Friday, December 30, 2005

Cheating Death


7am - we got a chance to sleep in this morning, although I slept little. Night three of our outback adventure was relatively tranquil compared to the previous two, no rainstorms or scourges of flying ants to accompany our return to camp for dinner.

We woke up yesterday to a magnificent but crowded sunrise at Uluru. All of the tour buses descended to a single designated 'sunrise viewing area', causing mass confusion and frustration when group after group of people would enter into your carefully composed photograph of this anchient monolith. The National Park seems very serene and remote when hiking, but you get a sense of how touristy Ayers Rock actually is on these occasions such as sunrise and sunset viewing.

After the sunrise, we did a two and a half hour walk around the base of Uluru / Ayers Rock. Although still legal to climb to the top, you are told that if you do, you're basically going to hell (or some alternate version of eternal damnation), as it is a sacred site to the Aboriginal people. No members of our group did so, a testament to the awareness and manner of our tour guide.

From the 'red centre', we took a three hour drive north to King's Canyon for a 6k hike in the late arvo. The temperature read 37 C / 100 F, same as it has been all week. Strangely, it wasn't uncomfortably hot, due to the consistent cloud cover and cool breeze. King's Canyon was fantastic, reminiscent of Arizona, with steep sandstone walls and oasis pools found deep within the canyon. We returned to our new campground sweaty but invigorated from such a rewarding hike.

This campground was much better than the one at Ayers Rock / Uluru. Quieter, less bugs and better facilities and a softer place to unfurl our sleeping bag swags. Cici had a bit of a scare towards the end of the night, when ducking into her tent to fetch a toiletry kit, I spotted a tennis ball sized spider inching its way towards her door and cornering her inside. After a bit of a panic, our guide came over and removed the harmless (physically, at least) Huntsman spider from the tent, causing a visibly flustered Cici great relief.

Another stange detail from last night was the presence of 20 South Korean school children on the campsite next to us. A well disciplined bunch, to say the least, Cici recalls hearing the commands, 'Mi-Joon! Socks! Shoes! Water! Soon-Kwon! Socks! Shoes! Water!' barked by their vociferous chaperone at 3:30am this morning.

Today is Mount Ebenezer and the Rainbow Valley for low-impact hiking and shopportunities. We then return to Alice Springs for a night at the luxury resort hotel, rewarding us for the past three nights of 'roughing it'. Will return to Sydney tomorrow for a night of celebration and fireworks, ushering out 2005 on the harbor in style.

posted by ncawthon at 6:43 PM

Thursday, December 29, 2005

A Bug's Life

It's 4am again. We're sipping instant coffee, munching on stale toast on a table that has been covered with flying ant wings. Looking around, our entire dining area is covered with flying ant wings. After a pretty traumatic night on Tuesday with the Thundershowers, we were hoping for a calm and peaceful evening last night.

After a gorgeous sunset over Uluru, which illuninated a wonderful shade of red, we returned to our campsite to find that the preceding rain had brought out every crawling, flying, buzzing and hopping insect imaginable. Trying to prepare food was an absolute battle, causing grown men to run screaming after bugs have infiltrated every crevice imaginable. I'm pretty sure a millipede just crawled out of my butt. You know it is a bad situation when you're guide runs and fetches his camera.

The girls have been surpisingly adaptable towards this situation. Given that going to the bathrooms here involves wading through a holocaust of wings, legs and antennae from those who have flown too close to the light. The mantis and the millipedes are the toughest to digest when you're trying to digest.

Ah, the food. Bordering between Government issue and inedible, we're all thinking of becoming vegetarians quite soon. There were hamburgers yesterday that bore no resemblence to any animal species ever to walk this earth. The patties were supplemented with either some sort of corn or vegetable (we hope), further adding to our suspicions as to why the coloring of the patties alternated between an orange and pinkish-yellow hue. Ironically, the sausages last night were of the same colors. Wayward Bus has some serious deficiencies in the culinary department to deal with.

Other than the food and generally the whole camping experience, the trip has been great. We've been on some fantastic hikes around both the Olgas and Uluru, with much more in store. We're driving to a sunrise viewing spot this morning before starting off on today's excursions.

posted by ncawthon at 6:36 AM

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Beyond The Alice

It's 4am. At some point during the night the rain subsided, but we were not awake to remember it. After 500k / 6 hours of traveling from Alice Springs, we were within 10k before the skies opened up. This in a place that is supposed to be one of the driest on earth.

Our little Wayward Bus was blown to fro by a driving wind, causing or guide and driver, 'Mackie' , to navigate like he was intoxicated. On this tour, we've accounted for 4 Swiss, 2 Canadians, 3 Aussies, 1 Irish, 1 Japanese and us three Amer-I-cans. The sheer amount of water on the ground has scattered the group to all corners of the campsite, I slept in the laundry room, the girls under the dining tent, others in the shower.

About a half dozen of us rolled out our swagmans in the laundry room, several were on a tour separate from ours. I slept next to a guy from China who snored the entire night. The girls initially tried a tent, but then picked the whole thing up and pitched it under the corrugated tin roof of the dining hall. The lightning storm was pretty intense as well, giving us all a reason to count our blessings.

We pulled into camp at about 7:30pm last night and tried to get a glimpse of Uluru, which wasn't anything spectacular given the cloud cover, but today we're attempting a sunrise hike around the base. Although, our guide has just announced that we will be changing our itinerary a bit since the sun won't be coming up. I think that if the sun indeed ceased to rise, we'd be in a lot more trouble than just missing a morning hike.

posted by ncawthon at 6:15 AM

Monday, December 26, 2005

Boats on the Box

In most Commonwealth countries, today is Boxing Day, whose history comes from England in that it was the day that servants of the wealthy manors had the day off to be with their families. Or, depending on who you believe, it was the day that in feudal times the lords were required to hand out annual stipends of common goods to the serfs who lived on their lands. For us, it was the day we threw away all of the boxes from the day before.

Today was the annual Sydney to Hobart (Tasmania) race, which involved 85 participants of three different length boat categories and about a million spectators who took every jet-ski, dinghy and yacht to line the course and escort them out into the sea. It was something out a children's book, watching this massive flotilla all on the move at once. The entire horizon was just whitewater from all the commotion. Wikipedia has a good article as well. Check out today's picture from our friend Mr. Murphy at Sydney Web Cam.

Here's a link to the photo gallery from the Sydney Morning Herald's coverage...

We definitely played the part of the ignorant tourist on this one, trying to head up the peninsula an hour before the start of the race and running into a pretty hairy traffic jam. Apparently, many others had the same idea. After they passed 'the heads' and took a right hand turn south towards Tassie, we could see the procession quite clearly. The helicopters covering the event were so aggressively close to these huge moving vessels. It must have been such an annoyance for these competition boats to have to edge through thousands of private ships before getting into the open sea. The racing boats looked like moth wings fluttering their way towards the horizon.

The race usually takes lasts over the course of a twenty-four hour period. A few years back, the Tasman sea experienced some extremely rough storms and fifty-five crewman needed to be rescued, with six people dying, and only one third of the boats even completing the race. So it isn't all mint juleps and sunshine once they get away from the mainland. If you have Google Earth installed, you can get a live feed as well. (This link has been acting a bit buggy, so watch out...)

Next year, we'll have a better understanding of how popular of an event it is and where to strategically place ourselves to gain a better vantage point. If there is a next year, I guess.

posted by ncawthon at 10:00 PM

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Merry Christmas To All and To All, 45spf.

Oh, the feeling of a sunburn on Christmas. Despite my previous post about feeling none of the Christmas love that Sydney had to offer, this Bah Humbug has turned full circle and embraced our Southern brethen to come together and celebrate the day of Santa's birth.

It is true, Australians actually believe in Jesus. We've had a fantastic day spent with good friends, fantastic food and unmatched weather. CiCi, Peggy and I started off by awakening with a mad rush of unwrapping presents and then slowing it down a little to enjoy a leisurly coffee cake, with the grow your own Christmas tree glowing merrily in the corner we dusted ourselves off and got ready for the mass of consumption that was to follow.

We joined our friends Rich and Michelle in Chatswood, which is about 20 minutes north of Sydney, we had a Mexican feast that would rival any taco truck's best effort. They prepared a fantastic lunch of ceviche, shrimp, chicken, beef, swordfish, tamales, rice, beans, the list goes on and on and on. The ten people who were lucky enough to attend this Feliz Navidad were all immobilized by the amount put away.

Then it was down to Bondi, where the apocolypse had come in the form of sunscreen and speedos. Never have I seen such a mass of people all on the beach at one point, just spilling out into the ocean. I would guess several thousand, easily, all soaking up the rays and enjoying a day on the sand. There were Santa's everywhere - surfing, scuba diving, boogie boarding, drinking heavily - and all in costume! We had some friends who had a flat that was right on the rocks in North Bondi, luckily a bit away from the crush of humanity, giving us a bit of breathing room and a little perspective as well of what a fantastic experience this has been so far.

Sydney certainly has built on the momentum of the recent heat wave, really getting into the spirit of all things Summer. I was picked up from Uni on the Santa Bus, surprising to see that it was decorated inside and out by a driver (click picture for a little movie) in a Santa costume with carols playing in the background. She had posted some newspaper articles about the bus, which stated that she arrived ninety minutes early every morning to set things up. Not so co-incidentally, I had turned in a revision to my thesis just minutes before this bus picked me up and I started to feel like the holiday season had finally arrived.

We wrapped up our Christmas by going down to Coogee for some Indian / Chinese / Thai / Kebab eating options, given that those were the only restaraunts open on such a day. Coogee is home to an disproportionatly high amount of British and Irish backpackers / bar employees, so as the sun went down, they all qeued up to phone the UK. A normal, non-descript telephone booth on the corner turned into a busy rush to call home. I've been three times unable to dial England tonight, due to the telephone network being overloaded. Many of the colonialist offspring seem to have the same idea as I have, to try and reach out to their motherland. I guess there's always Boxing Day.

posted by ncawthon at 11:55 PM