I finally made it to Iceland ๐
1.5 weeks ago I got into a train to go to the Dรผsseldorf airport – bound for a country with only 323k Inhabitants – less than most cities.
Tabea and me, we didn’t really plan… we googled a few places we had heard of and put it on a ‘want to see / maybe / naaah’ list. And we booked a car.
After arriving at eleven at night, I intended to go to a kiosk to find something for breakfast the next morning. The ’10 minutes that way’ turned out to be measured in car-minutes and I’m only a quarter as fast. After walking through wind and rain, I had definetly seen all of Keflavik (although everything was closed and covered in clouds and rain.) The next morning we picked up our Peugeot 208 and started our journey along beautiful scenery and hundreds of waterfalls. It took us 2 days to realize how to get music from our phones out of the car speaker (aux was disabled, usb sticks and my phone didn’t work and the bluetooth-options were quite hidden) and I emptied lots of coffee-cups as well as 3 camera batteries. Long story short, we had an amazing 2400km around iceland – but see for yourself ๐ [fullscreen suggested – upper right corner.]
I’ve seen quite a few countries so far but the scratch world-map on my wall is still pretty single-colored…
Fortunately, I’ll be scratching of 1 more place soon: I’m going to iceland tomorrow! Finally. I’ve wanted to visit this supposedly beautiful country for years – and now it’s for real! I’ll tell you next week if the landscape really is as stunning as the pictures online suggest ๐
Unfortunately the map below isn’t very detailed… I’ve only seen small parts of the US (Florida) and Australia (Queensland’s east coast), Argentinia (Buenos Aires & Iguazu) and I barely set foot into Brazil (Iguazu) but I got the passport stamp :D.
light blue: posted pictures from there
dark blue: been there, no pictures though
Grey: haven’t been there yet
From la paz, i took a complicated flight via multiple spots and ended up in Iguazu where I met Laura and a few friends. We stayed at a nice hostel including a pool for 2 nights and visited the brazilian and argentinian site of the iguazu-waterfalls as well as to a bird-parc on the brazilian side.
From cuzco I went to bolivia via Puno & copacabana. I did a boat trip to the isla del sol and and continued to la paz. After hearing about salar the uyuni, I spontaneously booked a trip there. Traveling in bolivia is really cheap thanks to overland coaches that offer relatively comfortable seats ‘semi cama’ or even 180ยฐ reclinable seats in the cama busses.
Due to the rough sea and low visibility as well as time constraints, I decided to skip Tow of 1770 / Agnes Water and the diving trip to Lady Musgrave Island. After returning from the sailing trip midday, I had to make arrangements for my next stop. The bus-ride further south from Airlie beach turned out to be a 13h overnight trip to Hervey bay. Thanks to the travel-agent at BASE in Airlie, I could book the 2D-Cool Dingo Fraser-adventure for the next morning, 30min after my greyhound was bound to arrive. The buy was perfectly on time but somehow my pick up didn’t show. After spending 10 precious minutes on the hotline, a taxi drove me to the ferry which waited 3min (just for me =) ). After reaching Fraser Island at Kingfisher bay resort, our funny bus driver put us in a pink 4WD off-road bus and we began our trip to lake McKenzie. Luckily we could hide in the crystal-clear lake during the short rain-shower and the weather didn’t disturb our lunch afterwards. Of course it rained it the rainforest during our walks before returning to our lodge-style accommodation at the resort. After the amazing dinner buffet, my new friends and me went to the ‘heated jacuzzi’ at the hotel. After getting excited as we saw the pool, starry sky and jacuzzi, the cold water was a slight disappointment ๐ but we found a solution: Getting out, into the even colder (‘heated’) pool or the fresh air and returning to the jacuzzi made it feel warm for a few minutes ^^. After some pool, jugs of beer and an amazing live-performance to a few tenacious D songs, we recovered for what was to come the next morning: A bumpy ride through the forest to the eastern coast of Fraser Island, the 75 mile beach. We visited the Maheno shipwreck and learned about it’s stunning history and embarrassing end: The conversion from luxury liner to a hospital ship transporting ~~18000 patients, holding the record of the fastest round-the-world-trip for 25 years and it being sold to Japan (wanting the metal) who dismounted the propellers and tried to tow it to Japan, hitting a cyclone and stranding the powerless Maheno on the sands of Fraser island about 79 years ago. We also drove all the way up to the Indian head and the champagne pools, where we spotted a few whales and saw pristine beaches. Later on we floated down the Eli-creek in tyres before our coffee-break. Best of all, I did a 15min scenic flight with air-fraser, starting from the beach and landing further up the beach to rejoin the bus (they claimed this to be the oly place where planes land on the beach apart from a single place in Scotland).
One of the most famous spots along the east coast is Airlie Beach – but mainly because this is where the sail-boats ad catamarans leave for Hamilton and Whitsunday island which is famous for Whitehaven beach. The beach consists mainly of silica instead of common sand (the inner part of the sand grains, beneath its (iron)-oxide shell) which is of such high quality that they wanted to use it for the Hubble space telescope’s mirror.
A friend I made in Cairns suggested me to join her on the ‘WINGS’ 2D/2N sailing trip since it’s one of the few that offers diving at different sites. Due to the super-moon and the resulting 2.5m tide, the water was a little murky during my 2 dives and night-diving would’ve been even worse but we saw a wobbegong-shark! underwater-pics will follow as soon as I receive my picture DVD (the one I bought onboard turned out to be empty ๐ ) The sailing was great and we had a lot of fun on our catamaran, as well as on the beach with the awesome crew and people. See for yourself how stunningly beautiful this beach is:
After a 1-day diving trip to the outer Great barrier reef where we met a bunch of turtles, I went on a tour to the Atherton tablelands. The weathergod thought it needs to rain when I’m in the rainforest ;). We saw a Platypus (they are much smaller than I thought ~40cm long all black and swam in brown water), a few fig-trees (who start growing when their seed lands on another tree and cover the host tree with roots and twigs until it dies due to a lack of sunlight and nutrition).
On my last day in Cairns, I went flyboarding and it was amazing! If you get the chance, try it (Here’s a video about flyboarding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4Bm3cs9TFo)!
My ext stop along the greyhound-road was Townsville from where I proceeded to Magnetic Island (Ad yes, there are a few magnetic rocks lying around if I can trust the magnetometer of my smart-phone)
Ps: please excuse any missing N&n s, somehow this button isn’t reliable anymore.