I woke up at 3-something a.m. the morning of Friday 22 September after about four hours of sleep. I hopped into the shower, ate half of a grapefruit and took the rubbish out to the dumpster. The cab was already waiting for Val and I before 4:45 a.m., so we were able to start our trip without delay.
The cab ride to the domestic terminal of the airport cost $45.30. Not very cheap, but since no public transportation was running that early in the morning, it was the best we could do. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare before our 6:30 a.m. Qantas flight to Sydney. I was amused by the televisions in near the check-in counter and at the gate which were playing reruns of "Good Morning America" and "Today" - very appropriate to be shown in Australia I thought.
On our flight to Sydney Val had the window seat and I had the aisle seat next to her. We were served a delicious brekky: cereal, blueberry yogurt, milk, juice and a sultana bread roll thingy. It is so nice to fly on an airline that will serve you a meal even on a flight that is only 90 minutes long, unlike any airline in the U.S., where you're lucky if you get a bag of pretzels flying for hours across the whole country. I can't wait for my three-leg flight of starvation across the U.S. in December!
As we approached Sydney Val pointed out the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge to me and then she was able to see Bondi Beach as we did a loop over the Pacific Ocean to line up for our landing. When we were in the southern end of the loop I said to Val that at that point we may be at the furthest south we will ever be in our lives.
We landed in Sydney around 8:00 a.m. and after picking up my backpack from the baggage claim area we searched for where to pick up the phone to have our hostel pick us up and found nothing. We finally gave up searching for the non-existent phone and called them from a pay phone. The guy at the hostel told me to go outside and to look for the bus that was called "Super Shuttle, like Superman," he repeated the "Superman" emphasis several times. We went outside and waited about five minutes for the Super Shuttle to come and pick us up for our trip from the airport into the city and our hostel.
After winding through the city, in parts I knew were nowhere near our hostel, we finally arrived at
Jolly Swagman Backpackers and checked in to our room. The hostel was brightly coloured - painted yellow and red and out room was nice, with a TV, fridge and table. We wasted no time in starting our adventures in Sydney and left the hostel straight away. We walked a few blocks south to where we could catch a bus to Bondi Beach.
A bus came shortly after we arrived at the stop, but the driver couldn't or wouldn't break the $50 note I handed him (all I had), so we had to go break it. We walked across the street to 7-11 and bought a pack of gum and a phone card. We caught the next bus to Bondi Beach; one of the stops along the way was at Bondi Junction, the train station we knew we would have to get back to in order to make it to our next destination.
We were only at Bondi Beach for about 30 minutes. It was farther away from the city than I had thought (maybe this mis-estimation should have been a warning sign to me), so we had to check and see when the bus left to get us back to the train station at the right time. At the beach we walked into the water to wet our feet, but it was cold! It reminded me of Cape Cod water - I guess I am just spoiled being up north in warmer weather in Brisbane. Val and I sat on the beach for a little while before running through the sand up to the street to catch the bus. We went to Sydney's famous beach, but we weren't blown away by its amazingness.
From Bondi Junction we rode the train to Penrith, which was a little over an hour out of the city. We napped a little on the train, which was a good idea because we were only going to become more tired as the day and the week continued. Upon arrival in Penrith we walked across the street from the train station to the Penrith Shopping Centre and searched for somewhere to eat. We passed by KFC and McDonalds in the food court and went to
Oporto, an Australian fast food joint with the most delicious chicken burgers!
At 2:20 p.m. we left the Shopping Centre and began our walk to the Penrith Whitewater Stadium - the man-made venue for the whitewater and kayaking events during the 2000 Sydney Olympics. We had alloted 40 minutes to walk there, thinking that would be more than enough time to arrive in time to check in for whitewater rafting half an hour before 3:30, as we had been told to when I booked it. As it turns out, 40 minutes was not enough time.
I had done a lousy job estimating how far the walk was from the train station to the the whitewater stadium and we ended up having to jog/run sections of the road along the way. It was very hot, there was no wind and no shade along the way. Val's chicken burger was not happy in her stomach, but she managed to keep it down, thankfully. After the second of three "entrances" to the whitewater stadium I left Val with the water bottle and ran ahead to check in, since it was already after 3:00.
When I arrived at the desk I noticed on the white board next to it that the only time the water would be turned on that day was 3:30-5:00. This helped me understand why I had thought I was in the wrong place when I saw no rapids. I checked in and then a few minutes later Val, with a red face from running, showed up, also slightly confused about the lack of rapids. As it turns out, we didn't need to be there at 3:00 to check in since the 3:30 tour was the only one running that day. We changed into our
get wet gear and waited to go rafting.
There were eight of us on the raft, plus the guide. We suited up in life vests and the appropriate size helmet, grabbed paddles and hopped into the raft. Our guide taught us how to paddle together forward and backward and how safely hold onto our paddles when getting down in the raft or leaning to either side. He instructed us on what to do if and when we were to fall out of the raft - this came in handy later on in the day.
The course is set up so that we entered the water at the end of the circuit in a calm area and had to ride a conveyor belt uphill to the beginning of the course. We went through the course fairly quickly the first time and I wasn't so sure about how extreme it was going to be, but it turned out to be a simple warm-up run to let us know what the course was like ... the rest of the times we went through the course it wasn't nearly as easy going. People kept falling out of the raft and we kept losing paddles to the rapids.
Eventually I got jealous that almost everyone else, including Val, had fallen out of the raft and into the water, and I helped the rapids a little bit and sort of "jumped" overboard when we were caught up in one of the rapids. It was fun being swept away, but it was harder than I had expected to gain control of where I was going and to swim to the side of the course to wait to be picked up by the raft once it traveled to where I was waiting.
The next few runs though the course our guide led us into the rapids so we could see what it was like to be stuck in them. I think he was also trying to make sure everyone ended up out of the raft and in the water at least once.
One of these times, I was in the front of the raft and I was completely sucked out and ended up underneath the raft. Remembering what our guide had told us earlier that day, I pushed myself along the underside of the raft until I popped up out of the water, but by the time I realized where I was, I was already through the next rapid and headed for another. It took me a while to get on my back, with by feet pointed downriver, but eventually I was able to gain control of what I was doing and made my way to the side of the course to be picked up after the raft picked up a girl who had been sucked out in the same rapid and I had been. It was a crazy ride down the river - I loved it! You can see in the picture at right the portion of the course that I traveled through when I was sucked out of the raft (this picture taken was after the rapids had been turned off for the day and the water level was dropping). The rapid that got be is in the foreground in the bottom left corner and I floated along almost all the way to where you can no longer see water in the picture. I may not look like much here, but with the water going full blast it was intense!
After my ride down the river my head was full of water and I welcomed the end of our tour after a few more times around the course. We changed into some dry clothes and decided to split the cab fare with the three girls on the raft with us, but five of us wouldn't fit in one cab, so they called for two. Val and I started walking down the road leading out from the whitewater stadium and our cab eventually picked us up - we saved a few bucks by walking part of the way. After the torturous walk/run to the whitewater stadium from Penrith, we had no problem dishing out $12 for a cab back to the train station.
There was a weird guy on the train ride back to Sydney. He tossed his comb in the air, sat in every seat, sat on the floor, walked from car to car, asked people for money and then threw the money out the window. Once we were off the train and back in the city we made our way to the Hard Rock Cafe. It brought my Hard Rock Cafe continent count to three: North America, Europe and Australia. Val and I made use of our International Student Identification Cards (ISIC) and had $20 meals. We had burgers and fries, with free refill soda and a dessert. We also bought matching Hard Rock Sydney t-shirts with the Opera House and Harbour Bridge on the back.
We returned to the Jolly Swagaman very tired after waking up so early that morning and spending the day walking, running and paddling. I was alseep as soon as my head hit the pillow ... resting up for the adventurous day which would begin around 8 a.m. the following morning.
