Captain’s Log, from the Great Barrier Reef July 19, 2007

(somehow this post got lost in the shuffle…)

Our second day out on the reef. We are on a 3 day, 2 night trip with Pro Dive, one of the more reputable companies out there, or at least we are told by Pro Dive. The boat is in very good shape, comfortably fitting 32 passengers and 7 crew members (one more than the boat’s sleeping facilities could accommodate-not so comfy). They are all in their late 20s/early 30s, clearly here only because they love to dive. Oscar-the 38 year old Polynesian dive master who had tired of his previous career and wanted something more from life. No, he was not an investment banker or tax attorney (sorry Kase), he played professional rugby. We quipped that most people at his age, when having a mid-life crisis, complained that they hadn’t followed a dream, like playing professional sports or living on the Great Barrier Reef leading diving expeditions. Oscar proudly admitted he had never worked a day in his life. On the boat, he is the clear leader of the pack. Then there are Macka and Jade, the course instructors. There is a little tension, as Macka appears to find Jade lazy. But the Australian version of tension among scuba diving professionals is really not very scary. Roger, the tattooed Italian cook, makes 3 meals plus snacks each day, surprisingly gravitating towards Indian cuisine. We eat curry chicken and fresh baked Italian bread, with some American touches, such as chocolate chips on the pumpkin cake (Australian cuisine is very British/American overall).

Their happy days lead me to fantasize about my potential life as a dive master, living on a boat, navigating the reefs for awed tourists. I wonder if the reef gets boring, if after a while you just don’t care to spot Nemo for the 500^th time. Or are these basic dives what they do to make the money for the cool dives, like charting unexplored reef territory, or helping to map out the effects of climate change. In the end I think I’d have to go the academic route and dive as a way to study something. Probably doesn’t matter what and knowing myself, I would probably try to synthesize it with a double major in African economics.

 

½ the people on the boat are doing some sort of certification, either the open water part of their dive course (Tim included) or something more advanced, such as advanced open water or rescue certification. The other ½ are certified divers. These certified divers make a diverse group, with many divers old or young or dorky enough that I initially judged them to be part of the snorkeling contingent. One girl, age about 15 or 16, came on the boat with her teddy bear in hand. Another tween girl with braces came on quarreling with her brother and mother and hasn’t stopped yet (“can you pleeeaase move so I can sit down,” “you’re not supposed to fill out that box,” “I was not out of air, you were looking at the wrong bar”). A skinny 60-something year-old woman with gray hair looked like she for sure would be snorkeling with me, but was in reality a very experienced diver, convincing everyone that the night dive is worth doing. So I was wrong, none of these people were snorkeling. Turns out I am the only one.

I am referred to as “snorkeler,” as in, “hey snorkeler, you’re back,” “hey snorkeler, can you get my glove, I dropped it in the water, ” “hey snorkeler, no wet clothes in the cabin.”

 

Despite my initial misgivings about being the only non-diver, I quickly realized no one cared. I have gone so far in my attempts to rationalize, that I imagine myself as the mascot of the group, not, “the snorkeler,” but “The Snorkeler.” I believe the crew may be a bit protective of me (they gave me a large pink noodle to swim with, one I quickly lost when I dove to see some pretty fish. it quickly blew away with the current and they had to fetch it with the motorboat, “don’t worry snorkeler, we’ll get it”). One benefit of being The Snorkeler is that no one expects much of you. I don’t have to be anywhere for class and no one would be surprised to hear that The Snorkeler didn’t feel like going on the first 6:30AM dive. For instance, the sun just rose and everyone was sent into the black cold water, Tim, as part of his certification and the certified divers because that’s what they love. Brrr… I am in bed listening to Australian talk radio playing in the main cabin and blogging, enjoying the sunrise through my window, considering breakfast, but not before I read a bit of my book.

 

In addition to the added freedoms, I don’t feel like I’m missing too much. Most of the creatures worth seeing are in the top meter or 2 from the surface, swimming around the reef. Plenty of tropical fish, reef animals, even a turtle here and there. I swam alongside a 3 foot green sea turtle for 10 minutes about a foot below the surface before he headed towards what the dive master called, “shark waters,” (like in much of Australia, these close calls with death are given only a casual warning,”a no go.”). During the last dive session, Oscar, our dive master, took me out for a 40 minute personal scuba expedition. It was beyond amazing and kicked snorkeling’s ass. Finally, I was able to breathe comfortably, without inhaling salt water and the weights kept me comfortably in the reef ecosystem. Oscar was a great guide. He had a coke bottle he made crunching sounds with, trying to draw god knows what to us. We played with the creatures that live in the coral: Christmas tree worms, flatworms-they’re prettier than they sound, giant sea clams, jellyfish. A giant tropical fish, maybe 4 feet long, with iridescent blue and purple stripes and eyeballs that looked like cartoon drawings as it surveyed us and its surroundings, swam alongside. Everything looked different from underwater than above, much less 2 dimensional. Now I can see why people scuba.

 

Now the negative. It is cold. Really, really cold. Apparently the water temp is 24 degrees, which is somewhere in the low-mid 70s. While it seemed warm while planning our vacation 1 month ago, it leaves everyone shivering with agony. The outside temp is similar, but the winds are very strong, cooling the sun’s rays. The wet suits never quite dry so it feels like each time you want to be a part of the amazing reef, you first have to torture yourself by stuffing your body into what feels like a cold wet rag. Although in the water, you are usually pretty warm, on my scuba dive, I was shivering for the last 10 min underwater. Some people are much more forgiving towards their environment. But I really don’t like to be cold so this experience is a blend of torture and pleasure. At the end of day, I’m thrilled about what I saw, but I look forward to our next scuba trip in the Cayman Islands.

Here are a few other pictures we liked…

Close-up of a giant clam (multi-colored algae and bacteria grow on their inside):

A really big shark we saw on our last day:

Coral Sea-scape:

 

The Longest Friday the 13th Ever July 14, 2007

This morning I slept in. Today, 7/13/2007, I woke up in Sydney at about 9:15 a.m., with one eye half-open, watching Ania pack our bags in preparation for the never-ending journey back across 14 time zones and 10,000 miles to NYC.

 

That was 27.5 hours ago (1). I am now sitting in San Francisco’s Int’l Airport, enjoying my second bottle of white whine, while Ania shops in duty free. Now I’m not afraid to have a tipple now and again, but two bottles in one day? What gives?

 

Simple. This Friday the 13^th started about 1 ½ days ago, in a bar in Sydney, where Ania and I met up with my friend Ross from Tuck who happened to be (A) in town the same time as we were, and (B) watching a play in the Sydney Opera House the exact same time Ania and I were seeing the Barber of Seville in the main theater there. Any day that lasts this long and involves so much time in an airport is bound to be a bit strange.

 

So, the traditional view of the 13^th day of the month coinciding with the 5^th weekday is that unusual things tend to occur. I’ve never noticed this in my personal experience, but today is perhaps a bit different. For instance, I am not one to miss an airplane. In fact it has never happened to me once in an estimated 100 or so flights taken. So I may not adhere strictly to the “show up 2 hours before int’l flights rule”, but my heart certainly skipped a beat when I opened my computer in the Museum of Australia at 1:15pm (Sydney time) to confirm that our flight was indeed at 5:30, and instead discovered it was actually at a quarter to two. So that was flight #1 that we missed.

 

No biggie. United Airlines routed us through San Francisco instead of L.A.; problem solved. We got the bright idea to go downtown and visit Bartek, who works in S.F. for UBS. Definitely worth the BART trip, but maybe we didn’t need to stop for that latte for 10 minutes before boarding the train back out to SFO. After sprinting 26.2 miles through the airport to make our plane on time, we got to UAL Gate 81 just in time to see the walkway/aerosidewalk/spacetube/whateverthehellyoucallit decoupling from the plane, and us two on the wrong side of it.

 

Let me just take a second to note that, not only do I never miss planes, I hardly ever emit what one might call B.O. Not the case today. I am wearing a brand new Queensland “State of Origin” rugby jersey that is made of a space-age “non-breathable and very heavy” fabric, and I’m sure I offended the ticketing agents in more ways than one when I told them I missed my plane because I was having Thai with my bro-in-lay/coiffing lattes in downtown Frisco.

 

Well we were originally scheduled for a 4pm (Sydney time: 9am tomorrow) flight, but now we are on standby for the 10:15 (Sydney time: Circa Autumn ‘09). But it’s hard to be upset. I’m eating Boudin Sourdough bread, savouring (er, slamming) a fine Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, and waiting for Ania to return from her deluxe voyage into the tax-free wonderland of duty-free. In actuality, I dread Saturday the 14^th. It implies reality, responsibility, us being one step closer to true adulthood and workaday lives. While most people would be severely unsettled by 2 missed flights in one day (on 2 separate continents, no less), I think it is really the ideal way to come back from vacation. Why can’t every vacation have a quick layover in the twilight zone? Just as SCUBA divers need to briefly decompress at 3 meters underwater to rid the intoxicatingly deadly nitrogen from their systems, why can’t every homeward-bound sojourner have an impossibly long Friday the 13^th to help them settle into the reality that is “home”?

(1) Yes, I needed to use a slide rule, a casio digital watch, and Windows’s Clock Time-Zone synchronize function to figure that out…

Port Douglas. Warmth, Finally. July 8, 2007

Finally, after over 2 weeks of rain and cold, we have come to perfect weather. It is 70s, sunny, dry. We flew from Auckland to Cairns, the dive capital of the Great Barrier Reef. After spending one night at the Hilton, we rented a car and drove about 50km north to a smaller beach town called Port Douglas. 20 years ago, it was a small fishing village. Since then, it has transformed itself into a beautiful, natural resort town. The main attraction is 4 mile beach, a long natural stretch of flat beach of white fine sand, flanked by tropical rainforest on edges. I started every morning with an amazing jog up and down the beach, followed by a refreshing swim. There was even yoga on the beach at 8 AM, although I never made it that early. For brekkie, we started off each day with a nice french toast (me) or eggs benedict (Tim) at a café in town. We spent our 3 days relaxing on the beach or hiking. This area of the country is known as tropical North Queensland, and is pretty dramatic. There is the Daintree Rainforest Park, and all over the area there are estuaries where Salt-water Crocs (“Salties”) lurk, as a multitude of signs will warn you. 

Here are a few pictures of our hikes and beach time:

Port Douglas, with 4 Mile Beach in the Background

The Hike up Mount Sorrow

A “rock-hop” (more like a boulder-climb) up Spring Creek to some waterfalls

Kiwi Sport July 4, 2007

Ania and I are in Cairns, Australia right now (edging toward the barrier reef), but since today is one of the first days where we aren’t driving 6+ hours through New Zealand, we figured it’d be a good time to spew out a few thoughts/photos/videos on the other land down under.

So first things first.  Kiwis are mad about sport, but not the same sports I had expected.  Well, I wasn’t too surprised when everyone was pretty fired up about the New Zealand v. Australia rugby fixture (part of the tri-nations cup that also involves S. Africa).  We saw this on tv and it was pretty awesome, not least because the Australians (nat’l team known as the Wallabies) had a pretty dramatic come from behind victory after a late rally over the All-Blacks (the New Zealand nome-de-guerre).  But probably the coolest moment for us was the pre-game pep rally that the All-Blacks do before every game.  It’s called the Haka, and is a basically intact version of a Maori pre-war ritual dance.  Just check it out for yourself… it’s really badass (so much so that other teams have tried to have it banned because it is downright intimidating).  Maybe that’s why the Wallabies got off to a slow start in the match…  It didn’t help that the Aussies followed it up with a less-than-intimidating rendition of Waltzing Mathilda on the P.A. system (no joke).

Ok, what was slightly more surprising was how excited people got about the America's Cup.  Everybody was talking about it.  We were in the country while New Zealand was getting smoked by the Alinghi team from Switzerland.  Every time someone would strike up a conversation with us by asking if we caught the race on the telly, we had to rack our brains remember what they might be talking about. Oh yeah, the yacht-sailing.  We missed that, but sorry to hear you lost a 3rd race in 4 days, mate.  To be fair, the Kiwis have a pretty strong reputation for showing up at major speed-related events, having a noticeable relative lack of resources, and doing alright for a nation of 4 million.  For proof of this, just watch The World's Fastest Indian (great movie).

But what takes the cake is the fact that 3 out of the four times I turned on the tv, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, because grown men in all-black uniforms were playing field hockey. That's right, the sport that you forgot about after you graduated from high school.  Well the most highly televised sport during the 6 days we spent in New Zealand was field hockey (the world championships, to be specific).  We saw New Zealand play Argentina, England get smoked by India, and another game where two guys got carried off the field in stretchers before I even finished my beer. So maybe I shouldn't make fun.

After all, this is a picture of me doing the Haka.  Clearly I am not an authority on "tough":