Day 33: Rock Climbing

As you can probably tell from my recent blog posts, I have slowed down a lot since arriving in Perth.  Being here is somewhat like being at home, since I get good, home-cooked food, and a house to lounge around in.  Basically, I am taking a rest break before we continue on next week.  Of course, slowing down doesn’t mean doing nothing, and today was no exception.  Since today was a rainy day, the morning was slow, and mostly consisted of sleeping and reading.

Once Greg finished his work around lunch, he and I took a taxi into the city to a rock climbing center.  There were tons of the people there, mostly kids due to the school holiday, but lucky there were about thirty climbing stations, so it wasn’t a big deal.  Three of the walls were covered in climbing surfaces, so we just picked one an went.  We started with one that looked pretty simple, and both Greg and I were able to make it to the top with relative ease, although Greg was a bit faster than me, being more experienced.

We went all around the walls, trying different sections.  There was a wide range in difficulty, from easy to impossible, based on size, grip, and distribution of handholds, and angle of wall.  Even the slightest angle away from the wall made the climb significantly more difficult, as it moved most of your weight to your fingers.  There were several sections I simply could not make it up, which were mostly angled, as I found climbing those very difficult.  We didn’t even bother to try to climb ones that went nearly upside down and required extra carabiners.  It was also difficult to get pictures and work as a belayer at the same time.

Climbing the rock wall.

I made it to the top!

After climbing for about two hours, we were getting a bit tired, so we moved on.  Before heading back home we stopped in some of the shops in Perth and looked at souvenirs and such.  In the evening, we went met some of Greg and Mary’s friends and their two daughters at a Thai restaurant for dinner.  Like in Thailand, I found myself enjoying most of the dishes and finding more things I liked.  Their two-year-old daughter was cute and hilarious.  When we got ice cream after dinner, she went around and sampled everyone’s ice cream, and then proudly went up to Daddy and announced “Poopy!”