Mount Warning

Here's a possibly familiar young lady comporting herself on a stardard jungle-issue Tarzan-type liana. When you visit the jungle, you will find it thoughtfully provided with these simple transportation devices which require only moderate use of the arms and hands as well as the obligatory ululation. Sadly, none of use quite got the hang of it so we were obliged to walk.

A messy business that. The rainforest floor is not so much a floor as a sort of combination compost heap and stone mason's discard pile. Everything was covered in some sort of snot-green mud which set new standards for slipperyness.

After 4 or so kilometers of uphill slog, one gets to this.

And, as you sit on the top trying to avoid thinking about exactly how hard it is going to be to slither back down the last hundred odd feet of cliff in the impending rain while enjoying very much the Cadbury (how can anyone be sad in country with Cadburys?) that was seruptitiously packed by a charming (if momentarily sweaty and mud-bespattered) wife you can see where the jungle turns seamlessly into English countryside and think about how nice a cold pint would be.

And to think, no fatalities yet.

Anyway, we had a 4pm appointment at the boat shed to meet Ian Farrier, the designer of Endless Summer. We'd left the car at noon and I figured that we'd do considerably better than the 2 hours each way estimate on the sign at the parking lot. Interesting tidbit of Ozzie culture: they're very literal minded. When we Americans say "a two hour hike" we mean something like "an old lady wearing 4" stilleto heels and dragging a 70-pound oxygen bottle could certainly complete this walk in two hours." Ozzies mean: "If you are in good shape and you walk briskly and you are not bitten by any one of several deadly reptiles which lurk in every likely spot, then this hike will take you about two hours." Similarly, a 25 kph curve is exactly a 25 kph curve. None of this American, "things are only starting to get hairy when you double the suggested speed" nonsense.

We were 15 minutes late for the appointment.

That was monday. We were so sore from the hike that we spent the whole day today (tuesday) on the beach. Since it was my birthday, I got not one but two surf sessions, punctuated by a trip to the ice-cream shop.

Surfed the very tip of Rainbow Bay, the sharpest most igneous part of Point Danger. (Remember that Ozzie thing about literalism). The set up is like Malibu if it had a big dike of really sharp rock jutting out at First Point. In the morning, the tide was low and the crowd was pretty mellow (at least compared with the weekend). I had noticed that some of the waves swung wide and broke outside the main pack which was playing "deeper-than-thou" up against the rocks. Waiting patiently for these waves netted me several nice rides about halfway down the beach.

When I came back out in the afternoon, the tide had risen and the waves that swung wide no longer broke so I had to hassle with the school kids for the pole position by the rocks. The local kids have this nifty way of getting out to the line-up. They walk all the way out along the rocks (we're talking basalt, sometimes covered with barnacles) until they're at the very end. If they time it just right and their leash doesn't get hung up on anything, they can then jump off just as a wave hits the rocks and ride the backwash wave all the way out to the line-up. The really cool ones time things such that the backwash wave smacks into the next regular wave and throws them 15' into the air. I didn't see anyone actually surf from one to the other but I bet it's been done.

Tomorrow we're off to Noosa for a few days. More volcanos to climb and we can see Steve the crocodile guy.