Goodbye Aus, see you again in Jan!
Last night, while standing on a balcony attached to the Sydney Opera House, I watched fireworks erupt in the sky as I waited for the 2nd intermission of The Sleeping Beauty to end. Shortly after a stream of bats flew across the sky, across the harbor, as ferries and pleasure boats negotiated their way through the water.
It was at this moment, as I thought about my present and my immediate past, that I realized just how lucky I have been, just how many awesome experiences I have had. Less than a week ago I was swimming with manta rays and now I was attending a performance of an amazing ballet in one of the world's most iconic buildings. Tonight I am flying to Hawaii for 4 days where a rented convertible waits for me to explore Oahu. It will be my first time in the US in 463 days.
This has been an interesting past few months that have brought me to a lot of places with an obscence amount of flights. Unlike my time in South AMerica though it definitely felt more like a vacation than a journey. I have an exact end point in mind. Most of my itinerary was carefully planned beforehand. Try as I might it couldn't compare to SA. In most cases the travel portion was so easy, so civil, I didn't feel like I was traveling at all. There was one moment though, when I was on a bus traveling to Kota Kinabablu in Borneo, that I truly felt like a traveller. About an hour into my trip the bus attendant put on a Steven Seagal movie. As far as I can tell SS has starred in more "straight-to-bus" films than any other living actor (with the possible exception of Jean Claude Van Dam). No matter where you are in the world there will be a bus playing his movies. I swear his canon is included with the bus owners manual. For me it was the quintessential travel moment.
I did find out that my date that I am due to arrive in McMurdo has been pushed back to Jan 19th (so, sadly, no DA) which means I now have an additional 11 days to play with in the US. Unfortunately I will be in rural SC with my folks for most of this time and need to figure out something to do. I am considering New Orleans for New Years and have been mapping out all sorts of possible road trips in my head. Of course I might just decide to enjoy the free food and lodging and company of my folks and decompress a bit.
Financially this trip has totally blown past my arbitrarily set budget. Indonesia, which was supposed to be my budget stop gap turned out to be more expensive than New Zealand. Rather than spending 20-30/day I was routinely over 60-70.
I feel I must say again how much I love Sydney. It's just a great city, with a bunch of beautiful people and an agreeable climate.
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