side trip to Wineglass Bay

We arrived in Hobart safely… and I’m going to get ahead of myself here, but here are some pics from a sidetrip out to Wineglass Bay… Amazing Place. We’ll report back some of the earlier events in a later blog.

We are on the road, getting close to “Lonnie” making good progress and having a blast cycling up the East Coast of Tasmania. A few days ago we took a side trip to Wineglass Bay, near Coles Bay in the Freycinet National Park. The hike in is a few km, very easy, well maintained, and well worth it. Although the beach is well publicized, ranked in magazines, etc… we had a great time here. Partly it was due to the nice clearing in the weather that we got, as it had been rainy the last few days, and we were unsure if this side trip was going to be worth it.

Anyway… let’s get to some pics.

From Swansea, bikers and hikers can take a well known shortcut across a river to save 60 km of riding… and to take advantage of the fellow hikers is… “captain kirk”… part clingon… part wanker. The day before he told us that the boat ride across doesn’t exist, then when we called back, he just hung up. When asked about it the poor sap told us that last year he went out in the drizzle and he got a cold… awwww… ok, I understand, that justifies lying, and being rude… thanx buddy. Not to go on too big of a rant, but while we were there another fella was giving 10+ cycle tourists going the other direction a ride across the river for free… as they had befriended him the night before and he figured he’d do them a favor. As we crossed the river our “captain” was just cursing and calling the helpful local a “big wanka’”. It’s nice that there is a boat ride across the river, but when someone starts acting like they own the river… that’s when I figure a few screws have gone loose. Well… thanks for the ride Kirk!

Two nights before we ran into Arile, from Taiwan, who is riding around Tassie on a spur of the moment… she rented the bike, the gear, etc, and has been making good progress. Most days we run into her, and we’ve camped with her a few times now. We ran into her again in Coles Bay, and we hiked into Wineglass Bay together… we had our “zpacks” and she had her cloth shopping bags. Definitely a trooper.

Wineglass Bay behind…

In Wineglass Bay…

…hundreds of dead blowfish floated ashore…

...and little penguins

And the highlight of the side trip may have been the Dolphins… Yup Dolphins in Wineglass Bay… amazing...you'll have to wait for the video later... but here's a small pic for now... it's hard to time when they leap out of the water.

…while drinking wine…

The camping is free, you just have to have a national park pass… definitely a place not to be missed