It's hard work to catch up, but I'm making progress. Here's photos from my two weeks in Western Australia in the first part of December.
Happy New Years!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
North Sydney, Australia
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Welcome to the Wild West
December 2, 2008
...continued
So, yeah, even though my passport was in Fiji, I was in Australia. Oh well. My plan was to get the last resort that I stayed at there to mail it to my friend Bendegúz who lives in Sydney. Bendegúz is the same guy that I met in Cairns back in June and I played Axis and Allies and saw some theatre with in Sydney back in August. Assuming that they would mail the passport soon, it would have more than one month to get to Sydney before I took off for New Zealand. My plan is to usually hope for things to just work out. *crossing fingers* It’s a good strategy... it’s gotten me this far, after all, hasn’t it?
So, after waiting around in the airport in Brisbane for a while, I took a flight on Virgin Blue to Perth. Being a five and a half hour flight, it’s probably the single longest possible domestic flight in Australia. Brisbane is almost as east as you can get in Australia and Perth is almost as west as you can get. I landed in Perth just after midnight, got a bus into the city, checked into my hostel (the Emperor’s Crown), and passed out in a top bunk in a four bed dorm room.
December 3, 2008
I was up early, though not because people in my room were noisy (that doesn’t really happen super often, probably usually because I often opt for smaller dorms). It was probably jet lag or nervousness from the whole passport fiasco yesterday. Anyways, today was sort of an errands, laundry, catch up, and sightseeing day for the city of Perth. I had destroyed my cheap flip flops from Fiji and picked up another pair on sale for AU$8 (CA$6.50). I had some good coffee (a long black, please!). I bought a new t-shirt at the Salvation Army (or “Salvo’s” as the Aussies call it).
The most important thing I did today, though, was decide on how to spend my two weeks in the state of Western Australia (or just “WA” as most Aussies call it). I wanted to go south from Perth to sea the coastline, Margaret River, national parks with huge trees and rooftop forest walks, and possibly do some scuba diving (maybe get my certification!). I also wanted to go north from Perth to see the Outback one more time. After some indecisive humming and hawwing I finally made the impulsive decision to book myself onto a ten day overland trip from Perth to Broome on a Western Xposure tour bus, over 3000 km north from Perth. The tour was not inexpensive, at AU$1395 (CA$1150), but it sounded realllly good. The timing was good, too, since it would consume most of my two weeks in WA, and give me exactly enough time to get fly back to Perth to catch my flight back to the east coast. Perfect!
Most of the people in the hostel seemed to be long termers -- backpackers who came to Perth to work for a handful of weeks or months and were basically living in the hostel. There were a few other kinds of people, too. One of the people in my room was Simon, from Napier, New Zealand. He was working in the food services of a mine somewhere in the wilderness of WA and was visiting Perth for his week off. This scenario is actually a common one in Perth. There are MANY mines in WA and Perth is the place people go to unwind on their time off. Also in my room was Jonathan, a Swiss law student who was studying in Sydney. He was going on the same tour as me. We were leaving in two days.
So anyways, I look like this and so does Perth:
December 3, 2008
Perth is the capital of WA and the most isolated capital city in the world, being over 3000 km from its nearest neighbour, Adelaide (capital of the state of South Australia). It’s a financial centre, but more laid back than your busy busy centres in the eastern part of Australia. Sightseeing wise, I had walked around the city centre yesterday. Today I was heading to its famous suburb, Fremantle (or “Freo” as the Aussies call it). Fremantle is the main port for WA and is actually a slightly older city than Perth itself. It’s a very scenic place, and contains the brewery for one of my favourite Aussie beers, Little Creatures. I walked around a bit with Jonathan, did some sightseeing, took some pictures, and met Simon for some fantastic gourmet pizza and microbrew beers at the Little Creatures brewpub.
One fun thing that I got to do in Fremantle happened while we were walking around the old Round House building beside the port. There was a cannon and time ball set up there. In the past, the cannon would fire and the time ball would drop at exactly 1 PM so that the local people in town and the ships in port could set their clocks accurately. This tradition is still continued, even though it’s original purpose is no longer required. Anyways, the volunteers who fired the gun chose me to be the one who fired it that day. They set up the cannon and gave me a remote with a big red button to press. FUN!
One thing that was very exciting about Perth and Fremantle was that they were decorated for CHRISTMAS! Christmas trees, wreaths, and tinsel stars were in abundance in both places. Christmas is super fanstastic and I was going to experience it Aussie style!
Another great thing about Fremantle was the Indian Ocean. I had sort of swam in the edges of the Indian Ocean while I was in Thailand. But that was really the Andaman Sea, not the proper ocean. Here in Fremantle, I could look over over an ocean where there were NO obstacles until the southwest coast of Africa, almost 8000 km away!
That night at the hostel, I took at look at the book exchange shelf. I encountered a disturbing sight. I SWEAR TO GOD that a book I left on the book exchange shelf at The Beachouse in Fiji was here in Perth! The book was “The Day After Tomorrow” (no relation to the movie of the same name). I had carried it around since a Danish couple gave it to me in Samoa, but I wasn’t really that interested in reading it. I unloaded it in Fiji not three days before, and now it was here in Perth. It looked the same... same ratty pages, same faded cover. I discussed this disturbing phenomenon with two of the people who were sitting in the hostel kitchen near the book shelf. They didn’t seem to believe my story... tsk. By coincidence, one of the people was Luca -- an Italian guy who would be on the same tour to Broome.
December 4, 2008
Up at 6 AM in order to get picked up at 7 AM in front of my hostel on my tour. I was excited. There were about fifteen passengers on the bus. Our guide was Tamantha (though everyone called her “Tammy”). Our bus’ name was “Turbo Charlie”. As always, I was the only person on the bus from North America. Most of the people were European (as always). There were also two people from Hong Kong, but they didn’t associate with the other people that much. Otherwise, we were a great and social group. I had so much fun...
So we had something like 700 km to drive today. So, mostly, we sat around on the bus, but there were some interesting stops on the way. The first big stop today was at The Pinnacles, a natural rock formation in some bushland with bright yellow sand. It was pretty cool. There were hundreds and hundreds of eroded limestone pillars scattered around. Tammy pointed out some kangaroo and emu tracks.
On the way out of The Pinnacles, we were driving along when Tammy suddenly pulled over and said “Get out of the bus! Get out of the bus!”. She leaped out and began running towards something back on the side of the road. We had NO IDEA what was going on, but poured out of the bus and started going back towards her. Was there a car accident? Was someone hurt at the side of the road?
She reached something we couldn’t see and called back “Get the first aid kit from the bus!” Our confusion was mounting. What the flip was going on?
When I reached Tammy, it was clear what was going on. She had seen a shingleback lizard (about two feet long) on the side of the road. It was infested with ticks and Tammy needed the tweezers to pull them out. Wow... this was a lot of drama over a lizard, but it was still pretty cool. Tammy had really good eyes to be able to see that little thing beside the road as we were hurtling up it at 100 km/h. She really loved animals (reptiles especially), and really wanted to help the poor guy!
The next stop was the big sand dunes at Geraldton where we got to partake in some sandboarding. Get a skateboard with no wheels, spread wax on the bottom with a candle, have a seat, and slide down a big hill. Fun! I wasn’t very good at it... I kept wiping out...
The farther north we got from Perth, the drier the landscape got. The trees got smaller, and the earth got redder. There was still farmland, but it was getting more scraggly the farther we got from Perth. There were wheat fields here, but the wheat was so short compared to the tall flowing wheat fields in Canada. Tammy told us that the farmers here only expected to have one good harvest of wheat every four years, but that was still enough to live on given the current cost of wheat. Wow... life was tough here. And this was just the beginning.
We spent the night in a little beachouse in the tiny town of Horrock’s Bay. We stopped along the way to pick up beers. I got a whole box (30 beers) of Emu Bitter brew... a cheap Western Australia brew. I hoped that the box would last me most of the way to Broome. Heh heh... given how much the people on my tour were drinking at Horrock’s Bay that night, there was little chance of that!
December 5, 2008
Had to get up VERY EARLY today... like 5 AM I think? I’ve recently discussed how early morning wake ups are very hard on me. Something usually goes awry. This time I lost my 4 GB 2nd generation iPod Nano. Ooops. I was building a playlist of music to put onto it last night, but I guess I had not managed to repack it today. Well, crap.
Anyways, it’s just an iPod. Life goes on. And NORTH!
The first big stop today was the fantastic Murchison Gorge in Kalbarri National Park. This would be the first of many gorges I’d see in my trip up north.
I got to try abseiling down a 23 meter rock wall here. Abseiling (also called “rappelling”) is descending down rock walls using ropes. You get to jump off the walls a long and swing and bounce around. I was nervous at first, but it was really fun after all. The hardest part was the very beginning, when I had to edge over the top backwards and just trust the rope to keep me from plummeting to my death as I crept over the edge.
I’m pretty sure I’ll give abseiling another go when I get to New Zealand!
Driving north from Murchison Gorge, we got to see a thorny devil lizard (another emergency stop!). This one was pregnant and apparently you could feel its eggs in your belly.
The second emergency stop this day was different from the others. As we pulled to the side of the road, Tammy shouted, “STAY IN THE BUS! STAY IN THE BUS!” I looked out the window and saw a huge brown snake slide across the road, under the bus, and into the bushes. It was a King Brown snake (also called a Mulga snake), one of the most venomous snakes in the world. The last time I had seen one of these guys was in the Australia Zoo back in February.
The next actual scheduled stop was Shell Beach along Shark Bay. The unique saline conditions in Shark Bay produce an environment where cockle shells grow in abundance. When the little shellfish die, their shells accumulate on the land and produce a HUGE beach with NO SAND... only shells, each pure white and less than one centimeter big. We swam a bit, but the tide was low and the wind was pretty crazy strong so we kept it pretty short.
The wind! The wind on the west coast was strong and persistent. Perth is one of the windiest cities in the world and wind farms are plentiful. For us, it meant that the hot days weren’t so hot, but the warm nights could be kinda chilly... especially when on the beach!
We spent the night at the YHA in Denham, the westernmost city in Australia. There was more drinking, of course. We also had lots of waterfights. Kerstin, one of the German girls on the bus, had a watergun and was relentless with it. She even used it on the bus! But it was okay. The weather was warm (especially after going on treks in the scorching hot gorges) and the gun was a good relief.
December 6, 2008
Up at 6 AM and onto the bus. It was a short drive to Monkey Mia, a cute little resort town on Shark Bay where wild dolphins came every day at 7:30 AM to be fed by hand by people. We got to line up along the beach, standing ankle deep in water, as wild dolphins swam up towards us and played around before getting fed. Only a few people get selected to actually feed the dolphins, and I was one of the lucky people! I thank my awesome Mos Burger t-shirt from Hong Kong, thank you!
After Monkey Mia, we started to drive away from Shark Bay. Along the way, we stopped at a bluff by the shore where we could look down and actually see reef sharks swimming in the shallows.
At the very south end of Shark Bay, we stopped at Hamelin Pool where stromatolites live near the shore line. Stromatolites are one of the first forms of life on Earth: bacteria-like life that lives in the water. They create oxygen and excrete layers of sediment which build up into rock formations. They don’t look like much, but they’re responsible for producing much of the free oxygen in our atmosphere. If it wasn’t for the stromatolites, we wouldn’t be here today.
More driving. More driving...
The next stop was at the Tropic of Capricorn, the line of latitude at 23°26′ south of the equator. The last time I had crossed this line on land was on the road towards Alice Springs back in July.
There were actually two tour buses from Western Xposure traveling up from Perth at the time same. My bus was going all the way to Perth, but the other one was only going as far as Exmouth. We managed to get to the tropic a few minutes ahead of the other bus. As we were getting ready to get on our way, the other bus started pulling in. Tammy said, “Quick everyone! One thing we do in Australia is moon people! Quick! Moon the other bus!” Good times. For revenge, the other bus gave us a vicious soaking with water guns when we got to our to our backpackers in Coral Bay.
Our resting place that night was, indeed, at a backpackers in Coral Bay, near the south end of the fantastic Ningaloo Reef. Coral Bay was a tiny town... seeming to exist only to support tourism on the reef.
There was much drinking, that night, of course. The entertainment that evening was a game of giant Jenga... our bus versus the other bus. They beat us two-to-one after Edouard (or “Frenchy” as we called him) made the big tower collapse. Even though Edouard sucked at Jenga, he was still a really cool guy. He sat beside me on the bus and we talked alot. Man, that guy could drink wine!
December 7, 2008
We had to wake up somewhat early today, too (around 7 AM, I think), but it wasn’t to go for another long drive. Today I was going on an extra special snorkeling trip to the Ningaloo Reef. This reef extends for several hundred kilometers along the western coast of Australia. Unlike the Great Barrier Reef (which is technically classified as a “barrier reef”), which is separated from the coastline by a huge barrier of water that takes one or two hours to cross on boat, the Ningaloo Reef is a “fringing reef” that lies very close to the shoreline. You could put on a snorkel, mask, fins, step into the water from the beach, swim for five minutes, and be surrounded by a wealth of corals, fish, and other aquatic life.
My snorkeling trip today consisted of a boat ride to three sites on the reef. The first one was just a shallow area to swim between corals. As always, there was an enormous amount of fish. Some people were able to see turtles and reef sharks hiding beneath the rocks, but I didn’t spot anything like that.
The second and third snorkeling excursions were the real special ones. The boat departed the first reef area and sped out into the lagoon in search of manta rays. Along the way we saw a huge tiger shark swimming around in the water. Unlike the harmless reef sharks, the tiger shark was a monster that was dangerous to humans, so we didn’t go into the water there!
Aided by spotter planes and other boats, we eventually tracked down one of the graceful and huge manta rays. They’re not really related to other rays, but are closer to sharks. Unlike rays and (some) sharks, though, manta rays are completely harmless. They lack the stinger that rays have and they don’t have teeth. Instead, they have huge mouths that could swallow human whole! They don’t feed on people, though, since they only eat tiny organisms en masse.
The manta ray that we encountered was probably about three or four meters wide, from wing-tip to wing-tip, and swimming probably about three meters below us. It was swimming in huge barrel rolls, with its gaping mouth wide open in an attempt to feed. There must have been a LOT of food for it there since it kept feeding for a long time. The water was a little cloudy, too (which was the food, I think).
I had a disposable underwater camera and tried to take some pictures. I haven’t developed them yet. Hopefully they turn out!
On the way to the third snorkeling site, we saw lots of sea turtles swimming in the water. The third dive site was just corals and lots of fish again. On the way back, I was very VERY cold since it was windy and I was wet from coming out of the water. I tried to lie in the sun at the top of the boat to get warm. Who though my teeth would be chattering from the cold when I was in the tropics?
In the afternoon, the bus packed up and left for Exmouth, where we would spend the next two nights at a camp ground in town (though we still got to sleep in dorms). For dinner, we picked up pizza and we went to the lighthouse for sunset. There were lots of shenanigans here.
Here’s a picture of me at the lighthouse after having a bit too much sun, wind, and wine:
Oh, I guess the lighthouse and sunset are kind of pretty, too, eh?
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Maroochydore, AU
...continued
So, yeah, even though my passport was in Fiji, I was in Australia. Oh well. My plan was to get the last resort that I stayed at there to mail it to my friend Bendegúz who lives in Sydney. Bendegúz is the same guy that I met in Cairns back in June and I played Axis and Allies and saw some theatre with in Sydney back in August. Assuming that they would mail the passport soon, it would have more than one month to get to Sydney before I took off for New Zealand. My plan is to usually hope for things to just work out. *crossing fingers* It’s a good strategy... it’s gotten me this far, after all, hasn’t it?
So, after waiting around in the airport in Brisbane for a while, I took a flight on Virgin Blue to Perth. Being a five and a half hour flight, it’s probably the single longest possible domestic flight in Australia. Brisbane is almost as east as you can get in Australia and Perth is almost as west as you can get. I landed in Perth just after midnight, got a bus into the city, checked into my hostel (the Emperor’s Crown), and passed out in a top bunk in a four bed dorm room.
December 3, 2008
I was up early, though not because people in my room were noisy (that doesn’t really happen super often, probably usually because I often opt for smaller dorms). It was probably jet lag or nervousness from the whole passport fiasco yesterday. Anyways, today was sort of an errands, laundry, catch up, and sightseeing day for the city of Perth. I had destroyed my cheap flip flops from Fiji and picked up another pair on sale for AU$8 (CA$6.50). I had some good coffee (a long black, please!). I bought a new t-shirt at the Salvation Army (or “Salvo’s” as the Aussies call it).
The most important thing I did today, though, was decide on how to spend my two weeks in the state of Western Australia (or just “WA” as most Aussies call it). I wanted to go south from Perth to sea the coastline, Margaret River, national parks with huge trees and rooftop forest walks, and possibly do some scuba diving (maybe get my certification!). I also wanted to go north from Perth to see the Outback one more time. After some indecisive humming and hawwing I finally made the impulsive decision to book myself onto a ten day overland trip from Perth to Broome on a Western Xposure tour bus, over 3000 km north from Perth. The tour was not inexpensive, at AU$1395 (CA$1150), but it sounded realllly good. The timing was good, too, since it would consume most of my two weeks in WA, and give me exactly enough time to get fly back to Perth to catch my flight back to the east coast. Perfect!
Most of the people in the hostel seemed to be long termers -- backpackers who came to Perth to work for a handful of weeks or months and were basically living in the hostel. There were a few other kinds of people, too. One of the people in my room was Simon, from Napier, New Zealand. He was working in the food services of a mine somewhere in the wilderness of WA and was visiting Perth for his week off. This scenario is actually a common one in Perth. There are MANY mines in WA and Perth is the place people go to unwind on their time off. Also in my room was Jonathan, a Swiss law student who was studying in Sydney. He was going on the same tour as me. We were leaving in two days.
So anyways, I look like this and so does Perth:
December 3, 2008
Perth is the capital of WA and the most isolated capital city in the world, being over 3000 km from its nearest neighbour, Adelaide (capital of the state of South Australia). It’s a financial centre, but more laid back than your busy busy centres in the eastern part of Australia. Sightseeing wise, I had walked around the city centre yesterday. Today I was heading to its famous suburb, Fremantle (or “Freo” as the Aussies call it). Fremantle is the main port for WA and is actually a slightly older city than Perth itself. It’s a very scenic place, and contains the brewery for one of my favourite Aussie beers, Little Creatures. I walked around a bit with Jonathan, did some sightseeing, took some pictures, and met Simon for some fantastic gourmet pizza and microbrew beers at the Little Creatures brewpub.
One fun thing that I got to do in Fremantle happened while we were walking around the old Round House building beside the port. There was a cannon and time ball set up there. In the past, the cannon would fire and the time ball would drop at exactly 1 PM so that the local people in town and the ships in port could set their clocks accurately. This tradition is still continued, even though it’s original purpose is no longer required. Anyways, the volunteers who fired the gun chose me to be the one who fired it that day. They set up the cannon and gave me a remote with a big red button to press. FUN!
One thing that was very exciting about Perth and Fremantle was that they were decorated for CHRISTMAS! Christmas trees, wreaths, and tinsel stars were in abundance in both places. Christmas is super fanstastic and I was going to experience it Aussie style!
Another great thing about Fremantle was the Indian Ocean. I had sort of swam in the edges of the Indian Ocean while I was in Thailand. But that was really the Andaman Sea, not the proper ocean. Here in Fremantle, I could look over over an ocean where there were NO obstacles until the southwest coast of Africa, almost 8000 km away!
That night at the hostel, I took at look at the book exchange shelf. I encountered a disturbing sight. I SWEAR TO GOD that a book I left on the book exchange shelf at The Beachouse in Fiji was here in Perth! The book was “The Day After Tomorrow” (no relation to the movie of the same name). I had carried it around since a Danish couple gave it to me in Samoa, but I wasn’t really that interested in reading it. I unloaded it in Fiji not three days before, and now it was here in Perth. It looked the same... same ratty pages, same faded cover. I discussed this disturbing phenomenon with two of the people who were sitting in the hostel kitchen near the book shelf. They didn’t seem to believe my story... tsk. By coincidence, one of the people was Luca -- an Italian guy who would be on the same tour to Broome.
December 4, 2008
Up at 6 AM in order to get picked up at 7 AM in front of my hostel on my tour. I was excited. There were about fifteen passengers on the bus. Our guide was Tamantha (though everyone called her “Tammy”). Our bus’ name was “Turbo Charlie”. As always, I was the only person on the bus from North America. Most of the people were European (as always). There were also two people from Hong Kong, but they didn’t associate with the other people that much. Otherwise, we were a great and social group. I had so much fun...
So we had something like 700 km to drive today. So, mostly, we sat around on the bus, but there were some interesting stops on the way. The first big stop today was at The Pinnacles, a natural rock formation in some bushland with bright yellow sand. It was pretty cool. There were hundreds and hundreds of eroded limestone pillars scattered around. Tammy pointed out some kangaroo and emu tracks.
On the way out of The Pinnacles, we were driving along when Tammy suddenly pulled over and said “Get out of the bus! Get out of the bus!”. She leaped out and began running towards something back on the side of the road. We had NO IDEA what was going on, but poured out of the bus and started going back towards her. Was there a car accident? Was someone hurt at the side of the road?
She reached something we couldn’t see and called back “Get the first aid kit from the bus!” Our confusion was mounting. What the flip was going on?
When I reached Tammy, it was clear what was going on. She had seen a shingleback lizard (about two feet long) on the side of the road. It was infested with ticks and Tammy needed the tweezers to pull them out. Wow... this was a lot of drama over a lizard, but it was still pretty cool. Tammy had really good eyes to be able to see that little thing beside the road as we were hurtling up it at 100 km/h. She really loved animals (reptiles especially), and really wanted to help the poor guy!
The next stop was the big sand dunes at Geraldton where we got to partake in some sandboarding. Get a skateboard with no wheels, spread wax on the bottom with a candle, have a seat, and slide down a big hill. Fun! I wasn’t very good at it... I kept wiping out...
The farther north we got from Perth, the drier the landscape got. The trees got smaller, and the earth got redder. There was still farmland, but it was getting more scraggly the farther we got from Perth. There were wheat fields here, but the wheat was so short compared to the tall flowing wheat fields in Canada. Tammy told us that the farmers here only expected to have one good harvest of wheat every four years, but that was still enough to live on given the current cost of wheat. Wow... life was tough here. And this was just the beginning.
We spent the night in a little beachouse in the tiny town of Horrock’s Bay. We stopped along the way to pick up beers. I got a whole box (30 beers) of Emu Bitter brew... a cheap Western Australia brew. I hoped that the box would last me most of the way to Broome. Heh heh... given how much the people on my tour were drinking at Horrock’s Bay that night, there was little chance of that!
December 5, 2008
Had to get up VERY EARLY today... like 5 AM I think? I’ve recently discussed how early morning wake ups are very hard on me. Something usually goes awry. This time I lost my 4 GB 2nd generation iPod Nano. Ooops. I was building a playlist of music to put onto it last night, but I guess I had not managed to repack it today. Well, crap.
Anyways, it’s just an iPod. Life goes on. And NORTH!
The first big stop today was the fantastic Murchison Gorge in Kalbarri National Park. This would be the first of many gorges I’d see in my trip up north.
I got to try abseiling down a 23 meter rock wall here. Abseiling (also called “rappelling”) is descending down rock walls using ropes. You get to jump off the walls a long and swing and bounce around. I was nervous at first, but it was really fun after all. The hardest part was the very beginning, when I had to edge over the top backwards and just trust the rope to keep me from plummeting to my death as I crept over the edge.
I’m pretty sure I’ll give abseiling another go when I get to New Zealand!
Driving north from Murchison Gorge, we got to see a thorny devil lizard (another emergency stop!). This one was pregnant and apparently you could feel its eggs in your belly.
The second emergency stop this day was different from the others. As we pulled to the side of the road, Tammy shouted, “STAY IN THE BUS! STAY IN THE BUS!” I looked out the window and saw a huge brown snake slide across the road, under the bus, and into the bushes. It was a King Brown snake (also called a Mulga snake), one of the most venomous snakes in the world. The last time I had seen one of these guys was in the Australia Zoo back in February.
The next actual scheduled stop was Shell Beach along Shark Bay. The unique saline conditions in Shark Bay produce an environment where cockle shells grow in abundance. When the little shellfish die, their shells accumulate on the land and produce a HUGE beach with NO SAND... only shells, each pure white and less than one centimeter big. We swam a bit, but the tide was low and the wind was pretty crazy strong so we kept it pretty short.
The wind! The wind on the west coast was strong and persistent. Perth is one of the windiest cities in the world and wind farms are plentiful. For us, it meant that the hot days weren’t so hot, but the warm nights could be kinda chilly... especially when on the beach!
We spent the night at the YHA in Denham, the westernmost city in Australia. There was more drinking, of course. We also had lots of waterfights. Kerstin, one of the German girls on the bus, had a watergun and was relentless with it. She even used it on the bus! But it was okay. The weather was warm (especially after going on treks in the scorching hot gorges) and the gun was a good relief.
December 6, 2008
Up at 6 AM and onto the bus. It was a short drive to Monkey Mia, a cute little resort town on Shark Bay where wild dolphins came every day at 7:30 AM to be fed by hand by people. We got to line up along the beach, standing ankle deep in water, as wild dolphins swam up towards us and played around before getting fed. Only a few people get selected to actually feed the dolphins, and I was one of the lucky people! I thank my awesome Mos Burger t-shirt from Hong Kong, thank you!
After Monkey Mia, we started to drive away from Shark Bay. Along the way, we stopped at a bluff by the shore where we could look down and actually see reef sharks swimming in the shallows.
At the very south end of Shark Bay, we stopped at Hamelin Pool where stromatolites live near the shore line. Stromatolites are one of the first forms of life on Earth: bacteria-like life that lives in the water. They create oxygen and excrete layers of sediment which build up into rock formations. They don’t look like much, but they’re responsible for producing much of the free oxygen in our atmosphere. If it wasn’t for the stromatolites, we wouldn’t be here today.
More driving. More driving...
The next stop was at the Tropic of Capricorn, the line of latitude at 23°26′ south of the equator. The last time I had crossed this line on land was on the road towards Alice Springs back in July.
There were actually two tour buses from Western Xposure traveling up from Perth at the time same. My bus was going all the way to Perth, but the other one was only going as far as Exmouth. We managed to get to the tropic a few minutes ahead of the other bus. As we were getting ready to get on our way, the other bus started pulling in. Tammy said, “Quick everyone! One thing we do in Australia is moon people! Quick! Moon the other bus!” Good times. For revenge, the other bus gave us a vicious soaking with water guns when we got to our to our backpackers in Coral Bay.
Our resting place that night was, indeed, at a backpackers in Coral Bay, near the south end of the fantastic Ningaloo Reef. Coral Bay was a tiny town... seeming to exist only to support tourism on the reef.
There was much drinking, that night, of course. The entertainment that evening was a game of giant Jenga... our bus versus the other bus. They beat us two-to-one after Edouard (or “Frenchy” as we called him) made the big tower collapse. Even though Edouard sucked at Jenga, he was still a really cool guy. He sat beside me on the bus and we talked alot. Man, that guy could drink wine!
December 7, 2008
We had to wake up somewhat early today, too (around 7 AM, I think), but it wasn’t to go for another long drive. Today I was going on an extra special snorkeling trip to the Ningaloo Reef. This reef extends for several hundred kilometers along the western coast of Australia. Unlike the Great Barrier Reef (which is technically classified as a “barrier reef”), which is separated from the coastline by a huge barrier of water that takes one or two hours to cross on boat, the Ningaloo Reef is a “fringing reef” that lies very close to the shoreline. You could put on a snorkel, mask, fins, step into the water from the beach, swim for five minutes, and be surrounded by a wealth of corals, fish, and other aquatic life.
My snorkeling trip today consisted of a boat ride to three sites on the reef. The first one was just a shallow area to swim between corals. As always, there was an enormous amount of fish. Some people were able to see turtles and reef sharks hiding beneath the rocks, but I didn’t spot anything like that.
The second and third snorkeling excursions were the real special ones. The boat departed the first reef area and sped out into the lagoon in search of manta rays. Along the way we saw a huge tiger shark swimming around in the water. Unlike the harmless reef sharks, the tiger shark was a monster that was dangerous to humans, so we didn’t go into the water there!
Aided by spotter planes and other boats, we eventually tracked down one of the graceful and huge manta rays. They’re not really related to other rays, but are closer to sharks. Unlike rays and (some) sharks, though, manta rays are completely harmless. They lack the stinger that rays have and they don’t have teeth. Instead, they have huge mouths that could swallow human whole! They don’t feed on people, though, since they only eat tiny organisms en masse.
The manta ray that we encountered was probably about three or four meters wide, from wing-tip to wing-tip, and swimming probably about three meters below us. It was swimming in huge barrel rolls, with its gaping mouth wide open in an attempt to feed. There must have been a LOT of food for it there since it kept feeding for a long time. The water was a little cloudy, too (which was the food, I think).
I had a disposable underwater camera and tried to take some pictures. I haven’t developed them yet. Hopefully they turn out!
On the way to the third snorkeling site, we saw lots of sea turtles swimming in the water. The third dive site was just corals and lots of fish again. On the way back, I was very VERY cold since it was windy and I was wet from coming out of the water. I tried to lie in the sun at the top of the boat to get warm. Who though my teeth would be chattering from the cold when I was in the tropics?
In the afternoon, the bus packed up and left for Exmouth, where we would spend the next two nights at a camp ground in town (though we still got to sleep in dorms). For dinner, we picked up pizza and we went to the lighthouse for sunset. There were lots of shenanigans here.
Here’s a picture of me at the lighthouse after having a bit too much sun, wind, and wine:
Oh, I guess the lighthouse and sunset are kind of pretty, too, eh?
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Maroochydore, AU
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Fiji Finished
November 27, 2008
...continued
The story picks back up again at the bus station in Nadi. There were lots and lots of buses puttering around and various crowds of people waiting around, mostly Fijians. I bought a bus ticket. The taxi driver who brought me here suggested that it would probably cost FJ$20 (CA$14) and I’d have to wait two hours for the bus. The reality was different indeed, though. I only had to wait about a twenty minutes and it cost only FJ$7 (CA$5). Just more evidence that taxi drivers around the whole world are pure, simple, inbred scammers.
Unlike the bus system in Samoa, the buses here were very normal looking. No flashy colours. No block rockin’ beats. Boooring.
There were lots of stalls selling Indian sweets, which is probably one of my weaknesses, but I didn’t get any. I was hungry, though, so I grabbed some french fries (though they called them chips!) and sausage for FJ$3.50 (CA$2.40) and a Coke Zero for my lunch. They didn’t have forks, so I had to eat with my fingers, which was somewhat messy, but as least I got to wash my hands in the bathroom after!
I sat at the back of the bus and spent some time talking to the Fijian kids back there. It took about two hours before the bus driver dropped me off at The Beachouse, on the southern coast (advertised as “The Coral Coast”) of the main island of Fiji, Viti Levu. About five minutes before I had to get out the heavens erupted in a torrent of rain. No time to get the rain cover on my pack... I made a mad dash with my 15 kg pack and also-heavy laptop bag to get to the reception. Good thing it was close to the road.
The Beachouse is a backpacker’s resort. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s got a nice beach, stuff to do, but at a backpacker’s level of budget (i.e.: dorm rooms and shared facilities). Yes, it’s true that Fiji is more developed and touristy than other Pacific islands like Samoa and Tonga, but that results in a full range of accommodation options... from backpackers to five star luxury resorts. Fiji is, however, a more expensive country to stay in than Samoa or Tonga, but cheaper than Australia, Canada or Western Europe. I guess that’s why lots of backpackers come here.
Not so many at this time of year though. Yes, it was the rainy season and it was raining out. I was going to stay at The Beachouse for five days (the remainder of my time in Fiji), and it rained almost every day I was here. So, there were only a handful of other travelers when I got there.
I was staying in a six person dorm room, but there was only one other person there: Stefan (from Washington DC). He had a laptop computer, too, but he was running Linux on his. He was a geek! We both had geeky conversations for a while. I didn’t want to get out of practice, of course.
It seemed like most of the other dorm rooms were similarly sparsely populated. When I got to the bar during happy hour, there was only about ten other people there. There were five kids from Sweden, who spoke enough English and were generally chatty with the other travelers. One of the guys, Mattias, had a very low and monotone voice, shaved head and tattoos. We got him to pretend he was Santa Claus and say, “What do you want for Christmas? Come sit on my lap and tell Santa” in his low gravelly voice. He sounded evil and it amused us. Heh heh, evil Santa.
There were also a couple of other Americans there, Annie and Will. They were were studying in Australia for several months and were stopping over in Fiji on their way back to America. A couple of Scottish people were there, Kirsty and her boyfriend Neil. They used to work in vodka bars in England and we got to talk about vodka. It turns out that they’re as big fans of Krupnik and Żubrowka (a couple Polish vodkas) as I am! There was also Tasha from Timmins, Ontario. I asked her if she knew Vince’s wife and sister-in-law, but I guess everyone in Timmins doesn’t know everyone else.
It was mostly these people (and a few other people that came and went) that I spent my last five days on Fiji at The Beachouse. It was chilled. It was relaxed. It was good.
November 28, 2008
Today was a big do-nothing day for me. Reading. DS. Email. Sitting in hammock near beach. Oh yeah...
I finished reading “A Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Marcia Marquez. It’s a book that I picked up when I was staying in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney near the end of my first big trip. I didn’t really get very far into it before I got back to Canada and didn’t read another page until I got on the plane to Los Angeles on my way back here. From then, I had read it voraciously. It’s a great book. I highly recommend it. There was another Marquez book on the book exchange bookshelf there, but it was in Dutch, so it wasn’t for me to enjoy.
I also finished playing “The World Ends With You” on my Nintendo DS. I’d been playing it on and off since probably about July. It’s a good game, I also highly recommend it. Next game: Dragon Quest IV.
It seems like Kirsty and Neil had gone to the neighbouring town of Sigatoka that day for shopping and had brought back some packets of dried kava powder. Yes, it turns out that the drink I had on Tonga was much more popular here in Fiji, at least among the tourists. Neil had devised a drinking game based on the game of Kings where you had to drink the kava (which is non-alcoholic, but still special), and whatever alcohol you had, too. Good times.
November 29, 2008
Stefan and I had decided to make a bit of a day trip to Suva, the capital city of Fiji, today. We intended to catch a bus to get there, so we went and stood by the highway at the appointed time. Within minutes, however, a pickup truck stopped and offered us a ride instead. It was a guy carrying a load of brewer’s yeast from the harbour at Lautoka to the Fiji Bitter brewery in Suva. We offered the guy FJ$10 each for the ride. It’s a bit more than the bus, but he took us there much faster. Stefan, the driver, and I sat in the front together, with me in the middle. It was cozy and my knees got crushed a bit whenever the driver changed gears, but it was all good. It seemed that Fiji was an easy place to engage in hitchhiking, even if it was unintentional!
Suva itself was nothing special. It’s a big, stinky, dirty city. In fact, at about 300,000 people, it’s the largest city in the South Pacific region (other than the cities in New Zealand or Australia). Stefan and I wandered around the shopping district for a bit, bought some local rum, had really cheap curry for lunch, went to the Fiji National Museum, and saw a mongoose. We even ran into a Canadian girl who had been staying at The Beachouse but had left the day before. On our way back to the bus station we stopped at the market and picked up a cornucopia of fresh fruit to bring back with us. The food at The Beachouse was pretty lame, so we needed fresh goods!
The bus ride back was long, crowded and unpleasant. The road was very windy and the bus lurched and swayed from side to side. Ugh. It reminded me of Laos.
That night I watched the sunset with the Americans (Stefan, Annie, Will, and Ian (Annie and Will’s friend that had arrived earlier that day). It was a really good one. We sat on a rope swing that hung on a palm tree that curved out over the water as the waves lapped gently onto the beach. Beautiful.
There were a few dogs that lived at the resort, too. One of them was called Lucy.
Lucy was fun. She watched the sunset with us. There were some local people that were swimming in the water. Lucy would bark at them if they came out of the water, but would stay quiet as long as they stayed in. I was amused. I decided that Lucy was really called “The Bula Dog”. “Bula” is the Fijian word for “hello” and you get to hear it and say it very often since the Fijians are so friendly. It only made sense that this dog was really called The Bula Dog. No one else believed me, though.
More drinking that night. I think I drank too much rum since I felt ill. I don’t think it helped that I didn’t eat enough that day. Doh.
November 30, 2008
I wasn’t feeling great for most of the day, so I made it a lazy one. There was a bonfire on the beach that night, and we sat around drinking beers and kava.
It was the weekend now, and it seemed like there were more people had arrived. Our cozy little beachouse was getting more crowded.
December 1, 2008
Today was going to be a special day!
I got going early and caught a bus to Waidroka Bay (part way between The Beachouse and Suva) for my first scuba diving ever. My ear was feeling better compared to when I was on Taveuni. I was staying on The Coral Coast, so I certainly had to give it a go! Part of me wanted to go whole hog and get Open Water PADI Certification right away, but the rest of me was more cautious and prudent and decided to go on a single introductory dive first to see how breathing underwater agreed with me first.
My dive instructor that day was a lady from Pennsylvania. After demonstrating the equipment and practicing a few essential techniques in the pool (clearing your mask, equalizing pressure in your ears, recovering your air regulator if it falls out), we hopped in a boat and went to the reef.
When we got there, it was time to put on the BCV (Buoyancy Control Vest), tank, mask, put in the air regulator, and fall backwards into the water, just like in the movies! I took my instructor’s hand and we descended down a rope to a depth of 10 metres. I was breathing underwater! I looked up and could only vaguely see the surface! The boat was only a shadowy shape somewhere “up there”. I was surrounded by coral rock reef walls and all sorts of colourful fish.
I was thankful I had an instructor with me. She held my hand the whole time we were down there and lead me around and between the rocky walls made of living coral. When you’re diving, you suddenly have to deal with the third dimension of movement, and I really had no idea how to cope with that. I didn’t have control of my movement since I didn’t know how to move safely without bumping into stuff.
Anyways, it was not a problem since I had my instructor. She pointed out different features to me and communicated to me with hand signals (since it’s not really possible to talk underwater). I saw anemones with cute clown fish hiding between the tentacles peering out at us. We got to feel the underside of the anemone. It was smooth, soft, and slippery. We saw two octopii and one of them squirted ink at us when it tried to swim away. We saw a big ugly stone fish, but didn’t get close to it because it’s venomous. We saw little purple and frilly Christmas tree worms that would disappear into holes if you touched them. And, of course, hundreds of brightly coloured and oddly shaped fish.
After a while I started to feel somewhat uncomfortable. Some salt had gotten into my eyes and my ear was starting to bother me a bit, so I signaled to go back up. I had no sense of time underwater, so I had no idea how long we were down there until I got back to the boat. It turns out that we were down for forty minutes, and would have had about five more minutes anyways if I didn’t end it. So, I think it was a good first attempt.
December 2, 2008
If yesterday was special, then today would be an unnecessary drama. Crappity crap crap.
My flight from Nadi to Brisbane, Australia left the airport at noon. It would take about two hours to get to the airport from The Beachouse, so, in order to give myself sufficient time to make it to the airport, I got up early (6:30 AM). It was too early to book the hostel bus to take me there, so I decided to try my luck at hitchhiking to get to the airport. No problems. After only a few minutes of standing beside the highway, I found a minibus that would take me there for only FJ$15 (CA$10).
I got to the airport about fifteen minutes before the check-in for my Air Pacific flight was opened. There were only a handful of people in line ahead of me. Things had gone very smoothly, until I went into my bag and tried to get my documents in order.
I couldn’t find my passport.
Crappity crap crap.
I unpacked my bag and looked everywhere for it right there in the airport line. The friendly Australian girl behind me in line talked to me and calmed me down (she even invited me to her wedding on December 23 in Brisbane, but I don’t think I’m going to go). I was not freaking out. This sucked, but I had options. I called The Beachouse. It seemed that I had left my passport in the hostel safe. Ugh. I started avoiding those things because I always forgot things in them (like when I left my passport in Byron Bay). I guess I had forgotten my lesson after I had restarted my travels.
It’s these early morning wake ups! Let’s say I’m not a morning person and dislike them. I certainly used to be a morning person, but those days are past. If I’m not working, then why should I have to deal with these early morning wake ups all the time? Ugh. The curse of the budget traveler.
Okay. Thinking. I didn’t have my Canadian passport (the one with my visa for Australia), but I did still have my Polish one. The lady at the check in counter said I could apply for a visa for my Polish passport online and use that instead. I went to the cafe, ordered a cappuccino (I certainly deserved a treat by this point), and applied for another visa online. Thankfully, it was free of charge for European citizens. Yay. Canadians have to pay for their Australian visas. Suckers...
I waited for the rest of my half hour of internet time to wait up to see if the approval email would come. It didn’t, but I decided to go wait in line to check in anyways.
By the time I got to the front of the line, some time had passed but my visa hadn’t been approved yet. In fact, when the check-in lady looked at the computer, it seemed that it had been rejected. WTF. No explanation.
Okay. Thinking. Instead, I showed her a photocopy of my Canadian passport and said that I had traveled to Australia three times already on the same passport and I was a really nice guy if there was anything she could do, oh pretty please. She said would talk to her supervisor and disappeared into the back. I didn’t see her again for forty-five minutes. All the other passengers finished checking in and disappeared. The boarding announcements for the plane were read over the intercom. The last boarding call was made. I was getting very nervous and antsy. I asked some of the Air Pacific staff still at the counter if they knew where the lady went, but they were unsympathetic to my plight.
Finally, she returned. She said that had to call Canberra (the capital city of Australia) and they had granted me special permission to enter the country with just the photocopy of my passport. She gave me my boarding pass as the intercom named me personally and told me to board my plane.
I ran through the airport. Good thing it was a small one. Some of the Fijians laughed to see someone running through the airport. They must have thought it was funny since Fijians are never in a rush.
Immigration was somewhat of a hassle since I didn’t have my Canadian passport for the dude to put my exit stamp into. I showed him my passport photocopy, he typed some stuff into the computer and lazily put the exit stamp into my Polish passport instead. He was in no rush, of course.
Sweating and breathing heavily, I was the last person to board the plane. Yes, I was that guy who gets paged repeatedly on the airport intercom to hurry up and board their plane. I sometimes scoffed at such people in the past (“why would you be late for your plane? come on!”), but know I knew how they felt and I would scoff no more.
The flight was three hours to Brisbane. Thankfully, the nice Air Pacific flight attendants gave me a couple Fiji Bitter beers to ease my nerves. I didn’t look forward to the Australian immigration. I expected a full body cavity search. Rubber gloves. Snap. Bend over. Clench.
Thankfully, the hard part was behind me. Getting past Australian immigration in Brisbane was surprisingly easy. I told the guy I didn’t have a passport and he sent me to the supervisor’s desk. They looked on the computer and it did show, indeed, that Canberra had sent special permission for me to enter the country with just a photocopy of my passport. They gave me my entry stamp in my Polish passport and said I still needed to get my Canadian passport back since that was the one that would have to get my exit stamp. Yes yes sir, I would get it mailed to me. They were very civil and very helpful.
I was back in Australia!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer’s Paradise, Australia
...continued
The story picks back up again at the bus station in Nadi. There were lots and lots of buses puttering around and various crowds of people waiting around, mostly Fijians. I bought a bus ticket. The taxi driver who brought me here suggested that it would probably cost FJ$20 (CA$14) and I’d have to wait two hours for the bus. The reality was different indeed, though. I only had to wait about a twenty minutes and it cost only FJ$7 (CA$5). Just more evidence that taxi drivers around the whole world are pure, simple, inbred scammers.
Unlike the bus system in Samoa, the buses here were very normal looking. No flashy colours. No block rockin’ beats. Boooring.
There were lots of stalls selling Indian sweets, which is probably one of my weaknesses, but I didn’t get any. I was hungry, though, so I grabbed some french fries (though they called them chips!) and sausage for FJ$3.50 (CA$2.40) and a Coke Zero for my lunch. They didn’t have forks, so I had to eat with my fingers, which was somewhat messy, but as least I got to wash my hands in the bathroom after!
I sat at the back of the bus and spent some time talking to the Fijian kids back there. It took about two hours before the bus driver dropped me off at The Beachouse, on the southern coast (advertised as “The Coral Coast”) of the main island of Fiji, Viti Levu. About five minutes before I had to get out the heavens erupted in a torrent of rain. No time to get the rain cover on my pack... I made a mad dash with my 15 kg pack and also-heavy laptop bag to get to the reception. Good thing it was close to the road.
The Beachouse is a backpacker’s resort. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s got a nice beach, stuff to do, but at a backpacker’s level of budget (i.e.: dorm rooms and shared facilities). Yes, it’s true that Fiji is more developed and touristy than other Pacific islands like Samoa and Tonga, but that results in a full range of accommodation options... from backpackers to five star luxury resorts. Fiji is, however, a more expensive country to stay in than Samoa or Tonga, but cheaper than Australia, Canada or Western Europe. I guess that’s why lots of backpackers come here.
Not so many at this time of year though. Yes, it was the rainy season and it was raining out. I was going to stay at The Beachouse for five days (the remainder of my time in Fiji), and it rained almost every day I was here. So, there were only a handful of other travelers when I got there.
I was staying in a six person dorm room, but there was only one other person there: Stefan (from Washington DC). He had a laptop computer, too, but he was running Linux on his. He was a geek! We both had geeky conversations for a while. I didn’t want to get out of practice, of course.
It seemed like most of the other dorm rooms were similarly sparsely populated. When I got to the bar during happy hour, there was only about ten other people there. There were five kids from Sweden, who spoke enough English and were generally chatty with the other travelers. One of the guys, Mattias, had a very low and monotone voice, shaved head and tattoos. We got him to pretend he was Santa Claus and say, “What do you want for Christmas? Come sit on my lap and tell Santa” in his low gravelly voice. He sounded evil and it amused us. Heh heh, evil Santa.
There were also a couple of other Americans there, Annie and Will. They were were studying in Australia for several months and were stopping over in Fiji on their way back to America. A couple of Scottish people were there, Kirsty and her boyfriend Neil. They used to work in vodka bars in England and we got to talk about vodka. It turns out that they’re as big fans of Krupnik and Żubrowka (a couple Polish vodkas) as I am! There was also Tasha from Timmins, Ontario. I asked her if she knew Vince’s wife and sister-in-law, but I guess everyone in Timmins doesn’t know everyone else.
It was mostly these people (and a few other people that came and went) that I spent my last five days on Fiji at The Beachouse. It was chilled. It was relaxed. It was good.
November 28, 2008
Today was a big do-nothing day for me. Reading. DS. Email. Sitting in hammock near beach. Oh yeah...
I finished reading “A Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Marcia Marquez. It’s a book that I picked up when I was staying in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney near the end of my first big trip. I didn’t really get very far into it before I got back to Canada and didn’t read another page until I got on the plane to Los Angeles on my way back here. From then, I had read it voraciously. It’s a great book. I highly recommend it. There was another Marquez book on the book exchange bookshelf there, but it was in Dutch, so it wasn’t for me to enjoy.
I also finished playing “The World Ends With You” on my Nintendo DS. I’d been playing it on and off since probably about July. It’s a good game, I also highly recommend it. Next game: Dragon Quest IV.
It seems like Kirsty and Neil had gone to the neighbouring town of Sigatoka that day for shopping and had brought back some packets of dried kava powder. Yes, it turns out that the drink I had on Tonga was much more popular here in Fiji, at least among the tourists. Neil had devised a drinking game based on the game of Kings where you had to drink the kava (which is non-alcoholic, but still special), and whatever alcohol you had, too. Good times.
November 29, 2008
Stefan and I had decided to make a bit of a day trip to Suva, the capital city of Fiji, today. We intended to catch a bus to get there, so we went and stood by the highway at the appointed time. Within minutes, however, a pickup truck stopped and offered us a ride instead. It was a guy carrying a load of brewer’s yeast from the harbour at Lautoka to the Fiji Bitter brewery in Suva. We offered the guy FJ$10 each for the ride. It’s a bit more than the bus, but he took us there much faster. Stefan, the driver, and I sat in the front together, with me in the middle. It was cozy and my knees got crushed a bit whenever the driver changed gears, but it was all good. It seemed that Fiji was an easy place to engage in hitchhiking, even if it was unintentional!
Suva itself was nothing special. It’s a big, stinky, dirty city. In fact, at about 300,000 people, it’s the largest city in the South Pacific region (other than the cities in New Zealand or Australia). Stefan and I wandered around the shopping district for a bit, bought some local rum, had really cheap curry for lunch, went to the Fiji National Museum, and saw a mongoose. We even ran into a Canadian girl who had been staying at The Beachouse but had left the day before. On our way back to the bus station we stopped at the market and picked up a cornucopia of fresh fruit to bring back with us. The food at The Beachouse was pretty lame, so we needed fresh goods!
The bus ride back was long, crowded and unpleasant. The road was very windy and the bus lurched and swayed from side to side. Ugh. It reminded me of Laos.
That night I watched the sunset with the Americans (Stefan, Annie, Will, and Ian (Annie and Will’s friend that had arrived earlier that day). It was a really good one. We sat on a rope swing that hung on a palm tree that curved out over the water as the waves lapped gently onto the beach. Beautiful.
There were a few dogs that lived at the resort, too. One of them was called Lucy.
Lucy was fun. She watched the sunset with us. There were some local people that were swimming in the water. Lucy would bark at them if they came out of the water, but would stay quiet as long as they stayed in. I was amused. I decided that Lucy was really called “The Bula Dog”. “Bula” is the Fijian word for “hello” and you get to hear it and say it very often since the Fijians are so friendly. It only made sense that this dog was really called The Bula Dog. No one else believed me, though.
More drinking that night. I think I drank too much rum since I felt ill. I don’t think it helped that I didn’t eat enough that day. Doh.
November 30, 2008
I wasn’t feeling great for most of the day, so I made it a lazy one. There was a bonfire on the beach that night, and we sat around drinking beers and kava.
It was the weekend now, and it seemed like there were more people had arrived. Our cozy little beachouse was getting more crowded.
December 1, 2008
Today was going to be a special day!
I got going early and caught a bus to Waidroka Bay (part way between The Beachouse and Suva) for my first scuba diving ever. My ear was feeling better compared to when I was on Taveuni. I was staying on The Coral Coast, so I certainly had to give it a go! Part of me wanted to go whole hog and get Open Water PADI Certification right away, but the rest of me was more cautious and prudent and decided to go on a single introductory dive first to see how breathing underwater agreed with me first.
My dive instructor that day was a lady from Pennsylvania. After demonstrating the equipment and practicing a few essential techniques in the pool (clearing your mask, equalizing pressure in your ears, recovering your air regulator if it falls out), we hopped in a boat and went to the reef.
When we got there, it was time to put on the BCV (Buoyancy Control Vest), tank, mask, put in the air regulator, and fall backwards into the water, just like in the movies! I took my instructor’s hand and we descended down a rope to a depth of 10 metres. I was breathing underwater! I looked up and could only vaguely see the surface! The boat was only a shadowy shape somewhere “up there”. I was surrounded by coral rock reef walls and all sorts of colourful fish.
I was thankful I had an instructor with me. She held my hand the whole time we were down there and lead me around and between the rocky walls made of living coral. When you’re diving, you suddenly have to deal with the third dimension of movement, and I really had no idea how to cope with that. I didn’t have control of my movement since I didn’t know how to move safely without bumping into stuff.
Anyways, it was not a problem since I had my instructor. She pointed out different features to me and communicated to me with hand signals (since it’s not really possible to talk underwater). I saw anemones with cute clown fish hiding between the tentacles peering out at us. We got to feel the underside of the anemone. It was smooth, soft, and slippery. We saw two octopii and one of them squirted ink at us when it tried to swim away. We saw a big ugly stone fish, but didn’t get close to it because it’s venomous. We saw little purple and frilly Christmas tree worms that would disappear into holes if you touched them. And, of course, hundreds of brightly coloured and oddly shaped fish.
After a while I started to feel somewhat uncomfortable. Some salt had gotten into my eyes and my ear was starting to bother me a bit, so I signaled to go back up. I had no sense of time underwater, so I had no idea how long we were down there until I got back to the boat. It turns out that we were down for forty minutes, and would have had about five more minutes anyways if I didn’t end it. So, I think it was a good first attempt.
December 2, 2008
If yesterday was special, then today would be an unnecessary drama. Crappity crap crap.
My flight from Nadi to Brisbane, Australia left the airport at noon. It would take about two hours to get to the airport from The Beachouse, so, in order to give myself sufficient time to make it to the airport, I got up early (6:30 AM). It was too early to book the hostel bus to take me there, so I decided to try my luck at hitchhiking to get to the airport. No problems. After only a few minutes of standing beside the highway, I found a minibus that would take me there for only FJ$15 (CA$10).
I got to the airport about fifteen minutes before the check-in for my Air Pacific flight was opened. There were only a handful of people in line ahead of me. Things had gone very smoothly, until I went into my bag and tried to get my documents in order.
I couldn’t find my passport.
Crappity crap crap.
I unpacked my bag and looked everywhere for it right there in the airport line. The friendly Australian girl behind me in line talked to me and calmed me down (she even invited me to her wedding on December 23 in Brisbane, but I don’t think I’m going to go). I was not freaking out. This sucked, but I had options. I called The Beachouse. It seemed that I had left my passport in the hostel safe. Ugh. I started avoiding those things because I always forgot things in them (like when I left my passport in Byron Bay). I guess I had forgotten my lesson after I had restarted my travels.
It’s these early morning wake ups! Let’s say I’m not a morning person and dislike them. I certainly used to be a morning person, but those days are past. If I’m not working, then why should I have to deal with these early morning wake ups all the time? Ugh. The curse of the budget traveler.
Okay. Thinking. I didn’t have my Canadian passport (the one with my visa for Australia), but I did still have my Polish one. The lady at the check in counter said I could apply for a visa for my Polish passport online and use that instead. I went to the cafe, ordered a cappuccino (I certainly deserved a treat by this point), and applied for another visa online. Thankfully, it was free of charge for European citizens. Yay. Canadians have to pay for their Australian visas. Suckers...
I waited for the rest of my half hour of internet time to wait up to see if the approval email would come. It didn’t, but I decided to go wait in line to check in anyways.
By the time I got to the front of the line, some time had passed but my visa hadn’t been approved yet. In fact, when the check-in lady looked at the computer, it seemed that it had been rejected. WTF. No explanation.
Okay. Thinking. Instead, I showed her a photocopy of my Canadian passport and said that I had traveled to Australia three times already on the same passport and I was a really nice guy if there was anything she could do, oh pretty please. She said would talk to her supervisor and disappeared into the back. I didn’t see her again for forty-five minutes. All the other passengers finished checking in and disappeared. The boarding announcements for the plane were read over the intercom. The last boarding call was made. I was getting very nervous and antsy. I asked some of the Air Pacific staff still at the counter if they knew where the lady went, but they were unsympathetic to my plight.
Finally, she returned. She said that had to call Canberra (the capital city of Australia) and they had granted me special permission to enter the country with just the photocopy of my passport. She gave me my boarding pass as the intercom named me personally and told me to board my plane.
I ran through the airport. Good thing it was a small one. Some of the Fijians laughed to see someone running through the airport. They must have thought it was funny since Fijians are never in a rush.
Immigration was somewhat of a hassle since I didn’t have my Canadian passport for the dude to put my exit stamp into. I showed him my passport photocopy, he typed some stuff into the computer and lazily put the exit stamp into my Polish passport instead. He was in no rush, of course.
Sweating and breathing heavily, I was the last person to board the plane. Yes, I was that guy who gets paged repeatedly on the airport intercom to hurry up and board their plane. I sometimes scoffed at such people in the past (“why would you be late for your plane? come on!”), but know I knew how they felt and I would scoff no more.
The flight was three hours to Brisbane. Thankfully, the nice Air Pacific flight attendants gave me a couple Fiji Bitter beers to ease my nerves. I didn’t look forward to the Australian immigration. I expected a full body cavity search. Rubber gloves. Snap. Bend over. Clench.
Thankfully, the hard part was behind me. Getting past Australian immigration in Brisbane was surprisingly easy. I told the guy I didn’t have a passport and he sent me to the supervisor’s desk. They looked on the computer and it did show, indeed, that Canberra had sent special permission for me to enter the country with just a photocopy of my passport. They gave me my entry stamp in my Polish passport and said I still needed to get my Canadian passport back since that was the one that would have to get my exit stamp. Yes yes sir, I would get it mailed to me. They were very civil and very helpful.
I was back in Australia!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer’s Paradise, Australia
New Photos Posted: Fiji
Sorry for taking so long, but I've finally finished getting my photos posted from my two weeks in Fiji. Enjoy!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer's Paradise, Australia
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer's Paradise, Australia
A Tale of Three Treks
November 24, 2008
Barbara and I were awake early. It was time to climb Des Voux Peak, the second highest peak on Taveuni, at around 1200 m. Technically, it was a simple climb since there was a road that lead all the way to the top. There were telecommunications towers at the top of the peak, so it was possible to catch a ride to the top with the workers who drove up there... but that wouldn’t be fun for us. We decided to walk the whole way.
It was a four hour walk all the way up, and a two hour walk back down. The road was rough and not really paved. Most of it was composed of piles of craggy black volcanic rocks. It’s a good thing we were wearing proper walking shoes, otherwise we would have wrecked our feet. We were astonished to see several groups of local people walking up and down the road in just flip flops or even bare feet. We didn’t know how they did it.
There is apparently a flower that is endemic to Des Voux Peak (i.e.: it is a species unique to that place). We were fortunate enough to be there at the time of year where it was in bloom. Although we didn’t see the plants themselves, several groups of local kids had climbed the mountain that day to pick big bunches of the pretty red and white flowers.
We were treated with gorgeous views on the way up the mountain, but as we got close to the summit, we were assaulted with rain showers. Any possible breathtaking vistas at the top of the mountain were obscured by thick layers of rain clouds and fog. Oh well.
On the way up the mountain, we saw some parrots and heard a strange barking sound emanating from the surrounding jungle. It really sounded like dogs to me. Barbara speculated that it could be some kind of monkey, but I didn’t think any monkeys lived on Taveuni. The sound would remain a mystery until we learned its true source two days later.
That afternoon, we took a bus from our inn in Waiyovo village to Lavena village on the other side of the island. It was a two hour bus ride and we were the only two foreigners on the bus. It cost only FJ$4 (CA$3) Taking a bus with the locals is always fun (of course, I can say that now since the terrors of my ordeals on the buses in Laos are somewhat dulled in my memory).
Part way down the road, it started to rain viciously. By the time we reached Vidawa village, the last village before our destination, a flash flood had overrun the banks of one of the rivers and blocked the passage of the bus. It was dark outside, so it took some time before I could figure out why our forward progress had been blocked. The bus driver edged the bus up to the edge of the rushing torrents of water. There was no proper bridge (Taveuni is too poor to afford many of such luxuries), just a paved ford across the river. I looked out the window and saw the flood waters. It seemed to me like the bus driver was going to attempt to drive across it! Oh god, I thought... I didn’t want to die here! I felt pretty nervous.
Thankfully, the bus driver decided he wouldn’t be able to make it and backed away for a while. Apparently flash floods like this happen fairly often here, and the bus driver has a good sense of which ones he can drive across safely. After about twenty minutes, the deluge had abated somewhat and the bus driver successfully made his attempt to cross it. We reached Lavena village without incident. Whew.
Lavena village was a tiny village, and it felt like the end of the world to me, for many reasons. It was located on a peninsula at the end of a rough road in a remote part of an island in a remote part of the world. It was hard to get to, given the distance required to fly here, and given that I felt like I almost died getting here! It was located on an island with the 180th line of longitude, making it symbolically far from the centres of civilization. Here in Lavena village, I was very very far from the world at large. It was a quiet place, populated with a handful of friendly villagers, and punctuated only the sounds of breaking waves and playing children.
Why would I come here? There were a number of beautiful treks you could do here, and a tiny, basic lodge to sleep in. The rate was FJ$30 (CA$20) for the first night and FJ$20 (CA$14) for each subsequent night. We were the only two people staying there.
November 25, 2008
The first trek we did from Lavena was the Lavena Coastal Walk, a spectacular walk along the coast and up a small river to a gorgeous rock pool with waterfalls. The trail started just outside the lodge itself.
The first part was along the beach itself and the adjoining lush stands of trees. At several places, we had to cross shallow creeks discharging into the sea. It was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen (until the next day...) Occasionally, we see toads, small lizards, or tiny crabs scamper across the path.
Partway down the beach we found amazing rock pedestals that had been eroded by centuries of crashing waves. The tide was low and we were able to find lots of starfish and crabs in the tide pools surrounding the pedestals.
After crossing a little swinging suspension bridge, the path left the coast and went inland up a rock-filed river. The path was lined with cultivated crop lands (mostly bananas and taro) and types of exotic flowers I had never seen before (including some orchids).
The path ended about fifty metres short of the rock pool. It took about two or three hours to reach this point (stopping to take many photos and climb some trees!) We had to swim the rest of the way through the fish filled clear bubbling water, passed sheer rock walls to reach a turbulent pool of water with two beautiful waterfalls plunging into it. The walls of rock were lined with tiny snails and prawns. The lady in the lodge had said that we could slide down one of the two waterfalls, but we didn’t try it since we didn’t want to break our necks.
After departing from the waterfalls, we had our lunch and sunned ourselves a bit before the heavens unleashed a torrent of rain onto us. We got completely drenched. It didn’t matter! The rain was warm. I was in high spirits. Thankfully, I had a waterproof cover for my backpack, so my stuff didn’t get wet... just me! It was fun to splash back in in the puddles in my flip flops on the way back with all the toads hopping through ahead of me. I felt like a little kid.
November 26, 2008
This was our last full day on Taveuni and our last trek. Three treks, three days-in-a-row! Taveuni was fantastic, and truly one of the highlights in all of my travels. I had originally come here to try my hand at scuba diving, but didn’t get to try it at all. It was no problem... I love trekking even more.
Barbara and I had to wake up at 5 AM in order to catch a bus back to Vidawa village, 7 km up the road, where our trek was based. Even though we woke up at sunrise, it seemed everyone else in the village was awake, too. The first bus left at 5:45 AM and it seemed life in the village revolved around this departure time. The bus was filled with people going to work in other parts of the island, and school kids on the way to Bouma village (5 km up the road) to attend classes.
This trek, the Vidawa Rainforest Hike, was originally recommended to me by Catie and Erikas Napjus, from my camp at Burning Man, even though the Lonely Planet guidebook highly recommended it, too. It was fun to look in the guestbook at the Vidawa village visitor’s centre and find their names and comments. It felt like a link reaching out from the first phase of my big travels to this second phase.
We met our guide, Rusi, and began our trek. The first segment of the trek lead through cultivated farmlands, past the remains of the two last locations of Vidawa Village, up into the rainforest, and back. We stopped several times as Rusi found wild pineapples for us to eat. What a treat!
We passed by some weathered stone chairs that the warriors of the old village would sit and watch over the sea, waiting to sound the alarm if war canoes filled with enemies threatened. Here’s a picture of me in one of the warrior’s seats. Yes, I’m very sweaty... but the weather was very hot and humid, and it was hard work climbing up the hills.
We also walked past some ditches that the past villages had dug to defend themselves from attack. It was a very real reminder of the violent lives the ancestors of the current villagers had lived before Christian missionaries converted all the villagers and basically forced them to pacify.
Finally, we reached the rainforest itself, and the trail grew very steep. It was a good thing that we were supplied with walking sticks before embarking on our treks. In the heart of the rainforest was the remains of the first site of Vidawa village. In the centre of the tree-enchoked ruins was a standing stone where people used to be sacrificed before being eaten or buried in the supporting of houses.
In the rainforest, we heard the same barking sound that we had heard before on Des Voux Peak. Rusi told us that it was a pigeon! It was a barking pigeon! I was astonished. How could a small bird be so loud? We also heard and saw the elusive orange dove, which made a quiet noise like fingers snapping. We heard, but didn’t see, wild roosters. Just like the evil roosters of Southeast Asia, they endeavoured to disturb the peace at any hour of the day!
Rusi also showed us how the villagers of the past would hit the hollow roots of the big trees if they were lost in the rainforest. The roots sounded like big drums that echoed through the jungle.
On our way down from the rainforest, we stopped for lunch and some fresh coconut juice on a hill overlooking Vidawa village itself. What a view!
The final stop for the tour was the waterfalls at Tovoro, a few kilometers down the road back towards Lavena. Along the way we saw lots of local kids jumping from a bridge into a river. As soon as I started taking photos of them, they started doing stunts and showing off.
The path to the Tavoro waterfalls was stunning. Apparently it was cleared and then replanted by a movie company that used the waterfall as a film set. I think the movie was “The Blue Lagoon”, or something like that. Again, I felt like I was in one of the most beautiful places I had even seen...
There are actually three waterfalls at Tavoro. We visited the first two. Of course, we were required to swim in the pools. It was a hot day, after all... we needed to cool off!
From Tavoro, we walked back to Lavena village. It was about seven kilometers, and it started raining on us on the way back. Did I mention that it was the rainy season in Fiji? As a result, there were far fewer tourists around, especially on a remote place like Taveuni.
November 27, 2008
Again, we had to wake at 5 AM in order to catch the early bus in order to get to the airport. I was scheduled for a flight around noon and Barbara was scheduled later in the afternoon. Since we got to the airport so early, we were able to get ourselves rescheduled onto earlier flights. Barbara was flying out of Fiji today, onto New York City to visit friends for a few days before heading home to Vienna. We said goodbye and went out separate ways. Thankfully, there were no mechanical problems with the plane this day and I reached Nadi airport without incident.
I got a taxi to take me back to Bluewater Lodge to pick up my sunglasses, then onwards to the bus station in Nadi itself. The taxi cost me FJ$25 (CA$17). I needed to take a bus to my chosen resort on the southern coast of the main island of Fiji, The Beachouse. The taxi driver tried to convince me to let him drive me all the way to The Beachouse for a mere FJ$100 (CA$67). Too expensive for me! I took the bus for FJ$7 (CA$5) instead.
I’ll tell you about The Beachouse in a separate post though.
To be continued...
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer’s Paradise, Australia
Barbara and I were awake early. It was time to climb Des Voux Peak, the second highest peak on Taveuni, at around 1200 m. Technically, it was a simple climb since there was a road that lead all the way to the top. There were telecommunications towers at the top of the peak, so it was possible to catch a ride to the top with the workers who drove up there... but that wouldn’t be fun for us. We decided to walk the whole way.
It was a four hour walk all the way up, and a two hour walk back down. The road was rough and not really paved. Most of it was composed of piles of craggy black volcanic rocks. It’s a good thing we were wearing proper walking shoes, otherwise we would have wrecked our feet. We were astonished to see several groups of local people walking up and down the road in just flip flops or even bare feet. We didn’t know how they did it.
There is apparently a flower that is endemic to Des Voux Peak (i.e.: it is a species unique to that place). We were fortunate enough to be there at the time of year where it was in bloom. Although we didn’t see the plants themselves, several groups of local kids had climbed the mountain that day to pick big bunches of the pretty red and white flowers.
We were treated with gorgeous views on the way up the mountain, but as we got close to the summit, we were assaulted with rain showers. Any possible breathtaking vistas at the top of the mountain were obscured by thick layers of rain clouds and fog. Oh well.
On the way up the mountain, we saw some parrots and heard a strange barking sound emanating from the surrounding jungle. It really sounded like dogs to me. Barbara speculated that it could be some kind of monkey, but I didn’t think any monkeys lived on Taveuni. The sound would remain a mystery until we learned its true source two days later.
That afternoon, we took a bus from our inn in Waiyovo village to Lavena village on the other side of the island. It was a two hour bus ride and we were the only two foreigners on the bus. It cost only FJ$4 (CA$3) Taking a bus with the locals is always fun (of course, I can say that now since the terrors of my ordeals on the buses in Laos are somewhat dulled in my memory).
Part way down the road, it started to rain viciously. By the time we reached Vidawa village, the last village before our destination, a flash flood had overrun the banks of one of the rivers and blocked the passage of the bus. It was dark outside, so it took some time before I could figure out why our forward progress had been blocked. The bus driver edged the bus up to the edge of the rushing torrents of water. There was no proper bridge (Taveuni is too poor to afford many of such luxuries), just a paved ford across the river. I looked out the window and saw the flood waters. It seemed to me like the bus driver was going to attempt to drive across it! Oh god, I thought... I didn’t want to die here! I felt pretty nervous.
Thankfully, the bus driver decided he wouldn’t be able to make it and backed away for a while. Apparently flash floods like this happen fairly often here, and the bus driver has a good sense of which ones he can drive across safely. After about twenty minutes, the deluge had abated somewhat and the bus driver successfully made his attempt to cross it. We reached Lavena village without incident. Whew.
Lavena village was a tiny village, and it felt like the end of the world to me, for many reasons. It was located on a peninsula at the end of a rough road in a remote part of an island in a remote part of the world. It was hard to get to, given the distance required to fly here, and given that I felt like I almost died getting here! It was located on an island with the 180th line of longitude, making it symbolically far from the centres of civilization. Here in Lavena village, I was very very far from the world at large. It was a quiet place, populated with a handful of friendly villagers, and punctuated only the sounds of breaking waves and playing children.
Why would I come here? There were a number of beautiful treks you could do here, and a tiny, basic lodge to sleep in. The rate was FJ$30 (CA$20) for the first night and FJ$20 (CA$14) for each subsequent night. We were the only two people staying there.
November 25, 2008
The first trek we did from Lavena was the Lavena Coastal Walk, a spectacular walk along the coast and up a small river to a gorgeous rock pool with waterfalls. The trail started just outside the lodge itself.
The first part was along the beach itself and the adjoining lush stands of trees. At several places, we had to cross shallow creeks discharging into the sea. It was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen (until the next day...) Occasionally, we see toads, small lizards, or tiny crabs scamper across the path.
Partway down the beach we found amazing rock pedestals that had been eroded by centuries of crashing waves. The tide was low and we were able to find lots of starfish and crabs in the tide pools surrounding the pedestals.
After crossing a little swinging suspension bridge, the path left the coast and went inland up a rock-filed river. The path was lined with cultivated crop lands (mostly bananas and taro) and types of exotic flowers I had never seen before (including some orchids).
The path ended about fifty metres short of the rock pool. It took about two or three hours to reach this point (stopping to take many photos and climb some trees!) We had to swim the rest of the way through the fish filled clear bubbling water, passed sheer rock walls to reach a turbulent pool of water with two beautiful waterfalls plunging into it. The walls of rock were lined with tiny snails and prawns. The lady in the lodge had said that we could slide down one of the two waterfalls, but we didn’t try it since we didn’t want to break our necks.
After departing from the waterfalls, we had our lunch and sunned ourselves a bit before the heavens unleashed a torrent of rain onto us. We got completely drenched. It didn’t matter! The rain was warm. I was in high spirits. Thankfully, I had a waterproof cover for my backpack, so my stuff didn’t get wet... just me! It was fun to splash back in in the puddles in my flip flops on the way back with all the toads hopping through ahead of me. I felt like a little kid.
November 26, 2008
This was our last full day on Taveuni and our last trek. Three treks, three days-in-a-row! Taveuni was fantastic, and truly one of the highlights in all of my travels. I had originally come here to try my hand at scuba diving, but didn’t get to try it at all. It was no problem... I love trekking even more.
Barbara and I had to wake up at 5 AM in order to catch a bus back to Vidawa village, 7 km up the road, where our trek was based. Even though we woke up at sunrise, it seemed everyone else in the village was awake, too. The first bus left at 5:45 AM and it seemed life in the village revolved around this departure time. The bus was filled with people going to work in other parts of the island, and school kids on the way to Bouma village (5 km up the road) to attend classes.
This trek, the Vidawa Rainforest Hike, was originally recommended to me by Catie and Erikas Napjus, from my camp at Burning Man, even though the Lonely Planet guidebook highly recommended it, too. It was fun to look in the guestbook at the Vidawa village visitor’s centre and find their names and comments. It felt like a link reaching out from the first phase of my big travels to this second phase.
We met our guide, Rusi, and began our trek. The first segment of the trek lead through cultivated farmlands, past the remains of the two last locations of Vidawa Village, up into the rainforest, and back. We stopped several times as Rusi found wild pineapples for us to eat. What a treat!
We passed by some weathered stone chairs that the warriors of the old village would sit and watch over the sea, waiting to sound the alarm if war canoes filled with enemies threatened. Here’s a picture of me in one of the warrior’s seats. Yes, I’m very sweaty... but the weather was very hot and humid, and it was hard work climbing up the hills.
We also walked past some ditches that the past villages had dug to defend themselves from attack. It was a very real reminder of the violent lives the ancestors of the current villagers had lived before Christian missionaries converted all the villagers and basically forced them to pacify.
Finally, we reached the rainforest itself, and the trail grew very steep. It was a good thing that we were supplied with walking sticks before embarking on our treks. In the heart of the rainforest was the remains of the first site of Vidawa village. In the centre of the tree-enchoked ruins was a standing stone where people used to be sacrificed before being eaten or buried in the supporting of houses.
In the rainforest, we heard the same barking sound that we had heard before on Des Voux Peak. Rusi told us that it was a pigeon! It was a barking pigeon! I was astonished. How could a small bird be so loud? We also heard and saw the elusive orange dove, which made a quiet noise like fingers snapping. We heard, but didn’t see, wild roosters. Just like the evil roosters of Southeast Asia, they endeavoured to disturb the peace at any hour of the day!
Rusi also showed us how the villagers of the past would hit the hollow roots of the big trees if they were lost in the rainforest. The roots sounded like big drums that echoed through the jungle.
On our way down from the rainforest, we stopped for lunch and some fresh coconut juice on a hill overlooking Vidawa village itself. What a view!
The final stop for the tour was the waterfalls at Tovoro, a few kilometers down the road back towards Lavena. Along the way we saw lots of local kids jumping from a bridge into a river. As soon as I started taking photos of them, they started doing stunts and showing off.
The path to the Tavoro waterfalls was stunning. Apparently it was cleared and then replanted by a movie company that used the waterfall as a film set. I think the movie was “The Blue Lagoon”, or something like that. Again, I felt like I was in one of the most beautiful places I had even seen...
There are actually three waterfalls at Tavoro. We visited the first two. Of course, we were required to swim in the pools. It was a hot day, after all... we needed to cool off!
From Tavoro, we walked back to Lavena village. It was about seven kilometers, and it started raining on us on the way back. Did I mention that it was the rainy season in Fiji? As a result, there were far fewer tourists around, especially on a remote place like Taveuni.
November 27, 2008
Again, we had to wake at 5 AM in order to catch the early bus in order to get to the airport. I was scheduled for a flight around noon and Barbara was scheduled later in the afternoon. Since we got to the airport so early, we were able to get ourselves rescheduled onto earlier flights. Barbara was flying out of Fiji today, onto New York City to visit friends for a few days before heading home to Vienna. We said goodbye and went out separate ways. Thankfully, there were no mechanical problems with the plane this day and I reached Nadi airport without incident.
I got a taxi to take me back to Bluewater Lodge to pick up my sunglasses, then onwards to the bus station in Nadi itself. The taxi cost me FJ$25 (CA$17). I needed to take a bus to my chosen resort on the southern coast of the main island of Fiji, The Beachouse. The taxi driver tried to convince me to let him drive me all the way to The Beachouse for a mere FJ$100 (CA$67). Too expensive for me! I took the bus for FJ$7 (CA$5) instead.
I’ll tell you about The Beachouse in a separate post though.
To be continued...
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Surfer’s Paradise, Australia
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
First Few Days in Fiji
November 20, 2008
...continued
Indeed! I was in Fiji! I stopped at the ATM to get some Fiji Dollars. FJ$0.66 is about CA$1.00. At least the Canadian Dollar is higher than SOMETHING these days.
I had arranged a pick-up from the airport. The hostel had sent a taxi for me. It was cool to have a guy waiting for me with my name on a paper. I felt important!
The hostel, Bluewater Lodge, wasn’t really that far from the airport. Other than the proliferation of ants in my room, it was really a fantastic place. Nice swimming pool, gardens, close to the beach, extremely friendly and helpful staff. It was kind of a quiet and small place. There were only about eight other guests there. I slept in a three-bed dorm, though there was never more than one other person sharing my room. The room rate is FJ$24/night (CA$16), which is about the average price I paid for all of my nights in Fiji. Pretty cheap!
I got myself showered, cleaned, changed, and chatted with a few of the guests. I needed to go into Nadi (the local city, pronounced “Nandi”), and had arranged with my taxi driver to pick me up again in a few hours and give me a ride there. There were a couple of English girls at the lodge, Chloe and Charlotte, who decided to come along. Generally, I don’t like using taxis (often too expensive for what you get), but Fiji is cheap, and splitting the fare is usually a good deal!
Nadi was not an attractive city, being kinda of dirty, hot and smelly. There were people trying to get you into their souvenir or clothing shops. I pretended these people didn’t exist, as always. I got a Vodafone SIM card for my cell phone, got some flip flops, sun screen, ice cream (it was super hot, after all), and went to the handicraft market with the girls. There was a mango tree there where the mangoes were so ripe that they were falling by themselves from the tree. It seemed very Newtonian. Charlotte and I picked up the fallen fruit and proceeded to eat it. Fiji was already amazing me.
MMM MANGOES!
We roamed around a bit more and met up with Charlotte and Chloe’s friend Jason, from Ireland. They met him on one of the offshore island resorts (there are MANY of them in Fiji) and were traveling in parallel for a while. It was with these three people that I would mostly hang out with for the two days that I stayed at the Bluewater Lodge in Nadi.
I did very little for the rest of the day. I spent time sunning myself and swimming in the swimming pool at the Bluewater Lodge. During sunset, I went to the beach and watched the show as the sea swallowed the sun.
That night, I ate dinner at the lodge with the other guests. The food was fantastic. We chatted, gossiped, and drank Fiji Bitter beers. The lodge had a little band come in and play some music for us on their acoustic guitars. Joe, who worked at the lodge, served us some kava (the same earthy-flavoured, relaxing drink that I had in Tonga) and sang along with the band. After a while, the band stopped playing music and some Fijian dance music started bursting out of the loudspeaker. What was going on? Was the band finished?
NO! Joe erupted onto the pool deck in traditional Fijian garb and did some crazy traditional dances for us. It was one of the most random things I’d ever seen. It was so cool! Joe was a good dancer!
What an amazing day! Fiji was going to be good, I knew it!
November 21, 2008
Today was an extremely lazy day. I did very little other than sit by the pool and listen to Bob Marley on the lodge’s stereo. I was supposed to be flying to the island of Taveuni tomorrow, and spent time trying to decide what exactly to do when I got there. It was supposed to be an amazing place to do some scuba diving, so I called around and ended up booking myself a few nights at an expensive place (FJ$75/night, ouch), that had the reputation of being a good dive operator.
The lodge kitchen was closed that night, so I went to a traditional Fijian restaurant with Jason and another Canadian girl that was staying at the hostel (don’t remember her name, though). The food was good, but I forgot my camera, so I couldn’t take any pictures *weeps*. Dinner was fun, though. Jason was a good participant in nonsense-conversations (one of my favourite kinds), and the Canadian girl was pretty funny.
November 22, 2008
It was time to leave the Bluewater Lodge. My next destination was the island of Taveuni (one of the many other islands in the country of Fiji). I had a flight that afternoon, so I got a taxi to the airport. On the way to the airport, I realized that I had lost my sunglasses. My expensive, prescription sunglasses! Oops. I called back to the Bluewater Lodge. Joe said that he had found them and would hold onto them until I flew back into Nadi in five days. Okay. Crisis averted.
Next crisis. My flight on my Pacific Sun airlines to Taveuni was delayed for many hours due to mechanical problems with the De Havilland Twin Otter airplane. Finally, like three hours after the originally scheduled departure date, the ten-or-so passengers boarded the tiny plane and the pilots took out us for a little spin. Literally. They started the tiny propeller-driven plane, we taxied around in a little circle for about two minutes, returned to the terminal, and they told us that the mechanical problems (something to do with the hydraulics) were not successfully repaired and the flight would be cancelled and rescheduled for the next morning at 7 AM. An Australian on the plane who was going over to Taveuni for business said he wasn’t surprised... Pacific Sun frequently has problems like this. Lovely.
The airline put the passengers in the hotel across the road from the airport over night. It was actually a fairly decent hotel (certainly much more expensive than any of the hostels I was staying at in Fiji). The airline also gave us vouchers for dinner and breakfast. So, I was going to lose a day in Taveuni, but I got to stay in a decent hotel and eat well for free. The penny-pincher in my couldn’t complain, really.
That night, I made a few new friends. Barbara, a girl from Austria, and a couple from the USA (though I can’t remember their names, now). The Americans were spending a month in a very rural village on a remote island. They were staying in the chief’s house and contains many bags of donated medical supplies.
November 23, 2008
Up at 5 AM in order to have breakfast with the other stranded passenger and to make out 6:15 AM pickup time to return to the airport. The plane actually took off on time and soon we were flying over the hilly and forested central highlands of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu. After a short while, we were flying over turquoise reefs and gorgeous arcing coral reefs. My flight was an hour-and-a-half long, and it was one of the most beautiful and dramatic panoramas I’ve ever witnessed.
My ear was hurting (I think it was from all the swimming I did the other day) and I decided that going scuba diving wouldn’t be a very wise idea. The other thing that attracted me about Taveuni was the wealth of opportunities for trekking. The island had mountains, jungles, and waterfalls that I could visit. Talking with Barbara on the plane, she had very similar travel ideas for Taveuni and was staying there the same length of time as me, so we decided to travel together while we were there. I cancelled my booking at the scuba diving place.
Today was Sunday, and the already infrequent bus services on the island were even more infrequent. Luckily, one of the Australians on the plane, Murray, was on Taveuni for business and gave us a ride to the village of Waiyovo for free. Nice!
The village was small and very quiet, since it was Sunday. Barbara and I split a twin room at the otherwise deserted First Light Inn (FJ$50 for two people). It was the low season in Fiji, and we were the only travelers staying at the inn.
The guy who seemed to run the inn suggested that we visit the natural waterslide, which we could reach by walking. It was pretty close by, and our Lonely Planet guidebooks said it was pretty fun. The weather was very hot and rather humid, so it seemed like a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The book suggested that we watched the local people go down the natural waterslide first. It was a wise suggestion, because, when we got there, it wasn’t really clear what part of the water way we were supposed to slide down. Parts of it looked pretty dodgy and rocky and we didn’t want to break our necks. There weren’t any other people when we got there, though, so we ended up swimming in a waterfall (the first of five waterfalls I visited in my four days on Taveuni) rockpool for a while. The water was very cold, but very refreshing!
After a short while, some local people showed up and showed us the right way to enjoy the waterfall. Some hotshot guys slid down on their feet, but we didn’t do that. Since the water levels were low, about five people at once would sit side-by-side to block the water flow and let it build up behind them. Once they had dammed enough water, they would let it out all at once and slid down together. It was very very fun!!
After the waterfall, Barbara and I continued our walk down the other direction. One of the other neat things about Taveuni was the 180th meridian. The island was on the exact opposite side of the world from Greenwich, where the system of measuring longitude begins. The International Date Line doesn’t pass through the island, but jogs by the side, so that the whole country of Fiji is on the same day and time zone. But, it was cool to have one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and the other in the Western Hemisphere at the same time. Sure, I could do the same thing in London, England, but this was way cooler (and much harder to get to!).
We continued walking through the village of Wairiki and sat beside a church and listened to the villagers practice their choir singing while kids were playing rugby on an adjacent field. There was a big Christian cross on a nearby hill and we made the trek up to it and were rewarded with fantastic views.
We went for dinner at a restaurant in the village. We were the only guests of course and the place stayed open past its closing time just because we were there. It was very weird being the ONLY travelers in the village, especially on Sunday in a traditional Christian country where the place seems to just shut down.
The next day, we wouldn’t be seeing any waterfalls, but were going to walk up a mountain instead! But, more about that in my next post.
Oh, and here’s a tip for anyone in the domestic terminal in Brisbane Airport. If you sit outside of the business class lounge for Virgin Blue airlines, then you borrow the free wireless internet that seems to be leaking outside the lounge. Tee hee.
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Brisbane, Australia
...continued
Indeed! I was in Fiji! I stopped at the ATM to get some Fiji Dollars. FJ$0.66 is about CA$1.00. At least the Canadian Dollar is higher than SOMETHING these days.
I had arranged a pick-up from the airport. The hostel had sent a taxi for me. It was cool to have a guy waiting for me with my name on a paper. I felt important!
The hostel, Bluewater Lodge, wasn’t really that far from the airport. Other than the proliferation of ants in my room, it was really a fantastic place. Nice swimming pool, gardens, close to the beach, extremely friendly and helpful staff. It was kind of a quiet and small place. There were only about eight other guests there. I slept in a three-bed dorm, though there was never more than one other person sharing my room. The room rate is FJ$24/night (CA$16), which is about the average price I paid for all of my nights in Fiji. Pretty cheap!
I got myself showered, cleaned, changed, and chatted with a few of the guests. I needed to go into Nadi (the local city, pronounced “Nandi”), and had arranged with my taxi driver to pick me up again in a few hours and give me a ride there. There were a couple of English girls at the lodge, Chloe and Charlotte, who decided to come along. Generally, I don’t like using taxis (often too expensive for what you get), but Fiji is cheap, and splitting the fare is usually a good deal!
Nadi was not an attractive city, being kinda of dirty, hot and smelly. There were people trying to get you into their souvenir or clothing shops. I pretended these people didn’t exist, as always. I got a Vodafone SIM card for my cell phone, got some flip flops, sun screen, ice cream (it was super hot, after all), and went to the handicraft market with the girls. There was a mango tree there where the mangoes were so ripe that they were falling by themselves from the tree. It seemed very Newtonian. Charlotte and I picked up the fallen fruit and proceeded to eat it. Fiji was already amazing me.
MMM MANGOES!
We roamed around a bit more and met up with Charlotte and Chloe’s friend Jason, from Ireland. They met him on one of the offshore island resorts (there are MANY of them in Fiji) and were traveling in parallel for a while. It was with these three people that I would mostly hang out with for the two days that I stayed at the Bluewater Lodge in Nadi.
I did very little for the rest of the day. I spent time sunning myself and swimming in the swimming pool at the Bluewater Lodge. During sunset, I went to the beach and watched the show as the sea swallowed the sun.
That night, I ate dinner at the lodge with the other guests. The food was fantastic. We chatted, gossiped, and drank Fiji Bitter beers. The lodge had a little band come in and play some music for us on their acoustic guitars. Joe, who worked at the lodge, served us some kava (the same earthy-flavoured, relaxing drink that I had in Tonga) and sang along with the band. After a while, the band stopped playing music and some Fijian dance music started bursting out of the loudspeaker. What was going on? Was the band finished?
NO! Joe erupted onto the pool deck in traditional Fijian garb and did some crazy traditional dances for us. It was one of the most random things I’d ever seen. It was so cool! Joe was a good dancer!
What an amazing day! Fiji was going to be good, I knew it!
November 21, 2008
Today was an extremely lazy day. I did very little other than sit by the pool and listen to Bob Marley on the lodge’s stereo. I was supposed to be flying to the island of Taveuni tomorrow, and spent time trying to decide what exactly to do when I got there. It was supposed to be an amazing place to do some scuba diving, so I called around and ended up booking myself a few nights at an expensive place (FJ$75/night, ouch), that had the reputation of being a good dive operator.
The lodge kitchen was closed that night, so I went to a traditional Fijian restaurant with Jason and another Canadian girl that was staying at the hostel (don’t remember her name, though). The food was good, but I forgot my camera, so I couldn’t take any pictures *weeps*. Dinner was fun, though. Jason was a good participant in nonsense-conversations (one of my favourite kinds), and the Canadian girl was pretty funny.
November 22, 2008
It was time to leave the Bluewater Lodge. My next destination was the island of Taveuni (one of the many other islands in the country of Fiji). I had a flight that afternoon, so I got a taxi to the airport. On the way to the airport, I realized that I had lost my sunglasses. My expensive, prescription sunglasses! Oops. I called back to the Bluewater Lodge. Joe said that he had found them and would hold onto them until I flew back into Nadi in five days. Okay. Crisis averted.
Next crisis. My flight on my Pacific Sun airlines to Taveuni was delayed for many hours due to mechanical problems with the De Havilland Twin Otter airplane. Finally, like three hours after the originally scheduled departure date, the ten-or-so passengers boarded the tiny plane and the pilots took out us for a little spin. Literally. They started the tiny propeller-driven plane, we taxied around in a little circle for about two minutes, returned to the terminal, and they told us that the mechanical problems (something to do with the hydraulics) were not successfully repaired and the flight would be cancelled and rescheduled for the next morning at 7 AM. An Australian on the plane who was going over to Taveuni for business said he wasn’t surprised... Pacific Sun frequently has problems like this. Lovely.
The airline put the passengers in the hotel across the road from the airport over night. It was actually a fairly decent hotel (certainly much more expensive than any of the hostels I was staying at in Fiji). The airline also gave us vouchers for dinner and breakfast. So, I was going to lose a day in Taveuni, but I got to stay in a decent hotel and eat well for free. The penny-pincher in my couldn’t complain, really.
That night, I made a few new friends. Barbara, a girl from Austria, and a couple from the USA (though I can’t remember their names, now). The Americans were spending a month in a very rural village on a remote island. They were staying in the chief’s house and contains many bags of donated medical supplies.
November 23, 2008
Up at 5 AM in order to have breakfast with the other stranded passenger and to make out 6:15 AM pickup time to return to the airport. The plane actually took off on time and soon we were flying over the hilly and forested central highlands of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu. After a short while, we were flying over turquoise reefs and gorgeous arcing coral reefs. My flight was an hour-and-a-half long, and it was one of the most beautiful and dramatic panoramas I’ve ever witnessed.
My ear was hurting (I think it was from all the swimming I did the other day) and I decided that going scuba diving wouldn’t be a very wise idea. The other thing that attracted me about Taveuni was the wealth of opportunities for trekking. The island had mountains, jungles, and waterfalls that I could visit. Talking with Barbara on the plane, she had very similar travel ideas for Taveuni and was staying there the same length of time as me, so we decided to travel together while we were there. I cancelled my booking at the scuba diving place.
Today was Sunday, and the already infrequent bus services on the island were even more infrequent. Luckily, one of the Australians on the plane, Murray, was on Taveuni for business and gave us a ride to the village of Waiyovo for free. Nice!
The village was small and very quiet, since it was Sunday. Barbara and I split a twin room at the otherwise deserted First Light Inn (FJ$50 for two people). It was the low season in Fiji, and we were the only travelers staying at the inn.
The guy who seemed to run the inn suggested that we visit the natural waterslide, which we could reach by walking. It was pretty close by, and our Lonely Planet guidebooks said it was pretty fun. The weather was very hot and rather humid, so it seemed like a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The book suggested that we watched the local people go down the natural waterslide first. It was a wise suggestion, because, when we got there, it wasn’t really clear what part of the water way we were supposed to slide down. Parts of it looked pretty dodgy and rocky and we didn’t want to break our necks. There weren’t any other people when we got there, though, so we ended up swimming in a waterfall (the first of five waterfalls I visited in my four days on Taveuni) rockpool for a while. The water was very cold, but very refreshing!
After a short while, some local people showed up and showed us the right way to enjoy the waterfall. Some hotshot guys slid down on their feet, but we didn’t do that. Since the water levels were low, about five people at once would sit side-by-side to block the water flow and let it build up behind them. Once they had dammed enough water, they would let it out all at once and slid down together. It was very very fun!!
After the waterfall, Barbara and I continued our walk down the other direction. One of the other neat things about Taveuni was the 180th meridian. The island was on the exact opposite side of the world from Greenwich, where the system of measuring longitude begins. The International Date Line doesn’t pass through the island, but jogs by the side, so that the whole country of Fiji is on the same day and time zone. But, it was cool to have one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and the other in the Western Hemisphere at the same time. Sure, I could do the same thing in London, England, but this was way cooler (and much harder to get to!).
We continued walking through the village of Wairiki and sat beside a church and listened to the villagers practice their choir singing while kids were playing rugby on an adjacent field. There was a big Christian cross on a nearby hill and we made the trek up to it and were rewarded with fantastic views.
We went for dinner at a restaurant in the village. We were the only guests of course and the place stayed open past its closing time just because we were there. It was very weird being the ONLY travelers in the village, especially on Sunday in a traditional Christian country where the place seems to just shut down.
The next day, we wouldn’t be seeing any waterfalls, but were going to walk up a mountain instead! But, more about that in my next post.
Oh, and here’s a tip for anyone in the domestic terminal in Brisbane Airport. If you sit outside of the business class lounge for Virgin Blue airlines, then you borrow the free wireless internet that seems to be leaking outside the lounge. Tee hee.
--
Rob Szumlakowski
Brisbane, Australia
Saturday, November 29, 2008
My New Camera
So photography is important to me. I take a lot of photographs, and I feel that I'm getting better and better at being a photographer. I've been looking forward to getting a new camera for a while... one with more manual controls and better performance. I want to learn more of that neat professional stuff. However, since I'm backpacking for an extended period of time, I'm very conscious of my payload. I'm trying to travel light and I'm very reluctant to get a big, proper, digital SLR camera. The cost does not bother me so much (they're not really THAT expensive), but the size and the fragility of such a device is somewhat intimidating to me given my current mode of travel. If I wasn't on this trip right now, I'm very sure that I would go and buy a digital SLR camera straight away.
But, I'm not. It's been a difficult decision for me, but I finally found a camera that falls in between the two extremes. It's bigger than your regular ultra compacts, but still much smaller than digital SLRs. It provides many of the features and manual controls of digital SLRs. It's something I feel I can really learn and expand my skills with. I bought myself a Canon Powershot G10.
There was a review posted to the Digital Photography Review website recently. It's very favourable. The Panasonic LX3 got higher reviews, however (I think this is the camera that Will Chau is eyeing right now). I think the Canon has more manual controls and that's what I'm looking for right now, so I don't regret my decision.
Hopefully, in the upcoming months, you can see the results being posted here. I know my photographs are already pretty "good" so far. Hopefully, they can now be "better".
--
Rob Szumlakowski
The Beachouse, Fiji
But, I'm not. It's been a difficult decision for me, but I finally found a camera that falls in between the two extremes. It's bigger than your regular ultra compacts, but still much smaller than digital SLRs. It provides many of the features and manual controls of digital SLRs. It's something I feel I can really learn and expand my skills with. I bought myself a Canon Powershot G10.
There was a review posted to the Digital Photography Review website recently. It's very favourable. The Panasonic LX3 got higher reviews, however (I think this is the camera that Will Chau is eyeing right now). I think the Canon has more manual controls and that's what I'm looking for right now, so I don't regret my decision.
Hopefully, in the upcoming months, you can see the results being posted here. I know my photographs are already pretty "good" so far. Hopefully, they can now be "better".
--
Rob Szumlakowski
The Beachouse, Fiji
New Photos Posted: Los Angeles
Hi! I've posted a nine new photos to my existing Los Angeles photo album. These nine new photos are from my eleven-hour layover on November 18, 2008. I didn't feel like creating a brand new album for only nine photos when I already have a small photo album for Los Angeles.
Enjoy!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
The Beachouse, Fiji
Enjoy!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
The Beachouse, Fiji
Departure
November 18, 2008
With the last of the weddings wrapped up, it was time to depart again.
My flight from Toronto was at 8 in the morning, so I had to get up very early. I was up at 5. Being the independent traveler that I am, I didn’t wake my sister or Hass to get a ride to the airport and took good old bus 58A down Lawrence Avenue to get there instead. It was a cold morning and I was wearing lots of layers to stay warm, including my blue and white AU$1 scarf from the Blue Mountains of Australia. On this upcoming trip, I didn’t expect to spend any prolonged times in any cold places (unlike the last one), so I gave the scarf away to some Spanish speaking lady who was sitting beside me on the bus.
I landed in Los Angeles ahead of schedule, around 10:30 AM. I had many, many, many hours to kill here. Los Angeles Airport (LAX) is a pretty boring airport (much more boring than your average airport), and Los Angeles itself is a pretty uninteresting city to me. Why did I set myself up with an eleven hour layover here?
There are a couple reasons, unlike my last Toronto-to-Los Angeles-to-the-South-Pacific flight attempt on February 1, I didn’t want unforeseen problems to make me miss my connecting flight from Los Angeles. Also, that 8 AM flight on Air Canada was the cheapest flight I could find, costing me only CA$11 (one-way, of course). How did I get such a dirt-cheap flight? I took advantage of my TD Travel Rewards Visa. Yes, the same credit card that cause me so much annoyance earlier in the year helped me save CA$200 on that flight. Yippee!
I had an excellent plan to advantage of my lengthy layover. On the advice of the Traveler’s Aid office in LAX, I took one of the free hotel transfer shuttles to the Radison hotel near the airport and checked my big backpack into their storage room, giving the bellhop a tip for his troubles. The hotel was only a two block walk to the bus stop where I was able to catch a ride on The Big Blue Bus (Santa Monica public transit) to Santa Monica, where I would have lunch, roam around, and play with my new camera.
The bus ride was about forty minutes long and only cost US$0.75, which doesn’t seem like much. Given the current exchange rates, that’s like CA$42we374t72364, though. At least I got to see lots of interesting people. I didn’t talk to any though. My spanish skills aren’t that good, after all.
I walked down the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, the ritzy pedestrian-only shopping street, where I was accosted by at least a dozen solicitors requesting my support for at least as many different charities. The shrubberies and fountains in the shapes of dinosaurs were pretty cool, though.
After enjoying some cheap and spicy Mexican food I continued my wanders down to the beach. I walked down the beach promenade and watched people enjoying the lovely weather (sunny and about 20ºC). There were people biking, roller blading and taking strolls (just like me!). I wandered past Muscle Beach where there were many very fit people swinging on gymnastics equipment, contorting themselves, and spinning around on the ground. Overall though, the cast of characters on the beachfront in Santa Monica was not as interesting as the colourful folk I saw at neighbouring Venice Beach back in February.
My final destination was the long pier with the big ferris wheel. There was actually a full blown amusement park on the pier with maybe half-a-dozen rides, though they mostly seemed to be shut down. The ferris wheel was running though, and I enjoyed a ride on it. It was pretty cheap (US$2.50, I think). The views from it were pretty cool.
I walked to the end of the pier and gazed out at the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. I felt like I was at the extreme end of North America. Somewhere over watery horizon were the distant places that had held so much of my fascination over the year and continue to hold me in thrall. Oh well, it was time for me to go back to the airport so I could hop that puddle!
I got back to LAX around sunset and still had about five hours to kill before my flight. I walked back from the Radison to the airport (it was ridiculously close) and continued playing with my new camera. I took some shots that I’m pretty sure I couldn’t pull off with my old one. The “sunset mode” on my camera was pretty sweet. You can probably expect many more glorious sunset pictures in the upcoming months, my friends.
My flight that night was a 10.5 hour jump on an Air Pacific 747 to Nadi on the main island of Fiji. I had two empty seats beside me took advantage of it by stretching out and lying flat to sleep. I’m usually not very successful at sleeping on airplanes. On past overnight flights I had attempted to help the process by taking a Gravol pill or an herbal sleeping pill. These attempts had limited success. I wasn’t goofing around anymore. I took two proper sleeping pills before my dinner of mundane airplane food, laid down, and passed out. It was excellent.
November 19, 2008
For me, this day did not exist. Since I was flying west across the International Date Line, I would be skipping this day.
I’ll take advantage of this small space, however, to boast about my air fare. My one-way transpacific flight on Air Pacific from Los Angeles to Fiji then, two weeks later, onward to Brisbane, Australia only cost me US$777 (my lucky number?). That seems pretty good to me. It also had the advantage of breaking up the ordeal of a thirteen hour flight and hopefully cutting up the jet lag a bit.
November 20, 2008
Welcome to Fiji! I landed at about 5:30 AM, just after sunrise, at Nadi (pronounced “nandi”). Nadi is not the capital of Fiji (the city of Suva is), but it is where the main international airport is located.
I’ll tell you more about Fiji in a later post, though. I’m still there right now. It’s a sunny day (which is actually kind of rare here, I’ve discovered), so I’m going to go lie in a hammock and read for a few hours, suckahs!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
The Beachouse, Fiji
With the last of the weddings wrapped up, it was time to depart again.
My flight from Toronto was at 8 in the morning, so I had to get up very early. I was up at 5. Being the independent traveler that I am, I didn’t wake my sister or Hass to get a ride to the airport and took good old bus 58A down Lawrence Avenue to get there instead. It was a cold morning and I was wearing lots of layers to stay warm, including my blue and white AU$1 scarf from the Blue Mountains of Australia. On this upcoming trip, I didn’t expect to spend any prolonged times in any cold places (unlike the last one), so I gave the scarf away to some Spanish speaking lady who was sitting beside me on the bus.
I landed in Los Angeles ahead of schedule, around 10:30 AM. I had many, many, many hours to kill here. Los Angeles Airport (LAX) is a pretty boring airport (much more boring than your average airport), and Los Angeles itself is a pretty uninteresting city to me. Why did I set myself up with an eleven hour layover here?
There are a couple reasons, unlike my last Toronto-to-Los Angeles-to-the-South-Pacific flight attempt on February 1, I didn’t want unforeseen problems to make me miss my connecting flight from Los Angeles. Also, that 8 AM flight on Air Canada was the cheapest flight I could find, costing me only CA$11 (one-way, of course). How did I get such a dirt-cheap flight? I took advantage of my TD Travel Rewards Visa. Yes, the same credit card that cause me so much annoyance earlier in the year helped me save CA$200 on that flight. Yippee!
I had an excellent plan to advantage of my lengthy layover. On the advice of the Traveler’s Aid office in LAX, I took one of the free hotel transfer shuttles to the Radison hotel near the airport and checked my big backpack into their storage room, giving the bellhop a tip for his troubles. The hotel was only a two block walk to the bus stop where I was able to catch a ride on The Big Blue Bus (Santa Monica public transit) to Santa Monica, where I would have lunch, roam around, and play with my new camera.
The bus ride was about forty minutes long and only cost US$0.75, which doesn’t seem like much. Given the current exchange rates, that’s like CA$42we374t72364, though. At least I got to see lots of interesting people. I didn’t talk to any though. My spanish skills aren’t that good, after all.
I walked down the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, the ritzy pedestrian-only shopping street, where I was accosted by at least a dozen solicitors requesting my support for at least as many different charities. The shrubberies and fountains in the shapes of dinosaurs were pretty cool, though.
After enjoying some cheap and spicy Mexican food I continued my wanders down to the beach. I walked down the beach promenade and watched people enjoying the lovely weather (sunny and about 20ºC). There were people biking, roller blading and taking strolls (just like me!). I wandered past Muscle Beach where there were many very fit people swinging on gymnastics equipment, contorting themselves, and spinning around on the ground. Overall though, the cast of characters on the beachfront in Santa Monica was not as interesting as the colourful folk I saw at neighbouring Venice Beach back in February.
My final destination was the long pier with the big ferris wheel. There was actually a full blown amusement park on the pier with maybe half-a-dozen rides, though they mostly seemed to be shut down. The ferris wheel was running though, and I enjoyed a ride on it. It was pretty cheap (US$2.50, I think). The views from it were pretty cool.
I walked to the end of the pier and gazed out at the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. I felt like I was at the extreme end of North America. Somewhere over watery horizon were the distant places that had held so much of my fascination over the year and continue to hold me in thrall. Oh well, it was time for me to go back to the airport so I could hop that puddle!
I got back to LAX around sunset and still had about five hours to kill before my flight. I walked back from the Radison to the airport (it was ridiculously close) and continued playing with my new camera. I took some shots that I’m pretty sure I couldn’t pull off with my old one. The “sunset mode” on my camera was pretty sweet. You can probably expect many more glorious sunset pictures in the upcoming months, my friends.
My flight that night was a 10.5 hour jump on an Air Pacific 747 to Nadi on the main island of Fiji. I had two empty seats beside me took advantage of it by stretching out and lying flat to sleep. I’m usually not very successful at sleeping on airplanes. On past overnight flights I had attempted to help the process by taking a Gravol pill or an herbal sleeping pill. These attempts had limited success. I wasn’t goofing around anymore. I took two proper sleeping pills before my dinner of mundane airplane food, laid down, and passed out. It was excellent.
November 19, 2008
For me, this day did not exist. Since I was flying west across the International Date Line, I would be skipping this day.
I’ll take advantage of this small space, however, to boast about my air fare. My one-way transpacific flight on Air Pacific from Los Angeles to Fiji then, two weeks later, onward to Brisbane, Australia only cost me US$777 (my lucky number?). That seems pretty good to me. It also had the advantage of breaking up the ordeal of a thirteen hour flight and hopefully cutting up the jet lag a bit.
November 20, 2008
Welcome to Fiji! I landed at about 5:30 AM, just after sunrise, at Nadi (pronounced “nandi”). Nadi is not the capital of Fiji (the city of Suva is), but it is where the main international airport is located.
I’ll tell you more about Fiji in a later post, though. I’m still there right now. It’s a sunny day (which is actually kind of rare here, I’ve discovered), so I’m going to go lie in a hammock and read for a few hours, suckahs!
--
Rob Szumlakowski
The Beachouse, Fiji
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Interim
I’ll try to use this post to report on some of the stuff that happened on the two-and-a-half months that I was back in Canada. I returned on September 3. I left again on November 18.
Why did I come back for such a short time? There’s a few reasons. My cousin Marta Rybak (now Shoemaker) was getting married. My friend Susie Ma (now Severence) was getting married. The weddings were only two weeks apart, so it would feasible to go to both. While I was back, I learned about two more weddings, Mike Henhoeffer and Naina, and went to those, too! Yeah, crazy... four weddings in two months. I guess I’ve reached that age where everyone else is getting married. Next year is more of the same... But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, of course.
I didn’t want to miss Thanksgiving. I missed Easter, and I was going to miss Christmas. I had to make sure I went to Thanksgiving, at least. I missed my family a lot and it was really good to see all them again.
I also missed my friends a lot, too, and it was great to see them again. I made a point to see as many of them as I could while I was back. I saw lots of people from Toronto, Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock and Ottawa. It was good to reconnect with so many people again. I even made some new friends, too.
I was very fortunate and thankful that I was able to return to my old workplace in Toronto, NeoEdge, and work for five weeks. My coworkers there are brilliant and so very fun. While I was gone, some people had left. Some people came back. Some people moved. Some people changed positions. It was good to catch up with the changes (money is nice, too).
I also really needed a break from traveling for a while. I was definitely feeling travel fatigue. Too much moving around. Too much packing. Too much unpacking. Too many friends made for a short time, only to say goodbye over and over. It was a cycle that I needed a break from. It’s strange to say that going back home to work was a break from traveling, but it really seemed that way to me.
I think, on my next trip, I will try to take go at a slower pace. I’ll also be gone less time (it should only be four and half months, not seven). I have every intent of coming back to Canada for Easter. Mostly, I just want to skip the winter while I still have the chance.
The day I left Canada was the first day of permanent snow. Sure, there had been a few days where scattered flakes drifted from the skies in little flurries, but the snow never lingered long enough to matter. On November 18, though, as I was flying out of Toronto, there was snow all over the place. It makes me feel like, unlike last time, I definitely beat winter.
In short, my break from travel was very very appreciated. I saw so many people. So many great things happened. Thank you for reminding me of the great and amazing things I have in Canada. I love you all and will see you in a few months.
This is hardly a goodbye, of course. I’ll continue updating this blog while I’m away, and I’ll be back before you know it (four months really isn’t a very long time...).
For those of you that don’t know yet, here are my approximate plans:
November: 2 weeks in Fiji
December: in Australia (including Christmas and New Years)
January to the middle of March: New Zealand
Second Half of March: Cook Islands, if possible. Maybe somewhere else. Still not really decided.
April: BACK IN CANADA! Yay Easter!
May: Ireland for a bit to see Patrick and Toni get married. This should be FANTASTIC and I am extremely looking forward to it, for lots of reasons.
June: BACK IN CANADA again. Depending on how things go, this may be the end of my long-term travels. It’s still many months away, so let’s wait and see, eh?
As always, people are free (and encouraged) to send me emails and text messages. I’ll probably reply to text messages more rapidly than emails, for obvious reasons. Unlike the last trip, I will always try and have a local mobile phone number (unless I’m stuck somewhere without reception). My current phone number should usually be posted on Facebook. Maybe I’ll start posting it on here, too.
--
Rob Szumlakowski
The Beachouse, Viti Levu, Fiji
Why did I come back for such a short time? There’s a few reasons. My cousin Marta Rybak (now Shoemaker) was getting married. My friend Susie Ma (now Severence) was getting married. The weddings were only two weeks apart, so it would feasible to go to both. While I was back, I learned about two more weddings, Mike Henhoeffer and Naina, and went to those, too! Yeah, crazy... four weddings in two months. I guess I’ve reached that age where everyone else is getting married. Next year is more of the same... But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, of course.
I didn’t want to miss Thanksgiving. I missed Easter, and I was going to miss Christmas. I had to make sure I went to Thanksgiving, at least. I missed my family a lot and it was really good to see all them again.
I also missed my friends a lot, too, and it was great to see them again. I made a point to see as many of them as I could while I was back. I saw lots of people from Toronto, Waterloo, Cambridge, Woodstock and Ottawa. It was good to reconnect with so many people again. I even made some new friends, too.
I was very fortunate and thankful that I was able to return to my old workplace in Toronto, NeoEdge, and work for five weeks. My coworkers there are brilliant and so very fun. While I was gone, some people had left. Some people came back. Some people moved. Some people changed positions. It was good to catch up with the changes (money is nice, too).
I also really needed a break from traveling for a while. I was definitely feeling travel fatigue. Too much moving around. Too much packing. Too much unpacking. Too many friends made for a short time, only to say goodbye over and over. It was a cycle that I needed a break from. It’s strange to say that going back home to work was a break from traveling, but it really seemed that way to me.
I think, on my next trip, I will try to take go at a slower pace. I’ll also be gone less time (it should only be four and half months, not seven). I have every intent of coming back to Canada for Easter. Mostly, I just want to skip the winter while I still have the chance.
The day I left Canada was the first day of permanent snow. Sure, there had been a few days where scattered flakes drifted from the skies in little flurries, but the snow never lingered long enough to matter. On November 18, though, as I was flying out of Toronto, there was snow all over the place. It makes me feel like, unlike last time, I definitely beat winter.
In short, my break from travel was very very appreciated. I saw so many people. So many great things happened. Thank you for reminding me of the great and amazing things I have in Canada. I love you all and will see you in a few months.
This is hardly a goodbye, of course. I’ll continue updating this blog while I’m away, and I’ll be back before you know it (four months really isn’t a very long time...).
For those of you that don’t know yet, here are my approximate plans:
November: 2 weeks in Fiji
December: in Australia (including Christmas and New Years)
January to the middle of March: New Zealand
Second Half of March: Cook Islands, if possible. Maybe somewhere else. Still not really decided.
April: BACK IN CANADA! Yay Easter!
May: Ireland for a bit to see Patrick and Toni get married. This should be FANTASTIC and I am extremely looking forward to it, for lots of reasons.
June: BACK IN CANADA again. Depending on how things go, this may be the end of my long-term travels. It’s still many months away, so let’s wait and see, eh?
As always, people are free (and encouraged) to send me emails and text messages. I’ll probably reply to text messages more rapidly than emails, for obvious reasons. Unlike the last trip, I will always try and have a local mobile phone number (unless I’m stuck somewhere without reception). My current phone number should usually be posted on Facebook. Maybe I’ll start posting it on here, too.
--
Rob Szumlakowski
The Beachouse, Viti Levu, Fiji
Friday, November 21, 2008
A Man Burns! An Ending?
Saturday August 30, 2008
I went on a good bicycle cruise this morning (like many mornings in Black Rock City, in fact). Today, I cycled far: across the playa to the Tower of Babylon (a huge 10 story tall tower with a big American flag hanging off the side. I climbed the tower, took some photos, and continued on to The Temple of Forgiveness.
The Temple truly is a special place. Like everything else in Black Rock City, it’s a temporary structure that was constructed specifically for this event by volunteers. It’s an art object, too, but, more so than any of the other art objects, the Temple has a special meaning and purpose. It’s supposed to be the centre for religious worship and spiritual well-being for all people in Black Rock City. Additionally, it’s the place where people can go to heal themselves of negative aspects of their lives, or say goodbye to past loved ones and hopefully attain a feeling of catharsis. Many people leave notes, letters, signs, shrines, artifacts, whatever, to parents, children, pets, spouses, whoever, who have passed on. It’s a very emotional place and after walking around and reading the notes, it was hard to keep the tears back.
Here’s a message left by someone who must have had problems controlling their temper, and hoped that the temple would help them move past it. It says “GOODBYE ANGER”
I didn’t take pictures of many of the notes. They felt too personal.
The temple, itself, is a very intricate and beautiful construction. It’s hard to conceive how much work has gone into the place.
How does the temple help people achieve catharsis (a feeling of emotional release, purification, or cleansing)? After everyone who wants to leaves a piece of something in the temple, the whole place is burned to the ground. More on that later, though.
I spent most of the afternoon at my camp hanging out with my fellow campers. It was amazing how crowded Black Rock City was by now. I had been here for a week now, and the place was very empty at the start. Now, I was one of 49,000 people here. Tonight was the night of the main event! The big wooden statue of The Man in the centre of Black Rock City would be set alight while thousands of people danced and cheered it on.
The actual burn was preceded by an impressive fireworks display!
Then, there was a huge fireball!
Then, the whole thing was burning, punctuated by more random fireworks.
After maybe half of an hour, the structure was consumed and collapsed to the ground. Everyone cheered! It was great! It was glorious! What a spectacle!
For many of the people there, that was the start of a huge all night party all over Black Rock City. Not for me though. I was supremely tired (too many late nights... not enough sleep.. it was all adding up). I went to sleep.
Sunday August 31, 2008
It was another day of enjoying the company of my fellow campers. Erikas and Catie left in the morning (Erikas was not feeling well). In fact, many people seemed to be abandoning Black Rock City. The day of the Burn was the peak. Now, many people were leaving to try and beat the rush of the official Exodus day (Monday September 1). There were legends of being stuck in traffic for many many hours on the one, long, two-lane road from the Playa back to Interstate 80. Our plan, though, for avoiding the traffic was to leave on the day AFTER exodus. So, even though many people were leaving Black Rock City today, I still had a while to go.
I seemed to have taken very few photos during the day, today, so I assume that I had had done very little, other than chill out (which is perfectly acceptable!)
That night, was when the temple burned. It was a completely different atmosphere compared to the man burn the night before. Whereas the man burn was a party with cheering, celebration, and joy, the temple burn was a solemn occasion. It was very quiet was we watched the beautiful structure burn. There was far fewer people there, too.
It was an intense inferno that generated a lot of heat. So much so, that it created whirlwinds of smoke and ash that migrated downwind.
As soon as the temple structure collapsed, an uncanny thing happened. An enveloping dust storm whipped out of the desert and obscured everything with a biting wind. David and I had to bike back across one mile of open playa in white-out conditions in the middle of the night to reach our camp. It’s a good thing that I have a good sense of direction and had a good feel for the place after being there for more than a week.
That night, I huddled in my tent while the wind and dust howled around me. It was creepy.
Monday September 1, 2008
Today was the official Exodus day. Thousands and thousands of people were leaving Black Rock City today. We said goodbye to many of our neighbours. David left today, too. He’s a really cool guy, and I enjoyed hanging out with him for the past few days. He hitched a ride back to Oakland. After David left, our camp was back to it’s original three people: me, Brent, and Wendy.
From left to right, me, Wendy, David, and Brent.
Brent and Wendy spent much of the day helping collect donations at the exit of Black Rock City. There would still be a small contingent of people living in Black Rock City for about a month. They were responsible for cleaning up every speck of litter and waste, tearing everything down, and returning the playa to its pristine state (or as close as possible). They needed donations of non-perishable food, treats, and beer (especially beer), to keep them going.
I was doing something different that day, though. Even though I had a ride back to San Francisco with Brent and Wendy, and I had a flight booked back to Toronto, I was willing to see if I could get back to Canada in a more glorious manner. I spent some time near the Exodus gate holding up a sign that said “TORONTO” in big letters and “Detroit, Buffalo, Montreal” in somewhat smaller ones. I was seriously trying to see if I could hitchhike home. I’ve never driven across North America before. It would be legendary. Many people managed to get home from Black Rock City that way (especially since a large proportion of the population lived in the Bay Area). I spent some time biking around and asking random Canadians if they were going back to Toronto. I actually found a school bus that was going to drive back to Ottawa (via Toronto), but it was completely full and wouldn’t be able to take me. Oh well, it was worth a shot.
Brent and Wendy were busy for a long time, so I spent much of the afternoon in my camp by myself. I cleaned up and packed a bit. I walked around on MOOP patrols (Matter Out of Place) to see if I could find litter. I helped some of our few remaining neighbours disassemble their art car. I talked to another of my few remaining neighbours. We discussed photography and I attempted to play my didgeridoo for him. I didn’t do so well though. i need practice.
Tuesday September 2, 2008
We spent much of the day packing and loading our truck. It took a long time since we had lots of stuff. We didn’t leave until 3 PM.
It was a long way back. We stopped for ice cream at the first store (LUXURY!). We stopped for Indian Tacos (apparently a popular tradition along the long dusty highway). We stopped at In-N-Out Burger for dinner (OH SO yummy). We dropped Wendy off and unloaded her stuff in Oakland before Brent and I made the rest of the drive back to Sunnyvale. We got back late.
Wednesday September 3, 2008
In the morning I said goodbye to Brent and his parents. He was an excellent host and really showed me many amazing and excellent things at Burning Man. Conversely, after talking to me, he is now thinking of taking a long-term backpacking trip much like mine. I hope he does. It’s really very rewarding.
I got a ride to the Caltrain station in Sunnyvale and took the train to San Francisco airport. From there, I flew to Los Angeles and then back to Toronto.
On the flight back to Toronto, I was sitting beside a man who was on the crew for a Hollywood show. He, and some of his coworkers, was traveling to Canada for he first time to cover the Toronto International Film Festival. Since it was his first time in Canada, I told him what to expect about the weather (no, it won’t be as cold as you think), and where to go and drink, party, and shop. He was astonished when I told him about my seven month trip. How could a person travel for so long? He was one of many in a long line of people I had met on my trip who thought this way. Is it really so astonishing?
I guess it is. Sometimes I can hardly believe what I had just done. I think back to some of my crazy times in Asia and Australia and can barely believe what happened. Much of it was a blur. I’m so thankful I took so many photographs and wrote this blog. I don’t want to lose my accomplishments.
As I exited the plane and entered Terminal 1 at Toronto Pearson Airport, I was euphoric. I had an amazing trip. Ups. Down. Good times. Bad times. I met so many people. I did so many things. But, I was back. It was good. I raced through the terminal to reach immigration before the crowd from the plane. Above the entrance to the big immigration room, there was a huge sign that said “WELCOME TO CANADA”. I know I had seen the exact same sign before... but it was completely different now.
Of course, I had to show the silly customs people my didgeridoo and the crazy mask I bought in Tonga. Quarantine, pests, all that. The customs lady was surprised to hear about my trip. I guess, in the grand scheme of things, very few people do what I did. Which still seems surprising to me, since I met many people when I was gone who were on long term trips, too. Many of them were Canadians (there were definitely more Canadian backpackers than American). I did, realize, though, that my trip was somewhat longer than most peoples’. And there’s more to go...
I exited the secure area of the terminal and met my sister and Hass. They were there to pick me up. It was a happy moment.
I was home.
NOT THE END.
I went on a good bicycle cruise this morning (like many mornings in Black Rock City, in fact). Today, I cycled far: across the playa to the Tower of Babylon (a huge 10 story tall tower with a big American flag hanging off the side. I climbed the tower, took some photos, and continued on to The Temple of Forgiveness.
The Temple truly is a special place. Like everything else in Black Rock City, it’s a temporary structure that was constructed specifically for this event by volunteers. It’s an art object, too, but, more so than any of the other art objects, the Temple has a special meaning and purpose. It’s supposed to be the centre for religious worship and spiritual well-being for all people in Black Rock City. Additionally, it’s the place where people can go to heal themselves of negative aspects of their lives, or say goodbye to past loved ones and hopefully attain a feeling of catharsis. Many people leave notes, letters, signs, shrines, artifacts, whatever, to parents, children, pets, spouses, whoever, who have passed on. It’s a very emotional place and after walking around and reading the notes, it was hard to keep the tears back.
Here’s a message left by someone who must have had problems controlling their temper, and hoped that the temple would help them move past it. It says “GOODBYE ANGER”
I didn’t take pictures of many of the notes. They felt too personal.The temple, itself, is a very intricate and beautiful construction. It’s hard to conceive how much work has gone into the place.
How does the temple help people achieve catharsis (a feeling of emotional release, purification, or cleansing)? After everyone who wants to leaves a piece of something in the temple, the whole place is burned to the ground. More on that later, though.I spent most of the afternoon at my camp hanging out with my fellow campers. It was amazing how crowded Black Rock City was by now. I had been here for a week now, and the place was very empty at the start. Now, I was one of 49,000 people here. Tonight was the night of the main event! The big wooden statue of The Man in the centre of Black Rock City would be set alight while thousands of people danced and cheered it on.
The actual burn was preceded by an impressive fireworks display!
Then, there was a huge fireball!
Then, the whole thing was burning, punctuated by more random fireworks.
After maybe half of an hour, the structure was consumed and collapsed to the ground. Everyone cheered! It was great! It was glorious! What a spectacle!
For many of the people there, that was the start of a huge all night party all over Black Rock City. Not for me though. I was supremely tired (too many late nights... not enough sleep.. it was all adding up). I went to sleep.
Sunday August 31, 2008
It was another day of enjoying the company of my fellow campers. Erikas and Catie left in the morning (Erikas was not feeling well). In fact, many people seemed to be abandoning Black Rock City. The day of the Burn was the peak. Now, many people were leaving to try and beat the rush of the official Exodus day (Monday September 1). There were legends of being stuck in traffic for many many hours on the one, long, two-lane road from the Playa back to Interstate 80. Our plan, though, for avoiding the traffic was to leave on the day AFTER exodus. So, even though many people were leaving Black Rock City today, I still had a while to go.
I seemed to have taken very few photos during the day, today, so I assume that I had had done very little, other than chill out (which is perfectly acceptable!)
That night, was when the temple burned. It was a completely different atmosphere compared to the man burn the night before. Whereas the man burn was a party with cheering, celebration, and joy, the temple burn was a solemn occasion. It was very quiet was we watched the beautiful structure burn. There was far fewer people there, too.
It was an intense inferno that generated a lot of heat. So much so, that it created whirlwinds of smoke and ash that migrated downwind.
As soon as the temple structure collapsed, an uncanny thing happened. An enveloping dust storm whipped out of the desert and obscured everything with a biting wind. David and I had to bike back across one mile of open playa in white-out conditions in the middle of the night to reach our camp. It’s a good thing that I have a good sense of direction and had a good feel for the place after being there for more than a week.
That night, I huddled in my tent while the wind and dust howled around me. It was creepy.
Monday September 1, 2008
Today was the official Exodus day. Thousands and thousands of people were leaving Black Rock City today. We said goodbye to many of our neighbours. David left today, too. He’s a really cool guy, and I enjoyed hanging out with him for the past few days. He hitched a ride back to Oakland. After David left, our camp was back to it’s original three people: me, Brent, and Wendy.
From left to right, me, Wendy, David, and Brent.
Brent and Wendy spent much of the day helping collect donations at the exit of Black Rock City. There would still be a small contingent of people living in Black Rock City for about a month. They were responsible for cleaning up every speck of litter and waste, tearing everything down, and returning the playa to its pristine state (or as close as possible). They needed donations of non-perishable food, treats, and beer (especially beer), to keep them going.
I was doing something different that day, though. Even though I had a ride back to San Francisco with Brent and Wendy, and I had a flight booked back to Toronto, I was willing to see if I could get back to Canada in a more glorious manner. I spent some time near the Exodus gate holding up a sign that said “TORONTO” in big letters and “Detroit, Buffalo, Montreal” in somewhat smaller ones. I was seriously trying to see if I could hitchhike home. I’ve never driven across North America before. It would be legendary. Many people managed to get home from Black Rock City that way (especially since a large proportion of the population lived in the Bay Area). I spent some time biking around and asking random Canadians if they were going back to Toronto. I actually found a school bus that was going to drive back to Ottawa (via Toronto), but it was completely full and wouldn’t be able to take me. Oh well, it was worth a shot.
Brent and Wendy were busy for a long time, so I spent much of the afternoon in my camp by myself. I cleaned up and packed a bit. I walked around on MOOP patrols (Matter Out of Place) to see if I could find litter. I helped some of our few remaining neighbours disassemble their art car. I talked to another of my few remaining neighbours. We discussed photography and I attempted to play my didgeridoo for him. I didn’t do so well though. i need practice.
Tuesday September 2, 2008
We spent much of the day packing and loading our truck. It took a long time since we had lots of stuff. We didn’t leave until 3 PM.
It was a long way back. We stopped for ice cream at the first store (LUXURY!). We stopped for Indian Tacos (apparently a popular tradition along the long dusty highway). We stopped at In-N-Out Burger for dinner (OH SO yummy). We dropped Wendy off and unloaded her stuff in Oakland before Brent and I made the rest of the drive back to Sunnyvale. We got back late.
Wednesday September 3, 2008
In the morning I said goodbye to Brent and his parents. He was an excellent host and really showed me many amazing and excellent things at Burning Man. Conversely, after talking to me, he is now thinking of taking a long-term backpacking trip much like mine. I hope he does. It’s really very rewarding.
I got a ride to the Caltrain station in Sunnyvale and took the train to San Francisco airport. From there, I flew to Los Angeles and then back to Toronto.
On the flight back to Toronto, I was sitting beside a man who was on the crew for a Hollywood show. He, and some of his coworkers, was traveling to Canada for he first time to cover the Toronto International Film Festival. Since it was his first time in Canada, I told him what to expect about the weather (no, it won’t be as cold as you think), and where to go and drink, party, and shop. He was astonished when I told him about my seven month trip. How could a person travel for so long? He was one of many in a long line of people I had met on my trip who thought this way. Is it really so astonishing?
I guess it is. Sometimes I can hardly believe what I had just done. I think back to some of my crazy times in Asia and Australia and can barely believe what happened. Much of it was a blur. I’m so thankful I took so many photographs and wrote this blog. I don’t want to lose my accomplishments.
As I exited the plane and entered Terminal 1 at Toronto Pearson Airport, I was euphoric. I had an amazing trip. Ups. Down. Good times. Bad times. I met so many people. I did so many things. But, I was back. It was good. I raced through the terminal to reach immigration before the crowd from the plane. Above the entrance to the big immigration room, there was a huge sign that said “WELCOME TO CANADA”. I know I had seen the exact same sign before... but it was completely different now.
Of course, I had to show the silly customs people my didgeridoo and the crazy mask I bought in Tonga. Quarantine, pests, all that. The customs lady was surprised to hear about my trip. I guess, in the grand scheme of things, very few people do what I did. Which still seems surprising to me, since I met many people when I was gone who were on long term trips, too. Many of them were Canadians (there were definitely more Canadian backpackers than American). I did, realize, though, that my trip was somewhat longer than most peoples’. And there’s more to go...
I exited the secure area of the terminal and met my sister and Hass. They were there to pick me up. It was a happy moment.
I was home.
NOT THE END.
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