Travelog for: JamaBanaDukLuv

Pajama Banana#1 has traveled to several countries now and has completed several of his life missions.  He came home for Christmas 2007 and in February he started his next great voyage. 
He chose to travel the US Toyvoyager Trail in 2008  and is on his way and traveling now.  He is traveling alone and will not be taking his little duk this time.

Pajama Bananas were created with good humor and are enjoyable to be around.  They seem to bring a smile on everyone's face.    We hope you enjoy him too!


             

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JamaBanaDukLuv  Itinerary   

Australia:  becka_kate **Thank You BeckaKate
Malaysia:  Aliah  **Thank you Aliah
Japan:  Yumi      **Thank You Yumi
Taiwan:  Icitaiwan  **Thank You Icitaiwan

US Toyvoyager Trail * 2008

Virginia:    3Tmom
Florida :    Carlissa
Florida:      Tarepanda
Colorado:  Wourpet


UPDATE 08:  Now he is on a new quest for adventure---- he has found another brother "BananaAPeel" to travel with him to complete his missions and he would like to travel again very soon!

If you are interested in entertaining our little Banana Man and his new found brother please let us know.
And remember----he still likes to chase bears and his brother does too!

**Thank you to his hosts who have entertained JB in 2007 and 2008.  He has had a wonderful time with many great memories and many great photos of his voyage. 

JamaBana and some of the gang of ToyVoyagers still left at home (waiting for someone to take them on a voyage)  jumped  into the car for a great adventure weekend to do some geocaching.  I have done this before with my mom and it is a LOT OF FUN!

My mom is helping me write all of this so we can get it done in a hurry.  We are almost out the door.

We are going to Sisters Oregon which is over the great mountains of the Northwest.  They have great food there, cowboys, fishing and I will see if my mom will let us ride a horse
Then we are going to Bend to make a short visit wtih a friend of my moms that is wanting to get into ToyVoyagers like us.  We are going to tell her all about our tales.

We are going to sleep over in SunRiver.  Banana's get kinda warm there this time of year but there are tons of bears to chase and I expect to have a great time finding a few.
If my mom takes me to the "Bears" restaurant where I hear they even serve BearBurgers,  I just may get me one.  Ha!

We are off to have a great weekend and will post several new photos next week when I get back.  I am going to be going to Australia on Monday next and I must get back to pack for the voyage. 

See you next week!
JamaBana and TV friends

We all climbed into the car and off we went on a weekend adventure to SunRiver, Oregon. 

On our way through Sisters Oregon we stopped at a GeoCache to add what my mom calls a "travel bug" into the cache container.  We got a close up view of where my mom hid this travel bug but we swear we won't tell.

You have to find a geocache with your GPS device and then a travel bug is sorta like us with a number and some little guy attached to this tag and then they have to wait until someone finds them in the cache and takes them to the next cache.

Sometimes it is not so good to just sit and wait for others. It can be a very long wait.  But most times these little guys get to travel more than us and see a lot of really fun locations.

Next in Sisters we went to the park to see the other location for a geocache.  It was called a micro but my mom couldn't find it.  Sometimes these little things go missing and no one knows why.  I think this one is gone as she never did find it.
Then we had to check on one of the other caches in the area for travel bugs. There weren't any but we had fun taking it all apart and getting our photo taken sitting on the cache box.

Now I know how to do this cause my mom let me use the GPS.  It was fun.  She forgot to take my picture holding the GPS and I was very sad.  It was a big deal to me.

Me and the Monkey Boys hung out by the sign and mom took our photo there.  The other guys had to wait in the car because they got caught climbing all around the tables and people were trying to eat their lunchs and didn't want the boys bothering them.  We thought it was funny!  My mom just frowned.

Our next stop was at the house where we stayed in SunRiver.  It is a beautiful house with a view of a great big mountain called Mt. Bachelor.  In the winter there is a lot of skiing there.  www.Mt.Bachelor.com

We had a big schedule planned so my mom packed us in the car again to go to the stables.  She told me we were going to get to ride the ponies today.  I was really scared.

While me and the guys were hanging out on the fence the monkey boys talked to the horse so they could get close for a photo.  The horse ignored them as most horses don't like monkies anyway.  But the boys thought it was fun.

As I waited for someone to get me a pony,  I sat high on the fence post so that I could find just the right pony to ride.  There were some naughty ponies in that group and I sure didn't want one to bite me.

I asked the nice lady if she could get me a very slow pony and one that had a very nice disposition as Bananas usually don't ride horses and this had to be a nice pony.

My mom yelled out---there's one that is asleep---I think the Banana can handle that one---tee heee heee!

Slowly I got on the nice pony named "Pokey" and DukDuk began to sqawk!
Get me off this thing--it's moving!  I'm afraid of heights!

I convinced DukDuk that the pony was quite gentle.  This nice lady led the pony around in a big circle and it wasn't as bad as I thought but Duk Duk kept his eyes closed the whole time.
We stopped the ride and then went to find those wild monkey boys. We found them trying to ride the little roundup steer.  They were just about to be thrown into Monkey Heaven when I yelled at them to jump off. 
They landed safely on the ground and all looked at me "Now It's Your Turn" Banana Man to ride the roundup steer!

While DukDuk whispered in my ear---don't do this---something inside of me said I could.  I sat very quietly on this roundup steer and he never even bucked me off.
We got down and the monkey boys were laughing at how they never saw me so scared!  Monkey chatter---
that's all it is.

Now I was feeling very brave.  I begged this one nice little girl to let me sit on her big horse with her and she actually said I could. 
I was feeling very good as I sat very high off the ground.  It somehow now felt special to be so high. 
Meanwhile DukDuk was begging me to get down from that big horse.

After our long day at the stables we went back to the house to sit for awhile with my new "friend" who wants to be a toyvoyager with the monkey boys "Cheeki" and we watched a few of those looney toons on the tele.  He's a great guy this little "Cheeki".  I hope one day he will get to travel too.

I had fun today.  My mom was right.  She knew I would eventually like to ride ponies.  Thanks mom!

Yipee!  It's Bear Day!

My mum took us to the Black Bear Diner just like she told me she would.  It was wonderful. 
I sat in front to take a look around.  Then I found a bear trail that led me to a whole group of bears that were fishing and roasting marshmellows for smoores.

After breakfast I went outside again to take a look around and possibly meet the other bears.
There stood the BIGGEST BEAR I have ever seen standing right in the front of the diner.  He told me I could come right over and stand by his great big bear paws and have my photo taken.  He seem to be a friendly bear so I thought it would be fun to get a photo taken with this BIG BEAR.

When I said goodbye to the BIGGEST BEAR I looked around the building and I saw 3 other little bears climbing a tree.  They invited me over for a short climb. 
I wanted to chase them but they told me that the mama bear told them to stay in the tree and not come down until she came back.  You have to do what the mama bear says they told me.
I got help from one of the other bears and climbed into the tree where one of the little bears held onto me real tight.

When I got down from the tree my day at Black Bear Diner was coming to an end.  I had to say goodbye to the mother bear as she was going back to her 3 little bears in the tree.

It was a very nice stay at the Black Bears Diner and one day I will go to another diner with more animals and hope I can get my photo taken again.

Although no one let me chase them---I had a great day!

Hi
Here I am in Australia but have not yet sighted another Banana running around in PJ's. There are plenty of bears to chase, but sadly they are all a bit aged and not so much into running around anymore so they're not a lot of fun.



Elisabeth arrived the day after me so we are having fun getting to know each other. I was having difficulty standing up even with something to lean on (must be jet-lag kicking in) and I don't think that impressed Elisabeth very much!



Luckily, it is the Queen's Birthday on Monday which means a long weekend, so we're all going to Canberra (Australia's capital) to visit some friends (who have children with young teddy bears I can catch unawares!!)

Sadly, the weather is shocking here (torrential rains & gale force wind warnings) and it has been decided to postpone our trip to Canberra until next weekend (hopefully!).



Our host is disappointed to as she hasn't seen her friends there for awhile. Here is a photo of our host's backyard. It is slightly flooded and the driveway gates had to be wedged closed at 5am as they kept swinging open in the strong winds. (Luckily us ToyVoyagers got to stay warm and dry while the humans did the running around in the dark cold and the rain!)





We hope that the weather improves so we can do some sight seeing closer to home, but its great weather for games!

With the wet and miserable weather Elisabeth decided that we were all going to play board games while Bec wrote reports on her children at school. She insisted that we play Monopoly, so we did.



I think I did well, I bought some hotels and didn't run completely out of money!



When we finished playing Monopoly and packed it away I came across this game in the back of the cupboard. It features ME and MY BROTHER! so, of course I wanted to play!



A fun way to spend a wet & rainy day (and the weather is clearing, so we might get to go out one day this long weekend!)

The weather in Sydney is much improved, so today we all went out to lunch at La Perouse, a suburb in Sydney's south on the edge of Botany Bay (Australia's 'birthplace').



Across the Bay from here is where Captain Cook landed (he was the first 'whiteman' to set foot on Eastern Australia). (Photos are in Kalli and Cassiopeia's travelogue)

While we were here, we came across a monument to La Perouse which had Elisabeth very excited as La Perouse was a French navigator who arrived in Botany Bay in January 1788 with orders to annexe any parts of 'New Holland' ie New South Wales / Australia that had not been claimed by England. Unfortunately he was a week too late, as the First Fleet had just arrived  and claimed the whole of New South Wales for England! La Perouse sailed away a few weeks later and was never heard of again!




This is Bare Island Fort.

I thought it might be an interesting place to go and find bears to chase, but Bec explained the differences in spelling/meaning to me. Oh well! We would have liked to go exploring there anyway but it was closed to tourists today due to storm damage.

The storm clouds seemed to be closing in again, so decided it would be a good idea to start to head for home, but on the way we stopped at this little church at Little Bay built by the nurses at Prince Henry Hospital (which used to be right next to here, but has been pulled down and turned into a new / exclusive housing estate)



It might not look like much from the outside, but the inside is pretty impressive!

Today after Bec had finished work we set off on a rather long trip to Canberra, Australia's national capital. Canberra is a three hour drive south of Sydney and we travelled the whole way in fairly heavy rain. Not the most pleasant of trips!
On our arrival we were welcomed most excitably by the two little girls who live at the house we were visiting. One was most impressed to meet me (although she kept calling me 'Nahna' but that's to be expected as she's not quite two yet!) and refused to let anyone else touch me for about an hour!

Good news is, is that as promised there are teddy bears here! Young bears who like to be chased and caught unawares!








I also got up to a little mischief! So the toddler would eat her dinner I hid in the kitchen cupboard. Later, her mum went to the cupboard to get a coffee mug and got quite a fright when she found me there!

I'm a very happy Banana here!

Today we visited Old Parliament House which was opened in 1927 and was the seat of the Federal Government in Australia until 1988 when the new building was opened. Now, Old Parliament House is a museum and the National Portrait Gallery.



Old Parliament House was only a short drive from where we were staying.

The first part we visited was the Senate (the Upper House of the the Parliament)

Here I am pretending to be an Australian Senator. I wonder if a Banana can be elected???


Next we visited the House of Representatives (the legislative chamber) and sat on the “Front Bench” of the government side of the room.



This is where the most senior of the Ministers get to sit. The Prime Minister (the head of Government) sits at the table in the middle and this bench is the closest. We wondered why the front bench had no desks, when the 'back benches' did, but the guide could give us no answers other than "it's tradition"

Old Parliament House was getting too crowded and was really only meant to be temporary anyway, so new Parliament House was built on top of the hill behind it and opened in 1988 (the year of Australia's bicentenary). Most of the building is actually under the hill, meaning that in these pictures we are actually standing on the roof of the building! The mosaic dot painting forecourt in front of the building recognizes the history of Australia's Indigenous People. 

We didn't go in because we had hungry and slightly bored children to contend with, but here we are outside ....

The flag is the size of half a tennis court and weighs 15kg!



This is the view looking down the hill. The white building is Old Parliament House.


And the dark tower shape in the back of this picture is Telstra Tower, which stands on top of Black Mountain. From the top you have 360degree views of Canberra. Sadly we didn't have time to get up there. (Bec likes it because when she sees it on her drive down to Canberra it means she can stop driving in less than 10minutes!!)

Our final destination of the day was Cockington Green, somewhere all of us ToyVoyagers were very interested in going, because their slogan is "Where Little Always Counts!"



Cockington Green is a theme park of miniatures - it started off with just English sights but is now extending into the rest of the world's wonders.

I took in a Football game (or "Soccer" as it's called in Australia). Did you notice the streaker?


I considered buying the boat. Thought it might be just about my size, but was bit worried by the "minor leaks"!


A maze to follow with your eyes from a platform high above....


Cockington Green has started adding building miniatures from other parts of the world (the embassies based in Canberra were approached to sponsor a site - but none from America yet). Here I am outside of Wheeler's Hut from Mount Kosciuszko (Australia's tallest mountain). The little man hiding behind the rock right near me is Ned Kelly, one of Australia's most famous bushrangers.


I took a little side trip to Columbia....


And then decided to take a leaf out of Don Quijote's book and 'tilt at windmills' in Spain!


On the way out Elisabeth became enthralled with this castle from Scotland, so one of my new friends and I decided to play a trick by having me pretend to be a handsome prince breaking through the vines to rescue her. I'm not sure she liked the joke, but Mauro and I thought it was hilarious! We laughed for a very long time!

On our way back to the car we passed this sign for a shop called Thumbelinas and just had to have a photo taken with it!



I also had a ride with the earliest settlers in the area...


Listened to a 'metal' band


and met Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard.