Ahoy, Cape Hauy!

NB: with this post – about a place I visited before the lockdown – I want to bring you some positivism, beauty, and reassurance that we’ll all get a chance to see great different places again. Meanwhile, I encourage you not to violate the stay-at-home regime. Instead, I hope you’re using this time for catching up on what you never seemed to find the time to do… ‘before’ :).

Onward we stroll, on the last day of our trek along Three Capes Track on the Tasman Peninsula. On today’s menu – getting to Cape Hauy. Over there… ->

At first it was the usual sturdy path with super views, but a bit later we entered a really strange wood…

…In which there grow these here bright orange… mushrooms? Carrots? :)

But things only got brighter, gaudier, and more alien-like!…

I wonder if it’s edible?!

I wonder what it is!…

Out of the forest, over to the cliffs’ edge. Oh my grandiose. And over there – that’s where we were the previous day…

The view down below – also impressive:

Then the track took us back toward and then into the strange woods again:

Therein – giant eucalyptus trees:

A bench – a well-camouflaged one at that! ->

The track winds deeper into the woods. Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf will appear next…

Oh my ghoulish! A face in a tree! The wood gets spookier with every step…

Red trees!

More brightnesses. I wonder – does that bright red mean ‘eat me!’ or ‘eat me and die!’?!

…The same goes for the berries! ->

We decide not to risk touching – never mind eating – any of these bubblegum-colored ‘delicacies’, or even the harmless-looking ones that wouldn’t be out of place at the greengrocers. Who knows how they may have mutated en route to Oz/Taz, and the first-aid situation on the peninsula is hardly a reassuring one ).

However, my travel companion, OA, and I observed some small local wild animal take a good few big bites out of one of these here toadstools – one of the regular-mushroom-looking ones. And the next morning, passing the same spot, the only thing left of said toadstool were a few crumbs – Santa-and-Rudolph-aftermath style on Christmas Day morning! And there was us expecting the corpse of said wild animal instead. So what’s it mean? Are they edible or not?

Btw, talking of (potential) poison… about snakebites. All Australians know the one thing you MUST do if ever bitten by one. STAY STILL AND DON’T MOVE! This is to slow the venom’s spread throughout the body in the blood. Did you know that? I didn’t. Of course, once told, I was like, ‘ah, yes, I could have guessed that’; but I hadn’t ).

Another btw: there’s an episode of Peppa Pig in which a spider features, apparently. Peppa and George insist this cute little creature should never be harmed. All very sweet; however, the episode was banned in Australia! The simple reason being that spiders here can be so bad-a$$ that they don’t want any children even thinking about giving one a cuddle or some such ).

Meanwhile, we leave the magic forest again, passing strange fir/fur cones ) ->

And more exotic… nope, I don’t know what they are… ->

We take a right to Hauy…

We were told at the outset that the walk to Hauy wasn’t the easiest: in all 3000 steps in total there and back. No probs, I thought; but then I thought a bit more: if all those steps were of a height of 20cm, that works out at 300 meters along the vertical: around 75 stories of a skyscraper! Ouch! But what were we to do? Give up? Yeah right. Off we pop – over there ->