are you my mommy, mr. human beatbox machine?

sorry, it's been awhile since i've updated this blog, but reliable and fast internet connection is hard to come by when you're traveling on the fly in hostels.

our grand campervan roadtrip ended up in cairns without a cyclone in sight. it was bloody humid up there though...upper 30 degree celsius weather with 90% humidity will do you good. jenn and i just took a nap in the shade of a banyan tree for a few hours in cairns before we tried to see any part of the city...which there wasn't much to see or at least much interesting to see when you feel like you're swimming through the sizzling heat.

so we bid adieu to our campervan beethoven and flew down to melbourne. melbourne is a pretty wicked city with all the great food and kickin' music scene. i daresay that if you had to choose one city to go to in australia, i would recommend melbourne over sydney. we continued on our wild australia tour by seeing more wildlife in the form of the littlest penguins in the world. i even had a close encounter with a baby fairy penguin down on st. kilda pier that chased me and nibbled at my ankles. this happened while we were waiting for the one concert we got to see in australia for a decent price...a concert given by the one and only Rahzel! i don't know if you've heard of him or not, but i managed to unknowingly catch him in a concert during armadillo day at northwestern university back in '98. he is amazing now as he was then. i took some video (sadly my battery ran out), but it doesn't matter because video does not do justice to how deep he can get his voice to go and just how awesome he is. if you ever get a chance to see him live, DO IT!!!

we then headed to the hallowed melbourne cricket ground to get up close and personal with this baffling sport. we even caught a friendly match between the politicians of victoria. i'm glad they are hard at work. it's an intriguing sport. i hear even the aussies and kiwis don't even know all the rules. i'm going to try to find this new book called "How to Catch a Cricket Match" by Harry Ricketts (sounds like a cricket athlete name too, huh?) which is supposed to be filled with "interesting" anecdotes and some explanations on the game. world cup cricket is around the corner and i've got to be able to follow the conversations of the day!

we then headed to adelaide for a quick trip. pretty much all aussies say that adelaide is filled with religion and churches, which is true, but there's actually a lot more. for starters, the art gallery is free, air conditioned, and has a bag check so you can spend hours soaking up the art and the cool air. (no, i'm not a wimp, it got to 40 degrees C in melbourne and high 30s in adelaide.) besides that, there's also (for all you davis people) james erskine and, surprise, christian antony in adelaide! christian is here for harvest and has a sweet set-up with very nice argentinian roommates. it was great to have some beers with him again. sadly, i didn't see much of james except for 5 minutes, i'll make sure he never forgets that...hahah just kidding.

i did finally do some wine sight-seeing in barossa valley...no winery tours, just tasting rooms. driving to barossa is a bit like driving on the back roads to napa from davis and barossa was great. we managed to stop in at torbreck, penfolds (of course but the tasting man was really nice), rockford (they've got a great alicante bouschet), and two hands (my favorite of the day). i wasn't much of a syrah drinker before, but i softened up to it after tasting australian syrah. it's not as peppery, smokey, in-your-face as it can be in california.