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Today was another relaxing sea day as we motor our way to Komodo and the famous dragons. Just a few sunrise and sunset pictures for you.
Here is the Top Photo Gallery:
It is our 2nd day in Darwin and we are revolting! No more buses!! The worst thing about any tour or excursion where you are with a group, is that they move you around on buses…big buses, small buses, nice buses and sometimes not so nice buses. Buses, buses, buses. It gets to the point (at just about this far into one of these trips) when we say ENOUGH WITH THE BUSES!!
Sorry, had to vent a little. Dale and I were at lunch today at the Compass Rose restaurant onboard the Voyager thinking about our afternoon tour when it hit me. I am sick and tired of buses. Here are the things I don’t like about buses:
- They are buses
- Usually they are either too hot or too cold
- I always seem to sit in front of the cougher, sneezer, heavy mouth breather or the loud talker who thinks that everyone is interested in hearing about her Sister’s Gall Bladder surgery…in detail
- You have to line up to get on a bus
- You have to line up to get off a bus
- If you want to sit anywhere near the front of the bus you have to a.) get to the constellation theatre early to stake out your spot so you can hear them call your bus and you can got off the ship fast! b.) you can’t be afraid of the mean looks you get when you walk past people who are trying to get to the same bus as you
So, in protest in the name of all things bus related, we stayed on the ship today to cool off a little and come up with a new, Zen approach to buses.
Repeat after me: Buses are good. Buses take us where we’ve never been before. And buses bring us back. Buses provide a place to sit and reflect on our life as we spend endless hours being shuttled around in their safety. Buses don’t hurt people, at least not intentionally. Buses are our friends. Now repeat.
Thank goodness it’s a Sea Day tomorrow because that means “NO BUSES”!!
It was hot and humid today with rain visible in the distance as we arrived at the Darwin Cruise Ship Terminal about noon. The ship will be port side for the next 30 hours as we enjoy an overnight stay in Darwin.
Today we survived attacks by “jumping crocodiles” on the Adelaide River. Before you get worried, you should know that it was much more of a challenge for the beef steaks, chicken halves and bones that were used as bait to lure the 6-16 foot estuary crocodiles to our boat and get them to jump 6 feet out of the water! But, I’ve gotten ahead of myself…
Click here for detailed Darwin Photo Gallery.
I was (Dale) back to normal today with no fever so we were on for the “Jumping Crocodile” tour at 1:30 pm. We had breakfast in the room, worked on pictures and blog posts and then headed out in the sweltering heat and humidity with my fogged up D700 and several bottles of water. The comfortable bus was air conditioned, although there were complaints that it was either too cold or too hot. But who’s complaining when it’s over 90 outside, about 100% humidity with off and on rain and there are crocodiles everywhere?
The tour guide had a strong French accent as he gave us background on Darwin, Australia’s fastest growing city. One of the more interesting facts is that Darwin is highly multi-cultural. This diversity occurred when workers who came to help rebuild the city, ended up staying here. Darwin has been rebuilt multiples times including after WWII and also after being hit by major cyclones multiple times. Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin in 1974 and knocked out 70% of the buildings.
Also, the busy pearling industry has attracted Asians since the turn of the century. About 40% of the population is Asian. There is also a high percentage of Aboriginals who own close to 50% of the land here. When you look at the geography and the proximity to Indonesia and Asia, it is also easy to see how this became a major melting pot.
While Australia’s Northwest Territory is immense there are only three large cities in the entire place and Darwin is by far the largest. The suburbs here are growing very fast and property has become surprisingly expensive, on the order of $750,000 for a decent size home in the more desirable bedroom communities. This is partly because there isn’t much buildable land near Darwin proper because much of the place floods during the rainy season (which is happening right now). Large-scale flooding is common and the large highways often become impassable for days, weeks and even months, causing detours of over 200 miles to get form point A to point B!
The more the guide talked about the area the more we decided that this wasn’t a place for us! The reason so many people move here is because there is virtually no unemployment due to the mining, pearling, fishing and, of course, construction industries. They can’t get people here and build housing for them fast enough! Still, I think we’ll pass on Darwin.
On the way to the croc tour we passed their savanna land, lush, green and wet with lots of mangos, eucalyptus trees and tall grass. You don’t want to go walking or swimming around these parts because there are estuary crocs everywhere. These saltwater crocs are the most dangerous and will eat anything, including people without thinking twice. Freshwater crocs, not so much…they are smaller and will run from people…but who’s going to be checking which type of croc it is! Just stay out of the water if you are in Northern Australia and climb a tree as fast as you can if a croc is chasing you!
One interesting thing that the locals eventually learned from the Aboriginals is to burn the grass growing between all the trees every year when it starts drying out. We could see the black marks up to about 20 feet on all the trees. If they didn’t do this they would eventually have devastating fires that would destroy everything. Think Southern California. The Aboriginals have done this for tens of thousands of years and they have now decided that this is the correct method and follow it religiously.
The pictures show the story of the croc feeding boat ride. As advertised, the crocs, well-trained from many feedings, approach the boat slowly. They would show up, one at a time, and the woman on the top deck of the boat would place the meat on a rope and dangle it in front of the croc, lifting it quickly when the croc went for it. The crocs would jump six feet out of the water and eventually outsmart the dangler, grabbing the meat and then slowly float away. The large male crocs can hold their breath for up to an hour so they are really good at sneaking up on their prey. We fed eight different crocs of various sizes and sexes and got some good shots from the very crowded railings. Lots of photographers on this cruise and it was almost impossible to get a spot to shoot! Margaret took videos and I took stills with the D700 and 28-300 lens. Hope you enjoy them!
On the way back to the ship they took a slightly out of the way side-trip to a nature preserve museum/restroom stop for 15 minutes and then we did the hour drive back to the ship. One of the three Regent tour buses got a flat tire at the croc show (those nasty crocs might have gotten it) so they had to put that bus load into the other two – luckily there was enough room for everyone.
We were invited to dine with the captain tonight and we had a very nice time listening to him and the other dinner guests tell stories about their cruising adventures. After dinner we joined one of the other couples, Kathy and Paul, for an after dinner drink in the Voyager Lounge. They are involved in a ministry and strongly support an orphanage in Uganda. All in all, it was a fun day and night on-board the Voyager.
The next day we decided to pass on the harbor tour boat ride so we won’t have a review of that in a post. It was quite hot and we were making progress on our projects so we had a nice lunch in Compass Rose, our new favorite thing to do each day, and just took it easy. There was a sailboat race in the area right off the Voyager and it was fun watching them, bringing back memories when we used to race our J120 and J105. As we watched we just kept thinking what a shame it is that you can’t go in the water anywhere in these parts due to the crocs and thousands of large jellyfish that were floating by. Not good.
Sea Day tomorrow and then on to Komodo to see Komodo Dragons!
Photography Comments:
Like most days lately it started out hot and humid and ended up rainy, hot and humid with high white clouds. The lighting today was a bit harsh and, although I took a polarizing filter with me, once the crocs started jumping I forgot to give it a try. Of course, the filter only works when it is at a 90-degree angle to the sun and the boat was circling, etc. It still would have helped eliminate some of the glare on the water. Of course, it also would cause you to stop down at least one stop but that’s probably too detailed for this blog. Like when you are trying to get shots out of a fast moving bus, trying to get a jumping croc requires a decent shutter speed, on the order of 1/500th or faster. I found that faster is better so I set my ISO to 1600, my aperture to 7.1 and made sure that the shutter was at least 1,000. I could have just set the shutter to 1,000th and T/S mode but then the exposure might be too low so I chose Aperture/A mode today and it worked reasonably well.
This was one of those days where there was a LOT of photographers crowding the railings making it difficult to get a decent shooting environment. You just do the best you can while giving the others a chance to get shots. A fair number of people taking videos today and it was definitely a great video subject. It really does make me wonder what everyone does with all their long videos because it is very time consuming to edit videos (that’s why I’m so far behind on that project!) but I guess better to have it and hope you have the time someday to do something with it than not to have it at all. Margaret volunteered to shoot video from the downstairs air conditioned area with wet windows today and she got some good stuff.
Today is Thursday and we are in Thursday Island! Locally it is known as “TI” and is the administrative and commercial center of the Torres Strait Islands. Thursday Island is the northernmost point of Australia and is very small with just 2,500 residents and an area of about 1.4 square miles. The highest point on the Island, Milman Hill, stands at 341 feet above sea level and was a World War II defense facility and the primary stop on of our tour today.
Click here for the detailed Photo Gallery.
This island was also nicknamed “Thirsty Island” since there wasn’t any water naturally occurring here. In fact, today, all of the water is captured in large reservoirs on nearby Howe Island and then piped underwater to TI.
During World War II, Thursday Island became the military headquarters for the Torres Strait and was a base for Australian and United States forces. In January 1942 they evacuated all of the civilians. There were a lot of Japanese living here working in pearl farming which was a major industry, and the Japanese on the island were interned. The residents did not return until after the end of the war and many ethnic Japanese were forcibly repatriated. The island was spared from bombing, due to it being the burial place of many Japanese pearl shell divers, or possibly the Japanese thinking there were still Japanese residents on the island.
Many Japanese divers died working in the pearling industry in the early 1900’s since they used manual air pumps to breathe underwater and they didn’t yet know about “the bends”. So, they just died or had painful side effects when they stayed down too long or came up too fast. They mostly harvested oysters for the mother of pearl for buttons, silverware handles, etc. rather than for the pearls themselves.
Of the 2,500 people living on TI, over 1,000 work for the government, since this is the northern-most outpost for Australia and the gateway to Asia. So with the crayfish industry (that’s what they call lobsters here), the pearling industry (pretty small now) and government jobs, employment is high on the island and things are good.
We toured the hilltop fort, where we saw three large gun encampments (they could shoot around five miles) and underground bunker tunnels that they have turned into a maritime and military history museum. It was sweltering inside, a veritable sauna. When we went back to the bus we found that our tour guide was MIA and 30+ people were standing around sweating. Turns out our tour guide had to close up the museum which took about 10 minutes. We eventually got onto the bus only to find out the air conditioning was broken so the inside of the bus turned into another sauna. But, she had to give us the rest of the island tour anyway! So, we all lost a couple pounds and eventually made our way onto the tender and back on the Voyager.
One of the outstanding features of this very small island is that the waters surrounding, and most areas of northern Australia, have salt-water crocodiles! They told us absolutely no swimming (not a problem). When Dale and I were eating lunch we saw something splashing out in the water. It happened about 10 times during the course of lunch, and we have to believe that they were crocodiles jumping to catch fish. At times they would come 2-3 feet out of the water!
Photography Comments:
Another mostly cloudy and gray day and also hot and sticky. One of the issues with the hot, humid weather is when you go out for a sunrise picture the camera is quite cold in our air conditioned room. So, the lens clouds up immediately when you step outside. You need to leave the camera outside for at least five minutes and then use a lens cloth to wipe off the moisture. By then, the sunrise is many times over unless you got up early enough. This also happens throughout the day when we are on air conditioned tours. Just part of photography in the tropics.
Not much to take pictures of today, especially since we went onshore just before the tour and then had to depart immediately on the tender after our tour ended. I will get a couple pictures from Sherrie because she had a few more minutes onshore to get some good shots, especially of the northern-most pub in Australia! I just took the Canon S95 today.
We are in cannibalism territory again in Melanesia having arrived at Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, which is widely abbreviated PNG widely around town. It is hot and humid, but we didn’t get rained on here. Papua New Guinea is one of the most culturally diverse countries on Earth, with over 850 indigenous languages and at least as many traditional societies/tribes, out of a population of just under seven million. It is also one of the most rural, with only 18% of its people live in urban centers. The name Papua translates loosely into “curly headed black people” and it was named “New Guinea” after Guinea in Africa.
Click here for the link to the Photo Gallery for Papua New Guinea.
The tour buses were delayed in their arrival, and when they showed up we realized why. They were using the local transport buses that held only 16 people each. That meant a lot of buses and a lot of confusion in arranging them in order to come to the dock and collect the nice Regent folks. Since we used over 30 buses, it also meant that the locals were having to crowd into the remaining buses as they tried to get around town!
Once on board, we started to come to the understanding that this wasn’t a “clean” area. I tried to pull my seat belt out, it was stuck on the side of the cushion, and when I couldn’t free it I looked at my fingers and they were black with dirt and grime. Yuck. Luckily I had some antibacterial wet wipes with me and I ended up using two of them!
As we drove out to our “Coastal Villages” tour, I was shocked to see the poverty. There were a lot of people hanging around, most of them waved at us with a look on their face like they just saw dinner! The other shocking thing here is the amount of garbage strewn everywhere. The people basically live “in garbage”. The roads, streams, yards, beaches are all covered in garbage.
Once out of the city, we continued to be a little nervous as we drove through some beautiful, but desolate countryside. We had a local driver and guide and neither of them seemed to speak or understand English…we were hoping they knew where they were going.
About 45 minutes later we pulled up to a local village and were instructed to stand in a dirt field as local children started to filter out from the surrounding school buildings. We waited about 15 minutes for some other buses to arrive and then were treated to a culture show put on by a few adults and some of the children.
After the show they told us to walk around the village…OK, not sure where to go, Dale was still taking pictures of the costumed children so I ended up following some other folks down to the water. The locals build their “homes” over the water, for good reason…their “plumbing” dumps directly into the water…they even have outhouses that are built over the water. I saw a local boy use the outhouse and then, in the water just under the outhouse, I saw him washing his face and hands. Again, yuck!
There were several stands set up around the village selling small, green nuts. It turns out these are Betel nuts and the locals chew them pretty much all the time. It is a stimulant and ends up staining their teeth a bright red color. Dale got a demonstration on how they use them. The guy he spoke to would stick the nut in a metal tube that had a sharp stick through the middle. He would grind it and then add a paste of mostly lime juice and then suck on it, sort of like chewing tobacco. They also chew it with the plant’s leaves as well as tobacco.
We were all impressed with the friendliness of the locals. They willingly posed for pictures, waved, said hello and smiled at us. They also didn’t beg for money…a lot of times in villages like this they will ask for some money to have their picture taken, but not here. I had brought some chocolates from the ship and handed those out to some of the children…they really like that! One little boy kept coming back and asking for more, and I realized I should have waited to hand out the chocolates just before leaving!
Back on the bus we found out we were going to another village. Most of us would have been happy to just go back to the ship…it was hot & humid and while the villages were interesting, it was sort of weird walking around looking at them and their garbage.
We ended up down by the water again and drove over a bridge that looked more like a garbage dump than anything…there were multiple fires burning garbage right alongside the road – very smelly.
The next village was more condensed and as we walked around, it was surreal to me…I wasn’t sure if we were in the zoo or they were…they were looking at us with as much curiosity as we were looking at them. The guides originally weren’t going to let us off of the buses, but then let us walk around for 10 minutes. While Dale really enjoyed the photo opportunities here, I was happy to get back on the bus early.
Once back on the ship, I ended up getting a massage and found out from the masseuse, who happened to be on the same tour as us, that she had heard from the guide on her bus that there were men with guns only about 100 yards away from where our buses had stopped at the 2nd village. It was no wonder why they hurried us back on-board! This is definitely a 3rd (or 4th) world country. We found out later that they had separated the tours into two groups of buses. One of the groups had gone to our second village first and one of the buses broke down. They had to wait 30 minutes or more for a replacement and then had that bus break down later as they went to the other village. We now feel pretty good about our tour!
Photography Comments:
Finally a day with decent weather and lots of photo opportunities. I decided to take the D700 with the 24-70 2.8 lens, which is a professional caliber lens and very, very clear. I gave up the longer telephoto but gained more contrast, better color and incredible clarity. It is also a very heavy len. The bus windows opened up so it was easy to shoot clear pictures. Unfortunately, the bus was bumpy which, along with the poor road conditions, made taking pictures difficult. I set the shutter to 1/640 and gave it a try. The other problem is some of the people on the side of the road didn’t seem happy to have their picture taken so I had to choose my opportunities. Overall, I’d rate my performance pretty average but at least I was able to document some of what it looked like driving in such poverty.
The villages gave many great portrait opportunities and it was the kind of place you could spend half a day and never run out of options. I was very pleased that everyone I asked had no problem being photographed and the pictures came out pretty well. The sky was very white which made shooting pictures of the houses somewhat problematic but worked great for the portraits. Almost all of the pictures of the people are exceptionally clear and, since I shot Raw, could be blown up very large if needed. Keep in mind once again, I’m uploading only <150k sized files due to the internet speed both for the image upload time as well as the download for anyone trying to view these on the ship. When I get home I’ll rescale the images and upload larger versions for download.
Cheryl - Oh my gosh, how incredibly beautiful!