Tasmania and the Mines of Moria

Remember how we fired Karen, our GPS guide? Well, we were planning to do a little internet research from our hotel in the evening to decide exactly where we were driving the next day and exactly what we wanted to see. Unfortunately, there was no mobile phone reception in the middle of nowhere, so we couldn't get an internet signal. So rather than plan the next stage of the vacation, we lounged in the hotel hot tub. It wasn't really that bad of a trade.

Until the next morning.

Tim found that we could actually get mobile reception if we were outside in the car, rather than indoors under the hotel roof. So I pulled out my tablet to figure out where we were going to go for the day. At my request, Tim asked at the desk about a driving map of Tasmania. But it cost nine dollars, and we had already spent the navigation allowance on renting the GPS.

"We'll be fine," we said.

And then Tim started driving.

"What are you doing? I haven't figured out where we're going yet!"

"You can do it while we drive."

What, on the tiny mountain roads? While we wind up and down and around animals and traffic? That would make anyone car sick.  I put away the tablet. We would have to go with Karen again.

Karen started out responsibly. From the small mountain road, we turned onto the wider highway heading toward larger towns. After a while, however, she instructed us to turn right onto a tiny, steep and narrow winding road. Tim drove up it for about sixty seconds, then pulled over in a turnout.

"Ok, where are we really supposed to go?"

We could get mobile reception from the turnout, although weak, and so we pulled up a real map of Tasmania. Indeed, this narrow winding mountain road appeared to cut a little bit of distance off the journey. Google maps estimated it would take us about 15 minutes more to go this way, however.

We fiddled with the GPS, trying to type a partial destination into the device to see if it would send us back to the main road. Instead, it told us to continue for a few meters, and then turn right onto Unpaved Road.

NO!

We tried again. Continue on this road, said Karen, and then meet up with the main road. We talked about it, and decided to go with Karen this time. Plus, what was 15 extra minutes? And what else did we have to do? We hadn't planned anything for the day except our destination in Hobart.

On the road Karen recommended.

***

I would like to interrupt this narrative of our driving woes with another amusing story. When we purchased our National Parks pass the day before, we got a little booklet with all the national parks of Tasmania listed inside, each with its special representative symbol. The symbol for Cradle Mountain National Park was a Tasmanian devil, for example. Freycinet, also on the itinerary, had a picture of a sea eagle. Others had a seal, a wombat, pretty flowers, tall trees, a kangaroo. One of the symbols was not like the others, however. One of the parks had as its symbol a creepy looking spider.

Icon from Australia Parks & Wildlife Service.

Ha ha. We laughed. Who would ever go to a national park whose symbol was a spider?

Winding up the narrow mountain road, into denser and darker forests, we passed a small sign informing us that we had just entered Mole Creek Karst National Park.

Indeed. The park of the spider.

I read on the parks pass that Mole Creek Karst was a network of limestone caves.

"Where is the GPS taking us?" asked Tim. "Into the Mines of Moria?"

A sign indicated a tiny road to Marakoopa Cave.

"Let's go, while we're here," said Tim. And off we went.

It was just after 11am when we arrived. We purchased tickets for the next tour, at noon. The park ranger suggested a stop at a local cafe while we waited. That sounded nice, so we drove back up the road past someone's farm ...



... to someone's roadside farm cafe, run out of their house.

The neighbors.

It was there, at the Marakoopa Cafe, in the family garden, where we ate the most delicious scones in the whole wide world. I know they were the most delicious in the whole wide world, because I have eaten scones all over the world, in multiple hemispheres and longitudes and stratospheres. And these, with cream and homemade apple jam, were the most delicious anywhere. And Karen, our GPS guide, had found them for us.

Jonathan and Tim, looking a little stripy, as they eat the most delicious scones in the whole wide world.

Next: Through the ancient rainforest ...

... where dinosaurs walk, toward the caves.

First, a little introduction to the famous park fauna.

The cave was wet with streams and dripping limestone. 

We only saw one spider, and it definitely didn't have the 14 centimeter leg-span that we had been told the spiders could have. (Largest in Tasmania!)

The insects we finally did see, though, in abundance, were amazing.  On our way out, the guide shut off all the lights, and we saw, across the ceiling like stars, thousands and thousands of glow worms, lighting the way of other bugs ... to dusty death.

We couldn't take any pictures, but the light of the glow worms was amazingly cool. It was the highlight of the day, even, except for maybe the best scones in the entire world.

After the caves, we stopped at a local farmhouse for a one day apple tasting event -- it's apple season in Tasmania, and Tasmania grows a lot of apples. The apple tasting was crowded with locals, but it wasn't as interesting as the glow worms. Sorry.

Jonathan tasted every one of them.  Twice.

They did, however, have the most stunning looking mushrooms growing in their front garden.  At first we thought they were fake, but no.  These guys grew out of the ground.

Who grows mushrooms like this?

And then off again! Fed, happy. Next stop, Hobart, three hours to the south.

Karen was very well behaved for the first hour. She took us directly to the small town we had typed in, part way along our journey, on the side of the Highland Lakes Road.

"Great!" we said. "Now let's type in the rest of the journey!"

"Turn around here," said Karen, "and go back the way you came."

NO!

Instead, we followed Google maps this time, along the Highland Lakes Road. It was labeled as highway A5. An A-level highway sounded totally respectable. Whereas Karen had put us on B's and C's up to that point.

Within a few meters, the A-level highway lost its pavement. Maximum speed 80 on gravel roads, read the sign. That's 50 mph.

"What? 80 really?" said Tim, as a ute drove by (I think "ute" is short for "utility vehicle" here, just to add in a little vocabulary) and whipped gravel at our car. Maybe Karen actually did know what she was talking about.

But we persevered. And the lake views were spectacular. The elevation was high, much higher than we'd driven before. (High enough, said a woman later, that they actually are covered with snow much of the winter, as opposed to the rest of Tasmania/Australia.)

Great Lake of Tasmania

You can see from the photos that the land there was completely barren and desolate, presumably because of the cold and elevation.  Compare that to the rain forest and farm photos, taken just an hour before. 

Gravel road, and ... nothing ... off in the distance.

I must say that we were very happy to meet pavement again. And then as we approached the capital, Hobart, the roads finally widened, and even split into something approximating a freeway. And just as the sun was beginning to set, we found our motel, on the side of the Derwent river.

Phew!
Dinner. Now with full internet reception, we did a quick search. Tim refused to drive any more. That meant we would eat at ... the riverside restaurant attached to the motel. At 30 dollars per plate. Again!

Later, ducks wandered up from the river to ask for food at our porch. No way, ducks. Not at 30 dollars per plate. You go eat grass.

This post is long enough. We shall stop here and continue again.