What I am about to write is not a type-o. Wake up alarm at 5:30am. It’s completely dark outside, it’s almost freezing- literally- I crawled off the top bunk, quiet not to wake the others who wouldn’t need to wake up for another five hours, and met my 4WD bus in the car park. Basically felt like I was being shipped off somewhere to be cooked, but then I remembered that I was in Ayers Rock and the only cookin’ around here is roo and wallaby- roo of which I ate last night… it was really nice, too! We whipped left [View Full Entry]

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It was easy to wake up today. Automatic. 7am felt like I was sleeping in. I made my way to the airport, with another friendly taxi driver to take me there, and before I knew it, I had gone from the great barrier reef to the red center of Australia. From the plan, I got my first glimpse of uluru- ayers rock. Pretty impressive, but reminded me a lot of Sedona, at least the color of the red rocks. I ran over to the thrifty car rental booth and grabbed the keys to my right hand drive, manual transmission Toyota…awesome!!! I [View Full Entry]

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6:30 wake up call. But this time, the boat isn’t moving…am I alive? Ah, almost forgot. We’re back in port. The sun was rising over the mountains- and some scattered clouds. I was reminded of the days crusing Alaska and waking up to a similar beautiful view. We all gave some sort of goodbye to each other, but I’m pretty sure that those of us that really bonded on the trip will keep in touch for some time. As goodbyes are always a bit awkward, this was minimal. Everyone was so friendly, and we had all experienced such an incredible week [View Full Entry]

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Last day aboard the ship, better make it a good one, right? I planned to dive all that I could, hopefully with a chance to see any last things I hadn’t yet seen. In all, I feel like I did see what I came here for. And by the end of today, there wasn’t really anything within reason that I had a yearn to see. The last dive of the day was the best one, and I knew that I’d rather end on this good note than give one more a try and tire myself out completely. The last dive was [View Full Entry]

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By now, I’m starting to think that I got my money’s worth in terms of diving. I really want to go again, but the energy to jump into my freezing cold, wet wetsuit and breathe dry compressed air for an hour has dwindled slightly. That, and the fact that my ears are expanding in order to compensate for diving to depth so much, has allowed me the opportunity to take it easy today. I did one REALLY nice dive with the guys and then hung around the boat for the rest of the day. On the dive, called Fantasia, we cruised [View Full Entry]

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Today was a day to dive. The weather was nice, and the seas were calm. Which is a relative term out here in the great barrier reef. The wind was at 20 knots and the waves didn’t knock us around to the point where we couldn’t stand. I guess, as far as a rating would go, 0-nothing 1- easy to walk around the ship 2- plan before you walk 3- forget about walking with food in your hands 4- anti gravity chamber The day only got to about a 2. Also, I made sure to drink lots of water, about 5 [View Full Entry]

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July 6, 2006 6:30 wake up call. “Wake up call, Minke whales.” What an unorthodox way to wake someone up. Entice them into believing that there are minke whales, one of the rarest, least known whales in the world, spotted right off of our boat. I walked directly passed the morning snack, the meal before breakfast, and outside to the back of the boat. Immediately, I spotted a whale fin less than 10 feet of the boat. I guess they really are out there. And the great thing about these whales is that they are very curious, there’s no need to [View Full Entry]

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July 5, 2006 6:30 am wake up call. WHAT!?!?! Oh wait, lemme back up. 3am informal wake up call. The boat was cruising to the first location, about 10 miles off of lizard island, which is about 100 miles from the nearest thing I could name. The form of the informal wake up was actually my luggage case falling from the cabinet, because the waves had forced most of the room upside down. I covered my head, thinking maybe something might fall on top of me. But nothing did. The boat rocked very hard. I went from weightless to flopping onto [View Full Entry]

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Happy 4th o Jew-Lie My USA shebang went off with quite a day. Started out as casual as the day before, waking up to a nice view of the city and the ocean, then a nice walk through the park and around town. I arrived at the dive shop early just to stop in and say hi to the people who had been taking care of my trip. “Hey there, so you know what room you’re in right?” they said to me- I was thinking they knew because I was the special guy they had to cancel out of their last [View Full Entry]

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Today was a bit of an in between day. I had done most of what I wanted to do and see in Sydney, at least given the amount of time I had to catch my flight to Cairns later that night. I really walked around the shopping areas, but was in no mood to shop. I was convinced that everything there was pointless to get because I’d have to put it in my bag and carry it around the rest of oz before I returned- also, I know I’ll be coming back to Sydney for anything I may have missed. I [View Full Entry]

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