Elise’s last day in Australia after visiting us for six weeks came and went so fast. It was not without issues though, but we managed to turn a rather problematic situation into our advantage 😊
MIL’s last day in Australia
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Tag Archives: travel
Springbrook, Warrie Circuit
I haven’t done too many hikes in my life, well a few. But Warrie Circuit in Springbrook National Park was definitely one of the best ones. Hot tips: Go after a period of heavy rain to lose count of how many waterfalls you see.
Don’t forget to scroll down to the very end of the post to see a couple of videos that I filmed and edited, almost all by myself (Mikael the pro helped of course).
Noosa National Park
Due to the ever changing weather in SEQ QLD, we decided to take a last minute mini camping vacation up north to Noosa Heads where we hadn’t been before. It was both the perfect and worst day for it.
Continue readingDue to the ever changing weather in SEQ QLD, we decided to take a last minute mini camping vacation up north to Noosa Heads where we hadn’t been before. It was both the perfect and worst day for it.
Continue readingFull moon adventure
24 February 21:02
It feels great to be back on solid ground and in an airconditioned hotel room. But doing this small excursion to remote islands was really great!
The whole trip was of course organized but due to low tide and other things, it felt like they were winging most of it, haha. We were delayed from Malapascua for 1,5h but I don’t think that would have made a huge difference with the tides. The tides are honestly not something I understand, I thought I did, but apparently they are not on cycles.
We got the impression that this trip was all about having a nice time, spending the night at the beach, stargazing, watching the full moon, sit by the bonfire, listen to live music and watch fire dancers. But both Mikael and I got a bit wary at the briefing when a few people only had two questions; will there be beer and will it be cold. You see where this is going, right? Basically the whole trip there was people being drunk and loud.
There were drums on the boat which was very cool. They were so good and it was effectful to leave Bounty Beach to the sound of drums.
Before really leaving Malapascua, we stopped at the north end of the island to go snorkeling for a bit. Mikael gave up when his mask kept fogging up. But my mask managed better and I stayed in for a bit. The snorkeling at Lapus Lapus was really great! The bottom was full of mostly soft corals and so many fishes!
Galaxy
The next stop was the very local island of Carnaza where we would spend the night on one of the beaches. Due to the low tide, the big boat couldn’t get all the way in to the shore, so we had dinner on the boat after watching the sunset. It was a bit cloudy so the sunset wasn’t extraordinary. On the complete opposite side of the boat was the full moon already visible. That was kinda cool!
Carneza Island
Dinner was traditional Filipino style, served on big banana leaves and eaten with your hands. Very strange to eat with your hands, I’m sure it takes some technique to get that right also.
The low tide wasn’t going anywhere so eventually we got two local fishing boats acting as taxis for all of us 18 passengers, taking two at a time. These boats are super tiny and only supposed to carry one person. So when me and Mikael both went on, there were very few cm left of the boat above the surface. Scary stuff! Also it was really dark. Exciting! Some people swam to shore.
After all of us came to land, the big boat was light enough to cruise over the corals and dock on the beach so we could get everything on land. We set up tents, started the fire, and the owner of the restaurant who organized this trip gathered everyone who wanted to join for a shaman ceremony on the beach. I joined on the side by meditating/sleeping on the coral-y sand. That calmed everyone down! That took about an hour and after that it was live music and firedancing. Not long after that, these two introverts went to their tiny, tiny tent to sleep. But first we watched some bioluminescense further down on the beach. It was not much but it was there!
Normally, that tent would have been too small for me, I couldn’t lie straight in it. But we both managed to fit somehow. We were not prepared just getting a tent from the organizers, so we had nothing to lie on except two beach towels. The sand was full of corals and very hard, but we still managed to sleep pretty well, even if it was a game of human tetris when we needed to switch.
The full moon was incredible! I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a full moon like this before. It was so bright, we cast very distinct shadows, almost like in daylight. I tried taking pictures but it was hard. Full moon with basically no light pollution was something truly magical.
The next morning, today, we woke up with the sunlight. Breakfast was served by the water, sandwiches, ginger tea and incredible local fruit such as mango and banana. So good! But best was the homemade peanut butter. The local peanuts are much sweeter than what we are used to.
The tide was super low this morning so the boat had gone out during the night. We spent some time at the beach, I was reading a bit, sitting in the water. Such a nice morning! While Mikael was meditating, he got a local friend in the size of a child with a toy gun who just sat next to him when he was breathing, haha! I have to say (maybe again), but wow, the kids here are adorable! They are so happy to see tourists, so friendly, curious, polite, asking for our names and welcoming us to the island and so on. I love it! When we eventually left, there were so many kids saying bye and waving us off. Just amazing!
The village on Carneza
The beach we slept on.
The next stop of the trip was the extremely small island of Lamanok which apparently doesn’t even exist according to Google Maps. The owner’s friend lives on it. There were some people fishing right outside the island when we arrived, they were surrounding fish and scaring them into the net. It looked very interesting but probably worth it.
We also saw a caravan of small fishing boats on the way and we stopped in the middle of the ocean to buy some extremely local octopus from them. So funny!
The island is basically just two rocks with a coral beach in between. Really beautiful but I really don’t like these beaches that are made up of dead corals. It’s like walking on Lego, but worse. We went into the water quick, took some pictures and then we had a lunch similar to dinner last night on the boat again. It was so good!
Lamanok Island
The trip back to Malapascua took around two hours. Everyone was so tired and most people slept. I read! Mikael slept and had a company in the form of the owner’s big wolf-like dog, Galaxy. It was so cute when they were sitting together.
Back at the hotel, we took a well-needed shower, got dressed and walked over to Tepanee resort to watch the sunset before heading to Villa Potenciana for dinner on the beach. Magical noodles with homemade bread was incredible!
Two very long days and we are so tired now again. Tomorrow is our last full day on the island! I hope we get to max it out before leaving on Monday morning. I am ready to go home, we both miss the cats a lot. But at the same time, I’m so inspired by everyone I’ve talked to on this trip who just travels the world right now. I’m jealous. Our two weeks felt puny compared to their 3, 6, 8 months trips around Asia mostly. Why didn’t I do that when I was younger?
Kimud Shoal and night dive at Evo Reef
22 February 22:00
Our last dive on Malapascua has come and gone. And what a great day of diving it has been!
The day started with our alarms going off at 4am because the boat to Kimud Shoal left at 5am. It was extremely low tide this morning so we had to walk a fair bit out to reach the small boat that would take us to the bigger one. The night sky was all clear and the stars were on such display. Magical start of the day. It then got better when we sailed into the sunrise and watched a big pod of dolphins jumping. Just magical!
We were first at the divesite, the waters were so calm, the visibility a refresh sight after yesterday’s extremely bad visibility at Deep Rock. Not too many thresher sharks at first, and the same goes for divers. But at the second dive, there were many more of both. I had some sharks swimming real close to me this time. It was incredible and I got it all on video! Unfortunately on my GoPro Hero 4, which is ancient compared to Mikaels’s DJI Osmo Action 4. I’m still excited to see the results when we have time to go through it all (once we get back home).
During this dive, we also saw a swimming moray (they usually only sit in their holes gaping at people) and huge schools of fish out in the blue. I actually kept looking out there to see if there was a whale shark casually swimming by, but no. That would have made a perfect day even perfecterer.
Moray half out of his hole swimming. That’s not something you see every day.
We were done with our two shark dives at 9:15 and headed back to the island. Great, so much more time to chill before the third dive of the day.
During our surface interval, Mikael and I found an Australian girl from Perth who joined us at Blanco Beach Resort where she is staying for some snorkeling. We hung out the full day, had aloe massages together, had lunch, went snorkeling. It was really great. On the southwest point of the island, there is a marine protected area where no boats are allowed, strict rules of not standing, just snorkeling around. And what’s so cool about this place (the corals weren’t that impressive if you compare to what we’ve seen diving) is who you can snorkel with: baby black-tipped reef sharks! We saw so many and at the end of our snorkeling trip, I had four at the same time in front of me. Adorable!
Something that’s not as adorable was the huge sea snake we also saw. Terrified fascination kept me going closer for that money shot, but shit, I was scared! I know they’re deadly but also have super tiny mouths and teeth so far back that that can’t really bite you. But not having a wetsuit on that would definitely get the best out of a potential bite was scary. We survived though!
Sea snake!
Baby sharks:
At 17:00 we were back at the dive center and geared up for our very first nightdive. We went to Evo Reef, many artificial reefs. There was a thresher shark structure, some other sunken things and sure enough, many things came to life during the night. But since it was our first night dive, we were more focused on doing everything right and not losing each other, rather than looking at macro things. We did however see some cool things like a big crab, lionfish, moray eel, mandarin (not sure exactly but I think I might have seen them while trying to get my head in between the other 5 divers who were also looking at the same time) and many other things like swarming fish, mating fish, sea stars as usual, sea urchins.
We started the dive as the sun was setting so at first, we didn’t use the torches. Eventually though, the sun disappeared and it grew darker and darker. The visibility was okay, but it was hard to keep track of who belonged to our group since there were so many other divers. I think that was great though, because even if it obviously was dark all around, you didn’t feel alone and isolated and closed in. That was what I had been afraid of, feeling claustrophobic. But it was fine. It was a very different experience diving when it was dark, for sure. But not sure if that is something I want to do a lot of in the future. It was cool to have tried and it might get cooler with time and experience, but right now I feel fine with diving during the day with great visibility (I miss Gili T where all the dives had 50+ m visibility, we really took that for granted).
One cool crab, that was completely oval.
These night dive pictures are just to show you how hard it is to take pictures while night diving, haha!
Super tired, but not very hungry, the three of us went to dinner at the next door restaurant, Villa Potenciana. Mikael and I shared the tacco pizza and Emma told us about diving in Western Australia. They have hammerheads there! And sea lions, and a ton of other cool things. Apparently it’s not just the Great Barrier Reef that has nice diving (I’ve also actually heard that the Great Barrier Reef is kinda overrated). One day, I’m gonna dive both coasts! We also heard this morning that you can dive with hammerheads outside of Tokyo.
What a great day! But we are so exhausted now. Diving in itself is not too bad. But all the fuss around it is really hard! But it is so worth it! In total, we did 14 dives each during this stay. I am now up to 31 logged dives, Mikael at 27 and I more than doubled my accumulated divetime. Great job!
Bemm 