Travel Blog: Day ???

Hey there, I've been back in Germany for about 6 weeks now and still haven't come around to tell you the rest of my trip. So here it comes:

The last thing I told you is that I flew back from Bangkok to Sydney. There I spend a couple days not doing much except walking around and looking for some geocaches...and I drank a few beers with a friend/colleague of mine who was in Sydney with his girlfriend. After two nights I took the train to the Blue Mountains which are only 2 hours or so from Sydney and are really worth a visit. There are some nice walking trails and beautiful scenery. I spend 2 days there and then went back to Sydney for St. Patrick's day which turned out to be just an OK evening for me.

But then I started a real adventure - hitchhiking. I had never done it before but it looks like I am a natural :)

I prepared a sign saying "Won't kill you" and took the train to a station which was close to the southbound highway. There I set up my sign and my biggest smile and hoped for the best. After 25 minutes a car stopped and gave me a ride. The driver was a guy originally from Samoa with the name of "Heini". He was super nice and took me the 50 something kilometers to the town of Wollongong where he lives. On the way he even stopped at a beautiful lookout to show me the beaches between Sydney and Wollongong.

For my second ride I only waited 6 minutes and for my third only 2,5! Only the fourth and last ride of the day took me a while to find. I first waited for about an hour at a spot that turned out to be not very good. Lots of people liked my sign though and honked or cheered at me. After I moved to a better spot it took me about half an hour to get picked up by Bill - a nice guy I would estimate to be 60+ years old. When he told me that he lived in Jervis Bay I mentioned that unfortunately there is no budget accommodation in the area - otherwise I would have liked to go. A little later he pulled out his cell phone and called his wife to tell her that she should prepare the guest apartment. I was totally surprised! This lovely couple fed me a nice dinner, let me sleep in their guest apartment in the garden and also invited me for breakfast the next morning. To make it perfect Bill even drove me over to Hyams beach after breakfast so that I could enjoy one of the whitest beaches in the world (according to the Lonely Planet). There I took a quick swim and then started hitching again. Again I had 4 rides and ended up in the town of Narooma. You will be suprised to hear what I did there: I walked around! Not really that much to see there but a nice little town. The main attraction seems to be the Australia Rock - a rock with an Australian shaped hole (see pictures).

The next day I wanted to get to Lakes Entrance and I started OK but after my third ride I found myself in the middle of nowhere. There was hardly any traffic and I still had about 150 km to go. It was getting frustrating....there was about a car every 5 minutes or so and none of them stopped. I waited more than 2 hours until finally a couple from Mauritius stopped - thanks to my sign :) Luckily they also wanted to get to Lakes Entrance and could take me all the way.

OK, that's it for today. I will tell you about my last 2 days of hitchhiking, my visit to Wilson's Promontory National Park and my days in Melbourne in my next post.