iller weg, day 2 Aitrach to Ulm

as written in previous post , here is the pictures of the second day, under beautiful sunny sky.

Short journey in Allgäu

I am planning 2 days ride along Iller, a river in Allgäu , a nice area in south Germany.

I arrived some hours ago in my camping place where is going to be my base point and from here i will ride to Kempten and another day to the direction of Ulm , but i am not planning to ride to Ulm, because it is a long ride.

The weather forecast shows it is suny tomorrow and the day after but not so hot , perfect ride weather.

Today it was always sunny and very clear sky.

To Faroe Islands June 2019, part 2

And here are some more pictures of our trips around the Faroe Islands last year.

my travel mates in Blue and Red raicoat 

Sheep are every where here

I lost the two guys for a while , and I saw them again from distance, started walking to them and talking with them, till i got close , and then  i recognized they were two strangers with the same raincoat colours and they were thinking ,probably, who this guy is who is calling us Alan and Steve!

One is explaining about the wind and sun and i do not know what else

Do you see the Segals ? 

To Faroe Islands , first moments

Flying to Faroe Islands from Copenhagen , almost one year ago, June 2019 . Renting a car with  Steve and Alan , old buddies whom  I met in Copenhagen, one from USA and the other from Australia , and here is as much as we could see on our almost 5-day trip in Islands.

and flying under the clouds, close to the mountain walls of the Islands :

a Lachs’ Farm

and this is our car 

 

To Faroe Islands Via Copenhagen

June 2019, 3 old buddies are going to meet up somewhere on the north. Meisam who lives in Germany, Alan traveling all the way from Sydney , and Steve from USA. The plan is to reunion in Copenhagen, 13th June, and then fly to the Islands on 14th .

i arrived 1 day earlier in Copenhagen, so I had one extra day to look around the city , going for a Toastmaster club on the evening and then waiting for my friends to start the adventure .

Here is some pictures if my walk on the Streets of Copenhagen, From Frederiksberg Garden to the little mermaid.

 

 

A weekend on Swiss Alps/ Val Ferret ( part 1, Hikinig around)

On Friday 7th September till Monday 10th , I spend time on some part of the Alps that I have never been before. This part of the mountain range is very different with the Alps In Germany. The picks are higher, but it is not what i was amazed with. I was amazed with different range of colors I could see on the mountain , and i have not seen the same colors on German Alps.

the Saturday  hike to the top of the mountain where it is called Fenêtre de Ferret.

Green , yellow, red, then orange, because of different vegetation , White because of  glacier and white fluffy flowers that i do not know their name and blue color of sky mirrored on the lakes are what made my hike even more pleasant than what i expected.

on the way there are 3 lakes and as understood all 3 lakes name is lacs de fenêtre.

lacs de fenêtre 

 

fenêtre de ferret is 2698 m above see level, and when we arrive on fenêtre de ferret, we can see Italian Alp in front and Switzerland behind us.

Fenêtre de Ferret

View to Italian Alps

View to Swiss Alps

On the way down , there are some groundhogs enjoying their beautiful day under the sun.

The hike on Sunday was a easier hike, just going to the dam that is near the Val de Ferret. I cannot remember the name of the dam., unfortunately.

after the hikes, a beautiful cosy  house is waitng on the Valley to relax and be grateful of what life can offer to someone.

To Elsey National Park

waking up at 7:45  in the morning and getting out of the tent,  I can see there are some Kangaroos around us looking for their breakfast .we can get close to them slowly, but there is a moment they realize our presence and run as fast as they can.

 

The camping ground is close to Katherine Gorge, therefore we decides to have a look around the gorge. Like many other things we have seen in the outback so far, this river also has routes in the Aboriginal people stories.According to the story, Nabilil ( NAH-bill-il), the dragon-like creation being from the Jawoyn ‘dream time’, had traveled from Wadeye(Port Keates) many kilometers to the west and decided to rest  at the entrance to the river. His journey up the river and subsequent death created the flowing water  we can see today.after the short walk to see the river, we drive further and reach the address we got in the morning by phone from the car rental agency to change our  broken tire. then we can continue our way again with one extra new tire.our way is oh highway No. 1 , or Stuart highway to the south toward Elsey National Park.

we pass some historical memorials , related to the second world war .

Stirling mill , dated 1942 :

 

 

Stirling Mill – dated 1942

Old Sheep Dip on Mataranka station , dated 1913:

 

sheep station

The next is Mataranka Aboriginal Army Camp. where Aboriginal people had to serve for a war that was not really their war.The Camp was established by late 1943 composed of 350 Aboriginal workers who were supporting the war effort by working for the Army. Army Aboriginal camps were also set up at Adelaide River, Manbulloo and Larrimah and as far south as Alice Springs. [For the source click here] and finally is the 45 Australian camp hospital, mainly operated by women. unfortunately  the description in my picture is not readable but if you are interested to know about that you can always look at the article Woman at war by clicking here .passing all these WWII memories ,we have a chance to take a stroll along a Botanic Walk beside the Roper River. actually I have no idea about the vegetation and different trees on the walk.

driving further on the Stuart highway, we arrive on the Never Never Museum. I did not know anything about the novel ” We of the Never Never ” ,and the film which was made based on the novel.  I think in case I heard about that before, I could read the book or at least watch the film , but I will do it when I go back to Germany. If you have watched the movie , it can be interesting for you to know that the movie was produced in this location, actually the building was made to produce the film.

 

Beside the Never Never Museum, there is Mataranka Thermal pool where you can jump in warm water.  It may not be refreshing to be in warm water when the temperature outside is around 33 degree but it can be pleasant. Let’s try it .

we move toward the springs, passing high palm  and other kinds of trees. I hear many birds are crying or shouting and I am wondering what kinds of birds can they be. Just a look upward and see hundreds of bats hanging from the trees or flying on the sky, what I have never seen before, a Bat Garden, or as Alan told me Flying Foxes.

 

It is more interesting when you see the bats are even hanging from the branches extended over thermal springs. I try to avoid looking up , to avoid bat poo on my eyes, and i hope i had nothing on my hair as well.

 

It is around 4:30 PM that we leave the thermal pools to the direction south. we think we will sleep in Dunmarra camping ground tonight. It is around 6:30 PM and we are still on the way, with a very beautiful sunset view on our side.when we arrive in Dunmarra camping ground I can see there is a Petrol station there and there is also an aircraft runway beside the petrol station. So you can imagine that you are in the middle of nowhere again. The temperature dropped down ,and it seems it is going to be a very cold night , those kind of nights in desert.

Note: If you are interested to know more about Elsey national Park, click here.

From Today I try to uplad some pictures of the route on where we passed on the map,and i will try to do the same for the last days later.

 

 

 

to Cutta Cutta Cave and Nitmiluk National park

Today we will reach 3000 km of driving , which is half a total distance we want to finish in this journey. we wake up early and leave the camp. it is a very hot day today , and  we will be on the car most of the time and will have a tour on Cutta Cutta Cave.  It is  exactly 14:15 that the km counter tells us that we have been driving 3000 km on Savannah way.it is around 15:00 that we arrive in the Cutta Cutta cave , where is the shelter for some snakes and bars and some other animals , which I hope we can see. The guy who is going to be our tour guide is quite a funny Australian guy who makes different jokes and wants to know where each of us are coming from, and he wants to learn something of our language. I think he rarely has seen someone from Iran.  We are not alone on the tour,there are two other guys with us who are from New Zealand. In the cave when we see some stones shining like there are thousands of stars on them, he asks me to teach him What it means” many stars”  in Farsi,and when i tell him : ” Setare haye Ziad”  his reaction is ” Oh it is impossible to learn this”.  there are many different type of stones and other kind of Geological creatures that I even cannot pronounce their name, also in different shapes, like a dog head, a turned dragon,and even a Kangaroo. I do not write anything about the pictures to see if you also can see them or not.

one of the cave inhabitants

After the tour on the cave, we drive to direction Nitmiluk National park. there is a camping place there , with salty water  swimming pool, where we stay tonight t.Tonight  is a clear night, like all other nights on the way, where I can see thousands, or maybe millions of stars shinning and blinking.

There are some thermal springs in the area, but unfortunately because of time restriction we cannot visit them all. However we decide to go to at least one of them tomorrow, the Mataranka Thermal pool. I do not know how  would it be to be in a thermal pool when the temperature outside is something between 30 and 40 degree.

 

 

 

 

 

Borroloola to Town River

we stayed the night in Mc Arthur River Carvan Park. This time also we arrived later , but we are lucky that the people who are working in the camp are nice and accept us for the night. actually the lady who helped us, told that she is doing it with all lat comers, and when we explained in another city we arrived late and nobody answered our phone call , she was surprised. ” People Travel, you know” she said.

like all other days,  we wake up early and  drive further  . it takes only around 30 minutes to reach Our first stop ,Caranbirini Conservation Reserve, where there are three different walking pass available to see around the park. we decide to go for Barawulla Walk and then after see the waterhole.starting the walk, we just see bushes and trees small and a bit bigger .  The temperature is around 35 to 40 degree centigrade.

But   after around 50 minutes walking, the view changes in a  very interesting way, where the Organ pipes appear.

after the first walking tour, we have some time to sit beside the water hole and have a look at the trees and ducks relaxing on the water.

Due to car rental terms and conditions we are not allowed to drive to Lost City , But instead we decides to drive to southern lost city which is smaller than the main one, but it worth seeing.

The walk around southern lost city took about one hour. Now we are on the way to see the butterfly fall, where I believe we will not find any water or any butterfly.

On the way to Towns River, we stop on Cape Crawford to have a short stop and lunch. after lunch we drive through Limmen national park toward the final destination for today , Towns River.  we pass a crocodile sign beside a small creek , and some kilometers after Ivan who drives the car now, stops.

-what do you stop? I asked.

-Let’s have a look at the wheels, something is wrong, he answered.

yes, now we have a flat tire, which we have to change with the extra one we have on the car. It means driving to the next stop with no extra tire, on the road with sharp stones almost everywhere. Even if we lost some minutes to change the flat tire, we have enough time to reach Town River.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boodjamulla to Borroloola

Time to drive further, after the first 2-day camping and relaxing a bit on Adels Grove. The next stop will be Borroloola , in Northern Territory. There are 2 different way we can select in the beginning of the ride, The first one is just derivable with a 4WD and the second one which is a part of Highway No. 1 . we decides to go on the 4WD- only way. The first things we can see on the way is a beautiful outbacky Rainbow. although the presence of rainbow is beautiful it means that there was a recent rain which can make the way on 4WD road more challenging. driving further on the road , and now we are on our first 4WD challenge, a Creek . before we start the way we were told on the camping place that there are gates on the road, to prevent the cows to escape, so we need to get off the car and open the gates and when we pass, we need to close the gates.now I see the first gate with the cows that may not see any car or human for weeks. The same way they are interesting for me, I think I am also interested for them. I can be the first Iranian they have ever seen, i do not know about Ivan. comparing the cows in Australia to what i see when i go hiking in Germany, I can mention that these cows are really thin and the one on the Alps are really really fat . the ones that I see here can run very fast, specially when they see our car, and they have no idea what we are. They just start running like a race hours. I am in doubt if the one on the Alps can compete with them.

although the road is very nice but it is really slippery after the rain last night and not easy to control the car.

this is the trace of our own car we made some minutes ago, we can see in this picture

because of the road condition Ivan needs to drive slowly to make sure that he can control the car. driving some kilometers on this road, we start discussing that if we go with this speed probably we will not reach Borroloola tonight , so it is better to turn back and take the highway number 1 .

according to the map it is 502 kilometers from Adels Grove to Borroloola on the highway, and as I learnt on this trip, the highways are not what we expect from highway in Europe. it is mostly gravel road , where also should be shared with Long Fast Road Trains, or The Killers.On the way we reach the small city Doomadgee and stop to tank our car. the name seems like an aboriginal name to me. there is not much to see on this long way. at is afternoon and we also feel hungry. soon we arrive on Hells gate Roadhouse where we can have a lunch, a huge huge outbacky Burger as usual on the Savannah way.

On Hells Gate Roadhouse we are not far from Northern Territory boarder, where we need to pass today. In my view, Hells Gate is the gate to Nowhere, is where the road to infinite road starts, as the next Everything is around 320 km. good luck .52 kilometers after Hells gate we reach the boarder between Queensland and Northern territory. Tonight we will be in Borroloola, 250 kilometers of gravel road in front.