The Agrinautica

Tuesday, November 28th - Woke up realizing I'd made a classic mistake. I'd plugged my phone in overnight but in Australia there's often a switch by the plug to turn it on, which i had not done, so i was beginning a planned long day of sightseeing with a 2% battery! Left it charging while we had breakfast at a bakery down the street and it was up to 60% by the time we actually left the hotel, which was better but i still felt i couldn't use my phone much.

We walked from our hotel about a mile and a half to the ferry stop at the waterfront. The old downtown fremantle area near the waterfront was very nice with classic old buildings with wraparound balconies. It looked clean and renovated and altogether like probably a nice area in the evening with all its bars and restaurants.

The colloquial shorthand for Fremantle is apparently Freo, and we saw some plays on the Spanish frio (cold), i suspect, in signs for "Freo ice cream!" and "Freo cold beer!" (I suspect it was influenced by the Spanish in that signage that didn't reference coldness didn't tend to use "freo")

In my in depth research (by which i mean reading the history sections of both their Wikipedia entries) I'm still sort of unclear on the relationships of Fremantle and Perth. Apparently they were both founded as independent towns within months of eachother in 1829; Fremantle at the mouth of the Swan River and Perth about ten miles in. At some point they grew large enough to merge and now the metropolitan area is referred to as Perth, with me course a Perth proper CBD, and Fremantle as the river mouth neighborhood.

There seemed to be four different ferry companies offering transport to Rottnest Island ("Rotto"), with departures at least every half hour and possibly every ten minutes at peak times. Our 9am ferry seemed to be bracketed by other ferry traffic impatient to use the dock.

Weather all day was nice, mostly sunny but a few very brief smatterings of light precipitation. Temperatures in the 70s f / 20s c. Trip to Rottnest Island about forty minutes.

The first Europeans to come to Rottnest Island were the Dutch in 1619, and the name that finally stuck was given by a Dutch captain in 1696, bestowing upon it the beautiful poetic name of "rat nest Island" in Dutch. The "rats" in question are quokkas, adorable little round cat sized marsupials who lack the good sense to fear humans.



Immediately upon reaching the island these adorable things could be seen hopping about, and truly lacking instincts for self preservation one put its head right under my slightly upraised boot to snuffle at a leaf. Fortunately i saw it. We sat and had lunch and a nearby toddler tried repeatedly to jump on one's tail, but this one did have the good sense to seek shelter under me. It was sorely tempting to pat them as they look so soft but signs warn this is strictly forbidden. Though again small children seemed to take no notice and in most cases their parents seemed to take no notice of their children's activities.



There were a number of ravens (?) perched in the fig trees around the eating area, "practicing their Norwegian vowels" as mom cleverly described it.

Another fact we marveled at was when the guide at the lighthouse told us Rottnest had been connected to the mainland only 7,000 years ago. And aboriginal artifacts dating back 30,000 years have been found on the island. They used to walk here. They saw the sea levels rise to separate the island. Well it was probably imperceptibly slowly but at some point in some aboriginals life time it was possible to walk there and then it wasn't.

The guide also said the sea levels rose higher than they currently are since then and only the tops of the hills were still above water. I'd never heard of a global higher than now sea level, and google just now says the last time that was the case was 130,000 years ago so as I've often found take what guides say with a grain of salt. But other sources do bare out that the island was connected to the mainland 7,000 years ago.

"Aboriginal prisoners contributed to agricultural development of the island" a sign says. Wait what. We all know European prisoners were sent to Australia and did a lot of the manual labor of the early colonies, but "aboriginal prisoners contributed to" sounds a lot like a nice roundabout way of saying "we enslaved the locals." I noticed numerous references to aboriginal prisoners on various informational signs but if there was a source of broad overview information on the island i missed it. But let me quote wikipedia for you:

Between 1838 and 1931, Aboriginal prisoners held on Rottnest Island were held in deplorable conditions and subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment. [...] Although slavery, as legally defined, never existed in Western Australia, the "assignment" system effectively implemented a system of forced labour, and was condemned by Reverend J. B. Gribble and the Anti-Slavery Society. Aboriginal people who refused assignment were sent to Rottnest Island to be "civilised", and were used in chain-gangs to perform hard labour including farming, quarrying, and collecting salt.[35] Most of the island's historic Settlement – including Government House (Hotel Rottnest), the church, Salt Store, museum, gift shop, original waterfront cottages and The Quod – was built by forced Aboriginal prison labour working under extremely harsh conditions.[36]

Apparently 3600 aboriginals came through the island.

Exploring the island by bike seems immensely popular, with mass bikes coming over on the ferry and bicyclists all over the island. Also there's a bus that goes around clockwise, $25 per person for an all day pass. It occurs to me just now i should try to describe the size of the island but as I've discussed with my friends none of us has a very good sense for measurements of surface area. It's 19 square kilometers, which is 1900 hectares, or 4695 acres or 7.3 square miles. Perhaps the important fact is it takes the bus an hour to circle the island.



The island is hilly, and covered with variously low shrubby trees or heathy bushes, and crisscrossed with trails. We proceeded about a quarter way around the island on the bus and got off by the lighthouse, which is near the center at the highest point. On neighboring hills there's a WWII lookout tower and gunnery observation post. The lighthouse is a nice tall white tower, still in use, a tour was beginning in five minutes but we didn't go on it. Went for a walk back from the tower towards the main settlement where we started. It was pleasant. Found very little tourist traffic away from the bike trails, in fact I'm not sure we saw anyone else on foot in several kilometers of walking. Saw some more quokkas but i think they're definitely concentrated by main settlement. Walked past some salty ponds where they used to make the aboriginals mine salt.



Got back on the bus and this time rode it all the way around the island. While at the far end of Rottnest Island we were 15,104 km (9,385 miles) from my parents home address in Southern California. This is certainly the farthest from home they've ever been. This is further than even my travels in Uganda, Ethiopia and Nairobi, though Zanzibar was 16,145 km (10,032 miles). (If you're curious, the furthest you can get from Los Angeles is the French island of Reunion, 18,501 km (11,496 miles) from my parents home address). Incidentally, my dad having grown up in Rochester New York, this is very very close to the furthest land from there in the world he could possibly reach. The exact furthest point is 100km from where we are now. For any other Americans from the east coast who want to go as far from home as possible, Cape Leeuwin in West Australia is it.



Then we returned to the main settlement and dad went for a brief swim at a nearby beach. Then to the ferry landing and left via a 4pm ferry. If you wanted to stay on the island there's plenty of holiday cottages, though i don't know how much they are.

Walked back to our hotel. Either people are very friendly in this area and I'm too cynical, or lots of people are on drugs because once walking to the dock in the morning and twice walking back wild feral looking people greeted us in a friendly forthright manner like they knew us, to which i responded with a somewhat brusque "how's goin" as i steamed past careful not to get drawn into a conversation.

The hotel restaurant was open and we went in there for dinner, which was actually extremely good (traditional pub fare w a bit of an Irish leaning as it was an "Irish pub"). There was an Asian woman who appeared to be on drugs dancing by herself by what looked like an ATM for placing bets on the races on the TVs. Eventually she left but was replaced by several similarly disreputable looking guys hovering around the machine as if it was a warm fireplace in a frozen winter.

   In Theory on Monday I'd take the train to Albury, 7.5 hours, and then drive from there to Euston (5.5 hours), and that would be that. Not so simple it turns out.

   In the morning (6:11am!) I found googlemaps directing me not to my local train station but bus stop. I don't know how it knows when the train has been replaced by a bus (or "coach" as they call it to sound more classy) but all one can do is trust google maps implicitly. So road the train-replacement-bus about forty min to an hour in to Waurn Ponds on the outskirts of Geelong, where we were all able to transfer on to a train. Train from there to Melbourne's Southern Cross station (1 hour, 25 min). Had about 40 minutes there (8:45 - 9:26) which was perfect for grabbing a hot cheese-and-ham croissant at a station cafe for breakfast. Then train another hour and a half north to the town of Seymour (10:56). It seemed like half the train's occupants got out here, but a lot of them must have been ending their journey there because only two v-line (train company) coaches were boarding passengers for onward journeys, and the Albury bound (pronounced Aubrey) bus was less than a third full, one person per row-side. Two hours on this bus headed east north east to Albury.

   I thought I'd be popping in to the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) office there to get oriented/inducted/whatever but clarifying it via email I was informed I was just to go to the car rental place there to pick up a car. Which, being as Albury is a substantial distance the wrong direction from my final destination I thought the whole reason I was coming here was because it was the closest DPI office to me. Anyway, walked from the train station to the downtown area to have lunch at a Vietnamese place. Seemed like a nice town, weather was pleasantly in the 20s/70s c/f. Car rental place was 3.1 km out of town, I didn't feel like walking it, for one thing that would add time I couldn't afford to add on to an already long journey. Uber didn't come up with anything so had to call a yellow taxi. The journey up to this point had cost me $18 in train fares, this taxi cost me $23. Hopefully I'll be reimbursed -- the DPI had said they couldn't cover my travel outside of NSW but Albury was in state so..
   Taxi driver was an immigrant from Pakistan (15 years ago). It's funny, being a fellow immigrant, I always get a happy feeling of comraderie from fellow immigrants whereever they're from. We're a secret club.

   Got the rental car, and then it was a 5.5 hour drive from there west to the final destination of Euston, through small towns and small rural highways. I was surprised by how few other cars were on the road, even passing through the small towns the streets seemed deserted. Sun set. I was afraid of hitting kangaroos but didn't see any, just a fox that cheekily crossed the road just in front of me.

   Arrived at the hotel at 20:24 -- 14 hours after setting out! I've been on plenty of 14 hour flights, people act like thats a shocking and miserable amount of time to be on a flight -- I can tell you 14 hours on a flight is sheer paradise compared to 14 hours of coach-train-coach-taxi-car.

The hotel here is gaudy like a casino, and indeed has a section off the spacious restaurant portion full of slot machines (it is after all the "Euston Club Resort," though we're staying in the "Euston Club Motel" section).

Checked in to my room and then returned to the restaurant as i was by now very overdue for dinner. Kitchen was closed of course but there was a very decent large meat pie on a warming rack i was able to get -- but not before being sternly chastised for wearing a hat. I don't know if it's a literal law that hats can't be worn in "clubs" or this is just a piece of etiquette Australians feel very strongly about but, while i don't think it's enforced in pubs or restaurants, anything that quantifies as any sort of "club" will remind you to take your hat off in a tone dripping with poisonous disdain.

And my "schooner" (half pint?) of (alcoholic) ginger beer cost $13 (roo bucks), which i felt was a bit high!

And that was my Monday. Having called and texted our team leader with no success in attempting to find out what we were doing the next day or when and where to meet, I went to bed without having any idea what was in store the next day.

Saturday, August 19th - in the morning we strolled around the Zona Rosa by daylight. There were some upscale malls just there. But we didn't get anything.

Around noon we went to the old part of town to meet up with Cristina's cousins. Apparently the rideshare app of choice here is DiDi, which I'd noticed google maps automatically recommends these days but hadn't heard of anyone using before. With this driver and all subsequent ones here they insisted one of us sit in the front passenger seat. Some cultural thing? About not getting hijacked from behind? Because in the past in other countries when catching a rideshare ride by myself and hopped in the front passenger seat I've had them act like that was really weird.

Our driver dropped us off at the end of a pedestrian-only boulevard thronging with families. There were street performers and people selling things from little tables. As with the night before people would address us to hawk their wares but immediately desisted on the slightest expression of disinterest. The effect actually being that while in countries with annoyingly persistent shopkeepers i'd be careful to never look directly at their wares and at best briefly side eye for anything worthwhile, in this case one felt free to examine items as much as one wanted without fear it would work the shopkeep into a mania of persistence.

We examined the strange (to me) fruit one man in his cart, he happily told us about them and cut open two different fruits to give me samples, though now i forget what they were called. Cristina bought a bag of lychees from him.



Presently we came to a broad plaza with a cathedral on one side and old colonnaded buildings on the other three sides, and a large statue of Simon Bolivar on a pedestal in the center. Many families were strolling or idling on the plaza.

We took some pictures and presently Cristina saw her cousins approaching. They consisted of her cousin (whose name i actually haven't quite learned because we always refer to her as "your cousin" / "mi prima"), who is 42, her son Anthony (23 but looks 16-18), and her precocious daughter Carlota, who came running to give Cristina and jump hug. The cousin's husband is an engineer currently working for a petroleum company in Gabon in West-Central Africa.



Anthony spoke pretty good English so he mostly acted as the translator between me and anyone else. Carlota was also enthusiastic to piece together questions for me from words she knew, and she was very good.

We proceeded up the side street beside the cathedral and went into a very nice restaurant there to introduce me to traditional Colombian food. I had the "Bandeja paisa" Which was kind a a sampler of a bunch of different things. It was very deliciouso




On our way back to the plaza we bought some [???] from a lady selling it from a cart. She a large a bowl of fruit simmering and poured this hot juice into little cups and added a tot of rum into each. It was a bit like mulled wine.

Rare encounter with English speaking tourists at the drink cart as a young couple from Holland who didn't speak Spanish were trying to order. Anthony helped them translate. They were friendly, the guy was wearing a Dropkick Murphy's shirt which is a band i like a lot.

After that we bought little satchets of corn kernels to feed the pigeons on the plaza, which Carlota had been particularly looking forward to. After feeding the pigeons we attempted to fly a kite Carlota had but we never succeeded in getting it to stay airborne.



"You are mortal" Anthony said to me sincerely. "What?" "You are mortal" "well yes but why are you telling me?" "You are more tall maybe you'll have better luck with the kite " "ohhh" (but no luck)

And then parted from them to rest a bit in the hotel, with plans to meet up again with Cristina's cousin and Anthony that evening to go to a "roomba" in the Zona Rosa, going clubbing basically.



And so we did. They met us in front of our hotel around 22:00. Once again i took the minimal amount of things with me lest i be relieved of them during the night. We walked around the Zona trying to decide where to go in. Finally tried the place with the mariachi-dressed staff but that seemed more along the lines of like a Mexican hofbrau house. Second place we tried turned out to be just ideal though, just kind of contemporarily cozy and elegant. Cost us i think around $25 each to get in and then we had to buy a bottle (we chose a Venezuelan rum) for $70 to get a table on the second level. I don't think I've been clubbing in like twenty years. Anyway we just had fun dancing amongst ourselves. Here on the second level we were level with the elegant globular lights hanging over the second level, half the time there were live musicians down there. It was altogether very nice. I found myself i thinking I can't believe I'm here dancing with my gorgeous fiancee and her relatives, _our_ relatives in BOGOTA of all places. <3

At one point the MCs were hyping up the crowd and asking where people were from and the cheering when he called Venezuela was almost as loud as for Colombia.

At 03:00 the club closed down, we walked back to our hotel and Cristina's cousin and Anthony took a DiDi or taxi home.

[Originally posted August 22nd]

I'm desperately wading through waist deep freezing water in the claustrophic passagenway. The lights flicker. Waves barrel down the narrow hallway as gravity seems to be reverse itself, alternately gluing me to one wall, then I'm thrown at the other and so is the water, then I try to lunge forward as the hall hangs in zero gravity. The main lights go out leaving only the eerie red emergency lighting as I claw myself towards a companionway leading up to deck. As I emerge to the the screaming wind of deck I look up and see Adam Prokosh up the mast trying to cut away the mainsail, but as I watch he loses his grip and comes tumbling down, seeming to fly through the air in slow motion before hitting the deck, breaking his back.



Friday, September 27th - I wake up. It's just one month shy of seven years since the replica Bounty sank in hurricane Sandy. I was half the world away at the time, in subtropical Australia, but I didn't know which of friends were or were not no the ship. I watched the news all night, waiting for all the crew to be accounted for ... which never happened. 15 of 17 crewmembers were rescued from the sinking ship (Prokosh, the then-boyfriend now-husband of a former crewmate of mine did get off alive despite a broken back).
   When I think back to it now, my nerve-wracked all-night vigil is always interspersed with visions of the flooded belowdecks passageway, which was vividly described by survivors in the Coast Guard report, as well as Adam falling. Its been on my mind more lately because I've finally been "reading" about its namesake, the original Bounty. "Reading" with my ears as I drive anyway. I find listening to gripping audiobooks during drives weirdly imprints the key actions on the locations where I heard them. forever after now, the locations on the drive I undertook this weekend will be indelibly associated with locations in the story of the mutiny of the Bounty. Ah yes, Laver's Hill, where they set Bligh adrift in the longboat!

   Cook is quoted as saying, "Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go." and this weekend I vowed to follow in his footsteps by ambitiously driving west along the southern coastline of Australia until I reached the border with South Australia, which surely is as far as it's possible for man to go!



   We begin this modern voyage of discovery in my little weatherboard house in a small hamlet in the countryside. Birregurra, with a population of just around 800, on days like Friday morning rises like the island of avalon above a sea of fog in surrounding marshy lowlands, surmounted even with the imposing gothic spire of a church. Once I'd shaken off dreams of the Bounty I had my morning coffee in my adorably checkerboard-floored kitchen while thoughtfully looking at the fog out the window. Due to some big sports event it's a public holiday so I don't have to feel like I should be working. I messaged a friend who lives halfway to my destination to inquire if I could crash at his place this night, and if he had a coffee maker (many Australians, more savage than the cannibalistic "savages" described by Captain Cook, will serve you instant coffee with a straight face). He said I could and he did, but I packed my coffee and a french-press into my car with my other necessities because you can't be too careful.
   Next I went into my detached garage to get three cases each containing 20 500ml jars of honey and loaded them into my car. While in the garage I called out to Sancho, my resident possum, admonishing him not to have any parties while I was out, though he usually disregards such suggestions.



   My faithful vessel for this trip would be the USS Trilobite, a champagne colored honda civic that has severe neurological problems. The passenger side window doesn't work and 90% of the time none of the dashboard gauges work. A month after I had bought ole Trilobite, some uninsured maniacs had broadsided her in a parking lot, which, like the Permian Impact Event, threatened to extinct trilobites. The local mechanic declared her totaled, but through the American mafia I was able to get her repaired to a functional state. The original mechanic alleges there may be unknown damage to the engine due to the whole thing shifting during the impact, so on any long drive like this, in addition to flying blind as far as gauges are concerned, there's always a possibility of a sudden catastrophic failure or something. Good times.

   As I headed out of my village through a steady drizzle on the very familiar road west, I began Peter FitzSimmons' telling of the Bounty Mutiny. He begins, actually, aboard the HMS Resolution at Hawaii in 1779. The Resolution has been forced to return to Hawaii shortly after a departure, having broken a foremast. It is evident that they've already overstayed their welcome, and things are tense. A longboat is stolen, several boats are put out to look for it, and Captain Cook goes ashore to bring the paramount chief back to the Resolution. Cook intends to hold him until such time as the longboat is returned. I am intrigued, I know where this is going. I've heard references to the seminal event in the history of Pacific exploration in so many books but never a detailed account of it. I've read some of Peter FitzSimmons other books and have been impressed with his ability to bring thorough research together into a gripping story. One of the longboats commanded by one William Bligh, chief navigational officer aboard the Resolution, fires muskets at a native outrigger they are trying to stop, killing an important chief. This news is conveyed quickly across the island coast as Hawaiians call out the news and runners make for where they have seen a British landing party coming to their paramount chief. Cook is leading a willing Chief Kalaniʻōpuʻu by the hand towards the beach when the news reaches them and the chief refuses to go another step. As Cook tries to convince him to come an ever larger crowd of angry native Hawaiians gathers around them.

   Meanwhile, I pass through the nearby town of Colac. Colac is the larger town Birregurra orbits like a habitable moon around a gas giant. Like many Australian towns the shopfronts along mainstreet all have big facades like a historic town of the American West, but there never seem to be any redeeming cultural events in Colac or reasons to go there other than for groceries. One mystery about Colac that has always perplexed me is it's actually on a lakefront but makes no usage of it at all. There's no restaurants, bars, or anything fronting on the lake, it's just, a back street and there's the lake.
   On this occasion I only get gas in Colac, filling up because I simply don't know how much gas I currently have. Then I continue. The main highway becomes Colac's main street but in the center of town I turn left to head south to the coast. Soon I'm out of town driving a road that slowly curves through towering messmate stringybark trees, a kind of eucalypt whose bark hangs off it in long fibrous hairy looking ribbons. For a few miles south of Colac the trunks are blackened from a recent fire and I always feel a tinge of guilt when I notice this, because I remember seeing the call out for that fire on the fire brigade pager but I was busy at the time. I glance guiltily at the yellow firefighting gear in my back seat.

   Meanwhile Captain Cook has realized the situation is worsening quickly and decided they need to make a calm dignified withdrawal to the boats. It's unclear what exactly happened next but it appears Captain Cook pushed or shoved a prominent noble who was getting in his face, the noble shoved Cook back, and he fell to his knees in the shallow surf, and the noble's attendant than stabbed him through the back with a dagger they had, ironically, gotten in trade from Cook's expedition. A general hand-to-hand melee ensued between Cook's companions and the natives. Most of his companions made it away in the boats but four royal marines were left bobbing in the red surf alongside the famous navigator. In the melee and from musket-fire from other longboats just offshore dozens of natives were also killed.

   Cristina and I had planned a dream vacation to Cancun. But our dreams of Mayan pyramids turned out to be pyramids of sand, obliterated as soon as I arrived, leaving me chasing after her across the Caribbean. Here's the story:

   Weeks earlier, we had spent hours choosing the perfect hotels and plans. Me at my computer with a view out my window to the crisp winter Saturday morning of the southern edge of Australia, her simultaneously in the humid summer warmth of a tenth floor apartment in the capital of Venezuela on a Friday night. We talked eagerly of scuba diving with whalesharks and turtles, of Mexican food and tequila, of the ancient pyramids at Chichen Itza and Tulum -- we even found a beautiful hotel on the beach within the national park containing the Tulum pyramids. There was one detail she didn't know though. One that caused me a great deal of anxiety I couldn't share with her. I would have a very shiny diamond ring worth several times more than I'd ever carried on my person before. What if I fell asleep in Guadalajara airport and someone rifled my bag? What if someone in airport security saw it in the x-ray and had their way with my bag while I was still stuck on the far side of security? Should I risk having it on me, and being pickpocketed, or have it in my bag and risk the bag being snatched? I was very very anxious about these possibilities.

   A week earlier, on her birthday, I had posted to facebook: "Happy birthday to my darling, my princess, my moon and stars, my pineapple, Cristina Santiago Febres. No distance is too great, no government so strong, that it can compete with our love and keep us apart <3 <3 <3"
   Little did I know I was apparently tempting fate to put that to the test.

   And to quote myself the afternoon before the flight began: This afternoon I fly to Guadalajara, Mexico, where I arrive at 11:46pm, only to depart there at 6am for Cancun. Which might sound like a miserable layover, but any other combination of flights would have had me arrive in Cancun after Cristina and I'd rather spend six hours in airport hell than lose a minute with her

August 30th, 18:31 - The trip began well enough. I was flying Volaris, some kind of Mexican budget airline with a logo like a heavily pixilated diamond, which immediately conveys this sense that somehow they didn't have the budget it make their logo any less pixilated. But it didn't feel punitively budget like Spirit, dangerously underfunded like Air Asia X, or Ebenezer Scroogingly parsimonious like every US mainstream carrier, just kind of a cheery "we're doing the best with what we've got!" kind of vibe. I didn't feel uncomfortable and all the passengers seemed unusually cheerful, I've never seen so many passengers happily chatting with eachother.
   The check-in guys at LAX were casual and chummy, giving me the number of a taxi driver one of them had liked in Cancun during his own visit there a week earlier. I was informed that upon arriving in Guadalajara, I'd have to collect my luggage and exit the controlled area before checking in for the next leg, which prospect left me concerned they wouldn't let me in, and I'd be stuck outside the terminal overnight, clutching my bag terrified to fall asleep for a moment.

   As I walked up to the Volaris check-in desks they appeared deserted with no one near them, but then a staffmember who had been headed toward the exit saw me, came over, and checked my bag for me. How nice! I asked if I could check in yet and she sadly shook her head saying in broken English,
   "No, they probably won't allow it until 3"
   "Hmmm, well I'll try anyway" I said
   And she smiled, shrugged and said "maybe."
   I walked over to where the doors to the gates were, they were all closed, with half a dozen uniformed security standing about in front, it really didn't look promising. I approached the nearest one with my boarding pass out, a hopeful smile, and some gestures conveying I hoped to go through. The guards quickly opened the door and waved me through. The guards at the x-ray machine were similarly obliging as I went through it by myself and I emerged into the vast almost entirely empty terminal feeling amazed by how friendly everyone in Mexico seemed to be.
   Unfortunately they had the air conditioning blasting so I spent the night being very uncomfortably cold, far too cold to even contemplate getting some sleep. Around 4am I thought I should get some food and went looking around: Chili's, Carl's Jr, Denny's, Johnny Rockets, Burger King, Starbucks, California Pizza Kitchen, Subway, another Chili's... I finally settled on a pizza place and only after I ordered did I see an actual Mexican cuisine place, and it even had my favorite, chilaquiles, on the menu! Oh well, I'd have plenty of time for more Mexican food... or so I thought.

August 31st, 08:34 - Arrived in Cancun. Cristina's flight was due in at 12:44, so I lingered in the baggage claim until noon so I would still be in a secured area, not out there where someone could snaffle my priceless cargo. While I was waiting I was informed payment had come for my latest article and it was actually a surprisingly decent amount. I was about to see my wonderful girlfriend, AND I was getting decent pay for writing, life was going suspiciously well. After I stepped out I was having trouble finding international arrivals so I had to ask a guy hawking taxis, who amiably proceeded to guide me the 100 or so yards to the correct place. I was bracing myself for him to want a tip for this (as happens in places like Egypt in such circumstances) but once he had determined I was in the right place he bid me goodbye and went back to where he had been, leaving me once again feeling like everyone here was so nice.


Cristina inbound to Cancun

13:31 - she texts me she has arrived.

13:41 - I text her laughingly about these taxi hawkers out here who tried to tell me the bus I know to be $10 is $40 in order to sell me on their $45 shuttle. They had also tried to sell me on a $189 taxi.

14:05 - the nearby taxi hawkers are asking me where my girlfriend is, since I've been waiting two hours now. One of them, a guy in a red shirt, mentions calling immigration but I say it's okay. Maybe she's just getting cleaned up in the restroom before seeing me or something. You know, girls.

14:07 - she texts she is still in immigration, they have taken her passport, they don't believe we're in a relationship. I'm extremely alarmed but still optimistic that it's just a momentary hold-up that will be cleared up. I had been trying not to talk too much to these hawkers since they had tried to misrepresent the bus cost, but now, since the one had mentioned calling immigration, I start trying to explain to them that she's stuck in immigration. One of the hawkers, an androgenous fellow in a tan shirt, shows me the courtesy phone on the wall where we are (just outside where international arrivals leave the secured area.). and calls immigration for me. He tells me they said to wait half an hour and call back, "and they will do interview."

14:30 - We call back but there's no answer, we proceed to call back every five minutes for the next three hours, alternating me and that same guy, but immigration never again answers.
   The taxi hawkers also start calling out "Cristina! Cristina!" every time they see a young lady approaching the exit that could plausibly be her, which is cute.

16:06 - I get the next text from Cristina, after not hearing from her for two hours: "Buscame en migracion" - "come to me in immigration," but of course I can't get in. A simple little plea I heartbreakingly can't fulfill.

16:30 - No me dejaron entrar.
Vuelve a los Estados Unidos no te quedes en Cancun.
Me hacen regresar a Caracas
😡😡😡😡😡

(They did not let me in
(Come back to the United States, do not stay in Cancun)
They make me return to Caracas)

   This is devastating news, the whole vacation has just been annihilated. $1000 in hotel bookings, $1500 in flights, and more importantly the only chance this year Cristina and I have to see eachother. It's been 12 hours since I've eaten, 33 hours since I've gotten any decent sleep, and 381 days since I've seen Cristina.

   I'd find out later the immigration officer told her he didn't believe we were in a relationship, and told Cristina that I "might kill her," so they were deporting her for her own safety. Additionally he told her, in a very haughty and conceited manner, that it isn't Mexican culture to meet people online the way we had.
   Meanwhile, if I could just get them to allow me to come in for an interview or to exchange documents with Cristina (she was bringing certified copies of identity documents so we could lodge a “registered domestic relationship” in Australia), my plan was to whip out the ring and go on a knee right there in the immigration office. Let them dispute the relationship then!

   As soon as I show the text to the taxi hawkers they spring into action. The original guy in the red shirt reappears like a genie saying he knows someone in immigration, and calls him, hands his cell phone to me. I talk to Ernesto, an immigration supervisor who is not on duty but will be tomorrow morning at 9:00. He says at that time they can do the interviews again and I can come in to be interviewed as well and meet with her "and we can get it sorted out." After I get off the phone, red shirt guy asks "how much did he want?" while rubbing his thumb across his forefingers in the international sign for illicit money.
   "he didn't mention" I say
   "oh," he says looking like he realizes he said too much. Not a second later he and the other guy are asking me what I'm going to do, where I'm going to go.
   "My original hotel I guess" I say. Immediately they pressure me to take the $189 taxi. I absolutely refuse this but am amenable to their $45 shuttle because it seems less stressful and quicker than waiting for a bus and at this point I don't want any more stress in my life at all. Literally without giving me a second to think between one thing and another red shirt guy starts badgering me to get some pesos "because it will be a better deal." I let him lead me to the ATM inside and ask him how much he thinks I'll need, thinking he might know the scale of the necessary bribe. He's pressuring me to get a lot out "because you'll have to buy your girlfriend her flight back to Caracas" which sounds alarmingly unfair to me, and in the end I only get just a little more than should cover a shuttle to the hotel and back, 2000 pesos ($102)
   Emerging, they try to bundle me into the shuttle bus as quick as they can (“hurry! Hurry! We have other passengers we need to pick up!”)
   “how much will it be?” I keep asking, but
   “We'll figure it out in the bus we have to go!” they say. Finally I stop at the door and insist they tell me before I get in. In Egypt I learned how getting into a cab is tantamount to consenting to whatever preposterous rate they will later announce, and even if it's moments later you are now moving and will be at a severe disadvantage to disentangle yourself from the “agreement.”
   “In pesos it will be...” the tan shirt clad hawker twiddles a calculator seriously and says to me in a straight face “4000 pesos.”
   Misconversion of currency is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and I had strongly suspected their motivation for pushing me to pay in pesos was to accomplish exactly this. Being so exhausted, if I had been a dorky tourist on my first time abroad maybe I'd have fallen for this, but I'll never be so fatigued to take a shady taxi hawker's word for a conversion, and I had already calculated $45 to pesos, and the answer was 900. So I exclaimed “WHAT! ABSOLUTELY NOT! It's 900! I'm going with someone else!” and made to turn away. Tan shirt looked alarmed and quickly chattered into his walkie talkie before explaining
   “oh I miscalculated! yes it's 900!” I handed over the pesos and received from him a receipt before getting in. Really I should have turned my back on these shady poltroons but did I mention I was very fatigued, and kept thinking “this is surely the last trick they'll play.”
   They bustle me into their taxi shuttle all in a hurry, a few minutes go by, and then Red shirt comes back, saying “we don't have any other passengers, so for only 500 more pesos we'll take you right to your hotel. I quickly calculated that to $25. I already knew it was a $10 taxi drive from the Tulum city center to my hotel. To have one complete trip sounded very nice at this point though, since I just wanted to get to the hotel and be done with it, so I agreed and paid this.
   Finally we pulled away, away from the rapacious scamming jackals, next stop my hotel!
   A few miles down the road we pulled into a gas station. “We will switch to smaller car” the driver explained. Okay. Fine, that seems reasonable. After a few minutes a sedan parked next to us and we moved my luggage to this car, bid goodbye to the first taxi driver and departed in the sedan being driven by a smallish man in what looked like a white chef's jacket.
   A few minutes later, “where are we going?” he asks me in broken English. So I pull up the hotel address on my phone and show it to him.
   "That's in Tulum!!” he exclaims, seemingly surprised despite that we're headed that direction already, “it's far!”
   “Si.” I say firmly, wary of this turning into more shenanigans.
   “It will cost much. 900 pesos” he explains.
    “I already paid!” I exclaim in exasperation. “Look, here's my receipt!”
   He pulls over to the side of the road. It is dark now and the highway is bounded on either side by walls of jungle.
   ”This receipt has no details on it” he points out. “this is worthless.” Sure enough, while it looks official and has the details for the airport itself it does not designate a specific person or company responsible.
   ”Call them” I say. But he claims he doesn't have their numbers. Ultimately after some more wrangling I had no choice but to pay 900 more pesos. Or else, be abandoned on a dark highway in Mexico surrounded by jungle with the most valuable object I've ever possessed in my backpack. So altogether I ended up paying $45+$25+$45, ie $115. I console myself that this is actually not far off from what I'm told the fair taxi rate for that trip is ($100) so despite shamelessly abasing themselves, their filthy souls didn't retail for much. Really it isn't even so much about the money so much as being already so fatigued physically and emotionally, to have to continually remain highly on my guard against these reprobate tactics was really really unpleasant, felt like being kicked while I was down.

   Even once we had sorted out payments the driver couldn't seem to figure out the extremely simple directions for the hotel. It came up fine by me by typing it into google maps but he couldn't find it on his own phone. So I showed him the map on my phone, it was incredibly simple, turn left on the first left in Tulum, follow it to the end, turn left, continue to the hotel, but he looked at it uncomprehendingly. HOW HARD CAN THIS BE? Finally I changed my map from “north always up” to that cartoonish front-forward view and he was able to comprehend it. We turned off the main highway in Tulum, proceeded down a smaller road for about ten minutes, turned left onto a road like tunnel in the jungle, and slowly looking at hotel signs until we got to our hotel. Even though the driver had been nice other than insisting I needed to pay him, I wasn't about to take his number down for further use.

   I flopped down in a chair at the Hotel Diamente K reception desk (an open air office sheltered under a palm leaf cabana roof but with no walls.), and the receptionist, a friendly looking guy around my age, smilingly said “so, tell me what happened.” It was nice to finally unburden myself to someone not trying to scam me.

   The receptionist gave me a brief tour of the labyrinthine hotel grounds, snaking between the irregularly shaped cottages, huts, and casitas of the grounds, on paths of sand, to show me the lovely little room we had booked. It all looked so lovely.
   I locked the ring in the safe, and then went to find my way to the restaurant, as I hadn't eaten in 18 hours. I became lost, every direction I tried to go on the hotel grounds seemingly coming to the little beach, waves crashing in from the dark open sea. Finally I came to the restaurant and ordered some shrimp tacos (only Mexican food I succeeded in having in Mexico). The restaurant was very cute, spacious and rustic, with beams of bare wood, the underthatch of the palm roof visible as a ceiling, the sides open to the sound of the crashing waves. It was so, muy romantico .. my eyes began to well up thinking of Cristina in some cell in the airport.

Just then I received a series of texts with the distinctive jingle I had assigned to Cristina:
20:15 - Ahora estoy en el avion vuelvo a panama
Ven a panama [come to Panama]
Ya estoy en panama
Mi amor I am in panana
I am in panama.

   Presumably until this moment she also hadn't heard anything from me since she had told me she was being deported, and as far as she'd known up till now I may have returned to the states. We were able to talk only until she lost the half hour of free wifi there. I was able to ascertain that she was in Panama but couldn't leave the airport.

   I immediately booked the next available flight to Panama City (departing 7:50am), despite not knowing if she'd still be there, or if I'd be able to see her (arriving with Panama as a final destination I might not be able to get into the airside of the terminal where she was, or she might be in some sort of custody even if I did). It would be a leap in the dark. I found the friendly receptionist again (after more wandering through hotel grounds that seemed to defy cartographical physics), and he arranged for a cousin of his who is a taxi driver to drive me to the airport at 4am for $120 ($100 +$20 for being the middle of the night) (the cousin of the hotel receptionist is a usual source for dependable taxi drivers anywhere). I then went to sleep, sadly alone in the muy romantico little room.

September 1st, 03:30 - The stress of the situation allowed me to jump to wakefulness as soon as my alarm went off. Promptly got the ring out of the safe where I'd had a deep paranoia of somehow forgetting it. With all the lights out, the hotel was even more of a labyrinth, fortunately after my course had as usual led to to the crashing waves, a night watchman with a flashlight guided me to reception where my taxi was waiting. I left the hotel without ever having seen it by the light of day. This driver was nice and honest and I hope I haven't misplaced his card in case god forbid I'm ever back in this godforsaken place.

04:06 - Cristina texts me that she has just landed in Caracas, Venezuela. Immigration there assures her that "this is normal,” regarding getting sent back. She had until now thought I'd maybe stay in Cancun or return to the states, and was overjoyed, she tells me, when I now told her to find the next available flight to anywhere she thought she could get into.

05:15 -While I was in line to check in to my flight in Cancun she told me she had found round trip tickets to the Dominican Republic for $460, leaving at 11 this same morning. I told her to book it! Now we just had to figure out how to pay for it from my card.
   Half an hour later I got to the front of the line to check in to my Panama bound flight, and then asked the check in guy if I could book the next available onward flight from Panama City to Dominican Republic. He seemed to find this slightly odd but nevertheless clicked away on his computer and reported it would be 16,735 pesos... which sounded like a very large amount. Quick math said it was $862, which makes it almost as much as my Melbourne-LAX round trip for a one way. Also we had not as yet managed to pay for Cristina's ticket to DR, which if we couldn't manage, this ticket would be useless. Nevertheless, I said yes, book it. Another leap in the dark. For the next 2.5 hours this could have left me with an expensive flight to nowhere but at 7:25 we succeeded in getting her flight paid for as well, we were both booked for the DR!

10:15 I arrive in Panama City as she is checking into her flight out of Caracas. She took off around 10:50. I am left hoping she will make it into the DR. I didn't book a return flight precisely because I wouldn't know if I'd be immediately bouncing out of there in pursuit of her or staying. Dramatically, she lands in DR just moments (12:51) before I take off (12:53), before she gets through immigration, so I know she landed but don't find out if she made it through immigration before I take off.

12:53 I depart for DR to arrive 16:17. I land there after an uneventful flight and anxiously turn on my phone … to find out she successfully got through and is waiting for me outside arrivals!



   In stark contrast to our hours-in-the-planning original vacation, we were now in the Dominican Republic's Airport of the Americas with our arms around eachother and no further plans at all beyond that. What now?
   I knew someone (Rafael) from the Partners for the Americas aid organization in Dominican Republic, I asked him if he had a hotel recommendation and he provided one. We called, they had vacancies. A guy by the airport door said “taxi?” and we asked him how much. $35, which sounded good from what I remembered from last time we were here (googling just now, “taxis from the airport to any hotel in Santo Domingo should be between $40-$45”), so we went with him, and verily there were no shenanigans. God bless places that aren't Cancun!



September 2nd - The next day I was googling hotels in Punta Cana, the other major tourist destination in Dominican Republic. Google inevitably brings up the tripadvisor and booking.com hotel lists and going down the first two pages of both those lists I was finding nothing but blandly similar looking luxury resorts. I messaged Rafael if he had any recommendations elsewhere on the island and he recommended Las Terrenas (“Cristina, he recommends the tyrannosaurus”). I googled this, and at the top of the page a beautiful resort appeared, Casa Coson, with pictures of a colonial style building and some hut shaped smaller buildings, palm trees, pools. It looked wonderful. I showed it to Cristina (“siii”), and we booked it!

   We arrived at Casa Coson after dark, around 8pm, they do not have 24 hour reception, but the security guard ("Marte") was very friendly and showed us to our “villa,” which it turns out was shaped like a beautiful giant two story hut (I have an inordinate love for huts), with the bedroom as kind of a second floor loft, and nice living-room area in the front, and also a kitchen and very nice bathroom. I literally broke into a sweat and started pulling up the reservation on my phone afraid I'd accidentally booked some $300 a night place, but no, this was indeed what we had booked for $85 a night!
   The receptionist, Gail ("Ga-eel"), appeared and greeted us, and the security guard volunteered to drive to the nearby town to bring us food (fried chicken and beer). He returned, counting back our change seemingly very anxious for us to know it was all accounted for, and the chicken he brought was actually really good.

   That evening, on the soft sand of the beach in front of the hotel, under the countless stars of a sky without light pollution, beside the infinite ocean, as the waves crashed a melodious rhythm, I went on one knee and asked Cristina if she would marry me (“Siiiiii!”).

https://instagram.com/p/B2Hy2y1HHnL

September 3rd -By the morning's light we marveled at the beautiful grounds of the hotel. We couldn't believe how nice it was! We sat in the breakfast patio and enjoyed a delicious breakfast of fresh fruit and made-to-order omelette, then we had a powwow with Gail the receptionist about activities. We could ride horses to a waterfall and go on a snorkeling excursion to some nearby islands (in the end we were unable to coordinate with either of two local diving companies in the short time we had). For both we should start earlier in the morning so for this day we would just be bumming around the hotel grounds … which was in no way suffering!
   We swam in the ocean, walked on the beach, swam in the pool, lounged by the pool, and had a delicious lunch (churrasco – grilled beef) and margaritas – the owners (a matriarch-like old woman and her husband) appeared to be celebrating a birthday in the restaurant at the time and poured champagne for all present, how festive! As there were only one or two other couples in the hotel it really felt like we had the place to ourselves and were being personally waited on by some eight staff.
   The next day we enjoyed the lovely horseback trek to a beautiful waterfall. Swam around in the pool below it for an hour. Had pina coladas in actual pineapples from a remote little cafe overlooking it. Swam in the ocean in the later afternoon, and had an amazing shrimp dinner at the hotel that night. The quality of all these meals to say nothing of the general quality of the hotel has left me feeling like it should probably classified as five star!



September 5th - Sadly all too quickly we had to head back to the capital, since the shenanigans with Mexico had eaten up a day and a half from the front end of our already-short vacation (originally 7 days), and because Cristina hadn't been able to find a flight back on the 7th as originally planned for, we lost a day on the back end as well, ending on the 6th.
   We needed another hotel in the capital, Santo Domingo, for this last night, and the one we'd stayed in on arrival, while acceptable for business purposes, was a bit dull to be entirely pleasing to us for our purposes. I hate looking up hotels on my phone though -- if I'm planning a serious vacation I like to do it on my computer with 40 tabs open. However I remembered after last year I had written a travel piece for the LA Times (promptly rejected by them), and the format had called for hotel recommendations! I asked my mom to send it back to me since I'd sent it to her for her usual merciless red-pen treatment. Sure enough I had recommended two hotels in the Zona Colonia. Not knowing anything else about them, knowing that I had recommended them was enough for me! One didn't have any vacancies but the other did, so I booked for us at the Hotel Luca.
   This hotel had an extremely chic and trendy looking lobby and atrium, a rather disappointing breakfast (omelets cost extra?!), unimpressive room (possibly just overshadowed completely by the super nice atrium building your hopes up before you arrive in a very mundane little room), but it totally redeemed itself with a rooftop jacuzzi! The receptionist emphasized so strongly that we could book it for privacy ("you and your wife will want privacy of course ::creepy knowing smile::") that, though we did book it, we were possessed of a fear that other people had been making the sexo in it. But we were also allowed to order drinks and food up to it so we ended our vacation in a rooftop jacuzzi with a view to the illuminated oldest cathedral in the Americas not far off, eating pizza and drinking mojitos!
   Later when Cristina was sending some pictures to her friends I heard her mumble to herself “best vacation ever!” and I smiled remembering what a disaster it had begun as.



Expect another entry focusing more on the details of our time in the Dominican Republic, as this is kind of a fast forward version just to counterbalance how bad the vacation began. Tune in to next entry to find out how we got lost in the middle of the island, more details about the proposal, and more!

August 15th, Dominican Republic - Bright and early we embarked on a minivan shuttlebus at our hotel, that had already been collecting tourists from neighboring hotels, and I was slightly irked that the available seats weren't side by side. So for a precious hour of our vacation we were separated. Finally we turned off the big main highway to take a small road that wound through walls of thick scrub until we came to the cute little coastal town of La Romana. Here were joined a whole bunch of other tourists who had been disgorged by other minibuses, and were ferried out by small boats that could beach on the white sand out to bigger catamarans that could not come in. From thence, with despacito blasting on the sound system we and about three other large catamarans departed as a fleet bound for the Isla Saona.


Look look, she's Cristina, I'm Kris, and the boat behind us is the Krister! (click for bigger version because I know you need to confirm this!)

   Plastic cups of rum and coke were passed around freely ... and I dreaded to see them soon flying into the water by the score but I actually didn't see this happen at all. The only thing that I saw go into the water was my own sunglasses, which leapt from where I'd hooked them over the top button of my shirt, and scuttled across the deck like a crab to dive into the water before I even knew what happened. Soon after getting underway the crew raised the sails and doused the engine, much to my pleasure. The sun was bright and warm, the air was fresh, Dominican and latin music continued to play festively on the sound system, many people danced, the rum and coke flowed. I could definitely understand why this was rated "#1 of 546 things to do in Dominican Republic" by Trip Advisor!
   Other passengers seemed to once again be from all over the map, but Americans United Statesians seemed very underrepresented, with only one or two people seemeing to come from there (actually the only one I can positively remember talking to was a US/Dominican citizen and had moved back to DR from San Diego because it was "too expensive" there). I guess they prefer to go to more developed Caribbean countries?


I really like her sort of Mona Lisa smile here (:

   Also on board was a professional photographer who makes his money taking pictures no doubt of couples like us and then selling us the photos. I felt he was quite alright at it and later on the beach where he had his laptop set up under the palm trees on an otherwise wholly electricity-less undeveloped island he burned his 46 pictures of us onto a CD, which I paid for and then wondered where the heck I'd find a CD reader in this day and age.


Though I quite rather think we got some cute ones ourselves

   Finally we pulled up to the turqouise waters around a classic Caribbean island of flat aspect with nothing but palm trees and white sand beach as far as the eye could see in either direction. The sails were doused, anchor dropped, and once again the smaller boats nosed up like ramoras to take us all aboard. The square nosed little landing craft took us the short distance to the beach and off the front end we were like storming the beaches of Normandy! Okay maybe not quite. Too soon?



   The beach had many rustic cabanas and beach chairs. We were told that lunch (bbq, included) would be at 1:00 and we'd depart at 3:30. Until then we were set free! The sand was hot on our feet, the beach was beautiful. We splashed out into the water, which was crystal clear and a pleasant temperature. While lovingly twirling her around in the weightlessness of the water I brought up something that had been on my mind -- let's make this officially official official. You know, "facebook official." She readily agreed, I think we hardly needed to have a talk about it at this point, but clarity of communication is really key. And these crystal clear waters seemed conducive to clarity ;)

   In what seemed like no time we saw people queuing up for lunch and we went ashore for feeding. There was a picnic table just beside the food table that was almost abandoned because of all the bees around it. Yes honeybees, not yellowjackets. Someone must have spilled a lot of rum and coke on the table (since bees don't care about your meat, only sugar). She seemed unafraid of the bees herself so we sat at this conveniently vacant table laughing at our good fortune. Even, I was about to gently remove a bee from her cup and she said "no, es lindo," -- she knows the way into my heart!
   Food was some delicious bbqed chicken, pasta and watermelon. Also rum and coke continued to be free flowing.


I really wish we had gotten the photographer man with his relaly good camera to take a picture of us in about this location. He stopped taking photos once we got off the boat though. We took one with her camera but I wish I had realized her phone camera really isn't very good, we should have at least used mine! :-X

   We then resumed our frolicking in the delightful waters until we saw all the tender boats pulling up their anchors and starting their engines. I thought we'd return to the big catamaran but instead, once boarded on the little vessel we motored up to coast of the island to a place where there had once been a big dock and now just the pilings remained, and we were given snorkles (I dreaded to wonder if it had been cleaned since someone else's mouth had been on it) and told we had half an hour to see all the fish here. Cristina, not a swimmer, kept her lifejacket on like most of the passengers, and I towed her out of the crowd in the immediate vicinity of the boat like some kind of adorable gorgeous little barge. I think she really enjoyed it and maybe next vacation we should book a scuba diving excursion .... but maybe we should work on her swimming first.

   Once we reboarded we headed up the coast a little further and were let out again in a place where the shallow water extended really far out from the island and everyone frolicked about in the waist deep water here. By now many strangers had met eachother and there was more joking around and chatting between groups that hadn't come together, the alcohol having been flowing all day probably helped as well --in fact now they seemed anxious to empty their rum stores, wading out to us with cups--, and everyone was very friendly and having a grand old time. Then we re-boarded, returned all the way back to La Ramada at high speed by motor in this craft (but still with the despacito and other latin music -- we joked they only had once CD as we soon recognized the same songs returning, but no one minded). Bus back to the hotel once again I was unable to sit beside Cristina, hey not to sound clingy but we were getting down to 18 hours left together for who knows how long!



   That evening we got all dolled up (or she did, I am like an undomesticated beast that cannot be dolled up) to finally go out to that hotel discotheque, but ultimately ended up chatting in the deck chairs by the beach. I'm not one normally to weigh in on fashion but I just loved her outfit: long skirt, corsetty shirt, long jangly earrings ... ::heart eyes::


Playing up our sad faces at parting

August 16th - Her flight was at 11:40 and mine at 12:40. Despite having more than enough time we planned to arrive at the airport at 8:00 "because this airport is very lazy," as she said. Sure enough it well and truly took a very long time for her to check in with the Venezualan airline, which seemed to distinctly not have its shit together. Then we stood in line at COPA, the Panamanian airline, for my ticket, which was faster but we were among the last in line since we'd been busy with the other. Only after she had checked her checked luggage did we realize she still had the honey I'd brought her in her carry on. We were both very afraid it would get confiscated at security, since honey is considered a liquid and can't be carried on in quantities over 2oz ... when her bag made it through the x-ray without being stopped I wanted to rejoice and give her a high five but like smugglers we had to furtively hide our joy until we were well away. And THEN when we sit at our gates (our flights were side by side gates using the same seating area!) she pulled out bottles of water and a soda for each of us from her carry on ::facepalm:: if I had had any idea I would have told her to make sure she didn't have anything ELSE that could hae gotten security's attention on her bag! Good work security ahahaha. Kindly airline official allowed us to hug until the last possible minute after everyone else had boarded and they were closing the gate. Despite her flight being officially an hour before mine it had been a delayed and then I had literally just enough time to walk over to my gate, stand for maybe two and a half minutes, and board my plane. The end.

   My flight was at 23:40 on Tuesday, so I had all day to get ready, which was plenty of time, but also I had a lot of random errands to do beforehand so I felt pretty anxious and stressed all day .. as is usual before a big trip.
   An annoying note is that I couldn't find any of the three external phone batteries I have anywhere. I use at least one every single day so it was a bit unusually irksome that not one of them could be found. We swung by work on the way to the airport though and I did find one but I do hope I eventually find the others as one is a big $80 one.
   The only other thing that qualifies I think as having forgotten something is that though I grabbed my DSLR camera, I forgot to check its charge, which turned out to be at completely un-charged, and I forgot the battery charger. So I'll have to pick one up at a nikon store at some point if I want to use it at all. Also I don't know if it was missing the lense-cap when I picked it up, I would think I would have noticed, but by the time I was checking in at the airport the camera no longer had a lensecap. I had a lense-cap walk off on me in Tanzania once and the lense quickly became smudgy enough to ruin every picture (and that was the trip in which my phone was later stolen so these two events conspired to leave me with no photos but I digress).

   But now here's the big mystery and inconvenience. My friend Ben kindly gave me a ride to the airport. We both very distinctly remember, just after I had stepped out of his car, him handing me my reading glasses saying "don't forget your glasses." A literal minute later when I got into the check in line I realizde my glasses were not on me anywhere nor in my backpack. I quickly bailed out of line to go retrace my steps and they weren't on the ground anywhere along the way or where I'd gotten out. Where they got to is a complete mystery to me, they completely vaporized!
   I looked for reading glasses at the shops in the airport but couldn't find any. Usually I spend a significant number of hours reading on trips like this but I really can't read without glasses any more so that was a bit torturous. ):


   Flight from Melbourne to Fiji went from 2340 Melbourne time to 0630 Fiji time, which, being as Fiji is +3 hours on Melbourne means the flight was 3 hours? And they spent an hour at least with the lights on serving us dinner and all so basically I got no sleep that night.

   At Fiji airport one walks through open-air walkways to the terminal, and even at 6:30 it was a nice pleasant temperature. In the terminal building a trio of fijian men were playing ukuleles and handing big pretty white flowers to young ladies to put in their hair. Welcome to Fiji! Having read that you can book day trip tours at the airport instead of bruskly brushing off the tour agent who solicited me as I wandered aimlessly, after an initial gut reaction to do exactly that I was like "oh, actually, I want to book a tour!" so like a trap door spider dragging its pray into its burrow he took me into their tour office.. where they put a necklace of shells around my neck.

   They had a number of tour options. Of course they started with their most expensive one, an island tour for $264. And I was shamelessly like "soo what do you have thats cheaper?" Their cheapest thing was a tour around Nadi (the capitol) for like $110 but it sounded kind of dull, markets and city landmarks don't excite me much. There were a number of different options in the $150 range. I forget what exactly they all were, though there were some ziplines and a hot spring / mud pool and I think I tried to book one involving caves but since no one else was taking that one that day they didn't want to run it for one person. So I ended up booking the "coastal tour" that visited some WWII fortifications and some sand dunes. I think it was supposed to be $120ish AND the tour guide paid for my lunch and a beer saying I could just pay him back for everything in one lump at the end, which sounded good though I suspected maybe it was an excuse to add things up with fuzzy math to an inordinately high number.... but in the end he only asked me for $100! AND, I was the only person on the tour!

   So yeah my tour guide was a young fellow, aged 26 to be precise. We drove from place to place in a nice little mini-van. He was very nice and friendly and... well I get the impression he is verrrry friendly with the lady tourists -- I think he relished having a youngish guy tourist to who he could regale about his exploits because it sounds like he's quite the satyr! Regularly going above and beyond sacrificing his personal evenings to the constant demands of foreign women ::shakes head pityingly:: #neocolonialism

   The WWII bunkers weren't terribly exciting, I've seen plenty of bigger bunker complexes on the California coast, but it was nice to enjoy the view from there. Fiji really is a gorgeous place. The temperature all day was in the 70s with a pleasant breeze and sunny skies. Ground was covering in luxurious grass everywhere, palm trees grew picturesquely all about. Island paradise it truly is.

   For lunch he asked if I wanted a "tourist lunch" or a "local lunch." I would Moderately have gone with the latter anyway but he laughingly noted that the "tourist lunch" is much much more expensive.

   So we stopped in at a little food counter attached to a grocery store, each got a plate with some stewy chicken and a big heap of rice. I was more than I could eat! And for $2.50 each. Also there was no room at the benches but two old guys eagerly made room for us and tried to speak to me in a friendly manner in their extremely broken English. This cemented my opinion that Fijians seem to be a very friendly lot. I mean I feel like everyone "is friendly" everywhere but they did seem on a whole a really quite friendly lot.

   Next we went to these big sand dunes. I was expecting just like, dunes, but they were actually mostly overgrown with thick foliage so it was quite lovely. Some dunes at the end were bare sand and they were really quite massive.



   After this we both agreed it was time for a beer. At first he was trying to be well behaved and not have a beer since he was working but he eventually broke down to the age old reasoning of "just one wouldn't hurt." They came out ice cold like ice was Figuratively forming on the glasses. I wouldn't expect good beer from a small island nation but, and maybe its just because it was ice cold and I was really in the mood, but I found this "Fiji Bitter" beer to be really quite good!


   From there that was apparently the end of the tour. There was a waterfall around there but when I inquired about it he said ti would cost $75 (claiming that was out of his hands, the cost the villagers charge), and I decided much as I like waterfalls it could hardly be worth $75. I still had all day left on my layover (flight out at 20:00) but the tour seemed to be over. He recommended I hang out at a privately run "transit lounge" which would cost me $20 and at first I was opposed to this but then I thought about spending the next six hours in an airport terminal and $20 seemed worthwhile to escape that. It was a very peaceful place full of soothing music and friendly staff, and I even got a complimentary foot massage (I guess the place is also a massage school and many westerners were coming in just for massages ... and no not that kind of massages get your mind out of the gutter!)


   Caught flight out with no incident. On my flight were 70 American highschool students who had apparently been part of some programme called "Rural Pathways" in which they spent two weeks studying the Fijian reefs and scuba diving and studying marine pollution and such. Sounds pretty fun! Also probably expensive - I cynically noted they all seemed at least middle class, and white. Also weirdly 90% female (of whom 90% were wearing yoga pants, apparently the young lady's traveling attire de jour). These 70 teenagers completely filled the aircraft cabin in my area, and tittered away like a tree full of lorikeets (which is to say, fairly a cacophony of tittering).

   Fiji airlines movie selection really not great. Aaand I couldn't read because I still didn't have reading glasses.

   Arrived home, picked up by my parents, went straight to In-N-Out burger, am living happily ever after! Sitting at the table in my parents back yard reading in the warm summer evening light at 7:30pm, my coworker in Australia reported it was a high of 39 and thick fog!

Fiji Pictures!

Saturday, February 23rd, 1856 - the small schooner comes into the cove and luffs up, the small experienced crew needing just a few gestures from the captain for directions. Amidships the prisoners are lined up on deck, their chains clanking, under the supervision of red coated soldiers. The forested hills surrounding the cove are starkly beautiful, but also cold and imposing. From the jumble of buildings that make up the penal colony a longboat rowed by prisoners is making its way to the boat. Murray looks at the grim faces of the rowing prisoners as the longboat comes up to take a line from the schooner and tow her in to the dock.
   "It can't get any worse" Murray remembers thinking wryly when he'd first arrived in Australia, "I've already been sentenced to transportation for the term of my natural life!" But he was wrong, it can always get worse. The convicts laborously towed the schooner in to Port Arthur, a place of secondary punishment.


Friday, February 23rd, 2018 - the cruise liner P&O Pacific Jewel comes into the cove lets its huge anchor hurtle down into the water. The passengers line the rails admiring the starkly beautiful forested hills, and point at the ruined buildings of Port Arther. After a few minutes the tenders are ready to ferry interested passengers in to the dock. As the geriatric passengers are helped onto the floating dock they are greeted by smiling guides. Welcome to Port Arthur.

   "Hey, isn't that the ship we saw earlier from the Queenscliff ferry?" I ask my dad, pointing at the white cruiseliner out in the cove. Later discussion with self-confessed shipnerd wantedonvoyage confirms it probably was. We had driven here from Hobart, about an hour and a half across a coastline that was a jumble of inlets and peninsulas, and across the tiny neck of land said to have been guarded by chained dogs to prevent escape from Port Arthur, to arrive here at this most famous of penal settlements.
   Port Arther was "a place of secondary punishment," meaning that if someone had already been sentenced to be transported to Australia and committed another crime, they got shipped here. As well though persons guilty of murder and other serious crimes could be shipped directly to Port Arthur.
   And if someone shipped to Port Arthur needs to be punished yet more? A "Separate Prison"on the panopticon design was built at Port Arthur where the inmates permitted no contact at all with eachother and even the guards didn't talk so there'd be no human interaction at all. And if that's not enough? It can always get worse! Further punishment for these inmates would consist of being locked in a dark closet sized room behind several big doors so there's no light or sound. And after that? They found they had to build one of the world's first psych wards when this treatment proved capable of driving people insane.

   The area is starkly beautiful, with its steep forested and mist shrouded mountains rising from the sea and numerous islands, but I gather it wasn't a very fun place to be sent as a convict. Aside from generally cold weather, the completely alien plant an animal life from their home, with the sheer distance from their home, must have made it feel like today's equivalent of being sent to Mars never to return. The prisoners worked at various industries, timber cutting and sawmilling was a major one, and logs were transported in the area on a tramway pulled by convicts. Among the other industries, they also had a shipyard and built boats until they were forced to close it -- because they were successfully competing with other commercial shipyards that actually had to pay their labor.



   We spent the entire day looking at Port Arthur. As it came time to go I had one last place I wanted to visit. Behind a hedge we found the quiet and contemplative memorial garden, with a reflection pool reflecting the empty shell of the former visitor cafe where 22 people were shot in the space of 15-30 seconds on April 28th, 1996. Nearby a plaque on a small obelisk contains the names of the 35 fatalities in the Port Arthur Shooting. After this shooting the Australian government imposed strict gun controls and there hasn't been a mass shooting in Australia since. This was all the more poignant since it was coming just a few days after the most recent school shooting in the United States.
   One other thing that I've noted about the Port Arthur Shooting -- the shooters name is never mentioned. It is known, it's in the wikipedia article, but I feel like whereas in shootings in the states the shooter's name is emblazoned across all the headlines, a sort of damnatio memoriae has been generally agreed in this case.

Wednesday, February 21st, Waratah, Tasmania - We woke up to find ourselves on a precipice! Right in the very middle of town! The town of Waratah, it seems, is built right around a chasm, with a waterfall cascading down into it, right in the middle of town! Apparently the early pioneers saw this chasm and thought "ahah, we shall harness the mighty power of this convenient waterfall to mill osmiridium!" Which totally sounds like a made up mineral used as a mcguffin in a movie or game, like the "unobtainium" in Avatar. But compare this impressive old photo of their mcguffin mills to the previous link showing it now!

   Our airbnb had actually been a few blocks away from the abyss, so we didn't wake up just beside it exactly per se. But it was still a bit of a surprise. We had headed off in search of "downtown" for some coffee, and found instead a giant chasm where downtown should be. Though the town had obviously seen better days, it still had another one of those grand old hotels, looking much as it had in ye olden days. Just beside the hotel was a rather funny cafe -- "the MUSH Room" was in a rather nondescript but oldish looking building, inside the decorations were very eclectic, but what struck me the most was the wide open kitchen looked like it had almost nothing in it. Like a coffee machine and microwave or something. It seems a bit odd. Also there were pictures of mushrooms all over, and books about mushrooms sitting around. Originally I was just gonna run in and get a coffee, and mom had come in with me, but we looked at eachother and said "dad needs to come in here!" because he's rather a fan of mushrooms. While waiting for my coffee we got to talking to a nice couple who gave us some more tips on things to see (though I think they themselves were only in Tassie as tourists?).