Katooooooomba!

So, as you know, since I was feeling a little eh about Sydney I caught a train to the lovely Blue Mountains town of Katoomba, which sounds to me like the sound that your (or, well, my)belly makes when you blop it up against someone else’s belly. I found a really great hostel there and immediately made friends with a couple of English girls who let me tag along with them on a walk to Echo Point and with whom I shared dinner and terrible boy-related stories until late unto the night. This cheered me greatly and I was a little sorry I was going to have only one night there, as I had to get back to Sydney in order to be able to catch my STUPIDLY early flight to Brisbane–which I did, you’ll be happy to know, as that is where I am typing from right this very second. Apropos of nothing, I am thrilled to report that it’s really warm here, for me at least, and that I’m being a total tourist like we used to laugh at in Miami because while everyone else is wearing jeans and sweaters and close-toed shoes? I’m in capris and flip-flops and sunnies, feeling like a poor little frozen orchid who has finally been let free out in the sun.

But we’re not talking about Brisbane, because we have only been in Brisbane for three hours and we have mainly just gone to the grocery store and so we don’t know anything about the city yet at all. We’re talking about the second day in Katoomba, where I decided to get a later train back to Sydney because a) the less time spent there the better and b) I wanted to do some more walking. One thing I did like about Sydney, actually, aside from meeting with Louisa and Jo, was that I just walked all over everywhere, like four hours a day, and I was starting to feel a little proud of myself when I moved from one hostel to another by walking with my full pack on. Tuesday I had a gorgeous walk to the Rocks and then went to the Powerhouse Museum even though it was kind of far away and everyone said I should take a train instead. “Ha ha!” I said, jauntily, over my shoulder, as I strode around and got lost and had to cross certain streets multiple times because I couldn’t read the street signs very well without my glasses. I was getting kind of into walking, which is why I thought it would be a good idea to do a four hour hike in just two hours, before having to take two trains to get to where I was going that evening.

A random Dutch guy at the hostel was going to Wentworth Falls and since I am nothing if not suggestible, I asked if I could tag along and we ran to the train station and got on with no time to spare at all. It was about a forty minute walk from the station to the trailhead, and by the time we got there I knew I wouldn’t be able to do the longer walk I wanted to do and still make my train back. After a cone of lemon gelato and some consultation with one of the cafe waitresses, I thought I’d be able to do about half of the Overcliff Walk, I think it was called, and then cut up the mountain and walk straight to the train station and get back to Katoomba (I swear, I make a little google-eyed expression every time I say or even think that word) and get my bags and get on the train and get to Sydney. So I set out, with no map (they were out of them) or anything, but reasoning that a trail with, like, handrails would be pretty easy to navigate.

It was a gorgeous day and I was a little sorry I was wearing such thick socks and a long-sleeved shirt. We climbed down about eight million very steep steps cut into the stone and looked out onto soaring vistas and native tree and cocaktoos just flying around and it was all very awesome and I felt a million times better than I had in Sydney, walking around the big buildings and feeling isolated and alone. We edged past the beautiful waterfall and I thought about the one I fell off in the Dominican Republic when I was fifteen and made very sure to hang onto the handrails. I kept an eye out for the turn to the station road but…it never came.

And then I realized that I was about to miss the first train, and if I wanted to catch the one that was leaving in an hour and a half I had to turn back right then, as I had no idea where the trail would turn. After some worried discussion with the Dutch guy (“You are going to be safe? There are a lot of stairs to go back up.”) I waved goodbye and gamely turned around, looking alllllllllllllllll the way up at alllllllllllllll the eight million stairs I’d have to climb. In forty-five minutes. When it’d taken us an hour and a half to get down them.

And the joke is, of course, that while I’m quite a bit stronger than I was even last year in Seattle, I am not and will probably never be super fit and trim and everything. Have you met me? Girl, have you seen me? If so, you know I am very much built for comfort, and not for speed, or, for that matter, for a lot of cardio that doesn’t involve Justin Timberlake singing in the background. But, you know? What’s a well-upholstered girl who needs to get back up that mountain going to do?

I am stupidly, ridiculously proud to tell you that I booked up there. Wearing jeans and a tee shirt, having eaten an ice cream cone two hours before. I powered up all eight million of those stairs and I could not believe I was doing it. I made sure to say a special thank you to my butt, which I believe played a major part in my making it to the top in half the time it took me to get down, although, full disclosure, we’d stopped and taken a lot of pictures so who knows what it would have been like going straight down. I was convinced once again that this gigantic ass that I carry around with me all day every day, that makes it so hard to fit into pants but so easy to sit down, is not, in fact, merely decorative but also highly functional in nature. It’s all engine power back there, baby.

By the time I got to the stop, out of breath and dripping with sweat, I felt so strong and powerful and competent (I followed the signs and didn’t get lost!) that I wanted to wrestle a crocodile to the ground with my bare hands and then make it a cuppa tea with some ginger biscuits because, you know, they’re endangered, and there’s no need to use violence to solve one’s problems. I found out that I’d just missed the bus back to the station and so I was in for another forty minutes’ walk. I tossed off a casual “Ha HA!” and strode off purposefully, drinking from my awesome blue Kathmandu nalgene I got on sale in Queenstown, thinking that after a very difficult (for me) climb up eight million stairs? There’s NOTHING I’D LIKE BETTER than to snorf down a gluten-free cookie and go for another walk.

I made it to the station, calves screaming, and made it to the last in a series of dispiriting Syndey hostels in which I stayed, and to a Thai noodle place in more or less one piece, and have even managed to make it down stairs with only a little scrinching up of my face in pain thus far. I’m staying at a funny place in New Farm here in Brisbane and am considering wearing my newly-purchased boob tube out tonight. (When I mentioned that I wanted to “take my boob tube for a test drive” at the hostel, one girl misheard me and said “You got a boob job? How do you take that out for a test drive?” To which I responded “NO, girl! These are all mine, although thanks for thinking that I would actually pay money for them. And I’m a bellydancer, so, you know. They’ve already been, um, test-driven, thanks.”) I’m looking forward to a chill weekend before I head out to the wallaby farm on Monday.

And I know a lot of people reading this are laughing at me a little because they are people who have slept in igloos they built themselves in snowy mountain passes and who have fought off bears with their bare hands on the Pacific Crest Trail and done all sorts of adventuresome and exciting things, so my story about how I climbed eight million stairs and caught my train on time is a little silly. But I still feel so amazing today, like my body will do anything I want it to and I can be friends with anyone I want and go wherever I feel like going. I feel like I will find a way to do what I want to do and even if I have to do it alone, no one can stop me. Every time I flex my still extremely sore calf muscles, every time I take a step on this new continent, I think about how much has changed in the last couple of years, how all the pain and confusion and indecision has been translated, very slowly, into strength and power, into making to the top of the mountain.