The Wandering Tattler

We drove into Port Douglas and boarded the Poseidon, a motorized catamaran that took us out of the harbor and about 38 nautical miles from shore (about 42 terrestrial miles, I believe). Near shore we encountered choppy seas and quite a few people (of about 50 on-board) became sick, but as we neared the reef, the seas quieted and everyone was eager to get into the water. The water temperature was about 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), so even I did not get cold. The reef system is so vast and healthy and the number of types and forms of coral so much greater than we’d ever seen before that the initial effect was rather overwhelming. The types and diversity of fishes was also astonishing and defies quick description. We snorkeled on three different reefs (the GBR is just an extremely long chain of many smaller reefs) and each offered different attractions. We saw barracuda at only one site, and we were all disappointed that our snorkel guide was not able to arouse any sleeping white-tip reef sharks for us to see, but in general the quality and diversity of life on the reef was as great as we could have hoped. Our Poseidon expedition lasted from 8:30 am until about 4:30 pm, and we were very lucky to have gone out on a day when exceptionally good conditions prevailed at the reef. We did not snorkel on the outer side of the reef, since waves were crashing against it with great force; this is the place where the continental shelf ends and the sea bed drops into the abyss. We can now say that we’ve snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef!

Greetings to all friends and relatives. We've had very limited internet access, so I haven't had a chance to post anything recently. I'm at an internet cafe in Port Douglas now, on our last night in Queensland, and I'm going to post notes for several days (below). If time permits, I'll add another post regarding more recent events. We're doing well and have had a great time in this tropical area. Needless-to-say, I've been taking a lot of photographs (over 1 GB's worth on one recent day!) but uploading image files as I did in Hawaii isn't easy here in Australia. Cheerio, mates.


Port Douglas and Mossman: March 26

Beautiful day! No rain. Drove to Port Douglas and spent some time in the outdoor markets next to the harbor (Lynn bought jewelry). Afterwards we walked on Four Mile Beach and saw the “stinger” nets set up to create safe swimming enclosures by excluding the lethal box jellies. About noon we drove to a tasteful Port Douglas institution, Rainforest Habitat, which maintains populations of Australian birds and mammals in open-air spaces. After seeing and photographing many interesting organisms (including female kangaroos and smaller macropods with young in their pouches), we drove to nearby Mossman Gorge, part of the Daintree National Park and adjacent to an aboriginal land grant. Mossman Gorge forms a channel through the rain-forested mountains for a river which was now swollen by recent heavy rains and filled with dangerous white-water rapids. When we arrived at one traditional swimming hole, we found that two young women had been carried downstream and were calling out for help. Several young men tried to swim across the fast-moving river, but before they could reach the girls, one disappeared into the rapids. Within a minute she reappeared further downstream, pressed against a large boulder next to the water’s edge. She was lucky to have survived her immersion in the turbulent waters but was now paralyzed with fear, unable to move out of the water. Eventually one of the young men reached her and pulled her out of the water. All around the accessible parts of the river were signs warning of frequent drownings in the area and cautioning against swimming. After this drama had been resolved, Lynn and I followed a 1.5 km hike through the rainforest. We were very impressed by the extraordinary buttressed trunks of some of the mahagony and strangler fig trees.

This evening we drove into Port Dougls for dinner at a restaurant named Zinc, where our lovely young waitress, Nicky, proved to be a friend of our proprieters. She had recently worked as an extra and double for a television remake of South Pacific and told us stories of her interactions with the lead actors. As we left the restaurant to walk to our car, we discovered a bandicoot in the bushes outside an ice cream joint, where a woman was feeding this odd marsupial ice cream cones.



Rainforest: March 25

We were picked up this morning by Peter, a Daintree wilderness guide, who took us in his 4W-drive Land Rover on an excursion through the Daintree River Rainforest, a national park. The north Queensland rainforest is said to be the oldest rainforest in the world, and it contains some of the most primitive angiosperm trees, as well as many tree ferns and figs. Due to recent heavy rains associated with Cyclone Larry, Peter had to ford many streams that flowed across the road, although the Daintree itself was crossed on a ferry boat that was winched across the river. In many places the track was very rough, and a 4WD vehicle was absolutely essential. The Land Rover, like many vehicles in the area, had tall snorkels that extended fro the engine up to the top of the roof, ensuring an adequate intake of oxygen for the diesel engine even if the river water was four feet deep. Pete gunned the engine as we crossed one releatively deep stream, creating a bow wave that nearly inundated the entire vehicle. Afterwards the floor of the Rover was covered by water, which eventually drained away.

We hiked through wet forest, enjoying Peter’s extensive botanical knowledge and folk lore, and eventually drove to to Cape Tribulation (“Cape Trib”), where we went for a walk on the fine sand beach. This area has extensive mangrove swamps, and in one we saw many “mudskippers,” small fish whose complex eyes enable them to see below and above water and that scoot about over wet mud. We also saw a gigantic megapode (primitive bird) nest mound, a pile of soil and fermenting vegetation that was about 4 feet tall. After returning to our B & B for a shower, we ate dinner in Port Douglas, which is a charming and fairly upscale small resort town.



On to Cairns: March 24, 2006

Qantas took us from Adelaide to Sydney and from Sydney to Cairns. Our flight path took us over the “tablelands”southwest of Cairns, one of the areas hit hard by the recent cyclone, and we could see that the rivers below were swollen from recent rains. A town called Inisfail had received the brunt of the Category 5 storm’s winds, but Cairns, to our relief, had been spared major effects. In Port Douglas, to the north, the storm had barely been noticed. Upon disembarking from the plane, we were shocked by the hot and humid air. We picked up our rental car, drove into Cairns, and spent an hour strolling the marine and esplanade. Cairns in located on the shore of a bay surrounded by dramatic headlands, all clothed in thick tropical rainforest. This time of year, the beaches are unswimmable due to the presence of box jellyfish (“stingers”). In the marsh beyond the boardwalk we saw lots of elegant egrets and herons, godwits and curlews, as well as signs warning about salt-water crocodiles. We decided to try to reach our B&B before dark fell, so we drove north towards Port Douglas and checked into the Marae,



Kangaroo Island to Adelaide: March 23, 2006

This morning we packed and cleaned up the lodge. We drove across Kangaroo Island toward Penneshaw via American River, In Penneshaw we ate lunch and drove the car onto t he SeaLink ferry. After a smooth 45-minute crossing, we drove from Cape Jervis to Victor Harbor, which someone had told Lynn was the site of another penguin colony. Victor Harbor, one of Adelaide’s seaside resorts, was quiet in these waning days of the tourist season. Lynn took a horse-drawn tram across a narrow wooden causeway to Granate Island and back. After strolling through the pretty marina park and both blocks of downtown business, we walked back across the causeway and ate at a restaurant on the island. At 8 o’clock we joined a guided penguin tour and saw many of the 14-inch-tall penguins emerge from the sea, cross a paved pathway, and climb up many feet of rocky cliff to their nest burrows. Afterwards, we drove back to Adelaide and checked into the Paringa Hotel, located on a noisy and dirty alley off Hindley St. Despite lots of street noise from the pubs below, we slept fairly well.


Koalas and Penguins: March 22

This morning we tried to drive to Murray Lagoon, recommended for its birding, but we encountered terrible road conditions after leaving the pavement (an unsealed road surface consisting of corrugated hard pan that induced powerful vibrations in the car). After meeting a driver repairing a flat tire on his 4WD vehicle who told us that road conditions were worse towards the lagoon and the lagoon was dry, we turned back and drove to Vivonne beach for a picnic lunch on the sand. There were only a few other people on this fine white-sand beach, but we were the target of large biting flies, and after a long walk (during which we observed a pied oystercatcher), we drove out to nearby Ellen Point, a rocky headland with a small automated lighthouse and low shrubby vegetation. A small fishing pier or “jetty” extended out into the cove from the side of the headland. From the point itself we saw a school of dolphins swimming across the cover.

We drove back to Cape de Coudic for an early dinner, and leaving the dishes in the sink, we drove back to the Hansen Bay Sanctuary, that eucalyptus paradise in which we had early seen koalas and an echidna. Upon arriving, we watched flocks of rainbow lorikeets and galahs (white and pink cockatoos) feeding in the grasses. Raucous braying noises attracted our attention to a large eucalyptus tree, where we saw a large koala descending, only about 5 feet above the ground. This animal was the source of the bizarre sounds, and as we watched, it lowered itself to the ground, ran across the dirt lane, and began climbing another large eucalyptus. It ascended directly, meeting another koala with which it proceeded to mate. As we watched this conjugation, which was transacted in silence and lasted several minutes, Lynn decided that koalas were not paragons of fuzzy innocence. After this unexpected performance had ended, we strolled the grounds, spotting other koalas, a couple of largte kangaroos, and a dozen Tammar Wallabies.

As the sun set, we drove back to Ellen Point, where we had learned that Little Penguins were nesting. After arriving back at the jetty, we immediately heard the gutteral communications of the penguins and saw a pair at their nest cavity about 20 feet above our heads on the face of the cliff. We walked out to the tip of Ellen Point, where we heard many more penguins, and at one point found ourselves standing above some coniferous shrubs, only a couple of feet above a pair of birds who were completely screened from our view by the thick foliage.

We drove back to Cape de Coudic at 50 km/hr; trying to avoid collisions with the many wallabies, kangaroos, and brush-tailed possums that were crossing the road or sitting at the edge of the pavement. Many cars in this area have kangaroo bars on the front of their hoods. The 2-inch tubular steel structures protect the cars headlights and grillwork from damaging collisions with these animals. Sometimes the animals stopped in front of us, blinded by our headlights, and would leave the road only when we turned off the car lights. A large kangaroo can cause considerable damage to a car, so as we drove we scanned the roadsides carefully, stopping frequently to wait for the road to clear; fortunately, we encountered no other cars this evening. At this low speed, our trip home took over an hour, but we avoided direct contact with any of the wildlife, and in the last mile we were lucky enough to see a very primitive bird, a bush stone-curlew, by the road’s edge.



Koalas and Roos: March 21, 2006

This morning we drove to the Flinders-Chase National Park Visitor Center, about 9 miles from our lodge, and spent about 2 hours traversing the Platypus Springs walk. We walked through tussock-grass meadows and eucalyptus groves (with a yacca understory) to a series of pools which support a small but growing number of platypuses. We saw signs of platypus (bubbles inside circule ripples) but never saw one come above the water’s surface. We also saw a couple of kangaroos and a few wallabies, as well as several of the large, odd-looking Cape Barrens Goose (which have a very short black bill covered by lemon-yellow ceres, or nasal tissue. We also spotted a koala high in a eucalyptus, as well as galahs. We then drove to Seal Harbor and went on a guided tour that took us down onto the small beach where the world’s entire population of the endangered Australian sea lion breeds. Two large adults were engaged in vicious combat, and one eventually fled down through the surf, leaving he victor to gloat over his success. There are only about 1,600 Australian sea lions left, and the entire species breeds only on this one beach.

Next we drove to Hanson’s Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, famous for its koalas. We did see several koalas, one of them quite low in a tree, about a dozen wallabies, a large male kangaroo, and one echidna at close range.




Kangaroo Island: March 20
After an early breakfast, we checked out of the Pacific International Apartments on Frome St in Adelaide and drove southwest to Port Jervis, at the extreme tip of a long peninsula. The landscape is hilly and semi-arid and savannah-like. At Port Jervis we caught the SeaLink Ferry for the 45-minute ride to Pennashaw on Kangaroo Island. It was a windy day and the large ferry, which was carrying large trucks as well as cars, pitched back and forth irregularly in the swells. The straits were filled with white-caps and we could see no small pleasuare boats. Fortunately, the sky was blue and the entire day was sunny.

On arrival in Penneshaw, we drove to Prospect Hill, where we climbed about 500 stairs to gain a splendid 360-degree panoramic view of Kangaroo Island and part of mainland Australia. After stopping in Kingscote for groceries, we drove for about 2 hours to the main visitor center for Flinders-Chase National Park, at the western end of the island. As we drove, we spotted kangaroos in the grasslands to either side of the road, but we also saw many dead kangaroos along the roadside. Most of these animals are killed by automobiles at night, after being blinded by headlights. This is the third-largest island off the coast of Australia: it’s about 100 miles long and, at its widest, about 35 miles across. Having been cut off from the mainland by rising ocean waters towards the end of the last glacial perod, it’s acquired some local endemic animal and plant species and many unique subspecies of mainland species. Having been spared many of the alien introductions that have undermined native species in other parts of Australia, it’s also got thriving populations of n native marsupials and monotremes that are in jeopardy elsewhere. Tomorrow we’ll try to arrange some guided tours, so we can see koalas and other native wildlife, perhaps even a platypus. We have seen wallabies here around our cottage, along with a colony of New Zealand fur seals, whose male leadership is constantly and loudly fighting to maintain its rank.

We’re staying in a century-old light-keepers cottage at the most remote western tip of Kangaroo Island, Cape de Coudic. It’s a large stone house with three bedrooms and no telephones or television, so we’ll be out of touch with the rest of Australia and the world for three days. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem, but we’ve just learned that northern Queensland was just hit by category 5 cyclone (hurricane), so we’re not sure if the Cairns Airport will be open for business when we fly in on March 24, or whether we’ll be able to pick up our rental car there and check into our B & B in Port Douglas.

At last we're in an Australian hotel with semi-decent internet service. However, the "broad-band" connection is not very fast and the price is steep, so - once again - i probably won't be posting any pictures. Sorry, folks. I know the pictures are far more interesting than my overly detailed narratives.


This morning we walked down two blocks from our hotel and watched the Commonwealth Games women's marathoners as they raced past (there were only 15 runners.) Then we caught our shuttle bus to the Melbourne airport and flew Qantas to Adelaide. Upon picking up our rental car, we found to our delight that Adelaide is an extremely easy city for foreign drivers. The central city is laid out in a grid and has relatively few high rise towers. It’s a charming “small town” of about one million people with a rustic feel and an air of fiftiesh innocence. An arts festival was in full swing, and near our hotel a “fringe” festival was nearing completion. We walked through the local botanical garden and along the banks of the river. Upon walking back to our hotel through a quiet pedestrian mall we were accosted by several drunk aboriginals, the only unpleasant social encounter we’ve had so far in Australia. They were too intoxicated to cause much trouble, but it reminded us that behind the impressive civility and progressive spirit of this country there remains one one major unresolved issue.

Tomorrow morning we’ll drive an hour southwest to Cape Jervis to catch a ferry for Kangaroo Island, where we’ll stay for three nights at Cape de Couedic. We’ll be in Flinders-Chase National Park, a locale with very rich wildlife and, I suspect, little internet or telephone access.

Today we took a lift to the top of the new Rialto Tower to see city. At 60 stories, it is currently the tallest building in Melbourne, but across the river a 99-story residential tower is being constructed; when completed, it will be the tallest building in the southern hemisphere (there’s a taller structure in Singapore). After enjoying the sweeping views we took the free tourist tram to Queen Victoria Market, where we bought opals and aboriginal art and got sandwiches in a congested deli market. We took a garishly decorated Bengali tram to Flinders Station and walked across the Yarra River to Alexandra Gardens; after dinner we listened to a terrific Celtic music group and then walked to Myers Music Shell for a spectacular concert by Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the Melbourne Symphony. Afterwards, one more fish/sound/light/dancing waters show for Lynn

Today we took a lift to the top of the new Rialto Tower to see city. At 60 stories, it is currently the tallest building in Melbourne, but across the river a 99-story residential tower is being constructed; when completed, it will be the tallest building in the southern hemisphere (there’s a taller structure in Singapore). After enjoying the sweeping views we took the free tourist tram to Queen Victoria Market, where we bought opals and aboriginal art and got sandwiches in a congested deli market. We took a garishly decorated Bengali tram to Flinders Station and walked across the Yarra River to Alexandra Gardens; after dinner we listened to a terrific Celtic music group and then walked to Myers Music Shell for a spectacular concert by Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the Melbourne Symphony. Afterwards, one more fish/sound/light/dancing waters show for Lynn

Today we took a lift to the top of the new Rialto Tower to see city. At 60 stories, it is currently the tallest building in Melbourne, but across the river a 99-story residential tower is being constructed; when completed, it will be the tallest building in the southern hemisphere (there’s a taller structure in Singapore). After enjoying the sweeping views we took the free tourist tram to Queen Victoria Market, where we bought opals and aboriginal art and got sandwiches in a congested deli market. We took a garishly decorated Bengali tram to Flinders Station and walked across the Yarra River to Alexandra Gardens; after dinner we listened to a terrific Celtic music group and then walked to Myers Music Shell for a spectacular concert by Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie and the Melbourne Symphony. Afterwards, one more fish/sound/light/dancing waters show for Lynn

Today we flew from Sydney to Melbourne. Our views of the countryside were limited but we saw some magnificent sandstone sea cliffs just southwest of Botany Bay and great expanses of fairly flat bushland (rather savannah-like in appearance, with scattered ranches or farms). Upon arrival in Melbourne we felt an immediate change in temperature: Melbourne warms up nicely during the day but in the evenings and early mornings temperatures fall into the mid-fifties. We’d sorn shorts, short-sleeved shirts, and sandles day and night in Sidney, but in Melbourne we’re wearing long pants and, in the evenings, light coats. We took a shuttle to the Kingsgate Hotel, an older modest establishment in the city center. It was the only hotel with an available room, due to the throngs of international tourists who are staying in the city for the two weeks of the Commonwealth Games, a track-and-field, soccer, swimming, rugby, and cricket competition involving current and former nations of the British Commonwealth. The Kingsgate is the sort of place in which the openingn and closing of every door reverberates throughout the entire 6-story hotel, as does much of the plumbing activity. The bed was fine and the room was clean, but, as with the much nice Rendezvous Stafford in Sydney, internet access is very limited and it isn’t practical to post many image files.

Melbourne is a sprawling city, just a bit smaller than Sydney (3 million versus 4 million) and it’s also a port city (Port Phillip is a very large bay opening to the south to Bass Strait on the Southern Ocean). The downtown area and most of the city’s highrise offices, hotels, and athletic and cultural facilities are concentrated along the banks of Yarra River. Our hotel was just a short walk from Federation Square (architectural style: cute anarchist) and Flinder Station (a grand Victorian edifice). Just across the river from these sites, on the south bank, is the thriving commercial Southgate shopping and dining area, along extensive parklands and a magnificent botanical garden. Alexandra Garden was the center of the two-week-long Melbourne Festival, which featured lots of free outdoor entertainment and many free cultural events concurrent with the Commonwealth Games. It was swarming with people and performers; many events occurred simultaneously in neighboring venues, the music from one site sometimes intruding on the next, but the whole enterprise was marked by a very positive spirit, orderly crowds, a noticeable absence of drunkenness or rowdiness, more than sufficient numbers of public restrooms, and ample advice from police and a vast network of well organized volunteers. In Alexandra Garden we watched a Canadian drumming group; ate dinner; watched a troup of talented young Australian circus acrobats in a presentation titled “Love Happens,” and then walked to the Myer Music Shell, where we listened to South African singer Marian Makeba (she’s really lost her voice but her band was fabulous). Afterwards we walked back along the river to view the nightly fish/fountain/light show. In the middle of the river are 70 large (about 15 feet long) metallic fish statues representing all the countries of the Commonwealth. Each fish bears several computer-driven water fountains and a set of coloured lights. Enormous loud-speakers play music while the waters dance and the lights change. The event is at once enormously corny but also very appealing.

Today we flew from Sydney to Melbourne. Our views of the countryside were limited but we saw some magnificent sandstone sea cliffs just southwest of Botany Bay and great expanses of fairly flat bushland (rather savannah-like in appearance, with scattered ranches or farms). Upon arrival in Melbourne we felt an immediate change in temperature: Melbourne warms up nicely during the day but in the evenings and early mornings temperatures fall into the mid-fifties. We’d sorn shorts, short-sleeved shirts, and sandles day and night in Sidney, but in Melbourne we’re wearing long pants and, in the evenings, light coats. We took a shuttle to the Kingsgate Hotel, an older modest establishment in the city center. It was the only hotel with an available room, due to the throngs of international tourists who are staying in the city for the two weeks of the Commonwealth Games, a track-and-field, soccer, swimming, rugby, and cricket competition involving current and former nations of the British Commonwealth. The Kingsgate is the sort of place in which the openingn and closing of every door reverberates throughout the entire 6-story hotel, as does much of the plumbing activity. The bed was fine and the room was clean, but, as with the much nice Rendezvous Stafford in Sydney, internet access is very limited and it isn’t practical to post many image files.

Melbourne is a sprawling city, just a bit smaller than Sydney (3 million versus 4 million) and it’s also a port city (Port Phillip is a very large bay opening to the south to Bass Strait on the Southern Ocean). The downtown area and most of the city’s highrise offices, hotels, and athletic and cultural facilities are concentrated along the banks of Yarra River. Our hotel was just a short walk from Federation Square (architectural style: cute anarchist) and Flinder Station (a grand Victorian edifice). Just across the river from these sites, on the south bank, is the thriving commercial Southgate shopping and dining area, along extensive parklands and a magnificent botanical garden. Alexandra Garden was the center of the two-week-long Melbourne Festival, which featured lots of free outdoor entertainment and many free cultural events concurrent with the Commonwealth Games. It was swarming with people and performers; many events occurred simultaneously in neighboring venues, the music from one site sometimes intruding on the next, but the whole enterprise was marked by a very positive spirit, orderly crowds, a noticeable absence of drunkenness or rowdiness, more than sufficient numbers of public restrooms, and ample advice from police and a vast network of well organized volunteers. In Alexandra Garden we watched a Canadian drumming group; ate dinner; watched a troup of talented young Australian circus acrobats in a presentation titled “Love Happens,” and then walked to the Myer Music Shell, where we listened to South African singer Marian Makeba (she’s really lost her voice but her band was fabulous). Afterwards we walked back along the river to view the nightly fish/fountain/light show. In the middle of the river are 70 large (about 15 feet long) metallic fish statues representing all the countries of the Commonwealth. Each fish bears several computer-driven water fountains and a set of coloured lights. Enormous loud-speakers play music while the waters dance and the lights change. The event is at once enormously corny but also very appealing.

Today we flew from Sydney to Melbourne. Our views of the countryside were limited but we saw some magnificent sandstone sea cliffs just southwest of Botany Bay and great expanses of fairly flat bushland (rather savannah-like in appearance, with scattered ranches or farms). Upon arrival in Melbourne we felt an immediate change in temperature: Melbourne warms up nicely during the day but in the evenings and early mornings temperatures fall into the mid-fifties. We’d sorn shorts, short-sleeved shirts, and sandles day and night in Sidney, but in Melbourne we’re wearing long pants and, in the evenings, light coats. We took a shuttle to the Kingsgate Hotel, an older modest establishment in the city center. It was the only hotel with an available room, due to the throngs of international tourists who are staying in the city for the two weeks of the Commonwealth Games, a track-and-field, soccer, swimming, rugby, and cricket competition involving current and former nations of the British Commonwealth. The Kingsgate is the sort of place in which the openingn and closing of every door reverberates throughout the entire 6-story hotel, as does much of the plumbing activity. The bed was fine and the room was clean, but, as with the much nice Rendezvous Stafford in Sydney, internet access is very limited and it isn’t practical to post many image files.

Melbourne is a sprawling city, just a bit smaller than Sydney (3 million versus 4 million) and it’s also a port city (Port Phillip is a very large bay opening to the south to Bass Strait on the Southern Ocean). The downtown area and most of the city’s highrise offices, hotels, and athletic and cultural facilities are concentrated along the banks of Yarra River. Our hotel was just a short walk from Federation Square (architectural style: cute anarchist) and Flinder Station (a grand Victorian edifice). Just across the river from these sites, on the south bank, is the thriving commercial Southgate shopping and dining area, along extensive parklands and a magnificent botanical garden. Alexandra Garden was the center of the two-week-long Melbourne Festival, which featured lots of free outdoor entertainment and many free cultural events concurrent with the Commonwealth Games. It was swarming with people and performers; many events occurred simultaneously in neighboring venues, the music from one site sometimes intruding on the next, but the whole enterprise was marked by a very positive spirit, orderly crowds, a noticeable absence of drunkenness or rowdiness, more than sufficient numbers of public restrooms, and ample advice from police and a vast network of well organized volunteers. In Alexandra Garden we watched a Canadian drumming group; ate dinner; watched a troup of talented young Australian circus acrobats in a presentation titled “Love Happens,” and then walked to the Myer Music Shell, where we listened to South African singer Marian Makeba (she’s really lost her voice but her band was fabulous). Afterwards we walked back along the river to view the nightly fish/fountain/light show. In the middle of the river are 70 large (about 15 feet long) metallic fish statues representing all the countries of the Commonwealth. Each fish bears several computer-driven water fountains and a set of coloured lights. Enormous loud-speakers play music while the waters dance and the lights change. The event is at once enormously corny but also very appealing.

Today we awoke to bright sun. After breakfast we walked over to the opera house for a guided tour which took us into all the performing spaces, including the magnificent concert hall, as well as some back rooms, including one designed by Jorn Utzon, the Danish architect who designed the building in the sixties, resigned during a construction dispute in the seventies, and who has recently been re-hired to oversee a new stage of renovation. After this tour we took a bus to the Australian National Museum, a natural history and anthropological museum, and later we went to an opal shop near the Queen Victoria Building, where Lynn acquired a necklace. After ice cream in the Queen Victoria marketplace, we took a bus back to our hotel and rested before dinner at Circular Quay. After dinner we walked to the opera house where Lynn wanted to attend a performance of the Tony-award-winning play, “Doubt.” I waited a bit after she entered the building and was lucky enough to witness the evening flyout of hundreds of flying foxes, giant fruit-eating bats that roost in the Royal Botanical Garden. The bats, with 3-4 foot wingspans, flew out directly above me and over Sydney Harbor, their wing beats slow and stiff, calling to each other. This was a magical moment, but one which only I seemed to notice. Sydneyites are probably used to this scene and consider it unremarkable, while most tourists never look up at the right time of day.

Today our bus was diverted around a block near Government House, where streets were blocked by squads of police, some of horseback, and both this morning and later at the dinner hour, the harbor reverberated with the sounds of helicopters circling low overhead. All this commotion was due to the presence of Condoleeza Rice, who was conducting official business in Sydney.

Today we awoke to bright sun. After breakfast we walked over to the opera house for a guided tour which took us into all the performing spaces, including the magnificent concert hall, as well as some back rooms, including one designed by Jorn Utzon, the Danish architect who designed the building in the sixties, resigned during a construction dispute in the seventies, and who has recently been re-hired to oversee a new stage of renovation. After this tour we took a bus to the Australian National Museum, a natural history and anthropological museum, and later we went to an opal shop near the Queen Victoria Building, where Lynn acquired a necklace. After ice cream in the Queen Victoria marketplace, we took a bus back to our hotel and rested before dinner at Circular Quay. After dinner we walked to the opera house where Lynn wanted to attend a performance of the Tony-award-winning play, “Doubt.” I waited a bit after she entered the building and was lucky enough to witness the evening flyout of hundreds of flying foxes, giant fruit-eating bats that roost in the Royal Botanical Garden. The bats, with 3-4 foot wingspans, flew out directly above me and over Sydney Harbor, their wing beats slow and stiff, calling to each other. This was a magical moment, but one which only I seemed to notice. Sydneyites are probably used to this scene and consider it unremarkable, while most tourists never look up at the right time of day.

Today our bus was diverted around a block near Government House, where streets were blocked by squads of police, some of horseback, and both this morning and later at the dinner hour, the harbor reverberated with the sounds of helicopters circling low overhead. All this commotion was due to the presence of Condoleeza Rice, who was conducting official business in Sydney.

This morning we drove for about two hours westward, from low-lying Sydney to the rugged and spectacularly eroded escarpment that leads to a 3,000-foot-tall plateau that stretches across most of the continent. The flanks of these “mountains” are extremely steep and are thickly covered by a rich eucalyptus and tree-fern forest, which in many places qualifies as a temperate rainforest. The Blue Mountains, like the Great Barrier Reef, were designated a World Heritage Site to encourage conservation. Greater Sydney stretches away from the sea for scores of miles in all directions, its suburbs extending into the national park. When we arrived at the first overlook site, thick fog filled the chasms and canyons, while the profiles of tall pinnacles and jagged ridges were revealed in openings of the dense clouds. We took several short hikes and then walked down a long boardwalk into the rainforest interior, where we hoped to hear a superb lyrebird, one of the world’s greatest avian mimics, but instead met a family from New York City. (The New Yorkers were two parents and a son who had come to Australia for the wedding. The son, in his mid-twenties, was a Democrat who worked in the State Department for Condoleeza Rice). We returned to the rim of the canyon via an elevated tram. As the day progressed, the clouds and fog broke up and we were treated to broad vistas and stunning views into the bottom of the forested canyons. We found a site off the beaten track called “Sublime Point,” which was a lookout at the tip of a long narrow ridge that extended far above the forest and provided magnificent views in all directions. At this lookout we were joined by a couple of young South Africans who had moved rrecently to Melbourne. They gave us some advice for our impending, brief visit to their city.

We used our Sydney Passes to ride the Bondi Explorer, a bus which took us from Circular Quay eastward along the shore of Sydney Harbor, following the coves and points through several extremely affluent and stylish neighborhoods, past yacht clubs and public parks that afforded spectacular views of downtown Sydney, including the Harbor Bridge and Opera House. The bus stopped several times to allow passengers to take photographs. The Sydney and Bondi Explorer buses are a tremendous service to tourists and probably spare local drivers a considerable nightmare of traffic congestion caused disoriented and confused out-of-town drivers. Our bus took us as far north as Vaucluse, near the mouth of the harbor at South Head, and then south along the outer coast to Bondi Beach, Australia’s most famous beach.

Today was a weekday, the day after Commonwealth Day, and the slightly overcast skies and constant breeze probably accounted for the emptiness of this beach. It’s a long, deep beach composed of extremely fine white sand, which was immaculately clean: not a bit of trash anywhere, no dogs, and no remnants of fire pits or beer parties. The beach facilities and utilities were extremely well designed and well maintained, and the smaller beaches in neighboring coves were equally attractive and tasteful. The recorded narrative on our bus, as well as the comments of the two young Canadians we met on last night’s ferry ride, led us to expect widespread abandonment of conventional swimwear, but most of the swimmers were attired in the traditional manner. [The absence of trash and litter on the beach now seems typically Australian – we have seen almost no trash or litter anywhere, particularly along public roads or in public plazas. Australians seem very proud of their landscape and appear strongly committed to keeping it clean.]

After taking a mile-long cliff-walk (along a paved path), we returned to Bondi and ate lunch in an Italian side-walk café. We lay on the beach until about 3 pm and then returned to our hotel, where we took showers and relaxed before dinner. We ate in a brasserie facing the opera house, and then strolled over to the elevated plaza surrounding that well-known architectural specimen. The plaza supports several buildings, each under a set of the famous scalloped “sails,” and the complex includes a drama theatre, a spectacular, very large concert hall, and opera hall. Despite the magnificent contours and outer texture of this structure, the interior of the opera hall is rather modest and under-designed, the stage and orchestra pit are quite small, and the seats in the opera theatre run in uninterrupted rows all the way across the chamber, from left to right: no pedestrian aisles separate the seats into sections and provide for easy access. There are just a few “lifts” for disabled patrons and only one restroom for each sex.

The performance was musically outstanding, although I found some aspects of the production jarring and distracting. The dialogue was spoken in Australian English, with several contemporary idiomatic expressions and gestures, and Papagena was portrayed as an Australian bush character, who carried a six-pack around with him. His voice and that of Pamina were very impressive, however, and the overall effect was quite charming.

We used our Sydney Passes to ride the Bondi Explorer, a bus which took us from Circular Quay eastward along the shore of Sydney Harbor, following the coves and points through several extremely affluent and stylish neighborhoods, past yacht clubs and public parks that afforded spectacular views of downtown Sydney, including the Harbor Bridge and Opera House. The bus stopped several times to allow passengers to take photographs. The Sydney and Bondi Explorer buses are a tremendous service to tourists and probably spare local drivers a considerable nightmare of traffic congestion caused disoriented and confused out-of-town drivers. Our bus took us as far north as Vaucluse, near the mouth of the harbor at South Head, and then south along the outer coast to Bondi Beach, Australia’s most famous beach.

Today was a weekday, the day after Commonwealth Day, and the slightly overcast skies and constant breeze probably accounted for the emptiness of this beach. It’s a long, deep beach composed of extremely fine white sand, which was immaculately clean: not a bit of trash anywhere, no dogs, and no remnants of fire pits or beer parties. The beach facilities and utilities were extremely well designed and well maintained, and the smaller beaches in neighboring coves were equally attractive and tasteful. The recorded narrative on our bus, as well as the comments of the two young Canadians we met on last night’s ferry ride, led us to expect widespread abandonment of conventional swimwear, but most of the swimmers were attired in the traditional manner. [The absence of trash and litter on the beach now seems typically Australian – we have seen almost no trash or litter anywhere, particularly along public roads or in public plazas. Australians seem very proud of their landscape and appear strongly committed to keeping it clean.]

After taking a mile-long cliff-walk (along a paved path), we returned to Bondi and ate lunch in an Italian side-walk café. We lay on the beach until about 3 pm and then returned to our hotel, where we took showers and relaxed before dinner. We ate in a brasserie facing the opera house, and then strolled over to the elevated plaza surrounding that well-known architectural specimen. The plaza supports several buildings, each under a set of the famous scalloped “sails,” and the complex includes a drama theatre, a spectacular, very large concert hall, and opera hall. Despite the magnificent contours and outer texture of this structure, the interior of the opera hall is rather modest and under-designed, the stage and orchestra pit are quite small, and the seats in the opera theatre run in uninterrupted rows all the way across the chamber, from left to right: no pedestrian aisles separate the seats into sections and provide for easy access. There are just a few “lifts” for disabled patrons and only one restroom for each sex.

The performance was musically outstanding, although I found some aspects of the production jarring and distracting. The dialogue was spoken in Australian English, with several contemporary idiomatic expressions and gestures, and Papagena was portrayed as an Australian bush character, who carried a six-pack around with him. His voice and that of Pamina were very impressive, however, and the overall effect was quite charming.

We used our Sydney Passes to ride the Bondi Explorer, a bus which took us from Circular Quay eastward along the shore of Sydney Harbor, following the coves and points through several extremely affluent and stylish neighborhoods, past yacht clubs and public parks that afforded spectacular views of downtown Sydney, including the Harbor Bridge and Opera House. The bus stopped several times to allow passengers to take photographs. The Sydney and Bondi Explorer buses are a tremendous service to tourists and probably spare local drivers a considerable nightmare of traffic congestion caused disoriented and confused out-of-town drivers. Our bus took us as far north as Vaucluse, near the mouth of the harbor at South Head, and then south along the outer coast to Bondi Beach, Australia’s most famous beach.

Today was a weekday, the day after Commonwealth Day, and the slightly overcast skies and constant breeze probably accounted for the emptiness of this beach. It’s a long, deep beach composed of extremely fine white sand, which was immaculately clean: not a bit of trash anywhere, no dogs, and no remnants of fire pits or beer parties. The beach facilities and utilities were extremely well designed and well maintained, and the smaller beaches in neighboring coves were equally attractive and tasteful. The recorded narrative on our bus, as well as the comments of the two young Canadians we met on last night’s ferry ride, led us to expect widespread abandonment of conventional swimwear, but most of the swimmers were attired in the traditional manner. [The absence of trash and litter on the beach now seems typically Australian – we have seen almost no trash or litter anywhere, particularly along public roads or in public plazas. Australians seem very proud of their landscape and appear strongly committed to keeping it clean.]

After taking a mile-long cliff-walk (along a paved path), we returned to Bondi and ate lunch in an Italian side-walk café. We lay on the beach until about 3 pm and then returned to our hotel, where we took showers and relaxed before dinner. We ate in a brasserie facing the opera house, and then strolled over to the elevated plaza surrounding that well-known architectural specimen. The plaza supports several buildings, each under a set of the famous scalloped “sails,” and the complex includes a drama theatre, a spectacular, very large concert hall, and opera hall. Despite the magnificent contours and outer texture of this structure, the interior of the opera hall is rather modest and under-designed, the stage and orchestra pit are quite small, and the seats in the opera theatre run in uninterrupted rows all the way across the chamber, from left to right: no pedestrian aisles separate the seats into sections and provide for easy access. There are just a few “lifts” for disabled patrons and only one restroom for each sex.

The performance was musically outstanding, although I found some aspects of the production jarring and distracting. The dialogue was spoken in Australian English, with several contemporary idiomatic expressions and gestures, and Papagena was portrayed as an Australian bush character, who carried a six-pack around with him. His voice and that of Pamina were very impressive, however, and the overall effect was quite charming.

Today Lynn decided she had to pet koalas and settle our recent car trauma, so we got our car from the parking garage and managed to make the one-hour drive westward on the M4 to Featherdale, a wildlife park that specializes in native Australia fauna. It was a good day to leave Sydney, as Queen Elizabeth’s royal convoy caused many street closures and traffic delays. The Queen met with the Australian prime minister and his wife, who committed the unforgivable faux pas of wearing the same outfit as the queen! It was Commonwealth Day, and schools were let out so kids could see the Queen. However, remembering that the Queen left Windsor for London on the day we wanted to visit Windsor Castle in 2004, we left Sydney before she arrived.

In Featherdale, safely out of the Queen’s way, we found an extremely rich array of captive native birds, along with a good representation of kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, and other marsupials. We were able to enter the enclosures where some of the kangaroos and emus roamed, and we petted the kangaroos, as well as some koalas that were tended by care-takers. The koalas were singularly unambitious creatures who accommodated enthusiastic school-children, fast-moving Japanese tourists, and assorted wildlife lovers. We saw many kookaburras (birds whose contagious hysterical laughter is iconic of the Australian wildlife experience), bowerbirds, cassowaries, pittas, tawny frogmouths, spectacular parrots and cockatoos, and – to our delight – brilliantly colored Gouldian Finches (causing us to remember our friend Roy, who is brilliant and colorful in his own ways). We watched the feeding of a 14-foot salt-water crocodile and waited in vain for the Tasmanian devil and the quiet, elusive quolls to show themselves. We got a lot of gravel in our sandals here and got our first taste of the ubiquity of flies in the bush (to wave a hand to brush away a fly is to ‘give the Australian Salute’).

We managed to get back into Sydney and find our hotel without major difficulty, although a glance at our route on a city map would reveal a street pattern of mind-boggling complexity. Downtown Sydney is very compact, like Boston, and its road and highway system are equally complex. Needless-to-say, we were quite proud of ourselves when we pulled into our parking garage.

In late afternoon we boarded a state ferry for the half-hour trip to Manly, a suburban town perched on a narrow isthmus just behind rocky headlands at the mouth of Sydney Harbour. This town, which seems prosperous and affluent, is surrounded by Sydney Harbour National Park, consisting of several major tracts of undeveloped land. We checked out the ocean beach and then took a scenic walk along the bay. I could see unidentified terns, swallows, and chunky white cockatoos, as well as enormous web-spinning spiders. Native plants were being cultivated here, including a coastal species of Banksia, which was in full bloom., We ate in an open-air seafood café across from the ocean, while Manlyites promenaded and ran along the beach across the street. As dusk approached, throngs of shrill lorikeets began to roost in the Norfolk Island pines in the narrow beach-front park across from us, a process that required that each bird buzz the small grove of trees several times before landing and commencing heated discussions with its perch-mates.

After dinner we took another ferry back to Sydney. On the deck we met two young men from Canada, currently vacationing at Bondi Beach: one was from Newfoundland and the other from Quebec. The latter had most recently been living in Portland, Oregon, though he had earlier worked in a bike shop in San Luis Obispo, CA, and had spent considerable time near Pismo, a beach town in which our family spent a week or two each summer. His mother lived in Maui, so he had become a very well-travelled fellow. We also talked with a man who was born in Cameroon, West Africa, had been raised in Niger, and spent a decade living in Jerusalem. He took his PhD in biochemistry from an Australian university and, although no longer living in Sydney, returned frequently to visit. If these folks typified the passengers on that vessel, it was a very cosmopolitan crowd! The view of the opera house, the sparkling high-rise buildings in downtown Sydney, and of the harbor bridge provided a satisfying conclusion to the day.

(Here’s a justifiable nonsequitor: we have found Australians to be a most congenial group of people, very gracious to tourists, and possessed of extraordinary humor and irreverent wit. They have also all mastered, without exception, an extremely quaint and cheerful manner of speech; they practice this accent and idiom constantly, so their mastery seems almost effortless. Most of the time we understand what they are saying, but when we don’t, they never fail to explain themselves cheerfully to dense Americans.)

Today was again comfortably warm and mostly sunny. We walked across the Harbor Bridge this morning and then back past Circular Quay into the Royal Botanical Garden. Here Lynn visited Government House while I searched for flying foxes. One of my goals in visiting Australia was to see these immense bats, and I’d read that a growing colony had settled into residence in the trees of the Botanical Garden near a Wollemi Pine tree that was planted there a few years ago (this species, long thought to have been extinct, was rediscovered in a remote canyon in the Blue Mountains outside of Sydney in 1994). As I walked about, full of purpose but lacking clues to direct my search, I eventually began to hear what sounded like an immense and cacophonous aviary. I walked toward the pandemonium and was soon rewarded by one of my most memorable wildlife sightings and a vista most bizarre and wonderful. The sounds were produced by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of large bats, hanging in dense groups from the tops of many trees. These bats, Gray-headed Flying Foxes, have 3- to 4-foot-long black wings and large cinnamon-colored bodies. They hang by day in the treetops, grooming and pestering each other, and their chattering reaches deafening levels, In the evenings they fly out to feed on fruits and nectar. They not only are much larger than the microchiropteran insect-eating, sonar-producing bats familiar to North Americana, they also possess less grotesque, more appealing mammalian faces. Indeed, they do look like upside-down foxes with Dracula wings.

After lunch we took the bus to Sydney Tower, the second tallest structure in the southern hemisphere. The views from the round observatory at the top are stunning. From here one can see how complex and convoluted Sydney Harbor is, and we could see its opening to the sea. To the south we could see Botany Bay, site of Captain Cook’s landing, and the Olympic stadium, and in the hazy western horizon, the Blue Mountains. From the tower we walked to the immense and ornate Queen Victoria Building and browsed the upscale shops in this historic emporium. Afterwards we ate dinner in Chinatown (finding no soap in the men’s room, I wondered if it had been a mistake to eat there) and took a bus back to Circulalr Quay, where large numbers of people were still strolling among the UNICEF bears, listening to a one-man steel band, an aged Chinese musician playing a traditional instrument, and a young folk singer. The large passenger liner that docked there yesterday (The Seabourn) was still there

[Needless-to-say, the pictures I posted for March 10 were intended for this posting.]

Today was bright and sunny, with temperatures in the upper 70s. Our hotel is on Harrington Street in “the Rocks,” Sydney’s compact historic district, now converted to trendy clubs, pubs, shops, and hotels. We’re only a couple of blocks from the “Circular Quay,” the main embarkation point for commuter ferries and buses, site of anchorage for many cruise ships, and the focus for much tourist activity and street music. We bought a five-day Sydney Pass, which provides reduced fares on all public transit systems (buses, trains, ferries) and public facilities, such as the Royal Botanical Museum and Sydney Tower, and took a useful 2-hour tour of the city on the Sydney Explorer Bus, which provides recorded commentary on 27 sites of interest in the city.

We got off the bus to enjoy spectacular views of the opera house and harbor bridge from the opposite side of the adjacent cove. We also explored Chinatown and a vast indoor public marketplace. After lunch we enjoyed the exhibits at Sydney’s great aquarium, which features Australian fish and includes a “walk-through” tank with many large sharks and a manta ray. We also saw two living platypuses and an Australian lungfish, one of the lobefinned fishes that is distantly related to the ancestor of all tetrapods. The aquarium is on Darling Cove, another waterfront venue that has been successfully re-developed and is a commercially and architecturally vibrant area.

We dined outdoors at a The Italian Village at a table with a view of the opera house. During the course of our dinner several wedding parties visited the plaza in front of the restaurant for photographs in front of the opera house. After dinner we took a 90-minute harbor cruise on one of the state ferries, which took us on a sedate and graceful loop through many of the coves and bays in neighboring parts of Sydney Harbor, which is has an exceedingly complex form. After the cruise we enjoyed strolling among the UNICEF bears, a set of approximately one hundred identical 6-foot-tall bear statues, each of which was uniquely painted by an artist to represent his own nation. This traveling exhibit holds great crowd appeal and will be next be shown in Berlin. After wandering back toward our hotel, we found that The Rocks was/were indeed rocking. The bars and clubs were full of revelers, and the noise level was fairly high, though not too bad around our hotel.

[We're back on line again, after having been temporarily closed down after a computer program thought it had detected "some characteristics of blog spam" on my site. i just received an email from blogspot apologizing for the inconvenience and telling me I'm free to go back to work. Unfortunately, the computer I'm using in this hotel is extremely slow or the internet connection is extremely slow, so I'm not sure that I'll be able to upload many pictures. Needless-to-say, I'm accumulating GB's of image files, as I'm shooting hundreds of pictures daily.]

I didn’t sleep well last night after discovering that I’d failed to bring my Australian ETA (visa). I’d made multiple copies of each of our many travel documents, but apparently in setting aside copies for Lynn, I’d failed at the last minute to put a copy of my own ETA in our “Australia” folder. I tossed and turned all night and at 6 am (11 am in Keene) I called our travel agent, who faxed a copy of the missing document. Of course, neither the airlines nor the Australian Immigration authorities asked to see this piece of paper. It’s an electronic document, so presumably the Australian agent who stamped my passport in the Sydney airport saw the travel authorization on his computer screen after he scanned my passport.

Our 10-hour flight from Honolulu to Sydney was fairly smooth, and Qantas did provide a few amenities to relieve the tedium. We watched two movies and were served reasonably palatable meals. We had a little more leg room than on domestic US flights (and much more than on the inter-island Aloha Airlines flights) and since our 747 was only about half full, we were able to stretch out a bit and take naps from time to time. There’s almost nothing to look at below the plane during a flight from Hawaii to Australia, but by checking the flight-course channel I discovered at one point that we were passing over the western end of Fiji. As fate would have it, a heavy cloud cover obscured any view of Fiji, but I did see one of the two small islands that lie just to its northwest. During our flight we not only crossed the equator but also the international date line, necessitating some complicated resetting of date and time on our digital watches.

After landing in Sydney and making our way through customs and immigration, we picked up some currency from an ATM and got our rental car from Budget. We were driving on the left side of the road again for the first time since England, and that is always cause for a major rush of adrenaline. Our course on the M1 to downtown Sydney, about 6 miles north of the airport, seemed pretty straightforward (aside from trying to signal lane changes by turning on the windshield wipers) but we missed a turn in central Sydney that would have taken us toward our hotel and ended up driving across the Harbor Bridge instead, something we had been trying to avoid. The Harbor Bridge signs drew us like a flame draws a moth. Once we had crossed the bridge it was too dark to consult a map, even if traffic had been slow enough to allow it, and our mistakes were compounding by the minute in narrow congested streets. After driving about randomly in North Sydney, at times thinking we were fated to wander this unfamiliar territory until dawn, we finally found our way back onto the bridge and through sheer blind luck made a fortuitous turn off the main highway and found ourselves on Harrington Street. This street is only two or three blocks long, but it took us an astonishing amount of time to find our hotel. This ordeal reminded me of the Kafkaesque adventure that ensued when we tried to return a rental car to the Gare de Lyon in Paris. Our hotel was probably less than a mile from our hotel on the Rue de Rivoli, but in between lay the Place de Bastille and at the end the medieval labyrinth of the gare itself. Fortunately, both adventures are now merely stories to be retold and embellished.

Our last day in Hawaii was pleasantly uncomplicated. We took a shuttle from our hotel to Hanauma Bay and spent the first part of the day snorkeling and lying in the sand. Conditions were not ideal for snorkeling due to cloudy water and low tide, which left little space to swim over some of the coral heads. The coral itself was not very impressive, and much of the reef seemed to consist of rock or dead coral. We did see numerous fish browsing on the algal coating of the reef but nothing to match the enormous diversity and large populations we witnessed in north Kona. In the late afternoon we wandered through the Honolulu Zoo in Kapiolani Park, enjoying several close views of a cheetah and of a pair of meerkats, to cite just a few highlights. In the early evening we watched another of the city-sponsored hula performances in the Waikiki beach park; these are very informative and describe the meaning of many of the gestures used in hula. The dances this evening were performed by a group of young children. While waiting for our name to be called at a restaurant on Kalakua Avenue, we wandered into the Waikiki City Center behind the International Market Place for what had been billed as a Polynesian Dance performance. We were treated to a remarkably kitschy demonstration of “hula” elements applied to pop music. Try to imagine a hula interpretation of “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”! We left as soon as we could. Kalakua Avenue remains very busy with pedestrians and street performers until the early morning hours, but it is mostly devoid of the seamy activities we witnessed here fifteen years ago.

The Waikiki hotel we stayed in March 7 and March 8 was very dilapidated. After enjoying a posh condo in Poipu Kai, we found conditions at the Aqua Coral Reef Hotel surreal. We knew things were going to be different when we found we had to carry our heavy luggage (6 pieces) up 10 stairs to reach the hotel registration desk. Once in our room, we discovered that the carpet was threadbare in places, that the luan doors had warped badly and were very difficult to close. We had to run the hot water for about 10 minutes before the water coming from the shower head was room. This is just the beginning of a long list of complaints about this hotel room…

Today was unambiguously sunny and clear! We joined a native Hawaiian guide for a kayak trip up one of Kauai's few freshwater rivers. After paddling upstream for an hour, we hiked a mile or so through mud and over tangled tree roots to a hidden 120-foot water fall. Our trail had been thoroughly ripped up in places by wild pigs, which reminds me to mention that two days ago we saw two large feral pigs run acros the road in front of us in Waimea Canyon. (Feral pigs have been even more devastating to the native flora and fauna than goats and moongeese.) After lunch and considerable exposure to freshwater mist, we hiked back to our kayaks and paddled back to the marina. Our guide, a cheerful, very poised 20-year old (who carried a 60-pound pack!), paused from place to place to give us accounts of Hawaiian uses of native plants, and to show us a couple of archaeological sites in the forest. She told us that slightly less than half of the island's year-round population of 60,000 can claim native ancestry, but that few of the young people can speak Hawaiian any more. She shared a lot of her family history and was obviously keenly appreciative of the unique values of life on Kauai, which is beginning to change as tourism, the island's only solid economic activity, begins to boom. Cousin Don mentions that he was here in the mid-eighties. In 1992 Kauai was hit by a Category 5 hurricane, which caused major damage both to homes and business and to forest and agriculture. The sugar cane and taro industries are now basically defunct, leaving only tourism as a major source of revenue. The island may lose its very rural character sometime in the near future as major developments materialize and when an interisland car ferry begins operating, which will bring weekend visitors from Oahu, along with drugs and other unwanted commodities.

We leave for two nights in Honolulu tomorrow, and we'll have to pack this evening, so I'll put this blog to rest with a couple of last pictures of Kiahuna Plantations in Poipu Kai, our current address.

Best wishes to all our friends and relatives.

Many thanks to Erica, Jason and Bob for their comments. I can give you any of the images you see here in large format (higher res) once we return to NH. I'm writing these posts on the fly, without time for editing, since re-sizing and posting the photos is very time-consuming.

Another great day. This entry will have to be brief, since it is late and I am tired. We drove north along the east coast of Kauai, through Lihue up to the north coast. We followed the highway westward along the coast to one of the most wonderful places in Hawaii, the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, where we saw thousands of Red-footed Boobies, many Red-tailed Tropicbirds (a new species, different from the White-tailed Tropicbird that frequents Kilauea Volcano on the Big Island and Waimea Canyon on Kauai), and quite a few Laysan Albatrosses, which are now breeding at this site. The albatrosses are immense birds, which dwarf the large boobies. We saw them perform their bizarre head-bobbing courtship dances on the hill that they’ve claimed, 180 feet above the water. This spot also hosts ground-nesting petrels, but that section of the refuge was closed to protect the birds during their early breeding season. The site of this refuge is an old lighthouse station on a tall cliff that juts out between two coves. The albatrosses claim the hilltop across the western cove and the boobies and tropicbirds have staked out homesites on the eastern cliffs. These birds moved about a lot, soaring overhead at high speeds. I found it extremely difficult to photograph them but have posted the results of my effort.

From Kileaua Point we continued westward through Hanalei (remember “Puff the Magic Dragon”?), a small, artsy town on the north shore of Kauai. This area, on the windward face of the island, is surrounded by extremely lush rain forest, and has many narrow one-land bridges that carry the highway westward. Sheer pali rise behind the town, many quite spectacular in profile, and the combination of frequent rain, heavy runoff from precipitous slopes, and the threat of storm surges and tsunamis (Kauai was hit by two hurricanes in the last two decades, one a massive category 5 storm) have dictated that most of the homes in this area are elevated, standing on tall pilings. Many of the bridges are submerged during heavy rainstorms, so people at the western end of town are truly cut off from the rest of Kauai. Here we also saw the Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge, a remarkable place in which the federal government rescued a group of native taro farmers whose land was about to be bought by developers. Recognizing that the flooded taro fields supported breeding populations of endangered Hawaiian gallinules, coots, and black-necked stilts, the US F&WS purchased the land and allowed the farmers to live there, provided they continued to cultivate taro in the traditional manner, thus maintaining the wetland environment needed by these federally listed endemic birds.

We continued west beyond Hanalei to the state park at the very end of the road. Here we hiked up a steep trial on the face of the cliff and enjoyed terrific views of the scattered beaches to the east and of the beginning of the rugged, roadless NaPali coast to the west. After our hike, we returned to Hanalei and ate the best ice cream we’d ever tasted (Lynn had coconut ice cream with macademia nuts and chocolate; I had coconut ice cream with raspberry and passionfruit sorbet).

Today we found sunshine and enjoyed a series of rewarding adventures. We arose before dawn and, feeling no rain, drove to Port Allen, a small town about 30 minutes west of Poipu, where we boarded a double-hulled 50-foot catamarin for a trip to the NaPali coast of Kauai. This boat had a single mast, two massive propellers in the rear, a semi-covered cabin, and a canvas “trampoline” in front of the cabin. We spent the 7-hour journey sitting on padded benches or standing on the hard deck or on the two walkways that extended forward on either side of the trampoline. Runoff from recent heavy rains, along with extremely powerful surf, eliminated any possibility of snorkeling, but the captain promised great views and lots of wildlife. We rode very tall swells all day, and the boat rose and fell in a nearly regular rhythm, rising high on each wave and then pitching forward into its trough. Sometimes these motions were so strong that people sitting on the trampoline were lifted into the air and inundated by waves breaking over our bow; at other times anyone on the front half of the boat was showered by spray. The sea was covered with whitecaps and we could see the waves crashing against the cliffs at the shore, but no one became seasick and a general joie de vivre prevailed.

We saw many, many humpback whales, which visit Hawaii each winter to mate and give birth. At times we were surrounded by so many whales it was difficult to decide which way to look. Many of the whales were lifting their flippers into the air, and we saw many instances of breaching, in which the whales projected almost their entire bodies out of the water and fell back with enormous splashes. We’d seen this behavior before during whale-watching trips off of Cape Cod, but never by so many individual whales. The whales were often accompanied by bottlenose dolphins, some of which accompanied our boat. In one area we encountered a school of small “spinner” dolphins, which leap from the water, spinning about and falling back on their sides. We also saw numerous large green sea turtles, swimming slowly and sometimes lifting their heads to look at us. At times we saw petrels skittering over the water and on several occasions a large black and white seabird soared low over the waves at some distance from the boat. Due to the pitching and rolling of the boat, I was never able to fix my binoculars on one of these birds, so I couldn’t confirm a crew member’s claim that that were “albatrosses” or whether they were shearwaters. We motored northward past “barking sands” beach, now a military missle test-site, and on to the NaPali Coast, a region of spectacular fluted cliffs that plunge almost vertically to the sea below. There is no road access to this dramatic coastline, so the only way to see it is by boat or helicopter. It’s impossible to describe the magnificence of this coastline, so I’ve attached some image files to this posting. Kauai is the oldest of the main Hawaiian islands, and it has eroded the most, creating both Waimea Canyon and these coastal pali. As we approached the north end of the NaPali (and the windward north shore), rain began to fall and the captain swung the boat around lifted the main sail upward, turning off the engines. For nearly an hour we sailed quietly southward, again spying whales, dolphins and green sea turtles. We disembarked about 2 pm.

After this trip, Lynn discovered an exhibition of hula dancing and other Polynesian dancing by a troup of pre-teen girls. This we watched with great interest.

We decided to drive up to Waimea Canyon and Koke’e State Park. Just before the mile 6 marker on the canyon road we stopped to watch a pu-o (Hawaiian short-eared owl) as it hunted in an old sugar cane field. It’s an atypical owl – a daytime hunter – and it hunts like a northern harrier, hovering over the ground in one position, searching for prey. This species is also a totemic Hawaiian creature and one of only two endemic Hawaiian raptors.

Today, unlike yesterday, the skies were blue and the scenic overlooks yielded spectacular, clear views of the canyon and its many waterfalls. At one of these overlooks we met Jim and Dorie, a delightful couple from Philadelphia who are staying at the resort next to ours. Jim, a molecular biologist on the faculty at Penn who enjoys photography, took our picture. (Does our neice Alexandra, a first year grad student in molecular biology at Penn, know this gentleman?) He grew up near Lynn’s hometown of Oreland, PA, and still lives nearby. After a lengthy and enjoyable conversation with this couple, Lynn and I drove on into Koke’e State Park, past the NASA geophysical observatory and the Air National Guard missile-tracking station, to the Kalalau Overlook at the end of the road. It had rained steadily yesterday when we visited this spot. Today we were able to look down the steep pali’i into the ocean. Then, as we began our walk down the one-mile path to the Pihea Trail, the rains began. This time we kept our raingear on and walked with another couple we met on the trail, a couple of retired school teachers from suburban Washington, DC, who have retired to the Lakes District of western Maine. We enjoyed their company on this two-mile hike, but we failed to see any of the elusive i’iw. The ohia woods were dominated by two honeycreepers, the bright red apapene and the yellow akeke’e, but the rain intensified and we were unable to do much birding. At the end of the paved road we found the sign for the Pihea Trail, which leads into the Alakai Wilderness, fabled home of the last o’o. We also saw a sign for Mount Wailaleale, wettest spot on earth. Wailaleale, the eroded summit of Kauai’s volcano, receives over 34 feet of rain annually. It is almost never visible, as it is almost always covered by clouds and falling rain.

Tomorrow we’ll drive to the north shore of Kauai, weather permitting, and visit the national wildlife refuge at Kilaeau Point and the mythic land of Hanalee.

This morning we awakened to blue, sunny skies. We drove west along the south coast of Kauai about 20 miles and then turned onto a road that climbed into the interior along the west wall of Waimea Canyon, Kauai’s “Grand Canyon.” As we drove upward and away from the coast we began to encounter fog and clouds. We stopped at several scenic overviews and were treated to intermittent views of dramatic scenery – steep green canyon walls, tall waterfalls, and here and there, a white-tailed tropicbird floating buoyantly throught the canyon. If you’ve ever witnessed the flight of a black-shouldered kite, you will have some sense of the aesthetics of the tropicbird. Tropicbirds, however, have long streamer-like tails and live in some of the world’s most dramatic scenery – tropical cliffs, canyons, and volcanos near an ocean. I managed to snap a quick picture of a distant tropicbird as it passed below us in the canyon (see accompanying images).

Mostly, however, we saw thickening fog and had to strain to discern the edges of jagged escarpments and ghostly ohio trees through the mist. We drove onward to Koke’e State Park, the place where one is most likely to encounter several of the endemic Hawaiian honeycreepers (closely related but wildly divergent and very colorful forest birds). We parked at the end of the road and began to walk down a trail along which we were virtually guaranteed to sight these remarkable birds. As we walked, the fog thickened and soon we were walking in a steady rain. We couldn’t see anything through our binoculars, as their lenses were covered with drops of water. We put on our raingear, but after 20 minutes we realized the downpour was not abating, and even though we could hear the songs of abundant birdlife and might have been only a few meters away from an I’iwi or an Elapaio, we had to give up the quest and return to our car. As we drove back down the canyon toward the coast, all the scenic overlooks where we’d caught glimpses of the canyon were now completed obscured by clouds and rain, and so we realized we’d seen all we could of one of Kauai’s most celebrated landscapes and had not seen any of its vanishing birds (other than the most common honeycreeper, the Apapene). We did see an Erckel's Francolin, a partridge-like bird from Ethiopia that has thrived in Kauai since it was introduced many years ago. It's quite different in appearance from the Gray's Francolin we saw in Mauna Lani on the Big Island. And in Kauai, as in all parts of rural Hawaii, the Red Jungle Fowl roams parks and roadsides. It is the wild ancestor of the domestic chicken, and one of the most obvious differences is that its chicks are mottled brown, not yellow.

As we approached sea level, the skies cleared and we encountered brilliant sunshine. It remained clear and sunny all day today along the coast. Still, a backward glance showed that the canyon was still filled with rainclouds. We returned to Poipu and spent some time on the beach and a site where we watched a humpback whale spouting and swimming parallel to the shore, about a half-mile out to sea.

Tomorrow we’ll try to see Kauai’s most famous scenery – the Na Pali coast on the island’s northwest shore. We’ll catch a catamarin out of a nearby port and spend 5 hours cruising the coastline. It’s the only way (other than by helicopter) to see these steep coastal mountains, since there are no roads on that side of the island. As I write this, at 10 pm, it has begun to rain steadily in Poipu (of course).