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.