Back at Mac

What a strange and interesting life I have. Six weeks ago I left McMurdo, for a period of wonderful traveling. Seems like the blink of an eye, and here I am-- back again. It is so much warmer than it was when I left, and it's light all the time. The work will be quite a bit different, too. A lot of flying around in helicopters, installing and maintaining mountaintop repeaters and stuff. It'll be a nice change after the relatively mundane wintertime work routine.
I wasted no time in contracting the McMurdo Crud. There are always a lot of viruses making the rounds on the ice, and it's pretty much given that we will all be exposed to them, until we gain our immunity. I felt funky right on arrival, and it has escalated into the strong sensation of having a colony of rabid prairie dogs inhabiting my lung tissue. I went to the doc to get some cough medicine this morning, and he recommended that I take a couple of days off of work. There really isn't much to do in the daytime, so it's not a big treat to play hookie. I've been reading a good book about Lewis and Clark's expedition, which has helped to pass the time. Fingers crossed that the germs will subside, and I can go do some work.

(The first picture is Conan at his new/old home in Helena. The other are taken in the C-17 I took to the ice.)

Dog Parkin'

After leaving Kauai, I headed to Oahu for a couple of days. I stayed in a big, funky backpacker on the north shore (near Sunset Beach). On my way out, I decided to have another little urban adventure. I stayed at the Honolulu YMCA. It was old and funky, and very cheap for Honolulu. I don't think I'll stay there again, but it was a fun experiment. I had a single room for something like $42.
My plane leaving HNL had mechanical problems, so American footed the bill for a nice room on the 19th floor of the Waikiki Beach Marriott. Not bad! I hung around on the beach for a while and nursed a bad sunburn from Kauai.
I came back to the states, and picked up Conan right away. We've been hanging around at dog parks near my dad's place in Louisville, Colorado. This morning we're back in Helena-- I'm sadly dropping him off at his parents' house for another few months. I got an offer to do a short summer contract back on the ice that I just can't pass up.

More Na Pali Pics

These were taken by the "first mate" on our Zodiac.

Na Pali to the Big City

I was so thrilled by my brief (but painful) hike up the Na Pali coast on the north shore of Kauai, that I thought it would be worth another day to take one of the cruises that see the coast from the ocean. There are different kinds-- sailboats, catamarans, helicopters, and some that use small rubber Zodiacs. I picked the last one-- sounded like more of an adventure. It was-- holy cow! We loaded about twenty of us, plus the captain and the first mate up at the boat launch (it isn't really a harbor) at Waimea. We had to blast through 5'-6' surf for about an hour to get around to the north shore, which was calmer. It was so calm, in fact, that we got to go into many sea caves that are almost always inaccessible due to high surf. I estimate we entered ten sea caves, including two that had a separate entrance and exit. I can't put in to words how awesome (and scary) it is to drive a boat into a pitch black cave with the surf surging up and down, navigating around to a separate exit. At one point Chris, the captain/pilot pulled in to a very cool cave with a waterfall splashing down through a "skylight" in the top of the cave. We took some pictures there. Chris said "this view was the photo that was on the cover of National Geographic’s special book on the most beautiful places on earth. I believe it. We then backed out of the cave, and proceeded back up the coast, where we entered a pitch dark cave. Turns out it was a "U" shaped cave, and we came back out where the skylight waterfall was. That was one of the most awesome moments of my life. You can see photos and videos at their web site: http://napaliriders.com/. In addition to the cool caves, the peaks and cliffs of the Na Pali coast are some of the most awesome geological features anywhere, and the clarity of the water is completely amazing. It is the color of Windex, and you can see the bottom through forty feet of water as though it were a bathtub. We went snorkeling with tiny Spinner Dolphins, and stopped at one point to tie up, bait some fish, and snorkel around them. Never having worked a snorkel before, it was a little frustrating for me. I haven't figured out the part of not drinking a gallon of water through your sinuses yet. It'll probably be more fun when I master that part.

After Na Pali, I explored some more of Kauai by land. I drove my slick rented Mustang convertible all over the place. The surf at Hanalei was very weak, or I might have spent more time there. I'm no surfer, but I love watching huge waves crash. It stayed dry for my entire visit on Kauai until the last day, when it rained almost all day. I used that as an excuse to explore by car some more. I spent my last night in Lihue to be close to the airport, and flew out without incident. Because of the way my tickets lined up, I was forced to spend a couple of days in Oahu, which I didn't really relish. I pictured hanging around all day downtown, trying to evade the tourists. What I failed to take into account is that these Hawaiian islands are TINY. I drove all the way up to the north shore of Oahu in less than an hour. I stayed at a big, funky backpacker at Shark's Cove, adjacent to Sunset Beach, and the famous Banzai Pipeline. I spent a little too much time on the beach yesterday, and I resemble a lobster today. A local bloke struck up a conversation about surfing and dirt bikes, and I stood around in the sun like a brain-dead lizard for an hour and a half chatting with him. When I got home, I was the color of a pomegranate. I checked out of my backpacker this morning and drove down to Honolulu, where I scored one of the strangest berths yet. I'm staying at the Central YMCA, right next to Waikiki. It's a dingy, ratty old building, with peeling paint and a lot of funk going on. I didn't see any bugs or anything, though, and the price is right-- $42 a night. Sometimes I like to take these little adventures-- get away from the tourists and hang with the locals. Plus, I can soak my lobster bod in the cool pool...

Kauai

I'm melting. It is so much warmer here in Hawaii than it was in New Zealand or Australia. It's been between 80F and 90F and muggy since I got here. I won't go into great detail, but I've been to beaches all over the place, hiked the Na Pali coast, and have driven up to Waimea Canyon. I've had really good luck with accomodations, finding a very nice hotel room right on the beach in Kapa'a (first two nights), for a very reasonable rate. My travelling style has changed quite a bit from the start of my trip. At first, I was eating out of grocery stores, staying in backpackers in New Zealand. Now I'm cruising around in a rented 2010 Mustang convertible, eating in restaurants and staying in B&Bs. Part of the reason for that is that Kauai is just not geared up for backpacker-type travellers. Also, I've travelled quite cheaply so far, and I just want to spluge a bit. I was really craving a nice piece of fish, and drove around in the bigger towns looking for a promising place. Nothing looked inviting, so I decided to take my chances back here in Waimea. Right across the street is the Wrangler Steakhouse. Hmmm. Not the normal best bet for a vege-fishy-tarian like myself. I just had some of the best fish I've ever had there-- moonfish rolled in crumbs, cooked in butter and served in a creamy caper sauce with garlic mashed potatoes. Yikes!
I'm taking a raft trip back up the other (western) end of the Na Pali coast tomorrow, which leaves from Waimea. I have to be there at 6:30AM tomorrow, so I wanted to stay as close as possible. The only accommodations I could find were in a B&B. It's a HUGE suite (three rooms) with a Jacuzzi, and a king size bed. It's only $160 a night (which is way more than I would like to pay, but for this place it a bargain). The downside: no AC! It's right on the beach, so it should cool down nicely at night. It's already quite nice outside, but a little warm for sleeping inside. I have all the windows open, with fingers crossed. If nothing else, I can dump a bag of ice in the Jacuzzi, and sleep in that...

Sydney

I flew back to Sydney from Melbourne today, saying goodbye to my funky Chinatown pub. The flight was uneventful, and I'm right back in the middle of good ol' Sydney. Not necessarily intentionally, I'm in Chinatown here, too. This part of Sydney is full of Asian students-- not sure where they go to school, but they're everywhere.
I had a nice visit with an Ozzie named Russell at a pub (Paddy McGuires) in the Haymarket district this evening. He related how he likes to go pig hunting in northern Australia, and what a rush it is. They bring two or three dogs, and track down the feral pigs. They loose the dogs on the boars, and the dogs capture them by grabbing them by the ears. In the summa, they just castrate the peegs, so they get noice and fat for next ye-ah. Then they'll catch 'em again, and dispatch them with a noice noif to the lungs. In the winta, they can sell them by dumping them in pig boxes, and get as much as AU$1.60 a kg. Profitable, that. He related how some (expletive deleteds) had captured peegs and cut one ear off. That means that when the dogs go after the peeg, they can't get a hold, and the peeg will sometimes gore the dog to death. I asked Russell why someone would go to all the trouble to go to the bush and capture a wild pig just to cut its ear off, and he replied that they do it just because they are (expletive deleteds).
An interesting country, this. (Note: Picture is not from here, it's a cool beach on Phillip Island, near Melbourne.)

More signs

More crazy, random signs...