Day 314: The Price of a Story

This one is for the people who feel jealous of me travelling everywhere and think that it's all sunshine, rainbows and butterflies!

I mentioned that I had planned for a longer hike the day before but had wasted too much time, so I decided to get it another go, leaving earlier in the morning this time and skipping by all the side trails I'd already explored the day before. The weather was nice and I made good time down the stairs to the floor. I got a bit mixed up in Scenic World which is a kind of nature park that runs a cablecar up and down the cliff. There were a lot of tourists around, and the the branch off to the trail I wanted was somewhat hidden and I missed it, but I managed to backtrack to find it and only lost half an hour, so I still had lots of time.
The first section of the trail had been wiped out by a pretty massive rockslide maybe 10 years ago. Paths over, under and throw things have slowly regrown, but it's still a tricky section where metal poles mark where the path should be since you're just sliding along loose gravel slopes for some of it.

As you can possibly tell from those pictures, the weather wasn't quite as nice anymore. There was still quite a bit of blue sky, but it was starting to get overcast. I was already 3 hours into things though, and it had been overcast a few times in the past couple days and always blown over without any rain, so I decided to press on ahead. Past the rocky section was the forest, and this trail went on for a long time - around 9km. At the end if split off with one path continuing onto the Solitary Mountain and the other one heading uphill to a place called Ruined Castle, which was my target. Ruined castle isn't actually a ruined castle. It's a rock formation of big stones on the top of a hill, but it was a good distance away for what I wanted to do for a hike. I scrambled up the rocks for a lovely view, but the sky had turned from overcast to dark black clouds, the wind had picked up a lot and the temperature had dropped.

After a few minutes enjoying my perch I climbed down to start heading back, trying to get back to the cover of the forest before the rain inevitably hit. I hadn't even made it back to the main trail before the rain started, and then turned from spitting to a steady drizzle. When I got back to the trail I hid in a niche beneath a rock, hoping the rain would stop quickly. It did not. Instead rain turned to downpour and downpour turned into downpour + hail. Yes, I managed to get hailed on for about an hour in summer in Australia. My niche had given me some cover for the lighter rain, but with the wind and the pounding rain it didn't offer much cover anymore, so I got back on the path and dashed ahead, hoping for better cover. There wasn't really any better cover to be had, and soon I was almost soaked through. I did stop under the trunk of a fallen tree long enough to wrap my camera case and wallet in a plastic bag I had to hopefully keep them somewhat dry, but the rest of me was already so wet that there was no point in trying to avoid the rain any longer.

The staircase I was taking up this time was about halfway between where the rockslide had been and where the path had branched off to go up to Ruined Castle. The sign at the point where the path led off to the stairs warned "Stairs can be slippery when wet" but when I actually got to the stairs I found a 900-step waterfall leading up to cliff. That's probably a bit of an exaggeration, since there were a few dry stretches, but probably at least half of the stairs up were covered by water ranging from 5cm to maybe 20cm pouring all the way down. Since my shoes and socks were soaked already I didn't make much effort to avoid the water, and just trudged up through it all.

By the time I got to the top I'd probably been in the cold rain in a t-shirt for 3 hours. The rain had slowed a little when I got to the top, so I stopped to evaluate things and make sure my wallet and camera were still relatively dry. This is when I discovered the leeches. I had 6 or 7 leeches on my legs and ankles which probably came from walking through the water up the stairs, as well as one on each arm, that I'm not quite so clear on. In Indonesia I had been told that leeches climb up trees and onto leaves and then when it rains it knocks them off the leaves onto things, so maybe that's what happened. There were another 10 or so leeches tucked into the laces and flaps of my shoes that hadn't managed to work to any fleshy bits yet. I'm told there's some special way to remove leeches to minimize the damage they do and to minimize the chance for infection, but I'm guessing that whoever invented it didn't do so after walking through the rain for 3 hours and discovering they were covered in leeches. In any case, my method of removal probably wasn't medically ideal, but it got the job done. I was now on this little abandoned dirt road out in the middle of the bush still at least a 2 hour walk from town, completely soaked through with blood pouring down my arms and legs. The walk back was pretty miserable. The rain picked up again and I was getting pretty cold by now. Despite all that, I still found the situation pretty amusingly terrible and couldn't help smiling and laughing at it all. By the time I got back to the hostel the blood from my arms had spread down with the help of the rain soak part of my shirt, which was unfortunately white. The reaction upon walking into the common room was one of shocked horror. I gave a quick explanation of my day and assured them I was alright before getting my towl and some dry clothes and having a long, hot shower. When I finally exited from the shower in dry clothes (but still bleeding, those bites bled for like 5 hours before they stopped) I heard one of the other guests asking the woman that runs the hostel "So what can you do around here on a rainy day?". I just grinned manically and offered "I have a suggestion for what -not- to do!"