Day 69: 20231201 Friday, December 1, 2023 Return to Sydney, Partial family reunion
Ben happened to get up at 1:30am and checked the Star Walk 2 App, which indicated that the Southern Cross, or Crux constellation should be at least 10 degrees above the horizon. So Ben grabbed his camera and tripod and walked to the nearby resort entrance to get away from all the resort lights. And sure enough, the southern cross was visible just above the horizon. Jupiter also very prominent in the night sky overhead as was the gibbous moon and Orion, which was easily visible directly overhead. Ben was successful in photographing the Southern Cross or Crux, which checked off another bucket list item. For as many times as we have been in the southern hemisphere, last night was the first time Ben has successfully identified the Southern Cross.
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We got out suitcases ready for pickup and had a last breakfast at the hotel. We then got picked up by a smaller tour bus to do the camel riding excursion. This was carried out very close to the resort. The camel farm actually trains camels captured from the wild for racing, riding and other domestic duties. There are over 1.5 million camels loose in the Australian outback. They had been imported for military and agricultural uses and ended up thriving in the outback. They do not breed camels, and all of the captured camels are castrated. They also have females for riding and milking. The facility has pens and sheds for the camels, as well as a small zoo of domestic farm animals. There is also a race track for the camels on site. We mounted up on the camels in pairs. They had custom tandem saddles which were a big step up from the crude saddles that had left such a bad impression on Ben after riding them in Dubai.
The camels were all roped together in a caravan which followed a course through the bush with views of Uluru and Kata Tujta. Everyone had geared up with hats and fly nets, but the flies were not all that bad. The temperature was in the lower 80’s in the morning and a light breeze kept things reasonably comfortable. The most notable part of riding camels is when they go from sitting on the ground to standing up, you really have to lean far back in the saddle and hang on for dear life as you get pitched back and forth quite abruptly and steeply. Once the camel is up, the ride is pretty smooth. The trail ride took about 45 minutes.
Once we got back to the hotel, we identified our luggage which was then loaded onto the coach and off to the airport we went. The flight from Ayres Rock Airport to Sydney was a 737-800 so there was no need to check our carry on bags, but we got to do so for free to reduce congestion in the overhead bins. The flight was about 3 hours, but during the flight, we had to move our clocks forward 1-1/2 hours to go back to Sydney time. Our flight left at 12 noon Darwin time, and arrived in Sydney at 5:30pm.
Price and Ciara arrived in the morning and checked into the Sydney Hyatt Regency just one floor below our room. They did an ambitious walking tour which took them all the way to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Sydney Opera House, and the Rocks. They got back to the hotel just a little before our coach dropped us off at the hotel. We had a mini reunion in the lobby and then did some luggage juggling so that we could have Princess deliver their suitcases to the ship so they can just walk to the ship tomorrow. Janet and Ben have a pre-embarkation tour which will include a behind the scenes Sydney Opera House tour and drive to Bondi beach starting at 8am. The tour will conclude with dropping us and all the luggage off at the ship at 2pm. Embarkation for everyone was delayed to 2pm because of a mandatory deep disinfection protocol following an outbreak of a gastrointestinal virus on the last cruise. We hope they do a good job eliminating the virus before we board. But that also means embarkation is bound to be chaotic and crowded.
We walked to Chinatown and sat down to eat at the Chinatown Noodle King restaurant which was very busy. After we had placed our order, Janet noticed a hand written sign at the cash register that said their credit card terminal was not working so only cash or bank transfers were permitted for payments. Since we didn’t have any Australian cash, we had to cancel our order and move on. We walked through the Friday Chinatown Market, which was a very busy and chaotic scene full of people, food, delicious smells, street music and lots of noise.
It was enough to overwhelm the senses. Ciara really took to it like a natural, having been in similar markets in Taiwan with her fiancé’s family, and ordered several food items including street grilled calamari on a stick, pork and onion dumplings and a Chinese crepe. But all the noise and chaos were a bit too much for us country mice, so we then headed back towards the center of Chinatown away from the market where Ciara had located a highly rated dumpling shop in an alleyway which had a lot of character in addition to some delicious dumplings.
We had some lamb, pork and Himalayan Momos (Himalayan term for dumplings). The Himalayan Momos were served with an interesting curry dipping sauce which contrasted with the usual vinegar and soy sauce served with the Chinese dumplings.
We walked back to the hotel and repacked our overweight stowage duffels into the spare suitcases that Price and Ciara had brought, and prepared all the suitcases for pick up in the morning.
