I'm currently on the plane, about to land in Sydney, Australia! I am traveling with a friend from school, Brandon Kearse. We have planned to explore Australia and New Zealand for about a month (I think I may stay longer). We got stuck in L.A. for a few days trying to get a flight out to AUS, but it was nice to explore the Los Angeles area - Santa Monica, Hollywood and the Walk of Fame, and Manhattan Beach.
Recommended by friends from school, Pete Johnson and Tyler Jackson, on two separate occasions, I am reading the novel In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson while I am in Australia. Several of my posts will probably have quotes from his book. He is a brilliant author!
The flight to Australia is 15 hours, but we arrive as if we had been flying for 39 hours. Crossing the International Date Line adds 24 hours to our day. We left L.A. on Jan 25 and are arriving on Jan 27. we didn't experience Jan 26 in the air (as our flight is only 15 hours), but it is as if we never lived it. I will never see Jan 26, 2011. Crazy! Imagine the pilots and crew that fly this route all the time! They' missing out on so many days.
The even crazier part is that you "get the time back " on the return trip when you cross the International Date Line again. Sure you get the hours back, but not the date itself. Fascinating. Also, on the return trip I get to experience going back in time. The flight leaves Sydney on Feb 23rd at 11:25am, and it arrives in L.A. on Feb 23rd at 6:00am. Crikey!!
So far Brandon and I plan to spend a few days in Sydney and hike the Blue Mountains. We hope to book an excursion to Uluru (Ayer's Rock) in the Red Center of Australia, and also visit Alice Springs, the city that is farthest into the Outback. We then plan to spend ten or so days driving and hiking along the South Island of New Zealand, and then return to northern Australia and visit Brisbane and dive at the Great Barrier Reef. There have been terrible floods in Brisbane though, and the Reef is currently closed to snorkelers and divers, so we'll see how things pan out. We may dive in a different area, or go explore Melbourne (the Australian Open is currently going on there), or explore the North Island of New Zealand.
Now I am going to let Bill Bryson tell you a bit about Australia:
"Australia is the world's sixth largest country, and it's largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent, and the only continent that is also a country. It is the first continent conquered by the sea, and the last. It is the only nation that began as a prison.
It is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayer's Rock (or Uluru to use it's now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of it's creatures- the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stone fish- are the most lethal of their type in the world. Eighty percent of all that lives in Australia, plant and animal, exists nowhere else. Australia is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile, and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents. (Only Antarctica is more hostile to life).
In short, there is no place in the world like it."
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