Climbing in the Gallery is amazing, the rock looks cool, bright orange with all these white chalk marks everywhere and the view is amazing.
From the gallery you look out over this valley that is covered with dense bush like a jungle and all these grey rocks. Saw some more eagles flying past us the other day as well, they were really big ones. Things are big in Australia, even the post boxes, people out here seem to have post boxes the size of oil drums, well actually they've taken old oil drums painted them, stuck them on a pole and cut some holes in them. I'd love to know what they're expecting to get in the post. Maybe its just a trick to stop the possums stealing it.
I started working a 7b the other day, and had so much fun on this route called Mr Meat, its awesome, its starts off overhanging by 45 degrees with really bouldery moves that I really have to go all out to get and then gets slightly less overhanging by which time I am ridiculously pumped and then you have to do this very exposed airy traverse round this corner on small crimps and just fighting that constant burning feeling while on a good 4m runout to the next bolt climbing above a ledge that hangs over the trees and then one more bolt to the top.
Its so much fun and yesterday I NAILED IT!!!!! Feels so cool today, I can't wait to try some more :D
I've put some photos up in the gallery so go have a look.
I've been in Oz for almost 2 weeks now, and I'm loving it, stayed with my cousin Brian in Melbourne for a night and have been camping since then, its soo much fun. We moved to a new campsite last night and its a realy realy busy one, so far I've seen 3 different busses!! Thats a huge difference from our last campsite, most of the time we were the only people camping there, is was soo cool and it was out in the middle of nowhere a good drive along dirt roads and its proper camping, they have a tap from a rainwater tank and a toilet, so we're in town today to use the "showers"??? (is that the right word) at the swimming pool, I hear people still do them.
I climbed my hardest ever route yesterday, I'm really impressing myself and loving the climbing here.
It was sad leaving our old campsite last night, it felt like we were leaving about 20 pets behind, the animals are so tame, and are 10 times more entertaining than TV, you guys would probably agree. We had possims (about 100) at least 3 kookabaras and kangaroos and wallabies for africa. After yesterday I can tell the difference between kangaroos and wallabies. Kangaroos are big and wallabies are small, I was walking through the forest on my own up to the climbing wall (40mins walk up a very steep hill) and I saw a Big Red, the thing is massive (reminded me of Tom and Jerry's Kangaroo), about a foot taller than me and it was only 20m away and then another one hiding in the bushes, that was awesome, they looked at me for a while and then went bouncing off into the bush/forest. Wallabies are smaller than me.
Have you seen Ice age 2, remember the possims, well these ones are just as mischeivious. They look like giant squirrels, the bigones are almost 2 feet long, not counting their tails. Be glad that you only have one mouse. We have a food tent for all our food and the possims got into it 3 times already, the chancers!!! They'll steal stuff from under your chair and then stand 2m away munching on it, it the time it takes for you to take a sip out of your coffee. And then the cheak, when you walk over to shoo them away, they take 2 steps and then stop!!! At least your mouse hides away. I got to stroke a few of them its really a strange thing to do, its just a cute little BIG squirrel with a very soft fur that has stolen all your breakfast and the last marshmallow for the FIRE!!!! Going to miss George the Master Possum, he's this very big possum that isn't afraid of anything, bet you he was the one that broke into our tent.
The Kangaroos are better, they havn't stolen anything yet, I got 3m away from a wallaby and its little Joey yesterday and they just carried on munching their tasty grass as if I was just a curious little bird.
Those Kookabaras!!!! One tried to eat my sandwiches!!!!!!! They're the laziest birds I've ever seen and like Neal says food is higher on their list of priorities than we are, they're just as cheeky as those Possims. They're funny to watch, when they come land on our picnic table, its almost like he doesn't make an effort to stop his head from flying forward and the only thing that stops him headbutting the table is his long beak, I think thats why they have such long beaks, its soo cool though, they'll swoop down from their perch obove the table brush past you and announce their arrival at the table.
Met Clare a friend of mine for lunch yesterday and we had a good laugh. We went to this outdoor cafe under the shade of some tall pine trees in this amazing garden it was realy nice in the winter sun. There were these little tame chickens that were wondering around the place and they were doing there best to catch our attention for some food, making the funniest noises. So we gave them a few crumbs and salad, that they ate, surprisingly, the waiter told us that they even eat chicken, but we didn't try that, it tasted too good ;) While we were enjoying a tasty cheesecake, Kev even you would like it, this male peacock came over and was pecking at the crumbs and was getting very close to our table, so we dropped some cream on the ground and it looked like it really enjoyed it. Now feeding cream to a peacock, with all its bright shiny blue and green and turquise colours and amazing crown, with a fork is something that I never thought I would be doing, but hey, This Is Africa! Eventually we encouraged it to eat from the plate at the edge of the table, so there we were me Clare and the Peacock sitting down eating cheescake in the midday sun, man, if only my camera wasn't broken. Definatly the first thing on the shopping list in OZ. Later
The day after I arrived in SA I was up at 3:40am!!!! And I thought this was a holiday. You guys in Ireland will be pleased to know that it got down to -0.5 degrees before we got to Harrismith to do some multipitch climbing. I'll put the photos up when I get them from Stephen.
That was about all the cold weather that we got tho, as soon as the sun came out it got up to 25degrees and its stayed around there since then, so Winter is going very well so far :D
We did some easy routes on the first day so that I could teach my Stephen how to climb multipitches and then on the second day we committed ourselves to Fight the Feeling a 21 (SA Sports Grade) 6 pitch route. It was awesome, got some serious sowing machine leg while trying to clip the bolt on the crux move about 50/60m high on a very exposed pitch, but some how managed to stay on and got it. Then when the 2 of us were on the next pitch we looked down and there was an immature black eagle soaring below us. Thats a sight that I will remember for a long time, looking down on a black eagle. Its a sweet route, some really cool moves and some really fun roofs on it. It definatly has the best last move of any route that I've done, one of the hardest moves on the entire route climbs over a roof and onto the top of the mountain, brilliant route and very worthy of its name :) You should have seen the view from the top, everything around was almost flat and this little hill springs up about 150/200m out of the ground, so I don't think that I've ever looked over so much of africa, or anywhere in the world at the same time before.
Aaah, I should have sung that "I'm the king of the castle and you're the dirty rascles" But I forgot.