Reflections on Sydney

After a week in Sydney we have moved on to Cairns.

Sydney Opera House

Sydney was a great city with lots of great features. The city is beautiful with great infrastructure, a great transportation system, large and beautiful parks, and iconic features like the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Nearby are great beaches like Bondi and natural features surrounding the harbor.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

All of that comes at a price. Sydney is a very expensive city. When we parked in the city to take a tour of the Opera House we parked in a nearby public lot and after four hours had racked up a $60 bill. Food is also quite pricey. Supermarket and restaurant prices run about 50% higher than in the US.  Gas is about $6.00 a gallon.

We stayed in a motel in a suburb called Haberfield at about why you would pay in the states. We didn't plan it but it turns out that Haberfield is a restaurant mecca with a long list of places to choose from. Apparently tour buses bring in foodies from around the area to sample the culinary arts of the region.

Captain Cook's ship Endeavour (replica)

The weather in Sydney was not great for most of our visit with some rain almost every day. The weather report on the news said it was one of the wettest weeks in about thirty years. None the less we had a great time touring around the city. Our activities included walking across the Harbour Bridge, a tour of the Opera House, a visit to the maritime museum and the replica of Capt. Cook's ship Endeavour, a drive around the harbor and to Bondi Beach.

Queen Victoria Building, shopping center in Sydney

We are now in Cairns, a much smaller town in the tropics. We will be here for a little over a week before moving on to the South Island of New Zealand.

Perth and the trip across Australia

Lake Cave

Dick is feeling tired tonight, so I am going to do the blog.

We made our way from Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg to Perth on an all night flight. (Business class is great on these long flights.) We stayed a week in Perth and thoroughly enjoyed the city. It is not a large city, so it is easy to get around. We rented a car and went to the beach twice-I only waded, but Dick went all in. I thought the water was a little chilly. One day we drove to a place called Margaret River. It was a charming little town with lovely beaches and caves. We toured Lake Cave which had a reflecting lake with many stalactites and stalagmites and two columns that were suspended on a flow over the lake. The cave was not large, but I think it was one of the more beautiful limestone caves that I have been in.  They were having a championship surfing competition at one of the beaches, but unfortunately the waves were not big enough the day we were there, so there was not action. Driving back to Perth, we saw kangaroos in a field. I was happy that our hotel had coin operated washers and dryers, so I got everything washed. I probably won’t need to do laundry again.

Perth beach

To make our way across Australia, we decided to take the Indian-Pacific train. It took three days and nights. We could not afford to book the sleeper cars, so we were in the red car, not gold or platinum. Which meant that we spent three nights sleeping in reclining chairs with no foot rest and you could not remove the armrest between the two seats. Fortunately the car was not full, so we could spread out and have two seats apiece. I found one set that you could move the armrest, so I could sprawl out over two seats. Surprisingly I slept not too badly. The train made many stops along the way-sometimes delivering mail and groceries to remote places. Most stops were not long enough for us to get out, but there were several planned stops where we got to stretch our legs. The first was Kalgoorlie which is a gold mining town. We arrived there at 11:00 at night, so nothing was open, but we walked the streets and were charmed by the architecture. The next stop was a place called Cook. In its heyday, it had been associated with providing services for the railroads, but now the IndianPacific only comes once a week, so it has become a ghost town. We toured the closed school and other buildings. There had once been a swimming pool (now filled with dirt) and a hospital. Only four people reside there and our train drivers got off there after a night’s drive and would pick up a freight train back to Perth.  The big negative about the place were the flies, hundreds of them landing all over you. The people that live there wore netting over their faces.All of the previous places were in the Nullarbor Desert This desert is very flat and covered in mostly sagebrush type of plants. It had been raining before we went through, so there were puddles.  Next we stopped in Adelaide. The train station is a little far from the city, so we did not really get to see it. But we did take a walk and saw a huge park. It was about the size of Central Park in New York. The final stop was at Broken Hill which was also a mining town. They mine zinc, lead and silver. The town looked similar to Kalgoorlie, but we were there earlier, so we able to eat dinner and walk the streets. 

The view in all directions

The next morning we were close to Sydney and traveled through the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains are beautiful with many vistas of valleys. We arrived in Sydney in the morning and rested. Today we toured Watson Bay and Bondi Beach (Sydney’s most popular beach). It rained today, so we just looked instead of swimming. We did walk around a park at Watson and got thoroughly soaked. 

The Indian Pacific Train

Dick and I have both enjoyed being out of the poverty that we saw in South America and Africa. It is very hard to see knowing that there is not much that you can do. It does make us more appreciative what we have.

Bus to Arusha

Let me back up a bit and tell a little of Tanzania and our trip to Arusha.

First a little about Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. We didn't seen much of it but what we have seen is pretty sad. Our hotel was right in the middle of what would be called a slum in the US. The hotel entrance is down a passageway in an alley, but then opens in to a small lobby. The actual rooms and the hotel are quite nice. There is a Thai/Chinese restaurant on site. We had an all you can eat buffet for about $10 each. The food was excellent.

Shortly after we got here we told the front desk that we needed to obtain some US dollars to pay the balance for our Safari. The young man who had carried our bags to our room escorted us about six blocks to a shady little hole in the wall place guarded by a guy sitting in a doorway with a rifle across his lap where we could exchange some currency. We had to pass some neighborhoods I wouldn't have liked to have been in alone. Our guide advised us to guard our valuables, had me carry Linda's purse. None of this made me feel terribly secure.

Tomorrow morning he will likewise guide us a couple of blocks to where we can get a bus to Arusha where our Safari will begin. Could be a ten hour drive. Hope it's not a "chicken bus".

For the first time on our trip, we screwed up. I had set my alarm to get up in time to catch the bus to Arusha, but unfortunately I had left it in airplane mode and it had not adjusted to local time so we got up an hour late. Richard the nice young man who helped us yesterday to the rescue again. He got us a cab and took us to where the bus was waiting at its first stop on the way out of the city. He actually rode with us in the cab and got us settled in the bus, someone else was in our seats so there was some shuffling around to do. English is one of the national languages but many only speak Swahili.

The bus was not a "chicken bus" it was a bit like an old greyhound that had seen its better days. The Africans who rode along with us were mostly dressed up because for them this was considered upscale traveling. If you only make about a hundred a month, the $25 fare is a significant investment. The bus had no air-conditioning so we drove with the windows mostly open. I got a real windblown look. The trip gave us a chance to see how the locals really lived. Most of the places we passed through would have to be considerably upgraded to be considered slums. There were an incredible number of little shacks often made of miscellaneous boards and sometimes mud over sticks. Each was someones little store selling everything imaginable, lots of little bars and eateries where patrons sat on planks over a dirt floor. Each store seemed to specialize in one product, maybe fruits, maybe nuts and bolts, maybe shoes, each one typically less than fifty square feet and open to the front. 

After eleven hours on the bus with only one bathroom stop (no bathroom on the bus) we made it to Arusha. Arusha is a much nicer town than Dar Es Salaam. Our hotel was very nice, very upscale, even by US standards. Quite a contrast to our bus ride.