Manly Beach

After a quick bus ride over the bridge and through the woods a bit at 9:30 am, a 10 kilometer hike doesn't sound like a bad idea--especially if you were raised outside of the metric system and really don't have much of a concept of how far that is. All told, it wasn't really that far, I suppose, nor was it the farthest we've hiked, and it certainly hasn't been nor will it be our most strenuous hike, and had we not been putzy and stopped to talk to people and take pictures, it wouldn't have taken as long as it did either. And really, if had been just about the destination, we would have just taken a ferry and walked >1 kilometer.

This jaunt took us through Royal Sydney National Park, and as I've mentioned before, I love national parks. We walked along the ocean, through ritzy streets, through lush forest, through less lush forest, past a disappointing lighthouse, and finally, Manly Beach. Along the way, we saw pufferfish, a pelican, jelly fish, a handful of comorants (shags here), the coolest public toilet that I've ever used, a couple different species of gull, and people.

The most interesting bloke was an elderly gentleman who just had reconstructive shoulder

surgery and was wading around and was kind of miffed that he couldn't swim. When he found out that we were from Wisconsin (not Canada), he made us wander over to his crocs, which, lo and behold were decked out in none other than good ol' Bucky Badger. Apparently, he had a cousin living in Indiana and they were in Chicago where there was a good deal on these shoes. He went on to say disparaging things about New Zealand, in a friendly rivalry sort of way and managed to chat us up for a good hour. Lovely man.

Eventually, we made it to the beach, didn't linger too long as we saw a couple of blue bottle jelly fish (danger!), had a lamburger, and headed back. This story is probably better told in pictures.

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