Forever gliding across the Everglades

02/02/2012

10am came and it was once again time to check out of hostel and board the Greyhound for our 2 hour trip further north. We’re finding that the 2 / 3 hour bus trips are actually quite nice, they provide you with the time you need to get bits done that you can’t find the availability for at any other point [like writing these blog entries] and you get to see some pretty nice views along the way. So no complaints.

After arriving in Noosa and checking into our hostel for the night (a Nomads this time, its ok – just no YHA) we decided to exploit the blue skies and find some sand where we could lay our towels and listen to the waves of the ocean while we power-napped. Scott managed this, while I couldn’t resist and instead took a long swim around the coastline [even though the sea had been dyed an unhealthy orange colour due to the rain].

The Nomads we’re staying in again has more of a party vibe, but we were boring and opted for an early night, even after the promise of a free drink if we went. Some of our roommates however did not choose that option (shocker) and came stumbling into the room at all hours, but I think we’ve both pretty-much adapted to sleeping through / ignoring the un-rythmic sounds of weary feet during the night.

7am soon came and Scott’s alarm burst into song to warn us it was time to pack up and move, but I think we were both awake regardless due to the excitement that lay ahead. We packed out smaller, hand luggage-sized bags with enough clothes and personal belongings to stop us becoming feral in the upcoming three days and set off to the dock…

Today was the beginning of our self-guided, three-day trip, canoeing up the Everglades [a network of rivers and lakes, surrounded by forests of various densities and mountains rising to the sky]. The day started by a little meet and greet at the dock of our fellow canoers [there were 17 of us in total] while we assorted our inventory for the trip ahead. 

 

We were all split into teams of two (those mathmatitions out there will realise that 17 doesn’t divide equally by two, so yes there was a team of three also] and each team was given a barrel containing their tent, an empty barrel to place all their belongings, a bag with a small gas hob and cooking utensils, a small tank of drinking water and finally a cool bucket to keep all our food in. Once this was sorted we all go in the boat and the skipper took us to our new home for the next few days, stopping along the way to show us the island Richard Branson owns and holidays on.

At one point, where the water was particularly shallow a few of us got out and stood at the front of the boat to try and even out the weight. It was at this moment the Everglades took its first victim… my hat. Once we were over the shallow area the boat raced into action, creating a gust of wind that took the hat off my head and threw it into the water below. During our trip the Everglades also stole a pair of Ray Bans (apparently a tree branch took them and fed them to the murky waters below) and a sleeping bag, which was later rescued. A moment of silence please…

And hour later we arrived at a little jetty in the middle of nowhere by a deserted wooden hut that was apparently meant to be a tourist information centre. Scott and I helped the skipper retrieve the canoes housed underneath the wooden structure and passed them to the rest of the clan to start loading with belongings and equipment.

 

We knew this was a described as a ‘self-guided’ adventure but I don’t think there was anyone among us that expected the skipper to simply hand us an oar and a roughly hand-drawn map and just wave us goodbye without any explanation of what to do from that point forward. Slightly perplexed, we headed in the general direction the map guided us towards and hoped for the best. Of course, being the well brought up gentleman we are; Scott and I politely waited by the jetty for two girls [Laura and Holly] who were slightly struggling to move anywhere but in circles (which didn’t actually improve throughout the rest of the trip… you know it’s true girls haha). However this proved tedious very quickly and instead we decided it was in their best interest to learn the hard way and we sped off to meet the others.

As stated previously, the map provided was hand drawn and as such gave us no inclination of how long it would take us to reach our ‘day one destination’, all we knew was that the site was called ‘Harry’s Hut’.

It turned out that Harry’s Hut was a good 2.5 hours of solid canoeing away from our starting position. I cannot explain the joy when the jetty slowly came into sight; I believe a few of us actually cheered [Oh if only we knew that was the easy part]! After docking and dragging our belongings / canoes up the jetty we started setting up our tents. The area was set up so that the jetty lead onto an open area with a few wooden picnic tables set along the edges and two racks to store the canoes on. Two short paths then lead onto two smaller open areas where we were to pitch our tents [later named ‘Camp Falltree’ and ‘Camp Nikpaddle’]. A third path lead to the toilet facilities which were about a 5 minute walk through the forest to get to. Well… I say ‘toilet’ when I really mean ‘massive hole in the ground with a toilet on top to give the illusion of a lavatory’.

Karma for ditching the girls at the start poked us in the ass when we opened up our tent barrel to find ours was broken. Nethertheless we are men and as such worked around our handicap and forged the bits we did have to form some sort of shelter.

The awkward moment then occurred when we all realised that there was nothing scheduled for the rest of the day, and it was only around 2 in the afternoon. After re-reading the map we noticed that there was a stop half way that we missed… guess we’ll never know what was there. It soon dawned on us that this trip might become somewhat creepy as there was definitely a communal feeling that everything started to seem like the opening scenes of a cheesy slasher movie. Nobody could get any kind of phone reception and we were literally by ourselves camping in the middle of a dense forest, an hour or so boat ride from any kind of civilisation. I won’t lie, I kinda liked the feeling. Felt exciting!

Even though there was literally nobody around for miles we did gain a few new members to our gang. I think we had been there for around half an hour when our first resident came to visit. He was a meter long lizard [don’t ask me what type, as I have not got a clue] which we named Timmy. He was later followed by his friend Jimmy, who I'm actually sure was a girl as there was a massive case of pregnant-belly going on. Our third visitor was slightly shyer and came to visit much later in the day. A turkey named Chloe.

We past the evening by playing a few make-shift games of Rounders and Fast Cricket with an oar, a few barrels and a softball someone had brought with them. It was around then that everyone started to really mingle and get to know one another. There was a great collection of people among us, from all over the globe. I think there were; Swiss, Swedes, Canadians, Brits, Dutch and Germans so we all had a lot to talk about which we both agree made the experience what it was. It was the kind of activity where you needed a really great group of around to make the most of the days ahead. The night started to fall and we all got our hobs out to make our evening meals, half of which didn’t ignite so we all shared the utensils we had and borrowed the odd condiment from each other, reflecting the community spirit that was flooding the camp. While everyone was eating their make-from-scratch pasta meals and salads, Scott and I whipped out our ‘man sized’ cans of potatoes and bacon stew much to the mockery of some of the others in camp. We had the last laugh though when everyone realised that it actually smelt and tasted pretty good, and that we ended up with vastly less washing up to do! 

It did look like sick in a bowl though…

The night was spent with most of us playing drinking games [although Scott and I were mostly shoting water as we were the only pairing not to bring any alcohol with us] and telling ghost stories, fuelling the ‘slasher movie’ atmosphere. Girls are so easy to scare though; it’s hard to resist hiding in a bush and jumping out at them when they made their way to the toilet block… Mind you, I went at around 2am when everyone was fast asleep, armed only with my little torch mum bought me before I left and I shit myself at every noise I heard along the way…

The itinerary told us that we had to up at 7am, ready to move to our second day location for 8. Being good little campers we pretty much stayed on schedule despite a few groggy heads. Half the camp went on their way further up the river while the other half (including ourselves) hung back for a short while to finish off our breakfast before jumping straight into our canoes. By then however we realised that we were one oar missing. Those that remained at the camp looked everywhere for it with no prevail, leaving us to depart the camp with one canoe using only the one oar. Loving a good challenge I nominated that Scott and I would have the handicap, which I don’t think Scott was overjoyed at.

Following the map we made our way [slowly] up the river occasionally swapping the effort between us both. The campers who left with us were nice enough to slow themselves down and take a more chilled ride so we weren’t left too far behind, providing us with more time to get some quality banter going. An hour and a half passed and we were getting pretty tired [we were going against the wind also which didn’t help] and we came up with an ingenious idea to help speed things up. We brought our canoes up to the side of another and while two of us (one at the front and one at the back) held on to the opposite vessel, the remaining two would peddle from either side. It made things harder to steer, but it definitely help us speed up the process a bit, so thanks to Will and Melanie for that!

I think it took about three hours to reach the next jetty [which was way further up that it appeared on the goddam map]. On the way to our initial drop-off point the skipper told us that no matter how tired etc we were, that we should definitely force ourselves to walk up the mountain at our second day destination as the view was unmissable. A pretty bold statement.

So taking his word as true we tied up our canoes and made our way through a trail among the forestry. 

The start of the walk was actually very pleasant, we played some games like 21 Questions to pass the time as we passed the blackened trees created by a bush fire a few years back. Nature has an incredible way of bouncing back however; even though the whole area was burnt to a crisp many of the trees still remained, still sprouting a rich canopy of leaves from their branches and the ground was covered high in new life. Soon we reached the mountain and started our assent through denser forest terrain, not as affected by the fire it seemed. The walk wouldn’t have been too bad, but as we arrived later than the others we had the midday sun to contend with, and it really didn’t let off for us. I think by the time we almost reached the summit any passers-by would have thought we were naturists, judging by the lack of clothing left on our bodies.  The walk was tough, I won’t lie but like the skipper had previously said, once we go to the top it all seemed completely worth it!

Awaiting us at the top this mountain was a seemingly untouched mass of sand, stretching for about a mile in either direction. It was the most surreal feeling walking out of a narrow gap through the trees and then stepping into sand dunes similar to those found in places like Egypt. 

After a short play making sand angel, we all retreated to the shade of the canopy by the entrance. The sun had beaten us.

We laid there in the shade, not talking, just soaking up the terrain before we gradually started getting up and dusting ourselves down to make the decent no one really wanted to do. It seemed to take longer getting down that getting up but my watch told a differently, time is relative as they say. The thought of canoeing back with one paddle was just as unappealing as the walk down, so we made a deal with the girls Holly and Laura; we’d take one of their oars and then we’d tie their canoe to ours and pull theirs along. So basically they got a free ride, but by this point I had actually grown to really enjoy canoeing so it was a fair deal to me! Plus all this arm work has made the top half of my body double in size – one British beefcake coming up! 

Not so shockingly we all got back to camp feeling absolutely shattered and absolutely famished so we hurriedly made our meals for the evening [we had another man sized tin of slop in a bowl, chicken casserole this time]. The night again consisted of drinking games and storytelling, cut short by our lantern running out of battery and a brief rain shower.  Oh, and the lost oar was found. One of the couples who left us in the morning hid it under his tent the night before and forgot about it… not sure why!

7am and again we were woken by the sounds of the birds soaring the skies above us, squawking as if they were about to choke to death. No need for an alarm clock here. We packed up our belongings and slowly started to leave our little camp, with little tears in the duct of our eyes. We had only been there for 2 days and two nights but it honestly felt like we’d spent at least a week living in the opening. Even though we were sad to leave, the promise of a shower and a proper meal awaiting us at the other end propelled us to head off. We hadn’t had a wash in 3 days, bar the occasional swim in the river to prevent the lovely aroma of BO from tainting the camp [and by ‘swim’ I mean we jumped in, and got straight back out as signs hung everywhere begging us not to swim as bull sharks were common in the area … some were braver than others, I was not one of them] so a shower was sounding like heaven by the end of our trip.

We decided to race back to the start, back through the rivers surrounded by planation and dodging fallen trees in the water [or riding straight into them if you’re Scott] of which we had become so accustom. Then we reached the lake full of lilies which told us the end was close. So using all the strength we had left we raced the others to the finishing line, and I'm happy to report that we won!

So thanks to: Amy, Will, Casper, Holly, Tom, Lee, Sebastian, Marlin, Nat, Melanie, Christian, Paul, Katherine, Me, Scott and Laura (as in order on the photo)for such an awesome time!

Now for the cheesy one-liner ending that I’ve been dying to type:- We started as 17 strangers, and ended as 17 members of a family.