agaza, here i come

agaza is egyptian arabic for "vacation". jules and i synced up our R&Rs so we could go on vacation together. strangely enough, this kinda be our first REAL vacation together. in india, we'd gone on our R&Rs separately, and since then, we've been working separate jobs around the world so no time to meet up. i did travel to meet her in ireland while she was working one time. anyways, jules and i arranged our R&R, and we are going to australia. i do feel bad, though. we were originally going to meet a buddy i worked with years back in turkmenistan. he's currently working in darwin, in the north of australia. that was the PLAN. sadly, darwin isn't the easiest place to get to directly (or even indirectly) from egypt, plus he told us there isn't much to see there besides a national park and him. so, swedishchefdave, i'm sorry, but we aren't going to make it. the invite is still open here.

anyways, we are taking wednesday off to make sure we have everything and relax a bit before our journey. we are flying from cairo through singapore (10.5 DAMN HOURS!!!), then on to sydney. the day we arrive in sydney, thursday, we are going to see 'hamlet' at the sydney opera house. the next day we are waking up early to do the 'BridgeClimb Sydney'. they breath-a-lyze you before you do it, so i insisted we do it early. nothing major is planned for the rest of that day, so we'll probably walk around the city. maybe a bit of a pub crawl on saturday, topped off by an evening showing of "between the devil and the deep" (you can check out the sydney opera house for details if you are that interested.

sunday, we hop a plane the cairns (the last place a person was killed by a great white, great). early, early monday morning, we get on a sailboat for a 2-day, 1-night boating/diving/snorkeling/sailing trip on the great barrier reef. i don't know how to dive, i wanted to try a couple weeks ago, but the company hadn't renewed it's license. so that means jules will go diving with the other serious divers having a divingly good time with strangers while i'll be wearing the equivalent of diving "water wings" wishing i could sit at the grown-ups table. we get back to dry land tuesday evening, where we'll probably find a nice dinner and lounge to talk about our trip so far. wednesday is completely unplanned as of yet, but i'm thinking i'd like to try the skyrail. jules found it, and i'm a bit scared of heights, so between the BridgeClimb Sydney and this, i'll get to try to work on overcoming my acrophobia, AND get to see a lot of cool things in australia. not sure if we'll have time for a walkabout or a safari being that we only really have 5-7 useful days. wednesday, we fly back to cairo via darwin (only 1-hour layover or i'd invite SCD to stop by the airport) and singapore. we get back in egypt at 7AM on the 4th of july. we are hoping, if TheMech isn't working too hard on our site's lube oil flush that we can have a grilling celebration featuring nice steaks, corn, macaroni salad, potato salad, baked beans, and tossed salad. like back in america without the incendiaries.

i'll let you know how it goes. i think i'm taking to computer to find things to do on the fly. not sure if i'll have time to blog while i'm there, but i'll take notes and throw it down for you when i get back. no worries though, mate, i still got a week to get ready.