G'day Mate!

Warning:  The next few posts will be about our Australia trip.  There are so many pictures and stories we want to share with our families, but I’m afraid we’ll lose everyone else if I post them all here at once.  So hopefully, you won’t find this too tedious.  We had a fantastic time and just want to share that with those who give a crap…..  Enjoy (if you give a crap).

As I said in my last post, according to Jake, the only reason he came sailing with us was to “go to Australia.”  He wanted to see a Kangaroo.  As we made the decision to go downwind from the Marshall Islands, we pretty much made the decision not to sail to Australia.  At some point you get too far west and the only options to sail there are not very comfortable (some will disagree, but I would place bets that they haven’t heaved over the rail as much as I have).  So we made the decision to fly to Australia.  Andy was there 20 years ago, but I had never been and well, of course Jake was up for it.  It took weeks to decide what to do.  We finally decided, if our budget and time only allowed for a few weeks, we were going to do what we would consider the “Australian” thing…we were going to the Outback.  So we signed ourselves up for a 5 day, 4 night camping Safari. 

Getting to the Outback from Kuching is not as easy or as cheap as many led us to believe.  To save a little money, we decided to spend a night in Darwin (I know that sounds counter productive, but planning our own flight connections proved to save us thousands of dollars, even with the extra hotel rooms).  Our flight landed at 4:15….in the morning.  Since our hotel room wasn’t ready (some old bloke still sleeping there, no doubt), we waited for sunrise in the restaurant and then went for a walk about. 

Our first impressions and realization that we weren’t in SE Asia anymore was the sheer number of white people.  We had actually grown quite comfortable being in the minority and not speaking the language.  You get to hide in the background knowing no one is talking to you and you get to pretend to be anonymous all the time.  Once we arrived in Australia, everyone was speaking English and you had to actually pay attention, because well, they’re friendly and they actually talk to you.  “G’day Mate!”  “No worries Mate!”  “Where are ya from Mate?”  These Mates were all talked out in the first day!  We were also taken aback when told to put our seat belts on..."seat belts?  what's that?"

So back to the walk about…we only had a day in Darwin, so we did a nice sunrise walk on the Esplanade and as soon as the pubs started serving pints, we bellied up to the waterfront bars and wondered what it would have been like to sail our boat into the harbor.  In the end, we decided it would have been bloody expensive and a pain in the arse!  Happy to be passing through (we spent $200 in the first 3 hours with our taxi ride, breakfast and the aforementioned pints).

Seriously...the biggest paella I've ever seen.

So I can see this will get lengthy if I tell every opinion we had, so I’ll skip ahead to our trip to the Mindil Beach Market.  Apparently, this is a very Darwin thing to do and we happen to be there on the right day of the week.  It wasn’t too far from our hotel so we walked to the beach and marveled at all the food stalls, artwork, and entertainment.  We even saw a velvet Elvis, I kid you not.  We ate our way through the stalls….oysters, paella (take a look a the picture…incredible), lamb kabobs, grilled fish, and of course ice cream.  We watched the sun set and made our way back to the hotel room.  After an early morning wake up call to the tune of a fire alarm, we made sure we were on our 7:00 flight to Alice Springs.  One day closer to the Outback….

They're pretty darn proud of their croc catching skills...
I have to say Jake was impressed.

Other items impressed Andy...bloated frogs holding liquor bottles.

Alice Springs was much bigger than we had expected but you could tell we had crossed some sort of climate, terrain, and cultural line.  Our hotel was kind enough to check us in early and we promptly took advantage of the air condition and cushy beds. 

We spent a day and a half touring the city before our “adventure” began.  We spent some time at the reptile museum where we got a sneak peak of some of the creatures we would be seeing throughout the week.  Jake and I got to hold a python – probably the highlight of the museum – and we saw some of the coolest lizards we’d ever come across.  When we made it back to our hotel, we were met with a peacock…yep.  I have no idea why the Doubletree has a peacock strutting his stuff around the grounds, but they do.  Pretty neat.  We ordered Dominos for dinner (because we could…haven’t seen Dominos in years out on the boat), and turned in early in anticipation of our 5:00 wake up call (this would prove to be a trend throughout the week).  Stay tuned….

One of the many venomous snakes in Australia.

Another "can kill ya" snake.

These were supposed to be everywhere, but wouldn't you know
we picked the one place in Australia where they're  hard to find.
Kind of like the Kangaroo (not kidding...more on that later.)

The bearded dragon.  We actually saw one of these in the wild
later in the week.

Thorny devil...saw one of these in the wild as well.

Not so rare for us as we're sitting in a croc infested river in Kuching,
but cool none the less.

Jake's newest snuggle buddy...it's on the list for
"when we get a house, can I have a pet?"

Not to be outdone by my son....

Wonderful lunch complete with kangaroo pizza...only $74!
What a bargain!

Don't ask...I don't know....

Another vacation?

Climbing rocks to make his mom
'freak out'

Most people think of our lifestyle as a constant vacation - beaches, cocktails, adventures - and I can see how they think that when our blog is really the only view into our lives they have.  But our blog for us, is like going to a family reunion and telling people about your kids, job, life, etc.  You tell the things they might be interested in and you try to show your family in the best of light.  While I do occasionally tell some embarrassing stories and have been known to go on a rant, most of the time, I'm just trying to keep the family up to date on the fun things we get to do.  Our normal life includes school (complete with the same complaining 'normal' kids do), dishes, laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, fixing things, cleaning, exercising, etc.  Normal stuff.  All without air condition, 100 miles away from the equator. When we stay in one place for a while, like we've done in Kuching, these things get to be more mundane than normal.  This explains why the sudden onset of trips for us like the Mulu Caves and Jakarta.

Last week we took a mini-vacation (although Jake would disagree - he had a complete week of school) and left the dock to go to some islands around here to celebrate Jake's birthday.  He was able to run around on the beaches, have bonfires and actually get to swim in waters free of crocodiles!  One of the islands we went to is a marine protected area...specifically protecting turtles.  There are rangers there that patrol the beach every night looking for turtles laying their eggs.  They tag the turtles, then dig up their eggs and move them to a protected hatchery. When the eggs hatch, they release the turtles back into the water.  Jake found a nest full of eggs and ran to get the rangers, thinking they had missed one.  It turns out, this turtle laid its eggs below the high tide mark and they basically drowned.  It also looked like they hadn't been fertilized, according to the experts.  So the rangers let Jake dig them up and get a hands on experience without harming anything.  They said the turtles lay an average of 80 eggs at a time.  This nest had 107!

Birthday dinner - gnocchi with shrimp and blue cheese sauce.

An unexpected trip for me back to the states really paid off
for Jake...birthday loot!

The requested birthday "cake" - homemade pumpkin pie (as
in from a real pumpkin)....I swear I thought I was cooking
for Thanksgiving.

River dolphins!

Jake, trying to chisel out some 'samples' for later research.

Our final 'break' (for a while) from real life comes this week in the form of an Outback Safari in Australia!  We are super excited and a bit nervous if I'm honest.  It's a camping trip in Central Australia.    We've paid thousands of dollars to sleep under the stars (again, no air conditioning...when we will think these things through?)...I'll let you know when we get back if that was a good idea or not.  We're heading out of here with a positive attitude and lots of bug spray.  Jake says the only reason he came sailing with us was to go to Australia and see a kangaroo (yeah, he actually said that)....so, in order to keep the mutiny down, off we go.  Stand by...there's bound to be a good story or two coming out of this.

Watching some longboat races on the Kuching waterfront
with our friends Lee and Richard. 

More exploring in Borneo

Anytime we spend a long time in one place, things start to get a little like ground hog day.  This past week, we decided to spice it up a bit and rent a car.  For a pretty pricey 70 Ringgit/day (about $23 US) we got ourselves the worst rental car we’ve ever had.  It’s a shoebox with 4 bald tires, a broken speedometer and gas gage.  The passenger window won’t roll down and it takes at least 4 tries to crank it up.  The latest issue with it is that somehow it’s gotten infested with ants.  But that just gives Jake something to do while we drive around.

Our first stop was Matang Nat’l Park and the rehabilitation center.  Andy and Jake had already been there, but I was dying to see the Orangutans and I wasn’t disappointed.  We saw an adult teaching a baby how to climb a tree (part of their “school”) and then we saw two babies playing with a sheet while the mama watched.  They were pulling it up over their heads, rolling around and wrestling with each other.  Occasionally, the mama would grab the sheet and put it over her head.  Very cute to watch.  The funniest part of the day however, was when the “bad monkey,” as Jake liked to call him, threw poo at Andy.  Technically, I guess he threw poo at all of us, but Andy was lucky enough to get hit….twice.  The monkey was quite frisky and didn’t stop with the poo.  He threw banana peels, watermelon rinds, mango skins and papaya….all at Andy.  Jake and I got a big kick out of that.

The next day we decided to head out to Bako National Park and go for a hike to try and see the Proboscis Monkeys.  We underestimated the terrain and found our flip-flops to be a bit of a hindrance, but we managed.  Unfortunately, we didn’t see any monkeys, but we did see a snake and a bearded hog.  The hog was about the funniest looking thing we’ve seen yet.  It has this huge long snout (with a beard), then it’s eyes are about halfway down, then the forehead just keeps going.  Add to that, it has really long legs...not very pig-like.

These naughty little monkeys like to steal
your snacks.  

He still fits on my lap...almost :(

Some other ways we’ve tried to beat the ground hog day feeling…we saw a local ballet depicting one of the Iban legends from the jungle, we’ve taken to having nerf gun wars at the marina when all the workers go home, and we’ve spent a lot of time with our friends Richard and Lee on s/v Before.  Jake has even taken up jogging in the mornings with me and we’ve managed to convince Andy to join us as well.  I can’t lay up in bed when I have a little guy wiggling my toes asking me to go run with him….the best motivator.

This weekend we’re flying to Jakarta to see an old friend of Andy’s and relax a bit (all this fun is tiring).  It’s serving a dual purpose in as much as Jake and Andy need to renew their visa’s for Malaysia as well.   When we come back, the most exciting thing of all…Jake turns 9!