Change In Plans

Greetings from Sydney! I have completed the first air leg (Wellington - Sydney) of the long trip that will take me from Abel Tasman National Park in New Zealand to the Hotel Eden in Chamonix, France. More Old Testament references than I had realized. p>

This is the first time that I have been away from India and the kids for more than a few hours since July of last year. It is definitely the first time I have traveled alone since then.

Actually, with the exception of my week-long trip to Turkey in July, we have all been together 24/7 pretty much since late May 2008.

It feels very strange to be traveling alone, and with essentially no luggage. I keep looking around for more things to carry. As I read a book on the flight from Wellington, I was half expecting to be interrupted by a question about World War II, or to look at a picture of a hairy-nosed wombat.

It feels strange to go to the bathroom without accompanying a cheerful small person, usually Tallulah.

As we were landing, the flaps were positioned funny, and the whole plane vibrated loudly for 90 seconds. I missed holding India’s hand and telling her, unhelpfully, that it was absolutely normal, and nothing to worry about.

The irony, of course, is that I used to travel like this - in lowered-head, hand-luggage-only, Economist-reading, silent isolation- every week of my working life. The new normal is always only a few repeated experiences away

The flight from Sydney to London, via Bangkok, is boarding in a few minutes. It is a really, really long way. Initially, I had been frustrated by having to backtrack from London to Geneva, but that is a rounding error in the overall scheme of these vast distances.

News flash: traveler discovers that world is big.

I may not feel so chipper on the other end. In the meantime, I am thinking about all of the fun we have had, traveling as a family for the last year. I miss them.

Greetings from Sydney! When we arrived yesterday afternoon, we knew we only had one full day here.  Last night over dinner, we developed a detailed plan to pack in a long weekend’s worth of activity in the short time that we had. We are exhausted, but had a pretty tremendous day of sightseeing and resupply.  Sydney is really quite an awesome city.  We will be sad when we leave early tomorrow for New Zealand.

By skipping breakfast, we were out the door this morning as soon as India got back from her run. Zola and I discovered that having him do his on-line math work before he has had breakfast is more frustrating (for both of us) than it is worth. The good news on that front, though, is that he has completed the 3rd-grade math curriculum, and has started on 4th grade.  The EPGY program has been the saviour of our home-schooling efforts.

We took a taxi across Sydney to the western side of Darling Harbour, to the waterfront mall. Zola lost the battery charger to his Nintendo DS several weeks ago, and has been deprived of its electronic pleasures.  He has handled the deprivation relatively gracefully, but  under duress we promised that we would get a replacement charger as soon as we got back to Sydney.  We actually arrived at the Electronics Boutique before it opened, and went off to have breakfast.  At the stroke of 10 am, Zola charged into the store like a crazed December 26th bargain hunter.  At 10:02, mission accomplished. 

That particular mall seemed to be dominated by shops selling souvenirs and Australiana.  Under further duress, I agreed to get some souvenirs for family, and a pair of pink Ugg boots for Tallulah.  My resistance to boot acquisition notwithstanding, I have to admit that they are very cute.  She wore them out of the store, and has basically refused to take them off since.  The classiest souvenir we bought was a heavy bottle opener  -in a roughly triangular shape- made from a kangaroo’s scrotum.   It will make a nice gift for the Christmas Eve gift swop this year.  The souvenir-shop owner told me that it is the most popular item in his store by a long way.

Escaping from Souvenirland, we started to walk to the Sydney Aquarium.  We passed the Maritime Museum, and Zola got very excited about touring the submarine and Navy destroyer docked outside.  He is going through a “war is really cool” stage.  I just finished Antony Beevor’s book, “The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939,” and am going through a “war is horrible and tremendously wasteful” stage.  Nevertheless, we decided to tour the old warships, as well as a replica of James Cook’s sailing vessel, the Endeavour.

The family-consensus takeaways from touring around the boats were:

1. it would be very unpleasant to live on a modern submarine or on an 18th-century warship
2. if you were only going to have one boat in your navy, you would want it to be a submarine
3. exploring the world with Captain Cook was probably pretty exciting, until they took on bad water in Batavia, and 40% of the people on board died of dysentery
4. we are incredibly spoiled and lucky

Good lessons from 90 minutes of stomping around on boats.  

A highlight for me was when our princess-obsessed 4-year old peeked into the Captain’s stateroom on the destroyer, saw a mid-1960s picture of the young Elizabeth II, sighed, and said, “Look Mummy, it’s the Queen!”

After searching all over Australia, we finally saw a duck-billed platypus.  The platypus siting was, unfortunately, in the Sydney Aquarium, but it was still cool.  They are weird-looking little fellows, and they spend a long time under water between breaths.  I understand better why it is difficult to see them in the wild.

Both kids loved the aquarium, and ran excitedly from tank to tank.  At least Zola did not shriek wildly when he saw a new fish, as he insisted on doing while we snorkeled on Lord Howe Island.  India and I were pleased to see that the Cape Town aquarium, which I helped a little in raising the money for in 1992-93, could hold its own against the famous Sydney version.  When we were planning Cape Town, it helped that we borrowed a lot of design ideas, and a technical advisor, from Sydney.

The best part of the Sydney Aquarium is its Oceanariums (Oceanaria?), which are glass walk-through tubes placed at the bottom of enormous fish tanks.  Standing in the tubes, looking up at 3-4 meters of water, and surrounded by huge sharks, is an amazing feeling.  There are signs which inform visitors that the glass distorts vision, and that the animals are actually about 33% larger than they appear.  This part of the aquarium is really well done.  Unfortunately, for some reason they pipe in very dippy sounding New Age music, which sort of diminishes the effect.  Fake scuba and breathing sounds, or silence, would have been better.

After lunch, we took a ride on Sydney’s famous monorail.  Because of its route, I thought the monorail was designed almost exclusively for tourists: it only makes a small, slow one-direction loop around the western part of the downtown area.  To my surprise, it was packed with real people using it for daily transport.  It was a good way for us to see part of the city.

The rest of the afternoon was consumed by our efforts to resupply shoes and clothes before we head off to rural New Zealand.  This allowed us to explore Sydney’s shopping district. I generally don’t like this kind of thing, but the Queen Victoria Building shopping center was good.  Zola and I spent most of our time looking at a huge cylindrical clock which hangs from the ceiling, and reflects important events in Australia’s history in diorama form.  One memorable scene is entitled “Arrival of Second Fleet of Prisoners”, and has two soldiers whipping a prisoner who is suspended from some kind of wooden rack on the beach.  The whippee’s shirt is ripped, and blood is pouring from his back.  History isn’t always pretty, but I’m not sure why they put that on a giant clock in a mall.

In a few short resupply hours, we bought:

• Our 5th and 6th pairs of Crocs for the kids
• A little black dress
• New Teva sandals (I disposed of my highly toxic old ones in a garbage can on the street)
• A pink princess dress
• New pajamas
• Running socks
• Lancome face cream
• Assorted jackets and sweaters, as everyone asks us whether we are “going to New Zealand for a ski holiday”

Midway through all of this, Citibank’s anti-fraud unit called me to check whether my credit card was in my possession, and whether I was aware of charges X, Y, and Z.  After much back and forth, and several periods of holding, the call-center person asked, “Are you in Australia?”  

Rosemary, our friend from Cape Town, and her husband, Francis, invited us to their house in the evening.  Our kids are so desperate to have some type of social interaction outside of Mom and Dad that they got very excited about this.  Tallulah kept talking about “the big party” and “all of the friends.”  She changed clothes three times, but kept the Pink Uggs on.   Zola was excited to play tennis and boxing on the Wii, and to tell Francis more about Pokemon.  Both kids rushed in, and appreciated Rosemary’s sparkling lights, candles, and special fairy drink.  What Zola really cared about was that Wii.  Francis gave Zola enthusiastic technical support, and exclusive use of his game while we were there.  Both kids were thrilled. 

Ashfield, their suburb, has a big Chinese population.  We walked up to the main drag, and had an excellent, truly authentic, Shanghainese dinner.  It was cool to see another part of Sydney life.  Lucky Francis still got to hear about Pokemon over dinner, while India, Rosemary and I talked about South Africa and her activist family.

On the taxi ride home, partying Sydney seems to have come to life on this Friday night.  For several successive traffic lights, we were next to a white stretch Hummer limousine, with house music blaring from the windows and sun roof.  A young woman was leaning out the window, champagne glass in hand, blowing kisses to pedestrians and motorists.  She shouted to India, “You have a beautiful son!”  We offered to toss him in through the sun roof, but they pulled away from the light.  Zola was embarrassed, but secretly thrilled.  Both reactions are sweet.

Everyone is sound asleep now.  It was a busy day.  Quality of life in Sydney is high.

Good morning, and greetings from Sydney. It is 5:30 on Sunday morning, and we are headed to the airport, en route to Lord Howe Island. We have had a fun and eventful 13 hours back in the big city.

Our flight from Ayers Rock landed at about 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon. The highlight of the flight was watching “Four Holidays” (formerly “Four Christmases”) together on the plane. Except for the scene where Vince Vaughn tells his nephews that there is no Santa, it was great for kids in the sanitized airplane version. We have some explaining, backtracking, and reassuring to do with Zola on the whole “no Santa” thing.

We stayed at a hotel called Blue, which is a recently converted wool warehouse in the Wollomooloo district, right downtown. Blue is managed by the Taj Group, out of India, and has the best service of any Australian hotel we have stayed in.  (Kangaroo Island and Angorichina were better, but don’t really count as hotels).  The building sits on a pier, jutting out into Sydney Harbor.  Russell Crowe owns the best apartment in the warehouse (as at least a dozen people have told us).  The hotel and its bars are a bit of a scene, and on Saturday night they were packed with beautifully dressed, tanned, fit Sydneysiders.  When we were checking out this morning, there was a stream of hotel guests coming back in -wobbly legged and dazed- after a long night of fun.  Sydney is living up to its reputation.

In the early evening, I went for an iconic Sydney run: through the botanical gardens, along the harborfront, up the steps of the Sydney Opera House, and out to the base of the harbor bridge.  I passed at least a dozen engagement parties, bachelor parties and hen parties, mostly still in the “taking pictures” part of the evening.  There was a long line of cabs and limousines going into the Opera House, so there must have been a 7:00 performance of something.  The weather was perfect, and the streets and parks were thronged with people.  Sydney has high quality of life.

We met a friend from South Africa, and her new husband, for dinner at a Buddhist restaurant.  As we walked in, Tallulah sniffed the incense in the air, and said, “It smells like the Hindu gods.”  Perceptive child.  It was great to see Rosemary, who was one of India’s closest Cape Town friends and colleagues for years.  It is too bad that she left South Africa, but she seems to have a wonderful husband and  to be happy in Sydney. What’s not to like?  The Buddhist food was surprisingly good: even the kids went bak for seconds.

We feel like there is a lot for us to see and do in Sydney (I almost typed Cape Town).  We will be on Lord Howe Island for about four days, and then back here for a few days before we leave for New Zealand.  Both kids have been pleading with us in the taxi to cancel the flight and just stay put for a few days.  Maybe they are just tired from too many early mornings.

Lord Howe Island is usually described as “the most beautiful island in the Pacific,” which is a pretty big claim.  It is about 600 kilometers east of the Australian mainland, and is very small (11 kilometers long). Only 350 people live on the island, and only 400 guests (a strict limit) are allowed to stay each night.  We are planning to snorkel and scuba dive, to hike, and maybe to surf.  It will be different from anything we have seen to date on the trip, and should be fun.

Greetings from Melbourne! We arrived this evening after two long days in the car, driving down from Sydney. Australia is an enormous country, and we’ve just traversed one small corner of it.

I will write a post about our drive later. This post is about our last afternoon and evening in Sydney.

On Sunday we had a very nice lafternoon with a friend from business school and his family. Steve and Alison have a remarkably nice lifestyle in Sydney, living a five-minute walk from Manly Beach. After they cooked us lunch on the barbie, and we had a glass of New Zealand wine, we all went for a sunbath and a swim in the ocean. Very civilized. They and their kids seem as happy and healthy and comfortable as can be. They embody all that is good about Australia.

That evening we stayed in a controversial new resort in Manly called “Q Station.” The developers have converted the old quarantine camp -where the Australian health authorities once detained potentially contagious arriving passengers- into a conference facility and cultural appreciation center. It is a little bit like having a boutique hotel on Ellis Island. It is controversial amongst Sydneysiders because it is a hotel inside a park, and the country’s heritage was also somehow potentially jeopardized.

The physical setting for Q Station is off- the-hook beautiful. It is perched on the bluffs above Sydney Harbor, with spectacular views of the city and of the northern beaches and towns. Because Q Station is in the midst of a giant park, the long, low, yellow buildings are surrounded by forests and fields.

The guest rooms are built into the old bunk houses that used to hold scores of quarantined passengers. To give guests a flavor of the quarantine experience, many of the rooms do not have en suite bathrooms, requiring guests to share … just like in the old days. While we were waiting to go into our rooms, India used one of the old communal women’s bathrooms, which had not been renovated yet. Apparently it also had not been cleaned since the facility was used for quarantine (ie, maybe 30 years). She came back disgusted, wondering how far the authenticity of the quarantine experience would be taken.

Our rooms did have bathrooms, but the developers’ desire for us to appreciate the quarantine experience made our whole stay at Q Station a little weird and frustrating. For example, they took away our car keys, effectively stranding us at the hotel in the middle of a huge wildlife area, surrounded on three sides by water. We hiked (a long way) down to dinner in the old dining hall, where we were not given a choice of food. Everyone was served the same dish of bad chicken, bad fish, and bad minute steak. We walked to the windy beach, but got kicked off almost immediately because it was sunset. Being in quarantine isn’t supposed to be fun.

There were several activities advertised on Q Station’s website: an “immersion theatre” production, a late-night ghost tour, a family ghost tour, a history walk. Unfortunately, none of them were being offered on the day we were there. Huh?

We were supposed to be staying in renovated cottages, so that we could all be in the same place, but the renovations are several months behind schedule.

Finally, all of the staff members were absurdly good looking young Brazilians, who spoke little English. I’m not sure how that emulated the quarantine experience, but it made our stay a little weirder.

We were glad that we had only booked a single night at Q Station. All of us were relieved to get our car back and head down to Manly for breakfast.

It did not surprise us (after the fact) to find out that we were basically the only guests on Sunday night. The site is so spectacular, and what they are trying to do has some real merit. They need to work out some of the kinks, though.

Greetings from Manly (the place, not the self-describing adjective). This very short post is about the wildfires in South Australia.

We are still in Sydney (more about that in a later post). We are having a late breakfast about 1,000 kilometers from where the wildfires are.

Today we are driving down towards Melbourne, but we will stay well east of the danger areas. It seems a little strange to be driving toward a page 1 disaster, but it is a huge country, 99.999% of which is not on fire.

We will write a longer post once we get Internet access. The plan is to stay overnight halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, breaking the ten-hour drive into two days.

We are glad to be getting out and seeing some more of Australia. The next few weeks we will be in pretty much continuous motion. We are also glad, though, that we will have several days in Sydney at the end of the month, before we head out to New Zealand.

CREEPY BUT FAMOUS FACE

Greetings from Bondi Beach!

A Tallulah’s suggestion, we spent most of today at Sydney’s famous Luna Park.  It is an amusement park located in North Sydney, just at the end of the Harbour Bridge, set magnificently right next to the water.

Luna Park is old school.  It was first opened in 1935, transplanted en bloc from a park in Adelaide, after being chased out by that city’s residents.  Adelaide’s loss, I guess.  

In the intervening 73 years, Luna Park has been embroiled in countless lawsuits (primarily against nearby residents over noise and disruption), it has been in and out of bankruptcy a few times, and it has been closed for years on end.

Strange history for a pretty cool place.  Somehow the park does not seem to have embedded itself in the culture and fabric of the city.  Even today, a sunny Saturday in high summer, we basically had the place to ourselves. The city has some arrangement where it subsidizes any losses experienced by the private park operator.  My guess is that the taxpayers of Sydney write a check every year.

Tallulah is 104 centimeters tall, which made her exactly 2 centimeters too short for most of the big rides.  She generally hates when I call her “Shortulah,” or “Not-Very-Tall Ulah,” and I was careful to refrain from these nicknames today.  

She still had fun, I think, riding the littler-kid rides, and running around the “Coney Island” fun house with me.  The funhouse was a re-creation of what Sydneysiders had at Luna Park in 1935: 60-foot-high wooden slides that you rode while sitting in a burlap sack; a maze of mirrors; a Turkey Trot path where parts of the floor shimmy and shake underfoot; giant barrels, spinning in both directions, that you try to walk through.  Tallulah particularly liked riding the bumper cars, where she and I got to whomp her brother several times at high speeds.

Zola and I rode a series of nauseating, old-school “centripetal-force” and “hang upside down” rides.  Someone once told me that kids and adults experience these rides in different ways.  Some inner-ear development happens only during adolescence, and prior to that, kids are largely immune to motion-related dizziness and nausea.  Based on my observation today, this may be true.  ”Dad! That was awesome!  Let’s ride that one again!”

RIDING THE TANGO TRAIN

Overall, Luna Park was a win.  There was no waiting in line for rides, the kids had an absolute blast, it was nice being next to the harbor, and the whole adventure was inexpensive. Well, it would have been inexpensive if a traffic officer hadn’t been writing a huge parking ticket when we got back to the car, and if Zola hadn’t lost my sunglasses somewhere between “The Ranger” and “Big Splash.”  

We went to dinner down at the beach in the town of Coogee (pronounced with a hard ‘G’).  For the last few weeks, I have been entertaining myself and the kids while driving with an ongoing dialogue between fictitious Southern rednecks named Tinker and Buck.  Today I added a new character, Tinker’s friend Coogee.  Coogee just got fired from his job at the penitentiary, and was hoping that Tinker could get him on down the Piggly Wiggly.  India, being from Tennessee (and probably having dated someone named Tinker or Buck in high school) is not amused by any of this.

Quoting one of the guidebooks: “Sydney is a tart.  She dresses up fancy, and she likes to talk all about the opera house and the art museum.  On weekends, though, she likes to dance, knock back a bunch of drinks, and party.”  Based on the scene when we got back to Bondi Beach this evening, that seems like a pretty accurate description.  The streets and bars are packed, the music is tremendously loud, and beautiful,  young people seem to just be having fun.

After our week here, India and I agreed that we have never felt so old, so unfit, so unhip, and so … what’s the opposite of care free?.  And we feel this while we are living in the mobile Never Never Land bubble of the world-round trip.  Imagine how it would feel being here in the midst of my real life.

Bondi Beach may be the real Never Never Land.  It may also be the Paradise City that Axl Rose sings about.  

We have had a great time here.  

Tomorrow we are moving over to a new hotel in Manly, in the northern suburbs, and we are seeing some friends for a barbeque.  On Monday morning, we start the long coastal drive down to Melbourne, and we start exploring the rest of Australia.

Greetings from Bondi Beach!  As we hoped, yesterday we got our circadian rhythms back on track, and had a tremendous and exhausting day in Sydney.

India and I were both up early.  In a major change to household patterns and trip protocol, I went out for a run before her.  Our hotel (www.ravesis.com.au) is across the street from the center of Bondi Beach.  I ran left (north) to the end of the beach, and then south along the coastal path to Tamarama and Bronte Beach. Brutally hot, even at 7:30, but a pretty spectacular route.  

Sydneysiders are the best looking and most physically fit people in the world.  I am amazed at how many people are out swimming laps, running, lifting weights, riding bicycles, surfing.  Regardless of the type of physical activity, all of the women here seem to be wearing bikinis.  Most of the men look as though they stepped out of a BowFlex infomercial.  India has advised Tallulah that before she goes off to save the world, she should come to Sydney “to get fit, and date, date, date.”  Tallulah looked at her with confusion, perhaps concerned that Mom meant for her to do this now.

We drove down to Clovelly Beach, about 10 kilometers from Bondi to go snorkeling.  One of our South African emigre friends listed this as the “#1 must do activity” in Sydney.  The “beach” is really a narrow inlet about 200 meters long, with concrete platforms lining both edges, about a meter above the water.  The ocean end of the inlet is mostly blocked by an artificial (cement-block) reef, so the inlet ends up being a huge, very calm tidal pool.  Zola and I swam around looking at fish for a long time: big fish, little fish, fish of all colors.  Later, I swam out over the reef and into the open ocean, just for the childish thrill of watching the kelp and the rocks rush by as the waves washed me back into the inlet.  Fun with mask and snorkel.

From Clovelly, we went to the family beach at Coogee.  Tallulah finally got some sand toys, and alternated between making princess castles and preparing elaborate baked goods.  Zola and I exhausted ourselves bodysurfing in the small beach-break waves.  India sat on shore, reading the same Jay McInerney short stories that I just finished, and coming to the conclusion that men are cads.

In the early evening, I went back to the surf shop where we bought the snorkel gear for a “Stand-up Paddle Board” lesson.  Craig, the surf dude at the shop, said, “Actually, it idn’t really a lesson, mate.  But if yer drifting off to New Zealand, I’ll haul ya back in.”

I had watched a few SUP boarders in Cape Town, and was excited to give it a try.  Amidst all of the belly-lying surfers and boogie boarders, the standing paddlers look like serene kings of the water.  For some reason, I always think of the bad, old Chris Isaac song, “Don’t Pay the Ferryman.”

There was practically no swell at Bondi Beach, so it was a good day to learn.  I found out that it is harder than it looks, and that it is very good exercise.  After an hour, I managed to stay vertical most of the time, paddling around in the flat water 30-40 meters off the beach.  We did not try to surf, and if I broke my concentration to talk to Craig, I immediately fell in.  It was a fun end to the water day.

Today we have a bunch of errands to run, including shipping a lot of stuff back to Tennessee.  We will also get out and see some more of the city.  Sydney is definitely growing on us.

FINALLY!

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!!

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.