Coles Bay and Freycinet National Park
Jan 16th, 2008 by Nick
Today I visited Freycinet National Park, off of the town of Coles Bay, about 20 minutes south of my hotel. Coles Bay has one of those vibes that screams “tremendous amounts of drugs were used here in 1970.” But today, it’s a small town with rental properties and a few businesses, boat tours, stuff like that. I stopped and looked around and picked up a late breakfast, then made my way into the park.
My purpose for the visit was similar to most people there: to do the hike to the Wineglass Bay lookout. There were shorter walks, and there were multi-day camping scenarios, but 90% of the people there were going to see Wineglass Bay. Most of us would do the hike from the parking area to the lookout, situated between two mountains above the bay. A few more athletic souls would do another hour of very steep hiking to get down to the beach itself, then wonder how they were going to climb all that way back!
Personally, I thought the lookout walk was steep enough, thank you very much. It has over 600 steps, making it the biggest elevation differences I’ve climbed - the previous had been at the Vatican. The path was well marked through the stone, and they had made wooden step frames about 80% of the time.
The hike is marked at 45 minutes, and most people were doing it in 35-40. Of course, I’m not most people, not to mention that I’m not in shape at all. It took me 66 minutes following a very rigid protocol: stop every four minutes or every 20 consecutive steps for a minute, stop every 15 minutes for five. After all, what else did I have to do today??
The view from the lookout was worth the climb. I stayed up there for about 45 minutes before starting to make my way back down. What amazed me was how so many people were getting up there, staying 5-10 minutes, and then leaving! If you are not going to enjoy the view, save yourself the aggrevation and buy a post card from the gift shop… The walk down should have been much faster, but a lot of the steps had their front faces smoothed downward, so I had to be very careful where I planted my feet when climbing down. It took me about 45 minutes with only one break. After that, I rested at the bottom for a while, then drove over and did the boardwalk-style walk around the lighthouse at Cape Tourville.
I came back to the hotel and just chilled out for a few hours, including doing three days worth of laundry so that I have enough clean clothes for the rest of the trip. I spent dinner working through my photos in Picasa, but I don’t have a good enough Internet connection to load them up today. I have about 520 photos to date for the trip, of which a fair amount of duplicates of landscapes.
Tonight, I am going on a penguin watching tour here in Bicheno. It leaves at 9:45pm, and goes out and watches the penguins come back onto the beach at sunset. It’s either going to be a blast or a tourist trap, or maybe both!
Honey — you’re an Illinoisan — we are meant to walk on level surfaces, we are not made for inclines. Inclines are for people from like San Francisco or something. Anything around here that involves a change in elevation also involves an elevator.
Interesting. I tend to find going down many steps to be more challenging then going up. Don’t know why. But my hat is off to you for a) doing it and b) doing it in an organized fashion designed to ensure that you survive the experience.
I climbed Squaw Peak in Phoenix. 2608 feet. I think that’s the longest continual climb I’ve ever done. I remember thinking that it was a long way down to the nearest bathroom.
Illinois really is flat though…
K-)
I like your routine, maybe my wanky knees may hold out following your method when I go there in April. Your review is excellent and well detailed. Now I have to change my itinerary because I wanted to see the penquins. Save yourselve a lot of hassle, buy a Transend Digital Album, it is a 20 Mb portable storage device. You can use it as digital photo viewer, a multi-card reader and digital music player.