Tasmania

So I really wanted to write while I was in tasmania but internet there was ridiculously overpriced and there computers had weird keyboards that were difficult to type on. So I will do my best to remember what happened for the week I was there. I spent a day walking around Hobart before heading off on a 7 day tour to see the rest of Tasmania. The first day we went to Wineglass Bay, voted the best beach in Australia. To get to the beach you had to walk 1.5 hours up a steep hill and then down to the beach. While on the down part a girl from my group fell down and I told her not to worry, that I fall down every time I hike. Ten minutes later I was true to my word when I tripped on nothing and fell down. I ripped my pants and cut both of my knees. I walked and bled the rest of the way down to the incredible beach where I cleaned myself up and relaxed on the beach a while. It was then time for another 1.5 hour up and down climb from the beach back to the bus. This time up I passed a crazy guy doing the hike (barely) with his huge backpack and ran into a guy from my great Ocean Road trip. That night my group stayed in a little seaside town called Bicheno. Most people payed twenty bucks to go see little penguins (which by the way, used to be called fairy penguins but must now be referred to as little penguins because fairy is supposedly offensive.)Since I had just seen the little penguin parade and wanted to save twenty bucks I stayed behind and watched Australian Idol with an Irish girl named Geraldine. i also manged to rip my pants in a second place and with no sewing kit used some tape to make them wearable for the rest of the trip.
The next day we walked along another pretty beach in the bay of fires. it was rainy but still a very pretty walk. We spent the evening in the city of Launceston. Apparently this city is famous for its gorge. I had no idea it existed until after we left the town so i did not go see it. After we checked into our hostel I went and got dinner. I returned to find the hostel in chaos. A dog had gotten into the hostel and was chasing the owner's cat through the dining area. people were either standing on tables yelling or chasing after the dog. It was finally caught and dragged outside, only to make its way back in through another entrance a few minutes later. Poor Geraldine had been bitten or scratched by one of the animals as they fought on top her legs while she was eating dinner and had to go to the hospital. i spent the night talking with a Belgian girl and a deaf girl from Japan who could speak and lipread both Japanese and English.
The next two days were spent on the west coast of Tasmania walking through rainforests and visiting factories. We went to a chocolate and a cheese factory with very generous free sampling and to a paper factory and art studio. We spent the night at Stanley in a hostel right on the beach where we went for a sunset walk. The next morning we climed the Stanley "nut", a big Uluru type looking rock which has a short but VERY steep climb to the top. A few people paid to take the chairlift up and down and by the end I was wishing i had too. The views from the top were amazing. Around lunchtime we stopped to get fuel and ended up spending the next two hours at the gas station. Our driver experienced a brain fart and put diesel into the van. The fuel tank had to be drained and refilled. Luckily this was a very scenic gas station right by a river with a nice walking trail. I also got to drive the van about 10 feet which was very exciting since it was my first time driving on the wrong side of the road. Once the van got going again we went to another river to try and spot some platypus. None were spotted. We then headed to the city of Devenport for the night. We got there about 4:30 and thought we would have about an hour to walk around and see the shops. While not a very exciting place to begin with the whole city was shut down early for some sort of festival. i discovered this as I angrily walked down the streets wondering why all the stores and restaurants were closed over an hour before there signs said they would. I then tried to watch some Tv in the hostel. About every 2 minutes the clear reception would give way to static. I eventually gave up and went to bed early.
The next day we went to Cradle Mountain. This part of Australia is usually rainy and cloudy. It only has about 30 sunny and clear days a year. By some miracle we were there ona gorgeous day. I did a 2 hour walk around a lake at the base of Cradle Mountain and then a 3 hour boardwalk from the mountain back to our campsite. I am usually not good at taking pictures but I took tons along the walk. At dusk we went wildlife spotting and saw a womabt family including babies and some wallabies kickboxing.
The next day we drove to a waterfall. We were told we had a 3 hour hike there and back to get to the waterfall. Once you got the waterfall there was a very skinny suspension bridge to walk across. Once across two German girls and I kept walking thinking that the track was a loop. An hour and a half later we began to have our doubts. We got to a fork in the road and chose right and walked down a muddy yellow track. Half an hour later we decided maybe we should have tried left. We went back and past the fork another half an hour. Now an hour late from when we were supposed to be back at the bus we realized we would need to hike all the way back to suspension bridge and back down the path we had come, which would take another 3 hours. We had not eaten since breakfast and none of us had food or water. Somehow we practically ran back down the track and made it to the parking lot in two hours. Our whole group was sitting around and the driver had gone to the check out the places where we would have come out if we kept going down the road. All in all we hiked somewhere between 20-30k in 6 hours. The day was not over yet. We drove to a sand dune and had to climb up a very high and steep cliff of sand for some pictures and sand jumping. Very pretty and would have been fun but my legs felt like they might fall off at any moment. We also went to another beach to watch the sunset and look at dolphins through binoculars.
The last day of our tour involved more rainforest hikes and waterfalls and stopping in a town whose claim to fame was that they painted all the buildings with murals. We arrived back in Hobart late and my two German hiking buddies and I went looking for dinner. We walked around in the rain for an hour before we realized that Subway was the only open restaurant in the whole city.
The Cadbury Chocolate factory was not far from Hobart and had told people back in Melbourne that I would bring them chocolate so I booked a tour there the next day. I found out which bus to take and climbed on. I assumed that the bus would stop in front of the factory and that it would all be very obvious. After a while I asked the bus driver how much longer and she told me that I should have gotten off a while ago. When she heard what time my tour was at she told me I should get off now and call a cab. I got off in the middle of a Hobart suburb and could see the factory in the distance I decided to run there. Somehow 20 minutes later I arrived panting and sweating just in time for my tour. It was pretty cool to see and I ate way too many free samples. When i got back to Hobart one of the Germans and I made vegetables for dinner and then watched tv and went to bed. The next day I flew back to Melbourne. I will have to write about my time in Melbourne later since I am on my way to dinner!