fun.  Just when you start to get annoyed, he will do something gentlemanly like carry your bags or open the door for you, and whatever you were bothered by will instantly be forgotten.   

From D Town we headed east to Bay of Fires.  There, we managed to get a free campsite with a stunning view of the ocean.  The rocks on the east coast of Tasmania are partially covered with red lichen giving the beaches a unique, exotic feeling.  On our first morning in Bay of Fires we woke up to see the sunrise.  You probably know this already, but in case you don't: the sun in Tasmania is bright, hot, white.  You would think that watching the sunrise would be a tranquil experience, however it actually becomes a battle between your mind that whats to look and your retinas that want to look away.  Luckily, if you switch your focus to the ocean, you can spot dolphins swimming in the sun-licked waves.      


Chapter 3:
We spent two nights and one full day on Bay of Fires before heading south to Wineglass Bay.  Wineglass is the type of place that you see on postcards and never believe it could look that amazing in real life.  The photographer had to have used a filter, Photoshop, something.  But no, not this time.  It really is that beautiful.  


We packed a couple of big backpacking packs and set off for a steep hike in.  The trail goes up and up and up numerous steps, but when you arrive at the viewpoint you forget what you were ever whining about.  It really is that beautiful.  Next you hike down and down and down until you finally reach the beach.  The campground is on the far end of the beach, about a half hour walk across soft white sand.       


I am one of those people that never gives out an A+.  Everything gets the 9+/10, or 4.5 stars, just in case something better comes along to take top place.  However, no matter what scale I am using, even if nothing comes to top it for the rest of my life, I am confident in giving Wineglass Bay the full 5 stars, 10+/10.  When we were in Bay of Fires, Chris said that he could finally die happy regardless of what trajectory his life takes.  In Wineglass, he declared that he had made that comment two days too early, because Wineglass topped what you could ever imagine the top was.  


We stayed there for two nights and one full day.  It rained all day for the full day.  Locals say that it only rains twice in Tasmania: just for four months each time.  Eating boiled potatoes in a cramped tent while under the pouring rain would have been miserable in most other settings, but in Wineglass it provided a Gothic skyscape for a phenomenal panorama.  Every now and then we would open the tent door to get a good look at our surroundings, but we would have to quickly zip it up again, before the rain poured in.  


The next morning we woke to see the sun shinning above friendly stratus clouds.  We were all ready to hike out, but I just couldn't go yet.  I tore off my backpack and ran into the ocean.  The crescent bay was turquoise at its crust and transitioned to a bright cobalt as it deepened.  Yet, looking down from where I was swimming, the water was crystal clear.  It sparkled, or maybe that was only my imagination.  We swam out to some rocks at the far end of the bay and looked back at the most amazing campsite I have ever seen.  For two nights and three days we had beachfront property in the most beautiful setting of my life.

The Overland Trail Revisited

I re-read my last blog entry and I just don't think that I did the Overland Trail justice.  I gave you a lot of information that you need in order to understand the concept of the trail, but I didn't take you there.  So let me try again:

There are a few things that you need to know about bush walking in Tasmania before you can understand the Overland Trail.  The first is the mud.  The mud is everywhere.  Rich, earthly brown soil with clumps of dirt, tiny twigs and leaves running through it.  It is the cold, dark humid mud of the sub-tropical rain forest.  Sometimes it exists in small patches but other times the mud takes up a block of trail so wide that It is unavoidable.  You can see traces of where others have stepped but they are not trustworthy.  The mud is always deeper than you think it is.  If you are lucky it will barely cover your shoes, but on occasion your foot will sink so far deep that the mud soaks in above your kneecap, runs down your gaiters and settles into your shoes.  

Secondly: the flies.  There are a lot of them, BIG flies that are striped like bees.  At midday it is hard to stay in one place because they buzz in circles around your head.  There are also mosquitoes.  Australians refer to them as mossies.  They usually come out late but there is a point around mid-afternoon when the mossies and the flies are out together and you might as well just quit swatting before you even begin.  You don't stand a chance against the buzzing swarm. 


Thirdly, there are the snakes.  There are only two types of snakes in Tasmania and they are both deadly.  During my time on the Overland I probably saw about five snakes.  Four of them were little but the one that I saw slithering across the trail on my last day was about a meter long and five inches wide.  I thanked my lucky stars that it ignored me and slithered perpendicularly across the trail.


I took a lot of side trips along the trail.  Now I will take you on my favorite one.  It was day three.  I had just hiked the 17km from Lake Windermere to the Pelion Plains Hut.  Me and two others decided to drop off our heavy backpacks and set off to Mt. Oakley.  Mt. Oakley is not the tallest mountain in Tasmania, but it has some of the best views.  


The hike started on a muddy track through open yellow grasslands.  It reminded me of hiking through snow back in Boulder; your foot could sink deep into the ground at any moment.  It is important to have a sense of humor about the mud on the Overland, because you know that you are not taking a shower anytime soon.  By the time we made it through the gauntlet  my legs were caked.  The trail began to wind through eucalyptus forest.  Gentle slopes quickly transitioned into steep switchbacks.  After about an hour, the forest changed again.  Eucalyptus trees were replaced with dense curly-headed palms.  The trail turned to rock and we found ourselves on all fours, ducking through palm trees, scrambling hand over hand up dusty rocks.  


Finally breaking treeline was like uncovering a thick veil.  The remainder of the trail through loose rocks and scratchy brush was rewarded with amazing views.  By the time we got to the peak, a set of giant rock boulders that sit on the middle of the mountain, we were in awe of the 360 degree spectacle.  With mountains undulating in all directions, and no roads, nor homes, nor cars in sight.  We were reminded, once again, what it is like to be in the middle of the Wilderness.