I think we read somewhere on the line that the Kiama Coast Walk was “not strenuous”. I myself find four hours of walking just conceptually strenuous, and that’s if it’s completely flat conceptually.
Nonetheless, on Day 2, in an effort to combat heroic jetjag through the time-tested miracles of sun exposure and physical exertion, we had planned to attempt “the short part” of the Kiama Coast Walk, roughly 10km (6 miles to you and me), and (spoiler alert) while, yes, completely worth doing and relentlessly beautiful (as you can peep for yourself below): by the time our feet and asses had given up and we decided to take the train from Bonbo for the final all-steeply-uphill 1km, a train which never fucking came due to “mechanical failure”, which OK was probably just as well because we couldn’t buy tickets anyway and undoubtedly would’ve incurred a massive, vacation-ruining fine (in the picture below of the train tracks next to the highway you can see Kiama on top of that impressive hill in the distance, at the time of the photo we'd just managed to figure out that the train wasn't coming and thus we were about to embark upon a slump-shouldered death march towards our ass-crushing homestretch)....JESUS what a sentence this is, it started like 3 minutes ago....
What I'm saying is, by the time our feet and asses had given up (thank you), the fun and wonder had kind of worn off and only ass and foot discomfort remained. Plus solid, very pink tourist sunburns we didn’t know about yet. These happened because the weather for the walk was "absolutely perfect"; I mean to the point where you’d find yourself saying 11 or 12 times out loud, “wow, man, this weather is 'absolutely perfect'', regardless of what a dolt you sounded like for repeating yourself. Each of us would repeat it 11 or 12 times.
What was it like you might ask, not having been there yourself. Well ask away Jam Master Jay: it was cloudy and breezy and misty but juuuust warm enough, at some point I may have even said aloud "I imagine this is a sort of Perfect Storm for getting one of those urban legend Cloudy Day Dumburns." Dumburns is an autocorrect but also totally accurate and a possible new coinage so i’m leaving it in there.
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Dus, blow by blow: here's 6:31am breakfast at the Something Monkey-Related Cafe (EDITOR'S NOTE: Hungry Monkey Cafe, you're welcome), us having been awake since 4:30am or something I'm sure. It is...not often I find myself waiting for breakfast places to open for business at this stage in my life, so being the first customers in the door was a bit of a "hey, wow, you're doing it! you're being productive!!!" shot of feelgood juice. In addition to it just being a friendly place, like just about every fucking where we went in Australia.
What I'm eating here was listed on the menu as "Purple Toast: Beetroot Relish. Persian Feta. Free Range Poached Eggs & Monkey Dukkah. Soy & Linseed Sourdough." I'm not exactly sure what Nelson is picking at, the current menu is no help. It's probably avocado with feta and tomatoes on sourdough, since Australian breakfasts were the beginning of Nelson's love affair with sourdough.
Ahhh, then we decided to wander over to the ol' Kiama Blowhole because a) it was 7:04am and b) every piece of goddamn literature you will ever see with the word Kiama on it will inevitably mention the Blowhole. Blowhole. Apparently it's a massive tourist attraction.
This we did not know. And this "not knowing that the Kiama Blowhole was something that people drive many many miles to undoubtedly be disappointed by" freed us from having any such expectations and thus we spent a serene 15 minutes watching and listening to the cycle of domestic blowhole violence: quiet peace; violent, not totally unexpected crashing gulf of water; giant refreshing misty spray; hiss of receding water; quiet peace; repeat. Pretty good: 4.5 stars as far as blowholes go.
THEN: We began the Kiama Coast Walk. Look at Nelson there doing her pre-walk mental prep. And stretching, she's probably stretching there.
No she's not: Nelson has never stretched in her life except to accompany a yawn. It's kind of a challenge to blog about this 16 months after it happened. Will I even know what's going on in these pictures??? Or will I just be talking out of my ass the whole time?
Mwah, I think I pretty much know what happened.
However, it is nearly impossible to get these posts to format correctly because of whatever thoroughly incompetent piece of crap software I used to make these blog posts in the first place. It's done something horrible to the code that I can't seem to fix.
So I'm just going to start typing here, since it's almost working, and you'll just have to use your lazy 21st century eyes to figure out which pictures I'm talking about.
Buh. A few things stand out from this walk in my mind. One: the obvious and dramatic beauty that is everywhere the ocean is. You think to yourself "Excellent coastline", and I'm sure people die every year with that being the second-to-last thought in their head, right before "FUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuccckkk" as they fall over the edge like the poor little stick figure on the sign above, which I didn't even see until just now. "How to Tell When Your Warning Sign is Ineffective."
Two: we were so scared. We didn't need warning signs. This is probably my fault. You know, you hear things about Australia. Dangerous animals, Google it. And yes, the Top 10 is truly, patently deadly: box jellyfish, bull shark, Eastern brown snake, crocodile, Sydney funnel web spider, blue-ringed octopus, etc. These will all kill you, easily, just by existing. But somewhere we started hearing about kangaroos attacking paragliders, wombats attacking handymen, magpies poking people's eyes out. And that made us think that when someone said, "Oh, well, you probably won't meet up with any actual kangaroos, but you might see some wallabies," well...a wallaby was probably pretty dangerous as well, if encountered alone in the wilderness.
So we were on high alert for most of this four to six hour walk. There were no people. No one to help us during a wallaby attack. We crept over the cliffs, crouched along the lush paths, tiptoed our way through the dark foresty bits, all with one eye on the ground for snakes and one eye on the horizon scanning for marsupial threats.
All we saw were lizards, bronze-colored lizards. Big! And the first couple give you quite a start when you're on high alert. And some fascinating birds. But in the end, our eyes remained in our heads, our guts remained in our bodies, etc...just a fantastic sunburn.
By the way: I loooooove how every video online of an Australian being attacked by furry wildlife involves the Australian talking to the attacker like it's a drunk friend: "What's up Skip? Ohh fuck off mate," or "(giggling) Piss off you bastard".
Three: What's up with putting a suburban neighborhood right in the middle of the Kiama Coastal Walk? It was certainly interesting to see what residential life is like, you know, landscaping, lots of palm trees in yards and tropical birds everywhere, educational...but...weird? You just felt more than once like you'd lost the trail and were just wandering through people's yards like a stupid tourist.
Four: Bonbo and the goddamn ocean. Superb. And, of course..."deadly."
Five: The warning sign on the beer garden door. I will transcribe it eventually since it's a little hard to read. Maybe this was a hotel? Super shady place.
Six: Sunburned pizza at Olive & Vine, we were soooooo goddamn hungry I think we ordered for 4 people. Nelson could barely function due to first-degree burns on her little face.
Seven: Yes we were staying on Bong Bong Street.
