I think the last time I left off, we were leaving the exotic island of Tahiti and traveling West. Here's an interesting tidbit -- we left Tahiti on Wednesday, July 21st at around midnight, and arrived in Sydney at 10am, Friday morning. Where'd Thursday go? It went to the wayside of the International Dateline. No July 22nd for me. It's ok, I'd get another day later, don't worry.
First thing we get to once in the airport is a terminal area, basic shops and such. Then I see a "Hungry Jacks". Upon further investigation I find that Hungry Jacks is actually Burger King, but Aussie style. And by Aussie style I mean, well, it's just called Hungry Jacks. I'll let you see the comparison:
After some investigation, Jonah wound find out that before Burger King came along, there was already a place in Australia called the Burger King, so they had to use a different name for copyright reasons. Way to go Burger King for being the bigger man and not buying them out. Or way to get Aussie Burger King for not selling out. Either way, now we get Hungry Jacks.
Well we weren't in Sydney long, as we were just transfering planes to Cairnes. We went from one aquatic town to another.
Cairnes is basically a surfing beach bum town, but it had a nice vibe to it. It's possible I was so jet lagged that everyone just seemed really chill, but I think it was a real vibe. We weren't really there for the town anyway. We were there for the reef. Swimming in the Great Barrier Reed has always been one of my life goals. Didn't really disappoint.
Getting sea sick out to the reef was great too. As many ginger pills as I could swallow didn't really help too much. But once we settled down and reached out dock, pier thing, I was gravy. As opposed to the Tahitian method of just jumping in, here we had instructions as how to put on a vest, how to use the snorkel, etc. Felt a little better about jumping in this time. Now, the hardest part about writing about things like this is trying to explain what it was like objectively versus fantastically.
So - In my mind - I swam around in the middle of the ocean, fish around me. I saw deep past the reef and into the deep ocean. I felt completely in control of myself while being completely submerged into something that had complete control over me.
Reality - Swam in a sectioned off area with life guards on duty and a life vest in about 15-20 foot deep water.
In my mind - I took part in this sea walk thing in which I walked on the floor of the ocean around hundreds of fish and turtles. I touched and fed beautiful schools of fish that seemed from the prehistoric era. Seeing some of these creatures literally up close and personally really makes you think about evolution and where we all came from.
Reality - I was hooked up to this astronaut type machine that made it impossible for me to not breathe while people around me fed these fish to keep them around me.
For the record, I enjoy my imagination a lot more. So let's just ignore reality for a while and see just what I did --
After some more snorkeling, we headed back.
The next day we went from the water element to the forest element. We took a cable car tour type thing over a rainforest, and ended up in an Aboriginal village, complete with semi-keetchy tour. It was actually very interesting being around actual indigenous people, not just Disney style tour guides. Here, I also learned that I am a fantastic boomerang-ist. So good in fact, that I got to keep my boomerang. I read that there's a boomerang association and they have a headquarters in DC. You can certainly bet they'll be receiving a call from me.
After all the water and forest we could handle, it was on to the next element - land/rock/sand.
Ayres Rock. We went from the oceans to smack dab in the middle of the desert. Literally. Ayres Rock is pretty much just a huge rock in the middle of nowhere. It's a huge, gorgeous red rock in the middle of nowhere.
It's quite amazing out there. If you ever travel down to Australia, I would recommend making the trip out there. It may just seem like a huge rock, but it's...well, a really big rock. There's also a lot of interesting vegetation and animal life that lives in conditions that you really wouldn't think support life.
While there we took a star gazing tour. Some of you may or may not know me well enough to know I'm sort of a space nerd, so this way pretty amazing for me. To say that I saw a lot of stars is sort of understating things. Coming from NY, where you can sometimes make out the moon through the smog, and Maryland where you can be lucky to see Venus, finally seeing stars was great. But not just the stars I'm used to. Southern Hemisphere stars, of which there are apparently a lot more. Who takes the time to count them all, I don't know, but I do know I've seen more than you (unless you're Yorrick and you live in Australia). Through telescopes we also got to see Mars (which I pointed out to my parents before the guide did), Jupiter and Saturn. Yeah, Saturn really does have rings.
I'll leave you for now with one of my new all time favorite pictures from Ayres Rock.
Ta
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