For some reason, whenever I get back from one of these vacations, I feel about ready for, well, a vacation. I suspect there’s some correlation with that and the amount of time we spend moving from place to place, but no time to think about at the moment – we have a plane to catch.

It’s a bit difficult to leave Cairns as we have definitely enjoyed it (and Port Douglas), but we’re also excited to get to our next stop, Alice Springs, as it is from there that we will venture out to Uluru/Ayer’s Rock. We know we’re in for something different as soon as the plane descends to land and all we can see in any direction is red sand and rock. I’m not sure where they film movies like The Martian, but i can’t imagine many places better suited than this.

Stepping off the plane is like a hair dryer to the face, and burning our fingers doing up our seat belts, we get to revisit some of our fondest memories of Texas. Driving on the wrong side of the road gets that much more interesting when you’re steering with your knees, waiting for the air conditioning to kick in and cool it down enough to touch.

Fortunately, it’s a short drive to the hotel, where we are greeted by this rather colorful doorman.

We spend the few hours we have left in the afternoon stocking up on custard, checking out the town (which is pretty much an Outback version of Dawson Creek so doesn’t take long), and visiting the Alice Springs Reptile Center. It’s not much too look at from the outside, but they have some pretty cool critters, a few of which you get to touch.

This is Pickles, the Blue-Tounged Skink (not to be confused with Pickles, the sometimes crabby teenager):

And Barry, the Olive Python:

I would have bet real money my trusty travel companion wouldn’t let a 15 pound snake get anywhere close to her, so a well-earned tip of the hat here.

They also have a saltwater crocodile, about a third the size of the ones Nick walked into the pen with in Thailand. They do a quick demo showing how quickly it goes from not moving at all to attacking something it thinks might be food and trying to tear it apart. Nick, those monks had it all wrong – you are very, very lucky.

We finish our day back at the hotel, where we spotted a tasting plate on the menu with a combination of kangaroo, crocodile and camel. All three are surprisingly tasty, with roo getting the highest marks amongst my fellow adventurers. It’s also a bit educational as I have to admit I never even knew they had camels in Australia, when in fact they have the largest wild population of them in the world. Given our last camel experience, I (and me jumblies) prefer them on a plate.

Something has felt a little off this trip and until now I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on it. Over the past 10 years or so, I’ve settled into a bit of routine of getting up early, catching up on work, doing a bit of writing, and then trying to pry my trusty traveling companion out of bed in time to grab the egg remnants and dried out pancakes from the buffet table before the kitchen staff wheels. In a sign that hell may indeed be freezing over, that routine has been turned on it’s head, and hardly a day goes by that we aren’t out the door at a reasonable hour. Today is no exception, even though we have no place to be or tour to catch.

Our plan is simply hang out at the public salt water lagoon a few blocks from our hotel. It’s clearly the place to be, and I’m particularly thankful that my six-pack is in such perfect condition to parade in front of the masses.

It’s a tough life, and eventually we need to refuel with a McSpider (a coke slushy with soft serve ice cream from the local McDonalds) and fruit filled waffle. The plan goes horribly wrong when, standing empty-handed and teary-eyed on the sidewalk, we realize the waffle stand is part of the night market and closed up tight until dinner.

Bent, but not broken, we decide to try our hand at the all you can stack chinese food place. Here, for a fixed price you get a plate and can pile on whatever you like. It turns out Joey is quite an accomplished stacker for one so young.

Nursing a bit of an industrial food coma, we decide to head back to the hotel for a few hours to catch up on emails and homework. Things pick up again once the temperature starts to cool off and we have bit of shopping to do. Joey wants to buy something for his teacher and I try to tell him to hang onto it until he sees what kinds of grades she has given him, but he’s having none of that plan. After seeing one up in Kulandra, I think he also has a stylish kangaroo scrotum bottle opener on his list, but scrotums aren’t cheap, so he may just have to wait until Christmas.

We’ve also started to hone in on some art, as bringing one thing back from each place we visit has become a bit of a tradition for us. Much to Joey’s chagrin, that means far more time that he is cut out for sitting in a gallery waiting for Mom to look at every single piece. He doesn’t realize just how lucky he is that she’s not looking for carpets.

It seems like we’ve been constantly on the go since we arrived in Australia and today is no different. We’re up and out of the hotel to catch the Skytrain to Kulandra in the Atherton Tablelands. The Skytrain is a 7.5km gondola that carries passengers over the rainforest to the village of Kulandra, pretty much the same way the Whistler gondola takes you up to Roundhouse Station. For a few extra dollars, there is even a glass bottomed version that allows you to look straight down to the forest below (which of course we do because we are tourists).

Along the way, there are two stops where you get off for a short walk. The first is through the rainforest, which by now we’re somewhat familiar with. Along the way, Joey spots some green ants shows Mom how if you crush them and then lick your fingers, it tastes like lemon (a tidbit he picked up from our Argo tour guide). Full props to Mom here for tasting ant juice.

All the cool kids are on Instagram, so we figure we’ll Instagram Nick the only way we know how. Nick, how come you never messaged us back?

The second stop leads to a viewpoint overlooking the Baron Falls and Baron river below. As the rainy season hasn’t started yet, there is not a whole lot of water falling, but it is still an impressive sight.

The town of Kulandra is made to order for day trippers, with plenty of small shops, restaurants and bite-sized activities. In retrospect, we probably could have spent another day here as we don’t get through even half of it before it is time to start our journey back down to Cairns.

For the return trip, we are taking the scenic train, which has been restored from the 1800s (the engines are mid 1900s). Along the way, a guide explains how the line was cut out of the mountainside using picks and shovels.

A short bus ride takes us from the train station back to the Skyrail station to pick up our car, meaning we’ve made it through another great day in Australia.

We’ve done and seen a lot these past few weeks, but always lurking in the background was the one big thing we came all the way for – the Great Barrier Reef. Today is the day, and we’re up bright and early to get a bite of breakfast and make our way to the marina. There are a bunch of different boats doing all kinds of tours, so after much thought, we have settled on one that will take us to the outer reef (Agincourt Reef to be exact) for the day. Being further from Port Douglas, our hope is there will be fewer people, and supposedly, there are less Box Jellyfish to deal with as you move away from shore.

Joey has decided he’s just not comfortable diving yet, so while that is an option on our boat, we’ll be sticking to snorkeling. I was a bit concerned about this as we were booking a tour (we came all this way, shouldn’t we be diving?), but most of the people we ask say the two aren’t much different here. The water is fairly shallow where we’ll be, making it quite easy to free dive from the surface and get close ups of the things you want to see.

Because it is jellyfish season (and because Box Jellyfish can kill you), we all have to suit up in a nice lycra body suit. It’s a bit hectic, but Joey manages to catch a photo of us before we dive in.

Over the course of the day we cover a total of three sites. They are all pretty incredible and the pictures won’t possibly do them justice, but it’s the best we can do.

Between sites, we are able to catch a little sun and listen to the guide talk about the area and the different kinds of fish and coral that we have been seeing.

We also enjoy a pretty tasty lunch (as tour lunches go), which surprisingly, none of the people yack back up on what is a fairly rough ride back to port.

Although we’ve already checked out of the hotel, we’ve borrowed their pool towels for the day, so take a brief detour back to drop them off before starting our drive to Cairns. While there, we feel obligated to at least spend a few minutes on Four Mile Beach, and Joey takes the opportunity to put his feet in the pool.

There isn’t much of a beach on Cairns, but we have a great view and are just a short walk from the restaurants and shops. We’ve been keeping an eye out for a place that serves kangaroo burgers, but they’re harder to find that we imagined and tonight we have to settle for plain old beef (although they were amazing burgers). We also come across a stand selling waffles stuffed with fruit and whipped cream, which is impossible to pass up given that we have the one and only Joey Waffles in our party.

It has a been a once in a lifetime day and it doesn’t take much for us to fall into bed once we get back to the room.

We’re down to our last full day in Port Douglas, and hoping to get in a crocodile tour before the temperature heats up, we grab a quick breakfast and head back to Daintree Village. There are a host of places with boats on the river so we just pick the first one we see. In turns out to not matter a whole lot, as after we’ve paid we learn this is pretty much the worst time of year to see crocodiles in Queensland (a combo of the water being warm and breeding season). We do see on medium sized croc resting up under a ledge, and a tiny eighteen month old sunning itself on a log, but that’s about it. Nevertheless, we’re in Australia, we’ve seen crocodiles, put a check in the box.

The last stop on our list is Mossman Gorge. It is the closest part of the rainforest to Port Douglas so gets the most tour groups, but it supposedly has a good swimming hole, which Joey is very excited about.

The area around Port Douglas is sugar cane country and this is harvesting season, so as we’ve been driving around the past few days we’ve noticed a fair number of trucks and trains loaded up with cane. Today, however, we pass a farm when the big machines are in the field doing the actually cutting. Having grown up in a farm town, it’s interesting to watch how quickly a towering field of sugar cane turns into nothing more than stumps.

Mossman Gorge is pretty much as advertised. A short walk in is the swimming hole, very much like Carlos’ Place in Puerto Rico that the boys enjoyed so much. We spend a few hours scrambling over rocks and floating through the rapids before moving on to a short loop through the rainforest. We’ve seen a lot of rainforest this past week so not everyone is fully on board, but a month from now, when it’s cold and rainy in Seattle, we’ll be wishing we had the option.

For the number of tour busses in the parking lot, there are surprisingly few people willing to walk a couple kilometers and we have the place more or less to ourselves (to the point of almost being eerie). Along the trail there are a bunch of places where it looks like something has been digging. The source is unclear, but wild pigs are quite common here and I know they aren’t particularly pleasant to meet up with. This is one case where having more people around might actually be a good thing, and not really knowing what might be out there, I crank up the Spidey Senses a little. However, knowing that a wild Angela is equally, if not more dangerous than a wild pig, I opt not to share this nugget of info with my fellow travelers.

Back in the car we make a quick stop at the supermarket, where Joey finds his new crack cocaine – double thick vanilla custard. The tub we walk it with is something most people probably use to whip up a couple dozen tarts for a dinner party, but paired up with a plastic spoon, it’s a single serving for a suddenly very quiet passenger in the back seat.

Tomorrow we’re off to the reef and then moving on to Cairns. It has been a whirlwind few days, so much so that we realize we haven’t even been to the pool or the beach here even though they are both just steps away from our room. It seems like that’s a good thing though.

There’s a lot to see here and we’re one day shorter than planned, so after a quick breakfast, it’s back in the car. We’re headed to Daintree Village, a small settlement just outside of the national park where they offer crocodile spotting tours on the river. Having been to the Everglades and on an alligator tour, I don’t have a real burning need to see crocodiles, but we’re here and it’s a popular thing to do, so what the heck. By the time we arrive, it’s surface of the sun kind of hot though (the tar is literally running in the streets, creating pools of it wherever there are depressions), which we’re told makes for pretty poor croc spotting (they would rather cool off in the water than pose on the shore for tourist photos). What does catch our eye is a ride through the rainforest in an Argo (a quad kind of thing, but with eight wheels instead of four).

Our guide is a cattle rancher named Peter, who uses the land we are touring to graze cattle during the rainy season (during the dry season, there is another pasture down by the river, but when it rains, the river floods and washes any cattle away that haven’t moved to higher ground). He stops frequently to tell us about the different trees and how the aboriginal people used them for food and medicine. There are also discarded stone tools around the property, like these ones used to break open the hard nuts of the candlenut tree.

Up on a ridge, we take the opportunity to stretch our legs and grab a few photos of the amazing scenery that surrounds us.

It’s a great tour, and one we would highly recommend should one find oneself in Daintree Village, but too soon we are bidding Peter farewell and heading back into Port Douglas for dinner. On the way, we take a quick detour to the lookout above town for some great views of Four Mile Beach, which runs south from Port Douglas past our hotel.

After a tasty meal of fish and chips, we are driving back to our hotel when swarms of black birds start streaming by above us. Pulling over to grab a few pictures we realize they aren’t birds at all, but big flying foxes, fruit eating bat with a three foot wingspan. They’re perfectly harmless, but seeing hundreds of them fly by against the darkening skyline is more than a little Hitchcock-esque.

In our travels through the rainforest, we learn that the aboriginal people did not have a written language, but passed down their knowledge through colorful stories and songs, often about nature and living harmoniously with the land. Here is one of my favorites from the Kuku Yalanji tribe.

It tells the story of a young, male mahogany tree (I never knew trees had gender, but I guess in legends they do), growing tall and strong in the forest. Blessed with sun and rain, the tree confidently reaches up through the canopy and spreads it’s branches wide, soon becoming the most magnificent tree in all the forest.

One day, a bird lands in the branches of the great tree, nibbling the seed of a fig tree, that slips from it’s beak and falls to the ground below. Protected by the mighty mahogany, the seed sprouts and a female fig tree starts to grow.

In the shade of the forest canopy, light is precious, and the young fig struggles to find the sun. “This mahogany is getting plenty of sun in it’s branches,” she says to herself, “if I can just reach up there, there will be plenty for me too. But he is so majestic and strong, how will I ever get that tall?”

Looking down, the mahogany sees the poor, young fig, and calls to the forest floor, “grab onto me, I will help you reach the sun.”

The fig leans over and using the sturdy mahogany for support, quickly reaches up through the canopy and into the light. Happy and healthy, the fig soon starts to create seeds of her own, and in short order, three have dropped to the forest floor below and taken root. “Grab onto the great mahogany,” she shouts to them, “he will help you reach the sun.”

Over the years, with the mahogany as their support, the four figs grow. But always hungry for more light, start to stretch out along the limbs of the mahogany, spreading more and more of their leaves to catch the sun. Day by day, year by year, the number of fig leaves grows, and now blocked from the sun, the mahogany leaves start to fall.

Not wanting to complain, the proud mahogany stoically sends out new branches in search of light, only to have them quickly overtaken by the voracious figs. Without sun, little by little, the weight of four figs proves too much even for the regal mahogany, and it begins to die.

Today, if you find the spot where the towering mahogany once stood, you will only see glimpses of if peeking out through the trunks of the figs. Looking way up high, if you search you may see a few skinny branches struggling to catch whatever scraps of light remain, a sad reminder of how the weakest of figs can bring down even the most indomitable of mahoganies.

Please note, this account is entirely ancient legend. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Our first full day in Australia and we’re back in the car headed about an hour north into the Daintree Rainforest. The roads are a little windy narrow, which has my navigator a bit nervous that I haven’t mastered the whole left side of the road thing, but with the exception of using the windshield wipers every time I want to signal a turn, I figure I’m fitting in with the locals pretty well.

The rainforest here is the oldest in the world (about 200 million years, more than 20 times as old as the Amazon), and chock full of different plant and animal species, many of which are found only here. Wandering across the aerial walkways at the Daintree Discovery Center puts us among thirty percent of all of Australia’s frog, reptile and marsupial species, sixty five percent of all bat and butterfly species, eighteen percent of bird species and over twelve thousand species of insect.

One of the most interesting is the cassowary, a flightless bird related to the emu, which is the only animal big enough to eat the fruits of many of trees here and disperse their seeds in giant piles of chunky bird poop. They are endangered now, and should they go extinct, may species of tree in the rainforest will follow. Joey is convinced we’re going to see one, so for the rest of the day we’re on cassowary watch.

We also learn about epiphytes, which are plants that grow without ever touching the ground. They are everywhere up in the trees, and rely entirely on catching water and falling leaves for nutrients as they fall from the forest canopy (only 1% of the light and very little rainfall actually make it through to the ground). It is a topic that Joey’s class is going to learn about while we are away, so the opportunity to learn about them here is perfect.

Every since we took Nick to Thailand and let him kiss a crocodile, Mom has kept a pretty tight rein on animal interactions. The best I could do here was to let Joey tickle this python.

From the Discovery Center, we continue north towards Cape Tribulation, stopping for a quick dip at one of the swimming holes along the way. There was a small restaurant serving crocodile burgers, but just as we worked up the nerve to try one, they started closing up for the day. Fortunately, enough people order them to keep the swimming hole croc free.

Just past Cape Tribulation the road is only passable in a four wheel drive, and while I’m tempted to cross a river in our sporty red rocket, my fellow passengers are far more rationale. Instead, we find a nice place to park and wander down a patch of the deserted beach before heading back to Port Douglas for the night.

We’re arrive at the airport for our 10:30pm flight, anxious to finally be moving on. Nevertheless, there is an air of uncertainty as to why Garuda is flying normal schedule when the Australian airlines still feel it is unsafe to fly. More normally stalwart traveling companion is very quiet, which is generally a bad thing, and I know she is nervous. Of course, we have a junior traveller with us and, at the moment, he is oblivious, so we keep such concerns on the down low.

Now I’m not superstitious by nature, but it has not escaped anyone’s attention that we are flying on Friday the 13th. As we check in, I notice we are at counter 13, and for a brief minute, my faith in logic flickers. However, I can’t believe the pilot and crew will needlessly put themselves at risk, not to mention the company and it’s $200 million plane, so I muffle the annoying voice in the back of my head and press on.

Since I am writing the story, clearly all ends well, and after a very unusual departure where the pilot stays at a low altitude for quite a long time (presumably to stay under the ash cloud), we settle in for the 5 hour flight. This gets us as far as Sydney, where we have a 4 hour layover before catching another flight to Cairns, finally arriving at 1pm, only 29 hours behind the original schedule. All things considered, we are pretty pleased with that.

Our first 4 days here are booked at Port Douglas, about an hour north from the airport. And as things to see there are fairly spread out, we have booked a rental car. This normally would be a non-event, however, Australians drive on the left side of the road, and while this isn’t a first for me, it definitely isn’t one of my limited talents. They sweeten the pot by adding in a traffic circle about every 100 yards, but somehow, we manage to make it unscathed (and more importantly, undented).

It is late in the afternoon but the time we check in, and after flying all night we’re running on fumes. We do manage to rally enough to make it into town for a quick dinner and to grab a few provisions at the supermarket (wow, we’re certainly not in Indonesia anymore). That’s everything in the tank though, and I’m sleeping before my body even hits the mattress.

After spending more time learning about volcanic ash and studying weather patterns than I ever thought possible, it’s time to test our luck. Our original carrier, Jetstar, still isn’t flying regular flights (they are getting a the odd recovery flight out when they deem conditions are just right), and from the stories we hear, people are expecting it to be at least a week before they get all of their stranded passengers home (we’re somewhere near the bottom of that list). The forecast shows the ash cloud blowing pretty much directly over the airport all day, so we’re not super optimistic, but trying to stay positive.

Our flight isn’t until 10:30 in the evening, so we take most of the day pretty easy, catching up with people back home, relaxing on the beach, and keeping cool in the pool. It’s a hard life, and I need to track down a pair of Nockers to give me the energy to get through the day.

The low point comes as I am chilling out, just minding my own business in the hot tub. It overlooks one of the poolside showers, which at the time is being used by gray-haired gentleman sporting a few extra pounds, all squeezed nicely into form-fitting banana hammock. I’ve travelled enough now that there really isn’t any shock value left in people wearing swimsuits that are well beyond their load capacity, but just when I figured I’d seen everything (literally in this case), he yanks the front of his suit away from his body and plunges his other hand in the give the fellas a good scrub down. Please lord, let there be an eye wash station nearby.

We kill our last few hours in Bali at the hotel lounge. We’re regulars here by this point, and the manager stops by see how we’ve enjoyed our stay. He tells Joey that he needs to bring his friends back next year, and teaches him a secret hand shake for when he returns. For a guy that has probably spent the last week surrounded by frustrated people just trying to get home, he’s amazingly upbeat, and is a great reminder of why we enjoy SE Asia so much.

With that, we’re off to the airport.