Change In Plans

SYDNEY ICON

Greetings from Sydney, where the local time is 3:55 am. We are experiencing the worst jet lag, by far, that we have experienced on our trip around the world.

We sort of powered through our first 24 hours in Australia: stayed awake until about 9 pm, tried to minimize the wee-hours running around, woke up early, and had a very full day. All best practice in jet-lag mitigation.

Again, two nights ago, we stayed out as late as we could tolerate, and even let the kids watch an hour of TV when we got back to the hotel. In bed at about 10 pm, with big plans for the following day.

At some point in the night, either India or I pulled all of the drapes tightly closed. The next thing we knew, it was nearly 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and we were still asleep in the darkened cavern of our room. 3 pm! Generations of early-rising Puritan ancestors spin in their graves.

To be fair, India had gotten up at the crack of 1:30 pm, and gone for a run, leaving the rest of us slackers (or bludgers, as the Australians call them) to sleep.

We went for a beautiful coastal walk from Bondi Beach down to Bronte Beach, all four of us feeling out of sorts. I went for a swim in the ocean, and then we went for a great early dinner at Icebergs, which is justifiably the most famous restaurant in this part of Sydney. Icebergs sits perched above the south end of Bondi Beach, and serves things like buffalo mozzarella “air freighted in from Napoli.”  Because it was a hybrid breakfast, lunch and dinner meal, we all ate ravenously and well.

After dinner, we walked around Bondi Beach again for as long as we could stand it. We bought Zola some slip-on Vans (with black-and-white checks), and raided the local bookstore for the rest of the ‘Artemis Fowl’ series.  By 9:30 pm, we were back in our room, where I (very unwisely) fell back asleep for a couple of hours. At about 11:30 pm, all of us were again wide awake: Zola plowing through ‘Artemis Fowl’ #5, Lu dancing around and singing “I’m not sleepy!” and India and me having an overdue talk about life, the future, and everything.

India and Zola fell asleep at about 3:00 am, and now Lu and I are sitting on the floor of the bathroom, trying not to disturb them. Tallulah maintains, “I’m not sleepy!” It may be wishful thinking, but perhaps there is slightly less conviction in her voice than there was an hour ago.

We will get ourselves on track tomorrow, and get out to see more of the city. I don’t know why the 9-hour difference from Cape Town has crushed us in a way that the trips to Ireland and Spain did not.  Even the 13-hour time difference to Tokyo was easier to adjust to than this. Maybe we are getting soft.  

Here is a sample of my dialogue with Tallulah:

“Tallulah, are you tired?”

“No, Daddy.”

“Tallulah, are you tired?”

“I have a giraffe dress and a cheetah dress too.”

“Tallulah, are you tired?”

“Daddy, why do our mouths have so much spit in them?”

“Tallulah, are you tired?”

“This is a big, huge bathtub. My baby is not tired either. I’m hungry.”

“Hello, Hungry.  Are you tired?”

“Daddy, remember when Mommy wore those super high heels, and she was taller than you?”

“Tallulah, are you tired?”

“No, Daddy.”

“Grrrrrrr.”

I am making good progress in reading Denis Johnson’s “Tree of Smoke.”  Maybe I will start Artemis Fowl when I finish, so Zola and I have something to talk about.

Greetings from Bondi Beach!  We have had a busy and fun first day here in Sydney.  

Except for me, everyone eventually fell back to sleep at dawn.  I entertained myself by watching people on the beach from our hotel-room window (scores of runners, cyclists and swimmers before 6 am), and by reading Jay McInerney’s new collection of short stories, “The Last Bachelor.”  He can definitely write, but his themes of post-9/11 angst, infidelity, and anger at his Nashville ex-wife are a little tedious.

I went to get breakfast for everyone, and then went for a swim in the Pacific.  I got back a few minutes before 9, woke everyone up, and we were all out the door by 9:15, racing to Taronga Zoo for a tour that India had booked for 10 am.

IRWIN THE KOALA

A terrific zookeeper and guide, named Diane Dominique, showed us around the zoo.  She focuses on the Australian mammals, so that is what we spent most of our time looking at: koalas, “macropods” (as Diane said, a fancy word for kangaroos and wallabies), bandicoots, small nocturnal marsupials, wombats, echidnae, poteroos, and dingos.  I had no idea there were so many.

Diane took us “behind the scenes” to get up close to the koalas, and to pet the kangaroos and nocturnal marsupials.  The most interesting marsupial was the echidna, which looks like a small porcupine with a long termite-eating snout and not-very-sharp quills.  They were friendly little guys.  Aside from the platypus, the echidna is the only mammal that lays eggs, an ancient link back to the time before mammals and reptiles went their evolutionary separate ways.

ZOLA, DIANE AND ECHIDNA

We also spent 20 minutes in the zoo kitchen, watching another zookeeper, Shannon Parker, prepare meals for all of the animals.  Zola and Lu gladly helped sort the dead rats and baby chicks for the carnivores to eat, and grabbed handsful of live meal worms to treat the little poteroos.  

Zola, in particular, was in his element in the zoo.  He knew a lot about these animals (must have read up at some point), and asked questions like: “Are the fingerprints we see on koalas paws unique?” and “Do kangaroos suspend their pregnancies the same way that springboks do in South Africa?”  This is truly what he loves, and it is fun to see him completely engaged.

The most disturbing thing at the zoo was in the Tasmanian Devil exhibit.  This animal is racing toward extinction due to a “contagious cancer” called Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease (TDFTD).  The pictures of the afflicted animals were truly gross.  The thinking is that the “clean” zoo-bred Devils may be the core of a new post-DFTD population.  Who knew?

After Diane left us, we were met at the zoo’s ferry dock by the crew from Sydney Sea Cruises.  India had booked a half-day excursion around Sydney Harbour, to help us get oriented.  The guide/owner, Sean, was a very nice young guy who grew up in upstate New York, and emigrated to Australia three years ago.  Daniel, the captain, was Sydney born and bred.  Having a boat ride in the afternoon sunshine was great.  Sean focused the sightseeing and his commentary a little too heavily on celebrities and real-estate prices, but maybe that is what most of his passengers are interested in.

GERONIMO!!

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We anchored near Manly, and ate a very good lunch on the boat.  Before and after eating, the kids and I went swimming in the warm, calm water.  There was a 25-foot cliff that some kids were jumping from, so I tried a couple of times.  After 150 years of kids jumping from these rocks, the area was recently fenced off, with a lot of “Danger” and “Forbidden” signs.  No one seemed to be deterred.  In fact, some kids were climbing to the top of the fence and jumping from there, to get the extra eight feet of vertical.  Somewhat like Namibia, this was just good, old-fashioned, redneck fun.

In the late afternoon, Sean and Daniel dropped us at Circular Quay, in the oldest part of Sydney.  We went for a 30-minute walk along the ferry wharves, and amidst the old buildings, but by this time everyone was pretty tired.  We had a quick taxi ride back to Bondi Beach, and then went off to dinner.

Tomorrow, I think we will settle into more of a routine.  India will run, Zola and I will do school, we will go sit on the beach for a while.  There is still a lot for us to do and see in Sydney.

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.

Greetings from Cape Town.

Sadly, we are leaving today.  Zola keeps asking, “Why are we going?  Why don’t we just buy this house and stay right here?”  Good questions, complicated answers.

We have a 12:50 pm flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, and then a 6 pm flight from Johannesburg to Sydney. 

I wonder how many emigrating South Africans have taken this same flight, one way, in the last 33 years.  It seems that the first big wave of white South African emigration took place after the Soweto uprising in June 1976.  There were some other big waves: after P.W. Botha’s Rubicon speech in 1985, after successive States of Emergency in the late 1980s, just before and after the first democratic elections in 1994. 

In the last 15 years, emigration seems to have stabilized, but everyone talks about it as an option “if things get bad.”  Having “internationally recognized qualifications,” as an accountant, actuary or doctor still has cachet, and having a foreign passport is even better.  I wonder how many emigres have later changed their minds and taken the flight back to South Africa.

The flight to Sydney is about 13 hours, and we move ahead 9 time zones.  We may have a few sluggish mornings later in the week.  India and I have been reading travel books about Australia, and getting excited to see and experience a completely new place.  We will shift back into a mode of continuous motion and activity, like proper travelers instead of the beach bums we have become.

The kids and I are getting in the car now to go pick up India, who left for her last long one-way run.  I think she has run at least 15 kilometers every day that we have been in Cape Town except Christmas.  Amazing. 

 We will have breakfast by the beach in Camps Bay, come back to hand over the keys and say goodbye to the house, and start the long trip to Sydney.

Our time in South Africa and Namibia has been special.  We are sad to be leaving.