11/17/10

I had done some laundry last night before I went to bed and while I was waiting for my load to finish in the dryer another guy was down in the room folding and putting away his clothes that had just finished in the dryer. He was an American from Sacramento, CA and his name was Dennis. I am guessing he is around 45 years old or so. I started chatting with him about his travels and it turns out that he was traveling around Australia for a month. He had also been in Australia about 14 years ago to do some traveling. The next morning I saw him in the kitchen while I was finishing packing my lunch up for the day. It was raining outside at the moment and that was a bit of a buzz kill for me at the moment. I asked him what his plans were for the day and he told me that he decided to go do a local cave tour that way if it did rain all day he would still have a good experience. This sounded like a good idea to me so I quickly went back to my room and got ready to go on the same tour. I ended up purchasing a package that included transportation to and from the caves and two different cave tours while I was there. The coach bus came and picked us up outside of the hostel and after stops in town to pick up more people we were off. The journey to the caves took a little over an hour and once we got close it was pretty amazing to see the bus wind around the 1 lane road tucked along the mountain with a steep drop off on the other side. The cave tours went well but it seems that this type of tour has changed since the last time I did one of these type of tour back in Ireland. The guide would walk through with the group and then the guide would use a remote control to light up different sections for us to look at in the cave. This adds to a nice effect and becomes more of a show with well placed lights and the guides giving background or stories on the certain areas we were in. I enjoyed seeing the caves and the vast size of some of the chambers was purely amazing. It turned out to be a fairly nice day after all but I was glad I went and took the tour. The bus left and the driver decided to have some fun with some of the passengers by pulling away while they were coming to the bus later then they should have been. He did not go far but it was quite comical to seeing these people burst out running to the bus. The bus ride back was nice and I talked some more with Dennis. When we got back to the hostel I did my own thing for a while and just relaxed a bit. Later in the evening while I was throwing together my dinner a fancy grilled ham and swiss sandwich Dennis arrived in the kitchen and told me he had just ate kangaroo at a local restaurant and it was pretty good. Then he did something unexpected that makes him my new best friend. What is that? Well he offered me ice cream..... I was thrilled and I took him up on his offer straight away. He had stopped and picked some up at the store after his dinner and the hostel has no freezers so it needed to be all eaten. I was in delighted since I am a huge ice cream fan and I always enjoy good free stuff. I ended up eating the ice cream as an appetizer since I needed to wait to get use of a burner. I ended up just chatting with Dennis for a couple of hours before I decided to turn in. I got a kick out of him turns out he works for Brinks and is the guy who is inside the armored trucks when they do the deliveries to banks and such. We each told of some other travels to Ireland and then he had some good scuba diving stories to share as well. I turned in to head back to my room for the night. This is when Bryan asked me what I did today. I told him and then he told me that he would also go see the caves but he would go on his bike instead of the bus. I tried to explain to him that the bus ride was a hour long and I did not think he would make it on his bike. Then about 20 minutes later I think he understood what I had told him and he told me that he would take the bus to the caves but he would not need a guided tour in the caves he would just go in by himself. He still was not getting it and I told him that the caves are locked up and they only let you in with guided tours. I can only hope he has a better understanding of what the cave tours are now. I think Bryan may be a bit lonely since he has mentioned to me three or four times that he should have gotten a German girls number who he spent a day with on a tour or something and then he could have a travel companion. One of the reasons he wanted a travel companion was so if he was coming off a trail and he had a spider on his back she could tell him and swat it off. I am not sure maybe he is that afraid of spiders or something but I do not see that as a great reason for a travel companion. Another good day Down Under!