Ayers Rock 1: Driving on the left

On the morning of September 13th, we took off from Cairns and headed off into the continent, where the features below us were constantly changing but it was all one, big, desert. In-flight entertainment, in between episodes of “Deadwood,” was a production preview of Baz Luhrman’s new movie “Australia” with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. We passed into the central time zone, which is a half-hour behind eastern (but 90 minutes ahead of western), and landed at Ayers Rock Airport.

As the plane descended into the dead center of the continent, we got our first glimpses of Ayers Rock (aka Uluru, note the underline) and its companion monoliths, the Olgas (aka Kata Tjuta). Get to those in a bit.

The airport at Ayers Rock is pretty damn small. It’s a little disconcerting cause you don’t even see it coming; you’re just dropping into the desert, getting closer and closer, and at the last possible second a runway comes into view and you land.

Once the plane comes to a stop, you turn around and taxi back up the runway to the terminal. Then they roll up the steps - steps! - and you step out onto the tarmac. The terminal building is slightly bigger than a large family home, with a single baggage carousel and parking for maybe 100 cars and 12 tour buses out front. It all helps to establish how far from civilization you are.

Then came one of the most harrowing parts of the trip - time to pick up our rental car, the one with the steering wheel on the right-hand side.

We were just cozy enough with the notion of which way to look when crossing the street. Actually driving down the street, though, was a scary proposition; but if you’re gonna do it, might as well do it in the wide-open desert, yes?

Hertz handed over the keys to a shiny new Toyota Corolla, with a stick shift for added challenge. I sat in the driver’s seat, adjusted the rear-view mirror (to my left!) and slowly backed out of the space.

Thankfully, the pedals were in the right order. Stick-shifting with my left hand took some getting used to. When it came to turns, I just acted like a 16-year-old and checked every mirror and every direction to avoid another car coming from any direction.

(A side story: another interesting thing is that people on the sidewalk and elsewhere also seem to pass on the left. That also took some getting used to.)

Funnily, my biggest challenge had nothing to do with driving, but rather signalling. The windshield wipers are to the left of the wheel, and the turn signals to the right; as a result, for pretty much the entire time, I was instinctively firing off the wipers when I meant to use the signals. It marked me unmistakably as a tourist. But then, there weren’t many locals about, come to think of it.

After driving the 10 km to the Ayers Rock Resort, it was time for the second big challenge of the day: dragging Mary Beth, kicking and screaming, into our [thunder clap] TENT.

The nice folks at the Campground handed over a key to the tent, and an electric lantern. MB looked at the lantern as though it might bite her. Then we walked to our tent, a sturdy 9×12 tent with a covered “porch.” Inside was a tiled floor, sealed to the outside; two beds on metal frames; chairs; and even a little nightstand. In short, the nicest tent that you or I have ever stayed in.

We opened the windows to ventilate the tent; the weather was only in the low 80s, pretty much perfect for the desert. Given a few hours to kill, we pulled out the computer and watched an hour or two more of “Deadwood.” Then, it was time to put on warmer clothes and get picked up for dinner.

Our evening’s food was the so-called Sounds of Silence sunset dinner. I’ll apologize ahead of time for forgetting my camera back at the tent.

A tour bus came around at 5:30 and picked us and other tourists up for the trip out to the dinner site. As the sun ran down the sky, the buses headed out on a dirt road labeled “SERVICE VEHICLES ONLY,” with Ayers Rock on one side of us and Kata Tjuta in the other direction. We were let off at the base of a low sand dune, with a railed walk winding up to the top. There we found a professional didgeridoo player and some Ayers Rock staff handing out glasses of cheap champagne. We watched the sun set to the northeast. Ayers Rock slowly dimmed from reddish to gray. Kata Tjuta, against the setting sun, cut a sharp and bizarre outline. It was impossible to get a gauge on how big either one was; they could have been one or ten miles away, but they were impossible to miss.

Once the sun went down, we followed the trail down the other side of the dune and found dinner tables set up for all the tourists (over a hundred of us, I think). There was no lighting besides a single candle in the center of each table.

As I ran off to the bathroom, Mary Beth did a masterwork of finding us some good people to share the tables with. (This mostly consisted of addressing those around her in line: “Does anyone else NOT wanna sit with children?”) So we found ourselves with four other couples. From left to right, they hailed from Boston, Vermont, Iceland, and London, and were all right around our age. We all hit it off amazingly well.

Conversation was the first order of the evening, chit-chatting about how we found ourselves out there in the middle of the desert. The five couples represented four honeymoons and one (the London couple) long-term backpackers celebrating a birthday. The Americans, of course, talked the most.

The sky went from blue to gray to black and commanded more and more of our attention. A new moon, invisible before sunset, now stood out low on the horizon, and even the dark side stood out against the sky as clearly as a full moon would in Texas. The stars came out, and the Milky Way shone plain as day from horizon to horizon.

Here’s the part where even if I did have the camera, it wouldn’t have been any use. It’s one thing to see a big fancy picture of a zillion stars. It’s another to actually be looking at the zillion stars above you. You can even see the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, standing out like little tufts of the Milky Way to the southeast. Other galaxies! In the sky! Just sitting there!

We did have dinner throughout all this wonderment: kangaroo and crocodile (and more conventional things like beef) which were all pretty tasty. Afterwards the staff came around and blew out our candles, leaving us in utter blackness, and our “presenter” came out with his booming voice to educate us all in the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. Using a flashlight and laser, which in the pitch blackness shot out like lightsabers, he showed off Southern Hemisphere constellations.

After the lesson, we got to walk over to three telescopes set up and look at the stars up-close: the double stars of Alpha Centauri, the moons of Jupiter, etc etc. It was an amazing thing. Both Mary Beth and I finally understood why I was so excited about flying into the middle of the desert.

By this time we and our four other couples had gotten to know each other (and our glasses of wine) quite well. We stuck around in the increasing cold until around 10:00 when we caught the last bus back to the resort.

And then [WHUMP] we plopped in bed.

Pics posted, by the way.

Pics and blogging are all caught up through Cairns. I’ll work on Ayers Rock next.

Check it out…

Cairns 3/3: Kevin drowns, but at least the bus showed up

By the time the sun rose on the 12th, we were so accustomed to cock-ups with our plans that we would have been a little surprised if the pickup van for the Great Barrier Reef tour DID show up on time.

Thankfully, it did, so we were.

At 8:00 AM, we were on board the Ecstasea, a short little sailboat with only 13 passengers booked for the day. As we walked down the pier we gazed gladly at the gigantic cruise ships boarding hordes of passengers (including, like most other places in Cairns, a shocking number of Japanese tourists). One, which we’d specifically been recommended, looked like a damn Star Destroyer.

The Ecstasea, meanwhile, is owned and operated by a fellow named Jim, who was classically Aussie right down to his red Speedo. With him were his two-person crew, Marie and Evelyn, both imports from Germany. (Lemme tell you, a German-Australian accent is a thing to hear.) We pulled out of the pier, passing the Onassis family’s $100+ million yacht, and joined the massive fleet that was headed out over the ocean at six knots.

Two and a half hours later, with the Australian coast laid out beautifully to the west, we anchored at our government-assigned mooring with the reef itself visible dimly in the water around us. Then we kitted up in our wetsuits (how can they be simultaneously cool and dorky-looking?) and hopped in for some snorkeling. Before we even managed to get out of the boats, several four-foot-long fish began circling the boat below in the crystal clear water.

Mary Beth and the rest of the tourists fluttered about like seals. Kevin stuck his head two inches in the water, realized “Crap, I can’t BREATHE under WATER!” and panicked. (Repeat.) It took 20 minutes of concentrated effort to dip my face in the water without instinctively flipping out; I still couldn’t figure out how not to breathe through my nose (which anyone who knows me, knows has ALWAYS been my problem in the water).

Despite my embarrassing panic attacks, though, there was the reef itself. My goodness, it was pretty. Looking at it through the water and the goggles makes you feel like you’re watching a really awesome 3D movie; the fish are the same ones you see in the aquarium, but much more captivating when they’re, ya know, in the wild. Some were so ridiculously colorful that it was hard to believe they weren’t manufactured for the benefit of tourists.

An hour flew by in an instant. We stayed kind of close to Marie, the crew member, who pointed out particularly awesome fish or giant clams or whatever, and even dove to the bottom to snag bright blue sea stars or slimy sea cucumbers for us to examine.

Then it was a yummy barbecue lunch on board. Some of y’all will find this amusing: Mary Beth actually ate chicken off the bone. *gasp* I was feeling rather woozy from my snorkeling experience, but Evelyn convinced me to at least attempt the beginning portion of the scuba dive, for which Mary Beth was very excited.

So back in the wetsuits we got. To add to the pressure, we were the only folks on board trying a dive, so the other 11 tourists stared at us while we got ready. We’d had a five minute tutorial earlier. (Short version: don’t push ANY buttons, just breathe through the mask and let Evelyn handle the floating and sinking.)

Jim had us sit on the edge while he strapped 25 pounds of weights around our waist, and a 25 pound aluminum air tank on our backs. Then came the flip flops and masks, and finally, leaping off the side of the ship into the deep water. The assurances that I would immediately bob back to the surface rang a little hollow for me. I can safely say that this was slightly more scary a jump than the one out of an airplane at 10,000 feet.

But bob to the surface we did, and my snorkeling practice allowed me to get underwater pretty easily, though the tremendous number of bubbles I was spewing out was an added distraction. We were then directed to the rear of the boat, where a bar was dangling about two meters below the surface. I was quite comfy there, focusing on my breathing, and we did a couple of practice maneuvers (e.g. getting the piece back in your mouth if it’s ripped out). Then we were beckoned by the crew off the bar and down, down, down toward the reefs below. Mary Beth swum like a scuba-diving duck in water downwards. I was having ear pain from the pressure changes, but otherwise doing okay and moving slowly downward, when suddenly…

PANIC!!! GAAAAAH!!! I’M UNDERWATER HOW COULD I POSSIBLY BE BREATHING!!! HELLLP!!!

Evelyn pushed my emergency air bladder button which shot me to the surface, and my scuba session was over just that quickly. I coulda tried again, but decided that I was more than proud of my accomplishments for the day and would let MB have all the fun downstairs. Mary Beth tells me later that when Evelyn rejoined her underwater, MB was actually very concerned about me. Evelyn apparently flapped her arms in the international underwater scuba signal for “your husband is a chicken”!

So I dropped my gear off at the boat while MB flew around at the bottom with her two instructors. She got to cuddle a clown fish in its anenome home, catch a glimpse of a giant lobster, and in the awesomest moment, view a nine-foot-long sea snake wriggling along the bottom. Later we found out the thing is pretty much the most poisonous thing on the reef. Good times.

On our trip back to the shore, MB was enjoying some sun on the front of the ship when we heard Jim scream “dolphin… 1 o’clock”. We looked up and right there at the front of the ship, 4 dolphins were just making their way straight across our path. One even obliged us a couple of jumps out of the water in true dolphin fashion. I was, unfortunately, too slow to catch the jumps on film, so you’ll just have to trust us on this one. Later in the trip, I believe it was during the cheese course, we caught a very distant glimpse of a humpback whale.

And that was our afternoon on the GBR. We had a great time chatting with our fellow tourists on our way there and back, and the crew were a riot. Again, we were so glad to have landed on a small boat, even if it took a surprise cancellation by our first tour company (and related screwiness with the Kuranda people) to end up there. We wanna go back, like, tomorrow.

Back in Cairns, we returned to the hotel and creeeeeyashed for several hours. Then laundry, dinner, and more sleep. We deserved it. It was a long awesome day.

Cairns 2/3: Our trip is cursed, but koalas are cute

Bright and early on the morning of September 11th, we rolled out of bed, ready to hit the rainforest village of Kuranda. To get there we’d be taking the world’s longest cable car ride, 7 km over the pristine rainforest. Then an afternoon wandering the village, cuddling a koala, and buying trinkets. To return: the Kuranda Scenic Railway, completed through the jungle in 1891 after 15 years of work.

At least, that was the plan.

We arrive at the designated pickup point. A Skyrail van arrives and departs in two minutes flat, leaving us a tad concerned, but the hotel concierge assures us that there’s several buses they could be using. Minutes pass. Still no bus.

Sigh. Thing #252 is about to go wrong with this trip.

I called the Skyrail people. They confirmed that we had reserved ourselves for the following day. They even confirmed that I had called the day prior. But they had no record of anyone actually rescheduling me for today, the 11th.

We had missed the bus.

With a migraine gradually creeping on, I called several numbers trying to track down how we could make this Skyrail. Finally the concierge, who’d been politely watching me panic, stepped over and offered to rebook the entire thing from scratch.

At 9:05, she scheduled our entire trip in reverse: we’d take the train into the rainforest, then at 2:30, the Skyrail back out. The train, however, left at 9:30. And we were on a separate end of town.

A cab was hailed. We climbed in, annoyed beyond all reason and more than a little convinced that our honeymoon was cursed. At 9:25, with five minutes to spare, it dropped us off at the train station, and without much enthusiasm, we climbed aboard.

All this is to tell you that our attitude was pretty negative to start our rainforest adventure. I’m glad all we had to do was sit there and watch the scenery go by; anything with an ounce of activity to it would surely have lost our interest before it even started.

Now, despite the oh-my-Jesus-this-is-horrible beginning, the train ride itself was extremely pretty. We gradually climbed from 12 meters above sea level to 330 meters. The rail line itself, crafted by hand over a dozen years, includes several switchbacks, a half-dozen bridges, and fifteen tunnels. The notion that someone had walked through the mountainous virgin forest and managed to survey a route for a train to get through was astonishing. Some of the slopes were at 45 degrees.

It also provided us with beautiful views back towards Cairns and the ocean beyond. Once, we stopped for ten minutes to view Barron Gorge Falls. There we saw an amazing sight: two men, part of a landscaping company, were tying themselves to trees with rappelling line, and preparing to lower themselves over the side of the cliff to chainsaw and weed-eat the vegetation away. (How does one qualify for a job like that, anyway?) We had to pull away before the guy actually hopped over the edge, but it made us feel a little better about the landscaping job we had back on Cuernavaca Street.

After 90 minutes, the train pulled into Kuranda Railway Station (completed 1915) high in the jungle. We got off with the rest of the train, which like most tourists in Cairns, was over 60% Japanese. Once the crowd thinned out, though, the village was pretty nice to wander through. One tourist trap after another, but it was scenic.

We stopped off at a random café for lunch, where we had burgers; standard cheeseburger for Mary Beth, “Tons of Fun” burger for Kevin. Get ready for this: bacon, cheese, pineapple, veggies, and a damn fried egg.

There were logistical problems fitting the thing in my mouth, but otherwise, it was decent.

Time to cuddle a koala!! Kuranda Koala Gardens bills itself as one of the only places where you can ACTUALLY cuddle a koala, not just be photographed petting one. The price was 15 smackers, not as bad as I feared. We were a little surprised upon walking in how dang close we got to the wildlife here; no fences or glass panels, you could practically reach in and touch the big scary lizards (not recommended). A whole mess of koalas, most sleeping, sat not three feet from us.

My koala’s name was Maya (MAY-uh), an older female of the group. After waiting for the previous couple to finish, I walked right up and found myself holding a koala.

First of all: the things have terrifying claws. And it’s not just the claws themselves, which look like they could slash your head off; but they’ve evolved unusual hands with two claws in the “thumb” position and three “fingers.” So the overall effect is of holding some freakish beast.

Fortunately the REST of the animal is quite cute. That nose must be seen to be believed. Maya stubbornly insisted on facing away from the camera; every time they mounted her on my right shoulder she’d jump over to my left. If they turned me around, then the opposite was true. Finally the koala keeper deduced that she thought the painted tree on the backdrop was a real tree, and was interested in climbing onto it! They walked us a few paces away from the backdrop and problem solved.

Mary Beth also got in on the action, though she left the actual cuddling to me. And then our time with Maya was over. Well worth the fifteen quid.

Afterwards we walked through the cage-free kangaroo pit and fed some roos. Then the cage-free snake pit, which we exited in a timely fashion.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering the shops and checking out the trinkets. As always, some good, some bad. And finally at 2:30 we hopped in line for the world’s longest cable car, the Kuranda SKyrail. The thing is 7.7 km long, and constructed entirely from the air so as not to disturb the wildlife. MB is not the biggest fan of heights, so she was less than enthused at the prospect.

We successfully conned our way into getting a private car, and enjoyed the scenery for the 40-minute trip over the mountains and back to Cairns. It was a great way to see the rainforest both going and coming.

The evening was pleasantly uneventful; we went to see “No Reservations” with Catherine Zeta-Jones, the perfectest woman ever, and ate again on the wharf/marina before heading back to bed.

Cairns Mega-Update 1 of 3

Cairns, a town of 120,000 that seems much smaller, has a cute dinky little airport with palm trees everywhere and mountainous hills surrounding it. Despite finally getting a sunny day in Sydney that morning, it was still a good twenty degrees warmer when we got off the plane, a thousand miles closer to the equator. (We realized that our closest friend in the world is Hillary up in South Korea. Hi Hillary!)

A cab dropped us off at Floriana Guest House, which (it should be noted for the record) was a Featured Recommendation in the Lonely Planet guide to Australia. The house itself, right across from the beach, was built in the 1930s and has been divided into 10 self-contained guest rooms. It was rather grubby, with a dinky plastic shower, and the sheets didn’t match the pillowcases, but we could deal.

We also had to tackle the issue with our abruptly-cancelled dive trip. We’d gotten word while in Sydney that, for reasons unspecified, our booked-and-paid-for trip to the reef was called off. So the gentleman at Floriana helped us out with some suggestions and got us booked on a sailboat with maximum 20 people. The OTHER catch (this will come back to bite us shortly) is that they were only available on Wednesday the 12th. So we called and rescheduled our train and cable-car excursion to the rainforest for Tuesday the 11th, then booked the reef. [thunder claps, a creepy sense of foreboding fills the blog]

That done, we plopped our bags down then decide to hit the beach. Yay beach! Swimsuits get thrown on. Towels get grabbed. We run out the door and across the Esplanade. And…

Mud and nastiness. The ocean visible in the distance. Between it and us, zillions of mud crabs popping in and out of the puddles.

Dimly, I realize that I never exactly heard anything about the great beaches at Cairns. This could be why.

So we’re stuck holding our towels and chalking up yet another thing on the trip that hasn’t exactly gone to plan. Dejected, we trudged back to Floriana, returned to street clothes, and started walking south along the Esplanade towards town.

Things got more pleasant there. The water actually came up to the beach (useful, since that’s where all the boats were); and the area had been redeveloped into a big urban park with a lagoon for the kids to splash in, barbecue pits everywhere, and a lively atmosphere. For the umpteenth time we marveled at what nice, happy people Australians seem to be.

For dinner we sat at a nice restaurant overlooking the wharf where all the tour boats were docked. Then we wandered back to the hotel, calling out to the pelicans in the water.

Update: More pics

I won’t post every time from now on, but, if you clicky the link you’ll see the second installment of Sydney picturas. More on the way, as I get a chance to post them.

Ayers Rock is pretty and humongous. The Olgas are just as nice. Why does Ayers Rock get all the press? Anyway, I’ll blog about it soon, gotta finish my Cairns entries first.

Now to go drag a sleeping Mary Beth out of the tent.

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!

The Cairns airport was awesome to get us some Web access, but didn’t do so well with the picture uploading. The Internet kiosk at the Ayers Rock campground is a little more obliging. That’s right, these pics are coming straight to you from the middle of the desert. Ever been somewhere and called it the middle of nowhere? Well we’ve got ya beat.

ANYway, click the link on the side for our pics from Los Angeles and the first day in Sydney.

Blog entries for Cairns coming through. Ayers Rock is pretty. Mary Beth hates it here but she’s being a trooper anyway. Three short hours until our fancy “Sounds of Silence” gourmet dinner (Google it). Which, good, we’re hungry.

The Manly Ghost Tour

Finally, it was time for Mary Beth’s big surprise activity for the evening. We grabbed a ferry again which took us 30 minutes out to Manly, a suburb on the north shore right against the ocean. It’s a much younger more spring break-feeling town, but still a nice place to spend the afternoon. The wind off the ferry was darn chilly, but two cups of five-dollar hot chocolate at a gourmet shop called Chocolate By The Bald Man fixed that right up.

For the last hour before the Big Surprise, we walked over to the beach and saw the ocean for the first time. Surfers were splashing around in the sixty-degree water like it wasn’t sixty-degree water. We were smart enough to turn around and take our picture at the exact moment a rogue wave shot up on the beach, drenching our jeans, shoes, and socks. (It’s been that kinda weekend.)

Finally, though, the big reveal! MB got us tickets to the Quarantine Station ghost tour! Yaaay ghost tour!

(This might get a little wordy, feel free to skim.)

From the 1820s onwards, the young country of Australia set aside some oceanside property as a camp for incoming ships. Once you finished the three-to-six-month voyage from England, you had to stop off here before being allowed into Sydney for a period from two weeks to four months. Ships were broken up into sick and healthy, then again by class and race, and thousands of people over 140 years just whittled away the hours and days here, seven short miles from their destination.

By the 1980s, Quarantine Station had been shut down and was a bunch of abandoned, very spooky-looking buildings, quite separated from the rest of civilization in a national park. Not surprisingly, the ghost stories quickly began to collect.

So it was this cluster of buildings, creaking and hardly lit, which Mary Beth, myself, our tour guide Brian, and seven other tourists wandered around holding nothing but kerosene lanterns. The tour was 2 1/2 hours long, during which time we heard gruesome descriptions of death by smallpox and were allowed to venture through the hospital and morgue. Brian did an excellent job setting the spooky mood, banging on metal walls at exactly the moment to cause all nine of us to squeal like little girls.

It’s hard to describe how surreal this set of buildings were, set off like this in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. The phenomenal view back toward the Sydney and Manly skylines made us genuinely amazed that it hadn’t all been ripped down and turned to condos by now. Yay historical preservation!

It was the best ghost tour I think I’ve been on. As much of a chicken as I am, it’s still rare to never that I feel actual tangible fear while on a tour. Quarantine Station did the trick.

We hit it off great with Brian, too, who has about 50,000 years more tour guide experience than me but was still very grateful to have a fellow guide on the trip. He was even so nice as to offer us a ride back from Manly to Sydney; we were happy to accept, and got an additional half-hour’s worth of Australian history til we were back at the hotel. Up front he educated us on tipping etiquette in Australia and how tipping of tour guides was NOT expected. Mary Beth still left a $20 bill under his hat in the back seat.

And that was how we finished out our final night in Sydney. Between the pumpkin pizza and five-star tour experience, it was a perfectly decent finale to our weekend here. And yet, we’re still calling a do-over on Sydney at some point in the future, when the weather’s happier and the heads of state are fewer. The city was even so cheeky as to present a crystal blue, cloudless sky this morning when we headed off for the airport and the flight to Cairns. Thanks a LOT, Sydney.

Sydney, Days 2 and 3

We enjoyed ourselves at the aquarium, where we witnessed two sea lions in the throes of passion. Then wandered a bit around the south end of downtown which was not *quite* as much a ghost town as the north end but still had cops aplenty.

Just off Hyde Park, on the very block where we had our steak reservations later that night, the NSW Police had cordoned off a two-block area with giant paddy-wagon buses. And sure enough, the protesters were filling the park, getting ready to rumble. Our favorite protest sign: “I DON’T BELIEVE IN ANYTHING - I’M JUST HERE FOR THE VIOLENCE.”

Concerned anew about our steak reservations, we backtracked away from the pending riots and napped at the hotel. Fortunately, by 7:00, the block was open again. Cops and protesters dispersed. We made our way untroubled into the lobby of the Sheraton hotel, and into Times on the Park, where we were one of only four occupied tables.

To this point we were so used to lost bags and drizzly weather and APEC hiccups that it wasn’t even a shock when our (as always, very nice) waitress told us that they didn’t have any Wagyu Chateaubriand steak - the very cut of meat we were so insistent on finding. Sigh. But we enjoyed a double serving of Wagyu rump, which it was hard to find any complaint with. Take that, George Bush. We HAD our expensive steak.

~

Day three! Despite working our way up to a normal go-to-bed schedule, we both (even Mary Beth!) continue to wake up at 6 or 7 AM. Sheesh.

In the morning we visited the botanical gardens - the part not fenced off, that is - and marveled at some seriously Dr. Seuss-looking plants, not to mention the postcard view back towards the opera house and harbour bridge. The tropical center was having a show of orchids and carnivorous plants with the awesome name of “SEX AND DEATH.” But, surprise surprise, the tropical center was closed for the weekend.

So it was back towards The Rocks. The Lord Nelson has a pub and restaurant on the first floor, and for a late lunch we had - read this carefully - a pumpkin pizza with feta cheese, pine nuts, and arugula. It was the best thing I have ever tasted ever. Soon as we get back to the States, we’re stocking up on pizza crust and pumpkins.

Brace Yourselves, Lads…

WE HAVE INTERNET! Thank you, Cairns International Airport!

We haven’t forgotten you all. We still love you. Oh, and yes, we’re still alive. It’s just this continent and the Internet are not EXTREMELY well-acquainted, besides overpriced terminals here and there that don’t lend themselves to lengthy blog writing.

The good news is, I’ve been trying to keep current here on the computer. So here comes a bum-load of reading for you to skim weakly (or, if avoiding work, read voraciously).

First things first: Mary Beth got her bag back. After returning from our zoo trip across the harbour, we trudged our tired feet (hers in flip-flops!) up the stairs at the Lord Nelson. We were stumbling past the office, when out the corner of our eye, we saw the most beautiful sight: MB’s bag, with an apologetic note from Qantas attached, just inside the office.

So hallelujah, MB has clothes.