Change In Plans

Greetings from Sydney! We arrived early this afternoon, and are struggling to stay awake long enough to mitigate the worst of the jet lag. Sydney is nine hours ahead of South Africa and sixteen hours ahead of New York. Our bodies have no idea where we are or what time it is.

The trip from Cape Town was long but relatively straightforward. We had originally planned to have a full day in Johannesburg, to see friends and to visit the newly opened African Leadership Academy (we are big fans). In the end, we had only about two hours at the Johannesburg airport (ORTIA), and we needed almost every minute of it to sort out ticketing and visa and foreign exchange problems.

For some reason, throughout our trip, Zola has been mildly obsessed with sitting in the upstairs cabin on an airplane. Even in Nepal, as we waited for the arrival of an ancient 16-seat Twin Otter turboprop, he would hope, hope, hope that it would have an upper deck for us to sit in.

On the Qantas flight from Johannesburg to Sydney, his dream finally came true, as they directed us up the narrow staircase of the Airbus A380. I thought the little boy might actually burst from excitement. Even today he thought it was one of the best parts of the whole trip. Not as cool as an elephant safari, but close.

The Qantas flight had something for everyone. Zola finally had his upper-deck seating, India was happy to be on the safest airline in the world. Even little Tallulah got swept up in the glory of it all. She watched ‘High School Musical 3′ while eating dinner. She was singing joyfully with headphones on, drinking chocolate milk, and conducting the cast with a carrot stick. At some point she turned to India and shouted, “Mom, this is the LIFE!”. I was just glad that everyone was happy.

Customs and Immigration in Australia is more vigilant (ie, more of a pain in the neck) than in any other country we have visited, and heavily focused on alien plants and animals.  We filled out endless forms, waited in several lines, and affirmed three times that we were not bringing any fruits or dried meat into the country. Maybe because it’s an island country, and a lot of its indigenous species were wiped out by rabbits and rats introduced by Europeans.

Eventually (a long eventually) we got through the alien-species blockade, and made it outside. As of that moment, all four of us, including Zola and Tallulah, have been to six of the seven continents. Antarctica, here we come!

We drove from the airport to Bondi Beach, where we are staying. Sydney is a big city, and, because our directions were bad, we saw a lot of it on our drive. Sydney is definitely beautiful, but doesn’t seem to be in the same league as Cape Town (but we are deeply biased). Sydney does look clean and well organized.

After checking into our hotel and getting settled, we staggered down the beach in a delirium of fatigue to find food. We had a great dinner sitting at the bar of a very crowded restaurant called North Bondi Italian Food. For some reason, the spaghetti arabbiata and crab dish I had was advertised on the menu as “cooked in a paper bag.” The waitress cut open the bag in front of us, and there was the pasta. Not sure how they did this or why, but it tasted great.

We haven’t had time to form any opinions about anything, but based on our afternoon and evening at Bondi Beach, we saw a lot of supporting evidence for the classic, positive stereotypes of Australians. Even under gray skies and a slight drizzle, we saw hundreds of good looking, physically fit, tanned people of all ages. Almost to a person, they were laughing and talking to friends, drinking alcohol, or engaged in physical exercise (or some combination of all three). Australia does not seem to be a place for angst or self pity.  Every person we have encountered has been friendly and enthusiastic.

We have lots of plans for the five days we are in Sydney. We start early tomorrow morning with a trip to the zoo. We are definitely excited to be here. .

I have fallen asleep twice while tapping this post out on my BlackBerry. I hope that reading the post does not induce the same narcolepsy. I think it is time for bed.

PostScript- everyone was awake again by about 3 am, Sydney time. For the last three hours we have been reading kids’ books aloud, and listening to an underwear-clad TalIulah run around saying “I’m not sleepy! I’m not sleepy!”. Tomorrow should be an interesting day for us.