Midge bytes

I’ve spent the past four days doing the PADI open water diver course, I’m now officially an accredited open water diver, yay!

It was a bit scary, but absolutely brilliant once we started the open water dives. The first two days were theory and confined water dives. The third day we did two dives off Solitary Island, did another two on the fourth day in the same location but we went to different parts of the reef. I saw lots of Grey Nurse Sharks, bit scary looking but they are non aggressive (at least during the day when they are not hunting!) At one point we had to swim up a gully with the sharks behind us, I had to force myself to stop looking around to make sure they weren’t chasing me. They are a protected species and quite endangered so I’m very lucky to have seen them! Yesterday our instructor found us a turtle, which made me very happy as I’d been talking about wanting to see one for the preceding three days! It was a Green turtle, fast asleep on a rock, fabulous! The visibilty wasn’t fantastic the first day (about 12m) but that encouraged all the little fish to come out. There were millions of different species of fish all around us! I found several species of clown fish hiding in anemones and thought of Jen, (being a big fan of Nemo). Also saw some puffer fish and loads more that I don’t know the name of!
The visibility was really good yesterday and we swam over shallower parts of the reef and saw lots of tropical fish.

Extremely coincidentally, one of the dive leaders who was on the boat with us the fourth day was wearing a Madagascar T shirt, I queried this and it turned out she was working for Frontier in Madagascar but left just before i got there! Of all the dive shops in Australia I could have gone for I picked the one with a former Frontier researcher working there, very weird! It made the trip seem more real somehow, because I’ve been talking to lots of people to whom my travels are just a story and talking to someone who has been there and knows the same people concreted my memories somehow! (Any Frontier types reading this, her name was Elissa).

I completed all my dive ’skills’ without much fuss, although I had to keep my eyes shut for all the mask removal bits so I didn’t lose my contact lenses, that would have really ruined the rest of the dive! My buouyancy control is pretty terrible though, I suspect my dive profile would look like a two-year-olds attempt at drawing a straight line! Have to work on that one in the future! I took tablets and thus didn’t get seasick, a big relief! The swell was quite big both days and several people got very sick. The dive boat was a very nice one although it did go up and down quite a lot, it was well stocked with hot water, teabags and biscuits so the inner Sarah was pretty happy!

Today I have mostly been wrapping presents and chilling out, the diving has completely exhausted me! My parents get to Coffs harbour this evening so my whole family will be together and I might allow Christmas to happen!

Merry Christmas peeps, I’ll think of you while I’m lying on the beach!

XXX Sarah

I’m in Coffs Harbour now, well actually the next town round the coast, Sawtell. This is where my sister Louisa and her husband are living and working and surfing lots.

Everyone in the hostel in Sydney said Coffs is a quiet retirement town…big sis is obviously ready for the quiet life! Actually it also claims to be the adventure capital of NSW so I’m sure there will excitement aplenty for me!

Louisa picked me up from the airport and took me straight to the beach to go surfing. I wore boardies, a bikini and a rash vest to keep the sun off. I’m mentioing my attire because in England I normally surf wearing wetsuit, rash vest, booties and gloves, all summer long! I haven’t actually surfed for three or so years as Louisa is the usual catalyst for me to get into that big wet salty thing and get knocked over lots.

It was rather lovely, although left me a touch battered feeling, hopefully I’ll get the hang of it again! No dolphins today but the promise that they are often around and play in the same waves as the surfers is probably enough to entice me out into the sea again. Temperature was gorgeous and the sand was soft and golden!

This morning started at 5am with me waiting outside the hostel in Sydney for the airport shuttle bus. I was sat on my rucksack wearing trainers and trousers and a big hoodie, so was somewhat surprised when a guy stopped and asked me if I was ‘working’. I answered that no, I was waiting for the shuttle bus, upon which he walked away fairly fast. It wasn’t until he reached the corner of the street that the penny dropped. Kings cross, Sydney at five in the morning suddenly felt a little sinister so i gave up waiting for the shuttle and jumped in the next taxi that came along!

The past two days I spent at the Blue Mountains, based in Katoomba. The weather was truly nasty, more like Wales than Australia! I bought a raincoat and slept in my fleece! Did some hiking through the fog, made friends with an Icelandic girl who was also wandering around in the fog then went wine tasting and out to dinner and to two films with her. We watched ‘The Edge’ which was an Imax movie about the surrounding area which is the oldest rainforest in the world! With my ecology hat on it was great as there are several species of fern in the Blue Mountains that have for example evolved to live in the spray of four particular waterfalls, and some ancient trees that were thought to have become extinct thousands of years ago (at an undisclosed location!) There is also some pretty incredible rock that merits climbing up too!

We then watched Bond and ate kangaroo, both good and pretty tasty!

The second day I now had someone to hike with and the weather actually cleared half way round our 10km hike, through rainforest, down a giant staircase (my thighs are unimpressed today!) and up in a cable car.

I actually passed up the chance to go climbing with a random but very nice chap I met in the outdoors shop (called Diego). Mostly turned down his offer because I wanted to see more of the area than a day at one rock face would afford me, plus the weather was still gruesome when I woke up and I can climb in weather like that any time I like at home! It was a great sample of how friendly the people here are though!

I’m going out for dinner tonight with another British friend who is also staying with my sister, nice to have some company while Mike and Louisa are at work, as they are both working the afternoon/evening shift.

Feeling much safer now I’m back with family, but my little venture into the world of backpacking has shown me just how confident I am at talking to new people, I have had a job offer (babysitting) and several offers of work experience in vinyards just by talking to friendly people!

I’m in Sydney! Having very nearly missed my flight (due to circumstances beyond my control, a tanker overtured on the motorway) I then spent 10 hours sitting next to a luvvie and talking about theatre, always fun. The next flight was after a half hour top in Bangkok so I only really had time to find the departure gate, say goodbye to the luvvie and walk round the gate looking like a loon to try and avoid DVT. Flight was painless and I saw a very soppy movie (Flicka). Oh, don’t bother watching Scoop, saw that on the first flight and it was rubbish, despite having Hugh Jackman in.

My hostel is delightful, it’s called ‘Asylum’ and I have my own room, free breakfast and dinner and internet access…best one I’ve ever stayed in! I can see th opera house, harbour bridge and lots of what I think are cockatoos through my window without even standing on a chair and craning my neck which is the normal procedure for seeing views out of hotel windows in my previous experience.

Today I walked to the Opera house (opera season hasn’t started yet so I’ll catch something on my way back home, that can be my christmas pressie to myself I think!) Had a look round the place (it’s very busy!) Decided not to buy any souvenirs from there yet, maybe on the way home, they do black T-shirts and it might be fun to wear an opera house T shirt for teching in the future…

I then walked round a weekend market at ‘the Rocks’, then sat in the sun by the Harbour bridge and tried to be awake…it wasn’t working so I cracked and came back for a nap, which is probably going to guarantee me a hefty dose of jetlag…I may run up and down the stairs a few times before bed…would rather go to the gym but I’m not yet that integrated. There is a yoga school down the road which I may try out tomorrow if I’m feeling energetic, or I might hire a bike and cycle off into the distance with my legendary sense of direction! (Someone remind me why I thought travelling alone was a good idea? I can’t put suncream in the middle of my own back and I get lost inside hotels, uh oh!)

I’m meeting a friend for Sunday lunch tomorrow, so I’m not actually going to be alone too much…maybe she’ll put some sun cream on for me…

Hi all,

I’m ‘out of the field’ as we field biologists say! Madagascar is amazing, we were visited on camp by crowned lemurs every day, who were very noisy and often stole our bread! It was impossible to walk more than a few metres without finding a gecko or chameleon or snake, I turned out to be quite nifty at catching and handling all the above (not the lemurs) except for the chameleons which are scary little buggers and best left in peace in their trees. They are very cool to watch though! I did get bitten by a Blasydactylus gecko, lots of blood ensued and apparently I very politely said "please can someone take this off me, it’s biting me quite a lot!" Probably serves me right for catching it but that was what we were there for…most beasties were quietly returned to their habitats after being measured and marked with hot pink nail varnish. The others sadly met their end in local 70% rum…if I’m ever specimened that’s the way I want to go.

We also went frog catching which I loved, frogs being some of my favourite beasties! Also butterfly catching which was really very difficult but I managed to catch a few. There were tree frogs (Boophis) and Pikadena and some enormous Pharmacophagus butterflies (Huge humming bird sized black, white and red ones).

Luckily I was there for the very end of the dry and windy season. We only had two cyclones, one being the day I left so the walk out of camp was very wet and the boat ride (in a local pirogue sailing boat) back to Diego was long and cold and wet. We shared the boat with several locals, about 50 empty crates of beer (from our camp!) a dead wild boar, some chickens and Puppy the camp dog who kept rolling his eyes and looked rather seasick.

I’m going to write a proper blog and put my photos somewhere sensible very soon, for now I have to go and read all my post and try and prepare myself to go to Australia in three days time! I’m also still trying get used to electric lights, cars, hot water and cooking on a hob…I can now bake bread on an open fire, I’m pretty damn good at it too!

XXX Sarah