week four ++
coming to you from muggy singapore:
here lies my last week or so of the 35 days i totalled in australia.
last time i left off in tropical Cairns...
Sept 21st.
found it difficult to make our way to the beach with the sketchy bus system and bad directions from the hostel's reception crew. arrived at palm cove at about 4pm and tried to enjoy some sun before it quickly was lost in the palms behind us.
Sept 22nd.
disappointed with our beach experience of the previous day, we headed to another beach in the same stretch of coast, this time earlier in the day. it was picturesque tropical beach, though the sand was more coarse than some, and the water picked up silt in the surf giving it a brown tint. we "sun baked" as the aussies call it and floated in the waves until we were forced by hunger to return to the city.
caught the semi-final footy game on tv where sydney's swans advanced to their second straight grand final appearance.
Sept 23rd.
hot, lazy day. booked another trip to the reef for the 25th; destination green island. left on the agenda for today, second footy semi-final and some drinks.
Sept 24th.
our second-last day in cairns.... it has been the holiday spot of the trip. so why not another lazy day sitting around at the pool, soaking up sun, reading and writing these journal entries. plans for later are to head downtown and catch a showing of al gore's 'an inconvenient truth' which just came out here.
Sept 25th.
back to the reef for one more view of the largest national park in the world. this time we took a larger boat (less sickness) to an island surrounded by coral reef (or so we thought). the island was pleasant but overrun by tourists and on our first two attempts to snorkel from the beach, we weren't able to find any significant or live pieces of coral. it seemed like it once was filled with coral which died off due to the volume of tourists kicking around sand and whatever else.
fortunately, we saw lots on the glass bottom boat tour included in the tour and then asked where the coral was. poeli and i spent another hour in the water viewing some great coral and fish. i spotted what i'm sure was an octopus (but only the top half) and a friendly bloke showed me a huge cod that he spotted deep under the dock. had asian buffet for dinner and did some last minute gift shopping with poeli and prepared for the obscenely early flight back to melbourne at 5:45am...
Sept 26th.
exhausted from the flight which was delayed by 45 mins and then the luggage was late by 30 mins, we checked into our hostel, grabbed some fish and chips nearby and caught a nap. not hungry when we awoke, we hitched a free ride on one melbourne's many trams (honour system payment) to the casino and wandered around before finally playing $10 each on the very confusing 'pokies' and losing it all in a blaze of unsatisfying button pushing!
Sept 27th.
met up with danielle at about 10am. grabbed some brekkie and walked around melbourne for a while. caught some live music at our hostel's bar after having a classy dinner on the acclaimed but oddly named, hardware lane. called it a night at around 11pm because poeli had to fly out at 6am back to ottawa.
Sept 28th.
said goodbye to poeli at 4:30am. not fun. likely would have been harder had we both been fully awake. checked out after a few hours and met danielle again at a cafe nearby. we bought tickets to some arts shows which were part of the fringe festival here and headed to the library to do some research for our upcoming trip to SE asia.
after dinner we proceeded to chat, causing us to be late getting to the first show (acrobat) that we had tickets for, and were stiffly denied entry. there is an off chance we could catch the next show but waiting on an email and seems very unlikely to fit with our plans. working our way to the bottom of a jug of draught helped ease our sorrows.
Sept 29th.
a day of entertainment. we caught a couple of comedy shows on for fringe festival and had a healthy laugh. one guy was a small-time comic/songwriter called the bedroom philosopher. his timing and wit were just right and he was more than prepared to sacrifice his ego for a chuckle.
the second show was a famous uk stand-up comic, stephen k amos. much more traditional and really cut up the people in the front row.
later we made a 45 min hike across the city and caught some music at two bars in fitzroy; some modern rock and some trancy live jazz.
Sept 30th.
a day of transit. up at the crack of 8:30, assuring ourselves we would catch the 10:05am bus to phillip island home of the little penguin parade. arriving just in time, we learned that the internet schedule was wrong, and had to take an alternate route. oops.
jump on a metro train and get delayed 1.5hrs on our first transfer. got off at stony point and found we had to wait another 3.5hrs for the ferry to the island. 8hrs from departure, we arrive at our destination, no more than 100km from where we started.
on the positive side, i got my ass handed to me at cribbage, rummy and crazy eights consecutively while we waited. oh, and we arrived barely in time to see the penguin parade. cute little bastards. smallest ones in the world - and they walk right up under the boardwalk no more than a foot from viewers.
here lies my last week or so of the 35 days i totalled in australia.
last time i left off in tropical Cairns...
Sept 21st.
found it difficult to make our way to the beach with the sketchy bus system and bad directions from the hostel's reception crew. arrived at palm cove at about 4pm and tried to enjoy some sun before it quickly was lost in the palms behind us.
Sept 22nd.
disappointed with our beach experience of the previous day, we headed to another beach in the same stretch of coast, this time earlier in the day. it was picturesque tropical beach, though the sand was more coarse than some, and the water picked up silt in the surf giving it a brown tint. we "sun baked" as the aussies call it and floated in the waves until we were forced by hunger to return to the city.
caught the semi-final footy game on tv where sydney's swans advanced to their second straight grand final appearance.
Sept 23rd.
hot, lazy day. booked another trip to the reef for the 25th; destination green island. left on the agenda for today, second footy semi-final and some drinks.
Sept 24th.
our second-last day in cairns.... it has been the holiday spot of the trip. so why not another lazy day sitting around at the pool, soaking up sun, reading and writing these journal entries. plans for later are to head downtown and catch a showing of al gore's 'an inconvenient truth' which just came out here.
Sept 25th.
back to the reef for one more view of the largest national park in the world. this time we took a larger boat (less sickness) to an island surrounded by coral reef (or so we thought). the island was pleasant but overrun by tourists and on our first two attempts to snorkel from the beach, we weren't able to find any significant or live pieces of coral. it seemed like it once was filled with coral which died off due to the volume of tourists kicking around sand and whatever else.
fortunately, we saw lots on the glass bottom boat tour included in the tour and then asked where the coral was. poeli and i spent another hour in the water viewing some great coral and fish. i spotted what i'm sure was an octopus (but only the top half) and a friendly bloke showed me a huge cod that he spotted deep under the dock. had asian buffet for dinner and did some last minute gift shopping with poeli and prepared for the obscenely early flight back to melbourne at 5:45am...
Sept 26th.
exhausted from the flight which was delayed by 45 mins and then the luggage was late by 30 mins, we checked into our hostel, grabbed some fish and chips nearby and caught a nap. not hungry when we awoke, we hitched a free ride on one melbourne's many trams (honour system payment) to the casino and wandered around before finally playing $10 each on the very confusing 'pokies' and losing it all in a blaze of unsatisfying button pushing!
Sept 27th.
met up with danielle at about 10am. grabbed some brekkie and walked around melbourne for a while. caught some live music at our hostel's bar after having a classy dinner on the acclaimed but oddly named, hardware lane. called it a night at around 11pm because poeli had to fly out at 6am back to ottawa.
Sept 28th.
said goodbye to poeli at 4:30am. not fun. likely would have been harder had we both been fully awake. checked out after a few hours and met danielle again at a cafe nearby. we bought tickets to some arts shows which were part of the fringe festival here and headed to the library to do some research for our upcoming trip to SE asia.
after dinner we proceeded to chat, causing us to be late getting to the first show (acrobat) that we had tickets for, and were stiffly denied entry. there is an off chance we could catch the next show but waiting on an email and seems very unlikely to fit with our plans. working our way to the bottom of a jug of draught helped ease our sorrows.
Sept 29th.
a day of entertainment. we caught a couple of comedy shows on for fringe festival and had a healthy laugh. one guy was a small-time comic/songwriter called the bedroom philosopher. his timing and wit were just right and he was more than prepared to sacrifice his ego for a chuckle.
the second show was a famous uk stand-up comic, stephen k amos. much more traditional and really cut up the people in the front row.
later we made a 45 min hike across the city and caught some music at two bars in fitzroy; some modern rock and some trancy live jazz.
Sept 30th.
a day of transit. up at the crack of 8:30, assuring ourselves we would catch the 10:05am bus to phillip island home of the little penguin parade. arriving just in time, we learned that the internet schedule was wrong, and had to take an alternate route. oops.
jump on a metro train and get delayed 1.5hrs on our first transfer. got off at stony point and found we had to wait another 3.5hrs for the ferry to the island. 8hrs from departure, we arrive at our destination, no more than 100km from where we started.
on the positive side, i got my ass handed to me at cribbage, rummy and crazy eights consecutively while we waited. oh, and we arrived barely in time to see the penguin parade. cute little bastards. smallest ones in the world - and they walk right up under the boardwalk no more than a foot from viewers.
posted by scott at
2:12 AM
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