Tasmania - Tiger Airways sucks big time, Cradle Mountain, and Launceston

So we woke up early to get on our Tiger Airways flight to Hobart, Tasmania. We arrived on time alright.

2 hours before check in started.

Actually Rony hadn't read the departure time correctly and instead of 12:00, the flight was at 14:00, so we just stayed at the airport listening to the complaints people had about Tiger Airways. Not only was our flight delayed by 2.5 hours, but we also got there 6 hours early! But almost all flight were delayed and one of them got canceled. A big mess! Tiger Airways in not reliable, guys!

So if you're thinking of booking a Tiger Airways flight one day, think twice and ask yourselves these questions:
1) Am I on a tight schedule?
2) Do I have other possibilities?
3) Do I have somewhere to stay in case the flight is canceled?
4) Do I have Valium?

During that time, Talia managed to call their unreachable costumer support service and change our flight on the 31st of December to the 30th of December. Good! One victory! And it only took 3.5 months!

So our flight finally departed at 4:30 pm, arrived in Hobart one hour later, and we picked up our pink rental car and drove it to Lanceston, where we arrived around 9:30 pm. Exhausted from doing nothing. But we knew we would have days like this. And of course, it was raining when we got here (duh).

The second day was much better: We booked a tour to Crandle Mountain which departed at 8 AM. We were lucky this time: the weather was perfect, sunny and finally no rain. We booked 2 different tours, because we thought that one was easier than the other and Rony wanted to do the tough part. But once there, it appeared that both had the easy and hard part.

So Rony started the climb to Marion's lookout which has an great view over the hills and mountains around. There is a 300-meter climb and it takes 2 hours more or less. And it's not that hard: Talia, who was not into climbing till now, did it too! That was a big surprise for Rony to see Talia at the top of the lookout but she did it! Rony (I) was very proud of her :) Running into each other was really funny, so we have the one picture together. Rony made friends with the girls on his tour, who felt sorry for him that he didn't have a camera (Talia had it), so they took pictures of him and promised to email them to him later. :-)

We actually did two different tracks, though we ran into each other mid way (right after Rony had been to Marion's Lookout and Talia was on her way). Talia's way down was really hard and involved some rock climbing, leading to very painful knees later. Nevertheless, it was good to have a day apart and be separate, especially since Talia is a lot slower than Rony with these things.

The tours included a visit to the adorable town of Sheffield. What's special about this town? Well, it has a lot of mural paintings on the houses there and they even have an international contest going on for new murals. The town is so picturesque - it looks like those towns from the 50s in the movies. Talia's favorite part was the following sign:

On the way back from Cradle Mountain, both of our tours made a stop along the way: Rony's stopped at a honey farm, where they have many different types of honey and honey-flavored products (all with free samples), while Talia's tour stopped at an incredible cheese factory that also had many free samples. The most interesting was the Pepper Bush cheese! She would have bought some, but we didn't have where to store any of it, unfortunately.

All in all, it was a great day with a gorgeous hike, albeit pretty rough on Talia's knees. The people on our tours were awesome and tons of fun, and Talia's tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and explained everything about everything, so we learned a lot. For example, did you know the Tasmanian Devil is now an endangered species? Over the past decade, the population has gone down to just 10% of what it was before because of a contagious cancer that's spreading throughout the country. There are a few special centers now that are trying to breed them as much as possible to get the population up again. Neither of us have seen any Tasmanian devils yet, but we both saw wombats. They are SO adorable!!

Pics from the first few days in Tasmania:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=584799&id=906005363&l=4b96461aa1