Well, I've been climbing every day at Arapiles since I got here on 11th October and the climbing is frankly incredible, every bit as good as I was led to believe. Sadly, though not unexpectedly, my arrival coincided with the end of a 12 year drought, between that and my managing to bring the worst flashfloods to the Sahara desert since I was born, I'm starting to wonder if I should rent myself out to drought ridden locations across the globe.
My body is currently bearing testament to the tenacity of the Australian mosquito, the intensity of the Australian sun and... well, something I havn't identified yet which has made an entire hand swell up and then elbow as well. Aside from the flies, mozzies and ants the wildlife is amazing, in a single day I see a half dozen species of lizards running around the place, including the slow shinglebacks: http://image14.webshots.com/14/5/94/2/173459402IxSCZr_fs.jpg which you can pick up easily. Birds, kangaroos, wallabees, everything is so exciting when you're seeing it for the first time!
The climbing has proven to be harder than fisting a velociraptor and my grade expectations have been rudely crushed! I did my first 22 trad onsight yesterday and I had to fight quite hard for it, I've been spanked by a few 23s and fallen off a 21 on second (Arapiles is sandbag central, even after careful grade editing by the guidebook authors). Sadly I can't upload pictures at the moment but I did manage to onsite the immortal line of Kachoong which looks something like this when a hot girl is doing it: http://www.onsight.com.au/gallery/images/large/200_217_07cfl.jpg Powering through the roof in such and insane position is, well, better than eating cake and quite possibly better than sex too.
I must mention the campground which is brilliant. Flushing toilets and water you can drink... If you don't mind "extra minerals" only 100 metres from the climbing and all for only 2 dollars a night. There are fires every night with everyone crowding round to talk shit about climbing, science, existentialism, breasts... and so on. The people at the Pines campground really are the finest in the world, my friend Ricky has cooked bread ranging from plain to chocolate and banana in his juryrigged oven for everyone to share in the evening and I'm only sitting typing this post because Marco swapped me his car for a rack for the day (my first experience of driving the unstoppable tank that is a Toyota Landcruiser).
I'm slightly dissapointed by the lack of single women at the Pines though, there are more girls than most anywhere else I have climbed but they are all attached to a climbing wad :(
Hopefully I will be able to find a way to upload pictures from my camera because there is quite a good one of the effects of 10 people throwing flour on a fire at the same time!
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