Ayer's Rock aka Uluru - Aussie Adventure Part 2

We saw the giant rock from the airplane.  In a vast, otherwise flat desert of the Outback, Uluru, and it's cousin Kata Tjuta  ("many heads"), are the only distinguishing features of the land.  This was one of the tiniest airports we've ever traveled through - a single runway, gate and baggage claim.  A shuttle picked up most of the airplane passengers, bringing us to the Ayer's Rock Resort where it seems the only hotels in the area are.  It was almost like a little community; different hotels at the resort obviously offered different amenities, but there was a town center where activities took place and there were shops and restaurants to mingle at.  Most of the hotels also had their own restaurants, and you could take a shuttle around the place to get from one hotel to the next, but the town center was an easy walk and had a lot to offer. 

We checked into the Desert Gardens hotel and got to our room on the second floor of a two-floor building with a view of Uluru.  Our room had a wide balcony, but we never really took advantage of it - the room was so spacious and comfortable, it was an oasis from our outdoor adventures.  I knew the Aboriginee dance demonstration was happening at the town center, but knew it was going to be tight to get there.  We did end up wandering down and caught just the last minute of it. 

Nerd Alert:  It was here, at Ayer's Rock Resort, where we

caught our first Kangaskhan in Pokemon Go.  I had noticed him on the radar as we were taking the resort shuttle to dinner, so we decided to do a big loop and get out at the stop nearest him to catch him.  And we did!  If you care but aren't aware, Kangaskhan is a Pokemon that is unique to Australia, so there's no way to get him in America.  The first one we caught was weak, but we ended up catching dozens others throughout our time in Australia, and got a few good ones to flaunt back home. 

Anyways, we had dinner at one of the other hotels that night; it was mediocre, but satisfied our hunger.  We called it an early night since the next morning would be another adventure! 

The next morning, after a hurried shopping trip in the town center for hats and water (how did we not think of that before?) we were picked up in the lobby for our camel train excursion.  The shuttle brought us to the camel farm, where our camels were all lined up and ready to be mounted.  First, we had to store all of our bags, and bring only water bottles and cameras in bags they provided to us that would go around our shoulders.  Then, we each got a sheep skin to sit on.  Finally, they lined us up in front of our respective camels, and helped as each guest mounted the camel and "hung on for dear life" as they put it, as the camel stood up so they could adjust the straps for our feet.  My camel's name was Spinifex, or Spinney for short, and Jaiman rode Khan.  As our camels carried us over small ridges through the desert, we were told anecdotes about our camels.  For example, all of these camels were wild before being tamed.  There are estimates as high as a million for the number of wild camels in Australia, but they're hard to track because they move so much.  Also, Khan wouldn't follow any other camel except Spinney.  The cameleers learned this when, on a tour one day, Khan had laid down and refused to get up, and they ended up needing to get another camel to bring the guest back to the farm.  Since Khan's face was roughly at my rear the whole way, it was easy to get to know his personality.  He was chill, and lazy.  He didn't want to do anything, and everything he did was begrudgingly.  But he did like pets, so I patted his head and told him he was doing good, even if he was veering off course and trying to stop the train.  Silly Khan.  We toured through the desert, with great views of Kata Tjuta and Uluru in the background.  I was a little disappointed we didn't get closer, so for that reason alone I might not recommend this tour to others planning a trip to Ayer's Rock.  But if you think the idea of riding a camel for the sake of riding it, then I would definitely recommend this excursion.  The ride itself was slow going and easy, and not nearly as rough as I expected it to be.  I was also worried about the wind whipping sand into my face, and bugs, but neither of these were a problem for us.  It was a very pleasant ride, with no reason to stress. 

When we got back to the farm, the cameleers worked with each camel to get them to lie down, and then help the guests off their rides.  My camel, Spinney, was not having it, and started nipping at the cameleers.  Another came to assist, and he was still being a big jerk.  Once they finally got him down, they said I couldn't take anymore pictures with him since he was being such an ass.  But that was fine, once Jaiman was down, we posed behind Khan, who was my buddy anyways.  We collected our belongings, and were invited to visit the other animals on the farm - an emu, a kangaroo, a baby camel and a water buffalo.  The baby camel was fun to see, but I was most excited about the water buffalo, mostly because of that darn Veggie Tales song that, if you know it, will now get stuck in your head.  You're welcome. 

I bought some postcards and a shirt that said, "HUMP DAAAY!" with a camel on it, because it was, in fact, Hump Day, and we rode camels.  Let's face it, that shirt was made for me on this exact day. 

Since the camel train didn't exactly take us to Uluru, we decided that we should take another excursion to actually go to the rock.  So after grabbing a bite to eat (I had an Outback Pizza with kangaroo and emu on it!) we headed to the tour area and booked ourselves on a hop on hop off shuttle.  Since we didn't really plan this, we had no idea what we were doing, and I think we ended up confusing the tour.  But really, if you call yourselves a hop on hop off, then we should be able to do whatever we want, right?  Well, what I found was that at Ayer's Rock, they really tried to take care of their guests by making sure they had everyone, which is nice in a way, but challenging when you aren't aware. 

So we were somehow scheduled for a pickup at our hotel.  It would give us enough time to see the Bush Yarn I wanted to attend at the Town Center, except that I had misread the schedule and realized that it wasn't happening that day.  So we decided to hop on the shuttle earlier and at the closest hotel rather than walk all the way back to ours and have to wait.  The driver then asked us what drop off points we wanted and when we wanted to be picked up at, and we had no idea, so he gave us a suggestion, but it was, like, 5 hours of hiking.  We were done well before that, and waited at the pick up point, hoping they'd still pick us up even though they made it sound like they weren't going to.  Just after I had given up on being picked up, the shuttle came.  Apparently, he was late because he had been looking for us back at our hotel, not realizing we had caught an earlier shuttle.  I was so grateful to be picked up, I didn't even argue my point about it being a hop on hop off tour. 

The actual hike around Uluru produced some really interesting views; the rock changes as you go around it.  We didn't do the whole circumference - that was over 10 km - but we walked from the drop off point our driver had suggested to the pick up point.  There were parts of the rock that were considered sacred by the natives, and therefore were not supposed to be photographed.  The signs clearly marked where you could start taking pictures again and where you had to stop.  There were also plaques that talked about the different features of the rock, why it was sacred, etc.  It was a very hot and sunny day, and there was very little shade.  I had completely failed to bring sunscreen somehow, and since I'd already spent a few hours in the morning in the sun riding a camel, I was getting worried about sunburn.  I tried covering my shoulders with the shirt I had bought at the camel farm, and kept my hat pulled tightly over my face and neck.  The bugs were awful here - flies and little gnats kept getting in our faces.  I had bought a cheap fly net the night before, and relented pretty quickly, putting that on.  It didn't stop the flies from getting on my net and irritating me that way, but much better than having them on my face.  There wasn't much shade at the pickup point (read: practically none), so when we realized we still had close to an hour before the pick up time I was hoping to catch, we decided to venture on to the gorge which was supposed to be scenic.  The gorge was, as promised, pretty neat to see, but we were watching our time and so had to head back shortly after arriving.  At this point, we were nearly out of water (again, bad planning on our part), and I wanted to get out of the sun as much as possible, feeling my skin bake. 

My learning and suggestion from all this is, hike Uluru early in the day, bring lots of water and sunscreen and hats and a fly net, and be more prepared than us.  All in all, we survived and even enjoyed ourselves, but we felt the pain of being so ill-prepared.  Back at the resort, we picked up some food to go, and put our feet up in our hotel room with dinner and drinks, watching the sunset over Uluru.  As much as Ayer's Rock Resort was overpriced and felt gimicky, I couldn't get over the feeling that this was a lot like glamping - like, luxury in the middle of the desert.  I think people honeymoon here, or at least take fabulous vacations here.  As far as hotel stays, this was my favorite of the whole trip. 

The next morning, we did some final shopping in the town center, and then boarded the shuttle back to the airport to fly to our next destination - Melbourne! 

Adelaide and Kangaroo Island - Aussie Adventure Part 1

Something funny happened on the way to the forum, as they say.  Or in this case, on the way to Adelaide.  We had gotten to LAX just fine, and actually had such a long layover that we ended up leaving the airport to go get lunch at a place Jaiman really wanted to eat at, and coming back to check in.  The flight to Sydney went without a hitch.  But when we arrived and checked in for our domestic flight, a bit worn and weary from the travel, I was thrown off a bit.  The plan had been to arrive in Sydney at 7:01 am and leave at 10 am for Melbourne, and then fly to Adelaide at 12:55, landing at 1:45.  But when we checked in to our flight, it said we were leaving at 9:55 am.  A little weird, but no big deal, I thought, they moved it up by 5 minutes.  But the flight wasn't going to Melbourne, it was going directly to Adelaide.  I had already disappointed Jaiman with the news that we had two more flights to go, and here we were looking at an itinerary that had us one just one flight left.  I assumed I must have changed the flights and not updated TripIt accordingly, but that actually wasn't the case.  From what I gathered, it seems Qantas had cancelled the flight to Melbourne and automatically booked us on a better flight to Adelaide.  Already, we were loving Australia. 

Things got even better when we checked our bags in - they had an automatic system to do so, and it worked like a charm.  Pretty awesome, Oz! 

Alright, so we arrived in Adelaide even earlier than expected, and our bag arrived and everything was good.  As we were driven to our hotel, we noticed a lot of Asian restaurants along the way - a mini China town if you will - and so, after checking into our hotel (which they let us a do a bit earlier than the usual 3 pm check in), relaxing a bit and then booking our Kangaroo Island tour for the following day, we decided to venture out and have some Asian food. 

We ended up at an okay place, but neither of us were really feeling it all that much.  Nevertheless, we were starting to decompress from the wariness of travel and general life stress.  We walked around town quite a bit, actually playing Pokemon Go, too.  While we were no longer avid players of the game (and most of the world has quit months ago), we were well aware that there was a region-specific Pokemon called Kangaskhan that we were determined to catch while visiting.  After some walking around, we decided to call it a night early, and headed up to the hotel room. 

We slept well, and were up and excited for our Kangaroo Island tour the next morning.  The shuttle driver was in the lobby ready for us when we got downstairs, and we were on our way.  We were transferred to a larger shuttle, and then were driven about an hour to the ferry terminal.  At this point, I wasn't feeling great, a little motion sickness or something bringing me down.  The waters were rough, so that only added to my motion sickness.  I cautiously ate a sausage roll for breakfast with a Sprite.  I will say, the sausage roll was fine, but it was nothing compared to Debbie's back in NYC.  Regardless, I made it without getting sick, but was definitely glad to be on land again. 

Ironically, the first iconic Australian animal we saw was a wallaby - dead on the side of the road.  Sad face.  The day was sure to get better from there.  Our first stop was Seal Bay where we saw Australian Sea Lions up close and personal.  We mostly stayed on a little boardwalk just a foot or two above the beach where the sea lions walked around, sun bathed and played.  This allowed us a very close up view without being in danger of the strong, unpredictable creatures.  But we did get to walk a bit on the beach itself (I know, I had to suck it up and keep myself from having a panic attack from the sand), and we were told to keep our distance during this walk, but still got to see them pretty well.  One little guy approached us directly, curious about us.  It was a very chilly day, being in the southernmost part of Australia and still spring, and the wind blowing off the water made it that much chillier.  In fact, the wind was picking up a bit of the sand, and making me a little uneasy, but I did my best to enjoy the adorable wild critters. 

We then had a quick lunch which was nothing to write home about, but satisfying.  I, of course, detoured to the bathroom first and practically gave myself a sponge bath in the sink, trying to rid myself of both the sand and the notion of sand.  Next, the tour took us to a koala sanctuary.  We were told that holding koalas was illegal in this state, which I had anticipated and understood, but that we'd be able to see them essentially in the "wild" since this was truly a nature preserve and not like a zoo or something like that.  I loved the smell of the eucalyptus as we walked through.  The first few koalas we spotted were a bit hard to photograph and see very well, but we did get a couple good views of some other ones as we went along.  One was a bit more active, and actually was jumping from branch to branch, which was fun to watch.  In the gift shop, there were those awkwardly frightening koala masks, and I joked with Jaiman that if I wanted a picture of me cuddling a koala, he could just put one of those masks on and pretend to be a koala for me.  He was not amused, and would not partake in such photo.  Being called Kangaroo Island, I was surprised that we had seen mostly sea lions and koalas so far, but there were wild kangaroos hanging out in the distance in several places, just not very photogenic, and we usually saw them as we passed without time to line up a picture anyways.  Our next stop on the tour was a place called Remarkable Rocks which was another windy, chilly place on the shore.  Here, the wind and ocean spray and carved interesting shapes into the rocks, hence the name.  We didn't stay very long or desire adventuring much because of the cold wind and ocean spray, but it was worth seeing I suppose. 

Then it was on to Admiral's Arch, which initially was a lot like Remarkable Rocks with the ocean spray and wind, but it had seals.  We winded down the path to the arch, watching playful and sleepy seals along the way.  They remind me so much of my chiweiner, Carly. 

I had been advised to stay longer than a day on Kangaroo Island, but I think our tour was sufficient.  I did much better on the ferry ride back, and even got some reading done on the bus. 

The next morning, we went to Hungry Jacks for breakfast, which is like Burger King, Whopper and all.  We both ordered toasties, which I think is another Australian staple.  Stopping in a convenience store, we discovered for the first time that Australia has some fantastic KitKats, including some of our favorites from Japan!  I got a Mint Cream & Cookie Smash pack.  KitKats in Australia have more thickness in the chocolate than American and Japanese KitKats.  The ones I got were Ah-Mazing! 

Then it was time to head out back to the airport for our next little journey… we flew to Alice Springs and then to Yulara for our stay in Ayer's Rock, otherwise known as Uluru. 

Aussie Adventure - Intro

I've had some pretty awesome and extensive vacations in my life thus far, and feel very blessed to be able to say that.  But none of them compare to the amount of anticipation, planning, and preparation that went into my most recent trip to Australia.  I first developed this itinerary circa 2008 in anticipation of going in 2009.  Things fell through - mostly, my travel partner.  I re-upped it for 2010, and again, flakiness pushed it off.  2011 didn't happen.  Neither did 2012.  Years passed and I began to feel more anxious about it.  Finally, in 2016, I decided that 2017 would be the year, come hell or high water.  Not too long after, my company announced it was moving our headquarters across the country, and Jaiman and I had a tough decision to make about our lives, let alone my much anticipated Australia trip.  As you probably know if you know me or have read my other blog posts, we took the relo package and moved, but I did not want that to postpone my Australia trip.  Moving from Arizona to Connecticut meant traveling farther to Australia, and it was a little challenging to justify given that we have so much we can do and explore around our new home on the East Coast, but I was determined. 

With the decision to move settled in early December, I suggested to Jaiman that we needed to minimize our physical belongings and that maybe Christmas presents should focus on experiences rather than things.  We had already begun a list of things we wanted to do in Arizona before we moved away, so that gave us some direction.  But also knowing that I wanted to scuba dive in the Great Barrier Reef, Jaiman gave me an awesome gift of scuba diving lessons and certification.  Unfortunately, we were both a little sick when we had initially scheduled the class, and again for the makeup class, and so although we attempted to get through it, we ended up not completing the certification.  We discussed the possibility of trying again once in CT, but ultimately decided to simply snorkel the Great Barrier Reef instead. 

Actually, that ended up working out better than I expected, and our snorkeling trip was absolutely amazing.  The only thing I would have done differently was bring our own snorkels because we had the ones that close up when you go under water, making it easier to do short dives as desired.  We had opted not to bring our own equipment in the spirit of packing as lightly as possible, given how much traveling we'd be doing and wanting to minimize our luggage and the exposure to losing things, but just bringing snorkels wouldn't have been too much of a stretch in hindsight. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's go back to the plan.  My initial itinerary, almost a decade before, had us hiking across the Outback for 3 days from Alice Springs to Ayer's Rock as the second thing to do; the first thing was a tour Kangaroo Island leaving from Adelaide.  My thought process was put something easy as the first thing, since we'd be tired from the initial trip over, and then put the hardest thing next so we knock it out early in our vacation and can coast the rest of the way.  Then we'd head to Melbourne and Cairns and finish with Sydney.  The two primary objectives were from my Life List, to snorkel/scuba the Great Barrier Reef and see a show at Sydney Opera House (#53 and #132, respectively).  As I started to finalize the details of the trip for 2017, I decided that it seemed to complex to deal with suitcases if we were trying to hike from Alice Springs to Ayer's Rock, and that I also probably wasn't going to be in shape to hike for three days straight, nor did that seem like a great use of vacation time.  So I ended up modifying that plan to simply visit Ayer's Rock - a great decision in hindsight!  The only other changes I considered were to add Nullarbor Links - a 100+ mile golf course that is also on my Life List, but determined to take several days - and a stop in Brisbane because of our MOS Burger obsession from Japan and theme parks.  In the end, we decided that those two stops could wait for another trip.  So we'd go to Adelaide, Ayer's Rock, Melbourne, Cairns and Sydney - hitting all but one state of Australia, and certainly a good mix of activities with some of the best highlights of the country. 

You know how sometimes the universe seems to be working either against a certain cause of yours or for it?  Well, despite the move across the country, I had some pretty funny little signs pushing me towards Australia as the trip neared.  First, my manager had hired a new teammate that was from Melbourne.  She was awesome, and I loved her instantly.  Her accent alone was mesmerizing - like, I could honestly listen to her all day.  It quickly came up that we'd be going to Australia soon, and before I even knew her a week, she had invited us to a housewarming party at her apartment in NYC.  There, we got to try our first tastes of some Australian staples like meat pies and sausage rolls, and met a number of her friends who were also from Australia.  All indications were that we'd love Australia.  A couple weeks later, I was actually in the middle of a book that was primarily about a woman with mental illness, but seemingly at random there was a whole chapter dedicated to a trip to Australia that had me laughing so hard I cried and again made me even more excited to go.  I learned from that book that certain parts of Australia outlaw holding koalas, but that they were stinky nasty creatures anyways.  Not that that was a big deal to me either way, I just wanted to see kangaroos and koalas, really, that was my biggest concern regarding the unique land animals of Australia.  Little did I know, I do much more than that! 

I'd been subscribed to the Sydney Opera House's events email for the decade I'd been planning a trip to Australia.  Honestly - it seems a bit crazy now, but that's how long this trip has been on mental burden on me.  So I knew from plenty of experience that shows didn't really get announced a year ahead of time, so it was hard in 2016 to plan what show we'd be going to.  I continued waiting and checking to see if anything good came up, and in the spring of 2017, a show did pop up that I thought was great and that Jaiman would really enjoy.  So I decided, again minimizing physical things as gifts, to give the tickets to Jaiman as an anniversary present.  We'd be going to see Postmodern Jukebox at the Sydney Opera House! 

With that date set, I was finally able to work out the rest of the itinerary around it, and I started booking hotels.  Since some of the excursions would pick up from certain hotels, I made sure to book the hotels based on those excursion pick ups - most of the hotels I booked were through Travelocity and had free cancellation, so I knew I could change plans with no problem if needed.  The one exception was Ayer's Rock - where the hotel I wanted wasn’t on Travelocity.  Here's a travel tip from me to you - I like booking on Travelocity for a number of reasons.  First, I've had great luck working with them if something happens and I have to cancel or change my bookings (even when its within the window; ref moving to CT and having my flight get cancelled and therefore I had to change my rental car and cancel my hotel the day of - Travelocity was great).  Second, I can pay with PayPal credit which is awesome for three reasons - PayPal credit doesn't show up on a credit report so it doesn't look like you have high balances of debt; you get 6 months no interest on all purchases over $50 which hotels obviously fall into, and I get my passive income through PayPal, so I can literally pay off my hotel expenditures with my passive income over time with no interest (…and since I don't include my passive income in my budget, this feels like I'm traveling for free!)  The other big reason I like Travelocity is because of the free cancellation policy on so many hotels, and I know from experience the cancellation is really easy to do online.  Also, when I've done comparative shopping, I've found that Travelocity almost always has the best price, and it's nice to have all or most of my bookings in one place.  Granted, I usually send my itineraries to TripIt and organize everything there as well, but it's nice to be able to double check in Travelocity, because TripIt doesn't update automatically when plans change. 

The main excursion for Adelaide was going to be the tour to Kangaroo Island.  But given that it was on the first leg of the trip, I decided to hold off on actually booking it until I was confident we'd actually get there on the right date.  So what I did was put the info in my TripIt itinerary, cleared labeled as NOT BOOKED so that I would remember to book it once we were well on our way and/or actually there.  This worked out just fine for us.  I did book the snorkeling excursion leaving from Cairns, since I figured there was no way I wouldn't make it to that.  I booked through Silverswift, advertising that it had one of the faster boats and therefore could get us out to see more of the GBR in a single day trip.  Many websites advise that you do overnight stays on boats to see the most of GBR.  That may be fine for another trip, but I really wanted to get out there and back.  At Ayer's Rock, I booked a camel tour, which seemed much more exotic in the description than what it ended up being, but it was still pretty fun.  To be fair, it was actually way less brutal than I anticipated, and although a bit gimicky, was a really pleasant way to see Ayer's Rock.  My only real complaint is that we didn't get very close to Ayer's Rock, so we still felt obligated to go out to rock afterwards on a different and pricier tour.  Had I known that, I may not have booked the camel tour at all, but in the end, I'm glad I did.  For Sydney, I tried to book a kayak tour through the harbor, but they didn't have tours on the dates that we were there.  We thought about doing the Bridge Climb, but postponed the decision.  In Melbourne, I had looked into a brewery tour, and but we also postponed booking until we were there.  For all the tentative plans, I simply put them into our itineraries as NOT BOOKED so that I knew what I was thinking but that we'd need to book them. 

As is often the case, I had opened up the invitation to others to come with us to Australia, and while there was some reluctant interest, no commitments happened, so it was just Jaiman and I along for this adventure again, but I was perfectly happy with that.  I sought advice about the best way to get to the airport from one of my other new teammates who had been local much longer, and she said the best way by far was to take an Uber.  Neither Jaiman or I had used Uber before, but were open to the idea.  If this trip did nothing else, it certainly converted me to the likes of Uber!  Honestly, all our Uber drivers and their nice cars blew away my preconceived assumptions and expectations of the service.  The only little hitch we had was, well, a failure on our part to think through everything to be honest.  I hadn't researched what visas were needed to get to Australia, and I guess I assumed someone would have told us if we needed such a thing.  So when we went to check in to our flight at the airport, we got this "Do not Board" message and the people at the counter couldn't tell us why, simply that something was wrong with our tickets and we'd have to wait until 9 am to sort it out, at which time our first flight would be well on its way to LA.  Frustrated, we sat down to the side and tried to figure it out.  After about 15 minutes of nothing useful, the manager came out and said he had figured out what was wrong - our tickets were fine but we needed what's called an ETA, which is Australia's visa system.  He said it would take 15 minutes to a few hours to get, but that's what was holding up our check in.  We quickly looked up ETA and started the application processes on each of our phones, and were able to get approval in minutes thankfully.  When we were certain we were clear, we got up and attempted to check in again and it worked.  Whew!  We barely managed to get our luggage checked in an hour before the flight, got through security with no issues and got on our plane.  

We were off for the trip of a lifetime!  First stop: Adelaide!