Elad’s blog

I will start from the end: my flight to Papua will be with their national flight company, Air Niugini.
I leave Cairns on 7/7/05 at 12:00, onboard flight PX93. I am to return here at 24/7/05, with Air Niugini flight PX98 - leaving Port Moresby at 18:25 and arriving at Cairns about an hour and a half later. What will happen between these two flights? I have no idea yet, but I have a week to plan.

Getting these flights was very tedious work. I went to several travel agencies - starting with Quantas (who strongly recommended me not to go to PNG, because it’s dengerous) and ending at Air Niugini. In the middle I went through some local agents. All of them wanted to send my passport back to Brisbane (some even to Sydney) to issue my visa. Only at Air Niugini did they know about the nice woman, who serves as a consulate or something, that can issue visas without sending the passport back half the continent; so I went looking for her.

Roselyne is a nice woman. Originally from Rabaul, she now lives with her family in Cairns. She runs a small shop with Papuanian souvenirs, arts and crafts; besides that, she also helps travelers in all sorts of consulate and immigration issues. Her shop is supposed to be open from 9:00, but as her kids are on vacation today she took the time and only arrived there around 11:30 - when I was already pretty nervous, having walked to her place at least three times just to find it closed (with all neighbor shops telling me that “she should come soon” and “she can’t be very far”). By the time she arrived I almost gave up and sent my passport to Brisbane through a travel agency - which would mean I arrive to PNG only after all the nice festivals end. When she did arrive, however, she was extremely nice and polite, kept smiling, and was in general very helpful - she promised to have my passport ready by Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, and she takes less money than all the travel agents!

Thus, I booked a flight to the first available date with cheap flights, and now I have a week to prepare my homework, and study about PNG. As a first step, I already bought Lonely Planet’s guide to PNG - a brand new print, fresh from May 2005! Now I only need to read it… The first page there explains that Papua means ‘Fuzzy Haired People’, and that this was termed by a portuguese explorer (who heard this word from a Malayan trader). It also says that on the last count they had there 867 different languages - and I probably don’t know any of them. This should really be an amazing adventure.

Now that I know what I will do next week, I can finally go and see what there is in Cairns. My first impression is that there are plenty of malls and shopping centers here; and every second store offers a day-tour for diving in the reef. But I still didn’t have time to feel this city - I was too busy with arranging the visa and the flight. Another thing that I want to do, and will happen here, is that finally I’m going to eat a kangaroo or a crocodile, just to get to know the local animals from a different angle.

Today we woke up by the birds. This is not as tranquille as it seems - the damned creatures started singing by our tent at 06:00 in the morning, just when the rain finally ended. However, as soon as we went out of the tent (with full intention to throw stones on the birds, those lousy creatures that howl like monkeys) we saw a most surealistic scene: a red kangaroo was standing on the grass, just a few meters from our tent, and watching us intentionally. A few minuts later he was gone - not a big loss, as it was just the first and not the most interesting kangaroo of the day.

The storm is over, and the weather today was my favorite: grey sky packed with clouds, a bit cool but not too cold, no rain at all and clean air from yesterday - including that wetness on the vegetation. We spent most of the day exploring the Atherton Tableland - a pictorious agricultural environment that combines wet rainforests every now and then with green meadows and lakes. A refreshing change from the coast’s endless sugar cane fields. The meadows resemble Tuscany, especially when taking into account the free wine tastings we got at a local winery (and if we easily ignore the amount of cows here). The real beuty, however, lies in the forests. We found several nice sites there.

The ‘Crater’, as the locals call it, is actually a volcanic pipe. Most people think of volcanoes in terms of spectacular eruptions or gaser activity. Though less famous, volcanic activity also takes place in the form of gas explosions - where gas bubbles escape the pressure inside Earth to the surface, and undergo massive expantion when climbing through cracks in the rocks - which most commonly ends up as a big explotion that cuts a pipe in the rock. This so-called crater is such a pipe - a deep, circular hole in the basaltic soil, some 30 meters in diameter, which is now full of water. It is located in the middle of a rainforest, and on the way there I spotted the more interesting kangaroo of the day - the tree kangaroo.

Tree kangaroos are a kangaroo species that lives high on the trees in rainforests; rather than jumping on the ground, they prefer doing it on trees. I spotted a colony just by the crater, some 20 meters above the ground. I am very proud of this - all the other persons around just didn’t see them because they were so high. These kangaroos have a rather different fur color: more red than the common grey one. In the forest there were also Cassowarry warnings, but we didn’t see this large flightless bird anywhere.

After the crater we went to the curtain fig tree. It is a fig tree that created with its roots a curtain of some 20 meters. The explanation to this unique phenomena is that it first grew on another tree, strangling it to death; when the other tree got rotten it fell aside on another tree, creating a bridge that enabled the fig to take over the other tree as well. The result is an enormous tree, that creates this huge curtain with its roots.

We also went to two nice lakes, with very clear water, but we didn’t feel like swimming; so we continued driving until we finally reached Cairns.

I started looking for information about my next destination here. It is not as easy as it seems. I probably want to go to Papua, where plenty of festivals as special events are being held in the next two weeks (see the link I added at the right bar of my site). The problem is, I need to arrange myself a visa to get there, and this might take a long time and cost a lot of money - I will only find details about this tomorrow, when official offices will be open.

The Atherton Tableland is a high land located at Australia’s wet tropics area, just south west of Cairns. We arrived here because we forgot to confirm a booking we have for a hostel in Cairns (part of our Whitsunday sailing package was a few hostels) and when we called them yesterday they were full - so we did a small turnabout to see this area. The weather is not so good - since yesterday it is all grey and the drizzle doesn’t stop. This was the main reason we arrived at Atherton city rather than looking at the natural reserve around (it is supposed to be full of lakes, craters, and nice things - but we’ll see this tomorrow, when the weather gets better).

In Atherton we went to two places: the cristal cave and the chinese temple. The cristal cave is actually man-made, and not a natural cave. It is located in the middle of the city, and it hosts the most beautiful mineral museum I’ve seen. They actually managed to make a mineral museum interesting and not boring after 5 minuts! The way to do it was to stuck all the minerals in an artificial cave, and upon entering the museum you get a helmet and a torch. You than enter the cave, and you are encouraged to touch and feel any mineral you find - and the cave is packed with precious stones, minerals of all colors, cristals (some of them fluorescentic), and fossils (real dinosaur eggs!). It is an excellent place, truely worth a visit. We spent over an hour just wandering in this cave, looking at Australia’s largest cristal ball, as well as rare minerals and gems from all over the world. Outside there was a shop and I was almost tempted to buy some stones, but they were far too expensive for me…

The chinese temple was an interesting site with very disappointing site-seeing. Chinese people got to Australia during the 19th century gold rush. After not finding gold they became merchants and villagers. They built small communities, most of them had disappeared by now. One such community existed in Atherton, and this is how the temple got here. It was a temple of extremely poor people, and it looks accordingly. The interesting part is that the people were so poor that they combined three religions into the same temple. Thus, it served believers of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism altogether. It was always open so anybody could just come and pray or talk to the spirit world or do whatever they liked. I just can’t imagine this kind of thing happening in the middle east - three major religions combining holy shrines… Instead we will probably eternally kill each other over Jerusalem. Besides this nice spot there is nothing to see there. The people were so poor that they built the temple from wood and painted bricks on it, because they didn’t have money for bricks; so statues, decorations, or all the golden things from the far east are out of question.

By the temple there was a small river which supposedly hosts Platypuses, and we went looking for them, but the elusive animal has once again escaped unnoticed. Maybe I’ll have to go to Papua to see them!

The aquarium in Townsville is a nice piece of art. They copied an entire reef slice - including all the corals and the fish, so people can really get a good grasp of what a “coral reef” means. Alex the non-diver was really impressed by the beauty, I was impressed by the work (It is extremely difficult to mimic the delicate environment required to maintain a healthy coral reef. They use special wave-machines and nutrients controlers to keep their aquarium). We also got to see the shark feed, and got some explanations about the sea predators (good thing I didn’t know in advance, but the Olive Sea Snake I was playing with at the Yongala is extremely venomos). I finally got to see Australia’s nightmare - the sea wasp.

A sea wasp is the common name of the box jelyfish. It has a rectangular box head, around 20c”m size, and tentacles that stretch to 3 meters and can instantly kill up to 4 persons. It is common in Australia’s tropical seas on the summer (October-May) and is the reason nobody gets into water without wearing a full body lycra suit (including a hood and gloves), called “stingersuit”. On the winter this jelyfish is supposed to be in a harmless, polyp stage - but would you count on it? Several beaches here have anti-stinger nets; However, in recent years they found a new type of deadly jelyfish, called “Irikundji” or something like that, which is small enough to get through the holes in the net. This type is also transparent, so you almost never see it before it hits you. All in all - don’t go into the water without this stingersuite.

After the aquarium we went exploring the nightlife. There are plenty of clubs, but they do work in different hours from our habits. The most profound example was the club that held a wetshirt competition … at 18:30 in the evening. Bad habits. The australian nightlife keep disappointing - maybe in Carins we’ll have better parties.

Regarding Carins: I’m about to finish my east-coast journey and it’s time to decide where to go next. There are basically four possibilities:
1) Pay a visit to Fiji - a nice tropical country, probably similar to Australia’s islands or perhaps to those of Thailand.
2) Jump to Papua-New-Guinea to see some primitive tribes, have some good dives, or see the highest mountains in the area.
3) Continue a bit north into Cape York Peninsula - I can get by 2 wheel drive up to Cooktown, on gravel roads, where I can see some more Australian wilderness (crocodiles and termite mounds)
4) skip all these and continue directly to Darwin and into Australia’s outback.

Right now I tend to take option (2), and maybe save Fiji to September. If anyone has any suggestions, tips or advices - I will be happy to accept them.

Yesterday was my first dive as a leader. The dive itself was far from special (we dived the Moltke shipwreck at Magnetic Island, which is of very poor condition, and there was also aweful visibility - just some 4-5 meters) however it was extremely joyful to watch how Roey was keeping track of me, always following me from above and beyond. I also got to carry the diver’ flag, signalling for ships that we are below. We did several rounds near the wreck, saw a few fish - Roey got real excited because he’s seen nothing in the course, but for me it cannot be counted among the best dives I’ve done.

After returning to Townsville we spent the morning here just exploring the nice Sunday market. It has excellent fruits and veggies, along with some arts and crafts. To my surprise it was not packed at all, with some good distance between the stalls and people not disturbing each other. Now we’re done with the market (we ate here an excellent breakfast - plenty of tiny dutch style pancakes) and we’re going to see Townsville’s aquarium, so Alex will get a feeling of what he misses by not diving.

For obvious reasons, the history of World-War-II is studied quite extensively in Israeli schools. For the same reasons, highschool students get a very detailed description of the war at the european front, while neglecting almost entirely the other major front of the war - namely the Pacific.

During the 1940’s the Japanese and the Americans where fighting all over the pacific, with some really big naval battles taking place. The city of Townsville (yes Oded, it actually exists) changed its face during the war years - from a small university-city it grew immensely, hosting some 90,000 soldiers and becoming an important base for the Americans and their Australian friends - a base for controlling the Coral Sea. As a military post, the Japanese tried several times to attack the city. Bombings occured once in a while, and the war reached Australia.

The Islands off the Australian east coast were also affected. Cid Harbor at the Whitsundays (remember Cid? Cook’s dog which received an island? This island also has a deep-water harbor) became a major maritime base; and Magnetic island received its share of posts, radars, and gun stations for protecting nearby Townsville. After the war the aussies were smart enough to disassemble all the military forts, so the island regained its natural beauty instead of having some ugly watchtowers left for the next generations.

Most of Magnetic island was declared a national park. Walking routes were made, and some of them go just by the ruins of the war-time posts and buildings. One of the most popular tracks is called ‘the forts’, and goes just between these ruins - inside a nice eucaliptus forest. The ruins themselves are very unimpressive to an Israeli eye (I’m way passed being excited of an old ammunition bunker), but the natural reserve that surrounds them is very nice, and is said to be packed with hidden animals - which is the main reason I did this small track yesterday.

Most of the animals remained hidden. I was very lucky - and proud - to spot a Koala on one tree off the road. This particular Koala had a baby in its pocket, which makes them two. Koalas are very hard to spot - the small fur-balls just hang silently on the trees, without any movement, concealed by the leaves and with a fur that is exactly the same color of the tree bark. Excellent camouflage - you can easily pass one without noticing it.

Besides the Koala the hiking was somewhat disappointing, because I hoped to see much more animals (they promised Rock Wallabies! Where are they?) In the night, though, when we were sitting in the beach together with Peter&Lucia the Slovaks and with Alexandra the Dutch we did see a tree possum, which caused much excitement.

We met the Slovak couple and the Dutch girl in our hostel yesterday. We just went for the shore because they wanted to drink silently - on Friday nights they hold some parties here, and you’re not allowed to drink anywhere: you’re supposed to buy on the parties their very expensive alcohol, instead of the normal Bring-Your-Own policy. They were having yesterday a “full-moon” party at Magnetic (oddly enough, the moon was full two days ago; they just rescheduled it to fit for the weekend - I don’t know why - the party was meant for backpackers, who don’t care about weekends anyway). There were plenty of people on the party, but it was bad - much more boys than girls, and aweful music - heavy dance going on the direction of trans music. Good that I didn’t go there; it was at the other end of the island and I paid the site a visit on the afternoon to check in advance what was going to be there. We sent Alex (who was quite enthusiastic about it) and indeed he told us that my worst inspections about this party were correct.

Today Roey finishes his diving course. I will probably do one dive with him to celebrate this occasion, and then we’ll head back to Townsville - tomorrow they have a market day there!

Surprisingly enough, Magnetic Island’s toad race is not a touristic attraction.
It is being held in a local pub here every Wednesday for quite a few years. When we arrived there all the audience - mainly local families, fathers with beers and their children with, well, also beer (only the babies received coke) - were sitting in a large circle around a yard. In the yard, a circle of some 6 meters radius was drawn on the floor. The toad race was just about to begin.

Before the race commenced, there was a public sale. The manager showed each toad, gave it a proper name (”meet George Waker Bush!”) and urged the public to gamble on it (”21 dollars going once! going twice! Do I here 25? 25 dollars going once!…”). After all the toads were exposed to the public, and each toad had someone who gambled on it (amounts were in the order of 20$-30$; the highest gamble was 50$ on one toad, which lost of course) - usually the children shouted the gambles and the fathers paid - the race begun. All toads - there were about ten of them - were put inside a bucket at the center of the circle, and when it was raised they all started to jump, following the applauses of the audience.

This process repeated for each round, with money prizes that changed according to the sum that was collected every round. The biggest prize that evening was 135$ - in that round the last toad to leave the circle gave its gambler a nice T-shirt, as a second prize. The nice thing was, however, after each round: in order to get the prize the winner had to give a kiss to the winning toad, which of course made all the audience even more happy. Would you kiss a toad to get your winning?

After the toad race finished we returned to our hostel. We found in our room two nice Irish girls and had a little chat. They were afraid of beasts so I took a long time to tell them about all the dangerous creatures of Israel - from snakes and scorpions to arabs and Judean-Desert tigers. It was really amusing to watch their reaction. Then we had a small talk about the army (”you HAVE to go there? It’s aweful!”) and some talk about the differences between Ireland and Israel (no dangerous animals in Ireland, “because Patrik banished them all. That’s how he became a saint - he gathered all the animals, asked any animal who wished to stay to rais its hand, and since snakes have no hands they were all banished”).

Before going to sleeep I went down to the reception area and found there a small Possum walking around - It is a strange half-kangaroo half-cat animal, which just came silently looking for food in the garbage. It was nice watching it, though. Then I went to sleep. Today I spent most of the day tramping in the mountains here, looking at various trees (large hoop pines, some eucaliptuses, and other vegetation); chilling out at some bays (absolutely clear water); and having some good ice-cream (try the winning Mango-Passion Fruit combination).

The Steam Ship Yongala was built in England at 1903. It was a huge ship, 110 meters long and 15 meters wide, and it served on the Sydney-Cairns line until its fatal sailing in March 1911, just 8 years after it first saw the ocean.

As always in these incidents, the captain was very experienced; in fact, he was over 30 years at the sea and this was supposed to be his last journey before retirement. So when they left the port of Maccay, just one hour before the cyclone warning arrived, he probably didn’t think much of the fact that the long promised radio system they designed for the ship in Europe still didn’t arrive (a note for all you project managers: schedules do count! see what happens when you ignore them…) and sailed the ship directly into the eye of the cyclone. We will never know when exactly they realized it wasn’t just a normal storm, but I guess they had some really bad moments before they all died - the ship just vanished, with no survivors, and the only clue to its fate was the dead body of a horse that was washed ashore a few weeks later. Other than that - all 121 people onboard died, and with absolutely no communications nobody could tell where.

Here is a short geographic background. When Australia’s east-coast mainland meets the sea, the continental shelf (which is wider in the south where it stretches some 200k”m insea and much shorter in the north) forms this canal, around 30 meters deep, that goes all the way from the mainland to the Great Barrier Reef. This canal can be safely used for marine transport (no coral reefs in it) and most naval transportation indeed takes place here. The poor Yongala sank straight in the middle of this canal, which means that with no corals, sea caves, or in fact any other structure on the otherwise flat seafloor, it immediately attracted a vast amount of marine life that made it their home. This is the primary reason that it is so packed with lifeforms - they have no other close place to go. The other implication of this geographical structure, is that there are relatively strong currents there: no obstacles stop the northern wind from creating large southern currents over dozens of kilometers (a terminology note: a northern wind is a wind that comes from the north and goes to the south. It creates a southern current, which is water flowing from the north and going to the south. This terminology difference once helped me to go through a most funny geography lesson at school, in which I mocked my poor teacher who didn’t know this difference - I hate it where people try to teach me things they don’t know). This implied, that the dive there was technically difficult, and that the sea was very bumpy on our way there - so I didn’t feel very well during the sail and didn’t eat anything throughout the day.

I was by far the least experienced diver on boat. As I said, it was technically a difficult dive and almost everybody had a history of at least 50 dives (most of them much more) - it was just a different league. I used a rope all the way down, and even like that found it hard to go through the wave level and down through the currents. Luckily they hanged air tanks on the ropes at some distances so I used them for my safety stops (even like that, I returned from the first dive with only 30 bars of air, and from the second dive with only 45 bars - also below the 50bar safety limit). Since it was two deep dives, we had to wait a surface interval of more than a hour between them (which some people used to eat lunch but I didn’t - the sea was just too bumpy and I was just too cold). The wreck itself was some 3 hours sailing (one way) from the shore, which probably explains why this dive was so expensive.

It was worth it, though. The ship lies on its side, fully intact, with the highest point around 15 meters deep and the lowest point below 30 meters. From above you see nothing (Actually, it was discovered by accident only at 1958 by a sonar; it was identified only when they managed to take a safe off its board and check its serial number - always good advice to keep long records). It first appears as a black, huge, shadow upon reaching a depth of some 10-12 meters. When you come closer, it first looks like a huge coral - the sea have totally taken it, no peace of uncovered metal is visible. You can, though, see the details. So there is a coral bed in the shape of the anchor, a coral in the shape of the captain’s chair, a coral in the shape of the toilets, a coral in the shape of the engine room, and so forth. Between the corals there is a vast amount of fish - and this place they go BIG. I mean, really big. Even huge. There are huge versions of all the normal coral reef fish - for example, I saw Grupers over 2.5meters long (usually they are measured in centimeters), some rays (a Shovel-Nose Ray went just above me - I first mistaken it for a shark, because they look similar from below; I also had some excellent swimming with two big Bull-Head Rays), and some excellent reptiles - not just the regular giant turtles, but also several Olive Sea-Snakes (It was very nice: my guide stretched his hand into the corral, and dragged this huge snake out of it by the tail. Then we all held it and made some fun with it before letting the surprised snake go). There were also some open-water, silvery schools of fish: Barracudas, to name one.

They claim that there are some Femur bones in the ship, but I didn’t see them. Anyway, it is a most remarkable cemetary. It is nice to compare it to the Mahoney shipwreck I saw on Fraser Island (read my notes from there). The Mahoney - which is on the shore - is rusted and slowly dissolves, though still intact and recognizable. The Yongala - which is also fully intact - is slowly becoming a living coral. Raises some philosophical thoughts about life and death.

The tour has taken all the day: I left the guesthouse before 7:00a.m. and returned to Magnetic Island only at 17:00. At the evening I went to see a toad race - but this deserves a different post.

Last days were all about meetings.
We had an excellent party after the Whitsundays sail. We drank a lot, danced a lot, eaten a lot of Pizza (two plates just for five people - us three Israelies, Sylva the french and his girlfriend, Anuk of Finland), and generally made fun. We had to return at midnight when the last taxci to our guesthouse left - but then it didn’t arrive so we just walked some 4.5k”m from the club to our room at the middle of the night.
The following morning we drove to Townsville. At the middle we stopped at Bowen, to see the “Big Mango”.

Australians have this small fetish to making it “big”. There are various tourist attractions here, like “Big Banana”, “Big Pineapple”, “Big Guitar”, “Big Mango”, and so forth. The Big Mango is actually just a visitor information center (with a huge Mango statue in the front, something like 20 meters high). I talked to the girl at the information there, and found out that “Bowen Mango” is well-known all over Australia; however, they hardly grow there Mangos - some years ago they all decided that tomatoes are much better so now it is a huge tomato-growth center with almost no mangos there - but they still have the reputation and the awesome statue.

When we arrived at Townsville we camped in a nice caravan park, and had two other nice meetings: One was with two girls - Evelyne from Canada and Marion from France. We met at the camp’s kitchen (Evelyne is a chef. She’s a great cooker and she’s going to Carins and I really hope to meet her there) and talked all through dinner and after it - we taught them some Hebrew words (Sababa) and they taught us some french habits (Sante!). Apart from the girls we also met at the camp a nice old Australian guy, who is circling Austrlia for the second time with his wife in a caravan. He gave us some really good advices that can probably save us a lot of money.

Today we went to Magnetic Island. The name (Cook’s choice, of course. He thought his compass went crazy here. Nobody else faced this problem) doesn’t tell the story about this remarkable place. We are mainly going to dive here - Roey has booked a diving course (which means we’ll be here for at least three more days) and I’m going tomorrow to dive the Yongala shipwreck. We met here Sylva and Anuk again, and hopefully will spend some time with them, too.

The nicest thing at Whitsundays came at the very end of our sail. It was a young Humpback whale. Not a baby, but not fully grown, it just showed off by our boat for around 10 minuts, jumping out of the water, waving its tail at us, and generally having fun at the ocean. We saw it on our way back from the islands to Airlie-Beach, and everybody was pretty fascinated by the majestic animal.

The islands themselves are nice, though not exceptional. We were 24 persons on the boat, in addition to crew of 4 persons; it was extremely small, but nobody really cared (except Roey, who got this sea-sickness every time the boat was sailing and not standing in place). On the first day I did a nice dive at a place called Pearl-Bay - nice corals, plenty of small fish, but no pearls there; I also did some snorkeling at another bay there, at the morning of our second day - I didn’t take another dive because they had only small air baloons and I figured out that it wouldn’t last me much time and thus was not cost-effective.

We also visited some nice beaches, including the famous WhiteHaven Beach - a 6 K”m stretch of pure silicon, which means exceptionally thin grains of purely white sand - more like a white sand-powder than a sand. You can actually hear it squeech when you walk on this sand.

The last night we parked on Cid’s bay. According to one of our crew (I still didn’t decide if I believe him or not), Cid was the dog of Captain Cook, and he died jsut here and was buried in the island now bearing his name - Cid Island. I think that if it is true, it is very amusing that old Cook named an island after his dog rather then, let’s say, his wife - the poor lady who waited in England while he was having his three round-the-world tours from which he never got back home.

Actually, he was probably sick of all this naming thingy: up north there are island groups called, respectively, “Tuesday Islands”, “Wednesday Islands”, and - yes - “Thursday Islands”. Guess when Cook passed these islands. The Whitsundays, by the way, are named so because Cook erretically thought he was passing them at Whitsunday (a christian date, something like our SHAVUOT). He was off by one day, though, failing to notice that he passed the date line - an error he only found too late, when he was back in London.

The Whitsundays are “mainland” type islands - not coral cays like Lady-Musgrave, but actually forested hills, the type we usually think of as tops of underwater mountains. They do have, of course, some tropical guidlines (for example, we were one day on a tidal beach, e.g. a beach that appears only at low tide but is totally covered by water on the high tide). Today we made a nice one-hour walk to a lookout point on one of the islands, where we caught a really good glimps of the entire island-group: very nice sight!

On the ship itself we were the only three Israelies; there were plenty of Dutch guys (who were, actually, most dominant socially) and some other europeans - a girl from Finland accompanied by her French boyfriend; a few Canadians; and some more. The food was excellent, and in the nights we all drank and played some drinking and other social games. The western social games aer very different than the ones I saw inHong-Kong (read my post from there), but I will describe them at a later time - now I have to go and prepare myself for the after-sail party we are all having tonight.