Goodbye, Aus

I think I'm officially done with travel for a while.

Up, down, up, down. Too many flights in the past week. Enough.

I'm here at Dallas Fort-Worth airport and here's how I'm feeling:

t
he rocky horror picture show (1975) I'm going home from rudyoutreville on Vimeo.

Too bad I left my corset and heels and Tim Curry face mask at home.

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Knowing that Christmas Island has little to none cellphone and Internet reception, I had intended to head to Sydney Saturday and update the blog then.

Then, the outbound flight from XCH to Perth conked out on Cocos Islands.

I was dropped off at the airport for the 4 p.m. Saturday flight to see a long queue of luggage left unattended. I asked a person what was going on and he told me the flight was cancelled. There was no information and the Virgin agents were useless and unsympathetic.

For me, this meant that Sydney was a no-go. I had 30 hours, which would inevitably be cut down to six. That city has a great vibe, by the way. The AirBnB penthouse in the Rocks was fabulous. Would love to go back there for a longer visit.

Finally, after a 40-minute call to Virgin later on that evening on the island, we were informed there would be a replacement plane at 2:15 the next day, taking us to Cocos to pick up other stranded people and flying directly to Perth from there.

OK, good. Stopped panicking. 

The next day, I got on that plane. But there were more fuck-ups from Virgin Australia to come.

The captain needed paperwork to be completed by ground crew, which delayed us. Then, there was an error in the number count of passengers on the plane. Twenty minutes later, they figured out there was an engineer onboard that shouldn't be there.

The delays meant people trying to connect to Brisbane at 10:30 p.m. would not make it. I had a bit more confidence in my Sydney connection at 11:15 p.m.

But then, add in the time to clear customs, collect bags, transfer to the domestic terminal and the nine of us arrived in check-in at 11 p.m. They were going to leave without us.

"We weren't expecting you so late," a woman behind the counter nonchalantly said.

Well, you guys keep fucking up. Maybe you should fix it. Maybe you should tell people what's going on.

A very nice police officer I was introduced to in Christmas Island kindly offered to give me his seat if it came down to the wire. I needed to be on this flight to make the Qantas flight booked Sunday to get home. Any change to Qantas would mean $1,200 out of pocket.

I also found out the 4 p.m. regular flight out of XCH that was also cancelled. Useless.

It all worked out in the end. I did lose a day in Sydney, but that's OK.

Would not recommend flying Virgin to remote areas, which is a shame because that's the only airline that flies to Christmas Island and I do believe that place is worth visiting. But travellers should be wary that if the plane breaks down, they're kind of stuck there. An agent said the next available flight out wouldn't be until Dec. 5. Completely unacceptable.

Part of it is also my fault – I didn't leave enough wiggle room and thought my work insurance covers all areas of travel. It doesn't; only if you get sick on the trip. I waived my trip interruption and cancelling coverage. C'est la vie.

Usually, on short trips, I get a little blue coming home. But after being away for two weeks, the only thing I'm looking forward to is home – my friends, my dog, my bed.

The Christmas Island Experience

This public service announcement is brought to you by the letter, C. C for 'Crabs.'

A few years ago, I came across this video for the annual crab migration on Christmas Island. I'm not sure if it was on Planet Earth or some other National Geographic video, but it fascinated me.

Over 45 million red crabs slowing moving in waves across the island to get to the Indian Ocean to spawn. Weeks later, the surviving babies – if they don't get eaten by predators – return to land and do the same walk their mothers did weeks before.

It's the circle of life. Fascinating.

Here's a cute video Faye asked me to shoot for her grade 1/2 class:



That is one aspect of Christmas Island, which after spending two days getting to know the locals, seems to be culturally and politically embattled. There's a dark history to that island, but out of that is a very tight-knit community comprising of mainly Malaysian and Chinese descendants.

There are memorials for the two shipwrecks encountered on the island, the worst being in 2010 when a boatload of asylum-seeks crashed into the rocks.

For anyone who hasn't read this excellent look into asylum-seekers in Christmas Island by the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/the-impossible-refugee-boat-lift-to-christmas-island.html?_r=0http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/the-impossible-refugee-boat-lift-to-christmas-island.html?_r=0

And people on the island will offer different views of asylum seekers, but they prefer to promote their tourism, which can be difficult – Virgin only flies there a few times a week; many places that would normally be two-star accommodations can jack up prices to 5-star rates because a) it's expensive to get commodities on a remote island b) there aren't a lot of places to stay because many spots have already been rented out by detention centre workers.

But island has its beautiful, protected red crabs (It's a $5,000 fine if you deliberately run over one in your car or snatch one up to eat) and it can be its biggest asset.

Because my flight was cancelled on Friday, that enabled me to stay another night, meet some locals at a barbecue and take up an offer with the parks ranger to get on his boat at 4 a.m. and take a look for red crabs spawning. It's an event that doesn't happen every day and is very dependent on rainfall. That morning, however, they were spawning.

Wow.

It looked like a moving carpet of red clinging to the rocky cliffs. Females carried a brown sac containing 100,000 eggs. When they are ready to drop the package to the ocean, they lift up their front claws and do an Elvis-like hip shake and their unborn babies drop into the water. They have to be careful to not fall into the water, though, as they cannot swim and will drown.

It's an amazing process and I'm glad I got to see it. I feared with climate change, perhaps one day, Mother Nature would just stop the process. I waned to see it just in case she does.

We also saw eight dolphins swimming that day. Rob, the ranger, towed a line for the snorkelers to hold onto while he slowly drove the boat near the dolphins, so they could get a better look.

Still deciding whether the loss of time in Sydney was worth it, along with all the hassle from Virgin, but I'm happy to scratch the red crabs off my bucket list.