Cradle Mountain, Tasmania Trip (Day 9)

23rd March 2016, Wednesday

Breakfast

Woke up on and off during the night but still woke up @ 7.00 am as we need to move out to Cradle Mountain today. So we packed our things and loaded them up to the car. Then we drove out to the bakery shop in town, which we bought some breads for breakfast. After that, we drove to Launceston, another town (almost 2 hours ride away). We travelled past many fields with sheep and cows, the roads were all wavy and up and down. We also passed by many smaller towns along the way.

Once we reached Launceston, we went to Coles supermarket to stock up water and food as we know there was very ulu up in cradle mountain and the restaurants were quite costly. We also went to pump some petrol for the car too (Don't want to run out of gas out in the nowhere...kekeke...). Then we continued another 150km up to the cradle mountain...long long way. We even played some music from our handphones so it won't get too bored and sleepy. There was even a sign to let the travellers know that they were leaving the last town along the way. We stopped by a small cafe named Round Hill Coffee, along the road. It was small, with only one group of customers inside. There was a big and fluffy cat sitting on the table outside too. We ordered a soup and chicken cutlet for lunch. After that, we continued on the road again.

Finally we reached Cradle Mountain Wildness Village. I went down to do the check-in, the staff informed us that there were only 3 eating places area the mountain and we will need to make reservation if we want to dine in the restaurants. And it was fully booked for the night too. Then she gave us the direction for us to drive to our cottage and the parking lot. We unloaded our stuffs once we reached the cottage. The cottage was not very nice from the outside but the inside was quite nicely decorated. But i do feel quite cold inside as the heater was not feeling strong enough. And there was no network totally and we can't use the wifi unless we pay for it and it was only at the reception area. not even in the cottage. Anyway we just rested for a while.

After that, we drove out to the visitors information centre to grab some information. We also booked the Devils@Cradle tour for our evening program. So we just stayed around there till 4.30 pm (really nothing much to do there). Then we drove up to the Devils@ Cradle office which was about 1 km away from the visitors information centre. As it was still early before the tour starts, the staff let us in to see the Tasmania Devils first on our own. My friend got scared as they resembles to rats, so she didn't want to go see. So i went alone down to see the devils and quolls (the devils' cousins) and wormbats. One of the devils was quite a bully inside its dome, keep bullying on the other devil, which was smaller in size. The wormbats were hidden at the back, we managed to catch them (as the tour didn't go to their area). They were very fluffy and big in size too.

The rest of the people started to come in slowly too, the tour guide gathered us in a briefing room @ 5.30 pm. In the room, she gave us introduction to the devils and Tasmanian tigers which were extinct. And because of this, the devils went up in the chain of the life cycle in Tasmania. However, the devils' population went down sharply due to a cancer disease which only targets on the devils and it was spreading fast. The tour guide told us that there wasn't any cure yet till now. Hence, the devils were on the endangered list now. She mentioned those kept in the protected area are currently free from the disease, however, they were also worried to let the devils out in the wild. She also showed us a 10 minutes video on the devils' behaviour and lifestyle. Apparently, the female devil can give birth up to 20 young but she could only feed 4 young. Due to this, many young can't survive, only the strongest can survive. Sometimes, the males do fight to see who is the strongest, however they don't fight to death. Once the winner emerges, they will stop and recognise the winner as the strongest. Every devil have their own unique white marking on their body too. So the staffs were using the different marking to recognise each devil. This marking will help the devils to camouflage in the bushes to hide away from their predators. After that, she explained more details on the devils, which later she told us she is going to feed the devils. So she went down to get some wormbats' torso for the devils. And she went in to the devils' open area and put down the torso.

We could see one of the devils (name: Chopper) approached and started to bite on the torso. However, when the other smaller devil tried to approach the torso, the other one made some loud noises to get him away from the torso. The guide told us that was the way the devils communicated, by making loud noises. And the devils' bite can be very fatal, its teeth were very sharp that it can break off the bones. But fortunately, the devils don't attack humans as far as she knows. And the devils can also open their mouth to at least 90 degrees angle, we could see it when the devils yawn.
Later, the guide brought us to see other 2 younger devils (age of 12 months) and later the compound where they put 2 males and 2 females for mating purpose. Normally, they will try to let the devils to mate naturally when the devils reach the suitable age.

Dinner

Then later she took us to the quolls' compound, where she also fed them with the raw meats. The quolls were smaller in size, weighed about 2 kg plus and they jump on trees. After the tour, we were free to go off or walk around to the see the devils. So we went back to the cottage, where we started to make our dinner. After preparing the dinner, we just watched the TV while having our dinner. Then we just rested for the day.

Hotel Stayed:
Cradle Mountain Wildness Village

Places Visited:
Devils@Cradle

Mount Wellington, Tasmania Trip (Day 6)

20th March 2016, Sunday

Mount Wellington Summit

Woke up @ 7.30 am today, had prepared breakfast while my friends washed up. Today we headed out to Mount Wellington. It was 35 minutes journey and we were quite worried that my friend will get dizzy during the road ride. We went the wrong way along the route, so it took us slightly longer to reach the mountain. But once we were on the top of the mountain, it was freezing cold and there were alot of clouds blocking the view. We can see the whole of Hobart from above, but it was still too white to see it clearly. We stayed up there for about an hour, as there was no roads for hiking and it was too cold for my friends.

Sorell's Farm

Fruits Season

So we traveled down to Sorell's farm to go plunk strawberries. Once we reached there, we were not allowed to bring our bags in and had to buy plastic containers to collect your fruits. We even got a small pail for corns picking (price based on the size of each plunked corn). When we walked in the farm, there were only strawberries to plunk. We tried to find apples and pears to plunk but most were eaten up by the birds. So we just focused to plunk the strawberries, which in the end, we got 3 big boxes of it. We also managed to plunk 2 corns. After that, we headed back to the shop where we got some fruit jams. Then we headed back to Barilla Bay Oysters (really love the food) restaurant for lunch.

This time, we ordered risotto seafood soup, slow-cooked pork belly and fried oysters with kilpatrick plus fries. We had a super heavy lunch, after which we were thinking where to go next. So we figured to head down to buy food in the supermarket for dinner after my friend bought a big abalone back. I left my friends to take charge what ingredients to get and i bought some tim tam biscuits too (less than $2 aud). Once done in the supermarket, we went to have our first petrol top up in the nearby petrol station. My friend was trying to figure out to open the gas tank door, which it turned out just by pressing the door manually. After pumping the petrol, we headed back to the apartment first to put our food.

After that, we went down to walk along the shops nearby our apartment. There were a lot of nice houses, my friend also played at the playground in Prince's park and i just sat on the bench to enjoy the quietness. Then we walked out to the shops, where i bought a small bag of coffee beans. The coffee beans really smelled nice, even though i am not a coffee lover. My friend finally got to buy her wooden rolling pin, which her husband let her to buy...lol. After shopping around, we headed back to the apartment to prepare our dinner. We wrapped every thing up and threw them into the oven to cook. We tried to turn on the stove to cook eggs but was not successful. So we tried to use boiled water to boil the eggs. But was not successful too, as it was not really fully cooked. Then my friend took the cracked egg, poured into a cup and tried to microwave it. Bad choice, it "exploded" inside...kekekee...

Then we just tried with boiled water again but this time we left it longer inside the water....hohoho...anyway had a nice dinner, the corn we plunked earlier was sweet too. After dinner, we watched TV (our usual programs - Cutthroat Kitchen) to relax since it was the last night in Hobart.

Hotel Stayed:
Sullivans Cove Apartments - Salamanca Battery Point

Places Visited:
Mount Wellington
Salamanca Battery Point

Europe 2nd Trip - Bernina Express & Celerina, Switzerland (Day 11)

4th Nov 2013, Monday, Sunny

My Breakfast

Today is the day we are going to take the Bernina Express Train to go into Switzerland from Italy. Tirano is the starting place where the train starts and the train will cross the Swiss Alps along the way. We had planned to take the 1st train out from Tirano, so we got up early and went down to the Swiss Train Station to check whether we need to get reservation for the train. The station was damn empty, only 1 or 2 people were inside the counter. As it was a Monday, so no reservation is required. So we went back to the hotel to have our breakfast, oooo!! The croissants were soo good, there was sugar on top and i took a few nutella so that can have them on the train. My friends took some fruits along. I finally had hot chocolate too, hahaaa, i used the espresso cup to fill the hot chocolate and it over-spilled cos the cup was too small. After breakfast, we went up to our room to collect our luggage and took turns to go down to the lobby. Hahaha....when we were paying for the hotel stay, i took out swiss franc currency to try to pay for the hotel (blur blur, i forgot we were still in Italy land....hahahaa). Then my friend looked at me shocked and reminded mi that we need euros, not swiss franc....hahahaha....really blur sotong....

Inner of Bernina Express Train

After the "乌龙" i made, we went to the Swiss Train Station for our scenic train journey for the day. We got on the regional train instead and we got the whole coach to ourselves, and we could open the windows (the bernina express train doesn't allow windows to be opened). At 8.50 am, the train started to leave, and we were off to Celerina (where we will be staying for the night and its the most awaiting hotel we were eager to stay in. Cos it was a like apartment, which was having 2-Storey in it). But first, we need to take the train until St. Moritz station, which was the last station of that line. Inside the coach, the train map was printed on the mini table around the seats and basically, we went running around the coach, from left to right and front to back. The train also went through towns and we were so close to the buildings (those with big lens camera needs to be extra careful, not to get hit by the objects when the train passes and the train is moving at high speed too). We also passed a lot of stations, the train doesn't stop for all stations, some, was stopped upon request. There was a stop button in each coach for people to press if they want the train to stop. Ohhh...Swiss trains timings are more accurate than Italy trains. They are always on the dot, come on time and leave on time, unlike Italy trains, which can delayed until crazy. Along the way, you can see snow mountains, lakes, towns, stations, and the road (for cars) are just beside the train. (See my photo album for the scenery photos during the ride).

One of the lakes saw along the journey

We reached St. Moritz at around 11 pm plus, so we need to make our way to another platform as to catch another train to go to Celerina. We had to spend some time at the station as the train leaves at 12.02 pm. After the wait, the train finally left the station, so it was a few minutes ride to Celerina. So it didn't take us too long to reach. After we alighted from the train, we tried to find our way to the hotel. It was like a long way from the station to the hotel, luckily it wasn't hot there (in fact, it was cold....hahahaa). Finally, we reached the hotel, it was called All in One Hotel Inn Lodge. We went up to see our room after we were done with the check in. The lift was big enough to fit the 3 of us, plus our luggage...kekeke....and the lift buttons were all touch buttons. When we got in to our room, it was really big, really with 2 levels...1 sofa bed downstairs and 2 single on the upper level. There's even a stove beside the sofa bed. The toilet doesn't look small too, no bathtub though.After the exploration of the room, we headed out to Diavolezza for our snow mountain visit. This was the only mountain opened for this period. When we got to the lobby, the hotel staff stopped us to get us pay for our payment first as they said their system will be down tomorrow, so they won't be able to access it. So we made the payment and my friend checked with them on how to go Diavolezza. They told us there was another train station opposite the hotel street that we can take the train to get to the place directly. So we walked to that station instead of the one we alighted earlier, and got on the train. As this station is not a main station, so we had to actually flag the train to stop (as to catch the driver's attention). Hohoho...it was fun....

Smiley Face (drew by me)

The train was empty too when we boarded and we were at the first coach, we could see the controls of the train and the 2 drivers were in control. After a few mins, we reached Diavolezza station, it started to snow....and we went in to buy our cable cars tickets. There was a guy in front of us, who kept asking questions to the staff (only see the staff had to make calls and then answer him), that caused to miss the cable car. In the end, we had to wait for the next car to come by the time we got our tickets ($30 swiss franc return trip per pax). Luckily, it wasn't a long wait (like about 5 to 10 mins). And so we went up to the cable car, it was those big type and we were going to the top of the mountain. Too bad, it was snowing outside and we wasn't able to see the outside view clearly. We played in the snow for some time when we reached, i tried to make snowballs and threw at my friends...hahahaa....It was soo cold, my ears were pain from the coldness (luckily i was wearing my friend's down jacket-her "rubbish bag"..hohoho...). After all the fun in the snow, we went in to see the souvenirs. As we were looking around, 2 of the staffs came over and asked us where we were from. One of them started to sing a song about Singapore when they heard about it. The guy just came to mi and gestured to take a photo..and so the other staff took a photo with mi....-_-".....they were so friendly...the one who took a photo with mi still joked by asking me $5 for the photo....i was like "i didn't ask for photo-taking".....After shopping, we had to take the cable car down as it was getting late. 

Potato Chips

After we came down from the mountain, we made our way out to the same platform to take the train to Pontresina. It wasn't a long ride too, we tried to find our dinner place as we were all hungry. We started walking in and it was a long way to the dinner place. By the time we walked in, the sky was getting dark. We stopped at a supermarket and grabbed snacks, drinks and even food for our dinner...hahahaa...There were coloured eggs too, which made us curious as why the eggs were coloured and for what purposes. We done with our shopping after spending half an hour or so inside...Then we made our way back again to the train station, as it was still early, we went in to a heater room to keep away from the cold and we had our potato chips first. It was nice, i like the potato chips (should buy some back). Then it was time for our train, so we made our way to the platform to go back to Celerina. Oooo..it was so dark when we alighted, there was not street lamps, we had to use torchlight as guide so that we can walk back to the hotel. Once back at the hotel, we had our shower and i boiled some hot water for our milo and instant cup noodles (brought by my friend). It felt so good to have some hot food in such a cold weather....And so, my day ended for today...yeah!!

Hotel Stayed:

All in One Hotel Inn Lodge

Places Went:

Celerina

Diavolezza

Pontresina