Quick Byron Update

This was an email to Jana, that I just figured would be a good blog update. I will write more in detail later, but for now....

"I am doing incredibly well! I live in Byron Bay now. It is so awesome, so everything I want in a town. 3 veg. restaurants, 2 organic grocery, live music 7 nights a week (gooood music), and its rated the #1 place to learn to surf on the east coast. Sweet, eh?

I have a job at a cafe in town. Well, I dont work there yet, but I had a "trial" where I went in and had a short shift to see what I can do. They said I could have 'hours' with them... so sweet!

Tara is living in Melbourne, and moves into her apt. in like 3 days. I don't have a place to live yet, but I am in love with the hostel I am staying at. Its got TPs and permanent tents, and a huge pool/hot tub, and its in the jungle. Everyone just plays music and does art and smokes weed all the time. www.artsfactory.com.au if you wanna see it."

I don't have my camera here, so sorry about no pictures!

Come Ride The Train!

Choo Choo! Photos by Anna.

I think this picture is super creepy, but Anna was all about it.

Sushi train that is. Awww yeah! Before tonight I had never been to a sushi bar/restaurant that had the conveyor belt of tasty rolls that just stream by you. To further authenticate the moment, I successfully used chop sticks and didn't embarrass myself by squishing the rolls, thereby loosing control of the roll and having it fall and create a soy splash tidal wave. I felt quite a sense of accomplishment. Marc's sister picked Anna and I up and drove us into a neat part of the city that I never even saw my first time here. It was trendy, and alive and colorful...unlike the Brisbane I came to know during my first stay here. It definitely turned my perception of the city around in one car ride and sushi train. Choo Choo.

My bus to Byron Bay leaves at 1pm Friday (tomorrow). AH! I'm ready for it though. I'm ready to settle a bit. This backpacking life is a bit stressful. I am so grateful to be in Marc's house on a comfortable couch with a 'clean' shower and most of all: not be paying for it.

See Ya Later, Bruce.

Tara Thai. Ha. I bet Dan Thai would be happy.

Today I said my sad goodbye to Bruce.

Today I made the decision to move to Byron Bay.

Today Tara decided she is going to move to Melbourne. We’re flying out on different planes tomorrow afternoon.

Walking to the grocery store today, Tara and I passed a Flight Centre (travel agency ‘cheap flights’ place) and decided to stop in to see what kind of prices they could get us on flights to … well… out of Cairns. Cairns is a strange mixing bowl of international backpackers primarily from Germany, Asia and Australia. Street vendors line the downtown mall with ‘authentic’ aboriginal art and boomerangs. Florescent colored poster board out side of each vendor’s tent advertises 2 for 1 sales with bold misspelled words like necklase and beutifull. The vibe is really strange. Most people are just wondering the streets sweating profusely and looking for an inexpensive tour to the Great Barrier Reef or Cape Tribulation.

So back to the Flight Centre— I got a flight to Brisbane for $161, which is mad cheap for less than 24 hours in advance. When I get to Brisbane I’m going to crash with a friend of mine from Curtin, Marc. He just got a place in Brisbane, so it will be solid to catch up with him and have a place to stay for a night or two. Then I’m off to Byron Bay, which is 3 hours south of Brisbane by Greyhound. Living in the Whitsundays would be killer, but I think I would get a bit bored of the super small town and people coming and going every three days. Might be hard to make friends. Not to mention, Summer is coming and that brings 110 degree days. UGH. I’ve never been to Byron Bay, but it comes highly recommended to be from dozens of people. I hear there is a great music scene, laid back people, a bit of a hippie vibe and phenomenal beaches for surfing. I want to learn to surf for sure. Maybe I can get a job at a bicycle shop? That’d be sweet.

I’m scared to be moving to a town by myself. I don’t have a job, any friends, or any real knowledge of what the place will be like. I think it is nervous energy, you know? I just need some sort of … something to kick me off. I think working asap will be a nice way to meet people. I am biting my lip right now with a smile spreading across my face. This is going to be awesome.

More Pictures

Tara is fat.

Incredible Incredible view from the top of a look out.

Diesel and Curry

Bruce the van


Beautiful Whitsunday Islands

Diesel and Curry

Right now I am sitting at a worn wooden picnic table trying to adjust my screen so the setting ‘winter’ sun doesn’t reflect too harshly in my eyes. It’s warm, but just cool enough so my toes are curled up under my feet in my flip flops. As the sun sets, breezy tropical Magnetic Island starts to become a symphony of exotic jungle sounds. That, plus drunk travelers at the hostel’s bar. It’s one of the only two bars on his island that stretches an undeveloped 16 km from tip to tip. The roads are half unpaved and climb up mountains at between 8 and 14% gradients (very steep). I’m used to driving on windy mountain roads, but these roads just go up and over again, and again. Bruce, our van with 313,000kms on him, usually likes to chug along in noisy 2nd gear with little interest in going much faster than 20mph up the hills. Anyways, back to my setting:
Just 100 yards down a dirt path is the backpacker’s kitchen hut. The painfully familiar smells of garlic, oregano, burnt toast, boiling sausages and pasta is starting to fill the air. Backpackers always seem to eat the same food no matter their nationality. I can see just through the noisy screen door of the kitchen a tan guy in his late 20’s cutting the core out of a pineapple with the serrated blade of his leatherman. He wipes it on his cut off jean shorts and folds the blade back into its handle. That is the most original thing I’ve seen anyone eat in a couple weeks. I got to talking to a guy named Christoph a few weeks ago who works as a biochemist in Germany in the ‘real world. But for the past 6 months, he and his wife have been picking pineapples to get by. They live in their car and have incredible German educations—they just wanted to get away. He still loves pineapple, get the ones with lots of yellow on the outside-- they are ready to eat.
Tara, Bruce and I have driven a bit over 1000kms since we left Brisbane. We have seen dingos, snakes, monitor lizards, ocipussies (?), kangaroos, wallabies and a probably 80% of the Finding Nemo cast. We tend to spend most of our time either in the dense jungle or on the most remote beaches we can come across. We took a sailing tour in the Whitsunday islands… wait I’m going to start a new paragraph for this one…

Whitsundays. The aboriginal word for this series of Islands translates perfectly to paradise. I agree with them. I got to see these islands on a 68’ sail boat. Our skipper was a wrinkly, jaded old sailor from Armenia with very little to say. He had, like, a dozen teeth. The boat had an old wooden and steel body, accented with cream with dark maroon paint covering what I assume to be shit tons of rust. The galley below the boat was three main rooms. One room was just beds, another was crew quarters with a messy cluster of radios, weathered maps, and broken dials that I was told “don’t really matter anyway.” Tara and I slept in the remaining section: the kitchen. Imagine a room about 12x15 with beds to sleep 7 + a sink, 3 huge burners and all the cabinetry to hold food for 26 people. (Our boat only had 10 for some awesome reason.)

The crimson carpets below were dank (heh) with sea water that never dries and matted from I’d say, um, 50 years of use. This is a three day, 2 night cruise. Every week the same 2 dinners are prepared: spaghetti with garlic bread (original, right?), and curry with jasmine rice. Well, as you can imagine, the pungent smell of curry gets trapped in the damp carpets, the sheets on the beds, and the weathered wooden timber supports in the cabin. I think the exhaust to the engine was also piped through my cabin. So throw diesel fumes in the mix. I got sick. Twice. Sea sickness is not remedied by eating awful curry. My bed was not the best part of the trip.
All of that aside, I saw the most incredible white sandy beaches of my life. The water has 70 shades of blue and green according to our deckhand, Hughie. Hughie tried to give Tara a sip of his drink, but Tara noticed there was a fly in it. Hughie took two massive gulps of the gin lemonade concoction and handed the drink back. The fly was gone. That’s all you need to know about this sailor. Oh, and he burned his apartment down one time by catching his couch on fire, with his friend on it. On purpose.

We snorkeled in the cold clean salt water for what felt like hours the first day. The chill of the ocean wind made the whole thing very intense. I wanted to stay underwater to remain warm, but I wanted to be out of the water to warm up for good. It was strange. We sailed to Whitehaven beach and spent much of the following day there. Whitehaven is the 4th most beautiful beach in the world as of 2007. It’s #1 for me though. White sand is produced by tectonic plates crushing quarts into silicone that tides carry to the islands. From mountaintops and planes, the waters look like swirling white clouds on a blue sky. It’s a strange abstract representation of the Australian sky. I found myself speechless more times than I can remember on this trip. Maybe I was just trying to keep the curry down.

The downtime on the ship was spent listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers mixed cds on repeat and reading on the deck of the ship. Apparently someone had stolen all the other music, and of course no one travels with cds, so we were stuck with Anthony Kedias and his take on 21st century California. I made friends from England, Katie and Jamie, they are badass. They are spending 5 months traveling around the world: Africa, Australia, NZ, and beautiful Los Angeles. I guess they have been Tara and my first real friends on this journey. Too bad we had to part ways.

This is too long. Im going to go make dinner with Tara. Pasta with cheap tomato sauce. Vegitarianism is hard here. They don’t have bocca or Morning Starr. Brandon Shore, Calvin: I think spring break style dining might be happening more and more often.

Post #1 ... week one-ish

Yup, saw some dingos on the BEACH at Fraiser island
Lake Makinzie
More lake mak.
Ship wreck on Fraiser island
Noosa.


Son of a... I just lost everything that I typed. Well, now I am running out of internet time, so I am going to upload pictures. Thats worth 1000 words, right? Things are going quite well. The van is sweet, and all of the towns we have driven through have been great. Very laid back time and time again. Nothing has struck me as "my new home" yet, but I am only in Mackay right now. Google it. Next stop is the whitsunday islands, REALLY google that. I'll have my own pictures of it soon enough, but it has dozens of little uninhabited tropical islands that everyone sails around to. I am thinking right now, a job on a sail boat might be kinda fun. We'll see. Now for some pictures: