Australia, finally!
NEW ZEALAND | Thursday, 1 April 2010 | Views [557]
4/2/2010 12:10 AM
Well. Ha. It has been a very fun past few days, but there have still been a few timing issues that have stuck with us. I’ll recap chronologically, from when I left off on Tuesday, 3/30...
We spent the rest of the day on the streets of Sydney, walking to various shops, etc. We didn’t buy much of anything, but I did manage to pick up a cool pair of Quicksilver board shorts. I brought two with me, but one has a hole in the bottom, and the other has a lingering sulfur smell that I’m hoping will go away. So … in the meantime … a new pair of boardshorts were in order. What sold me on this pair was that they have new “technology” in them so they are very soft and don’t get too heavy or irritable when they’re soaked with water --- perfect for surfing. Wicked deal. Jess also got a pair of cute Roxy boardshorts. We’re not exactly matching, but we’re definitely more stylish now.
I also spent some time trying to track down a camera repair shop. My camera isn’t broken, but we’ve noticed that there is a crazy amount of dust inside; so much, that it’s putting smudge marks on some of our pictures. Normally, it wouldn’t be worth the $140 it costs to fix it, but this is the only camera that will fit in the water proof case, and we’re going to the Great Barrier Reef … so dang it, it’s getting fixed. At any rate, we didn’t find a shop that would do it … so that was put on hold for now.
That was pretty much it for the day. We got back to the hostel in the evening time, and set out to make a bit of dinner. I joined Jess in the kitchen after about 20 minutes, and saw the look of horror and disgust on her face. After looking at the kitchen, it didn’t take long to see why. The entire kitchen was dirty as all hell. It was like a hundred 18 year old kids just cooked a dozen different meals for the first time and didn’t clean up after themselves. Absolutely disgusting. On top of that, there were almost no utensils or pots/pans. Jess had spent the entire past 20 minutes waiting for an available pot to use for our pasta, and empty plates that she could clean for us to use. Once we finally got everything cooked, we had to make room at one of the only two “picnic tables” by pushing away some stupid kid’s dirty dishes he left behind. This is a radically different experience than the YHA. At the YHAs we’ve been staying at, there is ample space, ample amounts of utensils / pots / pans, and they are quite clean. We’ve had a few dirty kitchens, but all of those pale in comparison to this mess. We made a point to mention it to the staff, and they were very much aware of the problem. They blame it on the lack of space, but I think it’s more the mentality of the young and immature kids that stay here.
Anyway, we had enough of the hostel and decided to head out for a nice bar. We ended up at Zeta Bar at the Hilton. We probably over compensated a bit by going from dirty hostel, to way posh bar. In fact, they gave Jess a hard time at the front door with her flip flops she had on. After a little bit of selling by Jess, they finally let us in, but made sure to keep Jess’s feet out of sight by putting us in a “booth” behind some curtains. Haha. It was actually kind of nice because it was a bit of a VIP booth. No complaints from us. About 2 hours and a few glasses of wine later, we were done, and turned in for the night.
The following day (yesterday) was our Blue Mountain Tour. The Blue Mountains aren’t actually blue; they just appear that way when the light hits it right because of all the eucalyptus trees. Anyway, we started out getting to some campgrounds an hour outside of Sydney where we were able to find some wild grey kangaroos. None of the roos we found were brave enough to pick a fight with me (word must be getting around Oz about my latest roo smackdown); these ones were quite peaceful. Just munching on a bunch of grass. One of the female kangaroos actually had a little joey inside her pouch. It was quite cute. The little guy had his head sticking out, and when his mom bent down to eat grass, he popped his head outside and munched on the grass as well. Ha. He ended up getting really excited and almost jumped out of the pouch; he had both arms and legs out of the pouch, but his mom did a good job keeping him inside. That was a really neat experience watching the mom and her little joey play around.
After that, we made our first stop on the Blue Mountains at some waterfall trail. We expected the day to be overcast and rainy in Sydney, but we thought that once we got to the mountains, it’d be all cleared up … but no. It was foggy / cloudy as ever, and even colder and more drizzly than in Sydney. Doh! Ah well, can’t control too much of the weather --- just gotta leave that up to better timing-luck next time. Not long after we took off on the trail, we got to the first waterfall. Not much to talk about there; it was a very beautiful waterfall, but we’ve seen dozens. However, the landscape of these mountains is quite neat. The cliffs are very clearly layered, and various shades of red, orange and brown. When you aren’t looking at the cliff sides, you’re starring off at hundreds of kilometers of Australian “bush”; it looks a lot like a jungle. And as you’re walking through it, it has a very jungle-like feel to it. Big ferns, and vines, etc. The rain also helps egg on that jungle effect. Cool deal. Anyway, halfway down the train, our guide stopped at a certain rock. On the rock, there were three different circles; one red, white and yellow. Apparently, this wasn’t placed there on purpose; these were natural occurrences in the rock, and it’s what the aboriginals use for painting. You just drop a bit of water on these circles, rub with your finger, and sure enough you have very good paint. Way cool. The guide made sure to demonstrate, and, of course, without any attempt to volunteer, he picked me as one of his subjects. Ha. I ended up with this paint on my face for the next three hours because there was no place to wash my face off. Great fun.
The guide also made sure to point out dozens of Funnel Web Spider webs. These guys are deadlier than black widows, and actually cause a couple of deaths each year in Australia. They’re generally in the bush, but they’re also found occasionally in Sydney – hiding in shoes, clothes, etc. Basically, don’t leave your window open at night and you’ll be alright. Hah, hopefully that just goes for inland, and not the coast. Don’t know how we’ll manage to keep everything shut when we’re camping, yikes!
After the waterfall trek, we went back to the van for a lunch. It was prepared by them --- salad, sandwich making materials, etc. Pretty standard, and definitely hit the spot after the walk.
Then we made our way to more Blue Mountains. This one was a different bush hike that went down by an old mining trail. We slowly worked our way down this path to the bottom of the valley. At one point, we were supposed to be able to see the “Three Sisters”. However, due to the clouds, no such luck. It did clear at a couple other spots along the way, and we kind of got a glimpse, but nothing too good. Not a big deal; it’s just three rocks in the distance with an accompanying aboriginal story about some medicine man / wizard who turned his three daughters into stone to save them from a demon creature, and then turned himself into an animal to get away from the same creature, but dropped (and subsequently lost) his morphing stick in the process --- thus forever leaving his daughters in stone, and himself as a bird. Hah --- wicked --- sounds like it was inspired by peyote.
The really cool part about this hike, though, was that once we got to the bottom of the valley, we took a train ride back to the top … in fact, it was the STEEPEST train ride in the world! 57 degree incline at one point. Awesome. Now we’ve been on the steepest train, AND the steepest cog wheel. Sweet!
We got back to Sydney around 6pm, and spent the rest of the time on the internet, and sending some documents back home. We had plans to make dinner for ourselves at the hostel, but after the previous night’s debacle, neither of us was too keen on that idea. We decided to swing by the YHA around the corner and perhaps leech off their kitchen. However, once there, we got sucked into some great live acoustic music. It was basically this kid and his guitar, covering dozens of songs from the Eagles to Jack Johnson. He was also handing out drink tickets to anyone that could guess the artist. In addition to that, the YHA had $5 pizza and beer! What a deal. Jess and I shared the pizza and beer ($5 for our whole dinner) and then listened to some free music. We even managed to win a couple drink tickets in the process. To redeem the tickets, we had to go down to the bar downstairs. No problem. Off we went ... where we won a couple more drink tickets from the same musician (he moved his gig down there later in the night). However, we got tired pretty quick and were in bed in no time (looong day that had started at 6:30am).
Today was finally our first REAL day in Sydney / Australia: beach day + harbor cruise. Awesome. It was an excellent day, and so close to being the “best” day … but there were a couple hitches.
We managed to get up reasonably early and go for a morning jog through Darling Harbour. I made a little detour and ran my camera by a repair shop to get it fixed. Thankfully, the guy was able to get it fixed and now my camera is taking pictures as clear as new. Awesome. After the run, we ran back to the hostel, made a quick egg and toast breakfast, and then headed for the beach. The kitchen wasn’t too messy in the morning, but somehow some rejects managed to leave behind their plates on one of the tables.
Before long, we were off to Bondi (pronounced Bond-Eye) Beach. This is the popular Sydney beach to go to (I suppose it’s like Huntington Beach in Orange County). It was a short bus ride there, and then FINALLY we saw the glorious blue-ish/green-ish water and golden sand. The sky was nearly cloud free, and the sun was crazy hot. A perfect day for the beach indeed. We made our way onto the sand, found a great spot to lay out, and then proceeded to battle with the high winds whipping sand in our faces for the next two hours. Hah. It was a small price to pay, though, for finally making it to the beach on such a nice day. I even got a little beach jog in. After a couple hours, we packed up, and headed along the boardwalk / sidewalk to another beach just 30 minutes away. The walk was quite scenic. Passed by a few bluffs, and tons of scenic coastline. The water looked like Maui, but the coastline looked like Laguna Beach, except more intricate sand stone, rather than rocks. Really neat stuff.
We got to the other beach (Bourke?) before long, and then grabbed a very healthy couple of chicken and salmon sandwiches. Another hour on the beach, and then we had to make our way back to the hostel for our dinner cruise that evening. We hadn’t planned on doing a dinner cruise, but we decided that we needed to see the harbor by night, and we needed a delicious dinner --- so we went for the upgrade. :)
The bus ride back to the hostel nearly put us to sleep … or perhaps it was the draining sun that had been beating on us all day. Needless to say, both of us were exhausted; but nothing a coffee couldn’t fix. We then got back to the hostel, quickly got ready, and headed out for the cruise.
The cruise was wonderful. It was much like other dinner cruises we’ve been on (delicious meal, great sights), but we were in Sydney! Passing by the Opera House and famous “bridge” never got tiring. We stepped outside for a few photos, and then, starring at the Opera House for the nth time, it hit us, “Holy @#$% we’re in Sydney, Australia!!” We’ve seen the Opera House on TV/movies numerous times, and we’ve always talked about going to Australia, but here we were! Wowsers. I guess it “finally” hit us because we’d spent so much of the preceding week getting our trip organized and running around on tours. This was the first time we were able to just relax and take it all in. Wonderful.
A couple hours after the cruise departed, we were docked, and back on land. Our plan to wrap up this near perfect day was to go to Level 47 for a drink or two --- this was a highly recommended restaurant / cocktail lounge courtesy of Chrissy. However, we forgot to look up where it was. No worries … there were dozens of cabbies around … … … none of which knew what we were talking about. One guy had an idea where it may me, but suggested we swing by the nearby Four Seasons hotel to ask the concierge. We did so, and she informed us that the restaurant had closed the day before! What!? No way … I had just called them yesterday. Also, she said that it was Level 41, not 47. Hmmm … fishy. So I asked her to call the restaurant. Sure enough, today was their last day … ever. They were closing up shop after tonight. And no, it was not an April Fools prank! So we asked if drinks were still possible, but no dice … dinner was over and they were closing down for the night, and forever. Noooooo!!! We’d made such a big deal about going to this place. Chrissy told us the view was AMAZING, and encouraged us to not go to their website to avoid spoiling the surprise view … just go to the restaurant and be blown away. And now … they were closed!? Hmmm … I found all this very weird because when I called yesterday to inquire about dinner, the lady on the phone made no mention of them closing the following day. However, the concierge swore she knew what she was talking about --- and she did just call Level 41. We asked if there was anything else around the area, but she said that most places at the top of sky rises were closed for the night, and we were essentially out of luck. Doh doh! Ahhh well, it was still a great day.
We decided to call it a night and take a cab back to the hostel. Walking out of the Four Seasons, a very eager valet man ran up to us and politely asked to hail a cab for us. Sure thing man! So, he did, and then asked where we were going ; it was kind of embarrassing to tell the Four Seasons valet guy who just hailed us a cab that we were going to the “Wake Up!” hostel, hah, but, we did … he gave us only the slightest of odd looks, and then told the cabby where to go. The cab driver had never heard of the place (nor would he have if he usually frequented the Four Seasons), but we got there pretty quickly and then were done for the night.
Jess is now asleep, and I’ve spent the past couple hours updating our receipts, doing our budgets, and writing in this journal. We’re still fairly well on track here. However, we do still have 6 weeks left, ha. We’re not even at the half way point of our trip! Crazy! … but, keeping track of our receipts has definitely allowed us to keep our budget on track. So, I’m sure all will be well.
OH … AND … I checked into Level 47, and despite what the concierge said, it IS called Level 47 and they are NOT closing tomorrow. She was right in the fact that there is a Level 41, but there is also a Level 47, which also goes by the name of the Summit Restaurant. How could a Four Seasons concierge not know of this? And what’s more annoying is that they stay open during the week “until late.” How unhelpful of her --- I’d expect better from someone like that.
Sleep time.
