Vacation was AWESOME!!!!

Russ and I got to take some vacation in July.  We went to Australia.  It was completely awesome!  Both of us agreed that this was the best vacation either of us had ever been on.  It was more of a Honeymoon than our honeymoon.  We've gotten so much closer to each other than we ever have been.  Now that he's back out at sea, I am one very unhappy camper.  I really miss him, I'm just thankful that he's not in Iraq or any place like that.  But, I digress.

We started out in Sydney.  We left Japan on Thursday and arrived early Friday morning.  Sydney was neat, if obligatory.  Russ had been there before, so he knew of several places he wanted to take me.  Also, we found a chain restaurant called the Bavarian Beer Cafe.  We were just ecstatic to be able to order mashed potatoes off a menu.  Not that I don't enjoy fish and rice, but what a treat!  Sydney has a wonderful botanical garden.  There is a huge colony of flying foxes, otherwise known as really big bats.  They were covering the trees while they slept.  it was quite a sight!  Also in the park is the governor's mansion.  It is open for tours, so we got to see the inside and get a bit of Australia history.  Apparently, the British got to Sydndey only a day or two before the French.  I'm really glad the British got there first as my French is terrible.

We booked two tours in Sydney and gave ourselves two days to explore on our own.  The first tour was of the Blue Mountains.  this is a gorgeous mountain range about an hour outside Sydney.  We were on the tour with a British family, and we seemed to be keeping up with another couple on a Private tour.  They were from Texas.  The Blue Mountains were gorgeous, as I already stated.  We also had a wonderful grilled steak lunch.  Another wonderful treat!  The tour was a little disappointing in that we mostly just rode around in a van.  We were hoping for a bit more walking, but it was nice.

Our second tour was supposed to be a 4 hour lunch cruise of Sydney Harbour.  Friday on check-in to the hotel, we received a fax that the boat broke and we could schedule a different tour or get a refund.  We decided to take the Hunter Valley wine tour.  WOW.  Personally, I think the Hunter Valley is much more scenic than Sonoma.  We visited a few wineries.  The only place we purchased was Brokenwood.  They only sell their wines in Australia.  We still have two bottles left of the four we bought.  I think we'll be drinking the next one when Russ gets home from his Autumn tour at sea.  We also visited a chocolate shop, where I found the chili chocolates that I love.  It's chocolate with chili pepper in it.  Sweet and heat, wonderful.

Tuesday morning very early, we left on the leg of the trip that Russ wasn't eagerly anticipating.  Our train left Sydney central station at 7:00 am.  After switching to a bus in Dubbo, we arrived in Lightning Ridge at 7:00 pm.  I could hear the gears in Russ' head turning.  I warned him before we were married that I have a dream of traveling around the world and buying gemstones at their places of origin.  He just didn't realize I am serious.  Now, he was thinking, "Great, my wife just dragged me 12 hours into the middle of nowhere because she wants to buy an opal.  How did I let this happen?"  Lightning Ridge turned out to be nearly Russ' favorite part of the trip. 

Quickie education, if you already know this, skip the paragraph...  Everyone knows opals come from Australia (actually, 90% of opals come from Australia, the rest come from multiple other places.)  Most of us are used to seeing the milky white opals with the mysterious hints of color.  Those are white opals and can be found over most of Australia.  Lightning Ridge is special.  The knobby, black opal comes from a 40 Km radius around Lightning Ridge.  Black is the most precious opal and the type to be called gemstone opal.  Knobby opal is about 20% denser than other opal, and is thus more valuable.

Lightning Ridge is so named because of the ironstone.  Whenever there is a major storm, Lightning Ridge is guaranteed to be struck.  It's a small town with two industries, opal mining and tourism.  75% of the stores in town are opal shops.  A 3 minute drive from the main intersection, and you're out in the bush.  Many locals pay a minimum fee to claim a 50m by 50m plot where they can live.  They build their homes out of whatever they can find.  The more elaborate homes are old, beat-up trailers.  They have no city water, electricity, or any other utilities except phone lines.  Many of them use wind, solar and battery or generator power.  The town reminded us of the Old West.  Russ loved it.  We toured mines and bought opals directly from the miner.  The Opal Bin is a newer shop in town.  They had the best selection and the best prices.  The husband mines the opals and his wife cuts them.  They are gorgeous!

After a 12 hour trip back to Sydney on Friday, we caught a flight to Cairns on Saturday.  We were transfered from the airport to a town about 1.5 hours north of Cairns.  Port Douglas was build up around the Mirage resort.  It is much quieter than Cairns and definitely a bit more upscale.  We stayed at a nice hotel, but definitely not movie star accommodations.  The hotel was about 250 meters from the beach, which we visited once, and about 4 Km from the main street of town.  It made for a nice walk along the beach into town.

From Port Douglas, we took three tours.  The first was on the night we arrived.  We went to the Cairns night zoo where we had a barbeque dinner and were introduced to Australia's nocturnal population.  It was touristy, but fun.  At the night zoo, we ran into the Texas family again.  We kept running into the same people over and over.  It made Australia feel a lot smaller.  Sunday, we took a trip to the village of Kuranda.   Kuranda is a small town in the Atherton Table Lands.  We took the historic railroad into the town and a sky cable way back down.  Kuranda sports a main street with lots of shops and restaurants.  At the top of the street are the Butterfly and Bird Sanctuaries and the Koala Gardens.  Like many other places, we could pet and feed the kangaroos and wallabies.  Queensland allows tourists to hold Koalas, so we took advantage of that opportunity. 

The last tour we took was of the Daintree Rainforest.  We took a walk on a boardwalk through the forest and learned about the various plants.  Included on the boardwalk is the famous Mossman Gorge.  Yet another stunning example of Australian geography.  Next, we had lunch at the Daintree Teahouse.  The main course was Baramundi, the signature fish of the region.  It was one of the most delicious meals we had.  It also featured a sample of several of the local, tropical fruits.  From there, we went on a Daintree River cruise.  The cruise was not what it usually was.  The river had been experiencing unusually low tides.  But, we did get to see Fat Albert, the local king croc. sunning himself on the shore.  Normally, the cruise would drop us off in Daintree Village, but couldn't get us there due to the tides.   Daintree Village was a bit disappointing.  It's a small tiny blink-town with not much more to offer than a pseudo logging museum and a  souvenir shop.  Overall, it was a neat trip.

The exceptionally low tides came into our favor on Wednesday.  We had managed to get the last two seats on a snorkel trip.  Wavelength is a small company with a large boat.  They take no more than 30 people on a snorkel only trip to the Great Barrier Reef.  All the other companies were much larger and with the ships and snorkel/scuba offerings, couldn't get as close to the reef as Wavelength.  This was by far the most extraordinary experience of the trip.  I had attempted to learn scuba, but breathed way too much water and ended up sick as a dog the next week.  I may have mentioned that in my Thailand posting.  So, we could "only" snorkel.  This was also my first experience snorkeling, so I had to get over the breathing underwater thing. 

With three crew to guide us along the reef (including a real life marine biologist), we saw the most amazing wildlife.  Here, I need to bring up the issue of the low tides.  Winter is the worst time of year to snorkel or dive the reef.  Wind is the biggest factor.  Not only does it make the trip to the reef nauseating, it churns up the water and makes it hard to see anything.  The day we went, the winds were at 10-15 knots, if you can call that wind.  Also, the tide was the lowest it was going to get all year.  Only about 5 days per year does the tide get that low.  At least 6" of the reef was visible above the surface.  The result of this is to force all the fish that normally swim on top of the reef down to the bottom.  It was like compacting the fish and making it impossible not to see anything.  We even went swimming with a half dozen sea turtles.  Also, on the way out and back, we saw humpbacked whales and a huge manta.

Thursday, we transfered to Cairns for the night.  I'm glad we went, but it reminded me mostly of the Jersey shore with all the low budget activities and teen-agers.  Friday, it was one of the hardest things to get on the plane back to Japan.  The experience of a lifetime!