Saturday, April 10, 2010

Getting knocked in the head in Broome

March 20, 2010

Well today we reached Broome and we checked into the Kimberly Klub, which is an insane hostel. The hostel has huge amounts of open air sections, pool, bar, beach vollyball courts, as well as some other amazing features like hammucks, palm trees, and 80% humidity. Our good Canadian doctor Sarah (Who we met earlier at Chateu G&J) said that walking outside in the heat and humidity was like "Opening the oven door to see if the cookies were done". I would like to completely dissagree with this saying prefering to say that walking outside in this heat and humidity is more like walking into a sauna while standing on a flaming grill, but she was close. Anyway we checked in around 4 had a shower (which was wonderful after 3 days in the hot humid weather, thank god for A/C as it dries out the air, but you should see the water coming out of the A/C unit when we stop) and then did laundry. Of course drying these clothes out after will be a task not even Hurcules can acomplish. Anyway, enough about the smoking hot humid weather, let me tell you about this hostel. I am paying 20 bucks a night and it has the feel of a five star resort, I hope to get some pictures up soon of this place as it is the only way to describe it. Should get more about Broome up soon, will chat later.

Oh ya, I haven't told you about the very weird thing that happened this week. Well when we were down South in Bunbury 1 hour north of Margret we picked up groceries. We were discussing what to cook this week up the west coast. Now before I get to far ahead lets reel the bus back to review the last 4 months of meals. They have consisted of, pasta, beans, pasta, ground beef, sausages, Penut butter and jelly, rice, more PB&J, sausages in beans/pasta/hotdogs. So as you can imagine when I was standing in the grocerie store debating with Ella if she should go vegitarian or not when I hear Christian say "sausages are cheap" and I suddenly had the urge to go vegitarian as well. And that is how for the last 2 weeks I have been a Vegitarian. I swear I just heard some people's heart stop back home, and a couple of jaws bounce off the earths surface. Now before start people sending me e-mails saying "WHAT?", I am not a vegitarian, yet. This so far has only been a foraging excusion into the other side of the nutrition spectrum. Now as I mentioned before I did this for 2 reasons, or didn't mention, anyway 2 resons. First was I couldn't look at either ground beef or anouther sausage for some time yet. The second reason is a bit more complicated. I seem to be finding a pattern with the women I am naturaly attracted to, they all seem to be vegitarians. This usually causes me to roll my eyes and scratch her off my possible dating list, but then something strange happened when I was in Margret River. Lena and Ella invited us to supper one night and Lena cooked up a vegitarian Cous Cous with fried egg plant and some spices. Lena can really cook, and it was one of the best meals I have had since I came to Australia, and the biggest surprise it didn't involve meat. It intruiged me, I have heard of dishes that didn't involve meat, but I never knew they could be filling, and I never imagined that they would could possibly taste good as well. My curiosity was peeked, and when we had Ella she cooked some of the recipies that Lena had shown her. I was continually amazed that vegitales can taste good as I learned more and more about vegitarian cuisine. It is hard to beleive I haven't had a real meat dish in over 2 weeks. So this is one of thoses strange series of events that lead up to this unexpected change. This event really started almost 2 months ago when Ella met Lena in a hostel in Freemantle and became fast friends. Then Lena taught Ella how to cook vegitarian, then we met Lena and Ella in Margret, then Ella taught us how to cook a vegitarian meal. It is amazing how the dommeno's fell. Anyway today we left Broome after spending 4 days there, leaving behind our good friend Ella to deal with this humid weather on her own. We just about had a traveling companion named Gil come with us, but that didn't come to fluition. Anyway just me and Chris again. On our first day out we stopped to make breakfastand I had eggs, but our bread was mouldy (bread doesn't last long in the heat up here). I made a comment that I won't be having bread with my eggs.
Chris replied "Well we have alternatives."
I was rolling through my head our list of food supplies and could not figure out what we could have with eggs. "like what?" I said
"Well we have granola bars."he says.
I suddered at the thought of eggs on granola bars and suddenly was wondering at what point in the night he had sunk to such a horrible low.

But before I get to far into everything else let's get back to the highlights of Broome. Unfortunately I can't say I really enjoyed Broome, then again I had a rough start. We arrived about three in the afternoon Broome, and Ella was immediately invited to Cable Beach for a drink by one of her old co-workers from when she worked in Broome last time she was here. (I would like to say at this time that Ella has more conections than the North American phone network) So we all go down to the beach and have a couple of drinks (I was driving so I stopped at 2), and after the sun went down we went back to this guys house. To make a long story short, when all the kiwi's went home it was just Ella, Chris me, and 3 Aussies. One of the Aussies wanted me to hit him in the head with a beer bottle which I flatly refused, and he punched me in the side of the head for it, talk about nice guys finishing last. Needless to say that kind of killed Broome for me. The sunsets were nice, the hostle was great, but that was kind of the end of it for me. I have been preaching a lot this trip about how the poeple make the place, and in Broome, that is exactly what happened, the people killed the place. I have to admit the heat was hard to, I drank 6 liters of water yeasterday and went to the bathroom once. It is about 38 degrees and 85% humidity. Let me put it this way, I sat in a chair, in the hostel, doing nothing other than drinking water, and I could feel the sweat roll dow my back, my arms, my legs, and my face. I was on a diet of water and salt just to replenish the sweat that was pouring off me. One very cool thing about Broome is the The Malcom Douglas Crocodile farm. This is the place that scared Dr. Sarah away from watering holes. I went thinking "this isn't nearly as bad as what she said they were." Well as it turns out, they are way scarier than I possibly imagined, and let me tell you why. I was standing beyond the fence looking at a pool of shallow murky water. I told the person standing beside me "this must be a small guy as you can barley see the water ripple. The tour guide then threw a hard plastic ball onto the pond and then like a creature from Dauntaes Inferno erupted a 5.6 meter saltwater crocodile with the devil himself shining from his eyes and I found myself taking a step back. Even though I found this a completely natural reaction, I found myself standing alone, because everyone else took 2 or more steps back. The only problem was this may have been a slight mistake as everyone else has forgotten that there was anouther crocodile enclosure right behind them. And he didn't like having people close to his fence, which is when he exploded against the fence and sent everyone scattering. I imagine that the guide must take great enjoyment in watching this happen as he hardly skipped a beat when he explained that this was the largest croc on the farm. I have to admit this may have scared me from swiming in any dark water muddy holes for the rest of my mortal life, as if I did, it would definately end my life in this part of the world.
OK, new rules when dealing with water,
number 1: never go swimming,
Number 2: Stay at least 7 meters away from the water at all times
Number 3: Just because you can't see them, doesn't mean they can't see you
Number 4:If you are caught by one of these nightmares, say goodbye, because you are sooooooo dead.
I was just absolutely stunned with the speed these guys can move at, and how they can swim from one end of the water hole to the other without even sending a ripple accross the water. You would never even know it was there, until they have you right were they want you. Anouther thing that is scarry about these guys is that their tales are just as dangerous as their heads. They quite often use their tales to bust animals legs. These things are built tough, solid, and very scary, all 5 plus meters of them. One last scary fact, these things are faster on land than we are over the first 10 meters.

Anyway I can't say anything else right now, we are heading to Darwin.

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