| Australia Highlights, Part II 30may2004 wow, a month has gone by since my last update.... time sure flies! I'm gonna try to keep this one fairly short, but knowing me that'll be tough to do! I think my last update ended in Alice Springs. From there, my new Dutch friend Leon (from Wayward's Adelaide->Alice tour) & I looked into trying to rent a car to get us up to Darwin, but in the end the hassle factor was too high and we ended up just signing up for the 3.5 day Wayward tour (again with our same guide Paul) leaving in a coupla days to Darwin. The good part of that was that we'd get to continue travelling with our other 2 buddies from the 1st Wayward tour, Thomas from Germany and Kenny from Scotland. This tour was fun also, although at just 3.5 days it was more geared towards getting from point A to point B than the 8-day outback tour was. Canoe-ing up the Katherine Gorge & trying to spot "freshies" (freshwater crocodiles) before taking the little walk up to the waterfall with the swimming hole & rock jumping was probably the highlight of this tour. Actually, the real highlight was probably getting to hang out with my new friends from the first tour and making some new friends: with Ruri, Yuki, Yuka, & Sissy (?not sure I spelled Sissy's name right?),a lively bunch who work for Qantas in Japan; James from Seattle, who was the first American I'd met in quite a while; and Andy from England who kindly burned CDs of photos each for Leon & me. Leon & I ended up hanging out together a lot in both Alice & Darwin... since we were the two slackers who never had accomodations booked for the cities we were about to arrive in, we relied on Paul to hook us up with places to stay. Leon & I also ended up signing up for the same 4-day tour into Kakadu National Park, and this was definitely one of the highlights of my stay in Australia. Up in the northern part of Australia it's always hot & humid and we arrived in Darwin just at the beginning of the "dry" season (early May). We went with Wilderness 4WD Adventures and despite the fact that our guide Nick was only on his 2nd tour ever, he was quite good and we had a blast. 4 days of nice walks, spectacular waterfalls, and refreshing swimming holes, best of all being the one day journey up the rarely visited Koolpin Gorge. The final day we visited the Corroboree Billabong and (just as we were about to pull away in the bus) got a glimpse of a 7m saltie (saltwater crocodile) - fortunately from a safe distance! Salties are the dangerous ones, they're bigger, more aggressive, and more territorial than the freshies, and they live in both fresh and salt water. The boat driver on the billabong cruise said that many naturalists have been out to study this 60-ish year old croc, and although they can't be sure, they reckon he's could very well be the largest croc in the world. Later, during my trip down the east coast, I watched some of the croc shows at Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin's Australian Zoo, and let's just say it's a bit intimidating watching those guys jump out of the water to attack! Skipping ahead a bit, Steve Irwin's zoo was a pretty cool place to visit for an afternoon. Obviously the crocs are one of the major highlights... along with the snakes, it's what he's known for. But they also have lots of native Aussie animals there including hard-to-spot creatures like tasmanian devils and cassowaries (which are large, rare, ostrich-like flightless birds with blue heads that live in Queensland)... I think I may have seen a wild one near Cape Tribulation up north of Cairns... as I was driving, a large fuzzy black blob ran across the road about a 1/4 in front of me. It happened quick enough and the road was shady enough that I wasn't sure if I was really seeing what I was seeing, but on the other hand, an ostrich-like bird is the only thing in that area that moves like that & is shaped like what I saw so I've mostly convinced myself that I saw one in the wild so there! :) Ok, now I've really skipped around a lot... basically, after the Kakadu trip, I just flew to Cairns since I was concerned about having enough time to get down the east coast & back to sydney while actually being able to stop & do fun things along the way. Oh, but before I go onto Cairns, on the Kakadu trip I made another really good friend in Chrissy from South Korea. She's one of those people who's really super-enthusiastic and quick to smile, so she was a fun person to hike & swim with during the trip. My next adventures in & around Cairns were a 3-day boat trip out on the Great Barrier Reef, then renting a campervan and driving up to Cape Trib to see the rainforests, and then into the Atherton tablelands and see the numerous waterfalls & bizarre fig trees. Oh, and for the first time I managed to spill myself out of a kayak and into the water at cape trib, where, fortunately, no box jellyfish were around to sting me to death & no salties were around to have me for dinner! After Cape Trib & Atherton, I meandered down the Queensland (squeezing in a 2 day visit to the largest sand island in the world, Fraser Island, where the dingoes run wild looking for babies!) & New South Wales coast back down to stay with Balu & his family for a few more days in norhern Sydney. We got to do a nice day trip up to Port Stephens together for my last beautiful, cool sunny day in Australia, and I got to learn quite a bit from Balu's mom during a chat about Indian history as we were taking a walk up to a lighthouse/radio station in Nelson Bay. Anyways, so now I'm now in the Philippines for a next week & a half of tropical paradise hanging out with my friends Ronna and Bob & Gwen before I head back home to summer in the San Francisco Bay Area .... making 2004 nearly a "winter-less" year for me! So I hope I'll be able to keep in touch will all my new friends from my travels in Australia (and a big howdy to those of you who are reading!) and to those of you in the Bay Area, I'll see ya soon.... Cheers, -PM |