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Well, I’m not waking up at 5:00 any more like a week ago, but since then I am pulled out of sweet slumber at around 1:30 every night. There is no way I’m getting up to write at 1:30, I’m too lazy. This will hopefully be resolved by next week when we take the back roads down to Adelaide. When traveling JM and I usually hit the hay not long after dark (which is coming earlier and earlier) and wake up before sunrise and the swarms of flies.
Speaking of flies, our trip with the Getaway group was great and best of all our interview ended up on the cutting room floor. Possible reason: JM mentioning the word “butt”. We went to the regular Thursday night barbecue at Jol’s to watch the segment and also say goodbye to the usual crowd since we may not be back this way for a few months or longer. I had such a fun time on that shoot and am grateful to the cameraman Chris who taught me how to use my polarising filter! Here’s the Getaway segment about the Never Never Track and Jol’s site Direct 4WD where you can book the trip if you’re down this way (JM’s done all his 4WD training with Jol as well). Also here are my photos of the Never Never excursion.
We had a wonderful opportunity to follow a tv crew and 4×4 magazine while shooting a story in the red centre. Of course I want to tell you all about it and how fabulous they all were, but we’re rushing like mad to get ready for our next trip which is 12 days and includes several of the couples from the previous trip. More photos to follow in about two weeks and hopefully I can keep all this great stuff in my head!
JM’s dad is visiting us and about to embark on his first outback excursion. Wish us well!
I just realized I may not have internet tomorrow. Looooong story short, our house sitting gig is up and we haven’t found anything new. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, JM and I are about to embark on a year-long journey around Australia wherever the wind may take us. Along the way we plan on doing some volunteer work in indigenous communities, map some areas, take photos, write a bit, and who knows what else. I hope to send updates whenever we hit an internet cafe, but until then… don’t let the net bugs bite.
We’re back in Melbourne after a short trip to Tasmania. It was absolutely wonderful despite the ever-changing weather. We had to dig out the fleeces from the bottoms of the packs, but it was heaven when I think of what’s to come. That’s right, we’re headed back to Alice Springs in a few week’s time but not before a short hop over to New Zealand — I’m really getting to see it all this time!
As usual, just click the photo above to be taken to the flickr page with more pics.
Let’s see, I haven’t written anything about vacation and I’ve barely looked through my photos. I vow to create a gallery, it’s just slow going. When we got home almost two weeks ago, we were greeted at the Swiss airport by my in-laws and the European Heat Wave ’05. That’s over now as witnessed by my taking a hot bath yesterday at 3, then getting into bed to warm up due to several 50 degree days of rain. In fact the rain followed me back from the US. Well, it followed me to the US, then Canada, and now it’s found me again and making up for lost time.
I’m slowly remembering how to speak German. When we first got to the US, I had to keep reminding myself I could speak English with total strangers (they probably preferred and only understood it) and adjusted within the week. Now when I want to say something in German, the words are slow coming or not coming at all — I had the urge to kick my 80-something-year-old neighbor for making fun of me last Sunday. Heat makes me grouchy, but for this I have no excuse.
Oops, that was supposed to be Theme: Friendship for Illustration Friday but what with this flu-like bug I am posting some boring photos instead:
Okay, the first is actually the Starbucks in Bern. Someone left her Swiss-French newspaper behind and I attempted to read an article about Wim Wenders saying goodbye to the American dream in his new movie. That’s all I understood.
This is a shot of Fribourg from our snowy walk.
Here’s to next week and a new pair of shoes…
The problem with travel stories is that they begin and end with airport stories. The raw inhumanity of a series of airports descends to cloak the traveler’s memory, blunting her wit and dulling the color and humor of recent events.
In my case, this is compounded by the inadequacy of my mere words to describe how gloriously lush and fertile Costa Rica is, how stunning is the variety of landscapes, and how friendly and tolerant most of the locals are with the hordes of clueless tourists.
Costa Rica lies on four tectonic plates, so mountain ranges (including several active volcanoes) separate the country into regions with vastly different terrain. Is astonishing to drive from one province to another and see the deep, florid foliage yield to hard-packed earth and fields of long, wind-blown grasses. In recent years, Costa Rica has developed a sustainable eco-tourism industry designed to allow visitors to experience the peace and beauty of the rain forests — wet and dry, primary and secondary growth — while keeping the infrastructure’s environmental footprint as small as possible.
The canopy tour through the rain forest is far less peaceful than the name might suggest: I was fitted with a clumsy harness around my hips, hitched to a finger-thick cable, and sent whizzing between the treetops 100 feet up from the rain forest floor, braking by pressing my heavily gloved hand to the cable to create friction that prevented me from crashing into the steel platform that was suddenly oh my God, right there After standing on the platform just long enough to realize just how far up we were and just how much the treetops swayed, I did it again. And again. And again.
I expected to be frightened, or at least a bit wobbly-kneed, especially as heights often make me a bit woozy, but I was surprisingly unfazed. The guides were exuberant but utterly professional and focused, and safety was clearly their first priority, so I simply released any residual fear and enjoyed the speed, the leaves, the air.
It was a pleasant diversion, and I was glad I tried it, but the zip-lines move you so fast that there is no time to appreciate the canopy, and I’m convinced that the constant movement and noise must drive away any animals from the route. It’s an activity for thrill-seekers, not nature lovers.
But now I understand why Tarzan gave that mighty bellow as he swung through the jungle — it is irresistible.
My favorite thing, though, was standing on the platform before each launch, my ear next to the cable, feeling it vibrate with the weight of the previous rider and hearing its high-pitched insistent singing, like a hive of furious wasps trapped in the cable.
At 4:25 a.m., I dragged myself out of an unyielding bed in an airport hotel in San José, and spent the next 14 hours muddling my way through airports, only to arrive in infamous Logan airport bereft of my checked luggage. Evidently the suitcase so enjoyed the worldly sensation of being waved through Customs that it decided to stay in Miami.
I am even more screwed than you might think: since airport security examined my keyring and advised me to stow it in my checked bag (lest I should yield to the temptation to overthrow the flight crew with an extra-large, blunt-tipped safety pin trinket), I can’t go home until my bag arrives. At 6:00 pm in Boston, they were hopeful that delivery might occur as soon as Tuesday morning.
Yes, that was when I momentarily burst into tears. The young baggage agent looked so distraught that I assured her that I knew she was doing everything she could, and that it must be difficult for her. She immediately brought my file back up on her terminal and pecked determinedly at the keyboard, her phone tucked under her chin.
By the time I arrived at my parents’ house in Maine, the baggage delivery agent, who is not supposed to be working tonight and who further doesn’t deliver to Maine, had left a message to expect him between 2 and 4 am. That young baggage agent is my new hero, followed closely by Curtis the delivery guy. By the time he arrives, I will have been up for nearly 24 hours, but I am determined to thank him (and tip him) in person, and to shower my filthy way-laid bag with kisses before wrapping my arms around it and snuggling down for a long winter’s nap.
Tomorrow, there will be less talk of airports, sleeplessness, and filthy baggage, and more talk about glorious Costa Rica.
I’m on a working holiday and tried to create something for Illustration Friday but my brain wouldn’t cooperate. This week’s theme is “disaster relief” and I offer you the following images instead:
A mountain we ascended in a gondola…
The view from the snow plow which took us back down due to strong winds. Steep and fun!
Elli
Elsa