Okay, time for a day off.

This statement is a toughie for some of us on vacation, especially on shorter trips where we feel compelled to maximize our time. But it’s something I learned to do on my big world trip, and can attest to its powers to enhance almost any kind of holiday.

So what the heck was I going to do in a ski town if I wasn’t skiing (or boarding)?

A bit of shopping, for one: yes, it is possible to find not-too-expensive gifts for nears-and-dears in this place… and they don’t all involve chocolate. Oh, who am I kidding; I bought a pile of that as well.

Fraternizing with the natives, for another. Zermatt’s not much of a gay destination (though come to think of it, I haven’t found snow resorts anywhere to be so), but I had had some success chatting online with a smattering of fellows. I was halfway to putting on my snow gear and opting for an easy half-day on the slopes when one guy I’d been talking to messaged me; he was off work today and was up for a rendezvous.

We met around the corner from my hotel, outside the church in Kirchplatz. Jan was fair-featured and athletic, hails from Interlaken and has been working for the season at the restaurant in the classiest spot in town, the Grand Hotel Zermatterhof. The quaver in his voice indicated he was interested in more than just a chat.

“It’s not so nice,” he said of his gorgeous, $800-a-night workplace. Lordie, not another one. It seems that faux-jaded gay youth are a constant the world over. This translated into an equally tepid performance back at my hotel room. It was all over in less than fifteen minutes as he put his clothes back on.

“I hate the spa,” he said, when I asked him about where in town I should go if I wanted a dunk in a jacuzzi somewhere. “And if you find one, it will cost you at least 75 Francs.”

“Really?” That’s north of 80 Yankee bucks.

“Welcome to Switzerland,” he replied, as he headed off. The whole thing felt like one of those furtive gay encounters you read about from the Mad Men 1960s. Heck, I’m all for casual encounters, but call me a romantic as I prefer even those to retain a measure of intimacy and warmth. Oh, well. Still not too bad for a day off.

It was too late to head out on the slopes, so I opted for more cultural offerings: right by my hotel was the newly-built Matterhorn Museum. In spite of its name, it’s really more a historical exhibit on Zermatt tiself – which suited me just fine. I’m curious to the point of obsessive about how places came to be the way they are; some have criticized Wander the Rainbow for delving a bit too heavily into factoids cribbed from Wikipedia, but in truth, the discovery of a place’s origins and evolution ranks near the top of my travel interests.

Surprisingly, for a place so world-renowned, I hadn’t been able to find out a whole lot about Zermatt or this region among my usual suspects of online research sites. Maybe because snow enthusiasts aren’t terribly interested in the vagaries of ski-resort history; indeed, most resorts Stateside have a fairly straightforward past: either they began life as rugged mining towns that transformed themselves mid-20th-century into ski towns (Aspen, Breckenridge); or else were synthesized out of whole cloth to mimic alpine resorts in the Old World (Vail, Whistler).

But Zermatt’s another story entirely. Humans have been passing through the nearby Theodul Pass for eons. Neolithic tools, Roman coins, and remains of a 16th-century man have all been found nearby. With the advent of Europe’s Little Ice Age in the later Middle Ages, however, traffic slowed as the Simplon and Great St. Bernard passes rose in prominence. By the middle of the 19th century, Zermatt was a poor farming village filled with those now-iconic wide-sloped-roof Swiss chalets. I learned why these wood-framed structures (some specimens from way back lay across from my accommodations) sit on stone stilts: used for agricultural storage, they needed to protect themselves from prying mice.

So what transformed this sleepy farming hamlet into an elite class resort? Blame it on those Victorian Brits and their zeal to take on the world. This I learned about at my next stop, the nearby Hotel Monte Rosa, the oldest of the town’s high-end accommodations. In a walking tour and talk delivered by a prim young blonde hotel staffer – in near-effortless German, French and English – I learned that the so-called Golden Age of Mountaineering drew British climbers to this spot. The Matterhorn was one of the later peaks to be scaled in the region, and its summiteer, Edward Whymper, left from this very hotel in 1865. In spite of a successful climb, four people were lost in that endeavor and it became something of a scandal in the British press. Notoriety bred curiosity, however, and soon people were flocking to this isolated Swiss village. The Monte Rosa expanded several times; its owner, Alexander Seiler, became a local magnate with ownership of the lion’s share of the town’s hotels (though as a pushy entrepreneur he received a frosty reception from the town’s burghers). Rail links to Visp and up the Gornergrat followed by the end of the 19th century, though it was only after the turmoil of the World Wars and the ascendancy of winter sports that the town took on its high-tone appeal.

With that history lesson completed, I sought some relaxation; proving Jan decidedly wrong, I headed to the Mont Cervin Palace, the third of the town’s ritzy hotels, and for a modest sum whiled away the rest of the afternoon in their beautiful health club: two jacuzzis, a standard swimming pool, and a heated indoor/outdoor pool proved an excellent tonic.

To cap it all off, another iconic Swiss dish was in the offing: the nearby Café du Pont was widely recommended as among the best (and one of the more reasonable – though not cheap) spots to enjoy cheese fondue. Impressively, they even did it for my “table for one.”

As it grew later I received a message from another guy online: Pascal was getting off work late, around 11 p.m., but was open to a meetup after that. I wasn’t sure what to expect after my previous encounter, but something about the style of his messages gave me hope. I met him, too, outside the church close to midnight, and indeed, he was a total contrast from the previous encounter.

“I came here to visit a friend five years ago, and I loved it so much!” said Pascal. About the same age as Jan but way more gregarious, engaging, and positive. He took me for a drink at a nearby lounge-y spot where, apparently, the town’s few gays often congregate.

“There are maybe ten in the whole town,” he said. “They are mostly arrogant and not very nice.” Tell me about it. Happily, he proved different: we had a wonderful chat about life in Europe (he hails from western Germany, not far from Luxembourg), politics in America, the ski season, and myriad other events. He, too, came back with me, and this go-round was a damn sight better than the last one. I hit the pillow around 2 a.m. on an Alpine mountain high.

In spite of the late night, I rose on my own steam bright and early for a final day on the slopes. A bit of light snow had fallen the day before, but now skies were blue again, albeit with tendrils of cloud hugging and swirling about the mountains. I again did the gondola/cable car combo to the top of Klein Matterhorn; this time it was windier, colder, and less crowded. As I began my descent, I whooshed into some clouds and it began to snow. The dense fog meant whiteout conditions. But, as with fog back in San Fran, the murk shortly cleared and I opted for another far-flung adventure: taking the pistes all the way down to the other base resort on the Italian side: the town of Valtournenche.

This was the longest descent yet, as Valtournenche lies at an even lower elevation than Zermatt. But I paced myself this time, carefully navigating a couple of traverses and a mini-chairlift to get to the other side of this massive set of mountains. Here again, a narrow trail to the bottom, and, with the low elevation (1,524 m, about the same as Salt Lake City), mushy spring conditions and bare slopes all around us.

Valtournenche, too, wasn’t much of a place, so I hopped the gondola up to one of the Italian mountain eateries and had myself a seafood pasta, one of the better insalata caprese in my career, and (of course) a most righteous cappuccino on the sunny slopes.

Thus fortified, I embarked on my next adventure: getting back to Zermatt.

Given what I’d experienced so far, this ought have been a breeze. The resort is, as I’d mentioned, richly endowed with high-tech lifts to get around its mammoth acreage. On the first two days, between the cog railways, funiculars, gondolas and aerial trams, I never once planted my butt on something as prosaic as a chairlift.

No more, as the Valtournenche side isn’t quite as blessed. Aside from the minor nuisance of sitting out in the cold, however, to most skiers the reaction this would be a ho-hum “so what?” But a snowboard, admittedly a less practical conveyance, is trickier to navigate on fast-moving, ski-on/ski-off lifts. One of the toughest elements, in fact, in learning the sport is simply getting on and off chairlifts – and klutz that I am, I still fall a percentage of the time on descent.

But the chairlifts were not the issue (especially since some of them had enclosed bubble canopies to ward off the chill – why this had not been thought of years ago is beyond me). No, looking on the trail map, my heart sank:

The only way to get back to Zermatt from Valtournenche was to take a rope tow, also known as a Poma lift. This contraption – one of the earliest to ferry skiers up an incline – has the passenger sit on it on the ground while it pulls them forward; essentially, it’s like skiing uphill. Suffice it to say, it’s a nightmare on a snowboard; I’d tried riding some of these throughout my years as a snowboarder, and every time I’d fallen off midway, having to haul myself through deep powder to a nearby trail, panting and exhausted by the end. I was dreading this, but steeling myself for the inevitable all the same: if I fall off, I’ll just try it again, I mused.

Just as I got to the Lift of Death, I saw in line ahead of me an affable young British couple, the only other ones braving this thing on snowboards.

“How do you ride this thing?” I asked them.

“Just stay loose,” they replied, showing me how as the lift attendent placed the round red seat between their legs. I was next, and he did the same with me. I got in the typical “skate” position (one leg bolted to the board, another not), and…

Hey, I can do this!

I rode all the way to the top, and once there let out a victorious whoop. I’d been sensing that my skills as a snowboarder had grown surer in my time here on the massive slopes, and if nothing else, this was vindication of that.

By the time I’d reached the top of Plateau Rosa, on the Swiss/Italian border once more, skies had mostly cleared save for a few remaining wisps swirling about the mountains. Unlike the previous day, I was feeling assured and ready for the final run into Zermatt. I began heading down the mountain, the glorious Matterhorn again resuming its oft-photographed form. I parked myself on a quiet trail and stared at it for a spell.

It’s all small stuff, I mused, about the myriad stressors and ups and downs in my life of late. Sometimes it takes a week or so of staring a glorious scenery to remind one of the bigger picture. I turned back toward Zermatt – still toylike down in the valley below – to call it an afternoon.

And then, just as I’d found inner peace, and all was well with the world, the other shoe dropped. Literally, in fact.

Once more reaching the lower elevations, the trails became narrow, of modest pitch, and a bit icy. Perhaps sensing this, skiers and riders began to pick up their game: where before they floated down the mountain, now they powered down it. No problem, I thought. With my newfound skills and confidence (I rode up a Poma!) I figured I could do so as well. I amped up my usual methodical style, and whooshed down the hill like a pro. And then…

WHAM!

It all happened so quickly, as it so often does: my board caught an edge on the hard-packed snow and I went tumbling, end over end, finally falling hard on my back. My worst fall this trip by far.

I wasn’t hurt, aside from a slightly sore butt; I’ve learned to take no chances in snowsports, and I ride the pistes with wrist guards and protective shorts that include a tailbone guard (my nine-year-old niece Lola calls it my “special underwear.”). I also equip myself with one of those Camelbak daypacks that includes an insulated water bladder – much needed at altitude with these exertions. As I’d landed on the pack, my fall was cushioned. Still, I’d heard a tiny crack when I slammed my back on the snow, and instantly knew what it was.

Oh, shit. I thought. My camera.

Taking electronics up and down ski slopes probably sounds like asking for trouble. Still, it’s a risk I’ve opted to take in exchange for capturing the jaw-dropping vistas for myself. Much has been said and written about the notion of actually just experiencing travel instead of constantly trying to capture it… but for me, documenting is part of the experience. That’s why I keep this blog, why I wrote Wander the Rainbow, why I take photographs at times like some stereotypical Japanese tourist. Chronicling my adventures are an integral part of my adventures. Perhaps it’s my background in communications or my love of movies, but I can’t imagine travel without it.

Making sure I was on a spot on the trail where I was clearly visible to the skiers and riders above, I opened my pack and took out the camera. It was embedded inside a scarf and myriad other padding, and thus far looked okay. I turned it on. Still okay… but the lens expanded out all the way out, froze in place, then the screen read: “lens error.” Fuck. It’s one of those higher-end Canon point-and-shoots with interchangeable lenses, so I tried unscrewing the lens – and pieces of the assembly fell into my gloved hands. The camera’s four years old and has already been with me on many outings (including my global circumnavigation), so the loss of it (or the need for a costly repair) may be hurt a little but not a lot. I gingerly put the pieces back in my pack and make ready to resume the ride into town.

“YOU FUCKING IDIOT, WHAT’RE YOU DOING!??” came a cockney-accented voice whooshing past. A gaggle of skiers and riders roared by, one of them obviously enraged that I caused him to slow. Indeed, the trail does feature flat bits that need to be negotiated at some speed (part of the reason for my fall), but up ahead, it wasn’t too bad. I suspected, with the day ending and the trail narrowing, flattening, and icing up, that the crowd has turned more belligerent. Still, I wondered, in the midst of all this glorious scenery, was that really necessary?

I head toward the bottom, more gingerly than before. At one particularly flat, narrow bit of trail I gathered some speed – only to see a pile of skiers sitting down, blocking the trail far worse than I had earlier. I tried to navigate around them but no dice: I crashed into one of them (albeit not at speed). I apologized profusely, indicating they were in the way. He was a middle-aged man, a cockney Brit, possibly the same guy as before. And he was having none of it. He cussed, swore at me, fulminated with rage.

“Come on, we’re on vacation,” I offered. This only seemed to make him angrier – so much so that skiers around him began to look askance.

“It wasn’t your fault!” said a pleasant young lady beside me, German accent. She was right, of course, but somehow it failed to soothe me. I rode the gondola a smidge down to the village (I’d had enough of riding after all this), and mused about this whole affair on the walk back.

On top of killer snow and mountain-town authenticity (and great eating), I’d come here hoping for more congenial experiences than I’d sometimes encountered at similar such American spots (see my previous post for specifics). Indeed, even with the dour Swiss I’d found a general courtesy; when people got pissy, they did so in a reserved, guarded fashion. But this explosion of rage I’d experienced harkened back to the worse of American redneckery – or, perhaps, British football hooliganism. I’d mused about such behaviors throughout my great world journey, and suspect I may have run afoul of it here. And money these days doesn’t always translate into good behavior… heck, has it ever?

Or maybe I’m just overthinking it all. Lord knows I’ve been guilty of that in the past.

After relaxing at the hotel and taking care of a few packing-related logistics, I opted to treat myself after this end-of-day turnabout: I’d already enjoyed a myriad of Swiss and Italian dishes in my time here, but have never before tried another variant of fondue, that involving meat. Calling it “fondue” is probably a bit of a stretch – although the principle of dipping stuff in a hot liquid still applies, here you boil raw shavings of beef and lamb in flavored oil, and apply dipping sauces to it. Still, it was fantastic, and capped off my time in this town very nicely.

I wandered through Bahnhofstrasse once last time, drinking in the lit-up shops and weekend crowds just beginning to arrive for their snow holidays. The past couple of days have given me a veritable banquet for thought, most especially about this part of the world so connected to yet still quite distinct from North America.

Since rediscovering the Continent as an adult on my great world trip, I’ve had a tendency to mythologize it: its lifestyles and social benefits; its speedy trains; its top-notch (and better-priced) mobile phone service; its populace seemingly less agro than the martial-oriented Yanks back home. But maybe it’s important for me to be jolted back to reality once in a while – on this trip, all of those elements failed in some way. No, Europe isn’t perfect… and coming here for the third time in three years offered me – in addition to splendid sights and remarkable attractions – an object lesson that, even if a place doesn’t live up to some mythic standard, it’s still capable of delivering a legendary time, and experiences that stay with you all your life.

Okay, I (sort-of) lied: my tale of the voyage from London to Zermatt won’t be found here. I’ll be posting that story, along with videos and images, as an upcoming guest blog on my travel cohort Brock Groombridge’s site, Backpack With Brock. He too went around the world solo and blogged about his adventures, and is now parlaying his experiences into a career in travel coaching. Oh, and he’s Canadian, too!

They say first impressions are everything, and if so, the initial night-time glimpse I got of Zermatt after my long, long, long day of travel offered hope. Still, I wasn’t sure quite what to expect from this place; it had been so built up in my mind and in the hosannas of others  that disappointment seemed entirely possible (look no further than here for an example of such a letdown).

All that evaporated next morning inside of ten minutes.

Zermatt’s a pricey place: snowsports are not cheap to begin with, and above and beyond that there have always been a cadre of top-flight resorts catering to the elite. We know their names all too well: St. Moritz, Vail, Aspen. I’ve had mixed feelings about such places: on the one hand, they’re often situated astride some of the best skiing around; on the other hand… well, I’m not a fan of snootery. Back in the States I’ve had mostly good times at such spots, but a few experiences marred the total: at Aspen, one of the last mountains to allow snowboarding, two middle-aged, agro New Yorkers let forth venom and vitriol at those of us who’ve migrated over to the board side. At another Colorado resort, a gaggle of Texans on a chairlift gave me an earful on how global warming was a hoax cooked up by “liberals who don’t have god in their lives.”

Yes, really.

I was hoping for something different here, even in oft-dour Switzerland. For one thing, I’d heard Europeans welcomed snowboarding, or indeed any contraption people have dreamed up to get down a mountain. For another, although prices did seem rather steep, they didn’t seem greater than at posh Stateside spots such as Aspen or Vail. Oh, sure, Zermatt’s got its glorious belle epoque hotels that command rates at least as as high as its brethren back home – but the town also offers some budget lodgings. At Le Petit Hotel, my chosen spot, I found a tiny room (fitting its name), uber-friendly staff, excellent breakfast (how oh how do Europeans do bread so well?), even a separate ski room (complete with boot warmers) for storing gear. All at the price of a Best Western back home – if one could ever find such a creature walking distance from an elite ski slope.

And here, too, Zermatt enchants: to prevent L.A.-style smog in the valley, internal-combustion vehicles were banned from the city ages ago. The odd taxi or service vehicle is miniaturized, electric, and downright adorable. The town is a maze of narrow, pedestrian-friendly streets and byways; elevators allow access to some of the hilltop chalets stairstepping their way up the valley. It’s no wonder North American ski towns like Vail and Whistler have tried to mimic this formula: it’s the way all cities ought to be built, if you ask me, the way humans lived in urban agglomerations for millennia before the advent of the automobile. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no car-hater; I relish the periodic road trip. But I feel that urban spaces work best with less vehicle traffic, and hope that, as the effort goes on to perfect the electric car, urban planning goes the way of towns like Zermatt.

The town continued to work its charm as I marched down Bahnhofstrasse, its main drag. The old church a stone’s throw from my accommodations played the opening bars from “Three Blind Mice” on the quarter hour. The Matterhorn – that bewitching, Platonic ideal of a mountain – peeked its corkscrew top out from between the chalets as I headed, snowboard in hand, to a most unique ski lift. Not a lift at all, in fact, but a cog railway: the Gornergratbahn.

Completed in 1891, long before snowsports had taken hold, the railway now ferries tourists, skiers, and snowboarders from the village base (at 1,620 meters, around 5,200 feet, or about the same elevation as Denver) to the top of the Gornergrat (elevation 3,089 meters, around 9,900 feet). That’s a vertical rise of 4,700 feet – more than practically any ski area in North America – and far more vertical than can be achieved with a single aerial lift. And this isn’t even the highest point this resort offers. For now, however, it was plenty.

As we rose above the town the treeline quickly faded away, and all in front of the twisting tracks was a wall of white. Zermatt’s had a bit of an odd season this year, with huge dumps of snow in December and January; extreme cold in February (but no snow); then significant warmth over the past two weeks (and still no snow). Luckily, they got a healthy bit of the white stuff right before my arrival; sometimes providence does shine on the traveler.

With wide open spaces and no trees, where does one go? Fortunately, trails are marked with fluorescent poles, thogh a few brave souls can always venture “off-piste” (alas, I’m not one of them). Zermatt has been faulted, in the snowboarding community, for a plethora of long, narrow-ish, moderate runs with occasional flat bits (a nuisance on skis but a nightmare on a snowboard). For me, however, this was heaven: I’ve constantly sought out bigger and bigger mountains and endless intermediate “cruiser” trails. I think I’ve found my mountain.

After a bit of riding, time for lunch. Here Zermatt shone as well, ofering mountain restaurants offering delectable (albeit not cheap) dining; no flavorless ski-hill cafeteria fare here. I stopped at Berghaus Grünsee and had a melted ham-and-cheesy-something-topped-with-fried-egg bit of yumminess that saw me handily through the rest of the afternoon.

And what an afternoon! I soon discovered that this place must be vying for the title of “most insanely diverse set of ski lifts.” In addition to the cog railway, there’s an underground funicular, several bubble-canopied chairlifts, and a combo gondola and chairlift running on the same line. Each lift, though only going a fraction of the way up the sprawling expanse of mountains (it takes roughly three to reach the several different peaks), is about equal to one of the bigger resorts back home. My father’s tale of taking all afternoon to do one run down the mountain wasn’t apocryphal.

Only issue: the massive vertical comes at some cost. As with Whistler, the only North American resort to approach Zermatt’s top-to-bottom immensity, conditions and trails vary enormously between bottom and top. As I descended toward the village, the runs became narrow, flat, and icy. Skiers raced by as I struggled to both maintain speed and not cause a collision with a sudden turn. I mostly succeeded on that front, though one move by me earned me an angry “achtung!” from an athletic local lady coming up behind me.

The bottom of the mountains does offer its pleasures, however: mountainside bars dot the lower runs, including – oh, Europe! – a champagne bar.

Next morning, all lingering travel weariness vanquished, I walked to the other side of town to experience this resort’s signature experience: a ride all the way to the top of its highest skiable terrain (indeed, the highest in Europe), and a descent into –yes, really – neighboring Italy.

The slow cable cars of yore have been mostly replaced by efficient high-speed gondolas or newer, bigger cable cars. Riding to the top, I watched the Matterhorn change shape, its iconic kinked summit transforming into a more conventional peak as our perspective changed. Then, a transfer onto the highest cable car in Europe, up Klein Matterhorn. Not the huge peak itself (it’s too steep and rocky to be skied) but a neighboring mountain whose rocky pyramidal pile does echo its larger sibling nearby. At the top, a walk through a tunnel dug into the mountain before emerging out onto the other side’s glorious vistas.

The Matterhorn – known in Italian as Monte Cervino – sits astride the Italian/Swiss border. So too the resort, whose pistes meet with the Italian resort of Breuil-Cervinia/Valtournenche. Even though Switzerland isn’t in the EU it’s still part of the Schengen Zone, and so crossing into another country involved no greater formality than hopping across U.S. states. Now… when are Canada and the United States (my native country and my current homeland) going to go the way of Old Europe and do the same?

And I thought yesterday’s runs were long. It took me well over an hour to get down to Cervinia (it’s at a slightly higher elevation than Zermatt – “only” a 5,800 ft drop from the top). At the bottom I found a disappointingly generic ski town: a cluster of modern-looking ski condos shaped in the familiar broad triangle of a Swiss chalet; rows of parked cars; nothing much in the way of on-mountain dining. Change the signage and this could be Montana.

One other problem with a mountain with massive verticals: the planned “last run to get down” needs to be, well, planned differently than I’m accustomed. After another long up-and-down, I was starting to feel peaked and a bit dizzy – and I still had the long, long trek back to Zermatt ahead. I powered through it, though, feeling increasingly out of sorts. Even though this was my second day here, the unprecedented exertion – coupled with the 12,000-plus-foot altitude at the top and the mile-high elevation at the base – translated into my contracting a touch of altitude sickness. I trundled back to my hotel (score another for centrally-located lodging) and called it another early night. Haven’t felt this woozy since Cusco, Peru. That’s another thing to remember when traveling: too much of a good thing…

Up next, a bit of a break from the snow, as I discovered what really put this town on the map (as well as a bit of fraternizing with the locals).

They call it a travel bug, but it’s really more of a lifelong illness (though happily benign).

At least that’s what I thought as I boarded yet another “Speedbird” (the British Airways callsign) from SFO back to the U.K. and beyond. It’s my third such international trip this year, and my second to Europe.

To which more lucid observers might say: Europe in early-March?

This is particularly true this year, a winter that’s seen much of continental Europe bounce from near-drought, to epic mountain snow, to extreme cold and snow as far south as Rome, to returning warmth (and a bit more snow in spots). For you climate change skeptics, I present you the Continent, 2012. And yet in that meteorological stew lay the seeds of this latest journey.

Well before I was born, my father was an avid skier. So avid, in fact, that, craving an experience beyond the local mountains of eastern Canada and New England, he visited the Swiss resort town of Zermatt in 1966 and has spoken of the journey all my life: the gorgeous, utterly genuine, car-free village;  the three cable cars to get to the top of mountains flanking the iconic Matterhorn; the above-treeline splendor; the descent taking almost an afternoon in itself. Even though I’d switched to snowboarding a few years back, and have been all around North America’s Rockies, Sierras, Appalachians, Laurentians — heck, even did a stint in Hakuba, Japan on my great world journey — I knew a visit to Switzerland was in the cards for me one day.

This year, with some huge dumps of snow having fallen in the Alps mid-season, coupled with relatively dry conditions throughout much of North America, I felt nature was literally calling. But before the mountains, a visit to one of my favorite cities (and home of a number of friends old and new) was on the agenda.

Two days in London proved a perfect spot to chill out and (mostly) get over jetlag. Sadly, my compatriot, partner in crime, and confidante from prior journeys, the fabled “Renaissance Man,” had flown the coop for new job opportunities in warmer (and noisier) climes: he moved to Mumbai a few months back. So this time around, I stayed in suburban North London with old family friends.

“Don’t let me sleep,” I exhorted to my pals as I arrived at their home midafternoon Saturday. I was determined to ward off jetlag the old-fashioned way: by getting onto the destination’s daily rhythms.

As it got dark, however, I had something more to keep me going: A rendezvous with some pals in the now-burgeoning Southwark district (I finally figured out how to pronounce it, too: “SOUTH-erk”.)

A train and Tube ride later and I was there – and, as I always am when discovering a new neighborhood in this town, suitably impressed: London’s noisy vibrancy and wall-to-wall shops on commercial arteries feel just right for a city boy like me. Southwark is a melange of old and new, from a cathedral that bills itself as one of the first Gothic incarnations in Europe, to historic commercial structures fronting the Thames, to the still-under-construction Shard of Glass (set to become the tallest building in the EU), to The George, where we were to meet — a historic pub with roots in Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dickens. It was a cool but not overly frigid night, and people tippled along outdoor tables beneath gas-fired heat lamps that I associate with California more than moody Northern Europe.

Gus and Adam showed up a few minutes later. Handsome, gregarious, intelligent late-twentysomethings from Sydney, they moved to Old Blighty a year or so back and are currently making a home for themselves in Winchester.

“It’s like a rite of passage,” Gus said, Aussies coming to the U.K. to live for a year or two. I maintain that London is a New York for the rest of the world, as it seems practically everyone, from so many different nationalities, seems to do the same. In their case, Gus’s engineering job brought him here, and Adam continued his career and studies in journalism. But their biggest leap into the brave new world is more romantic:

“We’re getting married in Vancouver this September,” Adam said.

Whoah, I thought. They’re twenty-nine (and look even younger). How long have they been together?

“Nine years,” Gus added. That was heartening to hear: with the struggle for gay marriage at a fever pitch in the States, I maintain that the gay community is waging its own internal battles in this area. Having been denied this form of emancipation for so long, the current crop of young and youngish gays back home seems almost hell-bent on “marriage or else.” A noble sentiment, sure, but for the fact that it echoes the notion of the dog chasing a car. What will he do if he catches it? I’ve watched so many of my contemporaries back home pine for a marriage that feels positively retrograde – housewifery, children, a home in the suburbs. Yet most of them also lack emotional maturity, and lurch back and forth between dysfunctional serial monogamy and guilty, furtive one-night-stands.

But these guys seem different. So eloquent, so well-spoken, so genuinely happy together without that forced artifice of “couplehood” I’ve seen in so many of my peers back home. Maybe it’s also the connection we nomads feel with each other: Gus, Adam and I spent  over three hours eating, drinking, comparing life experiences, political viewpoints, and a million other things. They even invited me to the ceremony they plan to hold in Canada and by golly, I plan to do my damndest to show up.

A hefty pile of sleep later, and it was time for a social Sunday with the remainder of the Lightman clan.

We started out in Golders Green, where I again paid a visit to the octagenarian Ray and Sidney. Ray’s hanging in there, warding off a myriad of health problems with a brave staunchness and a surprisingly lucid disposition. Keep calm and carry on, indeed. Sidney, meanwhile, remains a wonder: pushing ninety, he retains youthful energy and mental acuity and is still working (!) as a freelance translator; we managed to get into a discussion about, of all things, the coffee in Israel. The Jewish state has got a big café culture, and when Starbucks tried to move in there, they flopped (same story in Australia, too). While he wasn’t sad to see big American corporate coffee fail to conquer another land, he did have one regret.

“I had the contract to do their translation… and suffice it to say the pay was alright!”

Our next stop was East Finchley, where the Lightman family member closest to me in age, Joy, had just moved into a new home with her still-adorable daughter, Bella. It’s a cheerful two-story townhome that’s a bit remniscient of my home across the pond. Once again, I’m reminded of how similar we can be to those near and dear to us, even separated by great distances.

And so, that was it for my London sojourn. Up next: how I got to my snow destination (an insane day of travel!), and my reactions to the place once I got there. Stay tuned, snowsports (and train travel) fans.

As promised, here is a selection of photos from the Great Barrier Reef — though in truth, the waterproof disposable camera doesn’t do it justice. For you eagle-eyed fish watchers, however, you may spot a few, including the ever-famous clownfish, inspiration for the famed Disney/Pixar creation. Click on the pictures to see them in a separate page, then click again on them in that page to see them larger size.

After my trip to the tropics I felt I’d packed in enough adventure in Australia to make it feel like a much longer trip; Christmas with my family in L.A. already felt like ages ago. But I had a couple more loose ends to tie up in Sydney for the daylong layover I was to have there between my return from Port Douglas and my flight home.

To mix things up I opted to stay this time with my pal Sarah at her tidy flat in a walk-up in Woollahra. Unlike the beach shack in Coogee, Sarah’s housing choices – both in terms of location and style – mirror mine so closely it’s almost hard to believe we’re a vast ocean apart: a restored vintage condominium-type residence in a small, close-knit building (okay, hers is a bit closer knit than mine: she filled me in on some colorful neighborhood gossip that echoes the show Melrose Place). Only significant deviation: she’s got a fourteen-year-old son.

Yet there, too, there’s common ground: the oldest of my nieces and nephews turns ten this year, and in talking to Sarah about Huwie I got a glimpse of what’s off on my familial near-horizon. It’s been fascinating to watch, for me at a bit of a distance but still very much engaged, how the little ones develop and blossom into the people they will become.

I also managed a meetup with the very first person I’d met in Australia: Dean’s mother was good friends with some friends of my parents back in Montreal. We did the usual life-catch-up that occurs on so many of my visits where I make acquaintance with a long-lost chum.

On that note, the subject turned, as it often does, to travel; Dean and his family have done a fair bit of it, even doing bigger en-famille adventures (they were all headed to Hawaii in a day or so, in fact); but when I told him about my trip he had two observations.

“I couldn’t travel alone,” he said. “When I travel by myself, the journey feels like this,” he added, crimping his thumb and forefinger together with little space in between.

“But when I go with a friend – if I can find one who’s got the same time and budget – the trip becomes like this.” He held out his hands wide apart.

Fair enough, I nodded. But what about the notion of longer journeys such as the one I took?

“I could have seen myself doing it maybe when I was younger,” he said. “But now? I feel that now’s the time we need to be building up our lives and our careers.”

Aha! It’s instances like this one when my “career break flashpacker” light goes on.

“I hear ya,” I replied. “But if it is something you ever did want to do, your career will still be there when you come back.” This was a fear I had to overcome, one every midcareer professional lies awake at night considering: what if I’m no longer viable/needed/in demand? The amazing discovery so many of us have made who’ve gone on longer journeys is that, more often than not, aside from the short-term economic hit of traveling and not working, a career break really doesn’t adversely impact one’s career – and often augments it, bringing the career-breaker new perspectives and (sometimes) new skills to the table when returning to the workplace. Granted, not everyone is in a position to simply take a lot of time off and be able to count on a soft landing upon return… but many more people are in that position than realize it.

Some final packing, then a hop to the center of town, where the summertime Sydney Festival was just getting underway. I was going to miss it, but I did catch a sliver and enjoy a nice little rendezvous with a career peer: fellow writer and travel memoirist (and accomplished actor and screenwriter as well) Jesse Archer.

Jesse had been one of the early champions of my book back in its pre-release days, when I contacted him in a “what the heck” moment after reading his book about traveling in South America some ten years back. We’d traded e-mails and tips and such, but as he moved from New York to Sydney with his boyfriend last winter, we’d never had a chance to meet up. Even on this trip that looked unlikely: he was up in northern New South Wales at a New Years camping event when I arrived, and was recovering from a bout of flu this week from, shall we say, a little too much fun in the forest. But he made time for me and we sat on the grass swapping war stories.

“I love Sydney; the place is like a postcard,” he said. But it’s been tough for him as an indie gay filmmaker to be away from the burgeoning scene in New York. We’d chatted about my still-in-the-early-stage work on adapting Wander the Rainbow into a screenplay and he was able to offer some ideas to help make it more producible – though he conceded that the challenges of shooting overseas on a microbudget could be daunting.

As it grew later it was time for me to head off; bidding Jesse and his galpals goodbye I walked in the opposite direction of the human tide heading toward the festival, a bit sad to be leaving this place one more. I hopped on the train to the airport and checked in for my long, long flights back Stateside.

Oh, and wouldn’t it be nice if I could end it here. Unfortunately, the vagaries of sky-high holiday-season fares meant that I wasn’t doing a direct-to-San-Fran hop home but instead a bordering-on-ludicrous itinerary: two flights with Air China: an eleven-hour haul from Sydney to Beijing; a ten-hour layover in Beijing; then another eleven-hour jaunt across the Pacific to San Francisco.

I went for it partly because I knew the lay of this land, having been both to Beijing and its gargantuan new airport before. Still, this was to be a journey of eleven thousand miles and thirty-three hours total – about a sixth of the total mileage of my entire seven-month world odyssey.

Long-haul air travel has always been a challenge for me, who’s too tall for those economy seats. Our first flight, out of Sydney, however, confirmed a suspicion I’d had this past spring when going from San Francisco to London (a flight of similar duration): ten or so hours international, on a widebody plane with two meal services and a longer chance to sleep, is actually a better experience than the six-hour misery that has become domestic transcon travel. As suspected, Air China’s still finding its way in the overseas marketplace, but I’d say they’re still putting on a pretty decent showing.

Arriving before dawn into subzero Beijing, we entered the spaceport-like Terminal 3. A quick stampy-stampy at International Transfers and we were in the main lounge. I’d done my homework and knew where I wanted to go: as a newly-minted major overseas transit hub (a distinction it didn’t enjoy as little as five years ago), Beijing airport is now endowed with a number of options for passengers needing to while away too many hours – and who don’t relish the prospect of sleeping on a public airport bench: short-stay hotel-like lounges. Ordinarily reserved for elite-class travelers, the airport now offers a “pay as you go” option for we regular folk. Comfortable and cozy (though by no means cheap) it made for a great way to sleep off a bunch of hours and surf the Internet (albeit behind the Great Firewall of China – sorry, Facebook, I couldn’t get to you).

A respectable (and also not cheap – China really has “arrived” as a travel destination, I suppose) meal of Chinese fare, some amusement at a few brilliantly-worded “Chinglish” signs, and it was time for leg number two: the voyage home.

On this run, another pleasant surprise: instead of crying babies or moribund fellow flyers, my seatmate this time around was a San Jose State sophomore returning to school. Frank’s from Beijing and is majoring in Computer Science; how oh how do they always find me? Friendly and outgoing, he told of stellar experiences as a newcomer to America; I’m always heartened to hear such stories, proving my adopted homeland is a lot more open to would-be immigrants than we sometimes realize. Frank and I got to comparing notes on travel tales and (of course) computing; again I’m reminded that encounters like these are what really makes world travel magical: you really never know who or what’s around the next bend.

That’s it for Australia, but the adventure goes on… I’m slated to head to Europe this winter for a bout of snowboarding in the Alps. Stayed tuned, Wander fans!

Ever since reading Arthur C. Clarke’s Dolphin Island as a kid I’ve longed to see the Great Barrier Reef.

Alas, my last couple of visits to this part of the world rendered that impractical: the Reef lies off the coast of Australia’s north Queensland, which as a tropical region is subject to a rainy season – which means cyclones, the region’s variant of hurricanes, in summer and fall. And since both of my previous visits to this country coincided with Sydney’s early-automnal Mardi Gras, heading up to the Reef was out.

This time around, however, it was early enough in the rainy season that I felt more comfortable venturing up north; as it turns out, eastern Australia’s been having a slightly cooler-than-average summer. This translated into very comfortable temps in Sydney – but it’s also meant a relative dearth of rain up north in the wake of last summer’s big floods. So I took the plunge and booked myself on a four-day jaunt to Cairns and environs to see what Far North Queensland had to offer.

I stepped off the plane in the late evening, and the absurdity of my San Francisco-standard light jacket was immediately evident: a soft, humid, tropical breeze was blowing, humid but not too uncomfortably so. For my first night I’d booked myself at accommodations in central Cairns; once again, following my “flashpacker” credo, I’d found a highly-rated, midpriced spot at a local hotel chain.

Next morning, I headed out to explore some sights near Cairns… and it was here that I discovered something the guidebooks – fearful, perhaps, of seeming too negative – only tend to hint at: Cairns may be the base camp for people exploring the region, but it’s an ugly town: a forest of boxy, mid-rise accommodations surrounded by plain-vanilla two-story homes and apartments; a waterfront Esplanade with unspectacular meat-and-potatoes-type eateries on one side, and a boardwalk overlooking the water on the other. “The water” is putting it generously: unlike Sydney’s magazine-brochure beaches, Cairns lies on a tidal mudflat. The Coral Sea here looks nothing like its tropical-dream-sounding name and more like the banks of a dirty lake back home.

Another observation: Bill Bryson once called Australia’s Aborigines the country’s “invisible minority”; in my week or so in Sydney I don’t think I saw any. Here they appeared, in greater numbers, walking the streets, shopping the malls, or hanging around on the Esplanade. Like some of America’s minorities, they have the feel of an underclass.

Heading though the Cairns Central mall – a place as generic as any Stateside – I reached the town’s railway station in the shopping center’s parking garage; there I booked what I’d really come to Cairns to see, something not in the city at all: the town of Kuranda.

As we passed sugarcane fields and turned up into the mountains, the scenery grew more interesting: Kuranda lies in eastern Australia’s Great Dividing Range, though here the mountains lie much closer to the sea than down south. And however lush the hillscape may be near Sydney, it’s more so here, fed by unending tropical rains and warmer temperatures.

Although we tend to associate the word “tropical rainforest” with the Amazon in South America, Australia’s got an abundant share of it, too: in fact, all the world’s rainforests were once connected, part of the primordial southern supercontinent of Gondwanaland.

I stepped off the shuttle bus into Kuranda’s center; yep, it’s a tourist town. Lots of shops and markets. But these seemed a mite more interesting than the usual ticky-tack: the place was once (so sayeth the official guides) “a center for alternative lifestyles,” (we can only infer what that means), and retains a stable of artists and craftspeople. It proved a suitable place to shop for some small gifts for the nieces and nephews back home.

After a quick bit of surprisingly decent pizza at an actual rainforest café (no theme-parkery needed in these parts), I ambled over to the train station. Two trains sat parked on the station platforms, each a long line of wooden carriages from the late-19^th century capped by colorfully-painted diesel locomotives. Inside, the carriages retained their period feel, dark woods, patterned white ceilings and open windows. The train wasn’t too crowded, though the mix of mostly families led me to wonder if this wasn’t another lame attraction.

As we got moving, a surprisingly insightful audio narration (with accompanying still video on modern-day LCD screens) told the story of the line and the scenery around it: like so many pretty spots now given over to tourism, the Cairns area got its start in resource extraction – gold in particular. The rail line was built to get at the gold fields in the mountains. As with the construction of similar such transport infrastructure in the Americas, realizing this with century-plus ago technology was an immense, hazardous undertaking. I’m struck by how often we forget, in our comfortable, often banal technology-age existence, the hardships endured by so many in the not-so-long-ago past to build the comforts we now take for granted.

As the train rounded a corner and came to Barron Gorge, any “is this worth it?” uncertainties I may have felt instantly evaporated: nearly a thousand feet deep, the gorge is a wonder, a verdant Grand Canyon of Tropical North Queensland. The waterfall that plunges down the rocky chasm was just a trickle on this day, a combination of the dam built in this spot and the modest amount of rain the region’s had this season so far.

The narrow-gauge train continued winding its way downhill, twisting across viaducts spanning deep chasms, chugging in and out of tunnels (aligning all these tunnels with pre-contemporary engineering equipment was a miraculous undertaking), finally reaching the flat plains toward Cairns. Dozens died building this line; it’s rumored the bodies of some are buried inside the track’s foundations. Still others are buried at McLeod Cemetery in Cairns proper, spending eternity with a view of the line they gave their lives to create. The engineering geek in me, coupled with the vista-loving romantic, made this journey reason enough to spend that single night in Cairns itself.

With that complete, however, it was time to head up to my more permanent home base in these parts: the town of Port Douglas, some forty miles northward up the coast.

The drive to Port Douglas seemed to suggest my blend of stays was right: Cook Highway was a glory, the blue Coral Sea on one side and rainforested hillsides on the other. As it headed toward dusk, the shuttle bus dropped me off at my accommodations for the next three days: the LGBT-owned Pink Flamingo Resort. A former 1970s-era motel converted into a colorful gay & lesbian villa-style inn, the place looked promising on the one hand: lush gardens, a pretty pool, colorfully painted and decorated. The former carports were redesigned into private villa forecourts, complete with most wonderful outdoor shower and soaker tub. They even invited guests to choose their own wooden placard indicating “do not disturb;” I immediately found one to my liking and hung it on my entryway (see picture).

On the other hand, the inn also reminded me to think twice about booking myself, the inveterate solo traveler, into places touted as “romantic hideaways.” It was sleepy and deserted in the early evening, though later in the night a gaggle of friendly ladies congregated around the pool and bar area. An aloof gay couple – one a fellow probably my age, another a bunch of years younger (boy, does that sound familiar) – hung around the pool over the days I was there, saying not a word to anyone. As a former motor inn, the Pink Flamingo lay a bit of a walk from Port Douglas’ main drag, Macrossan Street; the next morning, rising early for one of my planned excursions, I walked and walked in some light rain showers past a smattering of closed eateries and other establishments. Was this a mistake? I wondered as I organized my stuff for the number-one reason I came out here: an excursion to the Great Barrier Reef.

As a group of us boarded the catamaran under the auspices of Calypso Reef Cruises at the nearby Port Douglas marina, my apprehension faded: a broad assortment of families, couples, and a few other solo travelers listened as our dive guide Charlie – an affable mélange of Bob Hoskins and Jacques Cousteau – briefed us on the basics of scuba diving. Although I’d been a bit of a water baby when I was younger, my years in chilly-water California have meant I’ve never done any diving before. As I was fitted with flippers, a mask, and an Aqualung and hopped off the back of the catamaran some thirty miles from shore, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

Well, the experience, like so many others, borders on the indescribable… but I now utterly understand the notion that we’ve explored outer space more than we’ve explored our inner space under the sea: the absence of buoyancy and the ever-changing air/water pressure give diving an otherworldly feel unlike any I’ve had to date, and the blue water feels mysterious and enchanted from the moment of total immersion.

The reef itself, meanwhile, really does need to be experienced up close and personal (photos coming soon!): although we’d been warned in an interpretive briefing (by the diving company’s one truly fetching fellow, a blonde New Zealander) that the colors we’d be seeing aren’t quite as bright as in all those movies and photos (where they’re aided by flash photography and the wonders of CGI)… well, no complaints from me. On the dive down to sixteen meters (some forty-five feet) we spotted Christmas tree worms, brightly-colored fan-shaped protrusions from the coral that pop in when you come close to them; fat sea cucumbers lazing on the bottom (these can even be picked up without bother to them); giant sea clams, their colorful eye spots prompting the creature to, well, clam up at the first sign of danger; brilliantly-hued fish of all persuasions – yes, including clownfish hiding in anemones, made famous by the Pixar film Finding Nemo; a reef shark, hanging out on the bottom before his nighttime feed; and all manner and type of coral. These colonies of polypy creatures manufacture the eponymous material in vast colonies; the Barrier Reef, consisting of many reefs, in fact, is the largest single thing built by living organisms – and unlike those inflated claims about the Great Wall of China, the Reef can in fact be seen from outer space.

For the second and third dives of the day, I opted for a snorkeling experience, which in these parts is almost a better way to go: coral lives in a symbiotic relationship with algae, and so seeks the sunlight. However, it also can’t live out of the water, so the low-tide mark is typically as high as it can grow. This translates into immense shallow regions – three feet deep is not uncommon – making a foray with a snorkel eminently practical. With the rain having long cleared and the few clouds that remained sticking close to land, the reef was brilliantly illuminated with dapples of sun. Fish swam all around, oblivious to we curious humans; one of them, an especially social little critter, kept on coming within a foot of my mask. For those who know me, I’m no spiritualist, but my day out here on the Reef reaffirmed that this is indeed a hallowed place that needs to be protected and nurtured.

A speedy boat ride back to town, then time for a bite of dinner… and here’s where I ran into Port Douglas’ ongoing challenge for the single flashpacker fellow: the town’s become something of a foodie destination, but with the Aussie dollar sky-high I chose to limit myself to not-so-pricey eateries. Still, to celebrate my day on the reef I felt like treating myself a tad, and asked for a “table for one” at one of the town’s more popular and better-ranked restaurants.

“Do you have a reservation?” said the hostess, eyeing my bicycle helmet and my solitary status. I said I didn’t and it didn’t look like I needed one – the place was half-empty.

“Sorry, we’re full up this evening,” she said. Really? Crestfallen, I picked an okay, not-as-fab nearby spot. When I cruised by my hoped-for place some time later, it was still at half-capacity. Interestingly, the aloof gay couple from my resort was eating there.

Huh? Interestingly, I’d brought with me a copy of last month’s Atlantic magazine that covered the rising trend of singledom in America and across the developed world. One writer, interviewed for the piece, has even recently coined a term to describe our society’s ongoing stigma of the uncoupled: singlism. I can’t say whether this experience on this night in Port Douglas was an example of that or not, but I can only hope that in future years we learn to look upon the unpartnered as something more than crazy cat ladies or cranky, uncompromising bachelors.

The next day I’d signed up for a more terrestrial adventure, an afternoon rainforest tour. Gary, a middle-aged fellow with mottled bald head, picked me and a number of other area visitors (including a couple from India who were on my dive the day before) and drove us north, toward the World Heritage-listed Daintree Rainforest.

“Port Douglas had more than 40,000 people at its height after they found gold,” Gary said as we drove north past more fields of sugarcane. It was only with the building of the Kuranda railway down south that Cairns became the more prominent of the two towns. Perhaps that was a blessing in disguise: sleeping its way through much of the twentieth century until Aussie impresario Christopher Skase built the sprawling Mirage resort in the 1980s, Port Douglas now keeps its population and development in check.

“We don’t want another [Australian] Gold Coast or Miami Beach,” Gary offered. Shit, you don’t even have to look that far, I thought. Have you been to Cairns lately?

We soon stopped at the Daintree River, a brackish tidal inlet, for a mellow boat ride seeking saltwater crocodiles, tree frogs, and other elements of the river’s bestiary.

Crocodiles form harems, as the males are often killed off by fighting and it’s evolutionary preferable for them to have a high female-to-male ratio to keep the species going. Only a small fraction make it into adulthood (their lifespans are similar to those of humans) – but if they do, they grow huge: twenty-footers are not uncommon.

Nothing that big was out on the muddy river that afternoon, but we did spot some smaller fellows (by age six they’re already some five-plus feet long, and we did see some of those); our eagle-eyed guide also directed us to iridescent-green tree frogs and slumbering snakes. A comedian once remarked that nature is the world’s biggest restaurant, what with one species eating another… but it continues to amaze me how the vast global ecosystem manages to remain in balance.

Since none of us fancied being a croc’s supper, we next stopped at Mossman Gorge, up in the rainforested mountains, for a short hike and swim among the great timeworn boulders. With water too cool, too fresh, and too swift for crocs, we ventured without fear into the sparkling pure stream under the watchful canopy of greenery. Yes, water princess here took her time getting acclimated to the cooler waters (probably one of the only spots in Tropical North Queensland where water temps were as chilly as the ocean up north near Sydney), but it was eminently worthwhile. That evening, on my return, I even gave the outdoor shower at my Pink Flamingo villa a whirl and found it equally revitalizing.

For my last morning in Port Douglas, I ambled about town: I’d rented a bike from my accommodations, which proved stellar for getting around the mostly-flat town. But the place has one hill, at the very tip of the peninsula abutting the center of town. Here I chose to hoof it, and was soon enveloped by the forested canopy of Flagstaff Hill. As the town grew trendy through the 1990s and beyond, many celebrities chose to holiday here; the elegant modern homes dotting the Hill – scant yards from the town’s commercial strip of Macrossan Street – bear witness to this place’s glitterati status.

The top of the Hill rewarded me with a lookout, where I could survey all the spots I’d visited over the past days: the Daintree to the north, the Reef to the east, the beachfront café where I’d had a stellar pancake breakfast earlier that morning. The town’s Four Mile Beach stretched southward; interestingly, it was mostly bereft of swimmers, as are all beaches in North Queensland this time of year: the “wet” is stinger season, when the deadly box jellyfish and not-as-deadly but tougher to fend off Irukandji jellyfish hover around the beaches; swimming in the ocean waters up here is thus a necessarily confined affair, done in little enclosures surrounded by “stinger nets.” I didn’t bother, having gone out on the Reef just the other day (where the risk of jellyfish is far smaller than near land).

And with that, an adieu to this most wondrous of places; another scenic drive down Cook Highway for my flight back to Sydney, where I had still one day left before my long, long voyage home.

If you think about it, the International Date Line is an arbitrary human creation; an imaginary line running down the planet where we as a species have decided “the day starts here.” It’s still difficult for me to visualize, but I think of it as the spot where time slips into the world, only to forever slip away once it completes its circumnavigation.

However arbitrary it may be, and however equally arbitrary is our measuring of years, they hold significance to us, and rituals have sprung up surrounding them. Back in the Northern Hemisphere, however, New Year’s Eve has always struck me as something of a contrivance, a bogus reason to celebrate in the middle of winter, as if to hold on to those lingering embers of Christmas that much longer.

But here on the other side of the globe, New Years coincides with the arrival of summer; and given where the Date Line is positioned, smack dab in the middle of the Pacific, New Zealand and Australia are the first large populated regions to greet the New Year. All those factors have made the holiday something of a big deal in these parts — a fact popularized during the turn-of-the-millennium celebrations, when those awesome fireworks shooting off the Harbour Bridge first made me say “I need to see that!”

Trouble is, I wasn’t the only one. The holiday’s big business here, with primo-view tickets for parties at the Opera House asking around $1000. Even the party at moderately-close Darling Harbour that two friends of Mikey’s were attending went for north of $100 – and it was sold out.

We got a further whiff of the scale of it all as we met Sarah during the day on December 31st at the Art Gallery of New South Wales for a Picasso exhibit they were having on loan from the namesake museum in Paris; as it was one of the City of Light’s attractions I’d missed on my spin through there two-and-a-half years ago, I figured this would make for a pleasant daytime diversion.

As we walked to the red sandstone museum, we dodged security guards and long, snaking lines. No, they weren’t here for the art; these folks were queued up before noon to see fireworks that were still twelve hours away. Yikes. We took in the artistic retrospective – a pretty comprehensive showing of the iconic artist whose career seemed to drag on for the entire twentieth century.

After a bit of lunch we went on a reconnoiter, filling in a few more gaps in my explorations of central Sydney. We walked down the Finger Wharf of Woolloomooloo, peeking into the former industrial building now converted to condos and a luxury hotel. Conveyor belts that used to carry ship cargo stood forever frozen amid high-tone bars and offices on the ground floor. As with so many once-derelict industrial spots in prime harborfront locales, this is yet another example of the ambivalence I feel about the continuing creep of gentrification.

We passed the diminutive naval base nearby – I’m struck by how this small facility fits in so nicely with the urban surrounds, cool gray ships and masts comingling with Sydney Victorians. In America such bases are typically isolated and monolithic, a by-product of the nation’s massive imperial military and post 9/11 security tightening. Here some crowds were gathered as well in anticipation of the night’s fireworks – and it was here, just up the hill amid the quiet, leafy streets of Potts Point, that we discovered a decent viewing spot for the night’s festivities: close in enough to see the bridge and the water, but not so close as to require multi-hour waiting.

As it grew dark we returned to this spot, walking down from Oxford Street in Darlinghurst through Kings Cross and on to Potts Point. Sydney’s in-town neighborhoods are pretty compact: this amble totaled maybe twenty minutes. Our earlier reconnoiter proved a good choice: the crowds at the end of Victoria Street were substantial but not overwhelming, more local folk headed out for their annual fireworks viewing. Sydney’s big show is so popular they now have two rounds of it, one at 9 o’clock for families before the (literal) big blowout at midnight when the clock strikes next year. Even at their earlier showing, with a view blocked by a few trees, the event impressed: a coordinated series of volleys across multiple spots around the Harbour, capped off with – this is something I hadn’t seen before – additional bursts from nearby downtown office buildings.

We were going to hang around for the midnight fireworks, but then Mikey received a text from one of his friends: a mutual pal of theirs was having a party at their high-rise apartment nearby with a view of the Harbour. Would we be interested to join? I was hesitent to give up my hard-won view spot for what could simply be another party, but I acquiesced and figured I’d see where the night took me.

I’ve long since discovered, in my travels, the virtues of serendipity – something that doesn’t always come easily to an uber-planner/organizer like myself. But when we showed up at this New Years party, on the fifteenth floor of a swank Sydney condominium, my belief in the unexpected took a new turn.

We walked in to a two-story place with floor-to-ceiling windows. A broad, white modern sectional sofa was flanked by a kitchen on one side and a narrow terrace on the other. Outside the windows the view was phenomenal, tracing a broad arc from Sydney’s CBD on one end to Kings Cross, Darlinghurst, and the eastern beach suburbs beyond.

Although a ways off in the distance, the fireworks were nonetheless stellar as they went off at midnight. Mikey and I shared a sweet New Years kiss; I mused on the upsy-downsy year that 2011 had been. Hopefully 2012 will be ever smoother… definitely can’t complain about how it started out.

We didn’t get to bed too late, so the next morning, with the weather having turned spectacular (sunny, high-seventies), I opted to pick up where’d I’d left off almost nine years ago: back then I’d taken the cliff walk from Bondi to Bronte; this time, I aimed to head the other way, northward from Coogee to Bronte along the jagged, sandstone cliffs bounding the blue sea.

The walk in this direction was even more spectacular than the trek down from Bondi, at least if memory serves: from the expansive sandy arc of Coogee Beach I ascended a grassy incline topping white sandstone cliffs. The erosion patterns on the rocks formed perfect, even rows, as if some carver had gone through with a giant steel comb. The ocean here is a magnificent, iridescent blue – the sort you see in tourist brochures and think “Photoshop.”

Passing Clovelly Beach, I came upon a graveyard sloping gently toward the cliffs over the sea; I think I now know where I want to be buried. And, finally, Bronte, wher the crowds were thick on this New Years afternoon.

It’s become standard to me that travel is a means of learning about oneself, and walks like this one definitely feed the brain. So what grand new revelations did this trek portend? Nothing earthshattering, though a part of me sometimes wonders if I’ve been running in place in the nine years since I hiked these cliffs. I’m still doing the same work (albeit with better pay and better working conditions overall); I’m again a relatively-recent homeowner; I’m still finding my place in the social sphere and continue to feel like a bit of an outsider everywhere I go; and I’ve got a few more scars nine years on – some of them literal.

But still, much forward movement: six wonderful nieces and nephews; enjoyable work and home life; a respectable circle of friends; and now a nice little mini-side-occupation as writer and world traveler. Yeah, life’s okay from my perch here at Bronte Beach.

For my last night in Sydney, we opted for something fun: a showing of the new Muppets movie at an outdoor, night-time screening in Centennial Park.

Mikey and I met Sarah and her fourteen-year-old son Huwey at the entrance gate. While Sarah had indicated this summertime event (they have numerous screenings from December to March – still weird for me to call that “summer”) has been struggling with low attendance due to inclement weather, on the warm evening of January 1, 2012 that was hardly the problem: a line of moviegoers curled around the entrance gate. We’d planned to hold off on eating, preferring to purchase something at the event much like I’d done at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival this past summer.

Alas, the fates were not so forgiving: the organizers of Moonlight Cinema obviously hadn’t banked on this level of attendence, and after Soviet-style lines for ordering and paying, they ran out of food midway through. We tried even ordering a pizza (we were all famished), but nothing was open on this holiday (curse you, non-American countries with stricter closing laws!). Finally we settled for a pile of orders of chips and another pile of, er, chips (the Aussies call both French fried potatoes and potato chips “chips”).

For the final day, I showed all those hearty Aussies who’d been teasing me for refusing to go in the not-terribly warm water: yup, I literally took the plunge at Coogee Beach, did some killer bodysurfing, and generally enjoyed the stellar weather. With that, a stop at the iconic QVB Building for a bit of shopping, then a farewell to Mikey and to Sydney for my next great adventure in this, well, land of adventure: up to Cairns, the tropics, and the Great Barrier Reef.

For all my world travels, it’s been ages since I took a bona fide two-week break over the Christmas/New Years period… in fact, other than the big trip itself, the last time I did so was back in my college days.

Continuing to make good on my pledge to nibble at the edges of my world travels on shorter trips, and to maintain that global spiderweb of connections I’d formed on my journey — oh, yeah, plus that modest pileup of Frequent Flyer miles burning a hole in my pocket — I opted for a far-flung destination where I still had a few adventures on my wishlist:

Australia.

After a wonderful first Christmas with my baby nephew and the family down in L.A., I had my posse drop me off at LAX  on Christmas night. In order to get Hunter to bed early I got to the airport with some time to spare. No bother: somewhere along the line I’d been gifted a one-day pass at one of the airport’s Business Class lounges.

After checking into for my Qantas flight I hoofed it over to the next terminal and availed myself of drinks and nibblies in the cavernous, comfy, and mostly empty lounge space. Through the tall glass-and-steel wall of windows I spotted it: the oddly chunky beast bearing the “QANTAS” logo plastered all over it. This was to be my first time flying the double-decked A380, the largest passenger plane in the world.

Bigger planes mean more people, and although it was generally pretty good for steerage class (kudos to Qantas for those netted footrests), more people also translated into… more little ones in tow. I’m still of two minds about infants on planes: I think it’s great that people are getting out there and taking their kids along for the ride; at the same time, sitting two rows behind three crying babies made what could have been a moderately-restful fifteen hours, well… not so restful at all. I consider my siblings, who’ve all gone through or are going through the tribulations as mothers of under-one-year-olds; I can’t imagine any of them subjecting their kids at that age to a journey of this length.

Still, it was worth it: a wonderful, warm Sydney greeting awaited me on the other side, this one from Sarah, my compadre from round-the-world days. Sarah served a pivotal role in my then-unsettled life (check out Wander the Rainbow‘s Sydney chapter for more); our reunion proved, once again, that impromptu soulmates really can be found all over.

Sarah wound her mother’s red Peugot around the Sydney motorways away from the airport and into Sydney’s beach cities. The city sprawls for quite a ways in all directions, but its central core is fairly dense and compact, and fairly close to the city’s beaches. Coupled with cleaner, bluer, and (slightly) warmer Pacific waters than what’s to be found even in the southernmost of SoCal cities translates into a vibrant beach culture more remniscient of Florida or the Caribbean back home – but with a city the size and sophistication of a San Francisco.

The day was a bit moody – Sydney’s been having a relatively cool, rainy summer to date – as we pulled up the hilly, winding road by Bronte Beach. The sand was uncrowded and the waves were temptestuous as we enjoyed a bit of lunch al fresco – I reacquainted myself with my favorite British-cum-Aussie delicacy, Barramundi fish & chips. Afterward, we went on a drive around Sydney’s northernmost south-side beach suburbs: North Bondi, Watsons Bay, Vaucluse. Streets curve over hills both greener and gentler than San Francisco slopes, and are dotted with elegant homes. Though not too elegant: Sydney may be pricey (and with my weak Yankee dollar, as much so as London or Paris), but Australia seems more like Canada than the States vis-a-vis its income divide.

Sarah dropped us off at a pleasantly run-down, rambling beach shack a block from the surf at Coogee Beach. Echoing timber-framed brethren across the great ocean in Venice, California, this onetime summer cottage is home to Mikey, the fellow who I was staying with, and three other housemates: two gay guys, both named Kieran, and a lesbian named Loz (short for Lauren — the Aussies have abbreviations for everything, I’ve come to learn).

That evening we hopped the bus into the city. Call me a city-planning nerd, but Sydney’s transport network continues to impress: spotless, mint-condition, air-conditioned vehicles ply across the city at speed – in our case, rambling through the beach suburbs, across the wooded expanse of Centennial Park, and up Flinders Street into Darlinghurst, Sydney’s gay mecca. We were headed for an evening at Midnight Shift, one of the town’s gay spots, for their midweek trivia night, hosted (of course) by one of the city’s famed drag queens, Miss Summer Salt. I can’t say I’m an expert at Aussie trivia, but I was proud of myself when Miss Summer handed me a purple-colored marker and I was able to toss in a line from Priscilla in context: “it’s lavender!”

Next morning, a meander with Mikey around the city. This was my third visit to Sydney, so I was nominally familiar with the place, but nothing quite beats having a local as one’s tour guide. We meandered through The Domain,  then on through the city’s Botanic Gardens toward Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair, a spot at the tip of one of the city’s many fingers of land protruding into the drowned river valley that is Sydney Harbour. Biggest achievement: I finally learned what those odd-looking birds I’d seen here on previous voyages are: Australian ibises.

“Rats with beaks,” Mikey remarked. Pestilential to Sydneysiders, for me they give the city an exotic feel to my North American eyes. But then, it’s all relative, right?

“I felt that way about squirrels in your country,” Mikey added.

Equally captivating to me were some bulb-shaped creatures hanging from the tall trees: Sydney’s got its resident population of bats, who sleep (yes) upside-down in the trees before taking wing at dusk over the city.

“To fight crime, no doubt,” I offered up as their raison d’etre. Dork, was the look I got in response. That’ll learn me to provoke a comic-book nut (Mikey’s collection borders on the encyclopedic.)

We continued over to the iconic Opera House, adding to my ludicrously bloated stash of photos of the structure; I maintain it’s one of the grandest works of modern architecture, and possibly one of humankind’s greatest buildings ever (forget it; I’m not adding another picture of it here). Just as we were completing our circuit at Circular Quay’s Overseas Passenger Terminal, and right after I asked if the building is still in fact used for such a purpose, my question answered itself: a beefy white vessel sailed under the Harbour Bridge.

It’s my third visit to Sydney, and I still haven’t been to the Blue Mountains. Next morning came time to remedy that as we hopped on a bus and a train to the country town of Katoomba, a couple hours west of the city.

Most of Australia’s population lives to the east of the Great Dividing Range, a spine of mountains running vertically down the country’s east from the northern tropics to the southern state of Victoria. They’re not enormous by any standard: no peaks exceed eight thousand feet.  Nevertheless, as I remarked on my world tour when driving up north through Nimbin (yes, weed-lovers, you can guess why I went there), they felt, to me, like a craggier variant of America’s Appalachians: green and forested, but more sheer and dramatic than the rolling hill country of America’s East.

A fairly full train ride on the city’s beat-up but very functional exurban train system dropped us smack in the middle of Katoomba. The crowds bore evidence that this was a touristy spot, and I was hoping that the natural attractions would overshadow the visiting hordes – much as, say, Niagara Falls does back home. A quick bus trip to the rock formation known as the Three Sisters revealed more touristic mobs – but the majestic views of the monument and the Jamison Valley beyond proved my working mantra true yet again: some spots become tourist traps for good reason.

We figured a short hike would dodge the crowds, so we followed signs to “GREAT STAIRCASE”  that looked to get ever closer to the Sisters. The steps were narrow, steep, and pretty crowded (though a trio of surprisingly loud and astonishingly fetching French guys in tank-tops made it worthwhile). Meanwhile, the hike was proving not so short: the steps continued down, and down, and down… no way we’re hiking this back up, I mused. At least the crowds thinned out, and by the time we reached the flat trail about halfway down the valley through the woods, we had the place to ourselves

We soon figured out why: we’d missed whatever signage there may have been for the 25-minute hike… and soon found out we were on the three-hour circuit. Though I was skeptical when examining the mileage: 2.5 km on a mostly level trail shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes for we fit walkers… assuming no further surprises were in store.

Luckily, none were, and we enjoyed a splendid hike through lush foliage. As expected, about three-quarters of an hour later we reached a couple of motorized conveyances to get us back to the top; we picked the closest one, an inclined railway that bills itself as the world’s steepest funicular. Something of a slo-mo roller coaster in reverse, I don’t doubt the claim.

Up at the top, at the once-again crowded and even touristier Scenic World facility, we stopped for some ice cream… and it was here, as I mentioned favoring less sweet ice cream flavors as I got on in years, that Mikey popped the question:

“So, how old are you?”

We’d met over San Francisco Gay Pride on one of those dating sites, and, in our talks about sci-fi and movies, and other, ahem, shared interests, the subject had never come up. Happily, my still-youthful looks confounded him. It made for a good chuckle over ice cream as he fingered my driver’s license and agreed the photo made me look like one of the 9/11 hijackers (all of whom, I think, were younger at the time than I am now — admittedly a dubious distinction.)

Back home, I got changed to meet Sarah and a friend of hers at a fab drinks & dinner spot back in Darlinghurst: the Victoria Room. Echoing the British Raj, the joint serves up a colorful array of drinks care of a friendly, attractive waitstaff. As we enjoyed Tiki-style drinks out of retro-ridiculous drinkware, a lively conversation ensued on unconventional relationships; with Sarah herself divorced, and with Sarah’s friend embroiled in relationship concerns, the ladies offered up a perspective different than mine on the open-type relationships I’ve had in my past.

“I just don’t think they work,” Sarah said. She counts herself as one who finds herself stung when she learns a potential paramour is into such arrangements.

“But think about it,” I offered. “If all people who decided they weren’t into traditional monogamy were free and open to choose it without stigma, then the truly monogamous wouldn’t have to worry about somebody lying to them or cheating behind their back.”

At least that’s my hope, if we ever come to live in a world more honest about what each of us really wants. I mean, heck, if we can’t all agree on a type of Tiki beverage to enjoy, who says all our relationships need to fit into a single mold?

Food for thought among the Tikis.

In my next entry: the real reason I came to Australia (sort-of) — Sydney’s New Years fireworks!

Wander the Rainbow is back on the book fair circuit… this Sunday, October 2, catch us at the Distant Lands booth at the West Hollywood Book Fair. Now in its tenth anniversary, the book fair this year coincides with the opening of the brand-new West Hollywood Library. The new facility features a GLBT literature section, where I’m sure you’ll be able to catch Wander the Rainbow in the near future. But don’t wait until then: I’ll be at the Distant Lands booth from around 1 to 3 p.m., with official signings slated at around 2.

Look forward to seeing you all at the fair!

One year ago, Wander the Rainbow broke new ground by becoming the first-ever travel book-length first-person account of a gay man traveling solo around the world.

Over the past year, the book has repeatedly hit bestseller status in its Amazon category, received wide-ranging media attention, gone on tour around North America… and most recently, was the gold medal winner of an Independent Publisher award for Gay/Lesbian Non-Fiction (item 43 here).

So what’s on the agenda for Year Two? Plenty!

Over the summer we will be releasing an updated printing of the book with a new Afterward recounting the follow-on trip I took to Europe last month. As with my previous blog/book arrangement, the book will feature memoir-style writing with no holds barred or punches pulled… which means you’ll all get to find out what really went on with those 18-year-old gay porn stars on my last night in Copenhagen. Stay tuned…

There will also be more media coverage, possibly more book events at some spots that were missed in the original tour… and even the prospect of a movie version as there’s been some interest from the folks down in Southern California of turning this sprawling memoir into a “coming of age gay road movie” (no, I will not be playing myself, but younger, hotter versions of me are encouraged to apply.)

Wander on, everyone!