Our Apartment!!

Hello, here are some pictures of our new townhouse in Perth. The neighborhood is Leederville and it is a great location with plenty of restaurants and pubs. Our shipping crate arrived last Friday and we are totally unpacked, it is a miracle!

Summer Down Under

I have just returned from yet another week of plant work in Australia. I spent the week at a B&B in Manjimup and was fed home cooked dinners every night, it was so grueling. I have my dad to thank for hooking me up with this volunteer opportunity. I had a good time scribing for a botanist and saw some gnarly looking plants and lizards that were approaching dragon size. I have some pictures I will post online later. We have had a good couple of months in Perth. George has spend several weeks working in Manjimup and I have been finding casual work where ever I can. Last Sunday we had a really cool job working "security" at a concert at a winery. It was really easy and we got paid to listen to the bands mainly. We are going to do several more this summer including hopefully Rob Thomas. Summer is really heating up here and the sun is now rising before 5am because Western Australia does not observe daylight savings so it is quite warm by the time you wake up. We are all settled into our new apartment in Leederville and are really enjoying it. Pictures have been taken and will be posted ASAP. The great news this week is that our shipping crate is arriving from the US today!!! Its like Christmas for us. I am so excited to stop living in my backpackers gear. This weekend we are bottling the beer we brewed 4 weeks ago and our very excited to bring our new beer baby home. On Sunday we have surfing lessons, I am braving the water and hoping nobody decides I look like a seal or a sea turtle, yipes!!! I am still trying hard to find a job and have a few leads. But until then I am still taking any casual work I can find. I really enjoyed hearing about the Oklahoma Nebraska game. I am so excited for the team but am a little concerned about what is going to happened if we have to play Texas in the Big 12 Championship. I think we will be getting up very early or staying up very late to watch the KU v. Nebraska game on Sunday. GO SKERS!!!!! Well I must be off, the shipping crate arrives in a few hours and I must prepare the apartment, I have no idea where we will put all this stuff! I will post pictures from our first few months here and the apartment this weekend.

Africa pictures are now on snapfish

The title pretty much explains it all! Email me if you would like to view.

A Fort Night and a Week Down under

As I know you have all been waiting on pins and needles for my next posting I have included a few pictures from our trip. This lovely one is a leopard eating a gazelle, yummy! I will tell you about the first 3 weeks in Perth. We just moved into our temporary housing in East Perth (10 minute walk to downtown) last week and it is really nice. Tomorrow we move into another short term accommodation for the last 3 weeks. We do not yet have a car but have been able to either walk or take public transport anywhere we need to go. George has been hard at work in his new role as a Senior Project Environmental Scientist. I am looking hard for a job and an apartment which is taking up most of my days. We have looked at several apartments in East Perth but it takes some getting used to as things are different here. We are looking at heaps and heaps more the rest of this week so we hope to have our new place settled ASAP. I am still adjusting to this wonderful country and am still waiting on my first Kangaroo sighting, but I have seen about a hundred parrotts so that almost makes up for it. It is spring in Perth and summer is just around the corner so any day now its supposed to be sunny and warm. Heaps of rain so far, Laura I know you are laughing at this. I don't have a whole lot of exciting news yet, but I am hoping to hear back about a few jobs soon. This weekend George has a 3 day weekend so inbetween the apartment hunting we will try to explore the city and the surrounding area. There are hundreds and hundreds more pictures for your viewing pleasure available on snapfish, email me (plattecat84@yahoo.com) and I will send you the invite to view. Just be sure to brew some strong coffee before attempting to look at them all. As I keep saying the Africa pictures are still MIA but I will get it up there very soon.

Who doesn't love hot pink snow pants!?!

Made it home!

Well me made it to Australia. We extended our stay in Tanzania by 2 days so we just got to Australia Saturday morning. After our climb we had a much needed day of rest in Moshi. I think I slept 20 of the 24 hours! After our day of rest we travelled to Arusha about an hour away to start our safari. Our first location was Lake Manyara a national park in Northern Tanzania. I really wanted to see some baboons for some reason so when I told our guide that he laughed and guaranteed I would see "no less than 100 baboons, ...today". Apparently asking to see baboons in Africa is like asking to see rabbits in Nebraska. They were everywhere and can be quite a pest, we saw one steal a banana from a street vendor, pretty funny. Upon entry into the park we saw 2 types of monkeys, a water buffalo and various species of antelopes. The park was also full of elephants, it was so cool to see the first one. They are massive! We stayed outside the park and then headed to the Serengeti. The park is absolutely enormous and is amazing. Every direction you look there are hundreds of animals. About a zillion of them were these cute little Thomson's gazelle, AKA lion/cheetah/leopard food. Other than that we saw hundreds of water buffalo, several lion family groups and were even lucky enough to see two different leopards which are very difficult to see. The first one was just chilling in a tree not doing a whole lot but the second we saw had drug a gazelle up a tree and was feasting in the branches. It was so cool to watch. We headed to the lodge which was this amazing place right in the park. The rooms looked right into the park. The wilderness started about 10 feet from your back door. After dinner George and I sat with our sliding glass door open with all the lights off and watched all of the animals walk by. We were right on the ground floor so the animals would come within feet of you. We saw a little jackal eyeballing some rock hyrax that look like chinchillas but are actually closely related to elephants. A couple of different Impala walked by including a little one that had never seen his shadow in artificial light before. He started jumping around like crazy springing up in the air as soon as he landed. After 30 seconds of jumping and falling over he was finally able to conclude that his shadow did not want to eat him. A Hyena also walked by our room not 6 feet away. Scared me a little because we had one little wooden bar separating us from the hyena. Could have come in our room if he pleased. We also heard some amazing sounds, Zebras barking, hippos snorting, and the haunting sounds of jaguars (sounds exactly like a big saw cutting through wood!) The next morning we went out in the park a little before sunrise and began our game drive. We saw several hippos out of water (surprisingly quick and agile) and went back to visit our leopard who was still snacking away on his gazelle. The highlight of the drive was when we watched a cheetah take down a gazelle. It was pretty far away so we watched through binoculars but it was still a pretty incredible sight. After the rest of our game drive which involved 3 more cheetahs we left the park and drove a few hours to our next destination, Ngorongoro Crater. This game reserve is located in a large caldera from an extinct volcano so it looks just like a crater with very high walls surrounding it. The lodge we stayed at was right on the edge of the crater looking down and the view was amazing. Ngorongoro Crater is the best place to see the black rhino our last of the "big 5" (lion, leopard, water buffalo, rhino & elephant) so we were hopeful when we went to bed. The next day we began our game drive through the crater. We saw many different animals and lots of wildebeest which had not been as abundant in the other parks. We searched tirelessly for our rhino but sadly it eluded us. We left the safari with at least one reason to return to Africa. After our safari adventure we returned to Dar es Salaam for our last 2 nights of our holiday. We upgraded from the Jambo Inn in downtown Dar to a nice little beach hotel north of the city. The place was pretty much deserted, only 3 rooms were filled, like most of Africa had been. The economy seems to be hitting tourism pretty hard there. The place had a good pool and a nice view of the Indian Ocean with a little beach area. You could not get into the water because it was too rocky and also the hotel had a sign that indicated that if you went down to the water you were in an unsecured area and they were not responsible for your safety. The areas by the ocean can be very dangerous muggings and gang activity is quite common (luckily for me, all of the shady people are terrified of George. So I never had to worry about anything). We spent two lovely nights at the resort before heading off at 5am on Friday to the begin our journey to Australia. We arrived in Australia at 8:30am on Saturday and have been enjoying our new city.

Kilimanjaro

So the guide book says the climb to the top of Kili is essentially a long hike, and if you are in decent physical shape it should not be exceedingly difficult. Umm ya understatement of the year! Also it seems in Africa the best remedy for 9+ hours of difficult hiking is a few more hours of strenuous hiking as they kept taking us to our tents and then making us march up and down the mountain. The trek started out great, the first day we drove to the trail head (7500ft) and saw wildebeest, zebras and monkeys along the way. Then we had a 3 hour hike through the rainforest to our first camping spot (8692 ft) which the monkeys seemed adamant about reclaiming. The second day we went from the forest camp to Shira 2 camp (12,595 ft) which was a pleasant 9 hour hike uphill. Upon arrival our guide tried to get us to hike 1 hour more up the mountain and then come right back down to "acclimate". We politely declined/hid in our tent. The next day involved more......hiking! We had a 7 hour hike to Baranco (12,956ft) but not before trekking around the lava tower (15,088ft) to acclimate, also known as our first fourteener. By this time we were in the alpine desert and it was very cold especially when the clouds rolled through. Day four we hiked to Karanga camp (12,998ft) which was 4 hours of very difficult hiking. Upon arrival to our camp our guide informed us that we had to acclimate some more and we hiked an hour up and down the mountain. Day 5 arrived and we hiked 4 hours to Barafu camp, Swahili for ice hut, (15,088ft). The hike was very difficult, we had to go up and down steep cliffs and involved quite a bit of scrambling. When we arrived a Barafu we tried to get as much sleep as possible since we pushed the the summit (19,334ft) at midnight. We woke at 11:30 and put on all our winter gear, it gets to about 30º F below zero on the mountain with lots of wind. Our ascent up the mountain took a little over 7 hours and there were several times I was convinced I was going to be brought down in a stretcher. We watched the sun rise on the mountain and made it to the summit about 7:30am. We took some pictures and then hurried down the mountain which took 2 more hours. After an hour rest we had to make a 4 hour hike to our last camp. I have never been so exhausted. Our last day we had a 4 hour hike the the gate and made it safely out of the park but I am afraid my mountain climbing career is now over. I am still so sore I can barely move.

Egypt

Well we have made it safely to Africa. Spent our last day in Greece walking around the city and toured the Acropolis and the Parthenon. The city was very cool and we really enjoyed seeing all the ruins. Very late that night we had a flight to Egypt with a stop over in Turkey. I was wearing a tank top and shorts and shoulders are very offensive to these people so I had to change at the airport when we got in at 2am. We got to our hostel in downtown Cairo which is an "interesting" part of town. The building looked scary from the outside with the first 2 floors abandoned but the 3rd floor with the hotel was pretty sweet. The next day we went to the Egyptian Museum and saw the King Tut exhibit which was amazing. We walked around the city a little bit in the afternoon and had some fun trying to cross the streets, they don't so much have traffic laws and lanes and stoplights seem to only be suggestions. The next day we hired a taxi and went to the pyramids at Giza. The pyramids are a pretty far hike so we got some horses and rode through the Sahara desert to get there. Was a really fun time and we had about a 25 minute delay when the guide's horse ran away. Pretty hilarious to watch. We took some amazing photos and then went on to two more sites with pyramids. None were as impressive as Giza but we did get to go inside of one. The tunnel you climb down is only about 3.5 feet tall so it was pretty challenging, more so for George than me. We finished off the day by walking around Cairo which is an incredibly chaotic city. We left for Tanzania that night after midnight. Upon arrival in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania we got checked into our hostel and arranged our Kilimanjaro trek and safari. Today we travelled by bus to Moshi and will begin our 7 day climb up the Lemosha route tomorrow, next stop 19,335 feet!

Santorini

Well I am very far behind on my blog but I will tell you about Santorini. We took a ferry from Ios to Santorini at noon and made it to the island in time to rent a scooter and get checked into our hostel which was fairly nice but not as cool as the one in Ios. The first thing we did upon arrival was check out the closest beach The beach was amazing but the wind was pretty gusty, we had to put rock on our towel to keep them from blowing down the beach. After we got some dinner in town, at 11:30pm when the locals eat, and called it a night. The next day we took a boat trip (on a pirate ship) across the caldera to climb the volcano. Santorinin is actually a large active volcano, home to the largest eruption in recorded history. After the volcano we were able to swim in some hot "springs" aka rust colored water that stained your suit. But nonetheless it was still cool because we swam to them from the boat which you had to jump off. We then explored some more of the island and watched the sunset over the ocean. The next day we woke up bright and early for our snorkeling adventure. The water is crystal clear and we saw some cool fish. We wrapped that up in the early afternoon and got on our 8 hour ferry ride back to Athens where we arrived about 2 in the morning after outsmarting some shady cab drivers.

Greece

Hi, we made it through Greece, we got into Athens very late on the first night. When we arrived at the hostel a lot of people were still up having a few beers, they mentioned that they were getting ready to go for a walk to the acropolis at midnight. We unloaded our gear, bought a few beers and went for a walking tour through the city with a few Germans, and an Argentinian. We got to see the Parthenon lit up at night and several other monuments. we finally made it home at 4am with our new best friends. The next day ....err, 2 hours later we woke up and headed to the port of Piraeus to catch a ferry, we headed for the island of Ios for 2 days (the owner of the hostel lost our reservation, to make it up to us he upgraded us significantly to an awesome hotel that was built into the mountainside, complete with an ocean view balcony and a sweet pool. The beaches were amazing and we made friends with three British guys that were very entertaining. The nightlife there was crazy and didn't even get started until after 3. Needless to say we did not party until 5am like our British pals. The next day we spent time at the beach and rented a scooter. George was fairly diligent/obsessed in the pursuit of scooter to rent, turns out you need a valid motorcycle license to rent a scooter in Greece, unless you deal with the shady places. 20 minutes later we were on a scooter and the entire island was ours to explore. So far the Greek islands have been outstanding, we are meeting great people from all over the place, I will post some photos asap.

Munchen!!

Just finished up the German portion of our tour. It involved, no surprise, lots of beer drinking. We visited the Hofbrauhaus on the first night and enjoyed several liters of beer. On our second day we made it to a bike tour of the city and saw the infamous Englisher Garten with many nude Germans sunbathing (mostly old men) and the second largest beer garden in the world. The city was great and we even were able to see the Glockenspiel which never fails to disappoint the next day before embarking on our journey to Athens.

Here are the places I will be visiting before arriving at my final destination, Perth!

We arrive -

August 7: Munich

August 10: Greece

August 16: Istanbul

August 17: Cairo

August 18: Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania (George's old stomping ground)

September 2: Johannesburg, South Africa

September 3: Perth, Australia