Some unwelcome rest.

When we are paddling sea kayaks, as with any human endeavour, our body is our engine. Like the valves and pistons that spin the drive shaft in our fancy cars, our muscles, veins, bones, glands and synaptic gaps all make up an engine, a machine so efficient that Ferrari would love to get a copy of the blueprints.

To make sure the car gets us to work on time we keep it topped up with energy (unleaded, biodiesel or some other concoction), with coolant, air in the tyres, oil, brake fluid and all manner of other necessary resources. And so it is with our bodies. To keep the paddles turning (or even the fingers tapping on the keyboard) we fuel our bodies with a mixture of wholesome goodness - a fabulously balanced diet made up of all the major food groups and essential bits and pieces in happy, healthy harmony. Most of the time.

Every now and then we get a flat tyre, the air filter gets clogged, the oil needs a change and the car goes in for a service. The roadside dining of Jakarta has seen to it that Lain and I have received a very thorough grease and oil change this week. The typhoid trolleys got us!

Lain and I, having indulged in the street food of many far flung countries, are of course not inexperienced in the delights of having some dodgy laksa, ceviche, curry or bakso give our alimentary canals the royal flush. Bali belly, Delhi diarrhoea, Kathmandu clean-out or the LaPaz leak - we've each ticked those boxes. We were not, however, quite prepared for the knockout punch delivered by the chicken satays we ate on the way back to our hotel in Jakarta on Saturday evening.

I shall spare you the gruesome details. It is enough to say though, that while we had intended to escape Jakarta early on Monday morning to explore some more of beautiful Java, we are still here (on Thursday), still holed up in a thin-walled hotel, still avoiding any attempt to sleep through the blaring karaoke next door. This has not been the greatest few days - we are both still in the mechanic's garage making sure we don't stray too far in case the sump drain needs to be flushed in a hurry.

If only sound and smell could adequately be transferred on this blog!

Picture: Somewhere in north QLD, Lain demonstrates a kayaker's method for waste disposal - well, so many of you asked how it was done!!

Jakarta - One great big village.

So often our preconceptions of a place (or an adventure!) are based on the fears expressed by those around us and are usually brewed in a sticky cauldron of gossip rather than fresh truth, straight from the tree. And so it was that I was expecting Jakarta to be a cesspit of all the worst that 10 million people could brew up, tangled in a labyrinth of red tape under a blanket of smog thick enough to choke all its inhabitants into a daze of cancerous delirium.

In contrast to my fantasy, Jakarta is an exciting and energetic city where all parts - people, buildings, food, smells, smog, ancient and ultra chic, are tossed together like an enormous nasi goreng into one giant 'kampung' (village). Stuffed directly between two mammoth and reflectively shiny shopping malls is a tiny street packed with locals (and Lain and I), all eating wonderfully tasty food - spicy, sweet, fried and unfathomable - at a microscopic fraction of the cost of the overinflated coffees, doughnuts, hamburgers and brand-name french fries inside the air conditioned monsters.

We may have found scissors sharp enough to cut through the red tape that drew us to Jakarta in the first place. We've rabbited our way through embassies, queued all the way to numerous counters, had meetings with officials and photocopied, printed and stamped all manner of papers. Our kayaks are due to arrive in Surabaya on July 3 and if all goes well we might actually be able to start paddling within a day or two of their scheduled arrival. I don't write with total certainty though, as we are yet to receive final approval from two different government departments - fingers crossed.

While we wait though, Lain and I have taken the time to explore this grand city. We've ticked a few tourist boxes - the National Monument, the Old Harbour (Sunda Kelapa), the Old Town. We eaten from so many wonderful street stalls, accidentally discovering the best place in town to sample goat satays among other new and exciting flavours, dishes and delights. We have had our hotel room converted, until 4am, into a massive resonating chamber for the karaoke bar at the end of the hall (we tactfully found a new hotel the next day).

Jakarta is also home to a new breed of Indonesians - the ultra class. Dripping in designer clothes as they step from their dark tinted, chauffeur driven, black Mercedes Benz directly into the Louis Vuitton lounge, they float over the poverty and hardship of so many to enjoy the thick layer of wealth like the cream on a milk bottle, of this great country's fortune. Here in Jakarta this wealth is clear, and the numerous, polished and shiny shopping centres are eagerly converting these (mostly) devout Muslems into credit-card capitalists.

The volcanic island of Java has delivered us a couple of jewels, dug from the mine of Lain's youth. Seventeen years ago, on a short high school exchange trip to Indonesia, Lain made a couple of friends she has never forgotten, and who have never forgotten her. Now, all these years later we have had the great fortune to reconnect with these old friends Esthie (in Solo) and Suryo (Jakarta's cool cat) and their families. To say that these friends have enriched our experience in this country is a huge understatement - we have had an insight into Javanese (in Indonesian) culture that cannot be bought, especially in the Louis Vuitton lounge!

Time moves quickly and another day or so will see us move on from this crucible city, this giant kampung. Even if we didn't have to return here every 60 days or so to fly out of the country and renew our visa then I would say with confidence that we will return to Jakarta. Of all the cities we have visited in the world, this one has the right mixture of craziness, colour, energy and flavours to keep us interested for a long time.

Photo: Lain tucking into another bowl of spicy street food, another new flavour.

Follow the Red Tape Road

Attempting to import a couple of second-hand sea kayaks into Australia would probably not even raise the eyebrow of even the most fastidious customs officer. However, attempt to do the same in Indonesia and the bureaucratic gates slam shut. Customs officers scratch their heads (what is a kayak?), and despite the elaborate rules and stipulations, bureaucratic decisions can apparently take place in only one place, the sweaty, overpopulated metropolis, Jakarta.

To say that a visit to Jakarta was low on my list of priorities is a gross understatement. The city is known as "The Big Durian" partly for the spiky appearance of its rapidly growing skyline but also for the pungent smell, a mixture of dense, hot smog and the oppressive stench of the foetid open sewers that slowly drain through the city.

Hopefully our brief (we cross our fingers) visit to Jakarta will yield a special travel permit from the Director General of Customs that will allow us to use our kayaks in more than just the harbour of Surabaya (the location that they are removed from the shipping container). We also hope to achieve miracles in the Department of Foreign Trade, sidestepping the normal procedures for importing goods into the country, and obtaining more special travel permits for the movement of our kayaks. Thirdly, we hope that our Australian passports will get us further tomorrow into the Australian Embassy than we were able to achieve today, where we were holed up in between several bomb-proof walls and hammered with questions (in Indonesian) by the security guards on duty.

Through all of this, and the hours of delicate negotiating and fiery hoops we had to jump through in Surabaya with the shipping company, import agent and customs department, I have sat virtually mute, struggling to understand more than the most basic of greetings. Lain, on the other hand, has shown her true colours. While Lain might humbly insist that she is not fluent in the intricacy of Indonesian language and culture, she has proven herself a champion of diplomacy and translation.

Having spent 17 hours on a bus the night before, seriously dehydrated and with a pounding headache, Lain still found the energy and the vocabulary to charm the stone faces behind the high desks of Indonesia's bureaucratic capital. Quite simply, without Lain's skill with the language there would be no way we could attempt to achieve what we are trying to do in Indonesia.

So while we nervously await the decisions of the heads of departments, our kayaks get ever closer, still tightly packed in a container somewhere between Darwin, Singapore and Surabaya.

A couple of hundred years ago there would have been no red tape - you want to go there, then just go! I am sure it is meant to make things safer, easier and faster but this paperwork jungle that we are swinging through right now definitely represents the less glamorous side of adventure travel. If we manage to dig through the paperwork, to follow this red tape road, then it is only the madness of the travel visa system (and yet more red tape) that will restrict our paddling plans.

Ah, Indonesia. Love it or hate it but just make sure that you sign the form, in triplicate, on the way through.

Picture: Yet another hot, smoky office - not exactly the paddling paradise we were expecting in Indonesia.

A tale of two cities

Darwin represents all that is vibrant, multicultural and explosive about Australian culture. A concoction of Asian influence and youthful anglo-australian energy blends into a background of world war two artefacts and ancient Aboriginal cultural history…and crocodiles.

While we only spent four days in Darwin I felt like I knew the place. Perhaps it was the Brisbane of my youth, perhaps youth itself (if I have any left!!) or perhaps it is a new energy that just felt so right, Darwin had a welcoming feeling to it that I haven't felt since driving into Port Stephens for the first time.

We were fortunate enough to spend our time in Darwin with friends, old and new, who helped to make our stay so pleasant. I would quite happily have kept exploring the Northern Territory in our minivan, or exploring the many delights of Darwin had we not been scheduled to jump on a flight to Bali.

To ship all of our gear, kayaks and equipment to Surabaya was a mission in its own right. We had to strip through all our carefully packaged dry bags and other gear to make sure that we were not attempting to ship dangerous goods or banned substances into Indonesia. With Ms Corby still wallowing in some Balinese prison we wanted to make sure that Indonesian authorities had no necessity to question our neatly packaged kayaks. Our vacuum-sealed packets of flour (white powder in a plastic bag) for making bread were the first to go! Cigarette lighters, life-jacket inflators, marine flares and, reluctantly, the remainder of our food was all left behind in Darwin.

And here we are, in Bali, waiting. Waiting for our kayaks to arrive, waiting for visas, waiting for bureaucracy. I suspect this will become a common thread to our lives over the next few months. Essentially there is no cheap or easy way to do what we hope to do. Despite our grand plans the Indonesian authorities see us as tourists, and they are right. We wish to out-stay the normal tourist visa by many months so our case creates bureaucratic indecision, delays and complications that not even the most well-intended backsheesh can resolve. This is not so much a paddling holiday as an experiment in paperwork.

As the number of days remaining on our tourist visa slowly expire, we zoom around Kuta on a motorbike (Lain drives like a formula 1 champ) trying to find loopholes in the visa process, while dodging the throngs of Aussie yobbos adorned in Bintang singlets and freshly swelling tattoos.

The next stop is west, into Java, and one step closer to putting paddles back into the water. Our kayaks are passengers themselves at the moment, in a container bound for Surabaya (via Singapore). We should be there in a day or so to coordinate their arrival. It may still be another week or two before we actually paddle away but that cannot come soon enough.

In the meantime Lain and I are enjoying the delights of the many food wagons (typhoid trolleys) and testing out the odd Bintang. Anything goes in Bali, just don't trust the money changers!

Photos: Lain testing out a self-inflating PFD as we packed our gear in Darwin. Life is like a box of chocolates in Bali.

The long road to Darwin

The goalposts for Archipaddlo have moved and, as we have just discovered, it is a very big playing field! Over five crazy days and nearly 3000 dusty kilometres we have transported our two kayaks and all our gear to the sweaty and lush topical city of Darwin.

It is a nerve racking experience to overtake a 55m long road-train on a narrow, dusty highway in a cheaply made backpacker van with two huge kayaks on the roof acting somewhat more like a kite than a kayak. I think I can appreciate how the survivors of a cyclone must feel.

The road is overrun with grey nomads, in a thick and constant stream, all towing an enormously oversized behemoth of meticulously white caravan behind their expensively decked out (and equally shiny) 4WDs. Every stopping bay, every track off the highway, every dusty parking area is packed to the gunnels with oldies all escaping their normal lives for this rather strange 'edge of the road' lifestyle.

Plunging into Mataranka hot springs felt a little like stepping into a set in the movie "Cocoon". The warm swimming pool was wall to wall with grey haired wrinklies, all exuding a youthful glow in their shared retirement. The water certainly had a rejuvenating energy that topped up our tanks for the afternoon.

Darwin is a colourful and lively place at this time of year, a heady mixture of backpackers, nomads and pretty much all sorts. Our campervan only stands out from the crowd for the two huge parcels resting on its roof. Our kayaks are wrapped in a protective shell of bubble wrap and cardboard in the hope that they make the long journey to Surabaya in one piece. Tomorrow we'll be down to hand luggage - all our possessions in one tiny backpack - until we are reunited with our boats in a couple of weeks to restart Archipaddlo in reverse.

Tonight we are evading the authorities. We are parked in a dark street under a huge banyan fig in a quiet corner of town. Every carpark, road, lookout, park and jetty that is anywhere near the water has an ominous and thorough sign promising that the council will clamp the wheels or impose a huge fine on travellers who sleep in their van overnight. Heaven forbid that people would commit such a crime!

While we still have plenty of packing and organising to do, Saturday will be our last day in Australia. A dirty dash over the Arafura will see us gnashing on nasi goreng and sipping a chilled Bintang while we escape the madness of Bali to calmly await the arrival of our boats in Java. Until then, we'll make the most of this crazy melting pot of the north and spend the last of our dollars and cents on more packing tape and boxes.

Pictures:
1. I finally made a dint in the fish population of 'The Gulf' - these two grunter were a tasty feed (Is that proof enough for you, Chuck??).
2. I am happy this monster is no longer around - a croc this size was apparently shot near Normanton back in the '60s. I'm sure it wouldn't eat kayaks.
3. The Crampervan - of course we only drove it on sealed roads!
4. Lain getting at ease with another, more ancient predator of the north - this kronosaurus would have eaten the Normanton croc for breakfast!
5. I wonder if they will start including kayaks as a standard feature with these vans.

The Backflip

As a kid doing bomb-dives into the neighbour's pool, I mastered an impressive backflip. The risk of landing with a slap onto the vulnerable skin of my lower back, or even of cracking my scone against the rough brick edge along the raised rim of the deep end was never enough to deter me from this arial manoeuvre. Still today (I'm just a bigger kid) I love the thrill of throwing myself backwards off some great height, never quite sure whether I'll score a series of 10s, or dismally crack the surface with a a slap and a huge splash.

And so it is with this adventure, Archipaddlo. Sometimes when making decisions during this expedition we need to close our eyes, throw ourselves backwards into uncertainty and wait to see how we land. We have just made a radical decision, and performed our gravity-defying backflip.

We were back in Cairns, scheduled to pack our boats into a shipping container bound for Port Moresby, and only minutes away from committing to this direction when we had a conversation with a customs agent in PNG that would flip our adventure upside down. There would be an unavoidable 3 to 4 week delay in processing cargo in Port Moresby due to a backlog in the port, and due to some bureaucratic bunglings we would need to be in Port Moresby from now until the boats became available.

This felt like pushing a big barrel of cow dung up a very steep hill - twice now our plans to enter PNG had been thwarted, and our gut feeling was telling us we needed to make a change. We needed a backflip.

Cairns to Bali, well how about Bali to Cairns?? And then everything fell into place, our gut feeling turned into butterflies, and our new adventure began to unfold.

We are currently zooming across the country in a campervan (or crampervan!) with the kayaks firmly strapped to the roof. Darwin is a brisk 2800km from Cairns, so much easier in a car than a kayak. The boats are scheduled to be on their way to Surabaya (about a week's paddle further west from Bali) by the end of this week. We'll meet our boats over there and hopefully be faced with a more efficient customs process than our PNG debacle.

The goalposts may have changed ends but we're still playing the same sport. We hope to simply reverse our route, paddling from Bali to Cairns. This reversed direction has several advantages that will hopefully make Archipaddlo safer and increase the likelihood of our success.

I guess though, just like in the backyard pool, we'll never know all the outcomes unless we give it a crack. Darwin, Bali, Surabaya, here we come.