Jackie's World Tour 2009 – Let the mayhem begin!

Ok, so I seriously had someone ask me today if I have ever licked ant butt.  How many of you can say that you have licked ant butt or have even been seriously asked that question? Not many of you, huh??? Well, I am proud to say that I am officially on the list of people that has licked ant bootie. It was a green ant to be specific and it tasted like Vitamin C! In fact, 1 lick gives you more than daily amount of Vitamin C that you are supposed to have in the course of a day. Pretty good, huh? I swear only in the treetops of the Australian rainforest can you do such a thing. LOL The Australian rainforest was pretty cool and Ruth and I did a nice little trip up to Cape Tribulation right before we both left Australia. But more on that later….but now I bring you my review on the Australia Zoo!

What an amazing place. I totally love the Australia Zoo. In fact, I loved it so much I think that I probably could work there and be very, very happy. It is such a unique zoo. They have the handlers walking around the zoo with lots of the animals throughout the day. It was unbelievable. I got my picture taken with a koala bear which was so cool. Those little guys are so cute. Ok, I will say this, they are small and really cute but damn those little stinkers pack some weight. I was not expecting them to be so damn heavy! And they have a kung-fu grip! That little koala grabbed onto me so tight I thought he was going to leave bruises! So worth it though. They really are so damn cute! Oh, and I did I mention they were totally and utterly cute! hee-hee… They also have this area where they just have kangaroos and wallabies hanging around. You can go around and feed them and lay with them and stuff. It was really nice just layin next to a Roo and petting his ears. I loved that. I think the thing I liked the most about the zoo is that it was very interactive and you can tell that the handlers really loved the animals and took great care of them. The handlers were everywhere all the time and interacting with the animals all the time. It was such a difference from all the other zoo’s I have ever been to. My favorite part of my trip to the zoo was the lemur feeding. I had signed up for 2 different encounters, which means you go into the enclosures and actually interact with the animals. I did the wombat and the lemur encounters. The wombat encounter was ok. Very cute animals but the interaction with them was quite limited. We only really got to scratch their butts as they ate their lunch. We couldn’t scratch their heads or stand in front of them cause apparently when they decide it is time to move they haul ass and barrel over anything in front of them. They call them bulldozers and for good reason. One of the wombat’s we were feeding decided he had enough and just took off like a bullet out of a gun in a straight line without caring who or what was in front of him. Very cute animals but kind of boring as far as the encounter goes. Now the lemurs were a totally different story. I was the only person who had signed up for the encounter so it was me, the photographer, the handler and the 2 lemurs. The lemurs are actually not on display at the moment so I got taken to the back of the zoo to their private enclosures. It was so damn cool. I got about a half an hour of me feeding them all by myself. They were very inquisitive and it was just awesome. The photographer got some amazing shots of the little buggers on my shoulder and of the feed. I loved every minute of it. Apparently the back of the zoo is where they take the animals out of their enclosures and “walk” them around for some exercise. When I was going to the lemur cages the leopard was out on a “walk”. I didn’t get a chance to see him but how cool would that have been. I did however see Tila the camel being taken on her walk and I got to take some pics with her and feed her a carrot. It was pretty awesome! 🙂 All in all, I had an amazing day at the zoo. I love that place. It is amazing to see what Steve Irwin and his family have done with something that just used to be a crocodile rehabilitation area.

Anyway, after the zoo I left Mooloolaba and caught a flight to Townsville to meet my friend Ruth (who I met in Fiji) and do some diving. We decided to dive the Yongala which is a huge shipwreck and is one of the best dive wrecks in the world. We stayed at the Yongala dive lodge which was really quaint and nice and the next day we did our dives. Words cannot even describe how amazing that is! All the things that I had seen in Fiji on my 72 different dives I saw on one dive and everything was HUGE!!!! The bat fish were the size of my head and the potato cod were about half the size of my body! And I saw HUGE rays. I think there were 3 different kinds and they were so magical to watch as they glided through the water. Got to see a couple of turtles that were about half to size of my body as well. The wreck is totally covered in coral and marine life that one whole side of if doesn’t even look like a wreck, it just looks like an amazing reef. It was sooooo cool. Unfortunantely, the Yongala is a wreck where you cannot penetrate the vessel so we could only explore the outside. When the ship sunk no one knew what had happened to it so they could not find it. It was found years and years later and the passengers that were on the ship were never taken off. So they are still actually in the ship. It is considered sacred so that is why no one is allowed to go into the wreck. How weird it would be to dive inside a shipwreck and see skeletons. I don’t quite know how I would feel about that.

After the Yongola Ruth and I headed up to Cairns to go on our 5 day/4 night liveaboard to the Great Barrier Reef. The night before we headed out on the boat was my bday night so we went out for dinner and a drink. It was very low-key which suited me just fine. I have to say, I really like Cairns. I can’t quite put my finger on why I like the town but I do. I has a nice laid back but party atmosphere. It is a nice mix.

The day after my bday we headed to the port and got onto the Taka liveaboard. Ruth had contacted them a couple of days earlier so at dinner that night they came out with cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday to me. I was really surprised and I was really touched that Ruth had gone out of here way to make sure they did something for me. The trip was absolutely amazing. It was the first time I had ever spent any length of time on a boat and it was definitely an experience. The first night on the boat we were told that the sea was probably going to be a little rough cause we were heading all the way up to the northern fringes of the Great Barrier Reef and we would be sailing through the whole night. Ok, no problem, I popped 3 motion sickness pills and got ready for the worst. I also, upon advice from the crew, put my backpack under one side of my mattress (I had the double bed in the room) so I wouldn’t roll off the bed in the middle of the night. Now this would have been awesome advice if the postion of my bed was such that I was rolling from right to left with the movement of the boat. This was not the case. The way our beds were situated was that the movement of the boat was from head to foot. So Ruth and I spent the whole night like we were on the pirate ship ride at Great Adventure. There were times when I looked over at the wall next to my bed and I swear we were almost vertical! It was crazy. I felt like a bouncing ball the whole night, boing, boing, boing, boing…..Needless to say, I did not sleep at all that night. It was so bad that when I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (numerous time I might add…my bladder is rebeling against me in my old age!) I was thrown around the cabin like a rag doll. It was actually comical at some points. I mean I could literally take one step from my bed and be in the bathroom if I wasn’t being thrown around. This night I think I made about 5 zig zags up and down the cabin before I reached the door. You know it is bad when you are on the 2nd floor of the boat and the waves are crashing against your window. Let’s just say thank god we were one of the rooms that had a bathroom ensuite! Lack of sleep aside, I really loved being on the boat. The diving outside of the Barrier Reef was amazing. We had 9 dives at places that were outside the barrier reef and they were fabulous. The other dives on the Barrier were not that great. Alot of people have told me that the Great Barrier Reef is not the great and after my experience with them, I tend to agree. The dives sites north of the Barrier Reef are much, much nicer. One of the dives we did outside the reef was a shark feeding dive (take a deep breath Mom, I am ok!) That was amazing. It attracted mostly smaller sharks like white tips and grey reef sharks but an oceanic silver tip made an appereance at one point and that guy was quite big. It was amazing. Even the smaller sharks are impressive when they are swarming in big masses. Hell, smaller sharks are impressive when they are alone but in a huge group it is magical. They are such beautiful creatures. I am always astounded at just how sleek and graceful they are everytime I see them. After the feed they hung around for awhile so we got to see ALOT of sharks that dive. I have found that I particularly like dive sites that are pinnacles or bommies. That means that there is a huge formation that shoots up from the ocean floor and rises up near the surface. You just spiral around the pinnacle and look for lots of little things that live in the coral. We had a couple of pinnacle dives and I got to see a bunch of nudibrachs (my favorite thing in the world to see, they are sea slugs and very cute and just for you Mom, harmless). They are usually pretty small and they are the most colorful little buggers around. I heart nudiebrachs! 🙂 I also got to see alot of poisonous stonefish and various scorpionfish. These guys are really cool too since they meld into the coral and you really have to be looking to see them. The only problem with them is that they are highly toxic and if you touch one by accident you are up shit’s creek. My motto when diving is don’t touch anything…I find it keeps me covered in the not touching highly venemous creatures that can kill me in 2 seconds category! Anyway, all in all I did 13 dives in those 5 days and it was awesome. It was expesive but totally worth it!

After we got off the boat we met up with the crew and the rest of the passengers for drinks in Cairns. That was a fun night. There was lots of drinking and complete silliness. One of my favorite moments was when the chef of the boat (Rueben) switched shirts with me in the middle of the bar. It was quite humorous seeing him in my peach ruffly tank top. I was kind of jealous cause I think he may have looked better in it than I did. LOL
Then it was off to Cape Tribulation which is north of Cairns and is located in the world’s oldest rainforest. It was absolutely gorgeous here, nice and peaceful. We did a horseride through the rainforest and on the beach. I really enjoyed that. My ass hated me for a couple of days after that but I loved it. It is so much fun to gallop with a horse! After that we did a zip line in the canopy of the rainforest. That was pretty freakin awesome as well! And of course that is where I liked ant butt! Great way to top off a kick ass day!

All and all Australia has been alot of fun but for my wallet’s sake, I had to head out of there pretty quickly. It was really expensive there and I was quickly going broke. So I got a flight and now I am in Singapore. I will be writing about Singapore very shortly. I didn’t think I was going to really like it but I was very wrong. It is a country (is it even a country?) that has no home and no real identity. My thoughts on that later. Till then…..HUGS and KISSES!!! Miss you guys!

Australia Part 1 – Melbourne to Byron Bay

So here I am in good ol Australia. Huge, expensive Australia. Oh wait, huge, expensive and freakin cold Australia! Don’t get me wrong, I am really enjoying Australia but it is damn cold! I only brought 2 pairs of pants and 1 sweathshirt (which I bought in New Zealand) and I think that those three articles of clothing are going to walk off my body in protest cause they are the only things I have wore since I got to Australia. It is just too damn cold to wear anything else! sigh….that is what I get for spending 2 months in Fiji and heaqding over to Australia at the start of their winter season. Yes, I have been spoiled with NZ and Fiji weather. I think my body is going to revolt when I come home to NY in the wonderfully warm month of January!

Anyway, onto more exciting things like Australia. So far it has been really good but I have mostly been in the cities. Between the two cities of Melbourne and Syndey, I have to say that I like Melbourne a bit better. It is a much smaller city but it is beautiful and there is so much to do. Sydney is pretty cool as well but it reminds me more of a sprawling NYC. I liked the coziness of Melbourne a bit more.

Melbourne was actually the first place I flew into. Like I said. I liked it alot. Everything was in walking distance and I think I spent the first day walking around the whole city. The architecture is really special and on my 2nd day there was the Anzac Day (like our veteran’s Day) and there was a big parade throughout the city. It was a weird parade. Our parades have floats and people singing and dancing and bands and of course people walking representing whatever it is they are marching for. Anzac Day Parade was well people walking in groups behind whatever banners that applied to their units with a marching bands thrown in every 10-15 groups. It was a very tame parade as far as parades go. No real fanfare or anything, just people walking with some marching bands. Not very exciting. Nothing like crazy NY parades with people dancing in the streets wearing weird costumes, huge floats of Snoopy and SpongeBob SquarePants standing on floats entertaining the crowd. Well NY totally has Melbourne beat for throwing cool parades. Besides that, it was awesome. They had everything you can think of from gardens to museums to really nice city walks and great restuarants.

Oh before I continue there is something I need to get off my chest about the places I have been and ….wait for it….can you guess what I am going to talk about…think people, it is one of my favorite pasttimes…if you guessed eating than you are right! I would not be a Jackie blog if I did not talk about some form of food! Ok this blog it is going to be about sushi and the crappiness of it since I have started this trip! You all know I love sushi, especially my spicy tuna roll. My quest for a good spicy tuna roll has been utter failure since I started this trip. In New Zealand the spicy tuna was actual tunafish with wasabi wrapped in it! UCK, UCK, UCK! Ok so I tried some sushi in Fiji. Utter failure yet again, they didn’t even have spicy tuna. sigh…So now onto Australia. I tried to get a spicy tuna roll in Melbourne thinking I am in Australia, it has got to be decent, right? Well at least it wasn’t tunafish. There was sushi grade tuna but the spicy part was black pepper rolled on the outside of the roll! WTF?!?!?! Is the spicy tuna roll found in America an American concotion? I figured this side of the world would have good sushi since they are closer to that actual part of the world where sushi comes from but so far I have been dissapointed. So I will continue to search for a good spicy tuna roll and I will report when I
find one. I know you will be waiting with baited breath!And now back to our regular programming.

So I met these 2 guys, Matt and Ross, at the hostel I was staying at in Melbourne and we decided to rent a car and drive to Sydney. Well now here is the catch. My two little London boys don’t know how to drive so it was chaffuer Jackie the whole way. I actually didn’t mind. I miss driving and it was pretty cool to drive on the wrong side of the road. I did way better than I expected until we got to Sydney (more on that in a bit). My car mates were very cool and it was a nice drive. It took us 3 days and we took alot the coastal road so the views were gorgeous. We actually got a little bit off course and drove through one of the suburbs by the coast and we saw kangaroos and wild parrots on people’s front lawns. Very cool!!!! They were just hanging out there chillin. I would love to come home from work and see a whole family of Roo’s hanging out on my front lawn. We just get squirrels and pigeons on our front lawns. Point one for Australia. New York 1, Australia 1,it is a tie so far! Oh yeah we also saw pelicans! These birds are HUGE!!! No wonder they can fit whole fish in their mouths. I think they could fit a car in their mouths (notice I don’t say beaks, it feels like an insult to call their huge gaping maws beaks!). Very cool birds though and a bit awe-inspiring when they are flying cause they blot out the sun! So a nice drive with lots of nature. There was also this really cool hippie guy that we met at one of the hostels that we stayed in. He was a total crystal hugger who played digaredoo (sp?) for a living for kids. It was the first time on this trip that I actually had a philisophical conversation with people and it was interesting. By the end of the night he played the dig over our bodies while we laid on the floor. It was such a cool experience. Now you all know that I am not a very spiritual person but there was something about this. I could feel the vibrations of the dig going through my body. It was really interesting and I walked away feeling very relaxed. So cool.

Another thing that I found quite interesting during this drive is the amount of signs on the side of the road warning people not to fall asleep. I mean every 5-10 miles there was a sign saying something like take a pwernap, it could save your life and my favorite one was fatigue kills and a microsleep can kill. I guess they have a big problem with people falling asleep in Australia. It was almost comical. They could care less about drunk driving or driving the speed limit. It was all about not falling asleep.

Anyway, we got to Sydney and well Sydney is kind of just a regular city. It has really nice sites to see, like any typical city and I must admit the Sydney Opera house it quite beautiful. Again, I did lots of walking around the city. I walked everywhere! It was great. Oh yeah, the driving debacle. It is kind of funny actually. The car that we rented was a Toyata Camary so it was a nice size car. The hostel we stayed in had a parking garage so we figured we would park the car there and return it in the morning. After navigating my car down this little alleyway and manuevering it down the winding ramp I got my car into the garage, where there was 1 parking space left between a pole and a huge van. Now if the width of the garage was bigger than a tennis court I MAY have been able to pull in and park the car. But seeing that I don’t think I could manuever a golf cart into this space there was no way this was happening. So I pull down a little bit more thinking I would turn around in the handicapped and foremans parking spaces. Well those spaces had these big locked bars in the center of them so no one could park there and they stuck up into the middle of the space. So no turning around in those spaces, actually no turning around period. It would have been the 1,999 point turn to get the car the other way. So I go upstairs to reception to explain the prediciment and ask the guy if he could please unlock the handicapped spot so I could at least turn around. Well, I must say that I think the handicapped spot was put there as a big fuck you to all the people that want to park their car in the garage and can’t cause no one had the key to take the bar away! I mean, what if I was handicapped, I would have been SOL. It was really just there for show! About half an hour later the guy finds the foreman’s keys and takes off the bar so I can turn the car around and go park somewhere else. HA, you think the story is over but no it is not! I then proceed for the next half hour to try to turn this hunk of metal around without hitting the support beams and the other cars in the lot. I needed 2 people to help me maneuver and tell me when to stop. I was sweating bullets by the time I actually got the car turned around. I wanted to get out of the cart and hug everyone in sight and dance a victory jig when I finally got the car turned around! I kept it together though fearing that anyone I hugged would be turned off by the sweaty mess I had turned myself into. Thank god the guy found the key cause my only other option would have been to back the car up this 90 degree ramp with a wicked turn halfway up! That I can tell you would have ended badly! But thankfully me and my crew of 2 were able to get the car out of the lot. Lovely way to spend your evening after 6 hours of driving. LOL But besides that Sydney was really nice and I enjoyed it.

I think I spent 2-3 days iN Sydney, which I got to spend with one of my friends from Fiji cause she was passing through. That was very cool. But I decided to try to find warmer weather and head north up the coast. Ross, Matt and I booked the overnight Greyhound bus up to Byron Bay. No comment about the bus trip except to say that it was the most uncomfortable bus ride I have ever been on. I thought I would be able to sleep on the bus. HA, jokes on me cause Greyhound busses have the most uncomfortable seats known to man. Regardless, got to Byron Bay in the morning and I could tell my fortunes were looking up! I LOVE Byron Bay. What a cute little surfer town. It is kind of a hippie, tourist, surfer (along with all the resident hot surfers) town. It has lots of cool ecclectic shops, surf and dive shops and little eateries. Did I mention I really like it here? The hostel we are stayng at is real and down to earth. I could so see myself staying here for awhile if I had the time. And actually if I had the time I would be staying in Byron Bay. When I went to check out diving at the dive shop they actually offered me an internship as a divemaster. They said they could use the help with leading dives and helping with courses. I was blown away to say the least. I did not expect any type of offers in Australia at all. But I got one. It was free accommodation and 1 meal a day plus all the diving that I would be doing. Pretty sweet deal except that they wanted me to stay for 2 months. I really had to think about it long and hard cause I know I would have loved to stay in Byron Bay for 2 months but that would kill my time in SE Asia (which is WAY cheaper than Oz). And after I did the dive that made my mind up. It was a nice dive but nothing near as nice as Fiji. And it was REALLY cold! I was in a 5mil wetsuit, which is pretty thick and I was still cold by the emd of the dive. But man 2 months in Byron Bay would have been sweet. Hope I don’t wind up regretting not staying.

Well I have since left BYron Bay and have made my way to Mooloolaga which is about 2 hours north of Brisbane. I had one night in Brisbane so there isn’t much to comment on about that. Mooloolaga is pretty nice. I am liking it so far. Tomorrow I go to the Australia Zoo, home of Steve “Crickey” Irwin. I can’t wait. I have signed myself up for a wombat and monkey encounter. That means I get to go into the enclosures and actually interact with the animals. So damn cool! I totally cannot wait. (PS Went to the zoo and it was AMAZING!!! More in my next blog about that!)

Well, time to go to bed. Until next time….sweet dreams and big hugs.