I have relocated!

Hey everybody! 

Sorry for the long leave of absence. Due to living in a permanent spot for the past three months, without any trips or enthralling adventures, I have found myself with writers’ block, and unfortunately no interesting posts to entertain you with. But now I am back with lots of new and exciting stories to tell you. I am off on a brand new, different type of trip with a very specific purpose. 

If you have enjoyed following my progress around the globe this far, I recommend you head over to my new blog here, created specially to follow our newest mission, to find out all about our most recent adventures! 

In Australia for the next ten months, we are now the proud owners of a very old (1979), large, yellow beast of a van: Lady Eileen the Adventure Van. We will be travelling all around this large country, making several special stops along the way. Find the whole story on The Calendar Challenge Oz blog! 

The adventure starts tomorrow! 

  

Blue Mountains Fun Facts

Why the Blue Mountains are blue

From a distance, the eucalypt forests that cover the mountain side take on an intense blue haze, giving the region its name. The blue haze is caused by an optical phenomenon called ‘Rayleigh Scattering’.  The leaves of the eucalypt trees contain natural oils, released as tiny droplets into the atmosphere when the temperature heats up. When these droplets are hit by sunshine, rays of light scatter. Viewed from a distance, this scattering appears blue in colour! The mountains appear intensely blue after a long period of warm, fine weather. After heavy rain, they seem green for a day or so until the droplets fill the air again. 



The Three Sister

The Three Sisters is a sandstone rock formation towering over 900 metres above the Jamison Valley. Sculpted by centuries of natural erosion, these soft sandstone pillars are regarded as the Blue Mountians’ most spectacular and recognised landmark. The pillars stand at 922, 918 and 906 metres tall respectively, or just over 3000 feet above sea level! 

The legend goes that three sisters, Meehni, Wimlah and Gunnedoo, lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe. It is said that they fell in love with three men from the neighbouring tribe but marriage was forbidden by tribal law. The three brothers were not happy and refuted the law, deciding to use force to steal the sisters away. A major tribal battle ensued and a tribal elder turned the sisters to stone, in an attempt to protect them. Unfortunatley, the elder was killed in the fighting and no one else possessed the power to return the sisters to their human forms. So they stand forever as three sandstone pillars. 





Scenic World

The Scenic Railway is the steepest in the world, set at an angle of 52 degrees!





The Scenic Skyway is the highest cablecar in Australia, hanging at 270m above the Jamison Valley





The Scenic Canlecar is the largest in Australia, able to carry up to 84 passengers at one time!





The Scenic Walkway is the longest boardwalk in the whole of the Southern Hemisphere



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The little things: a mini holiday

Now that we are both working and have ‘normal people lives’ to go about on a daily basis, we try to make a point of doing something special together every once in a while. This could be as simple as making sure we have an evening off together to go to the cinema or to just curl up on the sofa at home, or even taking a couple of days off so we can get away and do some exploring! We just got back from one such trip, to the mysterious Blue Mountains of New South Wales, just a few hours drive from Sydney. 

We got up early on Wednesday morning to set off but unfortunately got immediately stuck in traffic! Not a good start to our ‘holiday’, but soon the roads cleared up and we were on our way towards Katoomba. A stop at the botanical gardens made for a very scenic break in the sunshine, as we soaked up the views and the vibrant colours. 

Katoomba is a small town, with plenty of small, pleasant cafés and boutique style shops. We had a room booked in the youth hostel so checked in to freshen up before a spot of lunch. A brief shower stinted our plans somewhat but it soon passed and we set off to Wentworth falls. A bit of drizzle meant the views were obscured by haze, but allowed us to see the mountains at their most atmospheric. After all, that is how the Blue Mountains tend to be known and depicted! We wandered down the mountainside until we arrived a steep set of stairs. Being terribly out of shape, we decided to give these a miss (the few people who did climb up them towards us were red in the face, out of breath and appeared to be in a reasonable amount of pain) and turned back the way we came.

With the falls ticked off the list, we drove over to the iconic Three Sisters, Katoomba’s most famous landmark. I have to admit, I find them rather unimpressive when observed from Echo Point, the main lookout, and prefer to view them from a distance, with the valley in between. A little bit of a stroll and then back to the YHA to shower before dinner. We had heard that the Three Sisters were better when viewed after dark, when a massive spotlight illuminates them from across the cliff. So armed with our new camera (Nikon D90 for those interested), we found our way through the night back to Echo Point. Unfortunately, we haven’t quite mastered the camera’s settings and our attempts to capture a perfect photo were, well, far from perfect. A few hundred blurred shots later, the coldest we have been since arriving in Australia, we gave up and went to eat ice cream instead. All in all though, a pretty successful first day. 

With our holiday only lasting two days, we made the decision to be real go-getters and wake up at sunrise to return, once again, to Echo Point with our camera. Slightly more productive than our night-time photography session, we at least came away with a few decent pictures. Back to bed for a nap before breakfast! 

The previous night we had made our plans for the following day: were the day to dawn grey and mizzly, we would visit the Jenolan caves, but were it to be a glorious sunny day, we would pay the price to enjoy the views from Scenic World. 

Well, the sun beat down on us as we sat outside eating our bacon and egg sandwiches with all the promise of being a scorching hot day, perfect for walking around under the shadowy canopy of the rainforest. I pulled out my handy Indonesian smartphone and googled Scenic World. $35 for an unlimited pass (only other option is a one way ride for $14!) seems pretty steep but on such a nice day, with a new camera to play with, it was worth it. Unlimited rides on the cablecar, the skyway and the steepest railway in the world made it easy to get around the valley and explore the different pathways. 

Being little rebels, we had a tendency to hop over railings and leave the beaten track allowing us to uncover the less seen views as we sat with our legs dangling over the cliff-edge. 

With the spectacular landscape imprinted on our eyelids, we finally set off on the two hour drive home, stopping in the quaint town of Leura for a bite to eat on the way.

A lovely trip that I would highly recommend to anyone who has a spare day or two when in the Sydney area!  

The truth about being a diving instructor

I knew it wouldn’t be all fun and games, I knew it wouldn’t be easy, I knew that the pay would never be great, but was I really prepared for the realities of being a diving instructor?
If you have read other posts on this blog, you will probably be aware that it has been my biggest dream to teach other people to dive. Since the age of ten when I did my PADI Open Water course in New Zealand, I knew it was what I wanted to do and for the next twelve years, I never once faltered in this belief. Finally, in November 2014, I qualified as a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor. This meant I could get on with fulfilling that dream of guiding people to take their first breaths underwater. Almost immediately, I had my first student. My boyfriend did his Open Water and Advanced with me as his instructor and it was amazing. It was fun, no stress and very rewarding and to my huge relief and his, he loved it (as well as being a natural).
I was lucky to have taught my first course in familiar surroundings, with a great support team and with a student I was more than comfortable with. In no way did this portray the whole reality of instructing scuba.
I have now been working with a dive centre and shop on Sydney’s glorious Northern Beaches for just over a month. There has been a lot to learn, the water conditions are nothing like I am used to – yes, I am not ashamed to say it, I am definitely a tropical water diver! – and I have found the whole experience rather stressful. From getting in and out the pool on time, to learning to manage the shop. How to coordinate teaching from the boat as well as knowing the different dive sites.
Ultimately, I knew this was all part of the package but that in no way makes it easier. The teaching is incredibly rewarding but is it enough?
I have been battling with myself a lot recently, I am not going to lie, there have been quite a few tears, questioning whether this is the job for me. Unless you have been there, it would be very hard to imagine what it feels like to have been pursuing a dream for so long, only to then realise that maybe it was the wrong dream all along.
Driving to the beach at 2am to lie on a bench and gaze at the stars, I understood that more than anything, I am scared. I am scared of the responsibility, scared of messing things up combined with the fear of letting people down. I am 22 years old and in my head I am still a kid, not quite ready for this. So I made a plan and came to an agreement: take things slower, one step at a time. Stop trying to take on everything at once, there is so much to learn. Don’t be so hard on yourself! Everyone has to start somewhere, everyone gets scared. Enjoy it. Stop stressing.
We are in Australia for the next year and although we have an apartment and have accumulated SO MUCH STUFF(!) we are still travellers at heart. Time to go back to living for the day and making the most of what the world has to offer.

But there you go, as it is, the honest to God truth. Being a dive instructor is not glamorous (for those of you who were ever under that impression), it is hard work, it can be stressful and tiring. There is always gear to be washed and a mound of paperwork for every student that we certify. We are poor, but you will always hear us say ‘good thing we don’t do it for the money!’ and that is also true. We do it for the love of diving and the ocean. We do it to share a passion.
Do I think I was wrong to dream of being an instructor for so long? No. I followed my heart for twelve years and it brought me here, it is part of who I am, whatever happens. Now it is just time to start working on the next dream, whatever that may be. Just another adventure.

Diving in Indonesia

Two sides to every story: Bali

“What are we doing here? Let’s turn around and go back, NOW!”
This was our initial reaction upon landing in Bali’s Denpasar Airport. We claimed our luggage and jumped in a taxi, heading over to Seminyak Beach where we had booked a room for a couple of nights. Staring out the windows at the streets of touristy Kuta was like looking through the porthole to our own personal Hell. McDonald’s followed KFC, shouldered by a Subway and a Pizza Hut. Quicksilver, Rip Curl, Hurley, nothing but surf shops on every corner. The pavements bustling with loud, brash, drunken Australians in the mandatory ‘Bintang singlet’ and ‘thongs’.
We mumbled to each other as the taxi passed the fourth KFC in short succession, saying anything to try and reassure each other that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Yet we were not convinced. Arriving at our hotel, we hauled our bags up to the third floor before heading out into our own worse nightmare. Late, hot, humid, feeling hungry and tired, all we wanted was to find a small local restaurant that would serve us delicious local dishes at reasonable local prices. Well, that shouldn’t be hard, right? Wrong! After walking for over three quarters of an hour, passing everything from Japanese to Italian, German to Malay (having just arrived in Indonesia from Malaysia we gave this a miss), the heavens opened, soaking us in a matter of seconds. By this time, we were beyond caring, feeling lost and frustrated, we turned into the first place promising cold beers and at least some kind of food. By the time our meals arrived, we had made our decision. We would wait for the light of day and judge Kuta after some sleep, then if we still hated it this much, we would rearrange our plans and head up to Tulamben earlier than intended.
The next day dawned, we ventured to the beach. Big mistake. We walked along the hot sand, grumpier with every step, as we looked for an appropriate spot to lay our towels. Filth everywhere, litter, needles, plastic bottles and bags. The red flags were up so even swimming was prohibited, though a few holiday surfers were making half-hearted attempts to ride the small waves. We gave up. Time to turn around and head back to the hotel, congratulating ourselves on finding one cheap enough, but with a pool. That was our day sorted, lounging by the pool planning our escape.
I have a friend who is a diving instructor at a resort in Tulamben – up on the North East coast of Bali – and I quickly got in touch with him and arranged transport for us to get there. These plans made, we slept a lot easier in the knowledge that we would be out of the tourist trap tomorrow.
The three hour drive was slow, but otherwise uneventful and once we got away from Denpasar, everything changed.
There are two sides to every story, and Bali is very much two-faced. We loved staying in Tulamben, in the cheapest place possible, getting to know the locals at our regular restaurants and singing and playing with the resident band every night.
We spent ten days there, just diving and hanging out before moving on to the Gili Islands (a completely different story) and then Lombok, before returning to Bali to visit Ubud.
I guess the moral of this story is, don’t judge Spain by Benidorm. Denpasar isn’t Bali.

Why I love scuba diving (so very very much)

No matter how many times we have ‘been there, done that’, the excitement is always the same. It starts with preparing your gear. You grab a tank, check it is full and set up your equipment. The boat ride is always fun as we huddle together discussing what we may see on the next dive, or sit in silence staring out to sea, enjoying the warm, salty wind on our faces. The boat slows and suddenly becomes a hive of activity. People spitting into masks and leaning over the side to rinse them out, others attaching strobes to cameras and finally all kitting up, parking our backsides on the edge of the boat and back-rolling into the blue.
This is when it really begins, masks in place, looking down into the other world that lies beneath us, ready and waiting for us to explore it.

Our planet’s surface is about 70% water-covered so it is hardly surprising that some of the most beautiful and special places on earth are under the oceans and seas. Non-divers only get to enjoy 30% of the world’s wonders – imagine what you are missing out on!

I put my regulator – my life line that will supply me with air whilst underwater – into my mouth and start my descent. I let all the air out of my BCD (buoyancy control device) and am in free fall, able to twist and turn myself in any way I please. I am weightless, I defy gravity, I am flying. I can lie face down, with my arms and legs splayed out, slowing me. I am sky-diving, watching the sea bed rising up to meet me. I can spin to look up at the surface, slowly drifting away from me or I can allow myself to fall head first, the whole world turned upside-down as I dive in slow-motion, arm stretched forward, Superman fashion. This is one of my favourite moments of a dive – the descent. The sudden sensation of weightlessness when the normal laws of physics exerted on us on land no longer apply. If you have ever wanted to experience zero gravity and what it is to fly unaided, then diving will give you a pretty good idea.
Before I hit the bottom I take a deep breath and stabalise myself. This is buoyancy control and the key to flying underwater. Once you have mastered it, you will be able to conduct impressive gymnastics with next to no effort. You think it, you do it, your body unquestioningly following your brain and imagination’s orders. There is no feeling quite like it.

Now you have arrived, it is time to look around. The whole universe has gone quiet. The only sound in your ears is that of your own breathing – in, out, in, out – slow and steady, you are in total control. Every now and then you will hear the unmistakable sound of a parrotfish chomping on some coral near by or maybe the annoying whine of a boat engine but you know that it will quickly pass and die away.
How many of you like to spend ages in the shower because it is your ‘thinking place’? Somewhere you can be alone with your thoughts and finally make those decisions that have been hanging over you for a while? Being underwater is kind of like that, but a hundred times better. Your troubles, worries and problems all fade for that hour you spend out in the blue.
There are a million amazing sights to distract you. Sharks, turtles, big schools of fish. The tiniest of baby false anemone clown fish (Nemo fish), damsel fish, nudibranchs (sea slugs – so very beautiful and colourful). The coral itself a delight for the eyes. The light playing through the water, floating rainbows, sparkling off the sand… Everything about our underwater world is mesmerizing.

I have been diving for almost twelve years and yet even now, nothing can match the feeling I get before and during a dive. I still catch myself in complete wonder, halfway through a dive, as I realise I am breathing underwater (a look at my dive computer confirms that yes, I have been breathing underwater for a full 45 minutes now). So I will grin and perform a series of flips, just because I can.
Diving is so much more than a sport, it is a passion, it is true love, it is a life-style. Once you learn to dive and enter into that whole new world and join the community made up by scuba divers, you will never want to turn back.

“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.” – Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

Where am I?

One of the top dive sites in the world, Sipadan Island lies in the Sulawesi Sea just 5° north of the equator, off the southeast coast of Sabah. The island is reached via the town of Semporna, about a 45 minute boat ride will get you there. The island itself is densely forested and surrounded by sandy white beaches although being a protected site – especially for turtles to lay their eggs – it is forbidden to walk around and explore as it would be too easy to step on eggs, killing the young turtles.
An oceanic island formed by corals growing on top of an extinct undersea volcano, Sipadan rises 600m up from the sea floor. To say that the wall diving here is spectacular is an understatement. It is breathtaking, with a mixture of larger marine creatures and macro-life that will have you turning your head every which way.
Sipadan is in the heart of the Indo-Pacific basin, one of the richest marine habitats in the world, where over 3000 species of fish and hundreds of coral species have been classified. The area is renowned for its unusually large number of hawksbill and green turtles due to them coming to mate and nest on the island, so it is not unusual to see six or more turtles on a single dive. Residential schooling barracuda, jack fish and big-eye trevally, which often gather in their thousands, create spectacular tornado-like formations. A unique feature at Sipadan is the ‘turtle tomb’, un underwater labyrinth of caves and tunnels that contain the skeletal remains of many turtles that became disorientated and drowned. We visited the outer cavern of the catacomb to see the first skull in the tombs. Training in cave diving is required to penetrate further into the caves.
The macro-life is as amazing as the big fish, with a multitude of nudibranchs, garden eels, leaf scorpion fish, gobies and various pipe fish hiding around most of the dive sites. With its diversity and abundance of marine life, it is little wonder that Sipadan is acclaimed worldwide.
Since 2005, dive resorts that had been operating on Sipadan were closed to help conserve both marine and land eco-systems, and divers were brought in by boat from resorts on nearby islands (or in our case the Seaventures Dive Rig, a converted oil rig) by their dive operators. In 2009, Sabah Parks, which manages the island, installed wooden huts and facilities so the island would be accommodating for day-trippers. A permit is required to enter the area – priced at 40MYR per person, per day – and there are limited permits each day that must be distributed among the dive resorts. Hence why I feel so lucky to be preparing for my second day of diving at Sipadan tomorrow. Better get some sleep, it is a 5:30am start!

Info sources: SabahTourismf

Night buses and squat toilets

It is six o’clock in the morning and I am sitting in a roadside indian café, drinking piping hot coffee mixed with condensed milk in an attempt to both get warm and wake up.
We are on an adventure and like most adventures, this one starts in the middle of nowhere. We – that is Dominik, a fellow IDC candidate and myself – decided to take a few days off from diving… To go diving. Another member of our Instructor Development Course group flew off to Semporna as soon as we has passed the exam, to go diving at Sipadan, known as the fifth best dive site in the world. We all looked longingly at the beautiful photos he was sharing before realising nothing was actually stopping us doing it too. It is expensive, but due to it being an unusually quiet low season, we managed to get a good deal, finally deciding it was a once in a lifetime experience and worth the money. So our plans were made and off we set.
Yesterday was business as usual. Pick up at 8am and off to Gaya Island and the Downbelow Beach Hut. We did a dive to remove a tangled fishing net – more about this soon – then just enjoyed the rest of the day fun diving. I skipped the last session of the afternoon to enjoy the sun and get a few emails drafted, while my gear dried ready to be packed away. I still hate packing, even after all the experience I have had! I think getting a full set of scuba gear into a 60L rucksack will always be a challenge. But I got it done and by 4pm we were on the boat and headed back to mainland. A quick stop for our customary post-dive ice cream and it was time to get ready: shower, pack, pit-stop for food. I dropped a rucksack full of things I did not need in Dom’s room and we were on our way, a take-away box of fried egg rice tucked away for dinner.
A taxi dropped us off at the big bus station to the North of Kota Kinabalu city and in perfect asian style, we were mobbed by representatives of the multiple bus companies the moment the car stopped. One swung my rucksack out of the boot and onto his back, which immediately put him out of the running. I raised my voice and got them to take a step back. It was obvious -even through all their clamoring – that they were all charging 50MYR rather than their usual price of 75. One name jumped out at me: Dyana. We had been told when booking our diving trip that we would be picked up at Dyana bus station, so it made sense to get their bus. As soon as the decision was clearly made, all the others backed off and we were able to purchase our tickets in peace. That task done and with some time still to kill, we found a quiet spot in the corner of the bus-park (if that is what you call a car-park for buses) and sat on the curb to eat our rice and drink our beer. With my rucksack by my feet and a bus ticket in my hand, I smiled. For everything felt so normal, just as it should and I was happy knowing that I was travelling once more.
The squat toilets were simply a bonus. Gone are the days where I groan upon realising there are no western toilets available. I believe that learning to use a squat toilet without peeing on yourself is a turning point when travelling through Asia (unless of course it is only me that ever struggled with them!)
Enough about toilets, we boarded the bus in a timely fashion and as so often, it was like stepping directly into the Arctic. I will never understand the logic behind chilling the passengers to the point of getting frost-bite – hence the hot coffee I am holding now. Not only were we condemned to freeze for the next eleven hours, we had also been blessed with one of those drivers who thinks that since he isn’t getting any sleep, no one else should either. He decided to keep us entertained with loud Malaysian music, turning the volume up to ear splitting level every once in a while just to make sure we could hear it. Combine this with the fact he seemed to enjoy switching on the lights every few minutes meant it was not the most restful of nights. But now we are here, where ever here is exactly I do not know although I do know that in a few hours we will be diving in what are hopefully spectacular surroundings. Oh, and we are staying on an oil rig. Should be an awesome three days.