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We have been waiting for word on our Angolan visas now for nearly two weeks. That fact that this past Thursday, May 1st was May Day, or International Workers Day did not help our situation in the least bit. May Day is celebrated throughout the world, except in the United States where we honor workers with the Labor Day holiday in the fall. Depending on where you are, May Day shuts down the country from anywhere from a day, to over a week, as was the case when we were waiting for our paperwork in China.

Here in the Congo, the May Day festivities officially only last one day, however, because May Day fell on a Thursday this year, it effectively meant that everyone had a four day weekend, including the consular staff working on our visas. The two “official” days off from work, plus the reduction in productivity leading up to those off days means that we are relegated to waiting even longer for our visas. The current word at the consulate is “sometime this week,” although they are still reluctant to give us any exact days or timeframe estimates. Unfortunately, I am still reluctant to get too excited about this news, because they said the same thing last week.

Luckily one of our new friends from South Africa, Charles, is a budding professional angler and has all of his equipment here in the Congo with him along with some extra gear to spare. Since everyone who is in any capacity to help us get the hell out of the Congo has been out of the office for the past four or five days, we thought we might as well go fishing. Why not? Everyone else has. Unfortunately, our motivation to get up at 5 in the morning was not enough to impress the fish as we did not catch much of anything, but it was a chance to get in the car and go for a drive… something this trip is all about and something we have not really done in quite a while.

Charles knew of a nice quiet spot to set up and fish

Mark and Charles try and catch some breakfast

Still not feeling fully recovered from malaria, I caught some Z’s

We have new photos up.

The links to the galleries are below.

Australian Aid School Building Project - AUS AID has committed to help build 2,000 schools in Indonesia over the course of the next 2 years.

Indonesia this Morning on Metro TV - Our first international TV appearance.

Tioman Island, Salang, Malaysia - This island was the setting for Bali Hai, it was also voted by Time magazine as one of the top ten most beautiful islands in the world.  We did some diving on their pristine reefs and marine reserves.  This is a place on earth not to be missed.

Setting off at 10pm, we met our guide and his friend who had a car the would take us on the two hour drive to Selo. Since we did not go through a tourism company and being that we were in Indonesia, this seemed relatively normal. This feeling did not last long. Slowing down at every cross street, the driver tried to discern if it was the correct one. After a few street inspections, he threw the car in reverse satisfied that the chosen road would do. With a manual transmission and the steep road, stalling seemed inevitable. It seemed the driver did not realize that lower gears work better for steep climbs or perhaps he just wanted to see how low he could get the RPM’s to go before the vehicle would come to a complete stop. At some point during this windy and jerky drive Steve woke up and looked around.  Moments later the driver commented, “Go back to sleep boss.”  Thoughts of kidnapping and ransom flickered through my thoughts as the car struggled up small roads in the dark of night.

Eventually the car pulled into Selo, the small village at the base of the climb.  At this point the guide said we should rest at his friend’s house before we set out for the top of the volcano in a couple of hours. Masks adorn the walls around the couch were five men were riveted to Jaws III on TV. We took a seat and tea was served. Forty-five minutes later after unsuccessful attempts at sleep we were roused. The guide said that we could borrow flashlights from his friend. At our request the perplexed man poked around until he scrounged up one old flashlight for Steve and I to share. Our original English speaking "guide" had already settled into the comfort of the couch and indicated that the two youngest men in the room would now be our guides. This made me uneasy because our "salesman" gave us the impression he would personally take us up the volcano and the new guides were not well versed in English.

On our journey further south we have arrived in a town named Geelong.  In stark contrast from the busy city of Melbourne, this quaint little town has an unbelievable waterfront with a quiet little restaurant serving excellent food, wood carved statues ornamenting the small parks along the boardwalk and lines of sailboats ready to cruise the bay.  Intially we would have passed right by this little gem and pushed on to the more known surf town of Tourquay, but we had a meeting with the marketing person for the tourism board handling the Great Ocean Road.  Roger Grant was his name and he was a pleasure to deal with.  From the moment I walked in the door of his office I felt like an old friend while he walked me through the many different locations and attractions he recommended along the famous Great Ocean Road.

I was made aware that our next five days will be spent on a road recently recommended by Frommers as the best touring road in the world.  As I listened to Roger speak of the thick forests, waterfalls, shipwreck coast and charming hotels along the route, I did not know that the adventure was to begin in less than a couple of hours.  Our meeting ended with a piece of paper from the receptionist that had the name and phone number of man named Duane who runs the Jet Boat operation in the bay.  Roger recommended taking a quick ride out on the jetboat before heading out to Tourquay.  We indulged in this offer, but never expected to still be in Geelong five hours later with this jet boat captain.

After a phone call to Duane on his cell phone I was made aware that he works another job building fences in the slow season, but was apparently more than happy to be pulled away from his other job for some afternoon fun.  He raced over to the marina to meet up with us and we were off.  Throughout this intense afternoon of bouncing, splashing, seemingly close calls with channel markers, and waves of water soaking the group, there was nothing but laughs and smiles.  We all hit it off pretty well with Duane so we lost track of time and stayed out on the water much longer than expected.  Upon our return the helicopter   pilot who runs an operation next door offered Kira and Chap a helicopter ride around the bay (I think he was a little jealous that he was not getting filmed). This lead us to the restaurant on the waterfront for some refreshments and conversation while the rest of the group waited.

We learned of Duane’s heritage in New Zealand, and how he has been in Australia for the last 20+ years.  He had always planned on heading back to New Zealnd, but ended up marrying an Australian and never returned.  He did however bring a little piece of New Zealand with him…Jet Boating.  In fact, the boat we were on orignally hailed from there. 

It is always a true pleasure to meet people with a zest for life.  Duane was nothing but good attitude and good times. A fence building, jet boating dad with a commitment to having a great time only adds to the great experience of flying around the bay on a jetboat.  I would be happy to have a delay like this any day of the week.

Click here to see all the pictures.