Diving at Tangalooma

Now it has been a very long time since i last posted on here. this is for a number of reasons.

1. I was lazy
2. I hadn't done anything I had deemed interesting enough at the time to post about.
3. Circumstances at the time didn't always help when i was travelling.

Now since the last real post, i had just gotten back from Europe and was going back to Tour Guiding between Adelaide and Alice Springs.

now the long and short of it is that since then i have actually gone a long way.


After I did back to back tours for close to 7 months for Groovy Grape i got out of the desert and with 2 good mates drove from adelaide up to brisbane and then from there onto rainbow beach where i was going to start tour guiding on fraser island.
now this was an awesome place to start up on the east coast however through a few unforseen circumstances it didnt work out.

so i ended up working back in brisbane managing a carpark for the same company i was employed with before i originally left on my eurotrip back in 2012.
i lived with an awesome hippy dude for about 3-4 months and just kinda lived normal. it was weird, not ever really having a normal life before this.

however this was due to come to an end as the need to be travelling again was growing and the money wasnt as good living normally as it was in tourism working excessive hours.

So it was with that transition that i ended up moving to Moreton Island just off the coast of Brisbane to work as a tour guide out of the resort there. now this was actually not the change i thought it was going to be.

5 days a week, 40hr weeks. live on island it was pretty much a 9-5 day more or less just on an island. although the money was pretty good i didnt end up saving any money but i was able to pay off a fair chunk of my ball and chain to the financial institute.

June of 2014 i ended up moving from Moreton to the far part of Aus, i ended up moving to Broome where i worked for a company called Kimberley Wild doing tours around the Kimberley's.

This was it, this was the type of tours i was made to do and i had a blast, the one i did the most was the broome to broome day trip to windjana gorge and tunnel creek.
these two locations are definately up there in my absolute favourite places in australia.

If you are into Aboriginal culture then for me at least, the kimberley is the absolute peak of it in australia, one of the last places to be settled by the invaders (settlers) and as such the massive loss of culture the east coast endured was hardly seen at least, not on the same scale or anywhere near it.

so between working out of Broome and eventually moving to the Darwin depot for a few months it was time to go overseas again for a short stint this time i went back to europe for 4 weeks.

an amazing time was had, however a lot of money was spent too haha. so when i arrived back in brisbane a week later i was back on moreton island. now this was november 2014.

its now May 2015 and im still here and since the new year i am now also the manager of the tours department. so its never dull, but in my down time to keep me entertained since i dont have a 4wd here, i cant bring over a motorbike, i had to look for something to keep me entertained and stimulated.

i started diving, and i think its safe to say i have found my "thing" that is not 2 wheels.

i am now done my Advanced Open Licence through PADI so i am able to go to 30m below which is amazing.

here area  few of my pictures taken from my gopro whilst under.

Recent photo

30 Min Photo Montage

Last night in Europe.....

so after writing that last monster of a post, i decided im going to put this in a separate post as i want it to be read a bit more heart felt then a footnote at the bottom of a massive post.

to everyone i have met, interacted with, drank with, etc thankyou for your contribution to my trip, be it a good or bad experience, its all cultivated together to make this one that i will not forget until i die or get Alzheimers whatever happens first. 

currently im working on a slide show of my trip over here, i should have it finished tonight so i will put it on here and youtube once im done with editing and whatnot.

thanks to everyone,

ross

Too long between posts again, lots of writing, lots of pics.

So,

this post will be characteristic of that intellectual Ross that you all know and love so dearly......

Or perhaps not, but i suppose we'll see.
I left the last post in spain after leaving it wayyyyy to long between updates. I was a bit slack i know so thats why im trying to make up for it with this one.

as of the last post i had just gotten to spain and my sister had just left to go back to america. now this for me was a godsend haha. not because i dont like spending time with my family, i do, i truly do, however all of us are very strong willed people and after a while, we can get on each others nerves so it was nice to get back to normal. (bear in mind i have lived out of home more then at home since i was 13 years old)

So spain.

once again if you read back to the last time i was here, it had claimed my favourite place in all of Europe (that i've been to) and this time around was no different, if anything it just cemented that idea in place.

I still did not get to go on the Horse Riding outside of Benidorm, this time unlike last, the weather was perfect, i had the money for it, but they had no openings until after i departed.

i dunno why but for some reason whenever i tried to book for the horse riding at rancho la ofra, something always made it so i couldnt do it. maybe its the universe telling me to stay true to my motorbikes. :P

anyway i was staying at X Hostel Alicante once again, and this time i was also working there so that i didnt have as many overheads for one, but also just cause the people there are amazing, Simona, Hanna, Tobias for the rest of the staff, and then all the people that may as well live or work there Julia, Tom, Karina, Sherry, Rachel etc, if i left you out or forgot you im SOOOO sorry but there are so many of you.

From Spain i had one of the worst trips i have ever experienced going from Alicante, Spain to Bucharest, Romania.

if there is a hell, at this time in my life i would have considered this the way to get there.

for some reason before i do any long travels, i cannot sleep.
the reason for this is a puzzle to me, if it happens to anyone else it would be appreciated if you could let me know remedies or reasons.

anywho, it meant that i had only gotten about 3-4hrs sleep before i had to depart. this is normally not an issue when flying because you can sleep on a plane or something, however this was a 30 odd hour transfer.

Yes, 30 hours to go spain to romania.

it started off with Karina taking me to the airport and seeing me off, thanks darl, hope to see you again soon. After this it was a short flight to Palma De Mallorca of roughly 1 hour.

7 hours later after which i fell asleep in the macdonalds haha when scrounging free wifi, it was another short flight to berlin tegel of about 2 hours.

this is where the really painful section set in.

because i didnt arrive until 11pm and i flew out at 10:30 the next morning, i didnt really want to pay for a hostel in berlin itself as by the time i got there via taxi cause the busses werent running at that time, paid for the hostel it would be closer to 1am before i got to sleep and i would have to be back at the airport by 8:30.

so instead i settled myself in to sleep in the airport.

after finding a comfortable spot i prepared myself to try get a small amount of sleep, however what i didnt realise is that at 12:30 at night they close every terminal for cleaning......

so what was gonna be a 11 ish hour stopover was the stopover from hell,
trying to sleep on cold lino floor in germany in the winter is bad enough, what doesnt help is that every 20 mins one of the other ~20-30 people in the room had to go out and have a cigarette. thus letting in a ghastly cold blast of air every 20 mins approx basicaly waking you out of whatever slight slumber you had managed to get into.

its fair enough to say that as soon as 4:30am rolled around i was up and walking back into the terminals to get some food and caffeine.

eventually i made it onto my uneventful flight to Bucharest, Romania and landed in romania ahead of schedule.

Romania.....

a beautiful yet slightly backwards country.
well maybe backwards is not the correct word, maybe just behind the times.

not much was done in romania, except a 14km walk around the city and snow.

yes SNOW!!!!! I have finally seen snow now.
and with the help of Alex  a guy from sydney that was on my flight, i was able to tick off a few of my to do checklists with snow.
 1) snow ball fight - done
 2) dive into the snow - pending
 3) go skiing - pending
 4) write name in snow ;P - pending
 5) make a snowman - pending

Romania to Hungary was the trip from hell.

16hrs on a soviet era train in a bed that was 6" too short for me, and 4" too low for me.
most uncomfortable 16hrs i have ever spent,
however, budapest was awesome.

didnt really do that much sight seeing but i was able to see the liberty statue and the main bath house as the attractions i went to, but i met a few awesome people, and also caught up with lauren who i went to school with way back in '96-'00

Austria was next on the agenda, now this ended up being a bit controversial as i had accomodation organised with a good friend of mine at a ski resort south of salzburg and everything was fine and dandy until it came time to actually stay there and her dick boss ended up changing their mind saying if im not paying im not allowed to sleep on the floor of her room.

long story short, instead of spending 600 euro on ski gear and sleeping on the floor in Obertauern i ended up spending one night and leaving the next day back to salzburg and staying in a brilliant hostel.

come to think about it, i gotta say thanks to the dick boss saved me a lot of money and made some awesome friends in salzburg.

thanks to my friend though, nothing can be done about your boss being a dick.

In salzburg though we had a blast, drinks in the bar every night with some awesome people, and i did end up going skiing. just was in Flachau instead of Obertauern.

a few of us from the hostel ended up going skiing the friday before i was set to leave,
now this i was highly looking forward to. i made sure when i went to bed that i had more then enough money on my card to get out the next morning so i could pay the ski lift and hire etc but when it came time to get the money out at the slopes, it wasnt working.

after talking the manager of the ski hire place into letting me use his computer, i was able to see that someone (not me) had taken 200 dollars off my card that morning. thankfully a mate from the hostel let me use his card and we transfered money back to him that night so i was still able to get onto the slopes.

being a poor backpacker at the end of my trip though, i couldnt quite afford tuition haha.
i figured since i can ice skate i should be ok though, similar principles just bigger blades essentially......right?

so with a slight amount of apprehension i carried my skis to the gondolas going up the mountain and got inside with minimal fuss.

at the top however i was a bit more scared haha, never having set a foot in ski's before and now i was at the top of the mountain with absolutely no experience and all my mates were off the backside doing black runs haha.

it basically came down to nut up and go for it.

all in all i actually did quite good, 3 beginners runs and half of a intermediate run and only had 7 minor falls in the entire day, 2 of which were fairly stupid ones, one just poling forward in the line for the ski lift at the bottom and one ski decided it wanted to go right instead of straight and ended up doing the splits and popping out of the bindings, and the other was earlier in the day when still learning how to stop and a kid stepped out infront of me.
there was no way in hell i could have stopped in time so i just bailed haha.

video will be available shortly once i edit some of the footage.

Germany... again.

briefly let me take you back to 2007, i was 16 working at subway after school during the week.
one of the guys i worked with was a german backpacker named marcus.
me and him got along quite well, i think because he is so immature haha. anyway we kept in contact through the magic of facebook and long story short, we caught up in germany.

dresden was beautiful, i was only there for 2 days, but between gaming, drinking and shisha it seemed to go pretty quick, i dont have any pictures from here though as my camera decided on the way to germany from austria to go missing on the plane somewhere. i dont know if i left it on the plane, or if i was pick pocketed again, all i can say for sure is that my camera was not with me in dresden. :(
so marcus got a few with his phone, mine being flat but i dont currently have copies of them.

From here i did 2 towns quickly just to see a friend in each before spending the remainder of my time in Bamberg, Jena and Hamburg.

Potsdam was after Dresden for 1 day, 2 nights to see Mila, after a few drinks and a awesome roast chicken dinner i did up i went to dessau to see Stef :D
what was meant to be 2 nights 1 day in dessau ended up being 3 nights 2 days because it was cheaper to stay one more night then to take a train one day earlier.

Bamberg was also a short trip, but from meeting about 15 of Daniels family memebers to a heap of his mates when out on the piss in town, to watching his band practice it was a highly enjoyable experience and i just have to say thanks to him and his family for the hospitality.

Jena was a highlight for me in germany,
a very good friend of mine Eilyn and her roomate Doro made the 4 days i spent there very enjoyable.
quite a large amount of it was just relaxing but whenever both were home it was just absolute bonkers haha. As well as a day trip to Erfurt to see Claudi :D

and finally hamburg, i went to hamburg so i could celebrate a friend of mines 22nd birthday, i hadnt seen her since christmas 2010 so i was quite eager to catch up in person.

from her birthday party to the streets of St pauli, to just watching movies, hamburg was a highly enjoyable place to stay as well, although the train into town was a bit expensive haha.
ticked off the Hamburg Dungeon too, so i have now done all of them, Amsterdam, London, Edinburgh and Hamburg.

my favourite was the Edinburgh one followed by amsterdam and then london and hamburg are tying for 3rd place although i saw the hamburg one in german not english haha.

i know its a bit dogily written in places, but once again i left it too long between updates and just did too much to write about.

an amazing time was had at the least.