Vagabond Tales: Snorkeling with irukandji, one of the deadliest animals on Earth

by Kyle Ellison on

“This guy over here has been tagged three times mate.”

The dive instructor on our Whitsunday Islands cruise peels off his neoprene gloves and shows us a slight scar located just above the knuckle of his right thumb.

“Luckily every time they got me it was in the hand or the foot”, he claims. “If they’d gotten me on the bloody torso I’d be a gonner.”

As someone who has worked on charter boats for a number of years, I know that telling tall tales to tourists just comes with the job. True story or not, I know that the threat is real nonetheless. A dreamy island chain set at the southern tip of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the Whitsunday Islands from November through April are home to one of the world’s deadliest creatures: the irukandji jellyfish.

Similar to a box jellyfish, the tiny irukandji measure only 2.5 centimeters across and have tentacles that pack more venom than the combined amount of 100 cobras. Although actual irukandji fatalities are rare, one Australian teen actually reported he wishes he were dead during a recent irukandji attack.

For this very reason many towns and resorts on the Queensland coast have massive salt water swimming lagoons or fresh pools which serve as refreshing watering holes (and nighttime love hideouts for inebriated backpackers) during the annual irukandji season.

Yet, for some reason, I decided it was still a good idea to go snorkeling. In the ocean. In the Whitsunday Islands. In the peak of irukandji season.

A bit sketchy? Yes. But is it really that dangerous? Not really. Although the safest way to keep from being stung by a massively poisonous jellyfish is to abstain from the ocean completely, for those still harboring fantasies of gliding above a giant purple clam or catching a rare sighting of a giant Napoleon wrasse, the easiest thing thing to do is to simply don a stinger suit.

Wait. A stinger suit? What’s a stinger suit?Basically, a stinger suit is your worst fashion nightmare on land, and your best possible protection when you’re in the Northern Australia waters. A one piece lycra unitard that’s as sexy as it is form-fitting, a stinger suit essentially covers you from head to toe and prevents any rogue irukandji tentacles from brushing alongside and sending you on an impromptu helicopter ride.

That being said, the only thing more disconcerting than catching a glimpse of yourself in a stinger suit is catching an actual glimpse of an irukandji itself.

As I dove off of the crowded catamaran, snorkel gear in hand, the water was slightly cool for mid-April. After a sun drenched boat ride out to the reef from nearby Airlie Beach, I finally was immersed in the calming silence of the sea. Free diving beneath a grotto of human legs to a more tranquil world of vibrant corals and mutant looking parrotfish, the only sounds were the gentle crackling of reef fish feeding on coral heads and the occasional drone of a distant boat motor shuttling tourists from the beach to the reef and eventually the bar.

For the first time in a while, I finally was alone.

Noticing one of his boat passengers languishing gently in a sand channel between the reef, one of the instructors from the boat dove the four meters down to the sea floor to pay a casual visit to my hidden aquatic chamber.

Not more than two seconds after reaching the bottom, however, his eyes excitedly bulged and appeared to double in size as seen through the fog of his mask. Slowly, he raised a focused finger at something apparently located behind me.

For anyone who hasn’t spent much time underwater, regardless of how comfortable you are in the ocean, you never, ever, want to see someone with wide eyes pointing directly behind you. Music starts playing, drums start thumping, and you can almost feel the teeth sinking into the nape of your neck.

Fully expecting to see a toothy visitor, I instead saw…well…nothing. There was nothing there at all. The instructor was actually just pointing at the open blue.

Then, just as my lungs were starting to yearn for another shot of oxygen, the slightest flicker of motion and a narrowing of his pointing drew my attention to a miniscule speck drifting lazily in the sea.

According to our instructor–who would late re-confirm with me back on board–the drifting life form in front of us was none other than the feared and fabled irukandji, the 100 cobra knockout, and the most remarkably passive predator I had ever seen in my life.

For as surreal an experience as floating amidst the reefs of Australia already is, it’s amplified tenfold by staring directly into the face of a creature the size of your fingernail that could actually kill you right there. Like a mesmerizing orb, for some unknown reason you simply want to reach out and touch it, but the stinger suit says no.

“Captain, you said there was a bar on board right?”

I’d just looked death in it’s microscopic Australian eye, and somehow escaped unscathed. It was time for a drink, a pause, a moment of reflection, and a toast to a gentle reminder that even the smallest of creatures on the planet can still make a world of difference.

Want more stories? Read the rest of the Vagabond Tales here…

Stinger suit photo: Flickr; eyeintim

Hiking across Mordor in Tongariro National Park

by Kyle Ellison on

There aren’t many places where you feel the urge to wear your wedding ring around your neck and begin dodging fictional forces of evil.

New Zealand’s Tongariro National Park, however, is exactly one of those places.

As anyone who has been to a movie theater in the last ten years probably knows, New Zealand was the setting for the epically popular Lord of the Rings trilogy which introduced us to the adventures of Middle Earth.

Arguably one of the best known movie series of an entire generation, the movie saga has simultaneously done wonders for the New Zealand tourism economy by displaying the country’s enchanting and other worldly scenery to a global audience of millions. While Middle Earth tourism has sculpted out its own niche for diehard fans (my 2012 New Zealand road atlas, for example, points out where each scene was filmed), as a casual viewer there are only a few place names I actually recognize.

One of these, of course, is Mt. Doom, and as I set out from the campervan into the volcanic cinder of the Tongariro Crossing-one of New Zealand’s most heavily trafficked walks-I found myself standing directly beneath it.

So what exactly is Mt. Doom?

Well, to begin, its real name is Mt. Ngauruhoe, it is 7,516 ft. high, and from the best I could tell there aren’t any quivering, flaming black eyes located anywhere near it. While Mt. Ngauruhoe doubled as Mt. Doom, the surrounding bits of Tongariro National Park provided the scenery for Mordor, the fiery and terrifying volcanic wasteland that serves as the home of evil.

As it happens, Tongariro is actually pretty cold, even during the summer months. Lacing up my hiking boots at 6am with about 100 other trekkers, the morning dew had frozen and blanketed the campervan beneath a thin layer of frost.

“Weird”, I thought. “There’s not supposed to be snow in Mordor.”Actually, back here in reality, Tongariro is home to Whakapapa ski field, one of only two areas on the whole North Island of New Zealand which receives enough snowfall to warrant ski lifts and groomed runs. Though Mordor is colder in reality than in the movies, the threat of volcanic eruption is still very real.

Nearby Mt. Ruapehu is an active enough volcano that warning signs scattered around the park advise skiers what actions to take should the mountain decide to go all volcanic and bubbly during their mid-winter ski session. A legitimate concern, the mountain last experienced a major eruption in 1996, and volcanic lahars–essentially boiling rivers of mud–have been known to push their way down to within a few feet of chairlifts which regularly carry resort guests.

And, since Tongariro is still comprised of active volcanoes, it would make sense that there are hot springs, sulfuric lakes, and places where steam rises straight from the Earth.

As I enjoyed a lunch of sweet chili tuna (why don’t we have flavored tuna in the US?) above the turquoise (and toxic) Emerald Lakes, it wasn’t hard at all to see why the Lord of the Rings scouts chose this place. A sea of multicolored cinder, the entire landscape is bathed in that oxymoronic volcanic quality where new earth appears to be old; just because it isn’t covered in grass doesn’t make it old, but, in fact, too young for organisms such as grass to have taken root.

Though Tongariro gets pigeonholed nowadays into Mordor tourism there’s still much more to the park than volcanoes and moonscapes. Many places in the park are actually fairly green and lush, and on the trail out to Tama Lakes it’s possible to be surrounded by volcanic, sub-alpine shrub land and still sunbathe at the base of a cascading waterfall.

Or, if trekking across barren cinder flats isn’t quite classy enough, you can always retire to the historic and ultra-elegant Chateau Tongariro and listen to the tunes of the grand piano played next to a roaring fire. Constructed in 1929, the Chateau was originally a luxury outpost for outdoorsmen and adventure seekers aiming to explore the beauty of the island’s volcanic highlands. Today it’s still possible to book a room at the Chateau or simply call in for a glass of wine, an entrée of lamb, or, of course, a panoramic view of Mordor.

Though the silver screen has made this place famous as of late, Hollywood was far from the first organization to recognize the beauty of Tongariro. Wanting the land beneath these mountains to be preserved and maintained for eternity, it was the Maori chief Horonuku Te Heuheu Tukino who in 1887 first gifted this land to the New Zealand government to preserve and protect the sacred alpine ground for generations to come.

From Maori chiefs to mythical hobbits to active volcanoes to a wayward vagabond touring the country in a campervan, Tongariro National Park is a magical place to find yourself when given the freedom to roam.

For 2 months Gadling blogger Kyle Ellison will be embedded in a campervan touring the country of New Zealand. Follow the rest of the adventure by reading his series, Freedom to Roam: Touring New Zealand by Campervan.

Vagabond Tales: Swimming with elephants in Thailand

by Kyle Ellison on

Anyone who has visited Thailand will recognize the word Chang.

The national beer of Thailand, the over sized green bottles are found everywhere from the markets of Chiang Mai to the bars of Bangkok’s Khao San Road. In the Thai language, however, Chang does not mean beer. It means elephant. Hence the ornately drawn white elephant placed prominently on the bottle.

Another Thai word you may be familiar with is the word koh (also spelled ko). Ask anyone who just returned from Thailand about their trip, and they’ll rattle the word off as if they’re trying to remove a hairball.

“Oh the trip was great. We visited Koh Pha Ngan, Koh Lanta, Koh Mak, Koh Phi Phi, Koh Samui” etc.

Koh, as it turns out, is not the Thai word for hairball, but rather, it is the Thai word for island.
Put the two together, Koh and Chang, and what you are left with is Elephant Island, a nod to the fact that when viewed from the sea, the island appears to have the same profile as an elephant lying down. Therefore, it should come as little surprise that the lush and mountainous island of Koh Chang is one of Thailand’s premier locations for riding elephants.

Though there are many places around the world where you can rest on top of a moving pachyderm, what’s unique about Koh Chang is that it’s the first place I’ve seen where you don’t just get to ride on top of an elephant, but you go swimming with it as well.

Wait. Swimming with an elephant? This sounds dangerous. They’re the largest living land mammal on planet Earth, and you want to go jump into a watering hole with them?Though the idea of a four ton animal treading water in the first place is tough to wrap your head around, there are few experiences more surreal than straddling the neck of a leathery, hairy beast, your hands firmly clinging to a rope which is tenuously wrapped around the elephant’s underbelly, and to have the four-legged monstrosity completely disappear into a puddle of deep brown water.

Of course, these elephants are exceptionally well trained, but nevertheless, it all happens so fast. In one moment you are firmly on dry land bouncing along through the dripping green foliage of the jungle, and in the next you find yourself waist deep in a brown lake straddling one of the largest creatures on Earth which has, suddenly, completely disappeared.

This experience is of course coupled with the fact that an elephant is equipped with a fire hose on its face. Capable of drawing up to four gallons of water into its long, serpentine snout, the elephant will then deposit the massive reservoir of elephant boogers where ever he happens to see fit. The most typical place for it to unleash its hose is its own back in an effort to cool itself down. If you happen to be sitting on the elephants back, however…

Luckily I avoided the experience of being drenched with elephant snot, but this was perhaps my biggest fear going into the expedition. Not falling into the water and getting kicked in the face like any normal person might be wary of, but of being briskly trumpeted by a dual-nostrilled cannon at a speed of about 95 knots.

“She must like you” claimed the mahout, an Indian word for a man in charge of driving the domesticated elephants.

“She usually brings most people back with their hair dripping wet.”

Still seated bareback on top of the gray animal, I trembled with excitement at what had just taken place. Potentially unaware that I was even still sitting on top of her, for her part she had moved on to flapping her small ears and chewing on a soaking wet piece of sugar cane.

This may sound crazy, but if you ever travel to Thailand, do yourself a favor and go swimming with an elephant. A package deal of a mechanical bull, a zoo, and a waterpark, it’s an experience you assuredly will never forget.

Read more of the Vagabond Tales here.

Budget travel tips from the girls of Sixpenny Globe

by Jessica Marati on

Last year, recent college graduates Kelsey Ogden and Kristen Refermat set off on the adventure of their lives — a four-month, 12-country backpacking trip — armed with two packs, four cameras, and a desire to document the ups and downs of traveling on $30 per day.

The result is Sixpenny Globe, a Kickstarter-crowdfunded travel documentary series following Kelsey and Kristen on their budget round-the-world trip. Episode 1 premieres on February 12 on their website and Blip.TV, with a prologue providing the girls’ backstory launching the week before. I caught up with the girls to see what inspired them to create Sixpenny Globe, how they made it happen, and what their tips are for traveling on a tight budget.

What inspired Sixpenny Globe?

We both had always wanted to do a huge trip. We’d both traveled quite a bit and lived abroad, but we’d never traveled for a truly extended period of time. So six months after we graduated from college, the time felt ripe for the Big Trip, but we were both pretty broke. Voila, the $30-a-day budget was born. As far as the web series aspect goes, there just seemed to be this gaping hole in travel documentation. There’s that romantic, idealized open road you read about in Kerouac, where all you need is 2 bucks in your pocket. Then there are the travel shows you see on TV where the perfectly manicured host is cracking canned one-liners about bratwurst from the comfort of her chic boutique hotel room. You can either read about bohemian broke people having adventures or you can watch Hollywood’s fake versions of adventures. But there seemed to be very little video documentation of real people traveling cheaply. Tons of people do it, but very few have endeavored to tell the story for the screen. So we figured we’d give it a go!

Once you decided to take the plunge, what were your first steps?
Our first step was buying the ticket! We had just casually emailed a round-the-word ticket broker to get a quote. It wasn’t as expensive as we’d expected, so we spent a couple days tweaking the itinerary and then just impulsively bought the ticket on credit, bandaid-removal style. Then once we decided to do the web series, we raised some money on Kickstarter for the cameras and equipment, got our visas sorted out for the countries that necessitated them, and got our shots and vaccines! That’s pretty much it. We really had absolutely no plan, aside from the set dates of our flights.

Where did your travels take you?
We left Los Angeles on February 28, 2011. We landed in Paris and spent almost a month going overland through France, Austria, Germany, and Denmark. We left out of Frankfurt but ended up with a detour through Cairo on our way to Amman, Jordan. Next came India, then Thailand. We went overland from Bangkok, through Cambodia, and into Vietnam. Left out of Ho Chi Minh City, landed in Sydney. Flew out of Melbourne back to LA after four months away. Compared to everyone else we met traveling, we went extremely quickly!

How did you survive on just $30 a day?
It wasn’t always sunshine and daisies, especially in Europe and Australia, where everything is so expensive. We Couchsurfed, hitchhiked, tap danced in the street with a hat out, slept in hallways of hotels we weren’t staying at, accepted a lot of hospitality from friends and strangers, and probably broke a few laws. We couldn’t do a lot of the museums or the other attractions with hefty price tags, but I think that actually made the whole trip better. We spent a lot of time walking the streets and a lot of time bonding over cheap wine. Since we couldn’t afford to have a rigid schedule of activities to stick to every day, we ended up actually enjoying time instead of worrying there wouldn’t be enough of it.

What budget tips can you give other wannabe globetrotters?
1. STAY AWAY FROM PACKAGE TOURS. No matter how much they tell you they’ll give you a good price, you can always arrange the same thing on your own for a fraction of the cost.
2. Stay at hostels with free breakfasts and LOAD UP. If you stuff yourself properly, you might not be hungry until dinner.
3. Don’t take taxis. There’s always a bus.
4. Learn to trust people, but follow your gut. If someone offers you help, take it, but if you start to feel like something’s fishy, bail out of that car and roll.
5. Just roll with the punches. When you’re on a budget, something will always go wrong and you won’t necessarily have the cash to fix it. It’s a lot more fun to laugh at it than cry about it.

Stand up paddling with stingrays in New Zealand’s Murderer’s Bay

by Kyle Ellison on

Though Captain James Cook was the first European to set foot on the islands of New Zealand in 1769, he was not the first European to “discover it”. That honor would belong to Dutch explorer Abel Tasman who sailed past the country while navigating the Southern Ocean for the Dutch east India Company in 1642.

Blown off course by a strong easterly wind, Abel Tasman first sighted the northwest reaches of the South Island of New Zealand and thought he may have stumbled upon the bottom part of Argentina. Confused but intrigued, Tasman decided to make the most of the discovery and arranged an expedition party to be sent ashore to gather fresh water.

Unfortunately, the expedition was met by a band of native Maori people curious of the tall ships which had suddenly appeared off their coast, and after a hostile skirmish which historians have attributed to multiple cultural misunderstandings, Tasman sailed from the area with four fewer men than he had arrived with. As a result of the incident, Tasman saw it fitting to label the area as “Murderer’s Bay”.

360 years later, I ruminated on this violent turn of events while stand-up paddling above a gray stingray languishing in the tidal shallows of Murderer’s Bay.

On a brilliantly sunny and calm morning in which it was possible to stare straight through the turquoise waters, I found myself paddling in nearly the exact same spot where Tasman’s men had met their fate so many centuries ago. No longer referred to as Murderer’s Bay, with the discovery of gold in the region in the 1850’s it was prosperously renamed Golden Bay, and the name has stuck ever since.

Located in the sunniest region of New Zealand, Golden Bay is still somewhat of a secret when compared to neighboring Abel Tasman National Park. Although the Tata Islands–rocks that sit just offshore of Golden Bay and are covered in fur seals–are technically still part of Abel Tasman National Park, Golden Bay offers the same South Pacific setting as it’s crowded counterpart, yet for some reason there is hardly anybody here.

Except, of course, for me and the stingrays.

%Gallery-146107%With my wife and I swapping between a stand up board and one man kayak, the peaceful sound of waves lapping gently across the rocks is a stark contrast to the bloody encounter which once took place here. Completely alone as we paddle beneath rock archways and haul our water craft onto empty white sand beaches, the nearest we have been to violence all morning was a nesting shag bird dive bombing me when I paddled too close to his rock.

A fur seal here, a stingray or shearwater there, I realize there is nothing about this place that makes me think of death at all. Just like Kaikoura, Golden Bay is alive.

With the afternoon breezes introducing an audience of whitecaps to the bay, it was time to head ashore and point the caravan towards the far reaches of Farwell Spit. A 26km stretch of constantly shifting sand which is a favorite of the packaged eco-tourist trips, we instead hopped into a friend’s white ute (pickup truck) and bounced our way over the well-graded dirt track to Wharariki Beach, an expanse of sand dunes and rock formations which technically lies on the island’s wild west coast.

It is difficult to convey just how other worldy and exactly how empty Wharariki Beach really is.

Sure, there are a handful of tourists scattered here and there meandering amongst the dunes and the caves, but from a distance, the red sweater or purple tank top they may be sporting look no different than colorful scraps of paper blowing along the base of towering rock faces.

My local Kiwi friend who has brought me here, Nick, occasionally will surf down at Wharariki when the wind and waves are right.

“You ever get anyone else out in the water here?” I breathlessly ask, still utterly in awe of the place.

“Nah, never mate. Nobody wants to drive out this far. That, and nobody knows about it.”

As I watch a solitary fur seal exit a cave set in one of Wharariki’s massive boulders, and with the sun perfectly illuminating the stone archway pointing out towards the tempestuous Tasman Sea, I question out loud why more travelers to New Zealand don’t come here.

It’s no longer Murderer’s Bay, you won’t get killed by local Maori, but amazingly, 360 years after having been “discovered”, the place still feels like a wayward cove etched on an early explorer’s map, still waiting for someone else to find it.

For 2 months Gadling blogger Kyle Ellison will be embedded in a campervan touring the country of New Zealand. Follow the rest of the adventure by reading his series, Freedom to Roam: Touring New Zealand by Campervan.