Australia

Australia

So far I’ve done two things I’ve always wanted to do.  I’ve ridden an elephant in Bali, and here in Australia, I finally held a Koala!  As a little girl I had a Koala figurine that would dangle from the fan above my bed and have since the first day I laid eyes on it wanted to hold my very own real Koala.  I entertained thoughts of trying to sneak one onto the boat, but it’s probably for the best that I couldn’t.  Australia has been beautiful, but very very rainy.  There have been two stops so far that I haven’t been able to get off because I wasn’t part of an escorted tour, and while I got to see Sydney, which is gorgeous, as we sailed away, I wasn’t able to go there yet either.  The good news is, we come back through all of these ports and I can’t wait!  I bought a scratch off map which I am just tickled about…yes I recognize that this makes me a dork.  It’s a world map that starts off with all of the continents in a mottled brown color, but as you scratch off the places you’ve been, the colors come out from underneath the brown.  It’s awesome.  So far Australia has been nothing like Crocodile Dundee, which is both disappointing and a relief.  I have to laugh because most Australians find this movie as offensive as they fine Fosters…which is supposed to be Australian for beer.  I have gotten to pet kangaroos, be very near to crocodiles and duck-billed platapuses, and even hang out with an emu.  It’s been wonderful!  I was sad to say goodbye to our last cruisers because they were a great bunch who were very social and very nice to us.  Most of them were from Australia so kept giving us great tips on where to go when we got off.  On one of the excursions I went on, we drove through the rainforest on an old WWll Army Duck which is an amphibious vehicle.  Thank God I didn’t see any snakes, but the spiders here are huge!  At the shop they sold fruit kabobs of all the different fruits that the jungle grew.  I don’t know the names of any of them, but they were all delicious!  I know in this post I haven’t mentioned individual places or dates and that’s simply because I couldn’t even tell you what today is. Everything is bleeding together.  I get my schedule for the day the night before and I’m pretty much where I need to be when I need to be.  I haven’t had to plan ahead or look behind yet.  It’s been fantastic.  On one sour note, when we plugged in the tiny fridge that came with our room, it shorted out our X-Box, and being that all the game systems over here are different than the ones sold in America, even if we bought a new one, it wouldn’t be able to play any of the games.  I’m heart-broken over Skyrim, but I know I don’t have much time to play it anyhow.

Now I feel bad that I didn’t mention places so here is what I can remember…our first stop was at an island that we couldn’t get off (I forget which, but it looked beautiful.)  Then we stopped in Darwin, but honestly it was raining so hard and the raindrops were so fat that it felt like hail, we stepped off the ship and got right back on.  Darwin is a half-hour time difference by the way, which is very strange.  Then we went to Cairns which is where I went on the expedition to the rainforest.  After that we stopped in the Whitsundays where again we could not disembark, and then yesterday we were in Sydney.  The opera house is gorgeous from a distance.  I can’t wait to take a tour of it when we come back through.   The ocean seems to get a little rockier each day and I’m still nervous about the Tasman Sea.  I’m pretty sure we’re on our way to New Zealand.  We’re putting together a Christmas show, and there is an array of giant gingerbread houses and chocolate castles in the lobby that I want to dive into every time I pass.  Again, I am so thankful and happy that I got to do this with Jason.  I will miss everybody else for Christmas and the New Year!  I love you guys!