"Brizvegas" so far

Hello everyone! Sorry this blog is long overdue. and this is only going to be a partial, picture-free blog so hopefully you can check back in a couple days when I update it and add pics. Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know what I've been up to this past week. As I said before, my couchsurfing host, Ronnie, was awesome from the start. He picked me up from the train station and took me back to his place in Teneriffe, which is a very nice part of town, right by the river. He gave me lots of info about how to get around town and what to see, and I set off to explore the city. When I got back that evening, he was cooking an amazing chicken curry meal ... it smelled delicious and it was! We ate and drank beers and talked and listened to music. He offered to take me camping that weekend on North Stradbroke Island (of course the island has a nickname: "Straddie") if it wasn't too rainy. As it turned out, it was pouring rain on Saturday, but we decided to go anyway. We spent the morning washing and loading up all his camping supplies and making food for the trip. He brought two steaks to cook on the portable stove he brought, and pancake mix that came in a little plastic jug (just add water and shake it up in the jug -- so smart!) for breakfast. I made potato salad from a recipe he had, and it actually turned out really good! And of course we brought lots of beer. We drove across the Story Bridge in some of the hardest rain I've seen in years, and then got to the ferry just as it stopped raining :D Other than a couple quick bursts of light rain that evening, it didn't rain again until we were asleep!! We got sooo lucky! We were able to set up our camp right there next to the beach, hang out on the beach and spend a great night drinking beers around the campfire. In the morning, it rained a little while we were packing up our campsite, but by the time we drove away, it had stopped again. We saw a wallaby on the way to Point Lookout, had lunch (fish & chips ... delicious) overlooking the ocean, and then did The Gorge Walk at Point Lookout. It was so beautiful! And there were lots of stairs :D I'll post pics when I can. We also saw a group (pack? school? gaggle?) of sea turtles out in the water! The pics didn't come out but we definitely saw a few of them. It was such a cool trip!! :D

On Monday, I said goodbye to my new friend and headed downtown to stay two nights at the X BASE hostel. It's a chain of hostels known for being nice and clean -- and of course fun party spots. I took one ferry to cross the river from Ronnie's place, and while I waited for the ferry that would take me down the river to the center of the city, I started talking to a girl named Tanya and her friend Ben. Within about 30 seconds she had invited me to stay at her place, and a few minutes later she invited me to their work Christmas party at a bar downtown, "The Vic" (The Victory), which happened to be about four blocks from my hostel. I declined the invitation to spend the night since I had already paid for my hostel, but I enthusiastically accepted the invitation to party with them at The Vic, especially because she said it was open bar, and they'd be serving food. Woo hoooo! A poor traveler's dream! :D I checked in at my hostel, changed into a dress and walked over. I wasn't sure if I'd get busted and thrown out, but I decided it was worth a try. If anyone asked who I was, I intended to tell them I was new at QPAC (Queensland Performing Arts Center), but thankfully no one did and I strolled in and found my new friends without incident. The open bar was a myth but apparently the company had paid for some jugs of beer (pitchers), and Tanya poured one for me to start me off. She introduced me to a table full of people and they generously shared their plates of appetizers with me. After that first beer, the beers kept flowing ... someone gave me a Canadian Club (tastes like Coke with a little booze in it) and this funny guy nicknamed The Jaguar kept coming around with jugs of beer and filling everyone's empty bottles. It was quite impressive, and awesome. I met a ton of people and had a great time drinking and dancing with everyone all night and then I finally walked/stumbled back to the hostel about 2 or 3 am. The next day I had planned on going to the XXXX Brewery tour, but I had a slight hangover and suddenly paying $22 for four beers didn't seem like such a great deal anymore so I skipped it and just wandered around the city all day. That night, I went to South Bank, a very beautiful part of town along the river, and met up with my friend David (who couchsurfed with me a couple months ago in LA) and several of his friends from the Brisbane couchsurfing group, as well as some fellow travelers (from Germany, US and Switzerland). It was fun and I met some really nice people.

On Wednesday, after a huge, delicious (and cheap, thanks to the hostel) breakfast, I walked around the city for a few hours, begging building security at all the tallest buildings to let me climb them. It was very unsuccessful and kind of a waste of time, but at least I went to some places in Brisbane I hadn't been before. Then it was time to retrieve my packs from the hostel and catch a bus to Mater Hospital, where my cousin Deb works. I met her there and she took me to Kangaroo Point, which didn't actually have any kangaroos (none that I saw anyway) but it was really cool anyway. There are these huge cliffs along the river, and of course stairs to get down the cliff. Just think ... I could have been climbing those all day! Oops. But Deb took me down and showed me where I could rent a kayak or rollerblades if I wanted to the following day. I met a girl from Fremont, CA who was working at the kayak place. She came to Australia on holiday last year, met an Aussie guy, and ended up moving here. She was really nice and I told her I'd come back the following day to rent a kayak, which I did, even though that night, Deb's boyfriend, Stef, told me there were sharks in the river. I thought he was joking but he insisted it was true. Of course I couldn't just take his word for it. I googled "Brisbane river sharks" and got about 50,000 hits. I found out that there are over 500 bull sharks in the Brisbane River, and that bull sharks are the most dangerous shark to humans because they are fast and super aggressive, likely to attack anything that invades their territory, able to live in shallow, fresh water ... lovely. I was pretty freaked out but decided to go anyway. They wouldn't have a kayak rental business on the river if people were getting eaten by sharks all the time. Would they?? :/ I asked the girls if anyone ever saw sharks in the river and they said no. I was less worried than before but I still thought about the sharks that might be underneath my kayak for the first 20 minutes or so. But when I didn't so much as glimpse a shark fun or a dark form in the water, I relaxed and enjoyed my peaceful kayaking trip up and down the river.  After I finished kayaking for an hour and a half, I was a little sore and a little sunburnt so I decided to just sit down and read in a gorgeous park until it was time to meet Deb at work and go home. It was such a nice day!

This morning I woke up super early (so did Deb and Stef, who were heading down to Melbourne for the weekend, but to them 7 am is sleeping in late, not waking up early) and Deb took me to the Beenleigh bus/train station. I took a train to Nerang, then a bus to Surfer’s Paradise. I expected Surfer’s Paradise to look more like a small island village, or at least like Santa Cruz or Malibu, but it's actually a pretty big city with tons of tall buildings and of course, a ferris wheel. I didn’t ride the ferris wheel or even try to climb any of the buildings; I’m still dying to climb the famous Q1 building (80 stories, the tallest residential building in the world!), but today I was wearing flip flops and anxious to get to the beach. I took another bus down to Kirra Beach, a beach that my brother suggested I check out – he loved it when he was here with Andrea on their honeymoon, and he thought I would love it too. It was soooo pretty!! So much white sand and clear, warm water. And the water didn’t even have sharks or jellyfish in it! Well, I’m sure it did, but I didn’t see any. The only problem was that it was incredibly windy so there was powdery white sand blowing everywhere; within about five minutes I had it all over me and my bag and my water bottle, but that was a small price to pay for a lovely, peaceful day on a gorgeous beach. I got some sun and read almost an entire book (thanks Deb!) and made it back in time to feed Deb & Stef’s adorable little “sausage dogs,” Cecil and Henry. I'm looking forward to a very relaxing weekend. Tomorrow I think I’m going to go into town for a few hours because I need to pick up all my rail tickets for the next few weeks (I’ll be spending 8 days on the train between now and the first week of January … good times). Sunday I think I’m just going to stay here in Tanah Merah and read, walk the dogs, and play Deb’s Wii. :)

Monday = Round Two of Sydney ...