Welcome back! It’s time for another trip, and this time I will be going to Australia. This will be a special trip as it will mean I have visited all seven continents. But more on that when (if?) I make it through that 15-hour flight.

This won’t be a very long trip but still promises to be exciting. We fly into Sydney and spend a few days there, where I hope to explore the city and hopefully reunite with a few friends from my recent Antarctica trip. From there we head north to the city of Cairns to get on a boat for a 3-day liveaboard diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef — this should be the highlight of the trip. We then backtrack, making our way back through Cairns and Sydney.

I will be traveling this time with Shiho, who is the sister of a friend I met in Antarctica (see, traveling does bring people together!) She just completed her PhD and so this is a celebratory trip for her before she goes off to bigger and better things.

Finally, I got a new toy for this trip…the GoPro video camera. This rugged little bad boy has become extremely popular with adventurers who want to videotape themselves surfing, biking, motorcycling, and snowboarding. I’m excited because I bought a specialized dive housing so I can bring it with me underwater when I dive the barrier reef. I’m more excited because I can then consider myself an “adventurer”.

That’s it…see you on the other side.

G’day from down under!

Seven!
I’ve done it…I have now stepped foot onto all 7 continents. This is an exciting day and a few years ago I never thought I’d be able to do it. What did I do upon reaching this new country? I got a drink at Starbucks, bought something at the Apple store, and withdrew money from a Citibank.

Here I am in front of the well known Sydney Opera house.

Medical emergency at 30000 feet
Excitement, peoples! About thee hours into my Sydney flight as I was half asleep, I was woken up by the overhead speakers which were announcing that there was a passenger in need of medical attention and asked if anyone with medical training could come help out. I jumped up with excitement and walked quickly to the rear of the plane since it wasn’t too far from where I was sitting, hoping it was something legitimate (unlike a few bogus ones I’ve been involved with in the past.)

The small crowd of flight attendants told me a lady had just passed out. Nice…finally something right up my alley. I saw the woman and asked her a few questions but she didn’t respond. Not good. I gave her a mild sternal rub and she barely opened here eyes. Even less good. I then sat down and tried to feel her pulse, and was having a hard time feeling it. At this point a bunch of other passengers lined up behind me saying “I’m a doctor I’m a doctor, I can help”. Sorry suckers, Dr. Amir got here first.

I finally felt a pulse but it was very slow, so we laid her down on the row of seats. After about ten minutes of taking her vitals, getting more information from her husband, and then re-evaluating her, it became pretty clear she had had a vasovagal episode (a simple faint). She soon felt better and all appeared well, so I started walking back…but not before the flight attendants wanted my name so they could give me something. I refused multiple times but they wouldn’t accept that, and in the end I got a generous voucher for future travel. Mid-air excitement, a generous airline, and one happy customer/passenger…not bad.

Antarctic reunion
I met some great people one year ago on my trip to Antarctica, and interestingly most of them live in Australia. We met up with them for a great mini reunion, reminiscing both on the better parts of the trip as well as people we all found annoying.

From left to right: Kelvin, me, Mayumi Jr. (aka Shiho), Grant, and Nisha.

We were having a drink at the Altitude Restaurant, a bar on the 36th floor of the Shangri La building. It was sunset and there a great view of the Opera House.

In other news, my iPad does a terrible job of downsizing photos, which is why they’re blurry.

It seems most countries have a coat of arms, usually with animals or shapes or other weird imagery that have alleged historical significance. Anyway, when most people visit a new country, they respect that coat of arms…me, however, I eat their coat of arms.

(Kangaroo on the left, emu on the right.)

Australia is home to many animals not seen in the US, and Cairns has several restaurants that serve their meat. So our first order of business in this city was to find a place serving such modern Australian cuisine, which brought us to the elegant Ochre Restaurant. Here we ate kangaroo, emu, and then crocodile to finish it off.

From L to R: sampler plate with thinly-sliced raw emu (bottom right of plate), spicy peppered crocodile with prawns, and kangaroo sirloins with bok choy.

How was it? Kangaroo meat was almost indistinguishable from beef. Emu, on the other hand, was a very lean red meat with a gamey taste, which seemed pretty unusual for a bird. And crocodile tasted just like a thick, chewy white fish. Everything tasted great, and I’d definitely come back for the crocodile. The most surprising learning point of the evening? Learning that the emu is not like a cow (what I originally thought), but rather a bird.

This entire trip was built around diving the Great Barrier Reef and that time has come. Early Tuesday morning we boarded a boat for the Reef where we would stay at sea for two nights and three days doing almost nothing but diving.

Getting there was easier said than done. For the first 15 minutes, the captain of the ship navigated us adeptly through the port. He then fled, and from that point on Windows 98 drove us to our destination thirty miles away into the South Pacific…and she drives terribly. Autopilot plus choppy waters equals one miserable boat ride. This was even worse than the Drake Passage! Everyone looked ill, and your loyal host didn’t do too well either. Raisin Bran tastes good going down the mouth…not out the nose. (Latest scoreboard: Ocean 2, Amir 0).

Once we arrived it was amazing. At our first dive site we learned there is a big chunky wrasse who hangs out around the boat waiting for divers to come play with him. They named him Wally and he is particularly fond of having his lips rubbed. Here I am wrestling with Wally.

And here he is looking sideways at Shiho, who is looking the same way right back at him.

Of course you can’t dive the Barrier Reef without trying to find Nemo or his relatives. What do you know…I found him.

The Reef is the well-known home of many fish and coral, and it was really impressive to see it first hand. Unfortunately my camera couldn’t get a good photo of them (definitely the camera’s fault) although my videos turned out much better, so I’ll be putting those together when I return home. Here is a small school of fish.

But without a doubt, the most memorable dive of the trip was my night dive. I’ve always shied away from diving at nighttime mostly be I was too scared but also because I didn’t think there’d be anything interesting to see at night. Most importantly I’m way too afraid of sharks, which come out at night just to eat people. But I finally gathered enough courage and decided to do it…although that was before I saw this:

What you see is a view from the back of the boat, with tons of fish and sharks circling around. The boat’s lights attract the fish, which attract the sharks. And I had to jump into that.

But I did and it was amazing. The moment I started my descent and turned on my flashlight, the very first thing I lit up was a pair of green eyes, of a shark. Of course. If I hadn’t just gone to the bathroom I would have completely soiled my wetsuit.

The rest of the dive went perfectly, and I saw lots of interesting sea life unique to nighttime. And, I didn’t get attacked by a shark! It actually turns out they don’t attack unprovoked, although I still believe what I heard a few years ago which is that sharks leave us alone because they’re afraid of bubbles. That’s the truth and I’m sticking to it.

Back from the reef, safe and sound and sickness-free. (I prepared for the return boat ride best I could by taking a bunch of phenergan, fasting for three hours beforehand, and then staying horizontal the entire ride back…there’s no way Mother Nature was gonna squeeze anything out of me!). Time now to learn about Sydney.

Bridge climb
The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a beautiful steel arch bridge that spans the Sydney Harbour and is almost as well known as the Opera House; the two are often in the same photo especially for firewourks (in other news, I now use British spelling).

You can legally climb the arch by by starting at the southern end and walking your way up to the top, after a 134 meter (440 feet) vertical rise. This 3 1/2 hour event starts with a breathalyzer test to make sure you’re sober, walking through a metal detector, putting on a one piece jumpsuit, and finally strapping yourself with a cable to the bridge…and then up you climb! It was definitely scary other way up but you get accustomed to it pretty quickly. Here we are near the top, with Shiho flashing the scuba “ok” sign and yours truly showing you where the Opera House is. I think I look good in a jumpsuit.

Sydney Fish Market
This huge fish market ships over 15 million kilos of seafood a year, and is the second largest fish market in the world, after the one in Tokyo. There is an incredible array of very fresh seafood here, and you can simply point to anything you see and it’ll be prepared for you.

After exploring awhile, we relaxed from our morning bridge climb by having a freshly prepared salmon roll and local beer.

Night Noodle Market
We were lucky enough to catch the Sydney International Food Festival that took place most of this month. Its last night was tonight and the theme was a night noodle market. Hyde Park was filled with stand after stand of Asian restaurants serving up tasty food long into the night. And, we got admission to the VIP area, simply by saying we were Citibank customers…are we or aren’t we? I guess they’ll never find out.

This short film features the highlights of my 9 dives, filmed with a GoPro Hero2 camera and edited with iMovie for the iPad. It was so easy to use that I was able to do all this on my flight back home; the downside is that I was forced to use that dopey theme and music.