There were no marble clad mountains sparkling tonight though, as we drove down the dark winding road of Via di Vorno in search of her home. I was frustrated, as this place looked NOTHING like the satellite imagery I pored over on Google Maps. The homes had no numbers, and each time I saw a home painted what I like to call "Tuscan Yellow" I had to drive on a narrow bridge over the creek that ran parallel to the road we were one, find the bright juicy lemons tree her son plucked from, then ring the doorbell. Except ALL the farmhouses seemed to be painted "Tuscan Yellow" and they all had bright juicy lemon trees. Thanks to my rudimentary Italian, after waking all of Dani's neighbours, I was able to figure out what they were saying, Dani did not live there.

We did find her home eventually, and finally we were greeted by Dani, her ever-smiling husband Ale, her happy always hungry toddler, and Olivia dressed in a little red outfit, the Chinese Crested that Dani had not yet figured out was a dog. We were finally home.

It was not until the next day that we really knew that this was going to be a trip of a lifetime. Our days would be blissfully routine: In the morning we would wake to the scent of espresso and fresh pastries: nutella danishes, cream puff thingees, and my favorite, apple turnovers so fresh and flaky it would just melt in my mouth. This would be followed by a couple of Wiggles cartoons and Playhouse Disney in part English-part Italian then outside to discover new things on the farm.

Finally, we were able to find the bright juicy lemon tree Giacomo plucked from, and there were plenty. In the daylight we were now able to see terracotta pots lining one side of the gravel driveway all filled with bright juicy lemon trees. The other side was lined with olive trees and across the way, countless more olive trees. Ahead lay a patch of grass where we would loll about in the sunshine. Lucie would pick from the dwarf cherry trees when no one was looking. Steve would inspect the kiwi and grape trellises to try to duplicate it at our home in San Diego (not a success). Giacomo would crawl about as (sadly) he was not yet walking at the time. Dani and I? Well, we'd do just what we always did as best friends in 1989, make fun of people and talk New Kids on the Block.

When Ale came home though, that's when the real fun would begin. He would show us all the produce on the land: strawberries and squash and figs and "funghi" (mushrooms). He would walk right into the neighbour's home to show us where barrels of wine were made and stored. After that he'd walk us into another home, this time the guy was restoring antique meat slicers. After that him and Steve would light a BBQ and prepare dinner. Dani and I? Well, we'd be sitting on the stairs sipping Prosecco and criticizing our spouses' grilling abilities. (As for how that food turned out and Italian cuisine in general, that will require a separate post.)

It is here on this Italian farm where Lucie learned all her first words, "horse" for the elusive horse grazing on the Baron's property next door, "cow" for the smelly creatures locked up in a barn existing only to be milked twice a day, "doggie" for Olivia (when Dani wasn't listening). Sometimes we would be ambitious and teach her the Italian words, such as "cavallo" or "mukka". We don't know if they stuck but the most important one did, "Baci", for to this day she still gives me a bunch of slobbery baby kisses whenever I say the word.

The best time to go: During grape picking season (early fall) and olive pressing season (November) when it's not too hot and there's tons to do. (That's when we'll be back)

written by  audreyrosario on May 02, 2008 This Freakin' Rocks!!! from Lucca, Italy
from the travel blog: Italy & United Kingdom 2008
tagged Italy, Tuscany and Lucca

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Our bus pulled over on a long expanse of nothingness to see a car turned on its side, with a young couple stuck inside. the car had flipped over about 10 times, and their blood and guts and debris of whatever was in their car was strewn about a half kilometer down the dusty road. I got out of the bus to stretch my legs and looked down the road in both directions, which continued straight into the horizon. I had no idea how long it would take for an ambulance to come because the last town and gas station I saw was 2 and a half hours behind us, towards Adelaide. We helped pick up all their junk stuck in the sand and in these prickly painful plants which looked menacingly like close relatives of the cactus. when I looked down to see how my feet were doing, I saw a big animal skull on the dirt instead. just like in the Yosemite Sam cartoons! Feeling guilty that I had contemplated picking up a souvenir from the site of a massive car wreck, I continued to help pick up the debris with the others. Besides food, it was mostly bandages and first aid stuff, and we discovered the car wreck kids had been part of the Woomera paramedic crew. That was the start of my journey.

We were now in the driest state, in the driest country, on the driest continent on earth. (the driest continent is really Antarctica, because the ice never melts, but I refer to the absence of actual h2o at any temperature.) When we hit our destination, it looks like this.

Once at Woomera, it took forever long to set up the tents. Pegging the tent into the ground was a nightmare; if the ground wasn't too dusty and sandy to hold the pegs in place, then it was pure hard rock. There was red sand flying everywhere; in my eyes, in my pockets, in my mouth. You could not escape the sand. The wind was blowing everything (not just the sand) everywhere. It was crunchy when I spoke; I was literally chewing sand. People walked around with handkercheifs tied around their noses and mouths, Zapatista-style. I felt like a nomad; there was nothing all around me except for the detention center in the distance. I was going to be there for 4 days and there wasn't even any water except for what I had in my backpack. I wanted to cry in frustration but my tears would've caught the sand and permanently stained my face red. And good Lord was it hot, but fortunately, despite creating multiple sandstorms, the wind was refreshing. Looking at the sky, it was the clearest day I had ever seen. I couldn't imagine this place ever having a cloud. Rain - humidity - was probably little more than a myth here. The unrelenting landscape proved it.

About 4 hours into this tragedy of a weekend, a few hundred of our feral group stormed the south side of the detention center, and with the aid of some boltcutters, freed about 50 refugees - men, women, and young children. When the guards came to break up the mob, I saw children and women trying to commit suicide, jumping from the tops of fences or cutting themselves with the razor wire. I couldn't look, turned around, and headed back to camp.

Everyone seemed to think the mass breakout was just a fabulous idea, and I was just thinking -- what were they planning to do with these refugees turned fugitives? I crawled into our communal tent at dusk and saw 3 afghans and one Iranian men sitting there staring back at me. 'Where are you from?' they asked in extremely broken English as I fumbled around in the darkness for my canned dinner, flustered at the predicament I was in. When they heard I was from New York they look stunned. First I thought they were going to slaughter me, being an american and all, but then I realised that they "love the United States of Freedom!", because these were actual people seeking political asylum after from the Taliban we had heard so much about so far away. These were the people our US forces were supposed to be protecting, people we would only hear about and see about on CNN (click here for CNN's coverage on the escape) or the BBC. Despite us being in the middle of the desert in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles away from anyone, suddenly the world seemed very small to me. I was the first American they had ever seen. My presence had just made the world seem that much smaller to those three guys too.

It turns out these people have been here for months awaiting deportation. The more I walked around the darkness of the camp, I saw more and more little children, children who aren't going to school, aren't learning english, aren't doing anything but sitting in a camp for 12-14 months now in the middle of the south australian desert. They were hiding in the tents, because the ACM (Australasian Correctional Management, Australia's contracted national guard) and APS (Australia's federal police, the heavily armed ones) were walking around the camp, and eventually took back about 30 of the 'escapees' that evening. I took a nice long walk to the perimeter of the 'site' we were camping on, to the bathrooms of the gas station where Channel 7 and SBS news had set up satellite dishes to report on the 'breakout'. Here I came across dozens of armed cops on white horses or standing around in riot gear. I could swear they borrowed the horses from the KKK. After displaying ID, a US passport, 2 riot gear men stood aside to allow me on my way towards the centre. They were somewhat more reluctant to let the australians I was with through. It was while I was pleading with the APS to let them in with me that I realised we really were in the middle of nowhere, and on top of that were completely surrounded and certainly not free to leave. I had 2 choices now, I could A) continue on with my australian friends back into this virtual Baghdad, or B) use my US passport as a 'get out of jail free' card and blow this popsicle stand, only to face certain death by wasting away in the desert. Certainly I couldn't imagine one of these ACM thugs whisking me away on his white horse and riding me to the safety of my Sydney city flat. I chose A) Baghdad, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best.

Somebody listened - at least in terms of accomodation. Two guys gave me a new 2 person tent that I could have all to myself so as to not interfere with with refugee-smuggling operation that was going on in the main tent. After they set it up in the darkness, I had a moment to relax. I was really satisfied with my new abode, and was equally happy that they set it up, as I hadn't the faintest idea how to pitch a tent. By now it was almost pitch black, but fortunately there was a full moon out to cast at least a little light.

Let me tell you something about the desert at night. Night in the desert is like being on another planet and it was the most amazing thing for me. During dusk, it went from 33 degrees (93F) to 3 (40F) degrees in the course of about an hour. Despite the faint rustling of the people in the tents around me, I was struck by the silence. Apart from the small barrack filled streets of Woomera, the next town was over about 200 kilometres away. There was no sound of cars, overhead planes, televisions, air conditioners or leaves moving in the wind. There was nothing.

I opened my sleeping bag and 2 seconds later I passed out. I had a much more comfortable sleep than I had expected. It was a good rest, despite the hard red earth and the rocks beneath me, and also, as I would later find out, the largest uranium reserve on the planet. turns out, the town of Woomera was first created for uranium mining, and later existed solely as a British and US nuclear missile testing ground, sanctioned and wholey owned by the government. Being that this was still federal property, it also meant that I was trespassing.

In the morning, the sun awakes you as soon as it appears. Lying on my side, I opened my eyes and saw the bright sun right there, through the tent, level with the earth, and there was nothing on the ground to obstruct the sun from me; a billion or whatever miles away - and nothing in between. It almost disorients you, when the sun is at your side, almost below you - and the phrase holds true 'you don't know where earth ends and heaven begins'. The sun seems everywhere; all around you, all at once. And that's when you really thank God for being able to see another day.

In the desert, there are exactly 2 hours in the day when life is comfortable: the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset. Taking advantage of these fleeting moments of normalcy, I promptly got up to have breakfast. I had my contraband fruits and avocados, which I had smuggled across the state border into South Australia. For some reason, there is something like the customs borders at airports when you go from Victoria to South Australia which bars the transport of plants and fresh fruit. Australians are really particular about their fruits I guess, though it blows my mind what my banana was going to harm in this barren, lifeless desert. Anyway, the avocados had melted into a guacamole-like mixture in the heat, so taking advantage of this, I opened a can of tuna fish for a makeshift sandwich. That's when the infamous Australian Bush Flies appeared out of nowhere. Dozens of them, everywhere. Suddenly they were all over the place, attacking me and my meal. I zippered up the tent to keep them away and ate fast. It was a damned good sandwich.

I had just finished my makeshift breakfast, and before I knew it.. the temperature had soared up about 20 celcius degrees, into the high 90's F. In zippering up my tent doors I had inadvertantly turned my little tent into a thousand degree greenhouse. I reopened both ends of the tent to create a welcome wind tunnel. Except today there was no wind. Not a trace of the tornado-like sandstorm of yesterday. I was immobilised. I laid onto my back in the tent and tried my damnest to move as little as possible and to breathe as shallow as possible, so as to avoid any exertion which may result in me bursting into flames. It didn't work - and the day only broiled on.

The crazy thing about being in the middle of nowhere is that your needs are diminished to the basest, most instinctive form. It was like being alive in like, neanderthal times, where there were no deadlines, no bills, no car problems, no jobs, no credit reports, no laws, and no rules. When I wanted to eat, I ate. When I wanted to sleep, I slept. Everything was so simple. The only problems I had to consider were hunger, thirst, tiredness, and comfort. Stress, as we know it, no longer existed. It was totally primitive - and totally relaxing. I could almost get used to this.

The last night was the night that I discovered how amazing everything was. At this point, the remaining refugees had been (illegally) transported to Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne to be with their families and integrate into the moslim communities. That was a big relief because if there was something that made my night's rest short of perfect, it was the anticipation that the ACM was going to storm my tent another night with their M16s with the attached nightlights looking for any remaining fugitives. We lit a big bonfire in the sand using hollowed eucalyptus trees and gathered around it half-celebratory, half-exhausted, vaguely resembling the last episodes of a particularly taxing Survivor season. At one point, someone lit off red flares and left them on the ground. The moon shone less bright than the previous nights so the red flares were the desert's primary source of light and so it lit up the ground in every direction. The smoke from the flares created thick low clouds everywhere - about 2 metres high and again in every direction. I felt like I was on another planet, Venus perhaps, who knows. For a hundred metres all around me, the entire earth, air and flare clouds were illuminated in a deep dark red. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen in my life.

After the smoke cleared a couple of us started looking up at the sky. There they were, all the constellations, all upside down, and so absolutely bright. I saw tons of shooting stars, as well as those cloud clusters of stars that I've only seen in NOVA episodes and planetarium shows at Hayden. I saw depth in the stars, so that I could easily tell which stars were closer to earth and which ones were farther away. I think I even saw colours in them. I was never big on astronomy, but this kind of stuff captivated me for hours. I had seen nice stars in the middle of the ocean sometimes on cruises in the Caribbean, but this was infinitely different. If I didn't know better I would have even tried to reach up and touch them. I was really like nowhere on earth.

I left wanting only to return.


written by  audreyrosario on April 25, 2002 This Freakin' Rocks!!! from Woomera, Australia
from the travel blog: Short Term Sydney-sider
tagged Australia and Woomera

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