Well, they drive on the wrong side of the road and have flower eating kangaroos instead of deer in the backyard, but besides that, Australia sure feels like Canada! I've really had a great time up to now, and frankly, if it weren't so far, or excruciatingly expensive, I would consider staying awhile longer!
I was lucky enough to spend my first weekend here in a small town called Manyana, a beach comber hideaway where the ocean seemed twice as big and so much tougher than anything I had ever seen in my peaceful Brazilian paradise which was Cotovelo. Nature has a way of humbling us. That weekend Australia was threatened by a cyclone which caused serious flooding in the Northeastern region of Queensland, and we got the tail end of the storm. That meant extremely high winds and grey skies for about a week, but meanwhile the sea raged and seemed to eat up the coastline, spitting and hissing at us on the shore. That resulted in lots of great pictures, but not too much swimming really. Well, the temperature of the water doesn’t really help when compared with Natal, so forget the swimming bit on my part! None of this bothered Pedro, and he swam out there with all the surfers. Manyana also provided me with my first glimpse of kangaroos! They are quite strong looking and rather eerie since they sit on their haunches and will watch you for a good 5 minutes before they make their way over to eat bread out of your hand. By the way, I was told they’re preferred offering is the crappy white sliced kind… go figure! When you’re surrounded by about 15 of these meter and a half tall balls of muscle, you end up kind of throwing the bread at them before they get too close! Amazing really!
We left the Sydney area for another weekend, about 2 weeks later, and went down to the Blue Mountains National Park. We decided to go by train and found it easy, cheap and enjoyable – well, that’s not counting the pelting rain and fog we got on the way back, but weather here seems to change it’s mind as much as it’s underwear as Brazilians say. We stayed in a lovely B&B set in a remodeled country house from the turn of the century. Our room had a a quaint fireplace and private veranda, and the Thai restaurant was truly exceptional. We got lots of hiking in – about 5 – 6 hours per day: enough to get our calves aching and appreciate a good hot shower on the way back to the hotel! The Blue Mountains really are blue! The cobalt blue of the horizon is actually quite striking, and seems to be caused by the numerous Eucalyptos trees in the valley itself. These trees release fragrant droplets of oil into the air which refract the light to create the beautiful blue hue seen from far. On Sunday we went to one of the tourist shops before starting down the side of the cliff and into the forest, and happened upon an aboriginal dance presentation for tourists – the shop also had beautiful aboriginal art and we both fell under the shop’s spell!
The rest of our time is spent in Manly, or in Sydney visiting the sights. Manly is a place where picnics by the warf and music festivals are popular weekend activities, and where the beach is truly lovely and always full of families, surfers, and tourists. Tourists here seem to be mostly Brazilian… amazing really. Would never have expected that, but most people who work and live here in serious jobs are Asian, British, Canadian (I guess proximity and commonwealth makes that easy). Young Brazilian’s fill the English schools here, and work in cafes, restaurants, as cleaners, etc – anything to make ends meet really. And they are not particularly liked! They are seen as people who take from the system and don’t give anything back. Meanwhile, Europeans are few and far between- maybe that’ll be different in Queensland, who knows!
Last week Pedro skipped class to go to the Sydney zoo. It’s the most spectacularly located zoo I’ve ever been to! The view the baboons have of Sydney harbor is absolutely incredible! Sydney harbor is a series of small connected bays or inlets which often have a beach or a rocky shore to pick shells from. Several of them house the little penguins indeginous to the area. I haven’t seen any of them, but people say they’re there.
After much hemming and hawing we decided to go to Fiji on Monday, before we make it up to Queensland, so will hopefully have stunning pictures to add next week! :)
