"How ya goin'?"
The everpresent Australian greeting, "how ya goin'?", is not, as I'd initially thought, an amalgamation of "how's it going?" and "where are you going?" It is not appropriate to respond with your intended physical destination ("I'm going to the store") or mode of locomotion ("I'm goin' by foot") or with your intended mental destination ("I'm going to get drunk") but can be appropriately responded to with an update of current physical and mental status ("I'm really drunk in this store. And how ya goin'?"). Normally, however, one just responds with a simple "fine, thanks" or something similarly unenlightening.
So, yeah, that actually is kind of Australia in a nutshell for us. So familiar and yet so foreign. I mean, I understand the vast majority of words coming out of Australian mouths to be of the English language. However, I end up losing the collective meaning of those words at least a third of the time. It might be our (the ol' US of A) fault. As a comedian I saw on TV astutely noted, Americans have a tendency to add words on to already obvious phrases. By way of example, he commented on the phrase "horseback riding" that we commonly use. Apparently, most of the rest of the English speaking world just says horse riding. When you think of it, that makes a lot more sense. I mean, where the hell else are you going to ride a horse? It's not like Americans would get so confused by the phrase "horse riding" that we'd attempt to mount the horse's face or its ass (lonely Americans from the deep South excepted, of course).
Well we flew out of Bali at midnight, which kind of sucked. We arrived in Darwin, Australia at three in the morning, which also kind of sucked. We had to wait a couple sucky hours for our next flight that left at seven. We arrived in Cairns (pronounced Cans) at nine in the morning and our Australian adventure began.
/complainmodeoff
Cairns is on the northeastern coast of Australia right by the Great Barrier Reef. We spent a couple nice days there which were highlighted by an awesome snorkel trip out to the Reef itself. This snorkeling trip was one for the ages. We saw manta rays, turtles swimming around right next to us, two different kinds of sharks, and some cool batfish that acted like dogs. The batfish swam right next to the stern (that's "back of the boat" for you landlubbers), begging for food. They'd even eat food right out of your hand. Leann squealed like a little schoolgirl when one nibbled on her fingers that were holding food out for them. Good times.
We also spent a good amount of time wandering around the town and spent a day lounging by the public lagoon, which normal people would refer to as a "pool". It was pretty much a big saltwater pool right next to the ocean, which is unswimmable due to crocodile and shark infestations.
The everpresent Australian greeting, "how ya goin'?", is not, as I'd initially thought, an amalgamation of "how's it going?" and "where are you going?" It is not appropriate to respond with your intended physical destination ("I'm going to the store") or mode of locomotion ("I'm goin' by foot") or with your intended mental destination ("I'm going to get drunk") but can be appropriately responded to with an update of current physical and mental status ("I'm really drunk in this store. And how ya goin'?"). Normally, however, one just responds with a simple "fine, thanks" or something similarly unenlightening.
So, yeah, that actually is kind of Australia in a nutshell for us. So familiar and yet so foreign. I mean, I understand the vast majority of words coming out of Australian mouths to be of the English language. However, I end up losing the collective meaning of those words at least a third of the time. It might be our (the ol' US of A) fault. As a comedian I saw on TV astutely noted, Americans have a tendency to add words on to already obvious phrases. By way of example, he commented on the phrase "horseback riding" that we commonly use. Apparently, most of the rest of the English speaking world just says horse riding. When you think of it, that makes a lot more sense. I mean, where the hell else are you going to ride a horse? It's not like Americans would get so confused by the phrase "horse riding" that we'd attempt to mount the horse's face or its ass (lonely Americans from the deep South excepted, of course).
Well we flew out of Bali at midnight, which kind of sucked. We arrived in Darwin, Australia at three in the morning, which also kind of sucked. We had to wait a couple sucky hours for our next flight that left at seven. We arrived in Cairns (pronounced Cans) at nine in the morning and our Australian adventure began.
/complainmodeoff
Cairns is on the northeastern coast of Australia right by the Great Barrier Reef. We spent a couple nice days there which were highlighted by an awesome snorkel trip out to the Reef itself. This snorkeling trip was one for the ages. We saw manta rays, turtles swimming around right next to us, two different kinds of sharks, and some cool batfish that acted like dogs. The batfish swam right next to the stern (that's "back of the boat" for you landlubbers), begging for food. They'd even eat food right out of your hand. Leann squealed like a little schoolgirl when one nibbled on her fingers that were holding food out for them. Good times.
We also spent a good amount of time wandering around the town and spent a day lounging by the public lagoon, which normal people would refer to as a "pool". It was pretty much a big saltwater pool right next to the ocean, which is unswimmable due to crocodile and shark infestations.
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| Cairns Lagoon / Pool thingy |
After our Cairns visit, we flew down to the Sunshine Coast town of Brisbane to meet up with the lovely couple Mark and Hayley that we'd befriended during our Inca Trail trek to Machu Picchu. We spent several days with them and it was just fantastic. We tried our hand at surfing (I still suck) and got driven around to neat sights in the area. We also spent a day at the Steve Irwin (he of "crikey!" fame) Zoo. At the zoo we got to pet roos and koalas. Don't believe me? I have the pictures to prove it.
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Bitchin', eh?
We really loved our time with Mark and Hayley. They made us feel at home. We, in return, attempted to poison them to death by trying to cook up an authentic New Mexican dinner. That, as we found, is essentially impossible to do in Australia. All the peppers have names I cannot relate to. Capsicum is like a bell pepper, despite a name that would mislead one into thinking that it is full of capsaicin (the stuff in hot peppers that makes them hot). We tried to make chile rellenos, green chile stew, and some guacamole with chips. The guacamole was fine. We could not find any black beans to have a side dish and took a pass on cooking up refried beans for them. The rellenos turned out to be kind of a mess but they were moderately edible. The green chile stew was also moderately edible but tasted nothing like anything any self-respecting New Mexican would deem to be a real green chile stew. Of course, there is no green chile in Australia either and our improvisations thereof didn't help matters all that much. However, in the end, as Hayley noted, they had no idea whether what we'd cooked them was authentic or not. It didn't, in actuality, kill them. So that's good. Hayley and Mark, if you guys ever come to visit us in New Mexico we'll show you just how poorly we represented the delicious food from our state.
At the end of our Brisbane stay, we decided to rent a campervan and drive down the coast to Sydney. Our campervan was essentially a tricked out minivan with a bed in the back. We drove around from stellar beach to stellar beach and camped in the back of the thing for the night in several of Australia's many, many caravan parks (I guess more commonly known as RV parks back home). It was a sweet little rig, complete with DVD player to entertain us as we watched the $1 DVDs we'd purchased back in Bali.
We visited a multitude of little beach towns from Surfer's Paradise to Port Stephens to Byron Bay. I think I can pretty safely say that Aussies REALLY take good care of their beaches. Even on the beaches with decent sized crowds, the beaches were pristine. The sand is a nice off white color, super clean, and makes an amusing little squeaking noise when you walk barefoot on it. The water was also nice and clean and I finally got some decent sized waves to mess around in, as compared to the relative tranquility of the waves in both Thailand and Bali. The water was way colder than we were used to but manageable.
After about a week driving down the coast, we checked our campervan back in to the company (amusingly named Spaceships). Of course, I drove to the wrong dropoff point in Sydney and had to make an hour + detrour to get the thing to the right place. We then scooted on to meet my mom at the Sydney airport. It was sooooooo nice to have a familiar face to hang out with for a while. Now, it's not like I'm sick of Leann (or vice versa, I hope) but having a little piece of home delivered to you in the form of your loving mama is fantastic after months and months on the road. We all then took a taxi down to our temporary home in Sydney right next to Bondi Beach. We stayed in an apartment just a couple blocks from the beach. We did a ton of stuff, from checking out the Sydney Harbor and Opera House, to wandering through the very cool sculpture exhibition set up along the coast in between Bondi and Bronte beaches.
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| Smoochy poochies from Sydney |
After a too-short four days in Sydney, we all flew on to Christchurch, New Zealand. We've now been in New Zealand for a few days and just bid adieu to my mom today as she flies on her own way slowly back home. We're set to fly up to the north island of New Zealand later tonight and will be cruising around for several days checking out the amazing landscape in Kiwiland. New Zealand has rapidly risen to the top, or extremely near the top, of our "must re-visit" list. But, hey, that's another blog post, now isn't it?
Ciao for now!
