The Great Ocean Road. Student internship. Part 17.

in #travel7 years ago

"The grass is always greener on the other side" Btc/bch anyone?

Hej steemians.
This week's post is a late one because I have been driving the great ocean road this very Monday and Thursday!
Or I have to say, The pretty good ocean road.

I wanted to change things up a bit this post. I've been thinking about social media like steemit or Instagram or Facebook and the effect it has on expectations of traveling.

If you look at flight brochures or travel brochures you know the pictures are always better then the real life version of the situation is. You mentally prepare for that and its okay when you arrive and it turns out to be less then the pictures show. However on social media with text and images from "friends" or famous people. The pictures are self-made and contain a certain amount of trust. They are not made by a company they are often not photo shopped and your friends do not earn money by saying how much of a great time they are having. But they do it anyways.

So instead of making this one of the "look how awesome my life is" blog posts. I am going to make this a reality blog post. It will probably be less fun to read or sound like I am complaining. But I am going to just state the good and the lesser parts.

To start off at the start. the great ocean road entrance. This is what the internet or your friends show you.

But in reality its almost always more busy. Even on this Monday morning with the weather being warm and gray-ish.
This was the traffic.

So when you are driving a motorcycle you will not be able to take these corners any faster then the first van or camper that is driving in front of you.

But the view at the start of the road. *(driving from city) was worth it. Even on a average weather day the cliffs make a good look.

A good hour something ahead we stopped to get a break and eat something. It turns out there where a lot of birds there. And some nice lady gave me seeds to feed the birds.

But one of the cockatoo bite my finger in order to try to make me drop the seeds. It used so much force my finger got bleeding at both sides. I immediately felt my finger making a bonking feeling like when a cat gives you a scratch. Its the sign of infection. I went back to the restaurant to ask for washing my hands but it turns out they only have rain water. I then used baby wipes to disinfect the small holes.

So we drove on. and on.. and on.. we skipped some viewings like the waterfall on Lorne and the Cape Otway in general. To save some time because we want to arrive in our Warrnambool Airbnb at time.

The next stop we made was at Castle Cove.

Its nice to look at but after 5 minutes you are done with it. I found out that this is the case for me with most scenery.
The part you can't see on the pictures is the massive amount of flies. they are swarming around you and every spot where you can find humans. trying to sit on your face and arms and mouth or eyes. I think they enjoy the skin salt. At first its no big problem but when at the larger tourist locations it got really bad.

Here you can see the twelve apostles.

It is quite impressing in real life. It is worth visiting the great ocean road. However as I mentioned before. It only gives me a few minutes of joy before it gets boring again. Using 3 types of camera's may extend this time by a little while taking pictures. But it made me think of my plans to travel Australia on motorcycle. I was pretty tired this day because I had a hay fever attack the day before. The only way to counter hay fever is for me to take extreme large allergy pills that do make you feel sleepy and your eyes heavy. I was thinking about how hard it was for me to drive like this for just the very first day already. about 8 and a half hours. And how much I did see in these 8.5 hours did make it worth. But traveling trough Australia for weeks on end and seeing maybe 1 cool sight a day. Felt like its not worth it. Not on this motorcycle at least. Its comfortable but not high end. I am worried it would brake down somewhere halfway.

This is how the twelve apostles area look if you do not take out all the other humans out of the pictures that are obviously also there. And bring some extra cash if you want to cool down.

After killing a few flies and getting back on the bike. Next stop was London bridge.

The thing that I noticed is that from all the attractions the viewing platforms are pretty far away. While for example the London bridge in 1990 was without any fence before it collapsed in the middle. You could walk on the bridge itself. Turns out 2 people where on it while it collapsed but no one got hurt. The people got rescued 4 hours later.

After this ride I arrived at the Airbnb place with a really nice woman that welcomes us and told us where we could go for dinner, I had dinner in a place called images in Warrnambool. It was one of the best stakes I've had in a long time.

After that we went just a few meters to the left to see the sunset going down and took some really great pictures with my phone. Samsung S8.

The second bike is my friends. The first one. the Hyosung. Is mine. Its going to be sold tomorrow. I am moving to Sydney for my last month on Monday ! *(had to change the return date because i picked the wrong one. silly me)

I've bought a ticket just 4 days before leaving and I haven't planned out anything. I still am searching for a place to stay and it is all very last moment. I might go for a bohemian bush house!

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What is the maximum speed of your motorcycle?

its 211 km/h

Riding is always my favourite

What do you ride?

Right now its prohibited for me as I had a serious accident and a head injury.
But I ride a 150 Honda Bike.

This is a great post. I like to get the straight scoop. I appreciate the shots with the people in the frame - it is good to know what it is actually like. Some places really are wild and desolate. Others are full of people. I tend not to like the latter that much. Wonderful shots of the scenery though.

Much love - Carl "Totally Not A Bot" Gnash




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