Furiously Happy (22 page)

“Super bushy,” Laura replied. “
The bushiest.
”

I felt sure Australia would be grateful they'd sent such wordsmiths on this trip.

When we arrived at the campsite we realized it was less “camping” and more “glamping,” or glamorous camping. The tent was already set up for us and there was an outdoor bathtub and mosquito nets. There was also a lodge nearby that offered fancy food, booze, hot tea, and plugs to recharge our stuff. We met up with Ben (whose name might actually be Ben—or it might be something else), whose family owned and operated the campground. He had dinner with us. It was avocado ice cream with popcorn and Tabasco-sauce soup. (
“There's a lotta weird shit happening all at once here.”
—Laura on Australian cuisine.
“What's in my mouth?”
—Me on the same thing.)

Ben told us about a costume party he'd been to last week where he'd dressed up as a vagina and the guy who was with him dressed up as tweezers to go with the vagina. It was then that I started to suspect that Ben didn't know how vaginas work. Then he exclaimed, “No, wait, not a tweezer. That other thing. Um … a … a SPECULUM!” Then the other diners jumped a bit and stared at us. With jealousy I suspect.

Ben assured us that our fear of sleeping in the bush was unfounded. His exact words were “No worries, mates. She'll be apples,” which is apparently Australian for “Calm your ass down.” I asked if there were any rhinos nearby and explained that everything I knew about the bush I learned from watching
The Gods Must Be Crazy
when I was in second grade. Then Ben pointed out that that movie was about the bush of Botswana, so basically everything I know about Australia is Botswana.

We explained that our fear of the bush was primarily of possums because they like to make wigs out of Laura's hair. Ben hesitantly admitted that it might not
all
be apples because we were assigned to sleep in something named “Possum Tent,” but he did assure us that Australia's possums were adorable and not the angry, giant-teethed, hissing menaces that we had in Texas.

Just in case you think I'm overreacting, this is an American possum on his best behavior. (
Courtesy of Andrew Kantor
)

“One caution though,” he said. “
Absolutely no food in your tent
because that will attract wild animals.”

“Yes.” I paused. “But Laura and I are
made
of meat.”

Ben assured us that we'd be fine and sweetly added, “Please don't murder our possums. Ours are well behaved and won't eat your face off.” Ben gave us what he called “a torch” but what we called a tiny keychain flashlight that seemed to have a short in it because it kept turning off as Laura and I walked through the dense bush, alone and shivering. Then we turned directly onto a path with A GIANT POSSUM IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. Laura was so scared she screamed out, “AMANDA!” which was weird because
who the hell is Amanda
? Later she said she just screamed out a nonsensical phrase made from pure fear and too many vowels but I suspect she has unresolved issues with this Amanda person. Either way, that's when the flashlight went out and we were stuck in complete darkness with the sound of an animal scurrying either toward us or away from us. “PROTECT YOUR HAIR,” I yelled, and I considered covering her hair with my hands but I was afraid she might think my hands were possums and knife me. Laura's awesome, but she's a bit of a loose cannon when it comes to hair possums. But then the flashlight came back on and the possum was gone. I considered telling Laura it was probably just a ghost possum but I worried that might make her more freaked out.

We finally got to our tent, and we put on the kangaroo and koala costumes I'd packed because it was unexpectedly freezing and also because we thought if wild animals got in during the night they'd think we were one of them and wouldn't eat us. I'm not ashamed to say that at one point we made
Blair Witch
–esque videos saying good-bye to our families in case we didn't make it. I
am
ashamed to say that I tried to distract Laura with tales I'd heard the day before during a dolphin-watching trip. Sadly, all I'd really learned is that dolphins are super rapey. True story. I don't know why anyone wants to swim with them. Spell-check is trying to cover it up by saying “rapey” isn't a word, but it is. Male dolphins can go into murderous rages out of sexual frustration and will even gang-rape female dolphins at times. Laura looked at me like I'd gone insane and I realized I'd just been talking about scary Australian animals again, but I pointed out that it's not as if a land dolphin was likely to come accost us in our tent. At least not this far inland. Probably.

“Please stop talking about rapey dolphins,” Laura said.

“
Got it
,” I replied, changing the subject to something lighter. “The dolphin tour also pointed out a private island that no one is allowed on because there are penguins there who need to be protected, according to scientists. Seems sort of suspect though … penguins in Australia that no one is allowed to see? I think the scientists are lying and just want their own private island. That's probably how the Cullens got theirs.”

“Or, maybe just stop talking in general,” Laura suggested.

And so I did.

The next morning I chased a family of wild kangaroos toward Laura while she was taking a bath outside of our tent. I did this out of friendship. Sometimes you have to explain these things.
Apparently.

Goal Number 3: Investigate If Australian Toilets Really Do Flush Backward

I totally tried this but all of the toilets in Australia are low flow so basically the water just disappears and then comes back. Sorry if you're disappointed. I assure you, you are not alone. But in a way, that's good because if toilets really flushed backward you'd get shot in the face with toilet water every time you flushed, like a violently angry bidet. Also, apparently Australia thought this goal was too ludicrous to take seriously and instead decided to send us to the outback to see more interesting things.

We were to be in the outback for several days, which seemed very wild and exciting until I actually read about the outback on the plane ride there and realized that it was basically just rocks and desert. It looks a lot like West Texas if West Texas went on for a billion miles and you took out all the beer barns and people and replaced them with deadly snakes that want to murder you.

The only
real
difference between West Texas and the outback is the pride Australians have in their rocks. And they
should
be proud. There are
enormous
rocks in Australia and we were on our way to see the second-largest one in the world, Uluru. I saw it as we flew over it toward the airport (which was built specifically to let people fly in and look at a big rock). I turned to Laura. “Hey … There's that big rock.” I nodded toward the plane window.

Laura leaned over to see it. “Huh. That
is
a big rock.” She nodded somewhat impressedly, the same way you would if you saw a monkey do the Macarena on YouTube, and then she flipped desperately through our guidebook to see if there were any bars in the outback. “So now what do we do for the
rest
of our three days here?”

I shouldn't have doubted Australia though, because when we looked closer at our itinerary we found that we'd be doing a
lot
in the outback. Like looking at other, almost-as-big-but-not-
quite
-as-big-as-Uluru rocks. Or eating while listening to the rocks. And walking around the rocks. And taking a sunrise tour of the rocks, and a separate sunset tour of the rocks. And buying pictures of the rocks.

We did not have high hopes for this leg of the journey.

I suspected we were being unfair though, because the guidebooks all said that Uluru was astounding and that the subtle light changes on the rock turned it into a whole new rock each time the sun moved. I assumed the people writing those guidebooks were on LSD, because I once said the exact same thing about biscuits when I was really high.

Turns out that the guidebooks were right. Uluru was pretty amazing. It's the second-largest monolith in the world and I didn't ask what a monolith is but my guess is that it's Latin for “big-ass rock.” Our hiking guide drove us to Uluru from the resort, which was a small cluster of low-end-to-high-end hotels you could choose to stay in if you didn't want to sleep outside and be gnawed on by dingoes. The dingo gnawing wasn't specifically in the hotel brochures but I think it was implied. “No dingo nibbling here, probably. Running tap water on demand.” Something like that. The small airport, the resort, and some tents we never saw were about the only things for hours so there was no escape, but we found out that our medium-priced hotel was quite lovely and offered a full bar so we were fine. Also, the room we were in had an interesting carpet that was supposed to remind us of ancient red-bottomed creeks but instead the blood-colored stain running through the brown carpet looked a lot like a murder victim had been dragged across the room and thrown off the balcony. But in a pretty way.

Our guide was a very sweet and knowledgeable woman who was eager to share the cultural magic of Uluru, which is now owned by the Aboriginal people who originally owned it back before white people showed up and said, “You have no concept of ownership? Lovely! We own all of this now. But never mind that. How are you? Can we escort you somewhere else and treat you like shit for a while?” It's a very long and sordid history that is only now beginning to be rectified (including giving Uluru back and paying the local indigenous people to let tours take place) but it basically boils down to the same principle around the world, which is that white people suck and should not be allowed to discover anything that's already been discovered by the people who've lived there since the world began. On behalf of white people I'd like to offer an extremely late but completely sincere “I'm so very sorry for our being assholes. We're learning. Also, I've heard a few stories about some of you guys eating some of us in Tasmania, but I can assure you there are no hard feelings. We'd probably eat us too if there was enough money in it.” I don't have any pictures of the lovely Aboriginal people I met because they think it traps their spirit, and if they're correct then Facebook is basically creating a living hell. Which is really not that surprising, now that I say it out loud.

Our guide, whom I'll call Jessica because I'm a terrible journalist and I don't write down names, drove us (plus an older American couple and a young Danish girl) the short distance to the base of Uluru, where she began explaining that the part of the rock we see is “just the tip” (high five if you giggled there) and that the majority of the rock is still underground. Jessica used a stick to trace out in the red sand what Uluru actually looked like: the long shaft hidden, rising slowly upward until just the tip penetrated the surface. I stared at Laura with wide eyes and she stared back at me as we realized our guide had totally inadvertently drawn a penis on the ground that all of us were looking at in amazement. I got a quick photo of it but it doesn't really show up in black and white, plus our guide was in the process of stomping it out. But if you'd like a color picture of a young woman stomping on a penis on the ground, I can deliver. Not that you would want that. I'd like to think that no one really wants that.