Guam To Australia

[Kyle]We checked out of our hotel early and used the time to return for photos of all the places we couldn’t get the day before. We capped it off with a drive to beautiful Ritidian Beach on the north side of the island. It was a picture perfect Pacific Island beach. Each parking space was out of view of the others and led through a jungle path right out onto the white sands. We enjoyed as much as we could and then headed back to the airport to return our car.


Guam - Ritidian beach
We got hit with a really bad downpour on the way that slowed traffic to a crawl. Slow people pulled in front of us. The gas station was really slow. We ended up pulling into the car place ninety seconds before we would have been charged an extra day.

We got on the flight to Cairns, Queensland okay but the timing of the flight was really bad. The flight leaves Guam at 6:40pm and arrives at 11:25pm. Our flight on Qantas left at 5:40am. This left us with not enough time to get any benefit from going to a hotel but way more time than you really want to spend in an airport, especially at that time of night.

Having been kicked out of the secure part of the airport after clearing Customs, we took our stuff and trudged to the Domestic Terminal, which was not yet open. Maryanne and I were the only ones in the whole building when we first arrived. We each grabbed a row of seats and did our best to try to fall asleep. Just as we were finally dozing off, a cleaning woman with a big, loud floor polisher came by. She shut off the machine and explained that she would have to move our chairs so she could get at the floor under them. She was really nice about it, but getting up was the last thing we wanted to do. After that, a few weary travellers trickled in every hour until by morning, there were about a dozen or so. Then at about four o’clock, a virtual wave of people arrived all at once. Maryanne and I had consoled ourselves the night before when we arrived by thinking we would at least be the first in line. Not so! By the time we rubbed the sleep out of our eyes and grabbed our stuff we were about number fifty.

Oh, well. We got on okay. Qantas’ Economy Class is pretty comparable to Continental’s Business Class. The notable exception is the food, which is better. We connected in Sydney for the even better five hour flight to Perth, that is apart from the screaming baby who kept kicking our seats. I was actually pretty happy about it. In a few hours, I would never have to see that kid again, whereas the parents...

We picked up our tiny car and high tailed it out of the big city (population: 1.4 million) and headed for the outback. My original plan had been to get to the furthest campground we could before dark. All advice we had received said under no circumstances should you drive outside of cities at night. There are two reasons for this. The first is that there are kangaroos everywhere and they come out at night. They are about the size of a deer and will destroy a small car that hits them at speed. The second reason is the road trains – big three-trailer trucks that drive at night to avoid traffic and do not stop for anything. Most of them are encased in a steel cage that allows them to act as battering ram and smash through anything in their path, mostly kangaroos.

Dark approached and we could not locate our camp. We have found everything about Australian roads to be excellent except for the signage. It is often too little, too late. We decided to continue to the next town and just get a hotel room. They didn’t have any rooms. We continued, terrified, in the deepening dark and finally fetched up in Bruce Rock – WAY out in the middle of nowhere. We inquired at the store/deli/pizza parlor/gas station/motel and were told there was one room left. We could have it for $65. Fine. We paid up and they promptly closed for the night. It was 7:00. Our room looked like, well, uh, it made the Bates motel look posh and safe. I kept having to remind myself that it was still way better than our first night in Mumbai six years before. I should just think of it as an adventure.

Bruce Rock - Western Australia
We headed out to the bar (the town only has one bar) and managed to get a pizza order in before they closed. The place looked like every single basement rec room I ever saw in the ‘70s. The pizza was pretty good, though. The cook could hold her own in Chicago or New York. We finished up and they locked up right as we left. It was 8:30.