Australia wrap-up

The second part of my Outback tour was touted as being the most boring tour in all of Australia by our tour guide. He said this because there just isn't that much to see or do between Alice Springs and Darwin, just a whole lot of red sand, bushes and a few rocks. But luckily for us, he was a really good tour guide who made an effort to keep it interesting, even if there was a lot of driving involved.

The best stop of the tour was at Devil's Marbles, basically a bunch of huge rocks sitting in the Outback as if they had been placed there by some unknown giants. We scrambled around the rocks, taking amazing pictures at all the best photo ops. It's at one of these photo ops that I had my latest mishap that of course, I'd love to share with you.

Carl, our tour guide, proposed that we take a group photo on top of a big rock. He then looked at me and amended that, hum, maybe we'd be better off taking the photo in front of the rock, not on top of it. You see, the thing was that you actually had to leap onto the rock from a lower rock a few feet away. Imagine, to think he actually doubted my ability to get on the rock! The cheek of him! So of course, I say no, no, I can do it. Or at least try to do it. And of course, what was bound to happen happened. I didn't quite make it far enough, went "splat" onto the rock, lost my shoe somehow (???) and was flat on the rock desperately trying not to fall off like my shoe did. I basically had to scrape myself up onto my knee and then scramble safely onto the rock. I survived, but managed to scrape my knee pretty good. But someone was kind enough to retrieve my shoe from down between 2 rocks, so all was well. Hopefully the pictures will be worth it...

The third and final part of my tour was a 3-day sprint around Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks, way up top near Darwin. I say near Darwin, but really, nothing in Australia is really near anything else, so again, there was a lot of driving involved. This is also where I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Here are some highlights:

• Dragged my ass on an what should have been an easy 3.5 km walk to get to a swimming hole, wearing my fly net the whole time and still getting freaked out by the amount of flies around my face.
• Cooled down in the swimming hole for a while, then dragged my a** back from the swimming hole, this time twisting my ankle, falling and scraping the other knee that had so far been intact.
• Went on a guided night walk through the forest on Xmas Eve, looking for snakes, spiders and crocodiles. Found 2 out of 3 (no snakes) but as an added bonus had my first experience with leeches!
• Had a huge traditional Xmas lunch on our tour, with ham, turkey, chicken, salads, ... all the while fighting off the biting ants and coping with heat.
• Went to another swimming hole after Xmas lunch to cool down again, only to be nibbled on 3 times by biting fish! On my disgusting wounded knee that still won't heal in all this heat and humidity! Arggg!
• Finished off Xmas day by going out to dinner in Darwin with the gang from our tour. Somehow, we didn't get the memo that most restaurants would be closed on Christmas Day. Who knew! ;-) Ended up having an excellent (not) Chinese/Italian take-away meal with the gang.

So, all in all I had a great time in the Australian Outback and a good Christmas as well. I have to admit that my comfort level was severely tested during these 2 weeks, and I'm surprised that I managed as well as I did. But now, I am honestly quite pooped. It was great, and I would recommend it to anyone, but I also find that 2 weeks is a long time to be on a tour. I've realised that tours are great for meeting people, but the downside is that I don't have as much independence as I'd like. You have to pace yourself with the group, which in my case is way faster than what I'm comfortable with. A bit tiring for me, but also worth it in the end.

So as I'm writing this, I have now made my way to my first stop in Asia: Singapore! Free Internet at the hostel (cool!) and still hot & humid weather (oh well).

I wish you all a Happy New Year. Hopefully, 2008 will bring you all the best!

An update from the middle of nowhere!

I had a great week on my tour from Adelaide to Alice Springs. This is exactly what I wanted to see of Australia, and I have not been disappointed. It's vast, empty, harsh, hot and so very different from anyplace I've ever seen. From the news I get from home about the snow piling up non-stop in Montreal, I really can't think of anyplace more different than where I am now! By the way, I hope you are all surviving winter so far. I feel for ya! :-)

The first part of my tour covered the trip from Adelaide to Alice Springs, the aforementioned "middle of nowhere". For 6 days, we drove anywhere from 3 to 7 hours a day through the desert, stopping at interesting places along the way for walks or for taking pictures. The highlights for me were Uluru (amazing!) and Kata Tjuta (even prettier than Uluru).

It was also quite the experience for me, with firsts like camping under the stars and sharing duties with 24 strangers for 6 days straight. The group was actually really good, and I met some really nice people. The camping was OK, although I can't say that I'm a fan of feeling dirty all the time (red sand & dust from the desert that covers you from head to toe) nor of sleeping without a pillow. And the showers, well, I'll just leave that to your imagination. Let's just say I am becoming an expert at scanning for bugs like centipedes and cockroaches while rinsing the shampoo from my hair. And I now know to look under the bed for dead mice before going to sleep in an underground cave. Loads of fun! :-)

I promised my sister Julie that I wouldn't complain of the heat, since she is freezing her butt off in Quebec and is not loving the early start to winter you've been getting this year. So this is not a complaint, I swear, it is simply a statement of fact: The Outback is HOT! On the few days where the sun was shinning full blast, you felt like you were baking in the sun. To give you an idea of how hot and dry it gets, when I washed my hands at one of our rest stops, I left the toilet without drying my hands (no towels or dryer) and within 5-10 seconds, my hands were bone dry! I was so amazed, I wet them again just to count how long it took to dry them, and didn't make it to 10 seconds. A bit geeky of me, but I thought it was so cool! And we were quite lucky with the weather, since it wasn't that sunny all the time. We had a few days of clouds, and some rain, and without them, I don't know how I would have managed not to get heat or sunstroke. It's also why most days on the trip start out really early (like as early as 3:45 AM!), so that you can get activities done early in the day before it gets to hot. The hottest parts of the day were spent sitting on a very old, uncomfortable but luckily air-conditioned bus.

I am now in Alice Springs until tomorrow, when the 2nd part of my tour starts. I will probably not be in contact until the day after Christmas, so I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!!! Enjoy this time with your respective families, and stay safe!

As for me, I will probably be missing home a bit next week, but I still appreciate every minute of this trip I'm doing. No regrets or complaints from me!

Merry Christmas!!!

Road trip!

My last week started off on a bit of a low, having arrived in Melbourne to find that the hostel I managed to book myself into the day before was a bit scuzzy and sooo not my style. Added to that was me worrying about my plans (i.e. didn't have any yet) for the rest of my time in Australia. This planning as I go along will get some getting used to, but hopefully I'll be an expert at it by the time my trip ends.

I ended up spending my time in Melbourne going to the movies twice ("Death at a funeral" - very funny English movie, "Into the Wild" - liked it a lot) and spending hours on the Internet getting some stuff settled. So don't ask me what I thought of Melbourne, I can't really form an opinion based on what I did or saw... Just don't stay at the Nomads Industry hostel if you come here, although to be fair I've heard that most hostels in Melbourne are of the same quality.

So, once I made some plans, I was ready to move on. I spent a couple of days in Phillip Island, south of Melbourne. This is where the world-famous (at least now it is!) Penguin Parade happens every night. Those of you who've read my previous post about penguins realise that this would be a draw to me, having the chance to some again. This time, the "penguin parade" was a very touristy attraction, with hundreds of people paying good money to sit in a stand on the beach waiting for the penguins to return from the sea at nightfall. It looked more like a "tourist parade" at one point... But when the sun sets, hundreds upon hundreds of penguins make there way from the sea to their little nests on the beach. It really was an amazing site, these cute little 30-cm penguins waddling up from the ocean!

Phillip Island is also where I was introduced to the joys of summer in Australia. No, I'm not talking about the beautiful beaches, although there were plenty, nor the hot weather or blue ocean. No, I'm talking about the bloody Australian flies. You see, there is this well kept secret about Australia that I learned only once I got here. I was warned about the snakes, spiders, killer jellyfish, crocodiles, ... before my arrival, but no one ever mentioned anything about the flies. What's so bad about flies, you ask? Let me tell you, these are not your typical Quebec black flies that buzz in your ear once in a while and move on. These are disgusting, sticky little black flies that Will. Not. Leave. You. Alone. They fly around your face, trying to get into any orifice they can. These charming flies particularly enjoy the eyes, nose, ears and mouth, and nothing will deter them in their quest to drive you absolutely crazy. The only thing that keeps them somewhat away from your face is doing the Aussie wave, also known as the Aussie salute. A constant "whoosh-whooshing" movement in front of your face.

So there I was on Phillip Island, ready for a nice day at the beach. I had packed myself a little picnic lunch, a good book and had big plans for snoozing the afternoon away. I got to the beach, sat down and lasted 30 minutes before I realised I couldn't take it anymore. My hands were cramping up from waving all the time, I couldn't get a bite of my lunch without having 10 flies hovering around my mouth and when I tried to lay down and ignore them, they just had a field day trying to get to my brain through my ears (or so it felt like to me). I gave up and headed to the shops were at least the number of flies would be a bit more manageable, but not before I managed to make a complete fool of myself by having a meltdown right on the main street. As I was waving my hand frantically in front of my face, one fly got to my eye, even behind my sunglasses. I freaked and threw off the sunglasses, which also sent my hat and hairband flying. I was not a happy camper. Then I noticed I had attracted a bit of an audience, so I started laughing. Better that than going absolutely nuts, which is what I felt like doing. The flies have not gotten any better since then, but I think I've adapted now. The Aussie wave is now an automatic thing when I'm outside, so much so I think I may be waving in my sleep...

Next up after Phillip Island was a 3-day road trip from Melbourne to Adelaide, via the Great Ocean Road. I was very excited to drive in Australia, to see if driving on the left-hand side would come back to me quickly (I'd done it before when I worked in the UK for 6 months). It did, and it sure felt good to be behind the wheel of a car, that much I can say! Driving on the left didn't prove to be to much of a challenge, and shifting gears with my left hand is actually more natural to me than the right. What did prove to be a challenge was using the "flicker" to signal a turn instead of using the windshield wipers all the time (the windshield wipers are on the left of the steering wheel, where my "flicker" would be at home). I think I started getting the hang of it on my 3rd day. The drive on the Great Ocean Road is absolutely beautiful. I took so many pictures, it'll take me hours to upload them. Very much worth the while!

I had to upgrade my living arrangements for those few days on the road, since I was travelling during "schoolies" week. "Schoolies" is the Australian version of Spring break for the recent high school graduates. They head "en masse" to the beach, taking up every budget accommodation possible. So I had to upgrade to motels, or else sleep in the car. Not a difficult decision to make! Especially since next up for me is a 2-week tour of the Outback, including 6 nights of camping under the stars!

I hope all of you are enjoying Xmas time at home. I have to admit it is just not the same being so far away and being in a warm climate for Christmastime. Hearing "Jingle Bells" on the radio whilst sweating in 30C weather is just too bizarre for me...