Christmas day morning having a champagne breakfast
We haven’t been online to update for a while and in the last eight days we have had less sleep and more alcohol than the last month! We always knew that our festive period was going to be different but just how different was a mystery. After a bumpy three hours with Emirates we arrived back in Sydney safely. The weather was incredibly windy and as for feeling festive, well it was about as Christmassy as Basra. Luckily for us our home for the next few nights was the residence of a colleague of Martels from her brief stint of work at John Holland. We had a Christmas tree, a tv, the use of a reliable free internet connection, a comfy bed and more importantly a bath! Within an hour the taps where on and I was lowering myself into a bath which was teetering on the edge of boiling. Something I later regretted as I was as dizzy as a tramp on Crystal Meth. Christmas morning was peculiar, we both woke with the similar excited feeling but that feeling lasted the whole four minutes it took us to open our three cards. After gobbling down breakfast we headed for the train station and onto the tube for the short trip to Bondi Beach where we would spend our Christmas Day. We were meeting our adopted family who had the usual open house going on with more prawns than a fishmongers and more alcohol than George Best’s drinks cabinet. Donning our $5.00 santa hats it was obvious how the day was to progress when we were handed a glass of champagne before 11am. As a vast majority of the house and surrounding houses are occupied by Chileans Xmas Eve was celebrated in true local tradition with Christmas Eve being the main focus of the party. The aroma of cheap wine and stale beer coupled with the dark eyes and pungent breath suggested it was quite a night. Most people in the house were drunk at the mere sniff of alcohol and by late lunch the suggestion of a festive dip in the sea was met with the sort of excitement you wouldn’t expect given the weather wasn’t exactly true Australian summer.
The cactus and I, all before lunch
Never the less we all marched down to the beach, I carried the esky of beer, a wobbly affair but I made it, Martel carried the food and a tipsy smile and our friend Adam carried a 6ft inflatable cactus given as a secret santa gift – of course! As we all braced the cold bondi sea I did think to myself that alcohol and powerful sea rips don’t really mix well but the Bondi rescue lifeguards re assured us with a shout of “be careful in the sea, especially if you’re pissed” and then proceeded to laugh at us as we all splashed about like children . It wasn’t until after my third Hasselhoff type sprint and dive that I realised just how many people were pissed in the sea, it was the soaking wet santa hats that gave the drunks away, the same santa hat that now covered my eyes in a blindfold style after a wave completely submersed me. Martel was sensible enough to stay only waste deep, but not sensible enough to remove her santa hat. There must have been around 50 drunk santa’s surrounding us and several more up the beach, if a shark had bothered to take a bite at any of us the amount of alcohol in the blood would of probably offended there palette.
Cheek to Cheek
We headed back to the flat after about an hour and the party continued until the early hours, it all became a little too much for some as they passed out on the couch and this paved way to the usual comedy pictures. Whilst it wasn’t a Christmas day in the traditional form we enjoyed the experience of being in Australia and being on the beach, have to say though, think I prefer the turkey to the Barbie thankfully we did a proper English dinner with the adopted family the day after Boxing day….oh gravy!!
Christmas dinner with the adopted familia
