Christchurch -> Marlborough Valley -> Lake Taupo June 30, 2007

After spending our first NZ night in jail in Christchurch, the weather realized we had arrived, so early the next morning, the skies opened up. It started to rain when we got there and has not yet ceased. However, at some point during trip, we had come to terms with our rainy curse (helllloo Salobrena) and we have embraced the rain as our friend.

It was the first day that I started to feel better, getting over my URI, and spent the morning watching movies in the lobby of the hostel as my stellar husband organized the next part of our trip. Traveling with Tim is amazing. He acts as travel agent, organizing perfectly every part of the voyage quickly, cheaply, and easily. He is a human GPS device, taking one look at a map and memorizing the city layout, not needing to look again. And he is fun and laid back. My contribution is reading OK! magazine, educating Tim on the important cultural events of NZ/Australia, such as the recent 6 million dollar nuptials of Australia’s richest bachelor, James Packer to 29yo model Erica Baxter, in Southern France. I use visual aids, thanks to paparazzi efforts, to illustrate. I use valuable car time to sleep while Tim transports me from city to city. He likes to drive and I like to sleep. Anyway, there is no better way to travel than alongside Tim Hannan. Half way through a fantastic romantic comedy, Tim gave me a freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie and announced that our rental car company had arrived with our car.

We got into our circa 1990 Nissan sedan, seemingly a mirror image of Tim’s high school Honda Accord (with steering wheel reversed) and attached our GPS device (later to be dubbed Debbie), onto the window. Off we were to Marlborough valley, to a fancy hotel Tim booked.

Marlborough valley is a wine growing region in the north-east corner of the South Island. We first learned about it from a wine-tasting course we took in Chicago years ago, taught by one of my closest friends, Megan Libby, now Wiig (Hi Meg!). Meg got a Master’s degree in wines via the French government, a program that took her to all of the world’s wine tasting regions. The first bottle she introduced to the class was a Marlborough valley Sauvignon Blanc, Spy Valley, which soon became our favorite. Since then, we’ve always wanted to make a pilgrimage to Spy Valley.

After a few hours of driving (seemed shorter to me, as I slept ½ the way) over mountains, through valleys, along rocky coastal roads advertising whale watching enterprises, we arrived at a vineyard resort called Vintner’s Retreat. The ranch-style hotel was landscaped with palms and surrounded by miles of vines and further out, mountains. The décor was stylish and modern. Vintner’s Retreat is known for its gourmet food and an amazing amuse bouche welcomed us in our suite, a sampling of sushi, liver pate, sautéed shrimp and champagne. We were one of the few guests staying in the hotel and were treated like royalty. Our package came with a gourmet dinner, daily gourmet breakfasts, and a wine tour of the local wineries. So we quickly ran over to the restaurant for our meal. Tim ordered the lamb, which is probably the national dish, and I got the Blue Cod, a native of NZ, but rare from over-fishing. Our waiter, Rudy, was an older gentleman with a large curled up mustache, the kind you associate with a saloon in the wild west. It was probably the best meal we’d ever had.

The next day, the rains almost flooded our car, but we persevered and went on the wine-tasting trip. The group was led by the only uptight Kiwi alive, a woman in her 60s, obsessed with “the schedule” and intent on insulting members of the group who failed to know the basics of Captain Cook’s contribution to the exploration of the fine land we were touring. Our group consisted of 4 self-proclaimed “young” British students traveling the world for the year (when we asked how they are able to travel for so long, they answered, “we’re young and we’re going to start our own businesses when we get back”…OOOK) and a couple of American girls doing much of the same. The wines were delicious, mostly whites, with descriptions such as “mixture of berry and passion fruit with a hint of hazelnut.” After about the 4^th winery, I had tasted so many I couldn’t keep them straight. I liked nearly all Sauvignon Blancs, the dry Rieslings and Gewurztraminer, but quickly lost the ability to keep them all apart. It all ended with liqueur shots at a store called “the Prenzel.”

Funny thing about Kiwis is that they like to inject a NZ wherever possible. The liqueur shop wanted the name “Pretzel” for some reason but that had been copyrighted so they added an NZ in there and voila. More examples on this later.

The next morning we headed for Lake Taupo, a crater lake created as a result of a massive volcanic eruption 20 million years ago. Tim has a friend from school who is starting a NZ-US electric something or other company (my mind takes a nap when details are being discussed) and was visiting his parents in Lake Taupo. We had a beer with him at night and the next day toured some of the local sites.

One was “the Niagara Falls of NZ”, which although is blue and pretty was a bit of a disappointment to us Americans. Not much compared to Niagara or Victoria Falls in Zambia. Plus, the signage was frustrating and confusing (some analytical description of contributions to percentages of total vs hydro power in the N, S,and both islands…some of which we swore were mutually exclusive) .

Next we walked through “moon craters,” an area of ever-expanding geysers which smelled like rotten eggs (sulfur). Of course it rained, we were soaked, but the impression it left was powerful. Made me think of the article we read about Prince Edward. He was British royal who abdicated his throne for a hussy named Simpson from the States. Before that time however, he had to fulfill his princely duties, one of which was a post-Great War trip to the mourning nation of NZ. He sent pathetically weepy and whiny letters to his lover back in England complaining about the ugly women, the boring men, and stupid people he had to endure. One of his anecdotes said, “they made me stand next to a geyser for an hour, waiting for it to erupt, it never did.” Quite funny, bc I can understand how that might drive an exhausted public official bonkers.

Surfers Paradise June 28, 2007

My cousin (actually distant nephew, my grandfather and his great grandmother were brother and sister, but that’s a lot of family info) Marcin Sosnowski is an ED doc from Britain who recently moved to Wanganui, NZ.  Tim and I were in Brisbane, he was in a beach town about 80 km N of the city doing an EM ultrasound course, so we decided to pay him a visit.  It has been about 6 yrs since I last saw him, at his sister’s wedding in San Antonio, Texas (his sister is an actress, Olga Sosnovska and is married to Sendhil Ramamurthy who plays Mohinder on Heroes).  As Tim has never been to Poland and has met relatively few of my family members from abroad, I was excited for the 2 to meet.  Marcin is a bit older than I am, maybe 12 yrs, but despite that, I have always thought of him and Olga as close family, as everyone in Sopot, Poland seems closer related than they really are.

We stayed at the B&B he was staying in, and talked over sushi and Australian/NZ white wine.  With a room full of EM physicians from all over the world doing an EM course, the conversation was centered around health care.  Frank, from the US, gave the US community medicine point-of-view, which was also new to me as I’ve been in the world of academia for a long time.  What he liked about NZ medicine is that it didn’t bother with all the ridiculous administrative and legal issues the US is burdened with.  For instance, there are nearly no malpractice law suits in NZ, as all complaints are filed with an internal overseeing board, the ACC, which pays out claims.  As a distant option, a case can be taken to court, but this rarely occurs.  Septic vegetative nursing home patients are not brought to the ED to be admitted to the ICU, etc. Marcin chimed in with his similar complaints about the UK system in which everything is pulling teeth.  Both said working in NZ is a wonderful experience. 

The next morning, we went to explore the downtown of Surfer’s Paradise.  We were warned by our Lonely Planet guide and some Aussies that Surfer’s Paradise is a tacky, Florida-like commercialization of what was once a quaint beach town.  Call us tacky Americans, but we really liked it.  The beaches are immense, flat, full of perfectly white fine sand.  The water is aquamarine and warm and the surf is generally quite good.  True, the development is extensive, but pleasant.  Far from the American tackiness we were used to.  Tim had been talking about wanting to learn how to surf in Australia and when we passed by a Learn-how-to-surf booth that just started a lesson, Tim jumped in.  I watched from the beach, dressed in jeans, 4 layers of shirts, and a down vest while he spent 2 hours surfing, doing remarkably well. 

Then off to the airport and NZ. 

Lone Pine Koala Reserve June 26, 2007

Our last day in Australia before heading to New Zealand was a beautiful and sunny one. We went to Lone Pine Koala reserve where we did, in fact, snuggle with Koalas and feed Kangaroos. I was wrong about the Koala Bear on many accounts. First off, it is actually not a bear, but a marsupial, which means that it keeps its babies in a pouch for a while, except that the pouch is upside down. It opens from the bottom. They are also much, much smaller than I imagined, approximately a foot in length when snuggled. And snuggled they are. Amazingly, they spend 20 hours of the day sleeping as a perfectly curled up ball, on a branch, near a eucalyptus leaf. All of their body parts look like they have been whittled away by time so that every part fit onto itself. The end result is more like a fuzzy gray volleyball than an animal. Apart from the 20 hours of sleeping, the other 4 hours of the day are spent eating leaves. The word Koala means “never drink” because they rarely come down to drink, getting most of their water needs from the leaves. Far from being evil, as I suspected, they are too sleepy to be anything but adorable. I will admit, sorry Munchkin, that they may even hold the title as the only animal cuter than Rio. Holding one was a highlight of the trip.

Next was the feeding of the kangaroos. The whole enterprise was very un-American in its lack of supervision, administration of rules, and absence of exorbitant costs. For $1, you were given a bag of pellets and were sent off into a large unsupervised enclosure full of the little hoppers. Laying in the sun, hopping off to the distant corners, drinking from the troughs, large, small, gray, brown, the place was full of kangaroos whose general attitude towards the visitors and their food was tolerance. They were similar to deer, as I imagined, not at all scared. (Tim disagrees and thinks they were more similar to mice, one of the first European descriptions of kangaroos was a that of an 80lb hopping mouse) We saw a couple of mommies with Joeys (baby kangaroos) in their pouches. To our surprise, all you see is one long skinny leg sticking straight out of the belly and at first we thought it might be a mutant kangaroo.

Other animals in the reserve: wombats, dingos, cockatoos, snakes, crocs. They were ok, but not worthy of mention in my opinion.

Brisbane June 25, 2007

 

We took a 5 hr bus from Hervey Bay to Brisbane yesterday. Met a Sikh Brit who was traveling the world for the last 5 months. Bought an around-the-world ticket and had visited India and Thailand, currently visiting Australia/NZ for a couple of months, then will be off to Fiji and the Cook Islands, finishing off with the US. Some kind of independently employed lawyer. In fact, the more people we meet, the more we realize that nearly everyone is traveling for a period of “months” and not “weeks” like us. Most of the Australians we met had spent 3 or 4 months just in the US in the past few years. We know that only because it easily comes up in conversation and we don’t even want to ask where else they’ve voyaged. Makes our 3 ½ weeks seem more like a pathetic long weekend than the luxurious sabbatical we imagined. I will refrain from the nagging rhetorical question I always pose to myself, why do we Americans work so hard?

 

Brisbane is Australia’s 3^rd largest city, a pretty cool and laid back town on the Sunshine coast, that typically gets great fantastic weather year-round. We’ve come here mostly because we want to meet up with my cousin Marcin who lives in NZ and is doing some kind of medical course in a town near here called Surfer’s Paradise.

 

Still raining in Brisbane, still cold. Apparently it is the wettest and coldest “winter” this tropical part of the country has seen in 50 years, or something ridiculously similar. Instead of the typical 70s weather and sunshine of what is known as the “Sunshine Coast”, we’ve been hit with weeks of torrential downpours. To really pour salt in our vacationing wounds, there are signs in every hotel bathroom urging guests to limit their showers to 4 minutes as Queensland is experiencing severe drought. At least take the signs down people!

 

Luckily, we’re staying in a fantastic hostel in the “valley” neighborhood of Brisbane. Apparently this is a hipster area, although we haven’t ventured past the little Chinatown we’re situated near. The rain has kept us from exploring. It’s called Bunk hostel and has a great bar, hot tub, has outdoor movie showings every night (under a tent, obviously). We’ve met some cool people, as everyone is huddled indoors.

 

One of the biggest attractions of the area, as far as I’m concerned, is the largest koala sanctuary which lies on the outskirts of the city. Apparently, you can hold a koala and feed kangeroos. As we have seen very little wildlife so far, this is going to be amazing. By the way, despite their cute portrayal in cartoons, koalas are freaky looking bears. They have evil eyes, I have always thought, and claws that could rip into deep fascia. So holding a koala will be interesting. It is believed (although debated) that koala brains are proportionally too small for their craniums, an evolutionary adaptation. In terms of energy conservation, koalas have had to chose whether to expend energy into digesting toxic eucalyptus leaves or brainpower and brainpower lost. So not only are they ferocious but also dumb. Kangeroos, I have been told, are similar in disposition to deer. Their hopping is also an evolutionary adaptation, as it requires less energy than running over the long distances they need to cover to forage for food. But more on this tomorrow.

Don’t let Aussies flatter you June 24, 2007

Overall, the Aussies have to be the nicest and most laid-back people on this Earth. Nothing is ever a problem and their motto seems to be “No worries mate”. They say this every other sentence and they mean it. Don’t these people have normal problems? Fights with their wives, mortgages, busy schedules, illness? It’s hard to imagine. Always smiling and ready to talk to you at length about anything. Usually the conversation turns to America once they hear we’re from NYC. “I spent 6 months touring the States, bloody great” is a common follow up statement. Of course, Aussies don’t take their jobs seriously enough to not quit and travel for a period of time only depending on how far their money takes them.

After a while, you kind of get into the spirit. Start waving and smiling to everyone. Even throw in a “no worries mate” once in a while. Sometimes find yourself imitating an Australian accent. The whole mindset is quite contagious. The ways of Bellevue and NYC seems far away. “How could I have been so rude?” you think remembering your normal interactions in the hospital, on the streets, in stores. Boy, am I bitch. “After you mate,” you say as you let someone walk in front of you. You pledge to bring this happy new you with you back home.

It was with this ridiculous high that I stook in line buying rugby tickets. Tim and I had just gotten off the bus after a 4 hour ride. Upon our arrival in Brisbane, we noticed hoards of people piling into the streets and onto a bus heading towards something called SunCorp stadium. The Brisbane Broncos were playing the West Sydney Tigers. In a bout of spontaneity, we put our bags in a locker and followed suit. The line at the ticket counter was long. Being Polish, queuing was in my blood and as a true pole always will, I determined which line was moving fastest and Tim and I split up, seeing who got to the front first. Of course, it was me. I was so proud. One away from the counter, already knowing I was going to buy the “maroon, 2 adult” package, holding the aussie money in hand, I was distracted by a bloke behind me asking something incomprehensible. He was holding a piece of ripped up newspaper asking me something, “sorry I don’t understand.” It was times like these when I wondered at how different our 2 dialects of English really were. It eventually became apparent he wanted me to say I was buying 1 child’s ticket to get one of his kids in free. With his ripped out coupon, this kid would be free as a part of my ticket. I just had to buy his “white, adult and child” ticket (fine, I wasn’t that adamant about the maroon tickets, although they were a bit better situated). Then it turned out we all have to buy our tickets together so they can sit in a group. Then it turned out the woman at the counter had issued me 2 kids, 1 adult instead of 2 adults, 1 kid but didn’t know how to refund me. Had to ask her friend. Gave me some money. Before I knew it, she was handing me some coins, taking some of my bills. It’s times like these when I feel like a foreign fool, not knowing the money and not understanding anything anyone is saying to me. After 10 or 15 minutes of mass confusin between me, her, the Aussie, his kids, his friend in which everyone was short some amount of dollars and no one was issued any tickets, it became apparent that ½ the game was already over and all the other lines around us had dissipated. I had been passed by everyone and was still on line confused about what had happened. I just wanted my ticket damn it. It was a very unpolish moment of me.

The aussie who had previously complemented me on how very unamerican and friendly I was being by helping him out, suddenly turned a bit self-concerned. He wanted his money and his ticket and didn’t care too much about what happened to us.

How very unaussie of him.

Rainy Fraser Island = Not Bad After All June 23, 2007

It was worth it once we got to the hotel. Too bad we’re leaving so soon…

Our original idea was to rent a Land Rover, take a barge over to Fraser Island, and camp on the beach for a few nights. Fraser Island is supposed to be a magical place – sunny year round, a balmy island made completely of sand, boasting attractions like Champagne Pool and Cathedral Beach. Getting out of the airplane in Hervey Bay quickly changed our perception of the magic. It wasn’t until we got into the terminal and our avuncular windbag of a chauffeur stonily told us that it was the coldest weather on record for over 90 years. Since we cut Sydney short in order to flee to warmer northern climes, this was NOT good news.

I’ll spare you the details of how Ania and I blamed each other for something that was patently neither of our faults. The upshot is that we did get the Land Rover (vintage: circa 1982), spent a few hours waiting for our barge, and headed across the Sandy Straits to Fraser, minus a lot of camping equipment that we both agreed would not be necessary on this trip. We were instead heading for the eco-resort at Kingfisher Bay, booked at last minute internet rates from the car rental agent’s laptop computer.

Now, I’ve driven on some pretty bumpy roads before. That definitely did not prepare me for what was in store for us on the drive from the dock to the hotel. It took us nearly a half-hour to drive ten or so kilometers, which I guess works out to us driving about 2.7 miles-per-hour. A picture tells a thousand words, and a video even more, so just check out this clip on YouTube to get a sense of what I mean…

Before I explain how nice the resort was, I want to back up and synopsize our day up until when we checked in. We woke up at 1am yesterday morning due to jetlag and could not fall back asleep. The heat in our YWCA hostel was not working at all, so we laid huddled under the blankets waiting for sleep to return until 5:30, when it was time to wake up, pack, and head to the airport. After a picturesque flight, complete with views of empty white sandy beaches all the way from Sydney to Hervey Bay, we were pretty crabby to find the weather windy and frigid. The next few hours were spent having our chauffeur/car rental agent alternate between explaining our rental agreement and all the wonderful things we could do on the island if the weather didn’t totally suck.

Getting to the hotel changed our mood completely. Because of the weather, Kingfisher Bay Hotel is basically empty right now, and as a result, completely peaceful and relaxing. In a word, vacation-like. Not only that, but it is a legitimate eco-resort – you get that sense just by walking around and seeing the low impact it has on the eucalyptus forest it is planted in the middle of.So after a quiet night of reading, having a few beers, sacking out and actually sleeping through the night, we were fully ready for today’s adventure.

Again, the weather sucked, but that wasn’t the point at all. We spent the entire day either beating the crap out of our remarkably sturdy vehicle on jungle rut-roads and beach dunes, or sipping amazing lattes, cappuccinos, and “flat-white” coffee at various oases of civilization around the island. At one point, while Ania was driving, we “accidentally” jumped a dune so fast that all we could see out the windshield for a split second was gray sky, then lots of sand, and then we were cruising right along again. I glanced down and saw the car’s ashtray sitting in Ania’s lap. At one point, I noticed the driver’s side windshield wiper was missing. We stopped, looked around, and saw it just lying on the hood of the car, completely detached from the car. I’m not a car guy at all, but one thing I do appreciate about these old cars is that while they are easy to break, they are also very easy to fix. We plugged the wiper back on, stuck the ashtray back in its socket, and got right back on our way.

Tomorrow will be another day of exploring the island and doing some eco-tourist stuff organized by the hotel. They even offer a tour of the solid waste and sewerage management facilities, which we will most likely miss. But it’s nice to know they really care about that sort of thing.

We still haven’t figured out our next destination. Maybe Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef, maybe Bali, maybe Ayers Rock or a road trip through the Outback. We’ll figure it our tonight over some beers and Wi-Fi. This is definitely how our kind of traveling – weather be damned.

Day 2- Sydney Fish Market June 21, 2007

We read in the guidebook that you can get fresh cuts of salmon and tuna right off the fish.  So on the second day of our trip, as soon as we could change hotels (Wake Up! Hostel was predictably a bit loud during the night), go to the gym (Australians apparently take their gyms seriously, this one was amazing), and shower, we were off for lunch. Took us a while to get there, as it’s not a typical tourist destination and requires the crossing of a highway among some other subterranean maneuvering.  Somehow, when we got there, we missed the entire food court-like hangar with a myriad of prepared fish dishes.  We instead headed for the fish market on the wharf intended for chefs and Aussies throwing large dinner parties (this became apparent when everyone was asking for items in the dozens).  It was full of the most amazing seafood I have ever seen, all ridiculously fresh.  Oysters, crabs, shrimp, squid, octopus (baby and adult) and many many strange things we had never seen before.  After some looking around, we got about 8 slices of fresh salmon, 6 oysters in a half shell, salmon roe, soy sauce, lemon and seaweed salad.  Looking around for a place to sit, we noticed a hangar with a souvenir shop and some neon lights behind it, shaped like a fish.  Duh, the food court.  With our more authentic spoils, we bought a couple of beers and sat down to enjoy.  The oysters were fantastic, buttery in taste and texture, a bit bitter, so fresh.  Doused with lemon.  The salmon, dipped in roe and soy.  Tim went back for Tuna and I bought a half a lobster baked with a cheese on top.  I was in culinary heaven.  On our way out, a Chinese guy was vomiting in a garbage can, I hoped he was just one of those odd people, like my mother, who were nauseated by the even the smell of fish. 

I realized today that I would thrive in Sydney. The food is sea-based, the beaches dog friendly, the apartment prices reasonable (I could buy a one bedroom for 300,000 bucks).  The only problem is that it’s so far away from the rest of the world as I know it (sure it may be close to Nanjing, but I really don’t care). 

We took a cab back to the touristy part of Sydney to “The Rocks,” the old part of town which was once the heart of the city.  Now it houses Gucci and establishments named things like “Bakery Boys.”  I swear, there are more café’s in Sydney than all of Italy and France combined.  And they do their coffee right-thick, creamy with a thick foam on top.  Until 5 that is because apparently it is untimely to drink coffee after that hour.  All the espresso places seem to close simultaneously and between the hours of 5 and 6 when restaurants open, there is no place to go but bars.  Which would be fine except that there are not that many and they still allow smoking. 

Tim and I hit “sydney’s oldest pub”, the Fortune of War.  It commemorates the olden days, the golden era of Sydney.  A Wanted poster on the wall promised a fine of 4000 pounds for the head of Ned Kelly, Australia’s Billy the Kid (a murderous thug who deserved to be hanged and was.)  He was a beloved outlaw in a land where only outlaws became heroes. 

Got a beer and read until I started falling asleep, it being already 4 pm, just shy of bedtime.  Tim basically had to carry me to a café called “café Brothers” and hook me up to a cappuccino IV.   I tried to read my Bryson book but was a bit bored with it out of my mind (Bryson has so far gone to every place in Australia where I will not be going, hence my level of interest is subject to waning).  The TV was distracting me, showing weird beach-related competitions around the world:  Maine’s lobster-eating contest (lobster is not the kind of food that should be speed-eaten in mass quantities), Australia’s beach dog competitions which despite the reasonable expectation that it would involve dogs competing actually entailed men racing each other, while holding their dogs, Daytona beach’s life guard competition of manly-looking women.  Odd show, although so far Australian TV has been a disappointment.  Still, it turned my thoughts to warmer climates.  I longed for Sydney to transform itself just for one day into the beach town it is legendary for.   

Tomorrow, we are headed for Fraser Island, in the warmer climates.  It’s the world’s largest sand island and allegedly contains more sand than the Sahara desert.  It is always lauded as one of Australia’s greatest attractions.  It will be part two in my series of “Things that can kill you in Australia or look like they want to.”  When the lonely planet makes says things like, “man-eating sharks make this a definite no-no” and “once and for all, it was settled that dingos feed on humans” (here lies the origin on the famous Seinfeld quote, “maybe the dingo ate your baby!”, more later)…you know this is going to be a good trip.  So of course, we are rending a Land Rover and camping for 3 days…

Kicking off the Antipodal Vacay June 20, 2007

The first moment of our trip was stepping out of my parents’ home in Mountain Lakes with our wheel-y luggage and walking towards the bus stop on the Boulevard.  This bus would take us to Port Authority in NYC where we would catch a bus to JFK airport.  We were already exhausted after spending the last week moving Tim into our apartment in NYC (he just graduated from business school at Dartmouth in NH, where he had been living for the last 2 years) and preparing it to be subletted on Craigslist.  I was sick, caught Tim’s URI.  So before we even started, we were TIRED. 

Somehow, it was amazing that walking out the front door was the first step to seeing kangeroos.  Australia was the winner among many destinations which we had considered-Poland, Ireland, Maine, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea.  So after months of deliberating, then weeks of anticipation, and 0 days planning, we were off.  All we knew was that we were flying into Sydney on the 20^th and flying out 3 weeks later.   Vague plans included a couple of days in Sydney, a camping trip on Fraser Island, a scuba trip in the Great Barrier Reef, visiting my cousin in New Zealand.  I was also pushing for warmer climates; it is currently winter in Australia and we had heard some passing news on NPR that Sydney and all of New South Wales, the southeastern coast, were experiencing flooding and cyclones.  Didn’t look into it much, but I was sure this was going to be Salobrena – Part Deux.  Salobrena will forever in my mind represent a misguided vacation, a vacation version of the real world.  Take 7 people who either don’t know or like each other, 2 of them ex-military/CIA,  put them in a house with no heat, in the middle of what is supposed to be a cool March of 60 and 70 degree weather but is actually a very wet (worst rains in 50 years) and cold 40s,  take away 1 rental car, add the Spanish language barrier and one stinky pizza and you have Salobrena, Spring break 2006. One lesson I learned was weather, weather, weather. 

I also considered my warm climate locations more exotic.  As Tim put it, my biggest problem with Australia was so many white people.  It’s true.  After 30 hours of travel, 24 of which were at 600miles/hr, I expected to be a bit disappointed to see people who look like me, newspapers in English discussing Desperate Housewives, and winter. 

Indonesia-Bali, Sumatra, Java not only sounded delicious, but would also be more interesting. 

I got vetoed.  We barely had enough time to do Australia, much less Australia, NZ, and Indonesia.  It was true, we needed at least 6 months for everything we needed to do. We decided to spend however long we felt like in the tropical Northeast “sunny coast” and as long as I saw Kangeroos, Koalas, some Aborigines and Maori, I was happy. 

So we were off. 

On the bus ride, I started reading about corporate interest in reducing global warming, the topic of the first of the many Economists I brought.  Tim was reading about New Zealand, I felt a bit guilty for not being more in the moment and picked up Bill Bryson’s Sunburnt Country. 

The ride was over soon and before I led us to the subway to take the E train to the whatever to the whatever, Tim proposed we check to see if there are shuttles to JFK.  In my cynical, Bellevue-jaded way, I responded, “that would make too much sense.” He was right and off in comfort, we rode out to JFK.  At JFK we waited an hour or so.  Flew to San Fran, waited 30 min, and were off on our 15 hr flight to Sydney.  At this point, we had been traveling for 10 hours already.  Surprisingly, the flight was quite bearable.  A couple of movies, some Economists, Sunburnt Country, sleep, Economist, food, sleep, food, bathroom and we arrived.  We were a bit disappointed when we landed. 

It looked cold and gray.  It was raining.  We queued up at the Taxi stand and were picked up by a Ghanian driver in a nice leather-seated car, being driven on the wrong side of the road, on the wrong side of the car.  At some point, it occurred to us that only island nations stayed with the original “wrong side of the road/car” driving- England, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia….  Probably because you can’t drive to it.  They are automotively isolated and hence can do what they want.  Ghana is in the commonwealth, along with Australia, India, South Africa, and recently readmitted Pakistan.  Which doesn’t seem to be of much significance except for the existence of the Commonwealth Games which include Anglo sports such as cricket and whatever else these ex-colonies enjoy.  Apparently, this is a global event of much anticipation. 

The driver had left Ghana in 1979 as had most of his family.  Coming to Australia was fairly easy, he stated.  Based on some point system in which the more points the better, you got 75 points just for speaking English and some other amount for being from a commonwealth member.  If you made it to a 100 points, you could be an Australian.  According to his estimate, there are about 200,000 Ghanians in Sydney. Seemed like a pretty unassuming endeavor but actually immigrating to Australia has historically been nearly impossible.  Separated by 15,000 miles from its motherland, England, it took 4 months for the initial convicts, military and family, navy, etc to make to the sunburnt coast (amazing on this voyage was that only one dude was no associated with any of that, the only civilian…I would pay to find out what the hell he was thinking).  For the next couple hundred years, other than being lured by a gold rush that occurred approximately the same time as the one in California, not many people wanted to come to Australia.  Definitely no non-whites were allowed.  It wasn’t until after WWII when Australia realized that it needed to increase its population if it were to survive that they expanded their pedigree (England had abandoned Australia to fend for itself against the Japanese after losing Burma and Singapore and pulling out of the Far East).  The zeal for immigration meant more Italians and Greeks and the White Australia immigration policy lasted until the 70s.  It was apparently this time that the Ghanians were welcomed. 

 The Ghanian and Tim talked Socceroo, my new favorite word.  What is known all over the world as football is called soccer here, as in the States, and the national team is the Socceroos (maybe like ‘roos..the short for kangeroos? just a guess).  I am always impressed when Tim corrects foreigners on the details of this sport.  In this instance, he corrected the driver about the outcome of a Ghana-US game (although the US lost, we had gotten a goal, a point of disagreement until the driver conceded).  It reminded me of a conversation Tim had in Aruba with a Dutch guy from a small town in the Netherlands.  Tim educated him, much to his surprise, on the history, stats, challenges and hopes of his local small town soccer team, unheard of by many Dutch. 

Then the topic changed to what I considered a more pertinent-the weather.  Has been raining for weeks, flooding in fact.  Cold.  Winds today expected to reach 100 km/hr.  Tim and I exchanged sad yet falsely encouraging glances, “hey, we’re still going to have some fun.”  All I need is to curl up with a good book, right? After all, this vacation is about relaxation.  I just finished my intern year and just need to rest.  Another part of me was screaming, GO TO BALI! Get rid of the wheel-y suitcase, buy a real backpack, enjoy the last of your 20s…you need to be free!  I was so tired and hadn’t slept.  Tim refers to this state of mine as “getting my grump on.”  Usually completely reversible with sushi, some chocolate, and a nap.

We arrived at Wake Up! Hostel (already with my grump on, this name irritated me) and had to wait 4 hours to check in (grump is definitely on).  Still raining, still cold.  While Tim did something online (I assume it had to do with planning our vacation) I checked my email, wrote a few woeful words to friends and signed off.  We dumped our bags in the storage room and got some coffee at the hostel café. 

Australians do their coffee right.  We opened up a newspaper…this was the wettest and coldest June in 57 years.  Sounded like Salobrena (“I’ve been living in Southern Spain  since the 70s and have never seen it rain so much, the cactuses are dying.)  We realized we had a gift.  If doctoring and banking failed, we would become Drought Busters.  It would be an exciting life of travel and intense heat and sunshine relieved by soothing rains. 

My grump continued until the dim sum.  The Australians apparently eat dim sum, called yam cha, for brunch like we do eggs benedict.  Tim’s mom gave us a Travel & Leisure article on Sydney’s restaurants before we left which recommended a dim sum place near our hotel.  As advertised, it was a large ball-room type of room, seating up to 600 people, carpeted in red, and in served us the most amazing dim sum I had ever had…delicious ricecake outer shell with fresh seafood and veggie fillings, jasmine tea, and mango pancakes for desert.  It combined the efficiency of East (my go-to sushi rotating bar restaurant in NYC) with the deliciousness of Pacific Rim cuisine.  Grum is off.  

After breakfast, we checked into the hotel and went for what most people suffering from severe jetlag and 30 hours of travel do- a long exploratory run.  We put on our Brooks and headed off to explore the city in the only way that would fend off a likely narcoleptic coma on a bus.  Ran through a beautiful park, Hyde Park and to the Botanical Gardens.   More on the details of this another time.  The things we saw there are a topic all of their own and will be listed under a different column called, “Things that can kill you in Australia or look like they want to.”  Suffice it to say, this was no Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. 

The rest of the run took us to the Harbour and in view of the beautiful Opera House.  We ran through the Opera House, under the Harbour Bridge, on “The Rocks,” got some food, drank some coffee, and headed back home.   

As packed as this day was, we could not get over how slowly time was passing.  After all this, we had barely made it to 4pm.  It just wasn’t possible, as we felt we had been out all day, had toured through all of Sydney, exercised, read in cafes. 

We did dinner at the Dr. Seuss sounding, Spice I Am, again recommended by Travel and Leisure.  Spice it was. Damn.  I couldn’t eat more than the “little bit spicy,ok?” seafood soup or the “not spicy” papaya salad..my lips had never and for this long burned so badly.   But the beef dish was out of this world and overall, we were extremely impressed and happy.  We passed out at home at a pathetic 7pm at our hostel. 

Overall, it was an amazing first day of the vacation.