My birthday in the Blue Mountains, MEJ!!!
Well another week has gone by and it is time to catch you up on all the going ons in my life.
We will start where I left of last time, the plan was to leave Brisbane on Monday but… I got invited to a small party at Tim and Kims new place along with 3 other backpackers from the hostels. One cocktail lead to another and then another and next thing you know it was 2am and no way I am waking up to head out on the road. It was a great night with my friends in Brisbane and I completely enjoyed it. I also got a text from Esther which made me feel good, she was getting on her plane out of Melbourne. Tuesday I slept in until about 10:30 but didn’t really get anything accomplished until the afternoon. I got some gas for my car since it would not start and everything there was grand. After that I made my was to the library and saw the the Ozy government had given me my extension and now I am allowed to stay here until December 29th, although I should be gone before that. I chilled out for the rest of the day and took it easy but had smiles on my face when I got a text message from Esther on her stopover in Dubai (mej). So now that you all know that I have been getting text messages, yes I do have a phone here in Oz. I have not told very many people because I got it to get ahold of other backpackers to travel with and that sort of thing. If you really need the number it is 0458175459, you can figure out how to send a text to Oz if you want, but I probably will not answer and international phone calls.
On Wednesday I took my time getting out of Brisbane and ended up leaving at 11am. I drove straight through to Coffs Harbour about 4 hours away. I was still pretty tired so I went straight to the hostel and relaxed for a while. I had some supper at the hostel and then drove to a Macdonalds about 5 minutes away for the free internet and tried to have a chat with Esther. The internet/computer on Esthers end was not working that well so we decided to try again the next night.
On thursday morning I slept in again but not late and then had a great fruit salad for breakfast. Now it was time to do what I can here for and that is hiking. I walked out to a place called Muttonbird Island and sat out on the rock face for about an hour taking in the beautiful ocean and seaside. It is a great place to watch for whales as well. I did not see any whales but the great ocean air and scenery was enough. I made my way back to the wharf and stopped there for some fresh fish and chips. It tasted great, nothing better than fish caught in the morning and on the plate in the afternoon. With my belly full and water bottle ready I made my way to the river/forest walk. This walk took me through town the scenic way, along the river, through the botanic gardens and back to the hostel 7.5kms later. I felt really energized from the hike which i did in my flip flops again. I had left over spaghetti bolanaise that I made the night before, always better the second day!!! and then headed for the macdonalds again for a chat with Esther. It was a little better than then night before but still quite slow. We chatted for about an hour and then headed back to the hostel. If you are starting to feel like there is a pattern going on here with talking with Esther, I guess you would be right. We are chatting most days either with text messages or on Googlemail chat, and I feel great that we are staying in close contact. As you could tell from the last blog, I care for Esther very deeply and not sure what I would do if we could not chat. Imagine back in the olden days where there were no computers or email, how did people make it work??? Lots of letters I guess. Back at the hostel I had a couple of drinks with some other backpackers and chatted with them, but was in bed pretty early to get some extra sleep.
Friday morning and it is time to move on. I had another great fruit salad and got all cleaned and packed. My feet were bothering me a little from all these hikes in my flip flops so I made my way to the mall to see what I could find. I ended up i a Target store and found a pair of hikers that we $40 and they fit really well. When I got the the till to pay they came up on the computer at $20,yeah baby, I win again. I took my $20 shoes and made my way to the grocery store to get some supplies for the next few days. I amde my way out of Coffs Harbour at 11am and headed toward the mountains. The next few days will be spent in and around all kinds of mountains and hikes. I drove through Bellingen and to the Dorrigo National Park. I did a short tree top walk and then a 4km hike through the forest valley with some great sights including a huge goana lizard, but this time I was able to hold onto my camera. From there I made my way to Dangar Falls and seen a really nice waterfall. It was starting to get late and I needed to make some more miles before it got dark so I got on the road and drove through Armidale and to my final destination of the day Tamsworth (country music capital of Oz). Now who knew that this place would be so busy on a friday night but it was and both hostels in the area we completely full. I checked a couple of motels but they wanted $80 and I was not willing to pay that. I pulled into the Macdonalds to get on the internet and see if I could find anything else at a reasonable price. As it turns out that was my home for the night. I slept in the car, which was all right. I was a little worried about how cold it was going to get but with my 2 sleeping bags I had no trouble. The really good part of it was that I had free internet all night and when I could not sleep lucky me because Esther came online and we chatted for about an hour and a half. Got to sleep around 2am and ended up waking up to a lot of cars around me somewhere around 7am. I made my own breakfast in the parking lot and was on my way at about 8am. Today I wanted to make it to the Blue Mountains. The drive through the mountains was awesome, lots of curves and turns. There were lots of motorbikes on the road but most were going in the opposite directions of me. One bad crash along the way, it looked like one biker decided to take a turn to fast. Now one would think that seeing this would make me be a little more cautious, but i think it did the exact opposite. I was having a lot of fun with the drive and probably was going to fast but damn it was fun. I even tried to keep up to the Ferrari that zipped past me, but he had a little more power and handling than me and this did not last long, but I blew away the 5 old ford model T’s in my way. The drive ended up being a lot longer than I thought it was and i got into Katoomba at about 4pm. I decided to stay at a place called Katoomba Mountain Lodge and it was an okay place. I got into a 3 bed dorm and had 2 German girls (Mona & Susanna) as my dorm mates. We hit it off right away ans I knew this was going to be a fun place. I had only booked for the night but already knew that this is where I was going to be for my birthday. My original plan to be at the Sydney Opera house was dashed since there were no real good shows on for my birthday. I know this is the way it was meant to be and was ready for some fun. I also got to chat with Esther for a little bit and this made me very happy. The girls and I were joined by a Portuguese guy by the name of Nuno and we polished off 2 bottles of wine with some great conversation.
Sept. 13th: my brother Gregs’ birthday!!! We all slept in but the girls had some plans to go mountain climbing and I really wanted to chill out for the day. I did a walk around town and picked up some groceries as I was making supper for the group of us. I was back at the hostel at noon for a skype call with by buddy Boyd. It was great to see him, Tina and the kids. We chatted for about an hour and a half and got caught up with everything that has been going on. The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around town some more and buying myself a birthday present. I got myself a harmonica, which is easier to carry around than a guitar or any other instrument. I went back to the hostel and download a program on “how to play the harmonica” and started the lessons. I even played happy birthday to myself, how pitiful is that!!! The girls got back from there climbing and I started supper. I made chicken with potatoes, onions, peppers and mushrooms and chinese broccoli as a veg (mej). We started into a bottle of rum that I bought earlier and chilled out for the rest of the evening. At 12:01am 0ne of my favorite days began, my birthday!!! No better way to start the day than with a chat with Esther. We had planned on being online at this time so that I could open my gift from her with her. Esther was at home but ended up having computer problems and had to text me that she was on her way to her parents place so that we could talk. We ended up online at 12:30 and started chatting. After about 20 minutes of chit chat I was desperate to open the gift, which Esther thought I did well she was going to her parents. She was surprised by my patience and so was I. I got a great card with a cool saying on the outside and inside she wrote “becoming my friend means being my friend forever! Sorry Stephen but that’s how it works:-)”, no words could have been better. She also sent me a big hug and smile, and she has a lovely smile and great hugs!!! Now onto the gift, I knew before, because of it’s shape and size, it was some kind of book. As it turns out she got me a journal to keep my great stories. On the cover was the saying “life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away” and at that moment I could find no air to breath (MEJ)!!! This has a lot of meaning because when we were in Noosa and our favorite cafe that I told you about in the last blog. This was her favorite saying on the wall. I had to ask where she found this and it turns out that it was at the Cairns airport on our layover to Alice Springs. She also wrote some words on the inside of the journal but I will keep those to myself. We ended up talkng until 4am and it was the best start to any birthday I have ever had. There are some really cool things to having my birthday here. One is that this will be my longest birthday ever because I plan to celebrate until 11:59 on the 14th in Calgary. That means my birthday is 40hours long this year, sweeeeeet!!!!! THe second point is because I start early here, Greg and i celebrate on the day, Sweeeeet again.
I did go to bed at 4am and was up at 10am ready to have a great day. I had some breakfast and then turned my computer on. It took about 3 minutes for Mom & Dad to call me and we had a great chat. They are the greatest parents ever!!! After an hour chat with them and a call to Greg and tons of birthday messages on Facebook and email it was time to do some hiking. Mona and I (Susanna was feeling sick) made our way out of the hostel. We left around 12 and walked to what they call the 3 sisters, from there we walked down the giant staircase (800 and some steps). Now in the valley floor we walked along the path to a cool river area and had lunch. From there we continued on until we got to the miners camp that was loaded with tourists. It seems most just take the trolley down to the camp and then back up, we had very few people around during the walk. We took the trolley up and then walked along the cliffs to Echo Point where it is a great lookout to the 3 sisters and then back to the hostel. It was a great hike, I have no idea how far it was but it took 4 hours. When we got back to the hostel Susanna had a chocolate muffin and card for me, present number 2, life is good and they sang happy birthday. I chilled out for a while and put some pics on to Facebook as well as checked my emails, tons of them from family and friends. I guess there are people out there that do love me, just kidding, I know you all love me, what’s not to love!!! I made myself supper (pumpkin soup and garlic bread) and then chilled for the rest of the evening. The girls and I played Bonanza (the german card game I got from Felix) and had a great time. We were now 24 hours into my birthday and I still had another 16 to go in Canada. We finished our games at around 1pm and who happened to be online at that time? yup you guessed it, Esther. Talk about making a guy happy, getting to talk to Esther twice on my birthday (MEJ). We were better this time and only talked to 3am before heading to bed. I woke up at 8am and still had another 8 hours of birthday to go in Canada, this is awesome!!! The birthday messages kept coming in and I was feeling great. I had some breakfast and showered to get ready for the day. The girls were still sleeping when I went back to the room to pack and then they woke up. My plan was to get to Sydney by the end of the day. I took my time leaving Katoomba and got some new music from Mona and she took some of mine while playing some more games of bonanza. I left at 2:30 and drove into Sydney with the plan on going to Bondi Beach. I called ahead for a bed but they were all gone so I changed my plan and stayed in a different part of town (Newtown). I got a hostle that had parking and free internet called Billabong Gardens. I took forever to find the place as it was on a small side street hidden away from everything. Even after I stopped and called them for directions it took me another 1/2 hour to find the place and I was 2 minutes away. I was to lazy to cook so I went out for vietnamese food for supper and then came back and played around on the internet for a while. I was in bed early and very tired from a few very long days.
The reason I came back to Sydney was that I need to get my passport renewed. I tried to do this before I left but they do not allow you to renew with more than a year on it. At this point it runs out at the end of Jan 2010 so i need to get this done asap. I got up in the morning and made another awesome fruit salad for breakfast. I took the bus into the CBD and then walked to the Canadian consulate. I got all the forms from them and then started running around to get them all filled in. I did as much as I could and then went to a Macdonalds to make some skype calls to family and friends to get addressed and info for all the forms. After getting everything I needed, next I needed to get photos. I walked to the shop they recommended and got that done. I went for lunch while the pics were getting processed and watched a Mexican band play for Mexican Indepdence Day. I then went and got my pics and had to go the complete other direction to find a justice of the peace. I need this because I do not have a guarantor and so I have to have 4 references and the JP has to witness my signature. With everything now completed you would think that i could hand it in and be on my way, but no. Before handing the forms and stuff in I have to have it all checked and they only do that from 9am till noon so I will have to go back tomorrow and hand everything in. I took the bus back to the hostel and chilled for a bit and then went for groceries and cooked supper. The rest of the evening was spent writing this blog and the plan to go to bed early.
I am only a couple of weeks away from being on the road for 1 full year and it has been fantastic. I have had a lot of people asking when I plan to go home and I can still say that I have no idea. At this point I am sticking with this traveling gig, it seems to fit me very well. I will head off to Melbourne soon with a stopover in Canberra and then sell the car, get my passport and head for the West Coast. I should take me a few weeks to go up the coast to Darwin and from there it will be time for South East Asia. As for Esther and I, we will keep on chatting and keeping in touch the way we are and will meet up at some point on this great planet. I miss her tons but truly believe we will see each other again soon.
Thanks to all that sent me messages for my birthday and even those that didn’t, i love you all.
Till next time, continue to enjoy my blog and the pics.
Steve
What events are coming up in the calendar of Steve? (Thank god mom gave me all these dates before I left): Sept 20th is my uncle Loius’ birthday, then the 24th is Auntie Lills’ birthday, then Oct. 1 is uncle Dons’ birthday and last but definitely not least is Dads on Oct. 3rd. Happy Birthday to you all!!! Expect my next blog around the 7th of October and I will recall the highlights of my first year on the road, that will be fun!!!
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