Hitchhiking competition, Day 4

We woke up very early, in order to make it to the first ferry across back to the mainland. We set off towards the harbor - which was considerably further than we initially thought and as such, we ended up actually running in order to catch it. But we did, and then enjoyed the well-deserved cup of coffee on the ferry.

We also ran across the same pair of our competitors we met on the Saaremaa ferry. Since all of us were still fairly tired, we mostly sat in silence. Before docking, I managed to find us a ride to the next crossroads. The driver (who worked in biofuels) dropped us to the crossing towards Lihula. 

We found another hitchhiker there before us. We greeted her and then walked past her and settled a bit further. We had to wait for quite a while. 

We were eventually picked up by a group of  Czech tourists. They were in a hurry to get to the Saaremaa ferry, but nevertheless took us to one of the points - a Bishop's fort from the medieval times in Koluvere.


They told us they had been to Kunda the day before, and told us what it meant in Czech. Supposedly, it was a popular tourist attraction for Czechs for that reason.

They put us off near the gas station where the road led from Lihula back to Pärnu - crossroads where we had been just the day before. Since we had skipped breakfast and the traffic was slow, I went inside to get a hot dog for T., and quite soon after she had finished it, we were picked up and driven all the way to central Pärnu.

Our next destination was reachable by public inner city transport, so we bought bus tickets and then had  hamburger while waiting. Bus came soon enough and we got on board.

We had no clue where to get off, but T. asked a few locals in the bus and they helped gladly. From the  stop it was still about a kilometers walk in the hot sun to get to our destination - a fish ladder for the Sindy dam, next to the fishery.

On arriving, we found another pair ahead of us just ready to leave... and then when climbing to the ladder itself to take a picture, found a local TV celebrity (Vladislav Koržets) interviewing the head of the fishery. Inconsiderate as we were, we just walked through their background to get what we came for.


We then took a bus back to the edge of Pärnu, heading south. There was another couple there already, so we again walked past them and started hitchiking. They were picked up in a matter of 15 minutes but we were not so lucky. Cars kept whizzing by, not giving us the slightest attention. Eventually, another couple showed up and settled behind us - and then got picked up before we did. After 3 days on the road, emotions were soaring and that made us furious. Thankfully, we were also picked up soon after.

The driver drove us only a few kilometers, though. He explained that he used to hitchhike a lot and made a promise that when he got a car, he would always pick up other hitchhikers when he saw them. That said, he said he had now driven for 5+ years but despite that we were the first he had picked up in the period.

After he dropped us off, we again had to wait a while. Eventually, we were picked up by the same car that had first picked up the people behind us (thus making us mad). Nevertheless, since he was now giving us a ride, and actually took us past the couple he had picked up before, we calmed down consierably. He took us to about halfway where we needed, where the road turned towards Viljandi.

There was a 7 km stretch of road repairs in the direction we were heading, which made hitchhiking there near impossible. We therefore had to walk past all of it, to a small truck stop, by which time we were near dying of thirst (or at least it felt like it). We restocked on our water supplies and then put our thumbs up again.

We got picked up by a van with a trailer full of bicycles, and in getting in we found one hitchhiker already waiting for us there, who was on her way to Riga. They dropped us off next to the settlement where we needed to go.

Due to the imprecision of the map in specifying where the checkpoint was, we took the scenic route to the monument, walking 3 km where 1 would have sufficed, being pretty exhausted from the heat by the end.


We now had to find our way out of the settlement. After walking into a dead end and deciding not to listen to a drunk man walking by, we saw a car coming and asked for a ride out of town. The lady was nice enough to take us to the highway, again next to the gas station.

We now had two options -  try the main highway or go for the more direct side route. Since the local lady said that the direct route was also used often enough, we opted for that, and were indeed picked up by a car heading for Viljandi.

We were now heading for the finish line at 90 km/h, hoping to gather one more checkpoint that was practically on the way. The driver was indeed nice enough to take the 200-m detour to stop off at the Allikukivi caves (which really weren't much to look at, despite what T. remmembered from her youth), and we still arrived in Viljandi with ample time to spare.


In the end, we got the 4-th place, with just 0.5 pt separating us from the third and 1.5 pts from the second place. By that time we had been in around 50 cars and driven around 1500 km. We were dead tired, but quite content with 4 days of very active vacationing.

Addendum: After the award ceremony, we decided to head back to Pärnu. As all the buses had already left, we decided to try hitchhiking again. This time we failed, however, as there was practically no traffic heading towards Pärnu. Eventually we decided to set up the tent on the field by the side of the road, just a few km from Viljandi. We were both very dissapointed with the turn of events, but morning coffee in the bus station the next day mostly cleared that out.

Hitchhiking competition, Day 3

This is a guest post by T.

Day three. We woke up at my parents place in Pärnu. I was so grateful for getting to sleep in my own bed and getting a shower after two days in wild (and the morning coffee!), but arriving there late had been a little awkward, though. My parents hadn’t met M before, and my mom didn’t even know I was in a hitchhiking competition. She doesn’t agree with hitchhiking. Therefore, I was really glad at how calm she took it and how friendly she was. Everything went well, and we got to sleep for quite long.

Or at least until 8 o’clock or something.

We stood at Pärnu’s limits, with a sign “Edasi!” (“Forward!”, sounding like a slogan). One car took us to Audru, a nearby village. There, we painted on a bigger sign “Saaremaa”, which was our next destination. Since I was bored of us telling the same story about our hitchhiking competition to all the drivers, I told M that we should make up something instead. We decided to introduce ourselves to the next driver as a brother and sister driving to visit our grandma. We put together our characters: he would be a builder, I’d work at a supermarket and go to trade school studying to be a shop assistant (yeah, they actually teach it at schools). When the next car picked us up, we didn’t have a good chance on introducing ourselves that way, though. In this car, a woman was driving and a man sat in the front. They told us they were heading to Lihula. The man had work there. I asked what they did for living. The woman told: “He is a music teacher, don’t you recognize your own teacher?” I, indeed, hadn’t. I hadn’t seen the face of the man before, but it turned out it was my middle school teacher, who had left for work in Iceland, but apparently got back and didn’t find a satisfying job in Pärnu, so decided to take a job in Lihula. I was really glad that we hadn’t told them more than that we were going to visit our grandma, because the named teacher knows my parents, and probably knows that I have no brothers. The rest of the drive he told us stories about Iceland’s school system.

From Lihula we got to Virtsu, the ferry port, with a car of a woman who apologized for the dog hair and mess she had in her car. I didn’t mind, though. Compared to standing at the back of the roadworker’s paint-stenched van, it was nice and comfy. She took us to our next destination, which was off the road, a tavern named “Mutionu”. It looked as if it had been built in an old cellar. She then took us directly to the ferry station as well, which was nice of her.



The ferry drove from Virtsu to Muhu in half an hour. Muhu is a smaller island, connected to the bigger, Saaremaa, with a bridge. On Muhu we had two places we had to see, and on Saaremaa, there were three. We decided to take all the points on Muhu and then see if we had time for Saaremaa, as we planned to go with the last ferry to Hiiumaa. For our plan to work, we needed to get to Tupenurme village on Muhu. We met another competing couple in the ferry, who told they had already found someone that would drive them away from port. One of us had to talk to people as well, to ask where they’re going and if they’d take us with. I left that for M, as I was too much a coward to talk to strangers like that. He got us a ride to 5 km from our destination. They dropped us off right next to a supermarket. The place was such that every car that would drive out of the parking lot would fill us with false hopes. We stood there for long, it seemed, but I guess it wasn’t more than 15 minutes. What made it awful was the really hot weather, and our warm clothes. A car finally picked us up. We took a picture at the village sign and, after changing our clothes in the forest in the anthill, hitchhiked right back. I don’t remember the people that picked us up there too well any more.



Somehow we got to the next village, Koguva. It was a tourist trap: there was a map of hundred places where movies were made during last century, and some of the places were there as well. We only saw the map and the parking lot, but the village contained at least four housings for tourists, a museum, a nice beach and some workshops for making... something... We hitchhiked back on a car of the museum director, who told us more about the village. I was a little sorry we didn’t get to see more there.


We headed to Kuressaare, the only town on the island, after that. It surprised me how far away it was: 70 km. I had thought the island was smaller. It seemed that our good luck continued, as we hadn’t stood there five minutes when we were picked up again. It was a young guy wearing sweatpants in a fancy-looking car. You’d assume people who look like this would be narrow minded and act on a certain stereotype, but after an hour in his car, we realized our prejudice was not justified. He listened to reggae and seemed quite intelligent and open-minded. A reminder of how looks can be deceiving. Just like those two guys heading to pick mushrooms the day before...

We calculated that we’d still have time to take at least one out of three points in Saaremaa, even though they were far away from civilization.One was in a nature resort, another was on northern coast. When we stood at the crossroads, it seemed more cars were heading to the nature resort, so we tried our luck with that, writing “Viidumäe” on a sign. Not long after that, we were picked up. A car with a young couple on front and a drunk woman at back. She was scary, she pulled the map out of my hands as I tried to calculate our way. Thankfully, they didn’t take us long, though, just 15 km.

The next car stopped for us just minutes later. It was a family with two little children, so first they had to make room for us. The mother would take one of the children to sit on her lap. They told us they had seen us on the crossroads before, and drove past thinking “We can’t take them, we don’t have room with two children,” then reconsidered and thought they could make us room, drove back and didn’t find us, since we were picked up already. As they headed back to home, they drove past us once more. Lucky us! And the young family was quite interesting as well: the woman originated from South Africa, and the guy had dreadlocks just like M. Hippies, we thought.

They took us to the nature reserve, waited until we climbed the watching tower, and drove us back to the main road as well.


We didn’t run out of luck after this nice family either. With two cars, we got to the crossroads heading to the north coast. It seemed that we had time to take yet another point in the middle of nowhere, since there was lots of time before the ferry and we had met only nice and friendly people with every other car picking us up. We hadn’t waited for fifteen minutes when a car took us from Tõlli to Tagaranna (both really small villages). In Tagaranna, there was a memorial for the victims of the sinking of the ship “Estonia”. We also found a statue of an old man smoking a pipe there, which was one of our “moving points”.


We walked on the beach, looking for statue, with a young Finnish couple. As it was nowhere in sight, we decided to run in opposite directions along the coast. I found it first, and then had to wait for M to run back to me with the camera to take the picture.



The couple then took us to ferry port. They had a kid with them who listened to Moomin tales in finnish on the back seat. They told us they were tired of driving around the Estonia already, and the kid even didn’t come out of the car when parents went to look the coast. The woman picked some weird flowers from the forest, saying it’s for medicine. I wish I had known the name of the plant (I study biology, you know). The family seemed almost as interesting as the hippies from South Africa for me. The woman worked with handicapped people and told us she’s a vegetarian because of the way the animals are treated. It irritated me a little that she tried to push it on her children as well, but I didn’t say anything. I tried to leave as good an impression on them as I could, since I was really grateful for being picked up at such an abandoned place and taken right to the port, while I had thought we’d have to drive back to Kuressaare before heading to the port, since the traffic is low there. We had been so lucky that day!

We even had time to eat burgers before the ferry (yeah I’m guilty for M eating meat...) and climb an adventure trail we found next to the shop. We walked about 2 km to the port, and wondered about the things at the road the whole time: a fence built in the forest, ending at a strange place, with no obvious purpose, a field of strange plants, between them growing poppy’s, a nut tree and a cherry tree. There were also some strawberries beside the road, of which I couldn’t get enough of.

The ferry trip from Saaremaa to Hiiumaa took one and a half hour. We had time to drink coffee, check where other couples were heading (one had just missed the last ferry we were on), and again, ask strangers where they were heading and if they took us with them. Again, I left that for M. He talked to almost everyone before finally found us two people who were heading to Kärdla, but, since the girl had been on the hitchhiking competition on a previous year, agreed on taking us to two other places we needed to head to on Hiiumaa. One was Külaküla küla, a village which’s name is, in translation, Villagevillage. The other was yet another monument.


 After the monument, the couple told us we should see the Eiffel tower of Hiiumaa as well: a huge tower built by a crazy, but brilliant local. Not only was there a tower in his yard, he had made a whole theme park with nitty comments everywhere. Some pictures:



After the Eiffel tower, we decided to once more try our crazy luck, and hitchhike to the south part of the island to take two more points and head to the first ferry in the morning. We were, indeed, lucky again. A car picked us up and took us to Suuremõisa, even though the driver originally wanted to go only half the way there. The map told us there was two places of accommodation there, but what we found out was that one was being renovated and the other only accepted cash, which we had run out of. We still got to find our checkpoint, “an outhouse with interesting design”:


We started walking towards the port in dark after that, as there was supposed to be another place of accommodation. Margus would’ve been ok with us staying in tent again, but I didn’t like the idea at all, since we hadn’t still figured out how to put up the tent, there were lots of mosquitoes and there wasn’t a good place to put up our tent. We had this crazy idea of walking 10 km to the last checkpoint in Hiiumaa, but since we were too tired, gave it up. A car drove past us when we were heading to port. They picked us up: two locals heading home. When they heard of our hitchhiking competition and how we looked for a place to stay in night, they offered us to stay in their home (right as we were about to go into the hotel). So, we got to sleep in a bed again. Crazy luck, and those locals in Hiiumaa are really friendly!

Fully loaded, we've got snacks and supplies

I woke up at around 6.30. At this point it was light outside so I could take a closer look at the booth I was sleeping in and the ones next to it. They were all for boat tours on the river, main attraction being, of course, crocodiles.

The first boats were set to leave at 9.30 so I figured I could probably sleep for about an hour more without anyone coming to disturb me. Nevertheless, I knew that ferry had started running at 6 already so I thought I would try hitchiking again.

No luck for 2 and a half hours.. not that many cars passing by at that time of day. I had started reading a book on the side and was making good progress with that though. Nevertheless, I figured it was good time for a break so I walked up to one of the booths and asked about the tour. 20 bucks for 1 hour and 15 minutes of tour... Seemed reasonable, especially considering they were also serving coffe to the clients - which I quite badly needed at that point.

The tour was well worth the money. I got to see 4 crocodiles in the wild.. including a big fat 4 meter dominant male ("Fat Albert") and about a year-old baby croc hiding in the plants on the riverbank.

Now for some interesting facts about crocodiles. Males keep growing all their lieves. The largest male found in Australia was 8.5 m long (i.e. about the length of my appartment). Females usually grow to 3.5 m and then stop. Other than growth, it is pretty hard to tell males and females apart (besides literally taking a finger to their privates). The scales on the back are like tree trunks in the sense that if you cut one off, you can count the growth rings to get the age of the croc.. along with info about which years were good to him and which were not.Crocodiles are cannibals. Dominant males sometimes let young males set up their territories within theirs because they can then be counted to be there on the bad years where they then constitute a good meal. Chances of a newly hatched croc making it to maturity are about 1 in 50 - most just get eaten, either by sharks, eagles or other crocs. During colder months, crocs eat just once a week or even less often. They live to be about 80 and mature at around 25 - quite like humans. They have very good senses of sight, smell, hearing and vibration sensitivity (to detect ripples in the water) and use all four to hunt. They are also quite intelligent, remmembering patterns (i.e. stopping to let a ferry past). They are also very lazy (so standing back a few meters from the water will usually keep you safe - not because the croc could not get you but because it would be too much of a hassle for him to do so). And yes, only salties (salt-water crocodiles) are dangerous in Australia. Fresh-water ones feed on fish only.

Once I got back from the tour, I raised up my thumb again. After about half an hour, I finally get picked up by a small van. I ask whether they are going to Cape Tribulation. "Yeah, sure", the guy getting out of the car answers. The van was packed pretty full of stuff already, but my bass and backpack still fit in, and thankfully, so do I (but just barely).

I pretty soon realize I have hit the jackpot, when it turns out that
a) they also plan to go hiking in the Daintree park (just like I was)
b) they need to go back to Cairns the next day (just like I do)
c) they even have a spare tent, a spare sleeping bag and even a spare pillow

So more about the gang. I was sharing the backseat with a Taiwanese girl called Amy. Driving was a german girl called Franzisca and the guy who helped with my stuff was a scot named Lewis. Lewis and Franzisca seemed to have just gotten together as a couple, using every opportunity to make out. Amy was also a hitchiker, although a bit more organized than me - she had used a hitchiking website called Gumtree to get picked up instead of just standing on the side of the road like me. All three had been in Australia for months already.

So we first went to the camping grounds to set up a tent and have lunch. They offered to share their food with me and take me back to Cairns the next day, provided I pay them for gas. It was quite a good proposition so of course I took it. This meant handing them the last paper notes of australian dollars I had in my wallet - good, as I now did not need to worry about exchanging them back in estonia.

After lunch we did indeed go for a walk.. two actually, first on a very beautiful beach at Cape Tribulation itself and second a jungle track a bit south of it. The jungle track was a large boardwalk, so uncomparable to the up-close-and-scars-still-visible-personal experience of the previous day. Nevertheless, it was very beautiful. What more, we actually got to see a Cassowary.

Now, for those that do not know, a Southern Cassowary is a human-sized black bird with a bright blue head that is related to Ostriches and Emus. Meeting one in the nature may mean serious injury or even death if the particular specimen happends to be in a bad mood.

The guy we saw had a chick with him. You know, a smaller, more monochrome version of himself.

Of course, all of us tried to be very careful around him. Trouble was, though, he was pretty much right on the path, so we could not really go past him. He was clearly aware of all of us, but he was much less scared of us than we were of him. So it created quite an interesting situation...

That got resolved about half an hour later when we just gathered our courage and walked past him at about a meters distance. I was in front of the row of people... and it was pretty scary. (although, to be fair, by that time, 4 people had walked by him already one-at-a-time, but he was a bit further away in these cases).

I call the bird a guy, by the way, because we were later told that males usually care for the chicks once they are hatched. Equal division of labor :)

After that encounter, it was getting dark already so we headed back to the camping ground, had dinner and then went to bed. I shared a tent with Amy, but got to sleep before she had even entered.

And woke up at 7.30, the other side of the tent packed up just like it was when I went to sleep. Turned out she had woken up at 6 already. There was to be a crocodile feeding at 8.30. When heading towards that, we saw Lewis waking up too.

Croc feeding was fun. The guy told pretty much the same things about crocodiles I had heared the day before, though. But watching the croc follow the feeder with his eyes and ocasionally reposition itself.. reminded me of the beginning clip from Dr. Doolittle 2 - there may well be truth to that, actually.
We went to the hiking trail that was right behind the camp site.. and then drove to another one a bit southwards. Then headed back to the ferry and started driving south, making a stop in Port Douglas to stock up on supplies and look at the sights, briefly.

We then drove to Barron Gorge.. or well, would have if it would not have been a 20 km uphill drive. The car was quite heavy and was guzzling fuel at a bit too fast of a rate.. so Lewis and Franzisca decided to turn back at a lookout point that was about 5 km drive from the base.

However, as it was still fairly early (3 a clock), I was pretty intent on going up to see the Barron falls - so I asked them to drop me off at the base so I could hitchike up. We said our goodbyes, grabbed my stuff and started hitchiking.

About 20 cars later I got picked up by a woman in her thirties. On the way up, she showed me where a good spot would be to hitchike back, and also how to get there best on foot. She then dropped me off at the center of the small town just up the mountain and also pointed me to the direction of the falls.

The falls were 3 km away. I had a 25 kg backpack and another 5 kg of bass guitar with me. So instead of heading straight for the falls, I took a small detour towards a youth hostel. I asked the receptionist if I could leave my bags there for 1-2 hours. He was somewhat sceptical, but agreed once I explained I will definitely be back as I have a plane early next morning. When I said "Back in a few hours", he corrected me though, saying "1-2, that is a couple. A few is a few more than that".

I was now free of my burden for two hours, so I started towards the falls. 40 minutes later I arrived, only to experience what was truly one of the most beautiful sights I have seen in my life (yes, quite comparable to the road up to Port Douglas I mentioned about a week ago.. or the cliffs I saw at the first rafting trip. I do have pictures to prove it). I then also headed to the other nearby lookout point that supposedly had a good view of Cairns itself.. which it did..

By now I was running out of the 2 hours I had been granted.. so I raised my walking pace a bit and raised my thumb up whenever I heared a car passing by. Halfway I was indeed picked up and got a ride back to town in a pickup truck. Went by the hostel to collect my stuff and then followed the directions to get to the hichiking place I had been shown before.

It was quite nice, next to a long stretch of straight road, with a very wide roadside where a car could easily pull over. Two problems though. Firstly, it was a long stretch of straight road so cars were going quite fast. More worryingly, though, it was pitch-black dark again, I was still dressed in black-and-gray and there was no streetlight.

Ok, so there I was, at 7 a clock in the evening, with the whole night ahead of me and only 35 km to cover.

Well, except that the traffic was quite light, the cars did not see me before passing by (as they were going too fast) and oh, right, I could not go forward either because the downhill road did not even have enough room for a person to walk there safely without being run over, much less enough for a car to pull over. So I was, in effect, stuck, and in a pretty bad situation.

Thanfully, one driver did eventually notice me (after about 40 minutes of waiting), and managed to stop just right before the downhill trail so he still did have room to pull over. Driver turned out to be a youth worker, currently working with a problematic autistic kid who used to be pretty violent but seemed to be doing ok after three years of care. The driver was nice enough to drop me off at a good hitchiking location before heading into the opposite direction himself.

So, set out looking for the next car to pick me up. Decided to start counting cars again. I got to 2 - as the second car already pulled over, driver giving me a friendly greeting and introducing himself as Mick. He said he has a small errand to run before going to Cairns. I said I had all the time in the world.

So, he drove to a small town at the waterfront just outside Cairns - just to go check when a restaurant he had once visited would be open. He said he had been there once and really liked the food, but had not found them on the internet or on white pages once he got home.

That was a short detour and we were pretty soon at the airport. He dropped me off at the domestic, we exchanged contact info and then parted ways. I went into the terminal, sat down, made a cup of coffee and then...

...got kicked out, as the domestic terminal was closing for the night. I was directed to the international one next door, though. At about 4 a clock I got back to the domestic terminal and got on the 5.45 flight to Sydney, thus concluding my vacation in Australia

All in all, it was by far the best vacation I have yet to have. I got to swim underwater as well as to climb a mountain, meet interesting new people but also enjoy solitude, challenge myself but also do things easy and familiar to me. In short, it had everything I want in a vacation.

Well, nearly :)

No fear, destination Darkness

Hitchiking - a checklist of things to do:

Do it in the dark so you can just barely make out the road yourself.
Do it dressed in all black-and-grey
Forget to take a map with you.
Realize you do have a map, but let a car go by while searching for it.
Walk 7 km with a 20 kg backpack without seeing any cars pass you by.
Sit down to relax your legs, take your boots off and let the first car you have seen in 2 hours pass you by.
Look at the stars and realize just how beautiful they are in here.
Get barked at by a huge and scary dog.. til the owner calls him off.
Finally get to the crossroads where there are streetlamps and actual cars passing by.
Sit on your bag, watch bats fly aroung and realize that life is beautiful.
Attempt to hitch a ride.
Get picked up by the 25-th car.
Have the driver offer you a beer, and watch him also have one.
Have him tell you he drives tour busses for a living.
Let him drive you all the way to the ferry, about third of the way to the next destination.
Have a nice long conversation with the ferryworker lasting for 2 hours
While only 3 cars move in the direction you need to go.
When the last ferry goes, walk away from the river as not to be eaten by crocs.
End up at the river again, at a different pier with a few tour kiosks and a tourist information booth.
Attempt to sleep on the bench at the information booth.
Realize that the weather is not as warm as you first imagined.
Also realize you should have taken a sleeping bag, just in case.
Put a jumper on under your leather jacket.
Realize it is still too cold because of the wind.
climb into one of the tourist kiosks and attempt to sleep on the floor.
drag a wooden plank in front of the doorway just in case any crocodiles try something.
Realize that tiled floors are f***ing cold to sleep on.
Two hours later, realize you do have a towel in your bag.
Attempt sleeping on that with the leather coat as a blanket
Get 3 hours of sleep that way, then wake up because of the cold.

Oh yes, and enjoy every single second of everything described above!