Roadtrip in Tasmania

An island of black swans, thousands of sheep, white naked trees and rolling hills covered with pinot noir yards. Good place. With Ville and Roope we flew to Hobart from Sydney and rented a car for four days to drive around the island.

Wineglass Bay
Our first stop was the Wineglass Bay. A small place but the sceneries were even more beautiful. What surprised me tho' is that the bay and the beach can only be reached by a two-hour-hike.

So continuing our mountain adventures we hiked up to Mt Amos through "a hard, challenging track" (too true, I think half of the three-to-five-hour-track was more like climbing instead of hiking). However the view was awesome - not a bad place for a snackbrake - with refreshing wind. After we had survived back down we ate delicious pizzas (mushroom-brie pizza with local cabernet) in a small, cozy place called "Tombolo" (number one in TripAdvisor - out of five or so places in the whole town). Next morning we also hiked the traditional track - an easier one thank god - to the Wineglass beach itself. So beautiful with white sand and gracious tourquoise waves!

Wineglass Bay remained as my personal favorite place in Tasmania.

Through these rocks we had to climb up. Literately. No ready-made-trail.

"Hug each other or do something that guys usually do!" - with these two I spend two weeks after Sari left.

On the top of Mt Amos

Bay of Fires
The name comes from the history, story goes that aboriginals used to travel to the Bay and set fires there. However also the rocks by the coastline are colored with shades of orange and red. It was another beautiful place where we stopped by different beaches during our roadtrip. In St Helen, Mohr Cafe, we also had our best coffee table moments so far, just happily lying on the sofas, gossiping and sipping  good coffee with no hurry. :)

Bay of Fires

Bennet's wallaby and its cub -
 met her in Wineglass Bay but up there are already too many pictures

Cradle Mountains
After a night in Launceston we headed to Cradle Mountains (couldn't possibly brake our climbing-hiking-for-three-soon-to-be-four-days-in-a-row-exercise now). By the road the nature changed from fields inhabitated by fluffy sheep and Black Angus cows into the forests of dead white trees and mountains.

We spend one day and one night in Cradle Valley and wondered to Cradle Falls, Cradle Lake and to Marions Lookout (1300m above surface). The hiking tracks were easier there (only 10m of climbing, rest was regular hiking), but nonetheless the views were magnificent and we breathed the freshest air. If you seek something even more extreme you can cross the mountains hiking 80kms from Cradle Valley all the way to the other side to St Clare Lake through the "Overland Track".

Before leaving Tasmania we went back to Hobart, the second oldest city in Australia after Sydney. Small but quite cute, with dozens of restaurants and oldish buildings at the waterfront.
All in all, I'm glad we went to Tasmania, even just for few days. It's different from East Coast, a mixture of NZ and Australia. It's also more peaceful with small towns and only few backpackers - instead of all the fuzz it's all about the nature and some local treats.