Thursday, August 23, 2012

Blogsplosion: More Cairns, Darwin, and Uluru

Easily the best part of scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, for me at least, was the spectacle that two humpback whales put on while cruising to the morning dive spot. My opinion is a little biased, since my ears didn’t equalize very well during the first dive, and I only got down to 16 meters after 20 minutes of agonizing effort. The second dive was a drift dive, and by that point I couldn’t get lower than 7 meters without feeling like my ears would burst.


Mama whale breaching, but the cafe was the one who put on the show. The Japanese people want to kill and eat these things... why would anyone want to kill a beautiful animal that puts on a performance without being caged or trained first??
The highlight of the diving itself was a grouper fish the size of a small car – actually the fish had been dubbed “VW” for that reason. Our group also interacted with a friendly bumphead parrot fish that had become accustomed to being feed out of hand. It was cool to be face to face with a beautiful meter long fish, but seemed to contradict the philosophy of preserving the natural habitat. In my opinion, this type of gimmick is a tacit acknowledgement that the sea life at the GBR is no longer as abundant or colorful as it once was due to increasing ocean temperatures and poor eco-tourism management (at least compared to the places I was fortunate to see in Southeast Asia). That being said, several people raved about a dive site near Townville where people went diving with Minke Whales and schools of sharks.

My last day in Cairns was spent walking around the town. In some ways it reminded me of Perth, which has warm weather and a slower pace to life. It’s a beach city, but there are no nearby sandy beaches like Perth, so people end up sunning themselves on the grass around the artificial lagoon in the city center. Aside from the diving, I can’t see a huge reason anyone would chose Cairns over a place like Perth, but maybe my three days there weren’t enough to “suss it out” (as they say in Australia).

I arrived in Darwin late at night and booked another guided tour for the morning, this time an overnight camping excursion to Kakadu National Park. The name comes from a mishearing of an Aboriginal word, which was then confused for the German word for Cockatoo. Personally, it makes me think of poop. Twice. Despite the name, the highlights of Kakadu are nice. Kakadu doesn’t beat the national parks of Utah (Bryce, Zion and Arches) nor Arizona’s Grand Canyon (and that’s coming from a guy who didn’t think the Grand Canyon was that grand compared to Zion). But if you like camping and hiking, there seems to be plenty on offer at Kakadu. Considering the park is half the size of Switzerland, it damn well should.

A feral and hyperactive-looking tour guide named Dan picked me up at 7am and I crawled into the back of a modified Toyota Land Cruiser. By modified I mean the cabin had been gutted and fitted with two parallel poorly-padded benches. The rest of the camping crew consisted of two Finnish girls, two Slovakian girls, an Italian girl, a German girl, and Russian guy. The seats were uncomfortable but at least the ratios were agreeable.

Our first stop was a jumping crocodile cruise, and as contrived as it was, my butt was numb and I needed to stand. A fiber-glass replica of the largest saltwater crocodile (a dangerous misnomer as they spend most of their life in fresh water) ever found was sprawled in front of the ticket office. It came in just over 8 meters long, originally weighing more than 1000 kilograms (in imperial units, that’s a fucking lot), and had a head the size of my body. It’s there in order to hype up the size of the crocodiles potentially in the estuaries but the crocodile leather trade, wholly unregulated until the mid 1970s in Australia, resulted in crocodiles being hunted nearly to extinction. So a very large crocodile comes in at about 5 meters these days and those don’t seem to be very common either. The biggest I saw was probably 3.5 meters. The cruise operator felt it necessary to remind us on each occasion that even those crocodiles were “big enough to kill you.”


The replica of the largest crocodile ever found, I think somewhere in PNG or the Philippines or another P country. 

He looks funny without long arms, am I right?
After lunch, I satisfied my daily culture quota when we hiked around a cave area featuring Aboriginal rock art. Dan told us that there are four distinct types of Aboriginal art (but I have some doubts on the veracity of the details): 1) Contact art, as in contact with Western civilization (or as in a euphemistic punch to the face and made into second class people in society); 2) Modern art (circa ~10,000 years ago), a period of rapid artistic development caused from rising sea levels which required less time for hunting and gathering, and hence more time for art; 3) Ancient art (circa 10,000 to at least 40,000 years ago), consisting of simplistic animal designs and geometric shapes depicting the “creation time”. Some of the ancient artwork depicts paintings of mega fauna which are thought to have gone extinct more than 50,000 years ago, which is pretty cool (if you define cool as giant sloths and enormous gerbils).
A story about a creepy guy who will beat adventurous women or children with a yam if they wander out of the sight of the men. Standard stuff.
That night, we ate kangaroo steaks cooked on a campfire and tried our best at playing the didgeridoo. In a cloudless sky, the gash of the Milky Way cut across the sky. Dan showed me the Southern Cross constellation, which is depicted on the Australian flag, and from that how to find due south. Fascinating stuff for which the details I quickly forgot. I fell asleep in my tent looking at the stars, thinking how easily 6 months of living in a city can make you forget the pleasantries of the simple life.

I woke up in the middle of the night with something hissing at me, and if you didn’t know this already, crocodiles hiss when they are threatened.  I quickly pieced together that was some sort of possum in a dispute with a neighbor opossum, but for the first minute I was a little unsure of my next move. I scared the beasts off and fell back asleep for what felt like an instant, and then was roused with an early morning wake up call.

Our second day had us off-roading through the park, and hiking to Twin Falls and Jim Jim Falls. Twin Falls had tantalizing crystal clear waters but fresh water crocodiles inhabited the area, so swimming wasn’t allowed. As it was the dry season, a more apt name would have been Singular Trickle.  At Jim Jim Falls, in a similar aquatic state, a turquoise pool of frigid water lay at the base and had no crocodiles to worry about. I swam the 100 meters across the pool and arrived on the other side entirely numb, where I climbed onto a ledge to warm up. I stood underneath the falls as it pissed cold water onto me until I summoned the courage to jump back in. The cold water stole my breath but I managed to make it back alive (just in case you had any doubt). After sunning myself dry, I had to suffer the long walk back to the truck where, once arrived, I needed another dip in the pool.


Jim Jim Falls
We had a three hour ride back to Darwin without much to look at on the way. Our guide passed a fellow guide from the company driving a tamer looking set of guests back to the city. This driver entertained us for 30 minutes by dressing up in various tasteless outfits. His first character was a member of the Towelie-Ban sporting an uzi, followed by Steve Irwin, Anna Nicole Smith, a guy asleep at the wheel (at this point, we were at a stop light), and some other crude animations I’ll leave unmentioned. It passed the time at least, but probably freaked out the passengers in the other vehicle.


The towelie-ban character (i.e. he is wearing a towel on his head which I didn't get in the picture). 
For the next two days in Darwin, I fought off boredom during the hottest parts of the day, either by not moving (at most lifting a beer to my lips) or visiting an air-conditioned building, like a bar or Darwin’s art-science-history museum. By the late afternoon, it was comfortable enough to sit outside with the friends I had made from the tour in Kakadu. The running joke between us was, “What suburb are you going to go to tomorrow?” because Darwin city is tiny and dull. To think this wasn’t even the hottest part of the year where it is typically 38oC with 95% humidity. Also note that the risk of box jellyfish stings from October to May means you can’t cool off in the ocean during this time. Sorry to say it, but it astounds me that people actually live in Darwin on purpose, especially at any time before the tourism boom. Maybe it’s like America’s Florida where people go to retire and become forgotten by their children.

In travelling through Kakadu, I realized that Australia is too damn big for me to drive from Alice Springs to Uluru like I originally planned. In my last full day in Darwin, I re-arranged some flights and added another so that I could arrive by plane at Ayers Rock. In the end it was cheaper than driving too. Right now, I’m in Alice Springs’ airport waiting for my connection, and I’m thankful for my prudence. The outback is expansive and flat. If boredom hadn’t killed me on the drive, I’m sure a “Big Red” kangaroo would have jumped in front of my hired car in the middle of the night. You’ll have to be cleverer more clever (?) craftier than that if you want to kill me, Australia. You have four more days before I escape this lethal country.

(I wrote the above part earlier but since I haven’t had an internet connection, I’m combining posts).

There are two major rock formations in the Ayers Rock, Uluru and Kata Tjuta. These are sacred locations for the local aboriginal people, so they ask visitors to not climb Uluru, but they haven’t legally restricted access. Uluru is the one you typically see in pictures. I arrived with enough time in the day to watch the sunset at Uluru where they offer complimentary sparkling wine and hors d’oeuvres. I also organized transport to the two rocks sights for the following day.

Remember that night when I drank 10 complimentary sparkling wines in an hour? Funny thing, me neither really but I get the general sense I had a lot of fun. I’m happy to report that someone also turned in my daypack at reception, which contained my passport and camera.  I was still pretty hungover or drunk when the shuttle picked me up at 8:30am, but it was the holiday-mode hangover, not the working-weekend hangover, which, for reasons of perspective, the former tend to be more tolerable, um, comma.  


First attempt at catching the sunset.
There are many different types of people in life when they see natural beauty. Some people want to study it; some people want to put a house on/in it. Others want to take a picture. I’m the type of guy who wants to climb it. So for the entire hike at these rocks I thought about how epic a multi-pitch slab climb it could be.  Unfortunately, the hike at Kata Tjuta wasn’t that spectacular. As soon as you walk into the gorges, the looming grandiose peaks jutting into the vast flat landscape is lost. 

Uluru was more interesting. The rock is bigger, the facets on the rock are more varied and it’s just plain pretty. It was named by an explorer looking for suitable farm land in the 1870s, who found nothing but this rock and named it after the Chief Secretary of South Australia who commissioned his exploration, Sir Henry Ayers, but I doubt Ayers ever saw his rock.  Anyway, I took about a million photos and probably 50% of them are all the same. On a few occasions I took a picture of a cool rock feature, looked away, and by the time I looked back I took an identical picture because I was so excited by the rock features. Since I opted to do the walk around the base of Uluru, I had walked nearly 20 kilometers by the end of the day, my feet were sore, and my body was pretty ripe.


Some perspective. These people are climbing up the ridge that is visible on the most shadowed area of the rock pictured below. 



Sunset of Uluru on the second day. 
I got back to my dorm, showered, cooked dinner and sat down to write this blog post. I'll add a full set of pictures once internet is more reliable. Tomorrow I’m back in Sydney for the weekend and, after an epic flight across the pacific, San Francisco!   

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Cairns

I had only three days to spend in Cairns, so as soon as I arrived I organized a guided tour to the Port Douglas area, which meant I’d get to check out the Daintree Rainforest and catch the scenic drive along the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately, tourism in Australia involves choking down the outrageous prices, which aren’t even on the same order of magnitude as Asia. Despite that, I surrendered my money under the premise that I wasn’t coming back to Australia anytime soon. (I can't prove it, but I believe the tourism costs are part of Australia’s strategy to push travelers into exploitative low-skill farm jobs).

Afterward I went to grab dinner and check out the rest of town. I hadn’t yet seen Cairns during the day, so my first impression consisted of a small, binge-drinking, kitschy tourist city. Two days later, when I would see it during the day, I realized I had pretty much nailed it. For now though, I made a loop around the city scouting out the restaurants. I finally settled on something familiar from Asia: A Chinese buffet market, all offering the same buffet selections for the same prices, and yet everyone was waiting in line at the shop in the southwest corner. Kafka would be proud.

I stood in the same line waiting for my turn, and reflected on the demographics of the people eating: Mostly older couples or families but some (much) younger travelers than me, mostly obese, and seemingly no solo travelers. I was still getting comfortable in my solo traveler skin, and I realized that the markets in Australia are not the hubs for social interaction that they are in Asia. I’d have to rethink my strategy in meeting people.

Fortunately, this issue was resolved in a “small world” way. I caught the profile of a familiar face from my days at Lafayette College (or rather, from my ex-girlfriend’s days), and I instinctively called out her name to see if I was mistaken.  Sure enough, in two years on the road, I had finally met a friend from my old life in the USA. (Since I didn’t ask her if I could use her name, I’ll refer to her as Lucy). We spent a few minutes to get through formalities and we decided to meet later after I finished dinner at Kafka’s Place.

When I met Lucy and her friend later that evening, we swapped travel stories and impressions on Australia, but the conversation tended to circle back to how freakin’ incredible it was to run into a friend so far from where we first met. I have to admit, it was a great way to settle into the last leg of my travels, and it also reminded me of how much I missed my friends and family from home.  And as nice as it all was, I called it any early night because I had an early pick-up for the tour of the Daintree National Park. It was too expensive not to be well rested.

The shuttle bus that picked me up at 7am was still half full and I chose the only seat that had any semblance of leg room. Seats during a tour tend to be de facto assigned seats, and I was happy with my luck. 15 minutes later, the rest of the bus filled up in one go and I was crammed shoulder-to-window as an overweight, emphysemic man huffed his way into the seat next to me. So much for good luck.

An estuary from the Daintree National Park flowing into the Great Barrier Reef. Our guide informed us that these are the only two UNESCOWorld Heritage sites that are immediately adjacent to each other. 

Over the next 8 hours, I learned that my travel companion was a simpleton, he talked in a lisp (the quantity of teeth in his mouth were a handful shy of enough), his inside voice was closer to a shout than a whisper, whenever possible he shouted bad and off-color jokes in relation to the tour guide’s monologue (bringing admonition from his wife), and his name was Michael. I learned his name from context since I figured asking might lead him to believe I wanted to continue the conversation. At the present moment, the air-conditioned bus hadn’t even started the journey north to Port Douglas and Michael was dripping sweat while struggling to get enough slack in his seatbelt to fit around his waist. Michael was special, maybe clinically.

The problem with guided tours in Australia, often guided tours in general, is that they tend to be over-hyped and gimmicky. The guided tour I was currently on advertised a chance to observe Australian wildlife including the colorful cassowary bird, a scenic view of the coast from the top of a mountain, a boat cruise down a crocodile infested estuary, and a hike through the rainforest. In reality: We visited a bird sanctuary with a petting area for kangaroos and wallabies, the bus driver drove up the mountain and we were given 5 minutes to take pictures from the lookout, we hopped on a rickety boat with a chatty tour guide who pointed out all the wildlife that I deduced is in the same place every day (if it hadn’t moved I would have assumed it was plastic), and we followed a wood-planked walking trail for a few kilometers through the jungle. I more or less expected all this, and took my disappointments in stride.

Look at how cute that eager wallaby is!! 

Someone clever altered the speed bump warning sign.

A young cassowary that snuck up on us during our hike in the woods. 

I’ve added a few pictures to Picasa, here, so you can get a sense of the tour, but my personal highlight was Michael. (I didn't take any pictures of him). When we stopped for lunch Michael was floored with the crocodiles we had seen on the riverbank. “That was probably the second favorite thing I've seen in Australia,” he told the air. And what was his first?! It was “eating lunch while feeding lions and tigers raw meat”. I was fascinated and appalled at the same time. Keep in mind that about an hour earlier, our guide explained that Australia’s rainforests are so old (~50 million years old) that they do not have any large predatory cats or primates. I thought about telling Michael that maybe only half that statement was true on this day, but that seemed mean. 

Talk about slightly optimistic signage when a crocodile "attack may cause injury or death". Only in Queensland. 

In the end, it was a nice tour for a person with a limited amount of time to spend, but I would have rather experienced it on my own at my own pace if I could have. For the next day, I had organized scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, and perhaps that would be better. Surely that wouldn't be over-hyped, would it?

Thursday, August 16, 2012

A Bag Packed

On Friday, my co-workers organized a going-away happy hour and dinner for me. The timing coincidentally corresponded to our monthly paycheck deposit, which is usually accompanied with a happy hour, and so it appeared like I was extra special because a lot of people showed up. On top of that, they paid for my drinks and food and picked a venue near my apartment in Sydney, so perhaps, yes, I felt special.

That evening I started what I will call "a wicked bender" of a weekend. It is the type of weekend fueled by the desperation of an individual trying to extract everything fun possible from a city before he leaves it behind. It started tame: Sangria, a margarita, a very dirty martini. (There's a pun in there somewhere, I'm sure). Then a brisk walk to Darling Harbor, a few drinks at a sports bar, and an awkward yet non-threatening moonwalk around a group of nonplussed young ladies. Somehow that turned into gambling at the casino until 5am with two accomplices. That will happen. Fortunately, I won $600 playing Blackjack, which meant I paid for half of my flights around Australia. A similar experience happened again on Saturday night (sans the gambling), woke up a few hours after going to bed to have breakfast with a friend, and then returned home to pack my bag. After five minutes, I gave up and accomplished a nap instead. Packing is hard.

In a sort of awkward arrangement, my last day was a Monday. I said my goodbyes and tried not to think too much about how I would like to stay if circumstances were different (i.e mainly, Australia being closer to eastern USA). I returned to my apartment that afternoon where my first task was to sort my belongings into four piles: Things I will ship home, things I will donate to the salvation army, things I will throw away, and things I will carry around for the next few weeks. I did this apathetically for 30 minutes, gave up and went climbing instead. Somewhere around midnight I summoned the motivation to finished the job, and when it was finished, I crashed on my bed. It was a long previous three days.

So it was early Tuesday morning, the day of my flight to Cairns, that I went to the post office to ship my box of things home. When I plonked the large box on the counter, the postal worker's blank emotionless countenance told me my task would not be so simple. She notified me, with a condescending frown only a disgruntled union worker can give, that the girth of my box was too large. Indeed. I pleadingly asked her if she could find another box in the back room instead of having me purchases multiple tiny boxes (sold for $5 a pop) and have to pay separate shipping charges. She waddled, oh so slowly, to the back room to "look". I imagine her closing the door behind her, counting to 10, and coming out to tell me with a slight nod of the head that, "No, there are no boxes". I wanted to ask if she is always so helpful to customers.

$400 dollars poorer and an agonizing hour of my time stolen from my life, I walked out of the post office to head to the airport. On the walk and train ride there, I realized that I had still over-packed, despite all the things I've learned in two years on the road. To be fair, my pack weighed 13 kilograms at check-in, but I know I can do better for a 2 to 3 week trek -- I just didn't want to worry about not having certain things. (In contrast, when I went to Korea two years ago, it was 22 kilograms). Sometimes piece of mind is worth a few kilograms.

My whirlwind tour of Ozzieland. Keep in mind that Australia is about the size of continental USA.

I'll be flying from Sydney to Cairns to Darwin to Alice Springs, road trip to Uluru, and back to Sydney in less than two weeks. It isn't cheap but at least domestic flying in Australia is sort of what I imagine domestic flying must have been like in the USA during the late 80s and early 90s. In Sydney, no one asked me to take off my shoes. My Pennsylvania driver's license was taken as suitable ID. No one really gave me a "does he look like a terrorist?" once-over evaluation (I have a slight beard mind you). I high-fived the guard as I walked through the metal detector. Well, maybe not that last one.

Three relatively painless hours later (at least compared to the post office in Sydney), I arrived in Cairns. I walked to baggage claim and my friendly green backpack birthed itself through the carousel flaps. I threw it over my shoulders, sinched the straps, and walked toward the shuttle pick up area. Two sliding glass doors parted, a cricket (just one it seemed) chirped quietly nearby, as a gentle evening breeze welcomed me to Cairns. It feels good to be back on the road, I thought to myself.

Oh! And happy birthday Mom!