Special edition – HockTales marked safe

Welcome to a brief intermission in our HockTales adventure. Let me dump the giant blue rucksack and red backpack bulging like fat wrap-your-own tacos for a sec.

I am safely back in Australia. I managed to finish my entire trip on schedule without any requests from Australian DFAT to get dfuq back home with a mask and a Ghostbuster proton pack spraying multiple sanitiser streams.

I arrived home two weeks and one day ago. One week later and it would have been 14 days self-isolation for me. Australia kicked off that policy too late for it to apply to me. Extensive breathing has been involved since my return. I’m as clean as my travel account that the Cuban guy robbed.

Corona was nipping at the heels of the international community when I first heard about it. It slowed progress at borders but it was not a pandemic. But no spoilers!!!!

To be clear, I am not currently gallivanting around these exciting places and risking my life with the Russian roulette of truck stop food. I am writing retrospectively. Loyal readers (and disloyal – it’s ok – you can read other blogs – just wash your hands) will have noted an increasing lag between my posts. It just wasn’t viable to cram in so much eating, drinking, exploring and random adventuring and then go back to my hotel to write every night. Mostly, I would go back to my hotel room and pass out as if chloroformed by the Invisible Man most nights. (Bastard never paid his share of those double rooms.) I hammered away at this blog on buses, planes or Interjet queues. Now that I am home, this is just the same time lag with workus interruptus getting in the way!

Just know that I am safe and everything is cool with me in Adelaide where I live. I have a job, I have an apartment, I am safe, I have wifi, and I have three months of free Stan through a deal with Qantas. Sadly, I do not have my duty free Havana Club 7 Anos anymore but there is no ancient Mayan mystery about where it went …

So, dear reader, HockTales goes forward! Vamonos!!! (Spanish for come on, let’s go!) I will continue to report my remaining adventures in exactly the same fashion. There’s plenty to go! We are only halfway!! I promise not to mention the dirty C word unless it becomes relevant to the story.

I send a shout out to my friends, Clare, Deb and Jason who are in enforced self-isolation. (I prefer the term lock-ins because it sounds like Timezone circa 1990 and makes me nostalgic for kicking people in the nads on Double Dragon and Ninja Turtles.)

I think we can all use a laugh about now. Like many of the cafes and restaurants, I am happy to deliver.

Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment of HockTales!!!!!