The beginning of the first day

This is a long post about a long trip.

We were up late the night before. I worked until about ten, came home, packed and crashed at about one in the morning. Miriam kept packing, cleaning and organizing until about 3:30 in the morning. We got up a little after seven Friday morning.

Our flight left at noon. We wanted to make sure we weren’t late, so we asked the shuttle to pick us up at 9:00 am. Of course there was no traffic, so we got to the airport by 9:30.

A bunch of folks from Miriam’s team were already there. After greetings we checked our luggage, had breakfast, and sat down to wait for our flight. We had lots of time.

The flight to Los Angeles lasted two hours. For reasons I will never understand, the travel agent who booked Miriam's team had given us a nine hour layover in LAX.

We decided to take a cab to Marina Del Rey to kill time. It’s about four miles from LAX. The trip took half an hour and cost over $20 because of traffic. We ate at the original “El Torito” and watched it start to rain.

We called a cab, went back to the airport, and waited. We finally boarded and the engines started. We got a little giddy, and then we waited. The captain announced a problem with the runway, and our flight that was supposed to take off at 11:00 pm finally left the ground at 11:30.

It was a nice airplane and a nice flight. Our seats were in row 52. Fourteen hours in coach is fourteen hours in coach, even if the Qantas seats are wider than some and have those nifty LCD screens in the back of the seat and a very nice complement of free, first run movies. We tried to stay up as late as we could to help get on Brisbane time. Made it through the dinner and closed our eyes. We slept fitfully, read some, and watched some movies.

At about 4 am Brisbane time the flight attendants served breakfast. Our flight landed about 6 am. We were starting to get really excited. They let the whole other side of the plane out first and then 51 rows of people in front of us. I had trouble finding my bag in the overhead bins.

But we finally got out of the plane to get our first real view of Australia. It was raining. We looked and felt as fresh as daisies that have just made a leisurely trip through a cow’s cloaca.

We staggered off the jetway and saw what every exhausted traveler drams of seeing –customs!

Unfortunately, our view of customs was a bit hampered by the hundreds of people queued up in front, arranged in switchbacks that rival Disneyland on Spring Break. We queued too. We were punchy and slow moving. People took advantage and cut the line in front of Miriam. It did not improve our mood.

We finally made it through the switchbacks, talked to a very nice man in a little box, and were given the OK to go get our luggage. We did, and had the opportunity to queue up in another long line. We were still punchy and slow. More people cut the line in front of Miriam. Still it did not improve our mood.

Finally we got through the queue and emerged in the airport lobby. It had stopped raining!

Miriam leaned over and told me it looks like it’s going to be a pretty day. I get mad and tell her she has no business saying hurtful things like that to me when I’m so tired. It does not improve her mood.

A nice lady holding a sign with the name of our group’s travel agency directed us down a long sidewalk to our hotel shuttle. Miriam’s small bag, which was supposed to lie happily on top of her big roller bag, turned out to be just a bit too big to fit. She had to wheel two bags across curbs and through narrow passageways while carrying her backpack. I’ve got my messenger bag stuffed full of was beginning to seem like lead bricks, wheeling my big bag with one hand and carrying my dobro with the other. Travel magazines do not show pictures of people like us.

We reach the end of the long sidewalk. There is no shuttle. There is nobody from our group. There is nobody from the travel agency. I finally hail someone and am told we need to cross the street, go down a ramp, and walk through the parking lot. The person says we will be able to see our bus when we reach the lot; it will have the name of our hotel on its side. We cross the street and go down the ramp. The parking lot is huge. It is full of buses. None have the names of hotels on their sides.

We are comforted to see others of our group looking lost and wandering the parking lot.

Finally someone finds where we are supposed to be and we gather. There are two buses guarded by determinedly cheerful guides who work for our travel agency. You just check with them. They just check their lists to find your name. The lists tell them which bus you are allowed to get on. People we know who found the buses before we did are boarding happily. All of us feel like we can relax now. The long trip is almost over; we just get on the bus, have a nice ride, check in the hotel and do something decadent like showering.

Our turn comes and we ask the travel agent person which bus we should get on. She asks us our names. She pauses. She asks our names again. Our names are not on the list.

She tells us to wait. We wait. Miriam asks for more information. We get more information, but it is not useful information and it does not comfort us. It omits any clear statement of what will happen to us. We are told to wait some more. We are getting pretty frigging tired of waiting. I explain this to the travel agency person rather clearly. Some might say excessively clearly, but I did not think so at the time. I do obtain clear assurances that we will be bussed to our hotel sometime. Eventually we are actually put on a bus. We regard this as a hopeful sign.

On the bus we do something unexpected: we wait. The other bus going to our hotel leaves. We continue to wait. Then we wait some more. Then a nice, cheerful travel agent person boards the bus and tells us two things:

1: They are not going to keep us waiting for the people who had trouble getting through customs.

2. The hotel is trying to get our rooms ready, and if we are lucky, we might actually be able to check in when we get to Caloundra, which is an hour’s drive from Brisbane.

Neither bit of news cheers us much. It had not occurred to us that we might have to sit on the bus until everybody cleared customs. We wonder briefly if any of our traveling companions are smugglers.

It also had not occurred to us that we would not be able to check in as soon as we arrive and do decadent things like showering. It is a blow. We check our watches and realize it is only about 8:30 in the morning, Brisbane time. Now it makes sense that we might not be able to check in right away. It irritates us that it makes sense.

We wait more. Someone else comes aboard the bus. She is from an environmental agency of the Australian government, and is there to help us. She explains that Australia is very concerned not to import obnoxious algae from the US and Canada into Australian waterways. The dragonboating ladies nod their heads sympathetically. They hate that mucky, smelly algae.

Then the agency lady says that everyone with a life vest in their luggage must surrender it to the agency for a few days so the agency can sterilize it. Sympathy among the dragonboating ladies diminishes visibly. The ladies carrying life vests have to get their luggage out from under the bus, extract their life vests and hand them over to the agency.

Miriam accepts all this with impressive good grace. She and the members of her team didn’t bring life vests.

Once the vests are collected everybody gets back in the bus and we wait some more. Someone pulls out a walkie-talkie type device and calls the bus that already left. That driver is told to pull off the highway so the nice person from the government can go get the vests in that bus too. Our envy of the other bus diminishes.

Then somebody new from the agency gets on to explore a new plan, in which the agency will just keep the life vests and not disinfect them, and the ladies who brought them will simply do without. After a shorter discussion of this plan than the agency person would have liked, this plan is rejected by the dragonboating ladies who brought lifejackets, the agency person leaves, and the bus driver actually starts driving.

We are in a nice tourist style bus, seated up high with great views. We are traveling down a divided freeway. We note we are driving on the left side of the road. We are so tired it seems natural.

We see a building that looks familiar. McDonald’s. There is a KFC next to it, and a Subway somewhat farther along. Except for the trees and driving on the left side of the road, it looks a lot like Southern California. Lots of houses have tile roofs. Big areas of land are being scraped raw and prepared for new housing developments.

A ways out of Brisbane we enter forests of some sort of long needled pine. They look a lot like odd: every once in a while, as the bus drives by, we can see broad aisles between the trunks. These are farmed pines, planted in neat rows. There are lots of them.

About half an hour out the driver pulls off the road at a commercial rest stop. We are told we can get out, use the comfort station and grab a bite to eat. The place has a food court. with a “Wild Bean” coffee shop (kind of like Starbucks), a McDonalds, a KFC, and some sort of place that serves sandwiches that seem to consist mostly of mayonnaise.

Miriam gets in line to get us coffee, and I get in line to get us our first meal in Australia: KFC chicken wings – extra crispy.

We arrive in Caloundra at our hotel: Portobello by the Sea. The driver brings the bus to a stop and tells us to get off. The ocean is just across the street and the sun is shining. Our hearts beat a bit faster.

We rise up, pull on our bags, and a determinedly cheerful lady enters the bus and tells us to sit back down. The driver is told to drive us to the back of the hotel. We then get out, get our luggage, and assemble in the interior courtyard to receive our keys. It all takes about five times longer than seems necessary. People stand in the courtyard looking dazed. The courtyard is lovely. Swimming pool, tall bamboos, palms, hibiscus, other things we don’t recognize. Finally we get our keys, our rooms and, ahhh, our showers. It’s about 9:30 am Sunday morning, but it feels like late afternoon to us.

(The picture is of the wreck of the S.S. Dicky, which is on the beach directly in front of our hotel, which is located at Dicky Beach in Caloundra, Queensland, Australia)