Magnum Cum Laude

As you no doubt remember, near the beginning of our trip I discovered that there are nine (NINE!) varieties of Magnum ice cream bars available in New Zealand and Australia, and Vanuatu as it turns out. (Check out my original Magnum P.I. blog post for the sweet details.) I made it my personal quest to sample all nine flavors before leaving Oz (two months seemed like plenty of time), and I nearly completed the task before leaving New Zealand. Only one flavor escaped me, the one that I saved (savored?) for last, hoping it would be the pinnacle of my glucosic gastronomic adventure: the exotically named Magnum Ecuador Dark.

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Roadtrippin' With Dr. Spacevan

What do you do when you learn that a Category 4 tropical cyclone is headed directly for the set of islands where you are planning to do a 3-day sailing trip? If you are Lustin — and especially if you are Lustin after just spending three days on a heaving, tossing ocean — you aren’t all that eager to tempt your fate with the seasickness gods again. Nor are you especially excited about sailing around normally sun-soaked tropical islands in the pouring rain. So, you do what any rational person would do — you change the entire itinerary for the remainder of your time in Australia less than 12 hours before your next flight is supposed to take off.

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Finding My Inner Nemo

Cairns (or “Canz” as it’s pronounced by a nation that seems to have a collective speech impediment when it comes to saying their r’s) was a shock to the senses after our week in the Outback. The stifling humidity and lush greenness of tropical Queensland was a stark contrast to the hot desert air and sparse vegetation of the Red Center. We stepped off the plane in Cairns and immediately began to sweat. But that was ok because the bush flies that had been the bane of our existence for a week were finally thousands of miles away. A little perspiration (or a lot, depending on which half of Lustin you’re talking about :) was a small price to pay for a “swat-free” lifestyle.

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John, Paul, Gorge and Dingo

It’s a bit easier to write about our Outback experience now that the constant, maddening (infuriating!) buzz of the flies in our faces is more of a fading memory than the recurring nightmare that it was in the moment. It’s really hard to describe how challenging it was dealing with the flies, the heat, sleep depravation, the flies… I kept thinking it was a lot like the game of golf: you endure many, many frustrating moments where you swear you’ll never play the game again, but you have *just* enough long, straight drives and sweet putts to make it all worthwhile (with the help of some selective memory). Despite our frustrations with the flies, sleeping on the ground exposed to the elements and creepy crawlies, and a few insanely early wake-up calls, we really did have a once-in-a-lifetime experience in the Red Center (although we both agree that we probably wouldn’t go back for more).

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Photos from Uluru and Kata Tjuta

A quick update before Laura and I hop on a boat and finish up our scuba diving certification course for a couple of days. We’ve uploaded photo albums from our first two days in the Red Center of Australia — Uluru and Kata Tjuta. We really do have some fun highlights to share from our week-long adventure in the outback (some of which don’t even mention flies), but they’re not quite ready for public consumption. Our brains are a little waterlogged from two days in the pool doing exciting things like pretending our air tanks have run out of air, doing underwater acrobatics to remove and replace our BCDs and weight belts, and trying to decipher the hand signals from our PADI instructor Chris (almost as difficult as understanding his Irish accent).

We’ll get the rest of the Outback photos posted when we’re back on dry land, as well as some of the happier highlights from our 4WD adventure. Stay tuned!

Bushwhacked

Our five days camping in the “bush” of Australia’s aptly named Red Center were hard. Very hard. At one particular low point, Dustin turned to me and said, “I’d like to take the Outback out back and shoot it.” We had thoughts like this fairly often. Among the various enemies we were battling were sleep deprivation (a 5:30am wake-up call was considered a “sleep in”); mozzies, which were especially annoying at night while we slept under the stars, unprotected in a “swag” (basically a padded sleeping bag); heat (it was summer in the desert after all); and water (thanks to the floods the week before, the ground was super-saturated, resulting in heavy dews at night. We literally woke up one night soaking wet in our swags).

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G'day, Mate!

After an amazing five weeks in New Zealand, Laura and I hopped a flight from Christchurch (on the south island) to Auckland (on the north), then another to Sydney in the Land Down Under. We arrived late on a Friday night with only a few vague ideas about what we wanted to see and do during our month-long stay in Australia, a mode of travel we’re both starting to get pretty comfortable with. Our four days in Sydney included some great walks, a few scenic ferry rides, a ridiculous afternoon at the Four Seasons spa, one very quirky B&B and another “boutique” hotel (we are *so* over that word), a bit of post-Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade chaos, one very grumpy walk through Chinatown in search of breakfast, birthday tequila shots, and even a bit of culture at the Sydney Opera House.

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