Florian Hengartner

It's about time to update my blog, cause I'm back in switzerland since moren than one week!
My flight from Sydney left late what messed up the whole flight plan and the connecting flight in Singapur was already gone. In the end i flew over Frankfurt instead of Paris and luckily arrived no later than originaly planed, hurray :)

I enjoyed my last station - Sydney - very much. It's a magnificient, living city with lots to see & do. Unfortunately I couldn't stay longer.

Now I'm enjoying the conveniences of settledness. No 8hrs drive a day, my own bed and i don't have to live out of my suitcase - ah :)
Some of the other things I missed:

• good cheese
• real bread
• good pizza (without ketchup but with real tomato puree)
• long showers

Overall it was a very good, enjoyable experience and I could handle all glitches and most was running smoothly anyway.
And to all you new people I've met - have a good time and I hope I see the one or the other again some day.

the end

I crossed half of australia since I left Cairns.
From Cairns I started travelling together with my mate Serge who made it at the last minute on our plane to Darwin. "Just in time" as he says.

From darwin we went to the kakadu national park. On our croc boat cruise we even saw a croc eating another animal which looked very spectacular.

Later we drove from darwin to alice spring in a rather uncomfortable bus. On the journey we bathed in hot springs, visited the devils marbles (big round rocks laying around in the middle of nowhere). Now we've experienced "the real outback" which mainly consists of nothing. Big landscapes of dry gras, small bushes, cattle stations as huge as switzerland, small villages with a population changing from 2,3 people (wetseasen, summer) and around 12 in the dryseason (winter).

So now we are in Alice Springs and continue tomorrow to Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kings Canyon, etc.

During day the temperature is around 20 degrees celcius but during the night it falls down to 0! Brr! But nevertheless our mood is good :)

Cheers

this is going to be a short summary only.
after a farewell party I had to leave all my mates behind me and I left brisbane on sunday a week ago.
I then flew to the whitsunday islands and joined a sailing trip. The 3 days on the boat were very enjoyable. The snorkeling was very good, also we could help hissing the sails.
The weather at the whitsunday islands is the worst we had yet - often cloudy and with some rainfalls.

After that I meet the people of my tour. we had much fun in long island and then went on for cairns.
there we've been for 3 days. I did a skysurf - wuhuuu! - something of the best I ever did.

now we are on the way back to cairns from cape tribulation, there we took look at the rainforest, yet another beach, relaxing, swimming in the coldest creek ever ...

I'll put up some photos the next time.

This week I learnt scuba diving. I'm a PADI certified diver now :)
We've been 2 days in the classroom learning the theorie and practising in the pool. Then we went on a boat for 3 days with which we drove out to the great barrier reef.

Once you are in the wet wetsuit and have the bcd, tank, regulator, weights, fin , mask/snorkel and all that stuff mounted the adventure can begin. I saw many many different fishes down there. trompet fish, flutemouth fish, clownfish (nemo :), parrot fish, lion fish, barracuda's, shark, turtle etc. and the different corrals, sea cucumbers, sea star, x-mas tree worm, ...

The live on the boat consited of diving, eating, a short brake, diving, eating, a short brake .... ( to be continued) ... and sometimes sleeping.

The night dive was very special. You see barely nothing in the water, everything is dark. The conditions were very rough, rougher than on any other dive. It rained and even on the ground the current was pulling on you. Also we trained some navigation skills. All of that made it challenging, but on the other hand that's why this is one my favourite dives. Though we didn't see many animal's because of the darkness. In the night everyone has a glowing marker on his tank and a torch. The torch is realy important, because otherwise you hardly can see anything underwater and not less important it helps to regain the possibilty to communicate with signals as you can't speek to each other under water. The funniest thing of the night dive was the funky underweare and shirts we wore over the wetsuit. The purpose is to identify your dive-buddy (and everyone else) in the darkness.

I had a fantastic instructor (crazy girl), boat crew and many great dive mates.
On a side note: I knew they also offer a german course (I took the english) but I was very surprised to find a swiss instructor at the school. In total we've been six swiss people on the boat.

I enjoyed the diving very much and would recommend it to everyone!
..maybe with exception of people who get seasick. As for me I liked the bumps very much - it's like on a neverending rollercoaster ride :)

have a good time.
florian