Home Stretch!

It's been a very busy two weeks! It began with the group being split into two different groups for our work with the CVA (Conservation Volunteers Australia): Group one consisted of Alana, Chris, Annie, and Lindsay. Group two was Tracy, Ryan, Sarah, and Zach. It was a surprise to us all, and it was really weird splitting up the group after having been together for so long!

Alana, Chris, Annie and I (Lindsay) headed out to Port Victor where we stayed in a beach house, and spent our days driving around to other towns and doing much needed work in local parks in beaches. We cut down invasive plants that were suffocating the native plants in the area. The one thing we were most surprised about was the massive amount of flies that seem to lack an idea of personal space. For meals, we split into groups of two and took turns cooking different dishes everynight, an amazing toca dish, tuna and plenty of pasta ! But for free time we were lucky enough to have Drew push us to jog on the pier everyday, as well as have tons of fun on the local playground. Plus we had the guilty pleasure of a dvd player and tons of dvd's to watch at night after a hard days work out in the sun!

Group two, Tracy, Ryan, Zach, and I (Sarah) went to an old mining town called Burra, where we spent the week looking for a rare species of lizard called the Pygmy Blue Tongue. Up until ten years ago, they were thought to be extinct, but small populations have been found. Our job was to try and find some new territory. This basically involved walking around looking in spider holes (which most of the time contained huge, nasty looking trapdoor spiders), but occasionally we got lucky! Our accomodation was pretty nice, we stayed in apartments with kitchens and nice beds. When we weren't working we went to look at the old miner's dugouts, the jail, and other historical sights.

After the group reunited we had a day off and then woke up bright and early to begin our Groovy Grape desert adventure! The first day, we spent about fourteen hours in the bus, with occasional screeching stops where our guide, Clancy, would jump out of the bus to capture some sort of reptile. We also stopped to see some aboriginal cave paintings, which date back thousands of years, and are made with ochre, which is yellow, white, or red. They're usually used to tell 'Dreamtime' (the Aboriginal's creation time) stories, to depict important rituals, or simply to point out the location of waterholes and food sources. That night we ate kangaroo around a campfire in a tourist village in the middle of nowhere.

The second day we were in the car for even longer. There were no stops, but we finally arrived at our destination and we spent a refreshing night sleeping under the stars, which are completely visible and absolutely beautiful.

The next day we got to sleep in (which it turns out was much needed: we woke up for sunrise for the rest of the week). We headed to Cooberpiti, which is Aboriginal for "White Man's Burrow." Basically, in the nineteenth century, large deposits of opal were discovered. To escape from the wretched heat, the miners began to build their houses underground. The temperature remains the same no matter what, and they're actually really comfortable. From above ground, you can tell how many rooms a house has by how many metal poles (air vents) are sticking out of the ground. We stayed in an underground hotel called "Bedrock" which was fittingly reminiscent of the Flinstones. We went out for pizza and had a relaxing night.

We woke up for sunrise that morning, and headed to Uluru, the famous "Big Red Rock." We stopped at the Breakaway cliffs, which are colored from the ochre they contain, and we watched the sunrise. On the way we went into an Aboriginal village to see their art center, which was beautiful. We arrived at Uluru at around sunset and watched it at a lookout point.

Four AM was our lovely wakeup time the following morning. This is for a good reason though: it simply gets too hot to do anything after around ten o'clock, and everything gets really crowded. We watched the sunrise with about 400 other tourists and then went for a hike around Uluru. The creation stories were all around the rock, which is an incredibly sacred site for the Aboriginals. It's the grounds for important coming-of-age rituals for both boys and girls. The men and women have different sacred areas, which out of respect for their law, they never enter, and when they walk past the other's sacred sites they avert their eyes. We then went through a small museum talking about aboriginal art and the Dreamtime.

The next day was nearly the same but we hiked Katijuda instead. It's much bigger than Uluru, and entirely unique: the name stands for "many heads." We spent the rest of the day swimming (in the 105 degree weather) and then driving to our next location.

The last day we all worked really hard to create a beautiful thanksgiving dinner, complete with chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, casserole, gravy, peas and carrots, fruit cake, apple pie, icecream, and tons of little treats, like candy cane and chocolate. The girls decorated the table with flowers and made place cards, and set up candles. We were lucky enough to have a german couple, a british man, and two australians with us to celebrate the holiday! After dinner we went around at the bonfire and said what we were thankful for.

Now we're headed to Cairnes for the final stretch of our trip, where we'll learn to scuba dive in the legendary great barrier reef!

So, we're currently sitting in what's known as the "Big Love Cafe" here at the Chenrezig Institute. The meals are huge (and healthy...) and we love our motel style suites, which keep out the multiple species of highly poisonous everythings that live in Australia. We were all a little bleary-eyed upon our arrival, due to the highly comfortable all night train ride, but we were served a delicious pasta dish and lots of free coffee and tea.

Our first night, we went to a ceremony for Tara, a figure who portrays the Buddha's more feminine nature. There was lots of chanting and fast muttering that none of us could keep up with, periodically interrupted by exciting crashing and banging noises... nonetheless, it was otherworldly and enchanting to listen to. Even better: they served us the best chai tea in the world halfway through the ceremony, and gave us a big slice of chocolate cake at the end!

Since then, we've been doing yoga, getting the background of Buddhism, and today we had our first meditation course. There's plenty of rest time where we're free to explore the rainforest here.. on a side note, up until the seventies, Chenrezig was just a bare hill side where cattle grazed, but with the help of some volunteer students, 30 acres rainforest, complete with the rain and the animals, was born!

We're spending the rest of today walking through the garden of enlightenment, and let's not forget Lindsay's birthday festivities!

We are currently in Sydney, after a fairly laid back week in Lyttelton. We did a few days of work for the department of conservation, clearing off a stone wall, which was completely hidden by trees and other plants.

We also visited Kokoratata, where there was a group of boys and men aged eight to fifty. These men were at this establishment in order to become more connected with their native Maori Culture. They learned how to perform "hakas" (a very intimidating war dance). We had to each stand and tell them our mountain, river, town, state, and if we knew, our ancestry. In turn they told us their personal reasons for being there and what they had gained. We also took out one of their traditional canoes and learned the different strokes... it was a beautiful day, and we all had a lot of fun splashing and racing towards the pier. All in all it was a really pleasant experience; we all felt really comfortable and welcomed there.

We also went to a reservation called Raupaki, where they were going through communal mourning for their town hall, which they were tearing down in order to rebuild. The town hall, in Maori culture, is considered sacred, and is viewed as a living component in their community. We attended a church service, and at the end the elders stood and each went through all of their ancestors and their memories of these people. After that we at a meal that was cooked in the ground in the traditional fashion.

The rest of the week we had a lot of down time to hang out in Lyttelton. Halloween was a blast. The Halloween Commitee consisting of Lindsay and Tracy provided us with a plethora of treats as well as an interesting competition. The competition pitted teams of two against each other to see who could dress their partner as the opposite sex most effectively. This had some absolutely hilarious results. Zach, aka "Candy" and Annie, or Travis, stole the show. We walked around the town in these outfits, much to the confusion of the locals. We concluded the night by watching a few horror movies.

While in Sydney we split up into pairs to complete a scavenger hunt that led us to all of the important landmarks around the city. It took us all day and when it came to a draw, Drew and Karen treated us to some Thai food.

Yesterday we had the day to roam. We went to the aquarium, which had some awesome glass tunnels going through a shark tank. We also saw a platypus, and had a preview of the great barrier reef. Last night we all met up at the Opera House to see a contemperary adaptation of Shakespeare's play, Titus Andronicus. It was a little gory but really well done, and we all really enjoyed it.

Tonight we head for Brisbane on an overnight train. We'll update again soon!