Australia & NZ 2011 (13 March)

On our last day in Perth we had to wake up really early. There were few cars available to transport all of us to catch the next flight, and I had the bad luck of being in the first lot. We waited for a couple of hours until everybody else arrived. Naturally, I got hungry. I was about to buy an overpriced salad fruit and a coffee when I remembered I had teriyaki beef nuggets (same brand as the jerky) and a sachet of Vital Greens.

The flight to Melbourne was again in Qantas. It got a bit delayed (the luggage belt broke down) but that didn’t harm our schedule. We were served lunch; by the time the attendants hit my row there was no more chicken, only beef casserole. I didn’t mind it, as I eat virtually anything as long as it’s tasty. The beef was tender, the gravy was flavoursome, and it was served with potatoes, carrots, broccoli and mushrooms. There was also a bread roll, biscuits and butter on the tray, which I didn’t touch, but I did eat the thick slice of Tasty cheese as dessert. I also had water and a cup of coffee.

Lunch

We arrived at Melbourne around 6 pm. A bus took us to our hostel in St Kilda, The Base. The place was full of drunken kids. There was loud music coming out of the speakers of the bar in the ground floor. We were shown how the card keys worked and walked our way up to our rooms via the staircase with carpets that I suspect haven’t been vacuumed since the hostel opened (the lift was out of order).

I was assigned a 4-bed room with 3 people I didn’t know. Two of them were girls that I haven’t seen awake yet, they’ve been lying on their beds making occasional noises (sleeping noises, not farting).

Guests at The Base are entitled to free breakfast and dinner. We didn’t have much time before we had to leave, so we just had dinner there. A guy behind a hot display served us what looked like a cheap but decent fried rice with chicken. Just looked like. I have had my share of bad meals during my lifetime but this was ridiculous. It tasted like leftovers of the leftovers. Apparently they had thrown some corn, plus overcooked peas and broccoli with week-old rice (felt undercooked but I think it was the unpleasant crunchiness that appears after a few days of sitting in the fridge). The pieces of chicken were the only half-decent ingredients in the “dish”. There were also a few pieces of a weird-tasting sausage. Seasoning was a bit of ginger, and I suppose a tiny bit of salt. I had to drown the thing in BBQ sauce (which I don’t really like) to make it more palatable.

Free dinner at The Base

After eating we were to the Buddhist centre for a Q&A session with our lama. Then we stayed there for drinks (again, none for me) as long as we could to avoid going back to the filthy hostel.

Australia & NZ 2011 (10 March)

I’m on a tour. Not a touristic tour, but a Buddhist one. My teacher visits this part of the world once a year and I decided it was time for me to explore a bit more of my new country. So a few months ago I booked all my flights and for the next 25 days I’ll be away from home (except for the Sydney part of the tour).

This is day 1. I got up at 5:20 and had what I suspected could be my last healthy meal until the end of the tour: soaked chia, flax and sunflower seeds, cashews, peanut butter, 2 small bananas and cinnamon.

The Qantas flight to Perth departed from Sydney at 8:10 am. Around 10 am we were served breakfast. The hot option was a roasted pumpkin frittata and the less popular cold option was cereal and fruit juice. I was afraid they would run out of hot brekkies because I was sitting in row 52, but luckily that didn’t happen. The frittata, which had potato y turnips apart from roast pumpkin, was served with a slow roasted tomato half, cooked spinach and a thick slice of bacon. It was very nice, and very filling in spite of its looks. Breakfast also included a small cup of processed orange juice, a peach and mango fat-free (but loaded with sugar) yogurt, plus a bread roll and butter that I didn’t touch. I had a cup of coffee too.

Hot breakfast

In my (limited) experience, Qantas is very preoccupied about keeping its customers well fed. About an hour after breakfast, the flight attendants offered some bags of snacks (dunno what it was), and about an hour before landing, a yogurt/cereal bar and water. IMO, that was more than enough for a 5-hour flight.

We landed around 10:30 (Perth time, 3 hours earlier than Sydney). I got my suitcase and bought a ticket for the shuttle bus to Fremantle. It’s a 1-hour ride, which I spent sleeping, so I didn’t get to see much of the city. The bus left me at the B-Shed, where I caught a ferry to the Rottnest Island, where some people have been for the last 2 days enjoying the beach (and meditating, of course!) while our lama works in his new book. I had a quick walk around to check out my lunch options and settled with Tasty Express, the cafe located right in the B-Shed.

Tasty Express

The other options, for the record, were two cafes located in the E-Shed: a very informal one (in the edge of dodginess) that serves chicken schnitzels, pizzas, etc., and another one that serves cafe fare and Indonesian food.

Tasty Express serves breakfast until noon, plus Italian-influenced food for lunch. The menu has a few typos and expensive prices ($28.50 for a steak, for instance) but I guess it’s the price you have to pay for the convenient location.

Anyway, I ordered a smoked salmon salad after confirming the serving size with the waitress. It was essentially a garden salad (mixed leaves, cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumber, red onion, green onion) with avocado, smoked salmon and a balsamic and lemon dressing. It was very generous in size and in the amount of salmon and avocado. The dressing was delicious and a few threads of lemon peel gave it an extra fresh touch, much needed with that temperature.

Smoked salmon salad ($17)

I waited a couple of hours more for the ferry to depart. The company is called Rotto Express and once on board I understood the name. Man, they’re fast. So fast that I got dizzy within 10 minutes. It didn’t help that the lady behind me spent half of the short journey (20 minutes that felt like an eternity) vomiting. I just closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I could feel my blood pressure dropping and weirdly my fingers got really numb and started to rise by themselves. I guess they were looking for some blood.

Finally in the island, I walked to where I was told to and found a note saying they were swimming in the ocean. I went over to meet them, then we headed back to the houses, meditated, relaxed for a while and then had a BBQ with leftovers from the nights before.

If those were the leftovers, I don’t want to imagine how much food they got in the first place! There were chips, biscuits, capsicum dip, cheeses, salami, ham, nuts (almonds, macadamias, cashews) & dried apricots, salads with lettuce, rocket, tomato, sun-dried tomato, cucumber and feta, cous cous, quinoa, tuna, eggs, pasta with a meat & vegetable sauce, baked beans, guacamole, and BBQed sausages, steak and eggplant. Oh! and gelato cake, because we celebrated a birthday.

Salads, etc.

BBQing steaks

I was lucky to have so many options that I was able to eat lots of salad, good fats and protein while skipping the grains and junk. I didn’t drink a single drop of alcohol and went to bed fairly early.

Tasty Express
Shop 1, Peter Hughes Drive
B-Shed Ferry Terminal
Fremantle WA
93367363