Quad Heese Zoo Terrific Let’s Dance!

Millions of years ago man traveled from place to place via four large, rubber wheels which sprouted from either side of his ankles at around the age of 10. Since then we have, of course, evolved the slower and more boring method of transit we now know as “feet”. YAAAWWWWNNN. It is because of this natural evolution that we, to this day, celebrate our great ancestral voyage through motion by riding heese (the new and better plural for ‘horse’) and ATVs to experience how both of them succeed, and both of them fail at being the ideal mode of transport.

LIES. Nothing like that EVER happened. Well except that there were some ATVs and heese involved. Words pronounced ‘Blazing Trails’ are what happened nextly as follows:

In a last-ditch effort to find something more amusing to do than punch myself in the face all day, and because I hadn’t been to “The Outback” once since coming to Australia, I looked into booking some kind of outback excursion several days ago. Of course, my first inclination was to go see the desert portion since that’s all you ever see on Australian stuff and as featured in the animated adventure ‘The Rescuers: Down Under’. But I found out that those tours only launch from Alice Springs. Fair enough, except a ONE-WAY ticket to Alice Springs costs $400, meaning I’d have to pay that twice, plus the $500 for the actual 3-day tour to that big rock they gots out there. $1,300 CDM(CanDy Money (Australian Dollars))?… Chortle.

I found out though that there are two parts of the outback: the bush and the aforementioned desert. Luckily bush tours launch from all kinds of places, including Cairns! And that meant that I could sneak into at least some variation of the outback for not many dollar signs! I booked an all-day package with Blazing Trails for $208. The day included both gentle horse-back riding (*soft crying*) and then tearing face through trails in the picturesque bush country on a four-wheeler. HIYUUUURRRRR!

The heese were alright. I mean, they’re big-ass, beautiful animals but it’s scary to be sitting on something that can suddenly have a chemical shift and go berserk. Plus they didn’t instruct us on what to do if one of them went postal. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. We were led lazily for a couple hours through winding trails surrounded by tall grass and stereotypically dry trees. Pretty nice, but I couldn’t help but pay more attention to my balls and how much they hurt. We hit a couple straightaways where they’d fire all the heese up to a trot. My loose-fit jeans made sure this was the most excruciating thing that had ever happened to the inside of my legs/bag. EITCH! Oh yeah, and the heese pooped and peed all the time while we were walking, so you can imagine how much fun I had with that.

There were a couple hours of free time between the heese and the ATVs. Those of us doing (Have you ever noticed that if you forget the ‘i’ in ‘doing’, you spell ‘dong’? You silly bastard!) both things were thrown blind-folded into a black van and dropped off in a nearby, touristy village where we’d be picked up once more for the second half of fun later. I used the time to buy a bunch of stuff for the fam. The end.

Back at Blazing Trails, we waddled over to the smellier, sexier, manlier side of the property where the big, sweaty four-wheelers were caged. YES. In not so many words, we were instructed on how not to break a tree, a four-wheeler, or a spine in half, then given a choice of either riding what looked like a toy and sounded like an electric weed-eater or a huge, farm-grade tank. How the hell could anyone prefer the former over the latter?? But still, myself and two other bikers were the only three who opted for the widow-maker. Let’s guzzle some fossil fuels! And how!

At first, during the slow motor to the introductory obstacle course, I couldn’t even get my stupid thing to shift into second gear. But after warming all the magic that makes them go up, no problems with that. I’ve ridden a four-wheeler (very recklessly) only once before in my life. But these ones didn’t have a clutch so it’s really easy to get comfortable shifting. Soon enough I was breaking ass around corners.

I certainly felt my adolescent male side come out, hearing the power of the motor and shifting quickly through gears while ramping over roots, down into ruts and ditches, and quickly over long flat paths. IT =ED FUN. It did make me wonder why dudes my age feel like going fast and loose on city roads, instead of taking their energy out safely in venues like this. I mean, streets are a freaking transportation system. Not your own damn personal mating and fighting ground. You suck.

I did a pretty good job of keeping up with the instructor, though I’m sure he was taking it easy. He’s been riding for many years. If he wanted to, he could definitely have slayed me at riding. I had a good time with the speed and whatnot and dust getting all in my teeth and eyeballs anyhow. I recommend it highly! DO IT.

I did run into a tree once. But, in my defense, it was at very low speed because I went squirrelly around a corner and saw it coming. Just pushed the vehicle back out, and off I went again at dangerously high speeds!

The scenery we rode through was very beautiful. All kinds of grasses and mangled trees with insect vent shafts poking up all around. It’s just too bad we stopped so infrequently. I didn’t manage to get many photos out there. We did stop once to scope out a cow skull surrounded by other cow bones. Our guide (Tex, not from Texas) picked up the skull to place atop a fence post a little ways away. I must say it was pretty amusing following a guy around on an ATV while he proudly held a skull high in his hand.

Sadness consumed my mind soon thereafter, as our fun came to an end. We were all covered in a fine layer of dust/horse shit. Mud clung to my eyelashes with volumizing excellence. I looked FABULOUS.

Turns out, if you want to work at this place, you can also live there. There was actually a Canadian girl who had done just that. She was the one who led our horse-ride and she didn’t even have any equestrian experience prior! She just liked horses and wanted to work with them. I actually inquired as to whether they needed anyone else, because I totally would have been willing to delay my departure from Australia for a couple weeks to work there and ride the ATVs for free! I certainly seem to have a knack for it. Sadnessly, the season at this time of year is rather slow, and they were in no need for help.

I had interesting conversations with Tex (he drives the courtesy bus too) on the ride back to my hostel. Cool guy. Too bad I won’t have a chance to hang with him more by working there.

*Pause for a full day of resting/crying wherein I got too much sun and burned the whole of my torso - front and back. HOORAAAAA-AGGGHHHH… AGGGGGHHHHH*

…and then the zoo! Yes! I finally got around to using up the entry voucher the Gonthiers gave me way back when for Christmas. And what an odd coincidence that I happened to go on my birthday as well! (I swear, I didn’t plan it. I barely remembered it was my birthday.) My sunburn, combined with some new shoes I’d just bought that don’t fit quite well, made walking around mildly unpleasant. But there were plenty of awesome animals/marsupials smattered everywhere to keep me distracted. Oh, and I hadn’t seen ANY marsupials before then. Including kangaroos! INOWTF?

I got it all flushed out of my system really quick. First animal I saw was a red panda, which I don’t think is a marsupial, but it was cute and kept wandering around its pen, panting (and not ‘de-panting’). It was indeed a hot balls day. I had shellacked my body in aloe vera, sun block, and hat to avoid any further sun damage. I also saw some crazy little monkeys, lemurs, owls, dingoes (Which still look and act EXACTLY like adorable dogs. Imagine going to a neighbors house who had an awesome-looking dog, but then they said “You can’t touch or feed it because it’s a wild animal.” and then you’d be all like “But awwwww!”.) cassowaries, crocs, wombats, koalas, stuff.

KANGAROOS! Oh yeah. They know what’s up here. The kangaroo exhibit is a gated area where the roos just roam/jump around you casually while you feed and pat them. EXCELLENT. I couldn’t have asked for a more awesome way to finally see them. Some guy randomly gave me a bunch of feed because the bags you buy for a dollar have about 600% more pellets in them than the time it takes for you to get bored giving kangaroos food. I know. I used like 5 handfuls then gave up and set the bag down. That dude probably even found the bag himself before.

There was one that had the leg and ear of a joey hanging out of her pouch. I and a bunch of other folk waited anxiously beside her for a little while, hoping to see more of it. But she took off into the trees somewhere, and all hope of a glimpse was lost.

After that it was onto the croc exhibit. Damn those things are weird (wheird)! It wasn’t until the croc show later that I was convinced they weren’t statues. They stay so perfectly still when they’re sunning themselves, and their scales are so rugged and look like plaster. Shoddily-moulded plaster to boot! If I saw a sculpture of a crocodile in an art exhibit that looked exactly like one of these, I’d be like “That sculpture sucks!”. But they’re very scary and very real when in motion. A handler came out and did a show and was aggressively snapped at by a big guy called “Gummy”, named so for his low number of teeth and horribly misaligned jaws. It looked like he had two heads, his jaw was so crazy!

Immediately after the croc show was the open-air bird show. That was a hoot! (I’m really sorry for that…) It was very nice though. I almost didn’t stay because I figured “birds?… BOOORIIINNNG.” But I’m glad I did, because it was crazy. All these big birds fly just inches above your head. I think I even got hit by some wings for they were so close! I also have no idea how they cue up all these birds so well. For instance: the main announcer lady motioned over to a hole in a tree several feet behind her and said stuff about things living in there such as… an owl! And just then a little barn owl pokes its head out of the hollow and flies over. INCREDIBLE. Must be a violent cattle prod in there waking his ass up when he’s supposed to dance.

That was another funny thing about the regular, enclosed bird area. it had two owls sitting around in it. And below each owl was some configuration of gruesomely murdered baby chicks. I’m supposing they were their food. But it makes me wonder who’s job it is to murder batches of adorable little chick-lets. That job probably has a pretty high suicide rate.

There was koala exposé tucked neatly somewhere in there. The koala had tiny little eyes and used them to look confusedly around at everyone adoring him. Then some chick hauled out a big fat wombat that laid placidly on her lap. I then held a tiny croc for some pictures. Immediately juxtaposition from all that was the koala photo op booth. But I couldn’t hang there for too long. All the kids and asians clamoring for this one adorable koala was too much to handle. I don’t want to be one of those gay people who’s all like, “OH NOEZ THAT POOR KOALA!” But that’s what it felt like. THE END OF THE ZOO.

I caught a return bus back to downtown Cairns where I had a modest birthday dinner of spaghetti ‘Bolognese’ (marinara) with toast and garlic bread (I ran out of pasta and don’t want to buy any more food this close to leaving), followed by watching Ocean’s 13 with some other dudes from my room.

BTW, they call ketchup ‘tomato sauce’ here, and I guess they don’t use the word ketchup for anything at all. What a silly, non-stop carnival it is here year-round!

That’s all that I can figure. I’m really hungry. I think I’ll go see if that deli meat I bought a few days ago hasn’t turned yet. DELICIOUS.