Friday, December 30, 2005

For Those Of You Who Love Tents

This is the inside of the tent we used for the couple of weeks that we were in Tasmania.

We rented a car from Avis in Hobart because they seemed to be the cheapest by about $10-$20 a day over 10 days. Driving around Tasmania is quite easy. The longest distance between any two cities is something like 500km, so if you don't actually want to see the far south east corner as well as the far north west corner of Tasmania you can drive all the way around it in about 7 hours which is not too bad if you are going to be there for two weeks.

Our first night in the tent was spent on a beach. It's really nice to find free camping spots even if they aren't technically in campgrounds.

One of the amazing things about Australia in general is the fact that there are free electric barbeques set up everywhere. Just about every public park has a public barbeque there waiting to be used. For the most part, people keep them pretty clean as well.

We couldn't boil water on the first one we tried, so we resorted to simply using the little stove that we rented in Hobart from the camping store.

We mainly ate rice with store bought sauces, spagetti sauce and stir-fry sauce. Our pot was a little small to make enough for everyone and we didn't have any meat to add to any of the meals . The food in general was pretty disappointing. We had instant soup, rice, instant noodles designed as side dishes, type things for supper and bread with jam and peanut butter but no real butter or margirine for breakfast.

I was starving for the entire trip, and felt guilty when I did buy something for myself and not the rest of the group.

Sharing food is for the birds. You don't know what the other person likes. You have to worry about dividing it equally and you have to have your meals at the same time.

The tenting worked out quite well for me as I was a comfortable as can be expected in a tent. We saved money several nights because Tasmania has a large number of free camp grounds and because the pay campgrounds cost about a third of what it would cost to goto a hostel.

It's hard to see in the picture, but three people fit in this tent, if they have a car to put their stuff in.

You can see by my backpack I am Canadian.

-Gary Milner

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