Bali!!!

So we have been all around Bali in the past couple days. We hired a driver to take us around and show us some of the local crafts (batik, weaving, wood carving etc.) and also to sweet sights. We saw a bunch of beautiful temples including Tanah Lot, the temple in the sea. We also went into the mountains to see local markets where we bartered for clothes and fruits (including soursop! Reminds us of Montserrat), rice terraces, waterfalls, and Mount Batur... The volcano!!! It was all super sweet! The most exciting and memorable part (ESP for Sam) was probably the Ubud monkey forest where a few monkeys decided she was a good perch and would not leave her...I think they liked her hair.
P.S. Paps, you were right about the culture shock, but now we are pros... We were told that we were good barterers today...got the price for a bunch of fruit from 390000 rupia to 120000 rupia and got some free cashews and peanuts thrown in!

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Bali

Just writing to let everyone know we made it to Bali. It is crazy! Right now we are in Kuta which is a hustling bustling city on a gorgeous beach. It's totally hectic but very cool. There's surfers everywhere!! Everyone is really friendly, some because they genuinely are friendly, others who are just trying to get your money.

We bought this at the grocery store cause it looks yummy. It's a dragonfruit.





Also...we're millionaires here!!!! More later!!

Photo Journal of Australia...not in order though

Jump! Cool Wicked Camper!
Whoa! Amazing whale shark!

Stromatolites!!! Cool!

Dunes with gorgeous white sand near the Pinnacles

Pinnacles!!

Barry Springs park...Sam under the falls!

Enjoying a natural massage.

Territory Wildlife Park, getting up close and personal with a sawfish.

Cute Wallaby :-P

In Darwin!!

We have made it to Darwin. Today was a little unlucky, we couldn't find one of the places we wanted to go, then the next awesome park with huge waterfalls was closed off, then the van started to overheat. We still managed to see a really cool park where there was a creek you could drift down with ridiculously clear water. The waterfalls were supposed to be a two day stop, so instead we're going into the city tomorrow...should be a good plan B. It's wierd to be in civilization again. There are street lights and stuff. We haven't seen a streetlight in 15 days!

Mom, you were a little off with your guess on the slang but still close! Good on ya as the Aussies would say.

Mollie you win! (part of me knew you would). I knew at least you wouldn't be able to resist a little game. :) And I miss you guys too!

Grandma, your comments have been great! We both send our love and tell Grandpa we hope that he is feeling better and recovering fast!

Best for last:



Lizzie- I couldnt write your shoutout til i found you a kangeroo. I caught him by feeding him carrots. I can't bring the whole kangeroo back, there's the whole fitting him in my bag plus he might beat up jäger. So I'm just bringing part of him...haha figure that one out. And no it's not a skull. I miss you!!!!!

Answers to your questions

Mom- the parakeets were all the green and yellow kind

Bryan- Only one person had been out to see the whale sharks before. The most common nationality we're coming across is people from Europe, mostly French. We've only met one American couple.

Mystery person- sorry but I still don't know who you are slash might know but I'm not sure!!??


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Driving and driving...

So since we last wrote we have been on the road A LOT!!!! It was a pretty boring stretch for a while since Exmouth. We are now about 100 km outside of Katherine, which is maybe 600 km from Darwin, our ending point. We have come over 4800 km!!! We did a variety of things to entertain ourselves on the long sometimes monotonous drive. We played the alphebet game as a team but there's so little cars and signs that it took two days and we stopped at Q. I taught jess some mindfulness games, the no multiple of 7 or numbers containing 7 game ( Nia Sagers you know what I'm talking about). I modified it for two people, it took us 45 min to get to 69. I made up a song for Dooby Doo to the Scooby Doo theme song...it has four verses. And we studied up on Aussie slang. Whoever can decipher this first wins:

We've been hitting the bitumen at sparrows fart right after brekky. So we're pretty knackered by tea. Spindoola is tight and I've been earbashing about tucker, dinky-dee like chook on the barbie or a big sanger in the arvo. As long as there's no blowies. Fair go blowies!!
Good luck!




-- Thats jess. She's waving!



Geikie gorge...nothing bad happened. I was staying out of reach of the crocs.

One life goal down

13/5/09-Today was one of the most amazing days ever! Why, you ask?Well, today we were booked on a tour to see whale sharks. Turns out it is whale shark season here and there had been multiple sightings for the past few days...though nothing is garunteed. The tour started in the lagoon of Nigaloo national park with a snorkel on a beautiful reef. After, we went to deeper water outside the lagoon, where the whale sharks were. We were briefed on how to go about snorkelling with these creatures and shortly after, our plane (there was one working along with our boat) spotted a shark. As soon as we were close enough, we were given the ok to get into the water. I don't even know if there are words to describe how very majestic and graceful whale sharks are! It was coming right at us and was very near the surface and so we had to swim out of the way. We swam with it for a while before it dove back to the depths of the ocean. It was estimated that this shark was about 6 meters long. I was awestruck. This was not to be our only encounter. Our plane found two more sharks over the course of the day and we swam with both of them before lunch. These last two were even bigger than the first one! One word...and this time I mean it more than ever before, AMAZING!!!

We got in another snorkel after lunch on a very nice reef... Not only did we get to see the splendor and beauty of the whale sharks, but we were lucky enough to see two sea turtles, a dolphin and a white tipped reef shark not to mention a bunch of colorful reef fish and coral!

Dooby doo lost a headlight today and Sam had to chase it down the highway. We now have it taped on.

P.S. Mystery person, out if all my friends and family I have narrowed you down to a SERC person. Beyond that, I need more to pinpoint you.

P.P.S Mama!! Imagine a mini swallow spectacular but with parakeets...we saw that!!!

Coral revenge

Today we woke up early and drove up to Exmouth. We had planned to just hang out there for the day. But we stumbled upon something amazing and once in a lifetime. We booked it for the next day...you'll have to stay tuned to see what it is!!!
That gave us a whole day to kill. We got another campsite, again no roadside camping allowed. Then we walked through the dessert and over big sand dunes until we got to the beach. It was a long, hot walk but totally worth it. We had the entire beach to ourselves! And it was probably the most beautiful beach I have ever been to....so far. The only thing was that there was a pretty strong undertow so we stayed where we could touch. It was enough to suck you off your feet. No getting pulled out to sea, no thanks!!
Oh and another thing, I got attacked by coral. Most of you are probably wondering how coral could attack...well it happened during an intense seaweed fight between me and jess. We chuck the biggest grossest pieces of seaweed at eachother because it's funny. We've been doing it since we were young. Well jess thought she had found the motherload of seaweed and tried to nail me in the stomach but her aim sucks and she hit me in the face. And what she thought was a big, heavy glob of seaweed was actually seaweed attached to a large piece of coral. She basically threw coral at my face. Haha! Hit me right in the nose. I'm ok, no worries just a little scratched and bruised. Of course it was a mistake (although part of me thinks this is payback for when I threw a rock at her head when we were 8). Good times

Banana plantations and coral reefs

May 11
Today we woke up super early and headed to Carnarvon to check out their biggest crop, bananas! I've never seen so many banana trees in my life! After that we drove up to coral bay and went snorkeling on Ningaloo Reef. There were lots of cool fish. Jess took lots of pictures. The sunset over the ocean was absolutely gorgeous!
We're in a real campsite tonight which means showers!!! And bathrooms. Pretty luxurious for us. It's nice to have people all around. Usually it just us in the middle of the desert.



Grandma, a lot of times this is what the road looks like. It's called the Great Northern Highway but in the US it would be just a small back road. No shoulder and huge distances with nothing but red sand, brush, and a few farm animals.




That's Jess agaist the pretty sunset tonight.

On to Monkey Mia! (that's the name of the town)

May 10th STROMATOLITES!!!-only the reason higher life forms were able to evolve on earth! We started off the day visiting some of these! We also decided to start counting all of the dead kangaroos on the side of the road but had to stop after we hit 146 in 100 km! It just got to be too much after a while slash we got to a part where we couldn't even count how Many there were cause they were everywhere! How sweet would it be to get one of these skulls...
We took a heritage road up to Monkey Mia today to see dolphins; turns out we missed the feeding but we did catch a glimpse of a couple (they are actually wild dolphins that are fed for tourists - I don't know how I feel about this...). Along the way we stopped some nice places including a beach composed entirely of little shells. All in all it was a good time and we got to spend a good part of the day chilling on the beach slash relaxing which is always good to do every so often.
Next stop is Canarvan for banana plantations!
P.S. Anna, we totally met some cool Swedish people on the beach!
P.P.S A father was asked today by his very young daughter what "horny" means and he was at a loss for words. We are doing our part to corupt young minds. Good.
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So far...

First of all, thanks for all the comments! It's so fun knowing that everyone is keeping tabs on us!!
Let me catch you up on what we've been up to. We've been driving now for three days. We drive during the day because it's dangerous at night with all the kangaroos hopping around. They'll wreck your car way worse than a deer would and they are everywhere!! We had a face to face encounter two days ago with a kangeroo and her joey. I wandered off on a little trail by myself because I was bored while jess took pictures... I heard rustling in the bushes, looked over and was staring into the eyes of a kangeroo!! I kind of thought it might attack me but they don't teach us new englanders how to avoid kangeroo attacks so I just froze. It went right on eating and I'm still alive to tell the story. I think it liked me, probably because I have red hair.
Other crazy things...we got our van stuck in the sand. That was a fiasco! We were literally in the middle of nowhere, like hadn't even seen cars and our back tire was half sunk in sand. Dooby doo was almost doomed . So also, never had to deal with car stuck in sand. We are both good at being level headed in such situations so treated sand like snow. We dug out the tire the best we could, then I pushed, jess put something under the tire, and we rocked our way out. I've never been more proud (and relieved). Disaster averted! There's was another semi-unpleasant car issue today (we locked ourselves out) but the friendly Aussies came to the rescue. Please don't worry about us after these stories! We may get into messes but also get out of them pretty darn well!

So we've seen the pinnicles desert, camped most nights on the side of the road, seen wild dolphins, hiked along ocean cliffs, climbed down river gorges, and lots more!! Oh and saw a seahorse farm...did you know that seahorses are fish?? (Jess did, I learned something new).


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Australia!!

Just writing real quick to let you know we made it! We've already traveled about 800km and have yet to find Internet. So many adventures already...hopefully more detials later.
Our van is ridiculous. Me me just say, they don't let you choose and Australians have a crazy sense of humor. We're getting lots of attention that's for sure!



Our wicked van is named dooby doo! Haha!!

First Leg

I'm writing from our first flight because I'm bored, which is funny because our next flight is going to be 3x as long! We just flew over the Rockies as you can see in the pic. I'm hungry but we're waiting for free dinner on Qantas.


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Spicy mango margaritas for Cinco de Mayo!! A perfect way to spend time waiting for our flight. Here's to you Bryan!!

Packing...

So, for the past couple days we've been attempting to pack what is going to be our only possessions for the next three months. I have never been a light packer so Jess has been helping me out with the light part. It's actually kind of freeing knowing that I can carry three months worth of everything I need on my back. It will be roughing it though. We're going back to our hippie roots!! So no making fun of us when we're wearing the same clothes in every picture!




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Bags are packed, ready to go!

It's the morning of our departure! I can't believe it's here! We're heading to CT Limo to JFK!


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