Well, here it is... the word from home!

(Don’t worry, it’s much shorter than the 9-page, 3400-word “Mammoth of Melbourne”...)

A Night at the Dome

I took advantage of the Melbourne interlude and went to see a footy game. The arena used to be called the Colonial Stadium, now renamed the Telstra Dome. It’s quite huge, especially considering that it’s not even Melbourne’s main sports venue - that would be the MCG, on the other side of town.

At the Dome, the North Melbourne Kangaroos were hosting the West Coast Eagles. I was a little worried that supporting the guests from Western Australia would get me strangled, but it turns out they have quite a few supporters in town, and things never got too messy even though West Coast won 101-97 in a close game that almost saw some anxious fans jumping off the third-story balcony...

The Kangaroos fans around me made sure that the folks on the pitch know what they’re thinking, by shouting ‘advice’ such as “ya wouldn’t have a clue!” (at the umpires) or “get up, ya mongrels!” (at the home team).

Despite all that, I was surprised at how quiet the game was, compared to watching sports on television. For one thing, there’s no Rafi Ginat shouting at the top of his bass voice with every pass, tackle, and kick. Second, when you’re at the stadium there’s no commentary, except for the improvised kind from people around you. Also, when you watch Aussie Rules on television there’s a 30-second commercial break after every goal. In the arena this translates to 30 seconds in which nothing much happens, and it looks as if everyone temporarily forgot what they’re supposed to be doing. They just walk around aimlessly for a while, until the gods of capitalism have been satisfied.

Culture Shock

There’s bound to be a bit of culture shock when you go back to the Mediterranean after five months in the Britosphere. Guess I should be thankful that the adjustment phase got off to an early start, back in Australia.

Which city has the world’s largest Greek population? Athens. And in second place? Melbourne. So on the Melbourne-Singapore-Athens flights, there was a substantial proportion of Greeks. The first sign that we’re not in Kansas anymore came with the initial boarding call for the flight to Singapore. As soon as the ground staff got on the microphone, 95% of passengers swarmed towards the doorway. Never mind that it’s a 747 aircraft and the call was only for passengers in rows 49 to 62, and the human tidal wave only delayed everyone’s departure. Later there came a string of Mediterranean hallmarks such as loud conversation, lots of touching, clapping and cheering as the plane touched down, and smoking everywhere (despite the posters and public announcements forbidding it). By the time I arrived in Israel, I was ready for our own little additions, such as the constant security checks and the cellphone obsession.

Now, none of it is all that terrible, but neither did it make my “What I Miss About Home” list...

The Curse

I’ve been telling people that Israel is quite safe to visit. So it was embarrassing, as well as sad, to have a suicide bombing in Netanya on the very day I got back. It seems like much of the relative calm they’ve had here during the past 6 months just evaporated on the week of my homecoming...

Perhaps the writing’s on the wall - I’ve heard that some people are already raising money to ship me back to the other side of the planet, in the interest of world peace. Good luck, guys.

But at least things aren’t as bad as in London...

What’s Next?

Is this really happening? For the first time in about 23 years, there’s not much “what’s next”. All those years were punctuated by things like school vacations, end-of-semesters, graduations, trips abroad, and all sorts of significant dates and transitions to look forward to. For the moment, my nearest future plan with a date attached is retirement, somewhere around the year 2044.

Surely, life will soon be neatly subdivided again with all sorts of deadlines and transitions and cut-off dates, but for the moment it’s fun to just be. And we’re still young enough to be able to imagine it going on forever. (Gosh! This is bad. Let’s move on before it gets any more corny)

To Do List

1. Meet with family and friends (mostly done)
2. Wash up and stow away sleeping bags, backpacks, winter gear, etc. Annoy downstairs neighbours by hanging it out to drip-dry directly above their underwear (done)
3. Go back to work (done...)
4. Pay overdue bills with interest and late fees (done, I hope)
5. Distribute gifts and souvenirs (in progress)
6. Pick the best photos and make an album + slide show + enlargements + website + ... (started, unlikely to ever finish)
7. Start planning the next big trip. Avoid discussing plans with boss, even as a joke - boss might freak out (oops)
8. Finish this email and go to sleep (gone!)

Yalla Bye,

- Ron

Hello hello hello!!!

I’m back in the developed world, trying to remember the meaning of the funny colored lights with the stick figures in them, and so on.

Brace yourselves, this is gonna be a long one. There are several reasons why it’s long, but if I listed them here it would be longer still, so let’s just get on with it.

The Situation

After a somewhat slow start, and despite much unfavorable weather, my 23 days in the Cook Islands turned out so well that I almost wept upon having to leave. Heck, I’m almost weeping right now. It was so so amazing. Rarotonga, Aitutaki and Atiu are completely different experiences, all worthwhile and all like nothing I’ve seen or done before. Which perhaps means I should get out more...

Now I have a couple of days to play around in Melbourne, and then it’s back to the holy-moly land, landing some time early in the morning on July 12 (this coming Tuesday).

Island Life

It’s funny how your scale of reference changes on the islands. When I first arrived in Rarotonga, many things about it seemed very small and/or undeveloped (like the pre-cast huts used as government offices). But after a while on the smaller islands, Rarotonga starts to feel like Tel-Aviv, and Papeete seems as big as New York (Papeete, at 150,000 residents and 1,200 km away, is the capital of Tahiti and the closest city of any size to Rarotonga).

Rarotonga’s airport is about the same size as Israel’s terminal 2 (the domestic terminal). By the time I flew out of the islands, it seemed downright massive. The terminal in Aitutaki is a biggish straw hut. The one in Atiu is only a roof, smaller than that of a petrol station, where the passengers (up to 15) and their escorts and friends and kids (up to the entire 600-strong population of the island) wait to say farewell and/or welcome the new arrivals with flower necklaces. On the Atiu flights, you can see right into the tiny cockpit - I liked that initially, then decided that some things are better not seen, like how the pilot opens the sports section of the newspaper and starts reading for much of the flight. (I heard that on a separate occasion, the pilots got tired of the sun’s glare, and placed a shade-screen over the entire cockpit window. Now that’s reassuring...)

Getting back to Melbourne, there was some adjusting to be done (why are people in the streets ignoring me when I smile at them?)

Island Television

Rarotonga has one TV channel. Watching it can be hilarious (and often was). Now objectively, I’m betting that if every 9,000-inhabitant neighbourhood in the west started its own TV station, most of them wouldn’t be much better. Still, it’s hard not to smirk when you see the weather map drawn in pencil on a sheet from a math notebook, or when you watch those high-quality ads for the island’s high-quality businesses (Just Arrived - a new container of baby clothing from NZ!!! Are you sick of your clunky old DVD player? Get a brand new state-of-the-art Mustek DVD!)

The programming itself is all taped shows from TVNZ or the ABC (the Australian answer to the BBC). On Sundays they put on a series of American televangelism programs - usually with a black preacher, presumably because he’s less likely to spout racist bull along with the rest of his junk.

(By the way, isn’t it ironic that European missionaries reached the most remote corners of the planet to spread their gospel, and now the islanders and Africans and the like are all good Christians, while at the same time interest in religion in Europe is disappearing faster than fresh pawpaw at an Island Night feast?)

On Aitutaki they also have one TV channel, but they’ve opted out of the Rarotongan programming. Instead, they pick up and rebroadcast a television station out of Papeete, which is good for Looney Toons and for American sitcoms dubbed into French (a language that nobody on Aitutaki understands). On Atiu, they just put up individual satellite dishes and watch CNN or the ABC or whatever they want.

Island Food

I could write a whole article about this, but here’s just the highlights (or rather, the low points...)

The locals in the Cooks still grow or catch much of their own food, so they have a reasonable Polynesian diet of taro, yams, bananas, pigs, chicken, and fish, supplemented by some western groceries. But for some reason, the local food is usually unavailable for purchase by visitors, who therefore depend almost entirely on the western imports. Among those there is little variety, and most of it is awfully expensive and/or low-quality.

This is not a problem for rich tourists and honeymooners who normally eat in restaurants, but it’s a pain in the butt for budget travelers - they end up eating almost all carbohydrates, since fresh fruit and vegetables and meat are often out of reach. After three weeks of pasta, rice and toast, my systems were protesting loudly, and one of the first orders of business in Melbourne was to buy a bunch of fresh fruit and veggies and rustle up a huge salad.

On Rarotonga there’s good choice of canned meat and fish, plus a usually okay selection of fruit and vegetables. Sometimes you can get fresh milk, and excellent cheap Tip Top ice cream from NZ is widely available. On Aitutaki you can still get ice cream, but fresh milk is off the menu unless you get real friendly with one of the local goats. On Atiu, visitors usually import their own food. Vegetables are a rarity, dairy products are a non-starter, and when I was there they had a mix-up with the flour shipments so there was no bread to buy anywhere on the island. The hostel’s guest book has a lot of comments from hungry tourists (who still loved the place).

Even given the starting materials, many people in the hostels aren’t making much effort to eat properly, and are often satisfied with having a can of spaghetti for dinner. I was earning a reputation as an established chef thanks to such innovative dishes as home-made chips (fries), instant chicken-noodle soup, and rice with mushrooms...

Lately, the locals aren’t having the best of time with their food either - there’s few tropical fruit, since the cyclones destroyed all the crops, along with the taro plantations (taro is a root crop, basically a tropical potato but it looks and tastes very different). Also, there’s much fish poisoning, so eating fresh fish from the lagoon isn’t always a good idea.

Fact

When you use a Swiss army knife to punch a hole in a coconut, the procedure affects not just the coconut...

I had quite a few drinking coconuts on Aitutaki - it makes much sense there, since coconuts are very abundant while good-quality tap water is pretty scarce.

Atiu

I thought I could make travel plans for Atiu like you do for other destinations - cave tour, bush-beer session, some beach time, etc. Well, it doesn’t work like that. At all.

Arriving at the hostel, I set out to see what the place looks like. I’d gone about 20 meters before a group of kids called out to me to play soccer with them. After the game, with my city-slicker feet bruised and bleeding, I followed a ten-year-old friend named Junior to his house to meet his grandma. Afterwards there was a dance practice, with the island’s musicians and dancers getting ready for the big competition in Rarotonga in August. It was amazing to watch - not as professional as the tourist shows, but it just feels different when you know they’re doing it for themselves and not for you. I had to leave halfway through to walk Junior home, but there was another three-hour practice the next day. On the last day there was a local fiber-arts event, and later a village dance-party, which we left in a hurry after the mayor of the island, all drunk and disorderly, tried to hit on my Kiwi-German (German-Kiwi?) companions.

As for the normal tourist attractions, most were aborted due to almost-nonstop rain...

During my stay, the number of tourists on the island ranged from three to a grand total of five. Visitors are certainly not unheard-of here, but they’re few enough that each one becomes a minor attraction. I would just sit at the hostel door (hiding from the rain), and the kids would come up, sit down (or hover around), and ask all sorts of questions. Also, since the people here do the kind of work that puts food on the table but not money in the bank, our little effects and gadgets are a big source of fascination. It’s amazing how much fun can be had with tweezers, or with earplugs, and just imagine the possibilities opened up by a digital camera...

Chickens on Atiu are communal - if you can catch one, you can have yourself a chicken dinner. Interestingly, though the place is swarming with hens, chicken eggs have to be imported from NZ - the local birds roam free across the island and nobody can find where they lay their eggs. The many roosters are by far the most annoying creatures on the island (the mosquitoes can’t compete) - they scream their little lungs out all the time, day and night, rain or shine. One visitor promised in the guest book to return the island - with a shotgun...

Guest Workers

So, in what way are the Cook Islands and Israel the same? Both countries import workers from the Philippines. But In the Cooks they are treated with a lot more respect - first, because of the different nature of the host society, and second, since the Filipinos in the Cooks are employed as Catholic bishops rather than as construction workers.

Crabs

My attempts to gather seashells on Aitutaki were frustrated - the shells are all occupied by hermit crabs. On any beach, stand still for a few seconds and you’ll see them crawling around you.

The crabs come in all sizes, and one wonders - how do they find the appropriate shell? They can’t grow it, they have to find a vacant one and jump inside. I think I saw something that provides a clue to the answer. At one place on a deserted motu (islet) in Aitutaki lagoon I saw dozens of crabs, big and small and medium, in a big heap crawling over each other’s shell as if examining it. Now it might have been a big crustacean orgy, but it looked more like a market for trading used shells. If that’s the case, then crabs find their shells in much the same way that backpackers find their cars.

Some crabs have abandoned the traditional seashells and have made their home in the lid of a Coca-Cola bottle. I wonder where they stand in the crabs’ social hierarchy - are they respected and envied, or are they the subject of jokes all over the island?

The Booze

And so, after 28.5 years, somebody finally got me drunk. All it took was the right company, the right occasion, and two glasses of rum-and-Coke.

I wasn’t really very drunk - just laughed a lot and walked funny and held nonsense conversations with another mildly pissed bloke. On a scale of 0 to 10, I reckon I was about 3 or 4. The rest of our 10-person troupe (three poms, two Kiwis, three yankee girls, a Scottish deer-stalker and myself) was also about the same, except for the young English lady who organized the binge and presided over the drinking games. She ended up probably closer to 8, with no memory of most of what happened that evening. When we went to the club to dance, a two-person “security detail” of relatively-sober people watched over her the whole time, to prevent her being picked up and whisked away from the club by some suspicious character.

As a social phenomenon, British drinking culture is as strange and fascinating to me as any Polynesian dancing. An example of the difficulty in understanding it was the following mini-conversation we had in Franz Josef, NZ, with a Welsh guy who had spent the day downing beer after beer in front of the hostel’s television:

WG: Come on, let’s go to the pub.
RM: Okay, which one?
WG: There’s only three.

I thought at first that I was having some communication problems, what with the Welsh accent and all. So a few minutes later we had the exact same conversation again, and then I remembered. Brits do not go to a pub - they go on a pub crawl. You go to one place, have a drink (or more), then hop over to the next pub and do exactly the same, until you pass out, or somehow manage to make you way home. Now, since alcohol in pubs is expensive, and the main objective is to get very drunk, budget-minded backpackers often start by buying cheaper booze in the liquor store and having a few drinks at home before heading out. That’s what we were doing in Raro, and by the time we set out everybody was as wasted as they ever got that night.

What I Miss About Home

Well, I miss my family and friends, but that goes without saying.

Or does it?

I asked some people who’ve been away for twelve months, or twenty months, or five years, and they often say that there’s not much left back home to be missed. It seems that living thousands of kilometers away from your parents and from where you grew up is almost standard practice in the west. I guess in Israel we’re still a rather traditional tight-knit society in that respect.

I also miss mom’s food, though I’ve been eating rather well for most of this trip, and I don’t think we’ll see a rerun of the famous “schnitzel incident” from 2000...

What else?

• Sunsets on the beach at The Camel pub in Haifa, eating expensive snacks with my feet buried in the sand
• Rollerblading trips in Tel Aviv (since Haifa and skates are mutually exclusive, unless you’re a mental case)
• That incredible hot chocolate cake in the cafe in Stampfer St. in Netanya, mmmm...
• Shopping for stuff without wondering how I’m gonna fit it all in my backpack
• Being awed by scenery or nature that, at this point, I’d not even bother looking at. This condition is known as travel snobbery, and for Dana and me it was best exemplified by our getting bored with seeing yet more dolphins everywhere.

What I’ll Miss About Traveling

Well, after a while on the road, living any other way starts to seem kinda pointless... How do people put up with all that routine? The Cooks in particular are full of people at the end of long journeys, and depression sometimes runs high.

I think I caught the bug this time even worse than before, and the list of must-see places grows ever longer (apparently Mozambique is very very nice...)

Bibliography

I haven’t been reading that much on this trip - there were so many other things to do (like watching hours of Big Brother, brrr...)

Here are a few books worth reading, which are also relevant to the places we visited.

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond:

This is an attempt to analyze why history and prehistory happened the way they did - for example, why did Europe take over native America and exterminate the inhabitants, instead of the other way around? Of course Europe had all sorts of advantages (such as guns, germs, and steel), but why did they end up having those advantages in the first place?

I like this book for two reasons. First, without using humour it makes a joke out of any kind of racist argument. It shows how, in the great scheme of things, different levels of development in different societies arise from environmental factors and generally have nothing to do with one society being “inferior”. Consider this for example: for almost all of human history, Europe added nothing to human civilization, remaining a primitive wasteland while empires rose in Africa and the Middle East and China. So why are some people claiming some kind of inherent European superiority? Take that, Hitler. Take that, Kipling.

Second, the book talks about all sorts of different fields, all of which I found fascinating. You learn some Polynesian history. And how the people of Taiwan spread to occupy just about every island from Madagascar to Easter Island. And what diseases look like from the germs’ point of view. And what happens to wild plants when they become grown as crops. And which of the major inventions in history were “easy” (bronze, pottery) and which were “difficult” (the alphabet, the wheel), and why.

It also got me thinking again about William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. I’ve always had a problem with the book’s message, which is something like “under a thin mask of civilization, mankind is at heart comprised of brutal, savage beasts”. It seemed for a while that Diamond is pointing in the same direction. But that’s not true at all - the mix-up is solved when you remember that much of Golding’s generation still considered non-Europeans societies to be brutal, savage beasts. Diamond represents a more modern, and to me more intuitive, way of looking at “primitive” cultures.

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz:

This is a history of Captain James Cook’s discovery voyages in the 18th century, fused with a diary of the author’s journey to the places Cook visited and what he found there today. It makes an interesting read, and you learn much about Polynesia and the nearby regions.

A word of caution: don’t take his impressions too seriously. Horwitz has an agenda (to dispose of common myths about the “pacific paradise”). If you trust the book, then the Aussies are mostly drunken madmen, New Zealand is a scary place of gang violence and racial hatred, and Tahiti is a depressing slum. Talk about a bad spin...

Down Under / In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson:

Well, I have yet to read this book about Australia, but it’s highly recommended by everyone who has.

As a bonus, here’s the complete list of similarities between the book and movie versions of The Bourne Supremacy:

1. They are both works of fiction in the spy-thriller genre
2. They have the same title
3. In both of them the main character is called Jason Bourne. No, wait, scratch that. In the book his name is actually David Webb...

Souvenirs

Since my memory is about as reliable as an Indian salesman, it’s nice to have some more substantial souvenirs (in French class they said that “souvenir” means “to remember”).

There are several thousand pictures from this trip, taking up 9 CD’s, and some of the photos are quite nice :-) How I’ll make an album out of all that, God only knows.

There’s a journal, covering two notebooks, but that’s pretty hardcore since much of it is a laundry-list of things we saw and did. It will be more fun to read the email reports - to remember what it felt like, and to recall some of the adventures along the way. So thanks everyone for giving me an excuse to write these reports, with special thanks to those who gave feedback of whichever kind. I’d also like to apologize to anyone who had to use a dictionary when reading them, or who was too lazy and just didn’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

There’s also a small notepad, which started in February as a collection of cooking recipes and embassy addresses, and is now quite full with e-mail addresses, to-do lists and all sorts of scribbles. It too has a shot at becoming a cherished treasure.

Well now, that was the last report - the last one from the road, on this trip. There will be at least one more from Haifa, and after that we’ll see how it goes. Perhaps I’ll start a blog? I never expected to do that, but then there have been several never-expected’s recently, and they tend to turn out quite well.

Bye-bye, and good on ya if you got this far...

• Ron

Hi everyone, Kia Orana! (“May you live on!”)

This report comes earlier than I expected - if I wait any more, it’ll be so long that you busy people might despair and just hit “delete” without reading.

Trajectory

Flew out of Melbourne, via Auckland (where the speech suddenly changed from Aussie to Kiwi... weird) to Rarotonga. Spent ten days here, and flying tomorrow to Aitutaki (another Cook Island).

We Are on the Map

Shopping for groceries in Melbourne’s St. Kilda neighbourhood, I stumbled across an institution that I’ve heard of, but never before seen - the Israeli food rack. It caters to homesick Israeli expats, as well as some orthodox Jews who just have to have a specific rabbi’s signature on their food before they can eat it. There was matza bread, plus the usual suspects of bamba, bissli, soup almonds (shkedei marak) and a bunch of other things. What I can’t figure out is why anyone would go to the trouble of shipping MANA HAMA instant meals from Israel to Oz. “Haven’t the Jewish people suffered enough?” If you’re in Australia/NZ and you fancy a shot of pure monosodium glutamate, just pick up the nearest Maggi product. Sheesh.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Rarotonga

Hitching on Raro is easy - there’s just one major road, going in a circle around the perimeter of the island. If you stand on the correct side of the road, every car (or scooter) that passes is going in your direction. If you stand on the other side you’ll also get where you want to go - but it will take longer.

Not everybody stops, but enough people do that it’s no problem. If the rain starts, your chances of catching a ride go up significantly.

There was a rumor that the western hitchhiking sign (with the thumb up) is a rude gesture in Polynesia, but it turned out to be nonsense.

A towel is not necessary, but a hat, sunglasses and sunscreen are a good idea. If you’re a local you don’t bother with these; but if you’re a local, you don’t hitchhike - you ride your motor scooter. Many tourists also ride scooters. Others ride in cars.

And some people’s holiday in paradise just wouldn’t be complete without a shiny rented sports car or an SUV. It’s hard to explain how ridiculous it looks, driving one of those fancy vehicles on Rarotonga. You have to see it to understand. But consider this: the speed limit is 60 km/h (38 mph), except where it’s 40 km/h. As mentioned earlier, there’s just one road (about 30 km long), and it’s usually full of scooters, plus cars, bicycles, buses, pedestrians (sidewalks? what sidewalks?), and the occasional truck, dog, or chicken.

To be sure, when it starts raining I’d rather be in an SUV than on a scooter. The sports cars with their roof off are still a joke, though.

Flower Power

Island women often wear a flower behind their ear. Turns out the flower carries a message: wear it behind the left ear and it says “I’m married / engaged / taken / sick of being bothered”. Behind the right ear, the message is “I’m single / available / searching / hunting”.

Most of the young women here are right-flowered. Men aren’t easy to come by on the islands - first of all, many of them are likely to be your relatives. But the biggest problem is that so many young men go off to NZ or Australia, looking for work and opportunity. The Kiwis and Aussies, in turn, go off to the mother country (UK) to look for work and beer. The kids from the UK go on round-the-world trips, and occasionally (as in one case we had here this week) end up dating gorgeous Polynesian dancer girls.

And Speaking of Dancers

Having seen some traditional island dancing, I’m frankly surprised that the results of the missionaries’ arrival here was that everyone quickly converted to Christianity. More likely outcomes in my opinion would be: a) the missionaries drop dead of shock on the spot. b) the missionaries run back to their ships and sail away, mumbling something about ‘the work of the devil’.

But thank goodness for small favors - the priests who set up shop here were Anglican, not Catholic, so everything is a lot saner and more relaxed than on some other islands.

And There Goes Piri the Coconut Climber

Some people, when they go traveling somewhere, try to avoid reading about the place or seeing pictures of it beforehand, so that everything is new when they get there. I don’t subscribe to this system, but I admit there is such a thing as being too prepared.

The Lonely Planet guide to the Cooks is short enough that by the time I got here, I’ve read it almost from cover to cover, and some parts of it more than once. Then the deja-vu started: hey, here’s the guitar-playing airport fellow from page 39! And this must be Avarua’s famous traffic circle! (they go into quite a bit of detail in the guide).

After a few days it passed, and I had the advantage of knowing what’s what and where to go. Now if only it didn’t rain so much I could have done more of what I planned, instead of hiding in the hostel watching DVD movies... (or worse yet - Cook Islands Television, a terrific joke but that’s another story).

Two places where the guide was completely wrong (or out-of-date), are the price of internet (it’s about 4 times cheaper than what they said), and the cleanliness of the island. It’s not clean at all - in fact parts of it remind me of the gutters beside the Tel Aviv-Haifa highway. Perhaps all this garbage is storm damage - this year they were hit by five tropical cyclones in six weeks. Most houses and five schools on Aitutaki collapsed, beautiful beaches became a mess of rocks, and just about every plantation on Rarotonga was destroyed. So perhaps when they have fruit and homes again, they’ll get around to picking up the rubbish.

Going Nuts

I’ve learned a little about coconuts. They’re magnificent trees - it’s as if somebody designed them especially for isolated islanders who have few other natural resources. They can be used to make clothes, dishes, boats, musical instruments, the shells are burned to drive away mosquitoes, and of course you can eat and/or drink the fruit.

I started thinking where we might be able to grow coconut trees in Israel. The answer is obvious: bahad 15, the army’s School of Intelligence! For those who haven’t been there, the place is known as “the world’s armpit”, because it’s always hot and humid there no matter what the weather is like in surrounding areas.

I’m sure the guys on patrol duty would appreciate an occasional coconut drink during their shift. And perhaps the whole place will pick up the island spirit. I can see it now, an island night in the bahad: the visint girls shaking their hips, the sigint boys stomping their feet, and the Arabic translators banging the drums, while officer cadets play the ukulele and mind the roast lamb cooking in the umu.

Wouldn’t it be great? I mean, why not? The place is a jungle anyway.

Okay, now since I missed the last bus out of town I’m going to hitch a ride back to the hostel. Later y’all...

- Ron

Coo-ee everyone,

I was going to delay this report a while longer till I have more to write, but who knows when the next good chance will come up. I’ll be in Raro in three days, and according to my guide the prices for communications there are like pre-1997 Israel (read: ridiculously expensive).

The usual recap: took a ten-hour bus trip from Perth to Esperance, spent a few days there (decided that everyone just got to see Cape Le Grand national park in their lifetime), then back to Perth and off to Melbourne on a very comfortable Qantas flight. I’m doing a few days of road-trippin’, bird-feeding, koala-spotting and of course photography, over and around the Great Ocean Road - ending tomorrow back in Melbourne.

Cape Le Grand

Koalas

Perth is just full of koalas. Wherever you go they stare back at you from t-shirts, postcards, keychains, dolls, handbags, backpacks, etc etc. The “highlight” was a backpack shaped like a kangaroo that’s shaped like a koala.

It makes me a bit embarrassed to be a tourist, since the only place you find koalas in WA (besides souvenir shops) is in the zoo.

Now that I’m in Victoria, I got to see some actual live specimens (they’re pretty common around the Great Ocean Road). They’re admittedly very very cute, and that’s the only thing they have going for them. I find that they have about the same size, shape, and level of activity as Itzhak Shamir. They also have exactly two kinds of mood: very passive or very irritated. The Aussies don’t like them very much - they call them “drop bears”, because supposedly they drop down from their tree onto some poor slob and try to scratch his face away. As far as I’m aware, there is no major sports team called the Koalas, and what greater insult can you have?

What’s even less active than a koala? The answer is “a koala on a rainy day”. Looking for shelter is way too industrious for the little monsters, so they curl up in a ball facing the tree, and take whatever punishment nature has chosen to inflict upon them.

Melbourne

I haven’t really “connected” with Melbourne yet. It’s certainly 1000% cooler than Perth (and never mind the weather) - you can walk down the street and just stumble upon a good live music show (which I did), whereas in Perth you might find one if you knew where to look. Yet Melbourne is also more crowded, a bit sleazy, far less relaxed.

I’m sure I could get to like it, and apparently Singapore Airlines, with their booked-out flights, might give me the time to do so. But I got used to Perth after less than 24 hours - which is still a lot longer than Christchurch, where you start feeling at home during the ride into town from the airport.

Once you get out of Melbourne, Victoria isn’t that different from southern WA - I find the people somewhat less friendly (but they’re still Australians so it can’t be too bad), and the countryside a little different.

And I think the souvenir shops don’t carry as many koalas.

Happy holidays! (Shavu’ot or Queen’s Birthday, as appropriate)

- Ron

How yer goin’ mates?

In this chapter, our adventurous traveler is attacked by blood-sucking parasites, ponders the role of Jesus in his life, and becomes disenchanted with Fiji without ever setting foot there.

Albany

Since the last report, and for nearly two weeks, I’ve spent my time in and around the town of Albany (I arrived back in Perth just today). It’s got to be the most pleasant place to live that I’ve ever seen (it’s a record that’s been breaking frequently since we arrived in south west Australia). At 20,000 people, it’s the third largest city in WA. The town itself is very scenic and tidy. There are two natural harbours, where whales sometimes come to visit (I didn’t get to see one myself, just dolphins, so I ate fried shark instead). There are at least seven national parks and nature reserves within an hour’s drive, and there’s the usual collection of wineries, beaches, forests, galleries, historic sites etc.

I was staying at the local youth hostel (a curious label, as many of the guests were over fifty). The hostel has two big advantages - Pete and Kathy, the owners. It was such fun to stay with them that I hardly felt the days passing. It’s the first time I’ve ever stayed at a hostel for more than a few days, and considering that other people have also set up camp there for long periods, I got to know a few of them better - like the woman who left England to look for a place to settle in Australia (and has been looking for twelve years now), the English bloke who works as a plumber, the woman who was a cadet in the Royal Australian Navy, the retired guy who’s “resting” in Albany after walking the Bibbulmun track from end to end (963.1 km total, 20 km a day on average, whew).

I was sorry to leave, though eventually I managed to get myself to move on. Kathy, on the other hand, was so glad to be rid of me that she gave me my last night’s stay for free :-) This is one place I’ll definitely want to go back to sometime (now that we’ve got New Zealand out of the way).

Insights 1

I’ve recently gained a better (though not complete) understanding of two subjects that have troubled me for a while. The first is Aussie Rules football. I sat through a game and got answers from someone who knows.

The game is played on an oval field, with an oval ball. On each end of the long axis of the field there are four tall posts in a row. If you can kick/push/run with/throw the ball between the two middle posts on the opponent’s side, your team gets six points (a “goal”). If you get it between the two right-hand or left-hand posts, you get one point (a “behind”).

If somebody kicks the ball and another player (from his team or the other) catches it straight off the air, the receiver gets a free kick. Therefore, the game’s most dramatic plays are often not the goals but the assists. If a player holding the ball is tackled and falls, he has to get rid of the ball immediately - if he tries to hold on to it, the other side gets a free kick. Because of this, the game rarely stops when the player is tackled, and it flows faster than rugby (which in turn flows a lot faster than American football).

There aren’t many restrictions on what can be done with the ball, or with a player who has it. Some brutality is allowed, even encouraged. Protective gear is unheard of, except for mouth guards. Serious injuries are not unheard of.

Insights 2

Another thing that had Dana and me flustered for a long while is the dishwashing method used here. We’ve seen it done by the Kiwis, Aussies, Brits and Europeans, so I guess it’s pretty standard - which doesn’t make it any less weird in my opinion. Here’s how it goes:

1. Fill up the sink (or a small tub) with warm soapy water.
2. Place all dishes in the water.
3. Take out each dish in turn and scrub it to remove any bits of dirt.
4. Wipe the dish with a towel and put it back in place.

The missing part here is, of course, the one where you wash off the soap with water, so that it doesn’t end up half still on the dishes and half on the towel. This omission doesn’t seem to bother anyone, except me. I sometimes wash clean dishes with water before using them.

The Trouble with Fiji

I’ve long planned to use this trip to see one of those Tropical-Pacific-Island-Paradise places. The question is which one. There are quite a few, but the choice is more limited once you cross off those which are ridiculously expensive, inaccessible, tiny and/or unsafe. Of the ones that remain, the cheapest and probably the most interesting is Fiji, so I decided to go there. However, after reading more about it, I had second thoughts.

Most visitors to Fiji stay within the tourist resorts, and only leave them on organized tours. There’s nothing wrong with that, and they normally get back home immensely happy, but it is a kind of ghetto and not what I’m looking for.

According to the Lonely Planet guide, once you leave the resorts, things get a bit tricky.

Village visit procedure - Fiji:

1. Find someone outside the village and ask them to take you to the chief.
2. Give the chief a gift. The standard gift is a portion of kava (something they make a drink out of), which weighs half a kilo and costs $5-10 US.
3. The chief conducts a short ceremony, to ensure that the ancestor spirits have no problem with you visiting the village.
4. You can then look around - with a guide, who’ll make sure you don’t step in any sacred areas.

For visiting any other place (a beach, a lake, etc) you need to ask permission in the village that owns the land, but no ceremony is required.

Dress code - Fiji:

1. No swimsuits except in the tourist resorts, even if you’re swimming.
2. Both men and women should wear clothes that cover their shoulders and cover their legs to below the knee (again, this still holds when you’re swimming).
3. Wearing a hat and/or sunglasses in a village is extremely rude.

Lonely Planet - on Fijians:

While indigenous Fijians seem very laid back, their complex codes of behaviour are fairly strictly followed. As a foreigner, Fijians will generally forgive your gaffes in social etiquette; however, you’ll get more out of your experiences and are far less likely to offend people if you are aware of local customs.

Lonely Planet - on Suva (the capital of Fiji):

1. Don’t eat the fish - the sea is polluted.
2. Don’t walk outside at night, even in groups - it’s not safe.

Surely it’s not as bad as the guide makes it sound (and they certainly had no intention of scaring people away from Fiji), but I don’t like it. I like traveling in places where you can go where you want, make your own decisions and schedules (then change them twice a day), without having to worry about being attacked/harassed/stranded/offensive to people (as my friend and inspiration Ori would say, “Ein sechel ein de’agot” (no brains no worries)). By the way, that’s why I feel that Australia and NZ are such great places to travel. We speak the language, we dig the culture, the infrastructure is all there, and no one expects foreign tourists to be accompanied by a guide, a driver, two beasts-of-burden and a chef.

So anyway, I changed directions and I’m going to the Cook Islands (sometimes called Rarotonga, or Raro, after the main island). It’s a much smaller place, and a bit more expensive, but it sounds much easier and more friendly.

Village visit procedure - Cook Islands:

1. Show up.

Dress code - Cook Islands:

1. Keep you bum covered, and preferably some of the upper legs too.
2. Women are supposed to wear hats while in church. But tourists don’t have to.
3. You can wear flowers anytime except in church.

Lonely Planet - on Cook Islanders:

Don’t stress yourself too much about behaving correctly in the Cook Islands. Cook Islanders, particularly on Rarotonga, are sophisticated, modern people. Tiptoeing around them like they’re made of glass will only bring on howls of laughter and encourage them to have you on [play tricks on you].

Lonely Planet - on Avarua (Capital of the Cooks):

Watch out for annoying dogs who like to chase anyone riding a motor scooter.

What’s Next

I still have one more “mission” here in WA, which will take a few days. After that I’ll go to Rarotonga for a few weeks, and then fly home - which will also take a few days since it’s five flight segments and Gawd knows how many hours in the air. I plan to be home early in July - you have been warned.

Say What?

I liked the sound of the opening paragraph in this report, but there’s not much to it. The parasites are Kangaroo ticks, which assaulted my clothes in the Stirling ranges one day. Fortunately, they didn’t find any flesh and I believe I got them all off (wait, what’s that thing on my neck?? AYEE!!!)

The Jesus part refers to a very friendly group of devout Christians who I had morning tea with one day. They were curious to know what I, as a Jew and an Israeli, think of the teachings of Jesus, what happens after death, the survival of the Jewish people and the role of God in the founding of Israel, etc. I explained that unfortunately for them they’d stumbled upon a hopeless godless agnostic, and I tried to present the prevailing opinions as well as my own.

Last Thought

From an Australian perspective, this year’s Eurovision contest looks completely hilarious - even more so than usual. They did a summary of it on Rove Live (an excellent local adaptation of the Jay Leno concept, unlike the crappy one that Gidi Gov does) and everyone in front of the TV was gagging with laughter… What do you think?

Till later,

- Ron