Sydney: Final destination

I finally arrived in Sydney. The last major challenge for the Pajero is done. Started the last 320

kilometers this morning. The devastation caused by the Superstorm was visible everywhere along the road. Some segments of the road were halfway flooded and trees and other obstacles were about of being removed all along the way. Sometimes complete roads were closed and it caused me to drive 150km's of detours. So it wasnt boring at all and i enjoyed it - it was the last part of my Australian roundtrip. Arrived at about lunch time in Sydney City - perfectly timed to the worst rush hour! Except some clouds and little bit rain, there wasnt any sign of the storm anymore.

Tomorrow i will go to the print shop and get some copies from my Pajero-Advertisment. Its time to sell it. Therefore I will drive to different guesthouses and backpacker hostels, to hang up the advertisments there.

Brisbane's Super Storm

Back to Australia, Gold Coast, right into the eye of the cyclone! Since Friday here in Queensland is a very severe super storm roaming around. The flight yesterday to Brisbane was scary and people were shouting around :)! But it was long time ago since i last time experienced passengers applaud and clap their hands for the pilots at the end.

Actually, I booked the train from Brisbane Airport to Gold Coast, but because of the storm it was out of service. Thankfully I booked the ticket in advance, cause now the train company had to organize my trip to Gold Coast.  They simply put me in a taxi – a business class taxi and the transport costs were over 200$ - including a swipe out to McDonalds :D

The Pajero seems to be alright. He is little bit sick cause one tyre is flat. But except of that and the parking fine, everything looks good and I already was able to start the engine this morning. I actually planned to leave Gold Coast today. Hopefully really everything is alright with the Car and so I can go pump the tyre, driving to the next shopping mall to get some foods and then continue the last part of my Australian journey! Its about 870km to Sydney… Will be a long way again, but accompanied with the south-moving-cyclone, I should have a very pleasant time…

New Caledonia: Roadtrip

Cause my leg didnt allow me go diving during the week, I didnt do much except that I roamed around in Noumea, doing sightseeing, some coffee tasting in many different coffee shops, ate many small snacks everywhere and enjoyed watching people rushing around and doing their daily business!

On friday I checked out from the youth-hostel and got a rental car to drive to the northern part of New Cale. So the trip was nice with lots of nickel mountains and mining areas everywhere, but somehow I had many many “déjà vu’s” from the other countries while driving the 900kms.. So the “stunning”moments were very seldom. Anyway, it was definitely worth the driving and a nice experience to see the country and especially its north-south flora and fauna differences. Up in Hienghene, a place in north-east, I went for a 2 dive trip. Cause of the rain and storms the diving conditions haven’t been the best, although it was an interesting dive in and around the caves and reefs with some awesome parts of coral fields.

Today evening I will touch down again in Brisbane, where I will go back to Yvonnes appartement in the Gold Coast. And tomorrow I probably already will start driving my way down to Sydney…. So far the plan :D!

 

New Caledonia: Running around Noumea

On last friday in Vanuatu, I again scratched open a mosquito bite on the under leg. And it got infected again. Two days ago, I thought it will go away by itself, so didnt bother much and went running. I guess this was an absolutly bad idea. Yesterday it went very worse and so I went to the doc in the morning, as simple walking around really started to hurt. He gave me antibiotics. Seems to be the same infection as I had in the Solomon Islands! I hate that! It destroys my plan for tomorrows diving activity and other plans for the next days. For friday, I reserved a car to drive around New Caledonia. Hopefully on Saturday my leg will be much better, so that I will be able to go diving on the east coast somewhere….

By today morning, my leg looks terrible. It was swollen nearly to the double size and it burnt like hell! I read little bit in the internet about the causes of it and found out that it might be something like “elephantitis”, a typical tropics infection! It is probably caused by the remaining bacteria in the leg, from the last time in the Solomon islands. When I imagine what now in my leg is going on, then it makes me little bit scary! Now its evening and the leg seems to be already a bit better. Hopefully it is going to heal completely, and, very SOON!!
But for sure I never ever will scratch again any mosquito bite!! I guarantee!! I also remember when I was in PNG and talked to this crocodile hunter, he told me a story from the 1970's, when he had something like that. I just thought – “yeah that wont happen to me!” – and now it happened! But his story was horrible. Cause he was in the 1970's jungle and had no hospital or anything around, he had to put his leg into nearly boiling hot water to kill the bacteria…. Autsch…!!

Today I jumped into a bus and just drove somewhere i-don’t-know. Somewhere direction south! Cause it was the same road on which I was running two days ago, I wanted to find out where exactly I was running along and for how many kilometers - it felt like a half marathon distance :)

New Caledonia: Merde ATM, pourquoi?



Noumea

Here in noumea its actually very nice - they have a McDonalds! Compared to Vanuatu as neighbour country, its is civilizied and clean and tidy! People are wealthy and out of 100 locals, i would say 40  are white. And I didn’t expect so much France-Style everywhere. Its like a little france somewhere out in the pacific. Also they have the typical French cars and restaurants and they all talk French, like in France. And nobody of them really wants to talk English. Like in France.

Yesterday when I arrived, I got a shocking moment. In arriving hall at the airport at about 9pm, I went to the ATM to get money for my pocket! The first ATM didn’t accept my card and spit it out. The second ATM the same. The third ATM the same, but after it spit out the card, it also spit out the 400 USD I asked for. And this was the moment the shock started!!! The ATM spits the money after spiting out the card? The hell!!! I rushed back to the second ATM and tried to find the women who was behind me in the row. Cause I knew she must have taken the money with her! I searched in and outside the airport for a woman which I actually didn’t recognize at all…. I just remembered it was a black and fat woman. So I asked several black and fat women, if she was the one behind me in the row of the ATM. But she wasn’t there - i didnt find her.

So I rushed to the airport security and asked if they can check the security cameras to find out who the woman was. It lasted and lasted and lasted. Finally the security officer who was allowed to see the records was found and after minutes, he found out that the camera didn’t work ….!!! Now my chance to find that woman and get my money back, was like ZERO!

Afterwards I went again to the this second ATM, cause I wanted to be sure that the ATM spits out any money! The ATM talked to me and told me to take my card out and seconds later didn’t spit out any money, these moments made my day!!

Vanuatu: Diving to "The Lady"

Today I was diving at the famous wreck "SS President Coolidge". It was a luxury passenger boat which was converted to a troop transport ship for more than 5000 soldiers. In 1942, it touched some mines and sunk. The wreck is now lying between 20 and 70 meteres under the water and it needs a minimum of 10 dives to see the whole wreck.

With my two dives i did there, i probably only saw a fraction, compared to the 28'000 dives the owner of the dive shop did there in the wreck. Well, 28'000 - I think he probably did little bit too much :D!

The dive was a one of the most impressive Ive ever did. Cause all the aisles through the wreck are very intact and the big and small stuff from the boat, crew and passengers are still there as they left it behind in 1942. Missiles, helmets, guns and rifles, furniture, personal supplies. And the most famous object is in the first class smoking room of the wreck. A porcelain statue, called "The Lady". It is on 40 meters below surface and therefore the time to observe it, is just about 1-2 minutes.

In the afternoon the dive shop organized a second dive at the “million dollar point"! From above it looks like a normal shore and swimming beach! But it is a dumpsite, where at the end of WW2 the americans throw ALL their "things" into the water. Probably they were too lazy to take it home :)! As of today many things have been removed or stolen. But spreaded over several dozen square meters, there are still cars, trucks, boats, canons and many more unidentified metal parts vegetating on the ground.

Vanuatu: A seajourney is fun

I finally arrived in Santo, the biggest island in the north of Vanuatu. Originally I wanted go to the island Malakula, the island below Santo. There are several cannibal sites and also the one, where the last human got munched in 1936. But somehow I found out that when I go to Malakula, then I have to stay there for about 5 days until the next boat comes and brings me to Santo. 5 days! 5 days? 5 days without any proper food like chicken, pork or beef from grill? I had that dilemma already in PNG and it teached me a lot! And one thing I learned was “never ever spend again so many days in a such a lost place”! (no wonder those people became cannibals..hahaha)

The way from Port Vila to Santo with the boat, was also one thing i probably never ever will do again. I knew it is a long long way up here and in worst case it probably will take up to 24 hourse until arrival. At least I sat 27 hours on that fully filled boat. On the boat were no beds. Just chairs. Small, uncomfortable plastic chairs without any paddings. No showers and no drinking water. Ugly smell from the cargo goods and the living pigs and chickens they've transported on the roof. There were big waves and strong winds. The bright lights were always on and the feeling finally finding sleep was like defeating the last big boss in a boring but though video game. That’s a nice list of negative things, isn’t it? But at least they had enough clean toilets and enough toilet paper. Also the view on the stunning passing by islands, were like bonbons that brightened up the journey. And thanks god I came to the idea buying tinned food and water before departure. The best play was brining a bucket of chicken wings from the take-away in Port Vila. Once i grabbed it out of my backpack, everybody in and around 10 meters catched up the delicious smell and some of them set up a look as they want to kill me to get those chicken wings! But I forgot buying bottled water and therefore had to drink the disgusting smells-like-shit water they had there from the tab. No wonder I had to vomit…..

No idea how many days I will spend here in Santo. Probably until Monday and then back to Port Vila. Will go diving here cause dive books say, Santo has with its “SS President Coolidge” one of the best diveable WW2 wreck all over the world.

Vanuatu: Lava

The last three days I have been on the island Tanna, to see the volcano Mt. Yasur. One of the most accessible active volcano around the world. After walking for hours and about 22 kilometers somewhere around the island, I would say Tanna is nice, but except the volcano isn’t much going on or to do on that place. The volcano is awesome and I went up two times, cause on the first day a cyclone has nearly blown away the whole volcano.

 

I went up there that  first day and I never experience such a storm around me. Sand, ash, stones flew through the air and my skin felt like being rubbed with sandpaper. Opening the eyes was also nearly impossible and walking or standing normally on the top was impossible. The only shelter were some half meter stones and even behind them the sand and the little stones smashed to the back and into the face. Indeed I had one of these cheap transparent-plastic-bag-raincoats with me. I unpacked this one and put it over me the wrong way, so that the hood is in front of me and I was able to put the hood over my face! It probably looked like I wanna kill myself…hahaha!! But actually it worked and with that shelter on my face I was able to walk around with open eyes. But the wind was so strong that the raincoat broke and my shelter became unusable. Noticing after one hour, that it doesnt make sense waiting and struggling up there longer, I escaped as fast as possible down from the rim. There I went to some locals who have been waiting behind a little house as shelter. After a while some cars came along full packed with other tourists and it was like a comedy show watching them climbing out of the cars. We had lot of fun watching them and running after their hats or other little things. Some of them had short sleeved clothes, no raincoat or anything. They probably thought its like a beach up there... I dont know...  And most of them immediately jumped back into the car and drove the way back down to town.

 

So I went up again yesterday. The cyclone was gone, but it was still very windy and it rained sometimes very hard. But standing on the rim of the volcano and hearing and watching these explosions right from edge, while lava and stones are shooting up 100 of meters into the air - so incredible!

 

 

Solomon Is: Cyclone's and other troublemakers

My flight from Munda to Honiara on Saturday was canceled because of the Cyclone "Freda". When i arrived at this small hillbilly airport, one guy told me that the flight i canceled and i should come and take a look again on Sunday. Funny guys!!

So I arrived in Honiara on Sunday morning. And I felt sick! My wounds on the legs got infected more and more and my body started having high temperature. I felt dizzy, had headache and felt some kind of cramps in my legs - so it was time to check into the hospital! They gave me a bag of antibiotic pills and I have to take them until the next few days and until the yellow fluid in the wounds is completely gone. As of today I feel very healthy and the wounds look nice and clean already. The cramps are also gone. So this was my second last day of 2012.

Accompanied by fever and the cyclone, with extreme strong n' heavy rain and winds, Ive spent my last day of 2012 with fixing visa expiration issue. After having a met a fomer "brass hat" in the guesthouse in Munda, who organized an appointment for me with another "brass hat" called "Heinz" in Honiara, I thought this problem will be solved in a few minutes. Finally I spent the nearly the whole day in and around the immigration department to clear this. Heinz is in the highest position in the immigration department, but he has no power to change the procedures of the daily business in his department. And the chief of the daily business in the immigration office was the big obstacle. He already knew me when I called him some days ago and as I went little bit aggressive against his beliefs and obstinacy that day. So he insisted that it was all my fault and wanted me to pay the fine or being taken in custody. I didn’t accept his suggestions and went to the next coffee shop to write a complaint. After long forwards and backwards that day, it was nearly closing time in the offices and so "Heinz" decided to pay the fine with the department money.

Now I got my passport back and was ready to join the crowd at a new year's eve event.