This is the last video for Oz. We’ve just arrived in Wellington and are currently thinking of clever names for the NZ blog.
It’s around six minutes long so make sure you got some time to kill.
ditto. I’m going to try to get Max to wear the pyjama pants while skydiving.
Rich
we’re skydiving tomorrow, so if you’ve always been secretly in love with me or whatever, you may as well facebook message me now. -max
Christ, I make plaid pajamas look good in that video.
So we just completed a 3-day sailing extravaganza around the Whitsunday Islands, filled with amazing sights, dives, and interesting backpackers from all over the world, and here’s the thing about seasickness: it reduces you to a huddled mass of misfiring neurons concerned only with the blazing zone of agony formerly known as your stomach.
El scene: You wake up on day 2 after a first day of sailing that was fun, sunny, and totally free of crippling pain, only to eat breakfast and, 30 minutes later, experience a disquieting pang of…motion?…in your stomach. Within 5 minutes, this sensation has ballooned into a horde of nausea that is adventuring through your innocent digestive organs.
You’ve made it above-deck. The ocean is frigid and beautiful, stretching for leagues in every direction. A cluster of islands have glided into view - towering rainforest monoliths who stood watch for eons, as the oceans rose and innumerable ships passed through their corridors. But who cares? You’re barely aware of your extremities, let alone immediate surroundings.
Staring vacantly at the rocking horizon while lying, prone, in the fetal position, on the deck of the boat, with a lone trail of drool dribbling off your cheek, you realize: this is the lowest form of human existence.
Why are you mentally reciting Gordon Gekko’s speech from ‘Wall Street’? Why aren’t you instead berating yourself for not paying more attention to that episode of Mythbusters where they talked about seasickness cures? You don’t know. You no longer have any control over the thoughts spontaneously apparating into your brain.
I never figured out why the torment abated; it went as spontaneously as it came, halfway through day 2, after we hit Whitsunday beach. Also never conclusively determined whether beer helps or hinders in terms of prevention. More research is required.
You know the worst thing? Before the trip, Cam and I were like, to Rich, dude, don’t be an idiot, you should consider the possibility you might get sick, and he was like Fuck That, I won’t get sick, and then on the boat Cam and I were reduced to the physical state of octogenarians who needed Rich’s assistance to complete even the simplest of manual tasks. Meanwhile Rich spent the entire trip skipping around above-board and pretending he was starring in Titanic with Leonardo Dicaprio. Thanks for that one, Universe.
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Brief Place Updates
Noosa: Surf town. Kind of the poor man’s Byron but still real nice; more boutique stores, fewer new-age healing gurus. May be coloured by the fact that we weren’t awesome enough surfers to handle the sweetest waves. Oh, and ‘Le Monde’ is great great food.
Australia Zoo: Man, animals are cool. I would have enjoyed this even if I didn’t get to hand things to an elephant via its trunk, which, I discovered, is an activity that is capable of entertaining me indefinitely. Also, note to self: if I ever get really rich, I am putting a giant aquarium in the middle of my living room and filling it with a pair of sea otters, who will dwell in sea otter heaven and serve as a constant, living embodiment of joy.
(btw did you know that koalas are the only marsupials whose mating rituals include inflicting severe violence on their partners? Seriously, they’re not only the cutest animals alive, they’re also into S&M. How could god make one animal so unfairly awesome?) 
Rainbow Beach: Optimistically named. Only reason to come is that it’s the jumping-off point for Fraser. Great fun at hostels, though, esp. the post-island party with your Fraser crew.
Mackay: A desolate wasteland filled with brothels and drunk old guys who want to play guitar with Cam. Never, ever go here.
Airlie Beach: Deceptively named. Actually a town. The jumping-off point for Whitsunday cruises. We had a Sunday bar night righteously devoted to pint-glass philosophizing; place is a bit touristy but way more accommodating than Rainbow.
Whitsunday Beach: Accurately named. Actually a beach. Purest sand in the world, whatever that means. Very beautiful; it was flooded when we visited so we were basically traversing an unending field of turquoise ocean that hit about knee-height. The twenty-five of us waded around stingrays and schools of fish amidst sheets of torrential rain and a mountainous skyline straight out of Fiji. …Well, anyway, as I imagine Fiji to be.
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Lessons
A. Bring Ginger On Extended Sailing Experiences. Oh, and pajama pants. Seriously. They’re like the ideal sub-torso garment.
B. When dealing with boilerplate contracts, always always have both parties write in and initial the amendments made at the time of agreement. This saved us $$$ in bullshit ‘administrative fee’ losses from our travel agency.
a. Corollary: don’t agree to pay bullshit administrative fees.
C. Use specific times and specific meeting places. Avoid the ‘I waited a while then went to look for you then you went to look for me and now we’re 30 minutes late’ classic travel fuckup, and ensure that Cam doesn’t almost ruin your sailing trip by wandering off after nearby French accents.
-max
PS here is a mummified head 
After 3 days on a leaky sailboat going through the Whitsunday Islands in torrential downpours, we are now stuck in Arlie Beach being flanked by all sides with cyclones and other low pressure systems.
Ok, I was totally right, Dingos suck. They’re just emaciated-looking wild dogs that will wait for you to get drunk off goon and then try to eat your food. Luckily it turns out that if you fill Cam with enough beer and provide him with a heavy, blunt object, he turns into human dingo-repellant.
Fraser island was basically a rambunctious camping trip. It’s cool to see one of these uniquely Australian, smucked-up ecosystems (the island is basically a desert surrounded by/interspersed with rain forests, Cam should have some sick pictures as caminoz.blogspot.com) but if you’ve camped before and been to a beach, you’ve already seen most of Fraser island.
(though rich requests that i specify that the rainforests grow out of the sand…thus making them cooler, i suppose).
So the brunt of the trip was just the experience of careening around a giant beach-highway in a 12-person 4x4 filled with german/swiss/french/israeli/canadian people. On those grounds, I recommend it.
Lessons learned:
Updated Terminology:
Cam brough this guitar out each night and Rich was a regular goddamn Gordon Ramsey on our trip…so on a personal note, I think I need to acquire some sort of skill or talent before my next camping trip, making me more useful to humanity.
-max
Tomorrow we embark on a 3 day - 2 night, journey to Fraser Island. The Island is the world largest island composed purely of sand and contains more sand than the Sahara desert. The island is also infested with dingoes, Max isn’t too interested with them but I think these wild canines are friggin awesome.
For more stories/pictures visit: http://caminoz.blogspot.com/
the trip so far.
HEREIN LIE THE CONTENTS
1. Places
2. Lessons
3. Lingo
4. Music
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1. Places
Sydney: Our daily lives were basically: surfing, then being touristy, then collapsing from exhaustion at crazy early hours. (We eventually adjusted).
Go to: Manly beach (classic surftown boardwalk), freshwater beach (location of our first surf…kind of), Bondi beach
(adjacent to an amazing Cliffside jogging route), Sydney harbour (the opera house), The Rocks (like the Distillery, but bigger, plus almost as good theatre).
Buy: Amazing $2 sushi. Little else (their shopping is woefully inferior to ours. Though apparently I didn’t check out the good spots).
There’s a lot more cool stuff that we didn’t get to, quoth Laura. I found out that I am very impressed by cities wherein ferries are as common as buses.
I could probably live here.
Hunter valley: My first wine tour(s). Turns out that people do them to get afternoons full of free drinks. Who knew. Also, mind-blowing selection of cheese.
Mind-blowing.
Diamondhead Campsite: where we lived with the kangaroos.
My first public camping experience (representative image: medieval gypsy caravans, in the key of a roving encampment). Our crippling lack of preparation (no lantern, no soap, no peanut butter to go with Jelly as a result of Cam’s shopping abilities – seriously, he can understand the scaffolding of computer programs but he forgets the peanut butter after buying the bread and the jam? Baffling) redeemed only by the shocking, unsolicited generosity of Australian camper families. Also got our first official surf lesson from a wandering surf vagabond.
(before:)
(after:)
Port Macquarie: good hostel, fun kayak, it’s like a slightly bigger Windermere. Don’t go here. Though the koalas were kind of fantastic.
Byron is beautiful…
…but it can get kind of hot.
Byron Bay: Best waves of trip, thus far – first place I ever caught a wave, for real. Nights are: wine on the beach, then the Beach House (because you’re sophisticated, you aren’t going to Cheeky Monkey’s), then Cheeky Monkey’s. I could live here. for a while.
Nimbin: hippies.
So sweet.
Murwullumbuhgata (or something): Like Port Macquarie…but smaller. Only stopped for survival reasons, post-Mt Warning fiasco.
nice hike:
and demon hike
what’s that phrase, somthing about when you look into the abyss…
Surfer’s Paradise: Grungy party capital. Beaches plus skyrises. Sydney minus the class. We surf, then pubcrawl. Two days is probably enough.
2. Lessons
3. Lingo
4. Music
