Driving on the Left

I think I spent the first few days in Australia carefully watching how everyone was driving and worrying myself about looking in the correct direction whenever I approached an intersection. There were lots of subtle things that cropped up that I had to get used to, but they really didn’t turn out to be too hard: rotaries go in the opposite direction, slow lane is in the left not the right, etc.

But the one thing that I still can’t break out of the habit of is that the turn signal is on the opposite side of the damn wheel! This means that invariably when I’m about to go and pass the road train (truck pulling 3-4 trailers) that is going 30 km/h under the speed limit, I end up turning on my windshield wipers. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails like the sound of bone dry wipers scraping across a windshield in 90 degree heat. And Mekayla’s chuckling as I fail to signal properly for the 40^th time doesn’t really help either.

Back from the wild

Sorry, this post got a bit delayed due to an urgent need to go snorkeling, more on that later.

Before we get into posting some stories from the past week I just figured I’d give a quick summary. We whole-heartily recommend Kakadu National Park in Northern Australia. It was absolutely amazing, and we did get used to the heat (though I did sweat through my shirt every day we were there). The wildlife, incredible landscape, and Aboriginal culture and rock art all in one place make for a great mix of things to learn about. Hopefully I can find some time and way to upload all of the pictures we took, but here is a taste of the local wildlife:

That last one is either a wallaroo or a wallaby. We really have no idea how to tell the difference. They hop like a kangaroo, but are quite smaller. Can you tell?

Just getting to Kakadu itself was quite an adventure. Everyone has seen the kangaroo crossing signs, but the crocodiles next five kilometers kinda surprised us.

Alas, we saw no crocs crossing the road. Then once we entered the Park we had to drive through fire (literally) in order to get to our camping site. It seems the Aboriginals are still keeping up with their millennia long tradition of cleansing the forest with fire, so there are lots of small fires going on this time of year.

We’re now sitting in Darwin airport waiting for our 1:40AM flight going to Cairns. Ideas of exactly what we are going to do are still percolating, but certainly the Great Barrier Reef will be involved.

Winter is HOT.

At least in Darwin it is. Though the nights are quite nice. Rather than drive-in movies we went to a deck chair cinema and watched a movie under the stars.

Hmmm… The sign across the street is inviting us to “Swim with the crocodiles!” I think we will refrain from taking them up on the offer.

Jet lag is mostly over, and today the camping begins. We won’t have any internet access for 5 or 6 days and so won’t be posting. We’re off to explore the rainforest.

Forgot to Mention

Whoever planned for our flight out of Denver to go over the Grand Canyon was pretty sneaky. We get it. The US is beautiful too. I guess we’ll have to buy return tickets someday.

Can we sleep yet?

We haven’t quite finished traveling yet, but seeing as we are jet lagged and hanging around the Brisbane airport it is time for a first update. Here is the first documentary evidence of our existence on the other side of the world. Look, we're in the clouds!

Not the plane we were in, or the airline we were flying (yet), but out this window of the airport we got to see the sun rise above New Zealand for the first time while we waited for our connecting flight to Australia.

Too confused to try and write something witty and coherent so we’ll check back in after we reach Darwin and get some sleep.

G’Day all!

The Itinerary

I've added an itinerary to the right side of the blog page. This is the current plan and probably won't change much since changing airplane tickets is expensive.

By the next post we will probably have left Boston and most likely will be in Denver.

Homeless!

With the help of many hearty friends we have banished all of our worldly possessions into the safe keeping of friends and family. For the record, we have 55 labeled boxes, 10+ boxes I didn't bother to label, many plastic bags full of bedding and pillows, and the usual sets of furniture. We managed to give away about two car loads of old clothes and various other junk we used to treasure. It was a very cathartic experience that I highly recommend. Spending 3 days boxing up and moving all of our crap actually makes us want to just toss it into a big bonfire and incinerate everything. Perhaps we should do that when we return and have survived living a year without any of it.

After delivering much of this stuff to my parents house my Mom called me and had only one complaint: I had neglected to drop off our Roomba. Apparently the piles of stuff we left clogging the attic don't really matter as long as she gets to reacquire my Roomba (nickname: Roomy). Never fear Mom, once he is done cleaning our now empty apartment Roomy will be yours again.

Caleb and Elizabeth have taken us into their home for the week, and we have created a staging area in their upstairs bedroom where we are completing our final packing for the journey. Currently there are a dozen piles of possible things to bring with us: electronics, medical stuff, clothes, camping gear, etc. Somehow over these last few hectic days we'll whittle everything down to a manageable (and packable) set of traveling gear that can fit into our two backpacks.

Oh, and to finally quash the question from our parents: yes, we have completed buying health insurance.