The Buddha’s Striptease #2

Fear of the Great Unwashed

Some quick updates on Oz. This is the only country I’ve traveled to where it doesn’t feel foreign. The architecture looks similar to the Western US (although much nicer – hardly any mini-malls!), the people are laid back and they even have popcorn, peanut butter and sourdough bread in the stores! You don’t know what a big archaeological rush I had when found they had those last three – my favorite food group – carbos and fat!

I just arrived back in Cairns after staying a week in Port Douglas. Port was great! A really relaxed beach town. The locals all were barefoot – not a shoe to be seen for miles.

After recouping from my injuries incurred on the Tully River (bruised left butt cheek is healing nicely, thank you – now just a nice shade of yellow), I did a few day excursions.

I went to the Rainforest Habitat in Port Douglas. It is small but fantastic. None of the animals in the habitat are in cages: you walk through their territory. Got to see and feed some roos, crocs (they were safely penned in though), koalas and, my favorite part of the habitat, the birds. They had all kinds of birds. My favorite was the little, brightly colored parrot that just flew over and landed on my shoulder. He only had one foot, the other was just a stump. I called him “Gimpy”. We became fast friends and he hung around with me for a good half hour. We wandered in search of food and all the time he kept on saying “Hello”. He must have been someone’s pet at one time.

Birds, you can imagine, are everywhere here. Last night walking through Cairns at sunset, there must have been thousands of birds in the trees because the sound they were making was absolutely deafening!

Sign on the Daintree River stating “Nudist Beach: Beware of Crocs” Gotta love the Aussie sense of humor!

Also I went up to the Daintree in a 4WD. The Daintree is the oldest living rainforest on the planet and a World Heritage Site (whatever that means. It does sound suspiciously like it is owned by the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker Enterprises though). They say the Daintree was the only tropical rainforest to survive the last Ice Age. I really like the Aussie sense of ecology; they have resisted attempts to make the Daintree more conducive to tourism. You have to take a ferry across the croc-infested Daintree River and end up on an unpaved road. They won’t even allow electricity to be brought in for some of the surrounding communities. It gives it a timeless feel.

The road was, well how shall I say, not a road. More bumps and potholes than a NYC street. My liver is now firmly nestled in my throat.

Daintree Waterfall

After viewing the rainforest, I went on a boat on the Daintree River. I felt like I was on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. In fact, I in my NY’er ways, refused to believe our tour guide when he showed us a croc on a riverbank about a mile a way. I said to him after viewing the croc through the binoculars: “How do I know that is not some stuffed croc that you guys put on the riverbank a mile a way so the tourists don’t feel they are getting ripped off?” Well, I saw a real live one later on up-close and personal (unless it was one of the animatronic ones like they have at Disneyland).

The tour guide on the river told some gruesome stories about the crocs on the river. He said they are “Estuarine Crocs” as compared to “Freshwater Crocs”. The estuarine crocs inhabit the coastal areas and are the more aggressive of the two.

7 foot Croc. It sure looked real to me!

He said last New Year’s Eve, a woman and two guys decided to go for a New Year’s Dip after drinking heavily at a party. Well, the woman became croc fertilizer! They guide said that crocs will go for the smaller of the prey. So the moral of the story is, if you are going to go for a dip in Oz, make sure you outweigh your fellow swimming companions by a good 40lbs. Snotty nosed children come in handy for this exercise.

After much spilkus in my tummy (for the Goyim in the group…[again for the Goyim in the group, 'Goyim' are non-Jewish people; one of the 'Great Unwashed']… spilkus is Yiddish for an acid stomach. Oi!), I decided to conquer my fear of the Great Barrier Reef, another Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker Site. Don’t get me wrong, I love water and can swim all day, I just have a fear of seeing a big thing with lots of teeth coming my way.

4 foot fish named “Chompy”

The day was beautiful, although windy. The wind stirred up the sediment on the bottom so I really couldn’t see more than 10 feet in front of me. Well, I said to meself, “Enjoy it. No worries, mate.” I was loving it. Seeing giant clams about five feet in length, small brightly colored fish and the different kinds of coral, until a fish about four feet in length casually swam by me. I swallowed some Great Barrier Reef water and hurriedly swam back to shore. I know: “wussy”. I did go back out a second time and relaxed more. I think if I were to do it again, I would enjoy it even more. Maybe on my way back.

‘Low Isle’ Snorkeling Spot

Well, thanks for all the participants in our on-line voting of which item of clothing would be the next to go on “The Buddha’s Striptease: Naked in Oz Tour 2001″. As you may know, my personal vote was for the beach towel. However, I decided to keep that article for awhile, after receiving a convincing argument from a reader in Phoenix, AZ who stated:

t, not the beach towel!!! have you ever read ‘the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy‘? if not then you need to think about all the possible uses of a beach towel. blanket ,pillow, serape, can be tied up to carry stuff in, etc.. it has a part in the interconnectedness of all things.

The 1^st place winner was actually my preponderance of underwear. A few readers were shocked that:

1. I owned so many pieces of underwear and also,
   
2. That I even wore any
   

There are two things I hate most in the world. One is cleaning toilets and the other is doing laundry. I made sure when I was in NYC that I had enough underwear to get me through three weeks without having to do laundry (and I cleaned my toilet only when it was threatening to become a science experiment gone horribly wrong).

Good-bye, Dear Trousers. I hardly wore thee.

One would think that the undies would be the first to go, but I have decided to ignore my on-line readers (they really don’t take up that much space and as a reader in NYC, NY wrote: “the undies are the last to go in any good striptease“) and jettison my trousers.

These were only packed for the sole purpose of attending a luau in Hawaii. My mom was threatening to take me to see Don Ho but the Gods were with me and I successfully avoided that possible nightmare.

Tomorrow I am off for Alice Springs (Alice), Ayers Rock and then Darwin. I met an English bloke who has a car and is looking for traveling companions to share the costs. I met my other traveling companions last night. The guy with the car is about 35 and cool in a soccer hooligan kind of way, the other is an English kid about 19 and the other two are an English guy and girl about 20 and whose only purpose in life is to get drunk. Yes, I am the lone American and also the Grandpa of the group. I never knew I was so old until I sat with the younger ones last night and thought to myself, “Jeez, I can barely remember being that young”. Get me that walker!

But that is what I want this trip: something that will take me out of my comfort zone. A side benefit is that I will be able to practice my English accent. My English friends back home, after shuddering at my feeble attempts at their accent, state it sounds exactly like Dick van Dyke’s ‘wonderful’ cockney accent in “Mary Poppins”: “All I want is room somewhere. Far away from the cold night air….ooooh woooouuuuldn’t iiiittttt be loverly“. Or however that songs goes.

I will describe my traveling compadres more later. But suffice it say, they are totally different from me and should allow for some interesting stories! Aahh, the Great Unwashed!