Falls and Falling

We had many opportunities to look at waterfalls in the Australian tablelands. In the rain, and on a plain, in a bus, not from a train. Below: Barron Falls, Millaa Millaa Falls, Zillie Falls (I'm pretty sure that's right), and the "no duh" sign at the Zillie outlook. Two weeks earlier there was about twice that much water going over Barron. At Millaa Millaa, the rain was pouring buckets. There were people on the "falls circuit" who just wouldn't get out of the picture -- maybe the shirtless guy, still following me from Kaikoura?!?! At least tuneless girl and her guitar didn't show up as well...

NZ Kaikoura - A Weird Bus Stop

That's the ocean view from a town where our bus stopped for a lunch break -- Kaikura, South Island, NZ. We had ice cream (yum!) and got bread, cheese, and fruit to snack on. And batteries for mom's camera. It was eating batteries like nobody's business!

The two weird things were this random shirtless dude who insinuated himself into BOTH of my photos (far right) and a tuneless girl attempting to play her guitar for money, but she didn't know any songs, and seemed to be practicing a random and very limited assortment of chords, so, who would give money for that?!?! Maybe for her to stop? Anyway, before long, it was time to get on the bus and be gone so we did. No performance ever commenced from tuneless girl ... but it's noteworthy that they do whale and swim with dolphins kinds of tours from Kaikoura -- it looked nice. I'd go back.

What is frugivorous?

Everyone (well, more accurately, perhaps many people) asked for an update on the NZ/Australia trip. Unfortunately, I don't know where to start. When I reappeared in my jetlaggish state on Monday 3/9, people at work politely queried "How was your trip?" To which I answered, in my pedantic and unswervingly honest way: "too long and too short, exhausting and exhilarating, amazing and wonderful, all at the same time."

Anyway, I was doing something online today, and I found the word "frugivore", which was a link, so I clicked on it and found the wikipedia entry which stated: "A frugivore is a type of herbivore (plant-eating animal) that eats a substantial portion of fruit."

Which reminded me of our amazing and wonderful (see first paragraph) hosts, Guy, Francesca, and Jasmine Carpenter, who ARE vegetarians AND took us to see a Tablelands fruit bat rescue facility where Australia's flying foxes are sheltered and rehabilitated. Before you get all ishy about the bats, let me say that their wings looked like really soft black leather -- so soft! While we visited with our hosts later, Guy mentioned that once he had met a group of "fruitarians" who said they just needed amino acids to get by in life...hmmmmm.... so man CAN live by fruit alone?

LoSpace readers, feel free to look into that!