In the Land of Oz (Days 2 & 3)

On the flight over, Curt slept a LOT, and I was up pretty much the whole time reading a book cover to cover (I hate when I do that, I only have one more book that I brought – then what will I read?!) and then watching a few movies which were great! We had some beautiful Business Class meals, all the tea the nice Thai lady could stuff down my throat (I say that in a nice way – Thai airlines is so lovely and the flight attendants are ridiculously friendly and accommodating).

A nice surprise we got in the air was watching the sunset over the desert in Australia – all red, and beautiful… though you can tell you wouldn’t want to be caught out there for even a day, there was NOTHING! It looked like what you picture Mars or something to look like!

We got into Sydney around 10:15 local time, and were so excited – we made it! Our first time to Australia, and both of our first time to be south of the Equator – two biggies (p.s. we’ve been looking in all of our toilets to see if the water swirls the other way, but so far there have been no swirly toilets encountered –we will keep you posted!)!

We stayed a little outside of Sydney city proper about 20 minutes away (again, free hotel room/points), but Sydney has a great over-ground train system so we knew it wouldn’t be a big deal… We got sorted, and then to bed (Curt was wired, I was grumpy, but thankfully he slept)!

Oh! Forgot to throw this in there, but the day before we were to leave China I started to get the dreaded tickle in my throat – I tried hard to fight it off but this whole time so far I’ve had a cold… HUGE bummer, but the kicker was at the end and after our long flight my ears wouldn’t clear, and even after we landed it didn’t… talk about pain! I finally got it to clear last night (a full day of not hearing anything out of my left ear) using some hot salt water, after trying a whole host of meds and remedies… am getting paranoid that I’ll be in trouble for our dive trip, so trying anything and everything to get all of this crap out of my head/nose/chest/ears! What a nightmare it would be…. But that’s not going to happen!

We both slept well, and the next day were up and at ‘em for a fun day in Sydney! We started out with a $56 Courtyard Marriott breakfast (insert jaw drop here – some things about Sydney are reasonably priced, and others, like some food and CAB PRICES are flat out murderous, it’s insane). Breakfast was good, but this is what we mostly get for free?!

Then Stuart and his fiancée, Natascha, came to pick us up to take us around Sydney a little bit. We first went to the Koala Park Sanctuary and had up close encounters (as in petted and interacted) with koalas, grey kangaroos, wallabies, dingoes, and saw even more (penguins, cockatoos, night fox bats (we saw the cockatoos and bats in the wild here already, too!), peacocks, and tons more things… it was awesome!

The kangaroos were my favorite… seeing the little joeys poking out of their mommy’s pouches was really the cutest thing ever. There were a couple really tiny babies, and then there were some bigger joeys who will shortly (I have a feeling) be kicked out, LOL! There was one whose body and head fitted in, but his legs and arms were all hanging out at weird angles – it looked hilarious! Seeing them hop around was awesome, too… their tails are huge, and you can tell how strong and powerful they are! We also saw some of the bigger males (not in the same enclosure you interact with them because they’re about as big as us) boxing each other and standing up really tall which was impressive, too. Just amazing, amazing, animals.

Everyone that knows me knows I’m a Discovery Channel girl, and I knew a lot about the majority of animals in the sanctuary, but seeing them that up close and personal gives you a new respect for just how unique Australia is – some of these guys don’t even look “normal,” almost alien somehow?? And it’s totally different than seeing a few in a zoo enclosure, too… it was just the coolest, I can’t even describe it??

After a nice morning there, we all went into Sydney for a nice walk into the city over the Harbor Bridge, and then stopped at a “hotel” for lunch. A hotel in Australia, turns out, is a pub or a bar… I don’t know how this miscommunication stuck because it gets a little confusing, but we had a wonderful and relaxed lunch at “The Rocks” (area below the bridge where Sydney first set down its roots – a bunch of old buildings, warehouse-ish and stylish area).

Then Stuart and Tash showed us around Sydney some more before we had to say goodbye so Stuart could catch a plane later that afternoon… it was so nice to see him again, and I found myself thinking again that the world indeed can be small…

Curt and I then did some more wandering and came to Darling Harbor (or Harbour, to the Aussies – they spell things like the Brits), and as it started to rain we decided it would be a great time to hit the Sydney Aquarium!

It’s said to be one of the best in the world – and it really was fantastic… a TON of species and specimens, an amazing shark tank with tunnels with sharks that we’ve never even HEARD of (they all live down here, apparently), and again, seemed alien.

(We have to go catch a taxi now, but more to come later, including pictures!)