Wine Tour and Scuba Diving:

nommed by a giant face in Luna Park

On Friday September 10 Sheila, Noah, Katie and I went up to Sydney for the afternoon in preparation for a wine tour in Hunter Valley early Saturday morning.  We wandered around for a while, hitting the Luna Park, an epic amusement park similar to Kiddieland.  We made friends with some really nice clowns.  Then we went to dinner at an awesome vegetarian restaurant that we discovered during our last Sydney visit, and headed back to our hostel to go to bed early.  Unfortunately, our luck with hostels continued to amaze us.  At 2am, Scottish winners came back to our hostel room and decided it was time to have a conversation about hot girls for an hour.  Comfortable.  Then, they were convinced that I was farting in my sleep (unclear where this came from, I had been awake since they got back to the room).  One of the guys kept saying to his friend “she’s fucking farting…. Listen to the air!  The carbon dioxide!  You can’t hear it now dude, but listen, the airrr!”  It took so much effort to pretend I was still sleeping (and apparently farting) at this point.  I am actually proud at how well I held back my laughter.  After awhile, the action died down a bit and we dozed off temporarily.  Only to wake up again to the sound of top bunk Scottish boy peeing the bed in his sleep, which proceeded to seep through the mattress and start dripping on Scottish boy number two.  Of course.  So for the next hour the boy who got peed on screamed at the boy who peed/got him up and out of the room, obviously leaving his communal blanket soaking in pee (comforting).  At this point, it was about 4:30 am and we had to wake up at 6:30 for the wine tour.  Finally time for bed.

Darling Harbour - NO DIVING!

In the morning, I woke up to find that the boy who got peed on was sleeping under me.  It was really a shame that it took so much squeaking and shaking of my bed to get all of my sheets off, I was so sad to have “accidentally” woken him up.  I also found that my nose was rather stuffy, and obviously the only place to use a tissue was right next to his face.  We then said the nicest of goodbyes, and were on our way. 

We started our wine tour at a random national park in Hunter Valley.  I was kind of confused why we were there, we looked at one Aboriginal rock carving and some mangroves, but that was kind of it.  I think they weren’t really sure what to do with us, but sleeping a bit later would have been nice.  Then we went to three different wineries.  One was small and family run, and the other two were bigger. We all liked the family run one best.  We also stopped at an awesome cheese store. 

simulating a dinner party?  I have
cool friends.

On Sunday, I went scuba diving again at Shell Harbor with Karen and some other friends.  The first dive of the morning was similar to our refresher dive.  I got to hold a cuttlefish this time (well technically I cuddled the cuttlefish…).  In the afternoon, we got to ride around on a bunch of underwater scooters.  On this dive, we saw a massive cuttlefish and a weedy sea dragon with a bunch of baby eggs. 

FUN FACT:  Go watch Finding Nemo.  You’ll learn some valuable information.  Not all scuba divers are mean and scary like that dentist though. 

Aboriginal ghost carving.  You can't really see all if it, I'll look for a better photo.