Long Lost Update (brought to you by camel)

Beamed up by aliens? Kidnapped by pirates? Adopted by Madonna? What else could explain our bewildering lack of blog posts? Alas, the only excuse we have is being too busy gathering material for the blog with a good dash of general laziness :)
We are currently in Egypt staying with my parents (I could write a book about how wonderful it is to have a temporary "home".) In between taxi rides and foul sandwiches ("foul" is like refried beans) we're having a great time being overwhelmed by the quality and quantity of ancient Egyptian ruins and artifacts. And even though I'm not exactly a dead-ringer for Lara Croft, I'm having fun playing the amateur archaeologist and I just might write the next post in hieroglyphics! Alas we will be back on the road in two weeks for the last leg of our trip in Europe and the UK. For now here are a couple photos (with many more waiting to be uploaded):


here we are at Medinat Habu in Thebes (Luxor) - the memorial temple of Rameses III



and this is in front of the step pyramid of Saqqara with my parents. We can see this pyramid from our balcony!

Happy Birthday Christina!

Happy birthday, sweetheart. You seem as young as ever. Just don't forget to smile.

It's been a crazy year on the road. I think that if we can survive living side by side out of vans, landcruisers, and backpacks, we can take on anything! It's been my fortune to spend it with you, and - even if the day to day has driven us crazy sometimes - I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Here's to another year of new sights and old friends, new crafts to experiment with and old crafts to grow expert in, new foods to try and familiar foods to remind us of home. May your next birthday find you further along the path to your - and our - dreams.

Love,

Justin


(learning songket weaving)


(with my wonderful instructor, Komang)

weaving photoset

Selamat Pagi!

Selamat pagi from Indonesia! We have finally made it to Asia :) We flew into Denpasar, Bali on the 19th and will be in Indonesia for 4 weeks. We'd already like to stay longer but our visa is only for 1 month and we still have Malaysia and Thailand to see after this. For now we plan to spend a couple weeks on the island of Bali and then, who knows - maybe Sulawesi to see the Tana Toraja area, or across to Java. Arranging transportation here is pretty easy and cheap so we don't have to plan too far ahead. Although we just heard that east Java is experiencing bad floods, so we might have to avoid those areas.

20Feb:
So far we've been really enjoying Bali. We spent our first day on the southern coast in Sanur, where we mainly ate lots of tasty food and walked along the beach (tough life!) The food here is great - I'm proud to say that for our very first meal, breakfast no less, we had mysterious fish head soup, fried fish and rice at a little street warung - and it was enak sekali (delicious!) I've been practicing Indonesian but I still can't say much :)

21Feb:
The next day we took a bus north to Ubud - another touristy area but more focused on Balinese arts and culture than just fun in the sun. We spent the rest of the day walking around town and I have arranged to take weaving lessons from a place called Threads of Life - an organization that promotes the use of traditional dying and weaving practices throughout Indonesia. Next week I'm going to get three days of personal training on how to use a backstrap loom - this is how they make ikat. If I have extra time I will also get to start learning how to tie ikat. For those of you who don't know, ikat is a special kind of weaving where the warp threads (the threads on the loom) are essentially tie-dyed with a pattern before the actually weaving.

22Feb:
Today we took a beautiful walk through rice paddies on a ridge along the Campuan river just west of Ubud. It was a hot and steamy day (of course) and we used our umbrellas as parasols :) it may look silly but it works!








We made our way north to a little village called Bentuyung where we were fortunate enough to find a food stand selling gado-gado (cold cooked veggies in peanut sauce). The woman running the stall was very friendly and we chatted a bit while we sat under her roof and ate in the rain. She also insisted that we try her lak lak (like a small crumpet with palm sugar and coconut) and pisang goreng (battered and fried banana pieces.) Delicious! Afterwards we got lost trying to find the right path home and after getting chased by a dog we had to backtrack and take the road home. There is so much to see here that just walking around is a treat. We passed a group of school boys using big leaves like umbrellas (straight out of Totoro!)

That night we went to a wayang kulit show, which is the balinese shadow puppets. This we really enjoyed - in particular we were amused by the "clown" characters.

next up, monkeys in the forest and a wacky spainard...

Birds Koalas Turtles and Goats

One of the benefits of the antipodean Christmas is that it's early summer and all the trees are full of chicks and nests, and the fields are full of frollicking baby animals - it somehow fits the festive season very nicely. We've been lucky enough to witness some special animal babies these last few weeks and so I thought I would write up a nice post about all of them.

Firstly, the birds. We've seen trees literally full of nests- with busy parents, fledgling chicks, and juveniles as big as mama but still begging to be fed. North of Townsville I watched a pair of figbirds dutifully feeding their two chicks, and in the Bundaberg botanical garden we saw trees chock full of baby herons - all flapping their wings and jostling about. I never realized that herons roosted in trees or were so social!

On a hike on Magnetic Island, just off the coast of Townsville, we were lucky enough to see a koala mother and juvenile plus another mother with a much smaller baby. Cute beyond words! The juvenile was the most active - lazily reaching around for a few leaves to nibble. The second set let us get quite close so I managed to get some good pictures.



As you can see they are enjoying their favorite pasttime, sleeping! Koalas sleep around 18 hours per day to conserve energy due to their nutritionally poor diet.

A few days later near Bundaberg we visited the Mon Repos Turtle Rookery Conservation Area. This is the time of year when the giant sea turtles crawl up on the beach to lay their eggs and for a few dollars you can go on a tour along the beach at night to watch the egg-laying. It was a beautiful night for a long walk on the beach. Through the night we saw four loggerhead turtles - the first three turned back to the ocean before laying but the fourth succesfully dug her nest and laid her eggs while we watched. When she was finished they let us take photos:



and after she crawled back to the water's edge and swam away we got to help the conservationists relocate her 127 eggs to a new nest higher up on the beach - apparently it's quite common for these endangered turtles to lay their eggs too low and so the researchers always move them higher up.
We really enjoyed seeing the turtles but I have to say that we were both shocked by how rude, noisy and obnoxious the general crowd was! They let as many as 300 people go on these guided walks each night and we find it really hard to believe that it wasn't the cause of so many turtles turning back before laying eggs.

And now for the piece de resistance... baby goats!
While housesitting and wwoofing in southern Queensland I've gotten to tend to 4 pregnant goats and subsequently 8 newborn kids :) Big excitement for an animal person like me. The babies are absolutely adorable and are growing amazingly fast. Goat birthing is very quick so I've only witnessed 3 of the 8 actually being born - tending to my midwife duties with great aplomb. The goat mamas and the billy have all been very tolerant of me pestering them continuously and the kids are extremely friendly, leaping around and trying to climb on me.

















Justin just rolls his eyes but I am determined to have some goats someday for milk, wool and companionship (just don't ask if I'll ever have the heart to butcher any of them.)

just a note: I've started linking to the detailed summary page for each photoset. This should make it easier to see all the pics and captions for those of you using slow connections :)

koala photoset
turtle photoset
goat photoset

Happy Holidays from Down Under

In lieu of a real Christmas card...



I hope at least a *few* of you print this out and put it on your fridge! (click through for a bigger version)


Current update:

We've finally driven far enough south in Queensland that we aren't sweating buckets day and night. Despite the relative chill, it still doesn't feel quite like Christmas to us, being so far away from family and friends.

We've been to a lot of amazing places in the last few months - Uluru and the Olgas, the MacDonald ranges, Kakadu, Darwin, Singapore, the Atherton Tablelands, Daintree, the Great Barrier Reef - the list goes on and on. It's a lot of fun, even if Christina's pictures fail to convey the heat or the insect density.

The Queensland coast is spectacular, and we'd love to share a bit of the warmth and a vision of the bright blue skies and clear waters with everyone back home who is shivering with the midwinter doldrums. So hope you enjoy the Great Barrier pics in the post below :)

We'll be spending Christmas and New Year's housesitting and wwoofing on a farm outside of Brisbane - should be great fun.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's!

Justin and Christina

Our Early Christmas Present

The Early Christmas Present - Snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef

We decided to spend some of our Christmas gift money from Kathrine on a snorkeling trip out on the Great Barrier Reef. It's something we both always wanted to do, and now that we were over here on the Queensland coast, we were eager to go. We picked a snorkel trip which stopped at 2 places - Michaelmas Cay, where you can both snorkel and observe seabirds nesting, and Hastings Reef, which is an outer reef and has no island but much more varied and larger sea life.

We went with "SnorkelStar", who advertised a small boat with a maximum of 30 passengers. It was actually pretty nice. The passengers were mostly couples and families with grown children, and no one staggered on looking like he or she'd spent last night getting plastered.



The day was spectacularly clear with the kind of vibrant blue skies you see in advertising brochures for the reef. The boat itself was a catamaran, and the sea was fairly calm, so our ride out to Michaelmas Cay was quite smooth. The trip out to the cay took about 45 minutes, during which we had a snack, got fitted for snorkel and flippers, and learned a bit about the reef.

We got to Michaelmas Cay before any other tour boats - another advertised feature we liked - and then opted to walk on the cay and observe the birds. A small inflatable launch took us on a loop around the island and then landed us on the narrow strip of sand on which visitors are allowed to walk. The island is an important seabird nesting site and too much disturbance would probably chase them away.



Some bird shots:










After getting scorched for an hour or so looking at birds, we took the launch back to the boat, slipped on our snorkel gear and stinger suits, then clumsily lurched off the boat into the water. This time of year the tropical waters off Northern Queensland harbor poisonous jellyfish - the box jellies and the irukandji - neither of which is particularly pleasant to encounter. The stinger suits weren't too bad, though after watching everyone struggle in and out of theirs, I'm not sure all the other passengers would agree.

The water was fairly clear, and we immediately began to see fish. If you've never snorkeled, it's not quite what you expect. Without the need to constantly keep raising your head out of the water to breathe, it's easy to get lost in looking around at all the underwater life. We saw quite a few different fish.



The hour in the water went by all too quickly, and we climbed back onboard for lunch. The included lunch was quite nice - cold deli meats, prawns, fruits, and salads. Swimming does wonders for the appetite.



After another short boat ride, we anchored off Hastings Reef. One of the guides put on a short fish identification talk, then we jumped back in the water. Here, much nearer the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef, the fish were more varied and larger. The coral varieties were also astounding. It's hard to imagine just how diverse the forms the corals take without actually seeing them first-hand.

Here are a few photos:









After 2 1/2 hours here, it was time to head home. We climbed back on the boat, stripped off our stinger suits for the last time, then settled back with coffee and tea to watch the waves roll by. The ride back to Cairns in the late afternoon was quick but not rough. We talked a little more to one of the crew, who, it turns out, was a girl from NZ. She was working her way around the world on boats, working as a member of yacht crews and as a dive instructor. We compared travel notes and talked about NZ.

All too soon, we arrived back in Cairns. It was a long day but a whole lot of fun.

Above Water set
Below Water set

Birthday Boy

It's Justin's birthday today (Dec 6th) so let's all wish him a big...


Happy "good on you mate" Birthday!!


Here's a couple pics Laura sent us to celebrate Justin's humble beginnings - isn't he cute? (I know he'll get me back for this on my birthday!)


(Laura wondering just what exactly is so cute about baby brothers)



(Justin practicing for a future of 4wd tracks in the outback!)

Thanks Laura :)