Saturday 19th February
Australia is very strange, they have a border crossing from the Northern Territory into Western Australia where you have to give over all of your fruit and vegetables, then as a thank you they give you 120 minutes.
Literally, on one side of the street it was 15:00 and one step later we were back at 13:30 lunch time again, which would have been great if we hadn't just given all of our food over to the quarantine police.
I couldn't help wondering if they would perhaps have given us back more time if we had a larger stock of items in our possession, maybe you could even regain an entire day if you had the right sort of veg.
Just to throw out an idea out to the Australian tourist board, it may prove helpful to come up with some kind of a basic scoring system for the clueless tourists, nothing fancy just the necessary information:
Carrot = 10 Minutes
Broccoli = 20 Minutes
Avocado = 1 Hour
Etc etc
It turns out that whilst Pauline is terrified of snakes she seems to have an innate ability to spot them wherever she goes.
We had decided to visit Lake Argyle on the recommendation of a few tourists that we had bumped into en route, the scenery was breath taking, the kind of place that makes you want to stop and applaud mother nature on a job well done.
We had settled into our site for the night and Pauline had nipped out to the toilet whilst Tyler and I relaxed in the back of the van.
Two seconds later I heard Pauline bellowing out "Shut the door, Shut the door"
For a moment I thought that she had decided to play an impromptu quiz where you had to guess the celebrity catchphrase and I was about to chastise her for using incorrect wording when she promptly followed it up with "Snake!!! Snake!!!"
Sure enough, slithering directly beneath our van was a beautiful, bright Yellow and Black snake, about 2 meters long, looking extremely nonchalant in the face of two weirdly dressed highly animated tourists who were brandashing torches at it and gibbering incessantly.
Luckily we had brought a book on the deadliest animals in Australia so we immediately set about identifying the species, it turns out that we witnessed the first ever, western taipan -king brown - death adder cross breed, which would make it by far the deadliest animal on the planet.
In fact I am amazed that it didn't kill us all just by looking at it!
In all likelihood though it was probably just a common grass snake that upon reaching its home tried to identify what it had just seen in his reference manual on the weird creatures of Oz.
Because of the weather we have made pretty short work of this stretch of Oz, having averaged about 600kms per day so we decided that we would take an early break and pull over at a free camp site.
When we got out of the van the heat hit us instantly and in a few seconds we were completely soaked in sweat, luckily there were a few German tourists already there who advised us that there was another site about 100kms down the road and this one was on top of a hill so it should provide a pretty good through wind for the evening.
However, what they failed to inform us was that it was a bloody scary place indeed, sitting on the top of a cliff with a crocodile infested lake in front of you, snake infested grass either side of you and inhabited by large black crows who stared eerily at you anytime you moved.
If Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger and Jason from Friday 13th were sat around a table, having brunch and trying to identify the most idyllic spot to murder someone, this would definitely have to be in their top 3.
We are about 300kms from the nearest community, if you were to look up the word "Remote" in a dictionary it would probably have a picture of this place so that you could see it for yourself.
What made matters worse was that there was a full blown electrical storm occurring all around us, literally no matter what way you looked fork lightening was hitting the ground at a rapid pace.
We sat there for some time trying to work out if we should stay in our giant metal box on wheels or whether we should retreat to the giant metal shelter adjacent, a rock and a hard place sprung to mind.
Just before we put our heads down for the evening a beaten up old car drove up the path, when it neared our van it did a U-turn and then hid behind some trees and turned its lights out.
I could have sworn that the driver was wearing a hockey mask but the light was bad and I could have been mistaken.
Amazingly we weren't all slaughtered in our sleep and continued onwards to Broome at first light.
Also incredibly a Toyota Hiace campervan cannot outrun a cyclone and as a result we are currently sat about 20 yards from a beach, watching a full blown electrical storm that this time seems to be centered directly above our van.
Broome is currently on a "Blue" alert for a cyclone which is middle of the road and seems to be broken down as follows:
Yellow Alert : No Cyclone
Blue Alert: Maybe a Cyclone
Red Alert: Bugger its a Cyclone
Its alright though the woman at reception told us that if there was an actual cyclone they would try to come down here and tell us to evacuate if they had time, so if you don't here from us again you know why!
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Friday, 18 February 2011
Darwins revised theory of evolution
Wednesday 16th February
We spent a couple of days meandering around Darwin, a town who's inhabitants are so laid back that they are practically comotose, I guess that they need to be though in order to overlook all of the very nasty things that could put an end to their lives at any moment.
Originally we had planned to buy a campervan and then try to sell it when we reached Sydney, however as it was out of season there were slim pickings and the ones that were advertised were either very quickly snapped up or seriously beaten up.
So instead we decided to rent one for 3 months which works out at about the same cost as buying one but you got the added bonus of having a giant logo emblazzoned on the side of the vehicle.
We had booked it through a travel agent but when we went to pick it up apparently there had been a mojor cock up and the price we had been given was actually only for 78 days and not the 90 requested.
After some heavy negotiations which saw Pauline and I standing about gormlessly whislt the man at the hire company tried his best to patronise anyone he could reach on his phone, we finally managed to get it for the original price.
We spent the first night at a caravan park that had undergone some pretty heavy flooding, when we checked in the lady at reception gave us a map of all of the places we couldnt park and in my usual style I nodded and agreed before heading off in a completely different direction.
Needless to say I ended up parking in the middle of a marsh, we got well and truly stuck resulting in having to be towed out the following morning by a man who didnt look best pleased to be doing manual labour, in the heavy rain, at that time of the day.
To pass the time we have taken to naming all of the kangaroos we see on our journey, so far we have Brian, Stacy, Skippy, Iggy Pop, Colin and Mr Johnson, to be honest though I think Tyler was trying to be funny with his naming towards the end, what kind of a name is Colin for a Kangaroo anyway.
Having paid the $25 per person entrance fee to Kakadu national park we promptly discovered that the only thing that remained open was the road and even that was sketchy in places.
Apparently its wet season you see, however when an Australian says wet what they actually mean is underwater, we attempted to book onto one of the wet season river cruises but even they arent running as you can no longer get to the boat dock due to floods.
So instead we pitched ourselves up at another park in Jaribu to see how things panned out overnight, Jabiru itself had a couple of things going for it, namely an Airport and a Highway that could get you out of there quickly.
This time I listened intently to exactly where the receptionist told us to park and for a moment I thought that I had actually succeeded in locating it, that is right up until the point where I opened the door to inspect my parking and my feet disappeared under a meter of extremely soggy mud.
Whilst I managed to retrieve my mud encrusted flip flops (known as thongs here for some odd reason), I am amazed that the entire van wasnt sucked into the earths core that night as no sooner had we parked than the heavens opened and shat all over us for the remainder of the day.
We had a small puddle on the road between our van and the toilet block but by the time any of us actually needed a leak it was a raging torrent which I am certain would have deposited us at the boat dock we needed if we were to have fallen in.
To make matters a little worse we have just discovered that there is a Cyclone warning in Darwin and its no longer a matter of if it will hit but when, literally every few minutes there is a scary announcement on the radio to ensure your house is Cyclone proof or to get the hell out of it.
So as a result of all of this we have decided to cut our park trip a little short and head on down to Katherine and on to the Kimberlies which are apparently lovely at this time of the year if you can actually get there through the crocodile infested flood waters.
On the way out of the park we passed a mother and her two children fishing off of a small bridge in one of the creeks, when we reached the other side there was a crocodile just sitting at the side of the road watching them intently.
It is incredible how totally blais
é everyone is about them up here, I am sure that if they could get away with it they would open some kind of petting zoo.
We spent a couple of days meandering around Darwin, a town who's inhabitants are so laid back that they are practically comotose, I guess that they need to be though in order to overlook all of the very nasty things that could put an end to their lives at any moment.
Originally we had planned to buy a campervan and then try to sell it when we reached Sydney, however as it was out of season there were slim pickings and the ones that were advertised were either very quickly snapped up or seriously beaten up.
So instead we decided to rent one for 3 months which works out at about the same cost as buying one but you got the added bonus of having a giant logo emblazzoned on the side of the vehicle.
We had booked it through a travel agent but when we went to pick it up apparently there had been a mojor cock up and the price we had been given was actually only for 78 days and not the 90 requested.
After some heavy negotiations which saw Pauline and I standing about gormlessly whislt the man at the hire company tried his best to patronise anyone he could reach on his phone, we finally managed to get it for the original price.
We spent the first night at a caravan park that had undergone some pretty heavy flooding, when we checked in the lady at reception gave us a map of all of the places we couldnt park and in my usual style I nodded and agreed before heading off in a completely different direction.
Needless to say I ended up parking in the middle of a marsh, we got well and truly stuck resulting in having to be towed out the following morning by a man who didnt look best pleased to be doing manual labour, in the heavy rain, at that time of the day.
To pass the time we have taken to naming all of the kangaroos we see on our journey, so far we have Brian, Stacy, Skippy, Iggy Pop, Colin and Mr Johnson, to be honest though I think Tyler was trying to be funny with his naming towards the end, what kind of a name is Colin for a Kangaroo anyway.
Having paid the $25 per person entrance fee to Kakadu national park we promptly discovered that the only thing that remained open was the road and even that was sketchy in places.
Apparently its wet season you see, however when an Australian says wet what they actually mean is underwater, we attempted to book onto one of the wet season river cruises but even they arent running as you can no longer get to the boat dock due to floods.
So instead we pitched ourselves up at another park in Jaribu to see how things panned out overnight, Jabiru itself had a couple of things going for it, namely an Airport and a Highway that could get you out of there quickly.
This time I listened intently to exactly where the receptionist told us to park and for a moment I thought that I had actually succeeded in locating it, that is right up until the point where I opened the door to inspect my parking and my feet disappeared under a meter of extremely soggy mud.
Whilst I managed to retrieve my mud encrusted flip flops (known as thongs here for some odd reason), I am amazed that the entire van wasnt sucked into the earths core that night as no sooner had we parked than the heavens opened and shat all over us for the remainder of the day.
We had a small puddle on the road between our van and the toilet block but by the time any of us actually needed a leak it was a raging torrent which I am certain would have deposited us at the boat dock we needed if we were to have fallen in.
To make matters a little worse we have just discovered that there is a Cyclone warning in Darwin and its no longer a matter of if it will hit but when, literally every few minutes there is a scary announcement on the radio to ensure your house is Cyclone proof or to get the hell out of it.
So as a result of all of this we have decided to cut our park trip a little short and head on down to Katherine and on to the Kimberlies which are apparently lovely at this time of the year if you can actually get there through the crocodile infested flood waters.
On the way out of the park we passed a mother and her two children fishing off of a small bridge in one of the creeks, when we reached the other side there was a crocodile just sitting at the side of the road watching them intently.
It is incredible how totally blais
é everyone is about them up here, I am sure that if they could get away with it they would open some kind of petting zoo.
Friday, 11 February 2011
The Motorcycle Diary
Saturday 12th February
Oh my god we made it to Oz!
Before leaving Bali we ventured out on the moped yet again for a final foray around the island.
We had heard that the active volcano was a site that couldn’t be missed and as it was only an hour and a half away (according to Google maps) we figured it made sense to tick that one off of the list whilst we were in town.
Two hours later we met a very kind gentleman in a traffic jam in the middle of Dempasar who kindly informed us that we were now 2 hours away from it and that unless we wanted very sore arses we should quite frankly give up.
In true British style I nodded and agreed intently before heading off in the direction he told us not to, in search of a volcano that may or may not actually exist and could potentially have just been superimposed on photographs to attract tourists to the remoter parts of the island.
The problem is this, when driving in Bali you will inevitably reach an intersection, luckily the intersections have very large signs, unluckily a lot of the signs say the same name but point in different directions.
We reached one junction that had a sign for the same town pointing in all three directions, it was in fact the town that we needed but despite seeing the same intersection on numerous occasions and despite following a different route each time, we still failed to find the elusive town.
Who wants to see a volcano anyway, we would much rather see an expensive health spa and restaurant complex, which was lucky as that was exactly where we ended up on our tour of the island, for an overpriced very late lunch and a much needed rest of our butt cheeks.
It did afford us the opportunity to look at a proper map of the island again, only this time to discover that we were a little under half way to the "volcano viewing platform", which was still a full hour from the actual volcano.
If we were to set off now we may catch a glimpse of it by mid march, however as time definitely wasn’t on our side we decided to head in the vague direction of our hotel fully expecting to inadvertently find ourselves at the volcano anyway.
Unfortunately this wasn’t to be but the day did give us the opportunity to see lots of heavily blurred Indonesian villages as we whizzed passed them and at the very least we would still have the bruises on our arses for weeks to come, so it wasn’t a complete loss.
Monday, 7 February 2011
Martha & The Chocolate Brownies
Tuesday 8th February
We have been in Bali now for 4 days and its a wonderful place to chill out and do very little indeed.
The day we arrived Pauline had the inspired idea of walking to the mini market to get some supplies as she had discovered a local map and it appeared to be just a little way up the road.
An hour and a half later we had made it to a point on the map that was litterally just above the sign for our hotel when luckily we spotted a very small shop that sold crisps and coke (my staple diet).
At this stage we were all wringing with sweat and a little miffed to say the least, it probably didnt help that a few steps into our return journey I had already demolished half of our liquid resources and was busily working my way through my second packet of crisps.
We were therefore somewhat relieved when a random local person (who must have bore witness to a sight that he shall not be forgetting in a long time) kindly decided to take pity on these dejected souls and offer us a lift back home.
There was a tremendous sense of relief upon our return, not only because we would now be able to retain the use of our lower limbs but also because had retained enough coke for all of us to have a very, very small glass later that evening.
Yes, the journey had been an unmitigated triumph after all and as Tyler doesnt eat crisps it meant that Pauline and I had a veritable feast of a meal that night, practically gorging ourselves stupid on the half a bag of crisps that remained from our little foray into the wilderness.
The Asian tradition of cramming as many things onto a bike as humanly possible has been a relatively consistant theme throughout our trip thus far, so it seems only natural that we should now find ourselves adopting this tradition as our own.
The raw power of a 50cc Yamaha moped engine is enough to bring a tear to any motor enthusiasts eye but when this is coupled with the slender frames of 2.5 Europeans it really is a force to be reckoned with.
You can see the envious glares of the locals as this fine piece of machinery gracefully reaches speeds in excess of 20 miles per hour over the pot holed mud laden streets of Canggu.
When going at these speeds its is obvioulsy advisable to err on the side of caution and ensure that you wear the appropriate safety apperatus, so we were very lucky indeed that they managed to dig out three of the sportiest racing helmets known to man.
We looked as though we were extra's from the film "Cool Runnings" about to compete for the world luge finals, except in this version there were multiple lanes and we were holding all of the other teams up by swerving uncontrolably towards them.
Luckily we cleverly managed to get ourselves caught up in the one way system around Kutu which meant that we got to practive our moped skills for over an hour on the same familiar streets, annoying the same familiar people.
The place where we are staying is lovely, its a Yoga retreat so for me it is just like a home away from home, except that this home had a swimming pool, loads of little bungalows and obviously loads of poeple trying to stretch their bodies into positions that should'nt be humanly possible.
Its located just around the corner from Echo Beach, famous for the song by Martha & the Muffins, where she sings about being depressed because she has to work instead of spending her time here all day, Martha 0 - Smiths 1.
At least she can take consulation in the fact that she is now making everyone else on Echo Beach depressed as we have heard that song 5 times so far and we have only been there twice.
Yesterday it was Paulines birthday, and whilst we were out devastating the streets of Bali on our moped we managed to cram a brownie cake into the helmet compartment of the moped.
When we brought it the shop had kindly already cut it up into individual little sections, however by the time we retreived it from the moped it looked somewhat like a flattened cow pat that had become the new home for thousands of little chocolate worms.
Unfrotunately it also tasted like this so the majority of the cake was given out to the various guests staying in the hotel, luckily Pauline was ill so didnt want to eat cake anyway so I guess that was a bonus.
We have been in Bali now for 4 days and its a wonderful place to chill out and do very little indeed.
The day we arrived Pauline had the inspired idea of walking to the mini market to get some supplies as she had discovered a local map and it appeared to be just a little way up the road.
An hour and a half later we had made it to a point on the map that was litterally just above the sign for our hotel when luckily we spotted a very small shop that sold crisps and coke (my staple diet).
At this stage we were all wringing with sweat and a little miffed to say the least, it probably didnt help that a few steps into our return journey I had already demolished half of our liquid resources and was busily working my way through my second packet of crisps.
We were therefore somewhat relieved when a random local person (who must have bore witness to a sight that he shall not be forgetting in a long time) kindly decided to take pity on these dejected souls and offer us a lift back home.
There was a tremendous sense of relief upon our return, not only because we would now be able to retain the use of our lower limbs but also because had retained enough coke for all of us to have a very, very small glass later that evening.
Yes, the journey had been an unmitigated triumph after all and as Tyler doesnt eat crisps it meant that Pauline and I had a veritable feast of a meal that night, practically gorging ourselves stupid on the half a bag of crisps that remained from our little foray into the wilderness.
The Asian tradition of cramming as many things onto a bike as humanly possible has been a relatively consistant theme throughout our trip thus far, so it seems only natural that we should now find ourselves adopting this tradition as our own.
The raw power of a 50cc Yamaha moped engine is enough to bring a tear to any motor enthusiasts eye but when this is coupled with the slender frames of 2.5 Europeans it really is a force to be reckoned with.
You can see the envious glares of the locals as this fine piece of machinery gracefully reaches speeds in excess of 20 miles per hour over the pot holed mud laden streets of Canggu.
When going at these speeds its is obvioulsy advisable to err on the side of caution and ensure that you wear the appropriate safety apperatus, so we were very lucky indeed that they managed to dig out three of the sportiest racing helmets known to man.
We looked as though we were extra's from the film "Cool Runnings" about to compete for the world luge finals, except in this version there were multiple lanes and we were holding all of the other teams up by swerving uncontrolably towards them.
Luckily we cleverly managed to get ourselves caught up in the one way system around Kutu which meant that we got to practive our moped skills for over an hour on the same familiar streets, annoying the same familiar people.
The place where we are staying is lovely, its a Yoga retreat so for me it is just like a home away from home, except that this home had a swimming pool, loads of little bungalows and obviously loads of poeple trying to stretch their bodies into positions that should'nt be humanly possible.
Its located just around the corner from Echo Beach, famous for the song by Martha & the Muffins, where she sings about being depressed because she has to work instead of spending her time here all day, Martha 0 - Smiths 1.
At least she can take consulation in the fact that she is now making everyone else on Echo Beach depressed as we have heard that song 5 times so far and we have only been there twice.
Yesterday it was Paulines birthday, and whilst we were out devastating the streets of Bali on our moped we managed to cram a brownie cake into the helmet compartment of the moped.
When we brought it the shop had kindly already cut it up into individual little sections, however by the time we retreived it from the moped it looked somewhat like a flattened cow pat that had become the new home for thousands of little chocolate worms.
Unfrotunately it also tasted like this so the majority of the cake was given out to the various guests staying in the hotel, luckily Pauline was ill so didnt want to eat cake anyway so I guess that was a bonus.
The concise extended version of the Vientiane tourist information guide
Friday 4th February
Vientiane, hmm well what can I say?
We had a curry, I cracked my toe nail playing football and Pauline got stung on the arse. I cant help feeling sorry for that mosquito, what a tragic end to its life.
Vientiane, hmm well what can I say?
We had a curry, I cracked my toe nail playing football and Pauline got stung on the arse. I cant help feeling sorry for that mosquito, what a tragic end to its life.
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