Hola familia!  I put up five pages worth of pictures but haven’t had a chance to write about them yet. Hopefully tomorrow!  Anyways, for now here is a look at what Sam and I have been up to here in Costa Rica! Enjoy!

From Sweden we flew at 9:30 at night to London Stansted, where we spent another fantastic night stationed on hard benches and surrounded by the backpackers of the world all waiting for early morning flights. We suffered through the night only to have our 6:30am flight to Dublin be delayed by a faulty toilet. We got in to Dublin late, just in time to miss the boarding for our flight to New York. Gah!!!!!

The workers were really nice however, and managed to get us on another flight leaving only an hour and a half later (yay!) which meant we would still have plenty of time to catch our connection to San Jose. It only took 7 hours to get to New York – thank god because Continental’s seats are the worst ever, and so is their food. Upon arrival Sam was promptly hauled aside for a one hour interview with the border patrol.They wanted to know why in the hell he thought he could leave the country for so long and just what had he been doing in countries that Americans don’t normally go to? They pulled out everything he had in his bag including the two giant cheese wedges and enormous wheel of bread he brought from Sweden) and questioned him about every item and every place he’d been, where he worked, how long he had worked there, how much money he had, how much he had spent, etc. etc. I am soo thankful that it was him that got the interview. At least he has a job and pays taxes and such. I could see me in there…. No, I don’t really work. No, I don’t have any record of employment. Yes, this laptop that I am carrying now runs windows in Chinese….. Please, officer, these handcuffs are really too tight…

I think there must be some sort of online forum for complaints against the U.S. “department of homeland protection”. I hate to even think about what it must say about those men and women in blue – the surliest, most hateful people in the world. “Welcome to the U.S. My job is to do anything I can to make you feel unwelcome and prevent you from entering (or coming home).” Thanks Mr. Border Guard. Even the Chinese guards smiled and apologized as they took our guidebook (and had an instant guest feedback system so you could tell about the quality of the service they were providing at their border). I consider myself a fairly decent citizen, no arrests or social issues here, and I have tons of issues and problems with driving and flying into and out of the U.S. My foreign friends complain all the time of the cost, the hours and hours of long lines, the bad treatment, and the refusals for entry they’d had at the borders. This is really quite crap. Nowhere else gives you so much trouble, and you know what? It’s just not worth it. The U.S. really is not worth all the trouble it is causing people. I’m sorry Bush, but things have gotten way out of hand. Maybe it’s time to take a good look at the rest of the world and see how far away from reason we have strayed. All the restrictions, the laws, the warning signs so that you don’t hurt yourself. It’s just too much. I am so ready to move somewhere else because you know what? There isn’t anything in the U.S. that cannot be found somewhere else with less hassle. I’d like more freedom and more health care and less worry about being taken in by the police just because I’ve left the country. Is anyone really happy with the way things are right now?

Anyways, it took me forever to find Sam. They had told me to wait in baggage for him, but after an hour and asking five guards I still couldn’t locate him. No one seemed to know where he had been taken, how long he would be, or where he might appear when he came back out. One guard finally told me to go outside of baggage check just as Sam had an announcement made for my name to meet him. Gah. Good thing we had a three hour layover, because by the time we got to our gate it was almost time to board. Most of the people in line behind us at the ticket counter had already missed their flights.

We managed to catch the flight to Costa Rica with no problems. I sat next to a professor from Oxford on the way to San Jose – he was very interesting; he had lived and worked as a journalist in Bolivia and Peru in the 70’s and was now married to a Peruvian lady. A very unassuming guy with crazy old-English-man eyebrows. I liked him but I probably talked too much. He was reading Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. The plane couldn’t land in San Jose due to fog and we didn’t have enough fuel to circle so we had to go to Nicaragua instead (oh yay!). They didn’t let us off the plane. I felt bad because we got to San Jose five hours later than expected, and Sam’s mom had been standing outside of the airport, peering through the window in the occasional rain the whole time waiting for us. Ugh. I was so exhausted by the time we got there – the plane had the most uncomfortable seats I have ever been in and falling asleep in them was like asking for a broken neck. Arugh…

Anyways, we are in Costa Rica now, safe and sound as we are far away from Bush’s Border of Terror. Sam’s mom lives in Cartago, a city to the southeast of San Jose where the company she and Tony work for is located. They love it here. Life is simple and uncomplicated, the food is good, the beer is cheap, and the people are super nice. The country is almost 1/4 natural parks, the highest proportion of parks anywhere in the world. Costa Rica is promoting legislation to prohibit all smoking in public places and, even with ranking 5th in the world in terms of Environmental performance currently, they want to become the first carbon-neutral country by 2021. For a little Latin country the size of West Virginia, this seems to be a pretty good place. The tallest volcano, Irazu, is only 18 miles away from Cartago and you can see it from Barb and Tony’s front door. A birthday party is planned for Sam this weekend. There will be a lot going on. I hope my money holds out.

Yay! Sweden!!!!!! We finally made it to the Göteburg airport and Anna picked us up on Midsummer’s Eve morning (got that?) then she took us back to her house where we ate all of her cheese and an amazing veggie lasagna and showered the road grime off of us just in time to pick Sarah (arriving from Canada via Hamburg) up from the other airport at 2 in the afternoon. We shoved Sarah into the car, dashed her back to the apartment, rushed her through the shower, threw some cheese at her, and then we all piled into Dayan’s very fancy Saab to take us to Carolina’s house for some midsummer’s eve BBQ action.

I have never been to a midsummer’s eve BBQ, but it would seem that they involve a VERY large grill (which is almost too hot to get within 3 feet of), lots of strawberries and ice cream, and silly games. There were about 20 or so people there (everyone speaks English! it is great!), so we divided into two teams and competed in bb gun shooting (i made my dad proud by hitting 3 out of 4 cans for my first time ever shooting a handgun!), a crazy form of baseball that involved pitching for yourself and not being able to steal bases, and a relay race where you had to run in clogs that were held together by a large bar that made your feet go in a very high circle (we fell down a lot). We had a blast. We BBQ’d a huge array of meat products afterwards and sat at a very long table in the loft of their barn until the wee hours of the morning. Or night. who can tell, because it DIDN’T GET DARK THAT NIGHT!!!!!!!! Even south Sweden is pretty far north it would seem…. We slept on Carolina’s living room floor and she woke us in the morning with coffee and more cheese and knackebrot and cheese in a tube with caviar in it and who knows what other sorts of Swedish delights. I even ate the tube cheese/caviar. It wasn’t all that bad.

We spent the rest of the day lolling about watching movies at Anna’s, then at 10 or 11pm (who knows because it was light out) decided to go for a stroll around Göteburg to the zoo. Yes, they have an open air zoo that is in the park and you can go to it 24 hours a day. We saw some seals and tons of ducks, then had just gotten to the moose display (complete with brand new baby moose) when it started to rain. Hard. We had to walk a half hour back in the pouring rain – it was raining so hard we were soaked through (jeans, sweatshirts, boots, everything) in less than five minutes. But, at least it wasn’t cold…

The next day Anna had to work so Sarah and I took the bus to pick up the recently-damaged Orlagh from the airport and bring her back to the apartment. We fed her some cheese, then as soon as Anna got home loaded the five of us, two cats (well, Dido the cat and Melker, Anna’s new kitten that she’s had for only a week!), and a tons of gear into the world’s tiniest car to head for Öland, an island off the East coast. I have never gone on a road trip with two cats before, but Anna’s are quite decent in the car. They held out for a long time, but after we stopped for a bite of dinner they decided that they wanted out of their carrier that was stored at Orlagh’s feet. We endured some miaowing for a while but eventually figured out that they were much happier if they could just sleep in laps. Cats in cars? crazy!

Now, where exactly are the five people and two cats going to fit?

Giant guy riding a flying carpet with a goat – Sweden has big things too!

We arrived in Öland very early into the morning, around 2am when the sun had come back up to full light. Anna had been able to get us little houses to sleep in, so we crashed into beds filled with cats and sleeping bags

We spent the next few days touring the island with Anna as our guide. We visited beaches, little villages, an ancient Iron Age village, ate potato balls and strawberries, played with the cats, picked blueberries, hunted for rocks, had some nice family meals with Anna’s dad and sister, and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

Trying to decipher the Swedish grocery signs:

Öland has the World’s Best Strawberries.

Visiting an Iron Age church:

Swan spotting on the sea:

Scenery change! WINDMILLS!!!!! And lots of them!

Hunting for round rocks:

Meeting the locals:

Mourning Sarah’s broken shoe in the Iron Age village:

Pancake rocks!

I was promised candy on trees, but I guess a forest floor covered with blueberries is just as good… Later Anna made the ones we had managed to pick and not eat into pancakes. I almost died from happiness.

Dining at a neighbor’s restaurant; they had the best food I have ever eaten, set in a buffet style so you could eat as much as you wanted of anything. I think all of us almost exploded…

Herds of Icelandic ponies that you could watch from the restaurant’s rooftop terrace:

Cute little Swedish houses everywhere!

On the beach in front of Anna’s family home:

Melker, world’s cutest and most tranquilo kitten, attacking Sarah:

Touring Borgholm Castle, a ruin that has been through over 1,000 years of changes. They has a very nice display within the giant ruin that showed the various forms of the castle throughout time. We only spent an hour there, but could have spent the better part of a day…

Sunset leading us back to Göteburg (the sun rose again in a couple of hours):

Swanning on the streets of historic Göteburg:

Anna and Sam using their Thai food cookery skillz to make us awesome pad thai, spring rolls, and green curry. It was heaven…

Riding Icelandics at a farm North of Göteburg. We had a fantastic hour and a half long ride that took us tolting down roads and galloping through forests. I LOVED the one I was on, and if it would have been possible I would have taken him home with me.

After riding we dropped Sarah off at the airport and cried ourselves back to Anna’s apartment where we stayed shut in and eating cheese and Anna’s homemade cinnamon rolls and fluffy banana pancakes with ice cream and homemade chocolate sauce until the rest of us had to leave, one by one. Anna is the best hostess ever. We had an unbelievably perfect time

(June 20 to July 1)

5 countries in 50 hours…

We left Brisbane on June 18 and flew to Singapore – Bangkok – Zurich – London – Gothenburg

Singapore was very beautiful with plants perfectly manicured all over the departure lounges; I would have liked to have had time to take the free city tour on a layover, but we were in the airport less than 10 min before we were stuffed into the next plane to Bangkok.

They have bene feeding us.  They gave us lunch and then a “snack” of fettuccini on way from bris to singapore (7hr) then sing to Bangkok (2 hr) they gave us another meal, then Bangkok to zurich (12 hr) they gave us ANOTHER meal at night that we skipped and then a second breakfast (which we ate), then we got another snack from Zurich to London (1 hour).  Quantas flight to singapore was the best.  They has okay seats but a controllable video layout with movies and tv and video games on demand, inclouding lots of good movies and documentaries. Swiss air had similar but only a few movies and t.v. shows to choose from.  Was sad that we were in the middle and didn’t have window seats for the flight over india/afganistan/ etc. – it was the first time I have flown that section and if it had been lighter out and I had had a window seat we would have been able to see some amazing scenery.

Did get window seat out of zurich so had a nice view of the beautiful snow-covered alps.

24 hour layover in london – got in at 6:30am after almost 24 hours of flying, but since we had left OZ at 2pm it was more just like we had a very long night.  Got a tube day pass and went to the natural history museum and the birtish museum.  Saw huge dinosaurs and crazy deep sea fish and the rosetta stone and cleopatra’s mummy.  The egypt stuff was amazing, expecially the HUGE mummy collection.

Not exactly where I’d want my final resting place…

Got to stansted airport at 8 (on the most expensive train ever.  Cost us $34 to go 40 min down the track..  unbelieveable) and settled in on benches for the night. By midnight people had started bedding down everywhere, and by 2am it looked like a shanty town with rows of backpackers sleeping all over the furniture, along the walls, in the middle of the floor.  People had socks covered their eyes while they slept sprawled across suitcases under billboards.  Sleeping bags, sarongs,  - everywhere.  It was Friday so by 4am the lines for outgoing planes were already long, threading through the maze of passed-out people on the floor.  Hen and stag parties in groups of matching shirts stood around in lines headed to Reus, Ibiza.  We got into the departure lounge by 5:15 am, the parties were already downing glasses of stella with their croissant breakfasts.

We will be to sweden by 11am this morning, June 20.  It has taken around 50 hours and 2 sleepless nights to get to Gothenburg.  The light is already crazy.  We have been in winter; we are used to maybe 11 hours of light a day.  Last night it stayed light until well after 10, and by 4am it was bright outside.  We will be arriving on midsummer’s eve, one of the biggest holidays in sweden.  Lord help us, it won’t even get dark for us tonight. 

The airlines we will be flying on in Europe charge you $24 for each piece of checked luggage you will carry; we are on 3 of these happy flights before we depart the continent.  It is cheaper to mail our excess home (and be happily baggage free) than to carry it with us.   Thus, Sam and I found ourselves in the Brisbane post office yesterday, sweating through our shirts as we tried to fit almost all of our worldly posessions into a large box to ship home.  They wouldn’t fit.  Try as we might there was no way to satisfy both the requirements for an overseas package (can’t be too heavy) as well as the airline requirements  (we can’t have more than one small bag each).  We finally decided on sending a second box along with the first to hold the 6 kilos of extra goods that just wouldn’t fit.   A stranger in the post office watched our struggle for a good half-hour, listened to me crying over the cost of it all, and lo and behold – as he left he slipped Sam a $50 bill and told him it was a gift from one traveller to another.  We shipped our boxes.  I stopped complaining about money.  We left feeling like maybe there are a lot of good people in the world after all.

Later that night we got a phone call from a Canadian couple who had just moved to Brisbane from Canada, they wanted to see Hiro (we are trying so hard to sell him so that we can afford the rest of our trip).  Our time and money spent washing and detailing paid off – they loved him and turned over a pile of cash this morning.  We are happy he will have people who will love him.  We stayed in him one more night (behind the petrol station in a muddy yard full of trucks and backpacker vans) and, after dropping off the few posessions we have left at a horrible hostel, we delivered him to his new home.  I couldn’t be more relieved.  Our gamble on buying instead of renting a car paid off.  And there is no way that I could be happier about the fact that I will be meeting my favorite ladies in Gothenburg in just a few days.  Life is good.

We’ve managed to survive the endless roads (of wrong-sided driving), outlandish petrol prices, a run-down battery, emus charging our car, wallabies raiding our M&M’s, echidnas throwing their spiky bodies under our wheels, crashing over one very large kangaroo corpse, deserts, rainforests, mountains, snow, blazing heat, mosquitoes, flies, midges, no-see-ums, gnats, loads of very large spiders, loads of interesting people, and being stuck in a car with only one other person for two months while showering about once a week with dish soap and eating nothing but peanut butter, white bread, apples, and noodles (and the occasional carrot).  We have had a blast.  We can now afford to carry ourselves to Sweden and into the warm arms of Anna’s hospitality.  We anticipate many fun things while in Sweden, the majority of which will be the things I usually do (and look forward to the most) while visiting friends: take over the couch, harrass the pets, and make the friends cook me dinner.  Anna can’t wait for us (and ORLAGH AND SARAH!) to arrive!

See you in Sweden!!!!!!!!!!

 So we have finally (and sadly) made it back to Brisbane.  We haven’t been in a huge major city since Melbourne and I can’t say that I missed it.  The traffic, the difficulty in navigation of city streets, the endless chain stores.  You can keep it.   I am so not a city person.  We had a nice journey down the coast, relaxing on numerous beaches and visiting sights, and talking with other travellers.  We have been in almost every charity/thrift shop along the way and have been on a book rampage.  I think I have read about 15 books in the last week or so, most of which were quite crap but we did manage to find “Jitterbug Perfume”, one of the Tom Robbins books I hadn’t read yet so I was happy about that.  We have also been attempting to get in more exercise, using our days to walk and jog on the beach instead of making world-record distance drives across the Australian landscape. I feel slightly less like a blob thanks to this, however I think my calves have siezed up on me – I won’t be able to walk correctly for at least another week.  Maybe a bit too much too soon…… Oh I am so out of shape.

We have temporarily bought a mobile phone and will have our ads up for our car as soon as the phone decides to activate online (which it is not happy about doing right now) so will be around brisbane for the next week, hoping that someone calls us and tells us that they want our car.

Anyways, for now here are some pictures from our trip up the coast:

The fruit bats in Cairns.  We have seen them all the north, around Darwin and Cairns. They are fantastic, fighting in the trees and soaring overhead with their huge wings outstretched.  We were lucky enough to be in Cairns at dusk, to see hundreds and hundreds of them of them flying out of their tree roosts for the night.  It was beautiful to see but hard to take any pictures of.  Here is one bat in the dusk anyways, to give an impression…

We stopped in Babinda to get some information on the local parks, then headed in to the beautiful “Boulders” campsite and river.  It was a gorgeous place, with waterfalls and swimming holes, but it was a little too chilly in the shade of the giant trees for any swimming for me…

We also stopped at Josephine falls at the foot of Bartle Frere, Queesnland’s highest peak (not all that high at just over 1600m…) .

There are a million butterflies soaring around, some of them so brightly colored they hurt your eyes.  We found this guy dead on the side of the road, but he was still beautiful to look at.

There were more beaches than I care to recall along the way, but the prettiest were Etty Bay and this one,  Mission Beach.  We walked and jogged and found amazing seashells and sunned ourselves and read books; in general we had a good time.

Sign before a hike in the Tam O’Shatner National Park outside of Mission Beach (hoping to spot a Cassowary but we didn’t… Lots of Cassowary poo though.  They poo a lot, and they seem to liek to do it right in the path we were walking on).

Sam walked into this spider’s web.  He is the craziest spider i have ever seen, and he was very, very angry that we had destroyed his house.  Thank god he didn’t bite us, but i dont’ htink he was poisonous….

Sunrise at Saunder’s Beach.  We liked it so much on our way  to Cairns we decided to stay another night on the way back as well.

The Big Mango.

This car-top sleeper belonged to two guys from near Byron Bay.  Supposedly it is Italian – I have never seen a sleeping platform like it.  We talked to them for nearly two hours – they were funny and witty and entertaining, full of information and stories.  Unique people with a unique camper…

I have been suffering endlessly from a barrage of no-see-um bites that were inflicted sneakily while I lay in the back of the car watching the sun rise at Bagal Beach.  Yes, I wake up for sunrises now.  It is some sort of miracle.  Anyways, they itch like no other, making mosquito bites seem like child’s play.  My legs look like i have chicken pox. I am almost out of itch ointment.  I think it is time to leave Australia.

Wish us luck in selling Hiro, and if you know anyone who lives in Brisbane in need of a very awesome station wagon send them my way;)

So we were incredibly lucky to be able to go on a snorkel tour of the 2 million year old Great Barrier Reef on June 2. Never have I seen anything so amazingly beautiful and full of life. We went to just two spots on Norman Reef, a tiny section of the great barrier reef, but saw an amazing array of fish and coral. We had a waterproof camera with us but it will be a long while before we can develop the photos, so I stole some off the another website to give you a taste of what it was like.

We took a tour on the ReefQuest, a rather large vessel that was full of about 30 divers and snorkelers. It was a bit crowded at times to snorkel around with 15 other people, but the reef was so huge you could get away from them quite easily (I did get a fin or two in the face though…). The water was COLD, which kept me from staying in too long, but we did have 3/4 wetsuits to help keep us warm. Bonus! We saw some fish as big as me, schools of tiny little flashy fish, colorful fish, beautiful coral…. Hmmm, yeah you should pretty much just go book yourself a tour right now. It was right up there with safaris in Kenya. My face hurts today from the snorkel mask. I wish I had enough money to go diving and spend about a week here. Maybe two. Or three. Oh well, another time. For now here are a couple of pictures and the YouTube video.

Photographs courtesy of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority

We were exhausted after our tour so we went back to the Palm Cove campground to stay the night, then today (June 3) went to see Crystal Cascades, a beautiful gorge/freshwater waterfall system just north of Cairns. The water wasn’t warm enough to make me want to swim but we did see an INCREDIBLY GIGANTIC, foot-long walking stick insect. Well, we didn’t really see it until I inadvertently kicked it on the sidewalk and it attached itself to the top of my flip-flop-attired foot and I flew around screaming for a second until I had flung it off. Having a foot-long bug attached to your foot is a bit alarming anywhere, but especially in a country famous for, and I quote the travel brochure, “life-threatening flora and fauna”. Anyways, he was the coolest insect I have ever seen, and he really did look just like a branch with the little bark bumps and all. He absolutely made my day, even if he did make me scream like a girl.We are headed southwards now, slowly approaching our sad end in Brisbane, but hopefully will have a lot of beach action between here and there.

After our visit in Innisfail Sam and I decided to head towards Cairns to do some possible snorkeling, but the weather was not having it. The schedule was rainy and windy for the next few days, so after a visit to the Cairns night market and an unplanned night in a rest stop outside of Cairns on the 27th (for which we got a warning letter put on our car – no unauthorized camping within Cairns limits. Queensland is not the hospitable state that most other Australian states would seem to be. Jerks.) we headed North towards the Dainteee National Park instead (rain in a rainforest is never a problem…).

Warning sign on a beach where we stopped to have breakfast….

The drive north on May 28 from Cairns to Mossman (the Captain Cook highway) was 40km of BEAUTIFUL, with small deserted beaches to stop at the whole way and breathtaking scenic outlooks with sweeping views of the Coral Sea and the mountains.

Our first stop was Mossman Gorge, a section of the Daintree that is known for its incredibly gorgeous forest. And it was gorgeous, the most beautiful trees I have ever seen anywhere. We went on a 5km walk through the forest but I wish it could have been 500km it was so beautiful. The trees were huge and exotic – but I guess they would be.  After all this is the oldest rainforest in the world at over over one hundred and thirty-five million years old.

Heading into Mossman:

Walking in the Gorge:

From the gorge, and after a stop at Wonka Beach for lunch, we headed further north to take a ferry across the crocodile-infested Daintree River towards Cape Tribulation.

Thanks to the generosity of our fearless leader GWB, who decided in what must have been a fit of lunacy to hand me some more money that I didn’t earn and won’t repay (so much for stoking the American ecomomy), I bought a cheap straw cowboy hat, a case of beer, and 4 nights at a Australia Parks campsite that charged only $9/night.  We had the whole of Noah Beach practically to ourselves and it was fantastic.  We spent four days walking the beaches and wondering at the flora and fauna and spying on our neighboring campers.  It was great.  We now have tans, an even greater respect for Austalian National Parks, and a very doubtful view of the kindness of European travelers who rent huge, fancy vans to camp in.

Fan Palm!  I love them! They can grow to over 2m wide!

These ferns live in the trees in a pile fo their own dead bits attached to branches or trunks.  Sometimes the trees send out tiny roots from their branches into the fern’s decomposing leaf pile to tap into the nutrients there.  It’s like a tree holding a nutrition shake!

When rainforest meets mangrove – oh so cool.

Watching the evening approach on Noah Beach (note the lack of people and the presence of mountains!)

Cape Tribulation:

Over 430 species of birds live in the Daintree, of which 13 species are found nowhere else in the world. This includes the elusive cassowary, the world’s only bird with a helmet of which there are only 1200 left in the wild. We were not lucky enough to spot one but here is a picture so you can see the world’s most dangerous bird (they have dagger like claws on their feet that can slice you open with a single well-placed kick!). For more info on them click on the picture!

Unfortunately people keep running them over with cars, which can’t be good for such a small population, so as you drive through the Daintree you see lots of signs such as this:

Aside from the birds, the Daintree is home to the largest range of plants and animals on earth. According to daintreerainforest.com this rainforest that covers only 0.2% of the landmass of Australia contains 30% of its frog, marsupial and reptile species as well as 65% of the bat and butterfly species.

We saw only a few of these animals, but it was cool to see a Northern Bandicoot (below), a striped possum, and several other nocturnal foragers.  A regular guest at both breakfast and dinner was our friend Tom Turkey, who was ugly as anything but fun to watch (supposedly these turkeys do not taste good so we didn’t try to eat him).

Here are pictuers from further down the beach than where we stayed.  I made a panorama, but it just made it look small.   If you cut the long picture out and roll it in a tube (matching the sam ends up), then imagine that the beach is 4km long it makes it seem better.  And I am in the picture below, waving at you.  Try to find me….

We stayed on Noah beach from May28 to June 1, then headed towards Carins to go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef! Whoo! Somewhere along the way we picked up a couple of sweaty American hitchhikers and took them to Port Douglas, lost our camp chairs, saw a grocery store charging $6 for a loaf of white bread, lost our hummus due to a mold invasion, and found out of date snickers on sale at 5 for $1 (They are usually $1.80 here).    Things in the snack food department are looking up.

On May 23 we headed for Mataranka first thing in the morning. We had an amazingly perfect swim in the warm water under the ring of palm trees and beautiful hot showers. After that we began the first of three days of driving, driving, driving. We drove over 600 km to a dusty, flat, huge rest stop just after the three way junction (horribly expensive gas), joining the W-E Barkly highway to the N-S Stuart highway called the 41 mile bore. There was an incredible sunset there so we pulled out our camp chairs and our Styrofoam broccoli-box-turned-cooler to sit and have our dinner sandwiches as we watched the sun fade from the sky and a blanket of stars to pop out one by one. Outback sunsets are something else, but I really don’t understand the people with the caravans. Here they are, in the middle of nowhere at their free rest stop with all of the stars they could ever hope for and not a mosquito in sight, and they are trussed up in their campers with their generators going. We may have turned into gypsies at this point, but I am glad we don’t have any electricity.

May 24
Northern territory to Queensland

The sunrise at 41 mile bore was just as amazing as the sunset. We got an early start and drove over 700 km today, until the solid stands of low bushes that are the Northern Territory turned in to fields of nothing but spinifex at the Queensland border. Once we reached Mt. Isa, we found low rolling hills covered in low, sparse trees. The kind with white trunks and bright leaves. Mt. Isa is a monstrosity, a town unfortunately built around a mining processing plant. Everywhere you look this HUGE BLACK plant is in the background to this pathetic excuse for a town. Like Gary Indiana shrunk down to the size of a town with a population of 1000.

Hills!

We did not stay there. We drove 150km east of Mt. Isa for the night at a decent rest stop with actual bathrooms and a rather good collection of flies. In this picture Sam displays his posse that he collected within two seconds of stepping out of the car in the morning. At this point the flies are like our pets. Sam is convinced that they feed off of misery, as all they want is to be on your face, in your ear, up your nose. They never bother your food, just your head. I think he may be right.

The hills of Mt.Isa were short lived. Back to flatness. By the way, if you can manage to see through the flies splattered across the windshield, please notice something about this highway. This is the main highway, the only highway, traversing east-west across the northern part of Australia. The only one, the one that road trains carrying up to four giant, fully loaded trailers blast down at up to 130km an hour, headed straight for you. And this road? Yeah, it has no lines. NO LINES!!!!!!!!!!!! ARE THESE PEOPLE CRAZY?????????

May 25 brought us the highlight of our journey East. Our first ECHIDNA!!!!!!!!!!! It was waddling across the highway in front of us. They are surprisingly large, like a waddling football covered in spikes. It made it worth driving 800 km to see it! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!

Look at his cute nose!

We made it to Townsville, on the East coast of Queensland on the 25th, but continued on for another 30 km to reach Saunder’s beach for the night. Here we slept just meters from the beach, for free, then in the morning awoke to enjoy a beach-side breakfast followed by a couple hours of sunbathing on a perfectly empty, beautiful beach. For free. Need a BBQ? Here is a gas-powered one that you can use. For free. Just please make sure to throw away your litter in the bin. And your recyclables? Please put them in the recycling bin. Thank you. If it weren’t for gas being $8 a gallon half the time our stay here would be cheap…

That is the water of the Coral Sea just past those trees…

We continued our drive north this morning, May 26, towards Cairns. The landscape has turned to unspeakably beautiful. Fields of sugar cane and forest-covered mountains and beautiful blue ocean are all fighting with mad gray clouds. We’ve been sprinkled on but are glad for it – maybe it will wash the orange road dust off of Hiro, the best station wagon ever, for us.

Lovely road scenic outlook:

We ate lunch here, at a beach rest stop overlooking Hitchinbrook Island, then headed into Innisfall, where we are now, checking our email as we hide from the rain. We might check into snorkeling tours on the Great Barrier Reef, but if the weather stays bad we will continue north to Cairns and Daintree National Park.