Notes, conversations, incidences involving perspectives of America (apologies to everyone I've misquoted here, but you get the idea):
Watching the movie "Mean Girls":
American: "High school was never like that."
Helena, Swedish: "That's what we think American high school is like."
Steph, German: "Really, everyone just hates Bush!"
Me: "Yeah, I didn't realize there was AFL in the US until recently."
Guy in Melbourne bar: "That's cause Americans don't know anything about the rest of the world!"
Same guy in Melbourne bar: "You know, usually, I don't like Americans, but you're not bad for one."
Same guy: "Ah, you laugh loud! Like an American!"
Really, I'm not sure why I kept talking to him...
Australian: "Pennsylvania? Is Scranton in Pennsylvania? Isn't that where the TV show "The Office" takes place?"
Jess, American, commented on small size of McDonald's soda.
Rohan, Australian: "You drink larger sodas? How do you survive as a nation?"
Me: "Kata Kjuta is bigger than Uluru, since it's a bunch of rocks, not one. I think I liked that better..."
Angelo, Australian,: (jokingly) "You Americans! Gotta have everything big!"
On the radio, they discussed a poll which showed that 60% of Australians had a favorable opinion of the US. Those that did not said it was because of Bush and his foreign policy.
Guy at Royal Flying Doctors Service visitor center: "Where are you from?"
Helena: "Sweden, and one from the US."
Guy: "US? Oh, then I better watch what I say."
American girls on bus to Melbourne explained to some Europeans about paying for college in the US, getting loans, going into debt. (I'm pretty sure they were over exaggerating their situations.)
Europeans: jaws dropped
Jeremy, American: "I feel like Australians just like to make fun of us, but if we were anywhere else in the world, we'd actually be disliked. But it's ok: When they make fun of you, you just tell them that they remind you of the British."
Guy who threw beer over our boardgame: "You're American! Who cares!"
95% of Australians who hear my accent: "Are you Canadian?" (apparently it's better to be wrong than to accidentally insult a Canadian)
Jenna, Canadian, explaining herself during a story about yelling at an American guy at a hockey game: "Then I yelled - cause, you see, Canadians don't really like Americans - go home..."
Chasers War on Everything, which is a prank TV show which I would say is a combination of the Colbert Report and Punk'd, did a segment where they asked people who was responsible for the Iraq war: Osama, Barack Obama, or some other American name. They showed all the people who said Obama and the other name. The interviews were in Walmart parking lots. Angelo asked if there are a lot of people like that in America. I said we make fun of them too.
Hanna, Swedish, who doesn't hate America and has been there several times: "A LOT of people don't like Americans."
Me: "Why?"
Hanna: "I guess... well, they're loud."
Me: "Loud as in talk loudly or loud as in obnoxious?"
Hanna: "Both I guess."
Sally, English: "Ooh, Pop tarts! I loved when we went to America when I was little and we got to eat sweets for breakfast! Oh, and I love your big portions! When we were little we thought it was amazing."
Several non Americans: "I want to drive the Pacific Coast Highway."
Did you all hear that report that supposedly 20% of Americans can't identify the US on a world map? (Does anyone know where that came from?) Well, it was big news here.
The Miss Teen USA girl who was asked a question about that 20% and gave a horrible, nonsense answer was also the lead-in story for a radio conversation about dumb blondes.
Hanna, Swedish: "I LOVE New York. New York is my kind of city."
My psyc professor from New Zealand who did grad school in the US: "Say you were doing a study on ethics and torture. What if you had Osama and there was the option to torture him. Of course, they're Americans - they have no morals. I better shut up now..."
There was a big debate on the radio about whether Australian hip hop artists should rap in an American or Australian accent.
I was shocked to pick up the free paper on the train in Sydney and discover 2 bits of news from Pennsylvania: A Carlisle man received a drunk driving sentence 8 years after the incident because his original sentence was lost during processing. A Coke truck driver got into a fight with a Pepsi driver in a Walmart parking lot in the town of Indiana.
What I think is the biggest stereotype about Americans:
WE ALL HAVE GUNS:
Me, after security guards walked through a room of people drinking: "See, that wouldn't happen at home. They would check everyone's IDs, or at least just tell everyone to be quiet."
Security guard: "In the US it's different. Your campus security has to be tighter because you have to worry about guns."
Me, in my head: Guns? They're worried about noise violations, believe me.
Woman in Surfers Paradise: "My daughter did psychology. She went into the police force. Although I don't know if you'd want to do that in America with all the guns."
Josh, American, had a conversation with an Australian about guns. He said he was tempted to joke that he had a hard time getting them through customs.
Me: "Why do you think we all have guns!?"
Brionee, Australian: "It was that Michael Moore movie - Bowling for Columbine! After we saw how easy it was for you to buy them, we figured, Wow, all Americans must have their own guns!"
In Personality Theory, we had to do one of those tests where you look at a picture and write a story. My picture was of a collapsed woman and it looked like the object on the ground beside her was a gun. After I wrote my story, I refused to read it out loud cause I didn't want to contribute to the gun-loving-American image.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
Cairns Part II
[Added a few photos]
On Sat. the 18th, we finally took a day to relax! We said we’d sleep in, but of course everyone was up between 7 and 9 since we’d been getting up early every day (guess who was the one to stay in bed til 9…). We all did our own thing, which really led to all of us doing the same thing… shopping and going to the lagoon.
Cairns, despite the fact that it’s a major tourist destination, is really a small beach town… even though there is no beach. Supposedly the shore used to be beautiful, but by the 1930s it was just a muddy mess, most likely caused by the dredging of the ocean floor to keep the paths for ships open. When the tide goes out, it’s hundred of meters of sludge, where seagulls, pelicans, and other birds peck for food. Bird watchers line up with cameras aimed, but they’re sure to stay behind the crocodile warning signs.
Luckily, Cairns has done wonders to keep the shoreline an attractive place. The esplanade boardwalk stretches from the marina to far out of the main “city” area. The whole thing is accompanied by grassy areas filled with skate parks, exercise equipments, barbeques, snack stands, and children’s playgrounds. The highlight is the lagoon, a community pool with its own sandy beaches and palm trees.
[notice that behind the pool there is mud as far as the eye can see]
The town itself is nothing spectacular. The tallest buildings are the hotels, and it has its mall, shops, restaurants, and one million and one places to book excursions. As Ivicic said, “I’ve seen pictures of Cairns. I’m not impressed.” But looking around, you’re met with the sight of tall rainforest-covered mountains whose peaks are hidden by white fluffy clouds, so you certainly can’t complain about the view. Travel out of town and you’ll pass sugar field after sugar field. They even have a special railroad to carry the crop.
Overall I liked Cairns. It seemed relaxed. True, I didn’t go out at night and I did read an article that called it a party city, but it didn’t seem like somewhere that was totally wound up (it’s no Surfers Paradise). One thing I loved were the night markets. Crepes, Chinese buffets, gelato, crafts, cheap Australian souvenirs, clothing, massages… I ended up there a few nights. Actually, one thing that shocked me about Cairns: it’s the only place I’ve been here where most stores in town are open past 5:00 more than one night a week! Crazy!
Sunday Helena was doing homework, while Karin and Hanna were doing a tour that included the Tjapukai Aboriginal cultural center, the train to the mountain town of Kuranda, and a skyrail down the mountain. TripAdvisor had told me that Kuranda was a tourist trap and that the train was smelly and crowded, plus the trip was ridiculously expensive, so I decided that I would just head to Tjapukai on my own. Karin and Hanna experienced it with hundreds of their fellow travelers, while I got there in the afternoon and saw each of the shows with an audience of 3 to 7 people. There was a movie about the mistreatment of aborigines, a show about Tjapukai people’s beliefs, like how they categorize the world into wet and dry – you are what your father was and you must marry someone of the opposite. Another show was about dance. They showed us how to make fire. There was a presentation on playing the didgeridoo and about bush food. The food one I found pretty interesting – she told us which foods could be eaten fresh and which were toxic unless cooked or dried in the sun or run underwater for days. The woman told us which ones were good for sickness and snakebites. She said that, of course, aboriginal people now eat their McDonald’s and whatnot, but she would try bush food and medicine on her children first and only take them to the doctor if it didn’t work.
At the boomerang and spear throwing lesson, I was all by myself. My spear throwing skills need serious improvement, but I did successfully throw a boomerang. The guide said the small, returning ones are really for practice and fun. Bigger ones for hunting are too big to actually return. I told the guy how I couldn’t find anything but plastic triangle boomerangs at home, and he told me I could buy the type I was throwing in the gift shop. Then after a few more throws he told me I could take one with me, for free. I don’t know why – I think he just felt bad for me that I was by myself, haha!
According to the people working there, there are probably about 10,000 Tjapukai in 10 communities in the Cairns region. They also assured me that the aboriginal people working there really were from the Tjapukai tribe.
That night, the girls and I went to go get ice cream. We were out past 10:00 – such party animals!
Monday, we decided to take a walk to the Botanic Gardens. We decided to go past the lakes first… sure we saw some itty bitty frogs and some sunbathing turtles, but the lakes themselves were algae-covered and disgusting, and we were getting bit by mosquitoes like crazy. We got out of there as soon as we could and found a café in whatever town we ended up in (Edge Hill?). We asked for directions to the Royal Flying Doctors Service visitor center and the girl working at the café told us they were great people and they had rescued her twice.
If you don’t know, the RFDS is kind of an airplane ambulance. The doctors and nurses visit clinics way out in the middle of nowhere outback, and they also fly out in emergencies to take people to hospitals. Services are free, funded a little by the government but mostly by charity. They fly out about 100 people each month and there are fifty-some stations in all of Australia. There was an airplane we could go inside of, so we sat on the seats and laid in the stretcher. It was really interesting to look at the displays of thank you letters from people they had saved, as well as the equipment used, especially in the early days (it was started by a priest with all the right connections – check him out on the $20 bill): a medicine cabinet where all medicines are numbered so patients don’t have to figure out names, a pedal-powered typewriter that converts messages into morse code. I also liked the information about the school of the air - in the outback, kids who are too far away from civilization get to go to school through radio.
On Tuesday we went to Fitzroy Island. I LOOOOOOVVEEEE Fitzroy Island. There were actually a few things that could have ruined this day – the rude staff, the 6th grade class on the boat, and one other incident I’ll talk about later – but I loved the Island. It was a 45 minute ferry ride there, and we pulled up in Welcome Bay and discover that the beach there is made completely of washed up coral. White coral, while not the most pleasant thing to walk on, looked absolutely beautiful and the water was clear and blue.
We grabbed our snorkeling gear and made the 10 minute walk through the rainforest to Nudey Beach, where, as the name indicates, clothing is optional but luckily everyone kept their clothes on. On the walk, we kept passing skinks – reptiles that I normally think of as the size of salamanders but these things were HUGE. Like a foot long. They kept scaring the crap out of me. I think only 10 of us went to that beach at that time and the 4 of us went around a corner so that we could see no one else. Our own private patch of white sand, coral, blue waters, and the mountainous shoreline in the distance. When I first went snorkeling I went to the left, past some boulders. I was face to face with a few fish as soon as I went underwater, but only found one small patch of coral around that side. I found a school of what I thought were squid (I learned later they may have been cuttlefish) and followed them around, which they didn’t seem to appreciate, but they were fun to watch and became my new favorite animal of the day.
When the girls went to go get lunch, I stayed to snorkel more, and went by the rocks to the right, where everyone else was – no wonder everyone else was here – this is where all the coral was! Fitzroy and the island like it (the more crowded Green Island) used to be mountains on the mainland a bazillion years ago until the sea level rose and “fringe” reef formed around them. I did my usual following around schools of fish and scaring the little ones to go hiding in coral. It was awesome. Although especially open spots, deep spots, shallow spots, or cold spots make me nervous, haha.
I went back to Welcome Bay for our glass bottom boat tour. The marine biologist told us that this area of reef has more species than all of the Caribbean Sea. Crazy.
After that, I went snorkeling again till it was time to leave. I noticed that some of the boats around the island were on the move, but didn’t know what was going on till I was back on shore. Back on Nudey beach, someone had found one of the snorkelers floating in the water. They did CPR on him for 20 minutes on the beach before getting a boat to take him back to shore. A guy on the ferry said he came across the beach while they were doing CPR and that the man did not look alive. They thought he had been underwater for 10 or 15 minutes. They tried to get a helicopter but couldn’t get one right away. Helena especially was really shaken up about it. The next day in the paper she read that he was alive in the hospital. I was sad to tell her that on the 5:00 news they said that he had never woken up and died that morning. A 39-year-old British tourist. They blamed the death on “snorkeling complications” which I think means they don’t know what happened.
So that was a little scary.
There were also 2 girls (from Sweden! The 3rd group of Swedes we’d run into) who climbed down some rocks and got stuck as the tide came up, so they had to be rescued by boat.
The guy we talked to on the ferry though, he started talking to me because of my George Mason shirt. He graduated from JMU a few years ago and lives in Maryland now and does government contracting, something involving NIH. He was in Brisbane the week before on business. Did a Moreton Island tour like we did – except his jeep got stuck during high tide and his tour group had to be rescued! He said he climbed to the summit on Fitzroy and that it was a gorgeous 360 degree view, even though he may have passed a deadly brown snake to get there.
Wednesday and Thursday were more days relaxing in town and by the lagoon.
As far as spending 2 weeks with Swedish girls, I only learned a few phrases, and the only ones I remember are, “1, 5, 6” and “I live in...” I forget "My name is", "I love you" and the rest of the numbers from 1-10. They tried their best to remember to speak English for me, but I let them get away with Swedish probably more than I should have, haha.
After doing so much, I thought I was ready to head back to Canberra, but Friday morning when I woke up and it was once again a 30 degree (around 90 F) sunny day, I had to ask, Why are we leaving?
PS - My birthday, for which nothing was planned, turned out to be great. It was definitely one of those "I am really going to miss these people" nights. And instead of last, we came in second place in trivia! Whoo!!
Thanks to everyone for birthday wishes, cards, money, gifts, and love. :) xoxo!
On Sat. the 18th, we finally took a day to relax! We said we’d sleep in, but of course everyone was up between 7 and 9 since we’d been getting up early every day (guess who was the one to stay in bed til 9…). We all did our own thing, which really led to all of us doing the same thing… shopping and going to the lagoon.
Cairns, despite the fact that it’s a major tourist destination, is really a small beach town… even though there is no beach. Supposedly the shore used to be beautiful, but by the 1930s it was just a muddy mess, most likely caused by the dredging of the ocean floor to keep the paths for ships open. When the tide goes out, it’s hundred of meters of sludge, where seagulls, pelicans, and other birds peck for food. Bird watchers line up with cameras aimed, but they’re sure to stay behind the crocodile warning signs.
Luckily, Cairns has done wonders to keep the shoreline an attractive place. The esplanade boardwalk stretches from the marina to far out of the main “city” area. The whole thing is accompanied by grassy areas filled with skate parks, exercise equipments, barbeques, snack stands, and children’s playgrounds. The highlight is the lagoon, a community pool with its own sandy beaches and palm trees.
[notice that behind the pool there is mud as far as the eye can see]
The town itself is nothing spectacular. The tallest buildings are the hotels, and it has its mall, shops, restaurants, and one million and one places to book excursions. As Ivicic said, “I’ve seen pictures of Cairns. I’m not impressed.” But looking around, you’re met with the sight of tall rainforest-covered mountains whose peaks are hidden by white fluffy clouds, so you certainly can’t complain about the view. Travel out of town and you’ll pass sugar field after sugar field. They even have a special railroad to carry the crop.
Overall I liked Cairns. It seemed relaxed. True, I didn’t go out at night and I did read an article that called it a party city, but it didn’t seem like somewhere that was totally wound up (it’s no Surfers Paradise). One thing I loved were the night markets. Crepes, Chinese buffets, gelato, crafts, cheap Australian souvenirs, clothing, massages… I ended up there a few nights. Actually, one thing that shocked me about Cairns: it’s the only place I’ve been here where most stores in town are open past 5:00 more than one night a week! Crazy!
Sunday Helena was doing homework, while Karin and Hanna were doing a tour that included the Tjapukai Aboriginal cultural center, the train to the mountain town of Kuranda, and a skyrail down the mountain. TripAdvisor had told me that Kuranda was a tourist trap and that the train was smelly and crowded, plus the trip was ridiculously expensive, so I decided that I would just head to Tjapukai on my own. Karin and Hanna experienced it with hundreds of their fellow travelers, while I got there in the afternoon and saw each of the shows with an audience of 3 to 7 people. There was a movie about the mistreatment of aborigines, a show about Tjapukai people’s beliefs, like how they categorize the world into wet and dry – you are what your father was and you must marry someone of the opposite. Another show was about dance. They showed us how to make fire. There was a presentation on playing the didgeridoo and about bush food. The food one I found pretty interesting – she told us which foods could be eaten fresh and which were toxic unless cooked or dried in the sun or run underwater for days. The woman told us which ones were good for sickness and snakebites. She said that, of course, aboriginal people now eat their McDonald’s and whatnot, but she would try bush food and medicine on her children first and only take them to the doctor if it didn’t work.
At the boomerang and spear throwing lesson, I was all by myself. My spear throwing skills need serious improvement, but I did successfully throw a boomerang. The guide said the small, returning ones are really for practice and fun. Bigger ones for hunting are too big to actually return. I told the guy how I couldn’t find anything but plastic triangle boomerangs at home, and he told me I could buy the type I was throwing in the gift shop. Then after a few more throws he told me I could take one with me, for free. I don’t know why – I think he just felt bad for me that I was by myself, haha!
According to the people working there, there are probably about 10,000 Tjapukai in 10 communities in the Cairns region. They also assured me that the aboriginal people working there really were from the Tjapukai tribe.
That night, the girls and I went to go get ice cream. We were out past 10:00 – such party animals!
Monday, we decided to take a walk to the Botanic Gardens. We decided to go past the lakes first… sure we saw some itty bitty frogs and some sunbathing turtles, but the lakes themselves were algae-covered and disgusting, and we were getting bit by mosquitoes like crazy. We got out of there as soon as we could and found a café in whatever town we ended up in (Edge Hill?). We asked for directions to the Royal Flying Doctors Service visitor center and the girl working at the café told us they were great people and they had rescued her twice.
If you don’t know, the RFDS is kind of an airplane ambulance. The doctors and nurses visit clinics way out in the middle of nowhere outback, and they also fly out in emergencies to take people to hospitals. Services are free, funded a little by the government but mostly by charity. They fly out about 100 people each month and there are fifty-some stations in all of Australia. There was an airplane we could go inside of, so we sat on the seats and laid in the stretcher. It was really interesting to look at the displays of thank you letters from people they had saved, as well as the equipment used, especially in the early days (it was started by a priest with all the right connections – check him out on the $20 bill): a medicine cabinet where all medicines are numbered so patients don’t have to figure out names, a pedal-powered typewriter that converts messages into morse code. I also liked the information about the school of the air - in the outback, kids who are too far away from civilization get to go to school through radio.
On Tuesday we went to Fitzroy Island. I LOOOOOOVVEEEE Fitzroy Island. There were actually a few things that could have ruined this day – the rude staff, the 6th grade class on the boat, and one other incident I’ll talk about later – but I loved the Island. It was a 45 minute ferry ride there, and we pulled up in Welcome Bay and discover that the beach there is made completely of washed up coral. White coral, while not the most pleasant thing to walk on, looked absolutely beautiful and the water was clear and blue.
We grabbed our snorkeling gear and made the 10 minute walk through the rainforest to Nudey Beach, where, as the name indicates, clothing is optional but luckily everyone kept their clothes on. On the walk, we kept passing skinks – reptiles that I normally think of as the size of salamanders but these things were HUGE. Like a foot long. They kept scaring the crap out of me. I think only 10 of us went to that beach at that time and the 4 of us went around a corner so that we could see no one else. Our own private patch of white sand, coral, blue waters, and the mountainous shoreline in the distance. When I first went snorkeling I went to the left, past some boulders. I was face to face with a few fish as soon as I went underwater, but only found one small patch of coral around that side. I found a school of what I thought were squid (I learned later they may have been cuttlefish) and followed them around, which they didn’t seem to appreciate, but they were fun to watch and became my new favorite animal of the day.
When the girls went to go get lunch, I stayed to snorkel more, and went by the rocks to the right, where everyone else was – no wonder everyone else was here – this is where all the coral was! Fitzroy and the island like it (the more crowded Green Island) used to be mountains on the mainland a bazillion years ago until the sea level rose and “fringe” reef formed around them. I did my usual following around schools of fish and scaring the little ones to go hiding in coral. It was awesome. Although especially open spots, deep spots, shallow spots, or cold spots make me nervous, haha.
I went back to Welcome Bay for our glass bottom boat tour. The marine biologist told us that this area of reef has more species than all of the Caribbean Sea. Crazy.
After that, I went snorkeling again till it was time to leave. I noticed that some of the boats around the island were on the move, but didn’t know what was going on till I was back on shore. Back on Nudey beach, someone had found one of the snorkelers floating in the water. They did CPR on him for 20 minutes on the beach before getting a boat to take him back to shore. A guy on the ferry said he came across the beach while they were doing CPR and that the man did not look alive. They thought he had been underwater for 10 or 15 minutes. They tried to get a helicopter but couldn’t get one right away. Helena especially was really shaken up about it. The next day in the paper she read that he was alive in the hospital. I was sad to tell her that on the 5:00 news they said that he had never woken up and died that morning. A 39-year-old British tourist. They blamed the death on “snorkeling complications” which I think means they don’t know what happened.
So that was a little scary.
There were also 2 girls (from Sweden! The 3rd group of Swedes we’d run into) who climbed down some rocks and got stuck as the tide came up, so they had to be rescued by boat.
The guy we talked to on the ferry though, he started talking to me because of my George Mason shirt. He graduated from JMU a few years ago and lives in Maryland now and does government contracting, something involving NIH. He was in Brisbane the week before on business. Did a Moreton Island tour like we did – except his jeep got stuck during high tide and his tour group had to be rescued! He said he climbed to the summit on Fitzroy and that it was a gorgeous 360 degree view, even though he may have passed a deadly brown snake to get there.
Wednesday and Thursday were more days relaxing in town and by the lagoon.
As far as spending 2 weeks with Swedish girls, I only learned a few phrases, and the only ones I remember are, “1, 5, 6” and “I live in...” I forget "My name is", "I love you" and the rest of the numbers from 1-10. They tried their best to remember to speak English for me, but I let them get away with Swedish probably more than I should have, haha.
After doing so much, I thought I was ready to head back to Canberra, but Friday morning when I woke up and it was once again a 30 degree (around 90 F) sunny day, I had to ask, Why are we leaving?
PS - My birthday, for which nothing was planned, turned out to be great. It was definitely one of those "I am really going to miss these people" nights. And instead of last, we came in second place in trivia! Whoo!!
Thanks to everyone for birthday wishes, cards, money, gifts, and love. :) xoxo!
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Cairns Part I
On September 3rd, after my few blissful hours of sleep, I woke up, caught the bus to Civic and caught my next bus to Sydney. Too tired to pay attention to what bus I was getting on, I tried to board the Murrays bus with people I knew and nearly missed my Greyhound bus.
For this trip, I was traveling with Helena. She’s from Sweden and two of her friends, Hanna and Karin, came down to visit her. Hanna was a nanny in Chicago for a year and has been to the US twice since then, and we got along exceptionally well during the trip.
Cairns (pronounced "cans" - Australians remove the R from things like Cairns and Melbourne and put it where it doesn't belong in idea - "ideera") is in the state of Queensland… “tropical north Queensland” to be exact and it’s the main gateway to both the rainforest and the great barrier reef. We stayed at a place called Traveler’s Castle, where Helena stayed 7 years ago. We got an amazing price since she’d been there before (less than US$200 per person total for 11 nights) and we stayed in an apartment – 2 little bedrooms, common room with tv and futon, and a kitchen – hurray to no hostel bunkbeds!!
We had a plan that originally had us doing the big activities every other day, but we pretty much threw that out the window by making Tuesday a zoo day. We went to the Cairns Tropical Zoo to see all things Australian… Kookaburas, cassowaries (world’s most dangerous bird. It looks like an emu but has a thing on its head and it can jump at you and stab you with it’s big toe. Protect yourself by running behind a tree), dingos, crocodiles, etc. The best part was getting to hold the animals… my sole purpose for going to this zoo was to hold a koala! They have strict rules for holding the animals… I’m not sure of them exactly but it’s something like, a koala can only be out for 10-20 minutes at a time, held by each person for so long, and only used for photos once a day or something. But yeah, the koala’s name was Lucy. There was a kangaroo petting and feeding area as well, and I also got to hold a 7-year-old crocodile (they feel rubbery), and pet a wombat named Lulu. Did you know both wombats and koalas have bony things in their butts? Keeps the koala’s legs from falling asleep when it sits and the wombat uses it for protection… burrow in, stick its butt at the predator, and it won’t feel a thing.
Wednesday we got up bright and early to start our tour to the rainforest. We went with a company called Cape Trib Connections. They take you to and from your rainforest accommodation and stop to do activities on the way. Our first stop was Mossman Gorge. We had about an hour there. Our guide walked us through the rainforest, explained that vines wrap in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres, explained that we’re in the dry season now. In the restroom I encountered a HUGE spider. By “HUGE” I mean the size of my hand. So I took a picture and ran away. Nearby the gorge is an aboriginal community. I had noticed walking around Cairns at night that this was the first place I’d been where there was a noticeable aboriginal population. Really, they are only 2-3% of Australia’s population (you know, killed by settlers, forced into missionaries, they still have a significantly shorter life span that the rest of Australia), so I guess this isn’t too surprising.
We also stopped at a lookout where the Daintree River (this is the Daintree rainforest we were heading to) meets the ocean. Then we went to the Daintree Zoo where the guide just showed us a few animals and let us pet things. We pet some sort of glider squirrel thing, watched a cassowary swallow its food whole, saw a python, and got to hold a baby rufous bettong – it’s a small relative of the kangaroo. Adorable! The best part however was when we were looking at their crocodiles. One was on the bank by the fence where we stood and one was on the opposite bank. While the guide was talking one of the crocs silently slipped into the water – I didn’t see it and couldn’t figure out where it had gone. The guide decided to poke the water with a pole to make the croc near us lash out at it. He sticks the pole through the fence and BAM!! The other croc lashes out from beneath the water – he had been right there in front of us and we never would have known it. It was awesome because it wasn’t like the croc show at the other zoo where it was controlled (as much as you can control a croc) and predictable – this was a total mistake on the guide’s part. So after that, the two crocs weren’t too happy with one another and the guide made us not to tell the zookeepers what had just happened. It was the highlight of the trip for me!
{cassowary guarding its eggs at the zoo}
We soon arrived at Crocodylus, our in-the-middle-of-the-rainforest accommodation. It’s considered a hostel, but it’s really tents on platforms. We took a walk to the beach, which turned out to be a 45 minute walk. Still exhausted from Melbourne, I fell asleep for an hour and woke up to it getting cloudy. Cool beach though. Maybe 10 people there, pretty nice. We walked back and arrived in time to beat the rain, at which point I crawled into bed and slept for another 3 or 4 hours.
I almost didn’t get up for our nighttime rainforest walk, but I’m so glad I did! The German guy I was talking to during dinner laughed at me when it started pouring right before our walk, but it was still good. Our guide, a nice old man named Possum who kept telling me how cute I was, suited us up with huge raincoats and flashlights, and our group set out on the path. Possum pointed out different types of ferns and trees and plants – figs that kill other trees, pepper plants – while our group scoured the ground and trees for animals.
{Possum, Hanna, Helena, Karin, me}
We started off slowly, but we were more successful as we got deeper into the rainforest. We saw huge cane toads (not native to Australia – brought here to eat beetles but they turned out to be pests), huge huntsman spiders, different birds, snails with 2-3 inch shells, rainforest mice that are so big they look more like possums, a beetle that must’ve been 8 inches long plus 10 inch antennae, a forest dragon (iguana?), and something called a velvet worm that looked like a weird caterpillar – Possum was exceptionally excited about this rare find. After about 2 hours we emerged from the rainforest onto a paved road and Possum had us shine our flashlights in the air to attract bugs which in return attracted bats (and yes, he called them microbats). It was a really great time and I was very glad I managed to stay awake for that! We even saw a possum outside our tent before going to bed. (Note: We went to bed at 12:30 this night, since the tour didn’t end till after 11, and that was the latest we were up the whole trip. We progressively went to bed earlier and earlier, so we were all in bed by 10:30 on some nights!)
{toad, worm, spider & dragon on the night walk}
The next day, before getting picked up by our Cape Trib guide, we went on another walk around Crocodylus. I gave up and turned back after the millionth mosquito bit me in the face and the path looked exceptionally muddy – but not before we realized that there in the mud was a fresh cassowary foot print! (A guy in another tent told us he saw two of the huge birds outside his tent the previous morning.) On the way back I saw these weird chicken things that make huge piles of dirt (which, if by rivers, will be used by crocs who lay their eggs in them). Back at the camp I saw a wallaby hopping around one of the tents. It was just really cool to be staying right in the middle of the rainforest, with all the animals running around us.
Our activity for the trip home was a river crocodile cruise. First we spotted a dead python that had been killed by a croc, then a feral pig running along the bank. The feral pigs are pests as well. They destroy riverbanks and release chemicals from the soil into the water, which can even impact the reef. The government pays people to shoot them from helicopters. Our first croc was a juvenile, then a female in the water, and then we found Big Al, the head hauncho in these few miles of water. He was BIG! The guides didn’t interact with or feed the crocs – our guide said in the Northern Territory it’s legal to feed them, but that area has the most croc attacks as well. Getting off the boat, someone spotted a tree frog hiding under a bench.
We had heard it might be windy over the weekend, so instead of taking a day of rest, we scheduled our trip to the Great Barrier Reef for Friday. We picked the smallest boat we could find at the cheapest price. This had it’s plusses and minuses: We were only with 20 people, but small boat = sea sickness, even on what was the calmest day they had seen in a while. It took us about 2 hours to get out to the reef and at least 5 people on the boat got sick. I just continued to stare at the horizon and tell myself, “Throwing up is not an option!”
Felt much better after we stopped at the reef. The coral looked brown under the blue water and bits of it stuck up in some places. I had planned to just snorkel, but the boat was offering intro scuba dives for $24 (less than half the normal price) so Hanna and I decided to do it. We got to snorkel for about 15 minutes while the first group did their diving. I jumped into the water and swam away from the boat – coral and fish galore! Really, it was kind of overwhelming. They gave us no restrictions on how far or what direction to swim, so really I was out in the middle of the ocean allowed to do water I wanted. The only fish I could name were the parrotfish. They bite the coral, so I would listen to the sound, find a school of them, and follow them around. Plenty of other fish as well – blue and yellow and neon and purple.
Hanna and I climbed back on the boat to get ready to scuba. Our scuba guide was named Mischa. He had explained everything on the boat ride over. We hopped in the water and he had us practice our breathing and what to do if we got water in our mask or lost the mouthpiece. Then we started lowering ourselves to about 10 m down using a rope attached to the boat, making sure to adjust the pressure in our ears by pinching our noses and blowing out. We weren’t even all the way down the rope when Mischa started flailing and pointing over to my left. I turned and a few meters away there was a reef shark! What luck! It stuck around only a few seconds before swimming away. Once we were set, Mischa held on to our hands and swam us around. It was cool to swim between two walls of coral, or along one wall with nothing but blue ocean on the other side. And I did find Nemo! We passed over two clown fish hiding in their anemone. At one point, Mischa pointed to something I didn’t see. He signaled something which I thought meant crab and he dragged us down towards a crack in the coral. I panicked a little bit since I didn’t know what was happening and I was afraid of getting too close to the coral. I watched a giant that open and closed as we swam towards it – turns out Mischa was having us chase after an octopus. I was right on top of it and didn’t even see it!
{clam, some fish, parrotfish, clown fish, some coral - my photos turned out not so great, so I stole all but the last of these from Jeremy - he was in Cairns at the same time with his dad. I only stole pictures of the things I actually saw myself - he saw sea turtles and I'm jealous}
Overall, we were under water about 20 minutes, which seemed like a good length of time. The scuba was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. We had lunch after that – some sort of curry, tuna salad, potato salad – Helena was disappointed that it wasn’t the “tropical buffet” she expected, but it tasted good to me! After lunch, we had more than an hour to go snorkeling again. So I hopped back in the water, with my camera now (of course there weren’t any sharks this time), and swam around and followed some more fish. I didn’t feel cold at all in my wet suit – but apparently I was since I discovered that my face and lips were purple when I got back on the boat.
Luckily the trip home was pleasant and no one got sick. I must say, it was hard to pick a favorite between the rainforest and the reef!
To be continued.....
See more photos from Cairns here:
http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2097757&l=5e3fd&id=15600311
For this trip, I was traveling with Helena. She’s from Sweden and two of her friends, Hanna and Karin, came down to visit her. Hanna was a nanny in Chicago for a year and has been to the US twice since then, and we got along exceptionally well during the trip.
Cairns (pronounced "cans" - Australians remove the R from things like Cairns and Melbourne and put it where it doesn't belong in idea - "ideera") is in the state of Queensland… “tropical north Queensland” to be exact and it’s the main gateway to both the rainforest and the great barrier reef. We stayed at a place called Traveler’s Castle, where Helena stayed 7 years ago. We got an amazing price since she’d been there before (less than US$200 per person total for 11 nights) and we stayed in an apartment – 2 little bedrooms, common room with tv and futon, and a kitchen – hurray to no hostel bunkbeds!!
We had a plan that originally had us doing the big activities every other day, but we pretty much threw that out the window by making Tuesday a zoo day. We went to the Cairns Tropical Zoo to see all things Australian… Kookaburas, cassowaries (world’s most dangerous bird. It looks like an emu but has a thing on its head and it can jump at you and stab you with it’s big toe. Protect yourself by running behind a tree), dingos, crocodiles, etc. The best part was getting to hold the animals… my sole purpose for going to this zoo was to hold a koala! They have strict rules for holding the animals… I’m not sure of them exactly but it’s something like, a koala can only be out for 10-20 minutes at a time, held by each person for so long, and only used for photos once a day or something. But yeah, the koala’s name was Lucy. There was a kangaroo petting and feeding area as well, and I also got to hold a 7-year-old crocodile (they feel rubbery), and pet a wombat named Lulu. Did you know both wombats and koalas have bony things in their butts? Keeps the koala’s legs from falling asleep when it sits and the wombat uses it for protection… burrow in, stick its butt at the predator, and it won’t feel a thing.
Wednesday we got up bright and early to start our tour to the rainforest. We went with a company called Cape Trib Connections. They take you to and from your rainforest accommodation and stop to do activities on the way. Our first stop was Mossman Gorge. We had about an hour there. Our guide walked us through the rainforest, explained that vines wrap in different directions in the northern and southern hemispheres, explained that we’re in the dry season now. In the restroom I encountered a HUGE spider. By “HUGE” I mean the size of my hand. So I took a picture and ran away. Nearby the gorge is an aboriginal community. I had noticed walking around Cairns at night that this was the first place I’d been where there was a noticeable aboriginal population. Really, they are only 2-3% of Australia’s population (you know, killed by settlers, forced into missionaries, they still have a significantly shorter life span that the rest of Australia), so I guess this isn’t too surprising.
We also stopped at a lookout where the Daintree River (this is the Daintree rainforest we were heading to) meets the ocean. Then we went to the Daintree Zoo where the guide just showed us a few animals and let us pet things. We pet some sort of glider squirrel thing, watched a cassowary swallow its food whole, saw a python, and got to hold a baby rufous bettong – it’s a small relative of the kangaroo. Adorable! The best part however was when we were looking at their crocodiles. One was on the bank by the fence where we stood and one was on the opposite bank. While the guide was talking one of the crocs silently slipped into the water – I didn’t see it and couldn’t figure out where it had gone. The guide decided to poke the water with a pole to make the croc near us lash out at it. He sticks the pole through the fence and BAM!! The other croc lashes out from beneath the water – he had been right there in front of us and we never would have known it. It was awesome because it wasn’t like the croc show at the other zoo where it was controlled (as much as you can control a croc) and predictable – this was a total mistake on the guide’s part. So after that, the two crocs weren’t too happy with one another and the guide made us not to tell the zookeepers what had just happened. It was the highlight of the trip for me!
{cassowary guarding its eggs at the zoo}
We soon arrived at Crocodylus, our in-the-middle-of-the-rainforest accommodation. It’s considered a hostel, but it’s really tents on platforms. We took a walk to the beach, which turned out to be a 45 minute walk. Still exhausted from Melbourne, I fell asleep for an hour and woke up to it getting cloudy. Cool beach though. Maybe 10 people there, pretty nice. We walked back and arrived in time to beat the rain, at which point I crawled into bed and slept for another 3 or 4 hours.
I almost didn’t get up for our nighttime rainforest walk, but I’m so glad I did! The German guy I was talking to during dinner laughed at me when it started pouring right before our walk, but it was still good. Our guide, a nice old man named Possum who kept telling me how cute I was, suited us up with huge raincoats and flashlights, and our group set out on the path. Possum pointed out different types of ferns and trees and plants – figs that kill other trees, pepper plants – while our group scoured the ground and trees for animals.
{Possum, Hanna, Helena, Karin, me}
We started off slowly, but we were more successful as we got deeper into the rainforest. We saw huge cane toads (not native to Australia – brought here to eat beetles but they turned out to be pests), huge huntsman spiders, different birds, snails with 2-3 inch shells, rainforest mice that are so big they look more like possums, a beetle that must’ve been 8 inches long plus 10 inch antennae, a forest dragon (iguana?), and something called a velvet worm that looked like a weird caterpillar – Possum was exceptionally excited about this rare find. After about 2 hours we emerged from the rainforest onto a paved road and Possum had us shine our flashlights in the air to attract bugs which in return attracted bats (and yes, he called them microbats). It was a really great time and I was very glad I managed to stay awake for that! We even saw a possum outside our tent before going to bed. (Note: We went to bed at 12:30 this night, since the tour didn’t end till after 11, and that was the latest we were up the whole trip. We progressively went to bed earlier and earlier, so we were all in bed by 10:30 on some nights!)
{toad, worm, spider & dragon on the night walk}
The next day, before getting picked up by our Cape Trib guide, we went on another walk around Crocodylus. I gave up and turned back after the millionth mosquito bit me in the face and the path looked exceptionally muddy – but not before we realized that there in the mud was a fresh cassowary foot print! (A guy in another tent told us he saw two of the huge birds outside his tent the previous morning.) On the way back I saw these weird chicken things that make huge piles of dirt (which, if by rivers, will be used by crocs who lay their eggs in them). Back at the camp I saw a wallaby hopping around one of the tents. It was just really cool to be staying right in the middle of the rainforest, with all the animals running around us.
Our activity for the trip home was a river crocodile cruise. First we spotted a dead python that had been killed by a croc, then a feral pig running along the bank. The feral pigs are pests as well. They destroy riverbanks and release chemicals from the soil into the water, which can even impact the reef. The government pays people to shoot them from helicopters. Our first croc was a juvenile, then a female in the water, and then we found Big Al, the head hauncho in these few miles of water. He was BIG! The guides didn’t interact with or feed the crocs – our guide said in the Northern Territory it’s legal to feed them, but that area has the most croc attacks as well. Getting off the boat, someone spotted a tree frog hiding under a bench.
We had heard it might be windy over the weekend, so instead of taking a day of rest, we scheduled our trip to the Great Barrier Reef for Friday. We picked the smallest boat we could find at the cheapest price. This had it’s plusses and minuses: We were only with 20 people, but small boat = sea sickness, even on what was the calmest day they had seen in a while. It took us about 2 hours to get out to the reef and at least 5 people on the boat got sick. I just continued to stare at the horizon and tell myself, “Throwing up is not an option!”
Felt much better after we stopped at the reef. The coral looked brown under the blue water and bits of it stuck up in some places. I had planned to just snorkel, but the boat was offering intro scuba dives for $24 (less than half the normal price) so Hanna and I decided to do it. We got to snorkel for about 15 minutes while the first group did their diving. I jumped into the water and swam away from the boat – coral and fish galore! Really, it was kind of overwhelming. They gave us no restrictions on how far or what direction to swim, so really I was out in the middle of the ocean allowed to do water I wanted. The only fish I could name were the parrotfish. They bite the coral, so I would listen to the sound, find a school of them, and follow them around. Plenty of other fish as well – blue and yellow and neon and purple.
Hanna and I climbed back on the boat to get ready to scuba. Our scuba guide was named Mischa. He had explained everything on the boat ride over. We hopped in the water and he had us practice our breathing and what to do if we got water in our mask or lost the mouthpiece. Then we started lowering ourselves to about 10 m down using a rope attached to the boat, making sure to adjust the pressure in our ears by pinching our noses and blowing out. We weren’t even all the way down the rope when Mischa started flailing and pointing over to my left. I turned and a few meters away there was a reef shark! What luck! It stuck around only a few seconds before swimming away. Once we were set, Mischa held on to our hands and swam us around. It was cool to swim between two walls of coral, or along one wall with nothing but blue ocean on the other side. And I did find Nemo! We passed over two clown fish hiding in their anemone. At one point, Mischa pointed to something I didn’t see. He signaled something which I thought meant crab and he dragged us down towards a crack in the coral. I panicked a little bit since I didn’t know what was happening and I was afraid of getting too close to the coral. I watched a giant that open and closed as we swam towards it – turns out Mischa was having us chase after an octopus. I was right on top of it and didn’t even see it!
{clam, some fish, parrotfish, clown fish, some coral - my photos turned out not so great, so I stole all but the last of these from Jeremy - he was in Cairns at the same time with his dad. I only stole pictures of the things I actually saw myself - he saw sea turtles and I'm jealous}
Overall, we were under water about 20 minutes, which seemed like a good length of time. The scuba was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. We had lunch after that – some sort of curry, tuna salad, potato salad – Helena was disappointed that it wasn’t the “tropical buffet” she expected, but it tasted good to me! After lunch, we had more than an hour to go snorkeling again. So I hopped back in the water, with my camera now (of course there weren’t any sharks this time), and swam around and followed some more fish. I didn’t feel cold at all in my wet suit – but apparently I was since I discovered that my face and lips were purple when I got back on the boat.
Luckily the trip home was pleasant and no one got sick. I must say, it was hard to pick a favorite between the rainforest and the reef!
To be continued.....
See more photos from Cairns here:
http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2097757&l=5e3fd&id=15600311
Monday, September 24, 2007
this weekend and oh yeah 3 weekends ago
Well, I had a sufficiently touristy weekend in Canberra. On Saturday, some of the girls and I went to Questacon, the kid’s science museum. It was awesome! Games to play, a free fall slide (you hang from a bar and fall through the air before the slide catches you - Jess screamed), a roller coaster simulator, a spy mystery to solve, the mission impossible laser security to sneak through! (Of course I lined up behind the 7-year-olds to do all this.) We were there for hours. Good times.
Sunday Josh, Alex, Madeleine, and I went to the War Memorial. I expected it to be JUST a memorial, like you see in DC, but the inside of it is really a museum… huge, exhibits for WWI & II. Full size planes and submarines. Tomb of the unknown soldier. We definitely didn’t even come close to seeing everything. It was really nice though. My favorite parts were all the aircrafts and one memorial which was a wall with pictures of all the Australians who died on the Death March (over 1700 died, only 6 survived). It was also interesting to learn about the landing at Gallipoli in WWI - that battle is pretty much what formed Australia's national identity. We had dinner at the Pancake Parlour. Yummmmm, nothing like banana cinnamon vanilla ice cream pancakes after a day of getting frustrated with the weekend bus schedule!
(war memorial)
(faces of those killed in death march)
SOOO three weekends ago was the start of our 2 week break. First stop was Melbourne, the most "European" city of Australia, known for its cafes, shopping, and black being in fashion.
We were going with a tour group called Extreme Adventures, who specialize in trips for international students. The bus picked us up in the city at 1am, and then we drove down the block... and they told us to get off the bus for our 20 minute break. The Macquarie and University of New South Wales had already been on the bus for 3 hours, but why did they pick us up before the rest stop?! Back on the bus, every seat was filled. I was next to a Mexican girl named Joselina. We were in front of the bathrooms and our seats didn’t recline. Plus the bus was freezing. I was MISERABLE on the 8 HOUR ride.
When we arrived the next morning, we checked into our hostel, Nomad, which was quite nice, and had a nice big breakfast at the café a few doors down. I roamed with Liz and Nell to our first destination, the Rialto Tower, the tallest building in the city. We saw a movie and went to the lookout for 360 degree views.
Then we were on our own, despite the fact that the itinerary said our guides were supposed to show us around. Girls and guys headed together to Federation Square. It’s an architectural landmark… unfortunately it’s kind of ugly and the establishments in the square aren’t too impressive, mostly food and drinks it seemed. The girls lost the guys though when we found the Pixar exhibit, so we took pictures with the Monsters Inc monsters and the Cars car.
After that, we walked towards the arts center and found an awesome interactive art exhibit called Playground Experimentia. After being amused by our morphing shadows and fishtank music skills, we hopped on the free tram that goes in a circle around the city (I wish every city had free transport!). We rode it most of the way around and listened to the narration about the sites. I would have loved to go check out the gaol (Australian for jail, weirdos) where Ned Kelly was hanged. We past lots of interesting buildings and statues (one of a cow in a tree?).
We got off at the Melbourne Museum. It was great! One of those museums I would have loved when I was little cause it was filled with stuffed animals and skeletons... including dinosaurs! We spent a good time there, so we didn’t make it to the famous Queen Victoria Markets, which is too bad considering they were so close to our hostel.
The funny thing is that they say Melbourne can experience 4 seasons in one day, or “If you don’t like the weather in Melbourne, just wait a minute.” It was so true on this day! We’d walk around and it would be sunny, cloudy, chilly, warm, cloudy, raining, sunny, cold, hot.
We were rushed to have dinner (at the hostel bar) and get ready to go because when our itinerary said “hottest night spots,” it actually meant wherever our tourguide Mick has a buddy who will let us in free, so we had to go early with 75 people going. We walked to a place that I forget the name of, but the crowd was too old for us (businessmen after work) and the music too quiet (I even heard a girl say, “I’ve been here before. It’s shit.”) Joselina, Steph, and I left early, intending to go back to the hostel, but instead we ended up in CQ, a club that didn't play bad techno and which no one else managed to get into. A group of Australians needed 3 more girls to even out their guy-to-girl ratio before being let in, so we got in for free and on the guest list. Good times!
We had to be on the bus the next day at 7am to start our Great Ocean Road tour. A beautiful scenic road but a LONG day. We didn’t make as many stops as we all expected. We stopped at Bells Beach to see the beautiful cliffs and watch surfers and apparently this location means something if you’ve seen the movie Point Break. We stopped at a little town called Lorne and at another called Apollo’s Bay for lunch. The bus driver wouldn’t stop, but we got to see WILD KOALAS! That was one thing I didn’t actually expect to see in Oz, but there they were, about 20 of them hanging out in the trees where a river comes out to the sea. One was even hanging upside-down. Jess got the only successful picture of one… of course, she took it through the bus windshield, so there is a nice squashed fly right where the koala’s head should be.
(hahaha)
One thing that ruined the scenic quality of the trip was one of the Macquarie girls. She must have never seen the ocean before or something because she kept screaming about waves and how big they were. She also screamed her lungs out at the koalas, running back and forth to both sides of the bus. She also asked Mick and the bus driver a lot of very dumb questions, such as “Is that wave big?” and other equally irrelevant or obvious questions. Needless to say, the next day I was happy to hear that a bird pooped on her shoulder.
Our last stop was the 12 Apostles. Only like 8-1/2 are still standing. They’re rocks… sand really… the remnants of cliff that once stood, but the ocean has caused the coast line to collapse so that these parts stand alone. It’s a really beautiful view and such a shame that it wasn’t a sunny day. Some people did a helicopter ride, but it was $80 for 10 minutes, so I passed.
By the time we got back to the hostel, it was after 7:00. We were supposed to have time to explore and get dinner on our own, but Mick encouraged us to get pizza at the bar. It was something like $7 for 3 slices and a drink, so we did that, but it was disappointing that once again, we didn’t get to do what the itinerary said and we were pressed for time. We got ready to go out to another of Mick’s buddy’s clubs. It was an improvement on the last one, but we ended up at another place in some old building in the city.
The next morning we headed out to the St Kilda area to check out the markets and shops. Some people made the mistake of spending their 2 hours being treated with slow, rude service at a café, but the rest of us went shopping! Had a delish Danish from a bakery and bought an amazing pair of boots that were only $30 at a European shop. My most fashionable purchase ever. The market was another great selection of crafts, jewelry, and most anything you’d want. We walked on the beach as well- we wanted to stay here all day!
(Some people I know and some I don't in St Kilda)
But we were off to the AFL game. Melbourne Kangaroos vs Western Bulldogs. Kangaroos won – good, cause I was cheering for them! I tried to learn their team song and sang along when they played it twice at the end. It was a sweet game, with its nonstop action, a few injuries, and guys running up other guys’ backs to catch the ball. It was also good to see a game in a big stadium… I think there were 30,000 people at the game (about 3x more people than the AFL game in Canberra).
After the game, it was back on the bus. Unfortunately, there were fights over seats, so Mick made everyone get back in their original seats, which for Joselina and me meant the ones in front of the bathroom which didn’t recline. Another cold, sleepless 8 hours. I did manage to finish a book (Life of Pi), so that was good. And props to the McDonald’s employees who handled 60 of us in an incredibly short amount of time.
Overall, I liked Melbourne, but I wish I could have had more time to see things in the city - I feel like I would like it more if I really got to experience more of what it had to offer. And I wouldn't do a tour with Extreme Adventures again.
Thankfully, Nell convinced Mick and the driver that we should be dropped off on campus instead of in the city. I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY TO RETURN TO CANBERRA. I hopped off the bus and wanted to kiss the ground! I WAS FREE FROM THE BUS!!!! The funny part was, we were dropped off at a point on campus none of us had never been to. It was 1 or 2am and we just started walking. It was dark, unfamiliar territory. Kangaroos bounded around us (take that obnoxious Macquarie “I’m never going to see a wild kangaroo” girl!). After probably 20 minutes, we were finally at home sweet Arscott. I was super pleased to see my bed. I had a glorious 4 hours of sleep before getting up to start the first leg of my journey to Cairns in Tropical North Queensland…
More photos from Melbourne here:
http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2097751&l=f295f&id=15600311
Sunday Josh, Alex, Madeleine, and I went to the War Memorial. I expected it to be JUST a memorial, like you see in DC, but the inside of it is really a museum… huge, exhibits for WWI & II. Full size planes and submarines. Tomb of the unknown soldier. We definitely didn’t even come close to seeing everything. It was really nice though. My favorite parts were all the aircrafts and one memorial which was a wall with pictures of all the Australians who died on the Death March (over 1700 died, only 6 survived). It was also interesting to learn about the landing at Gallipoli in WWI - that battle is pretty much what formed Australia's national identity. We had dinner at the Pancake Parlour. Yummmmm, nothing like banana cinnamon vanilla ice cream pancakes after a day of getting frustrated with the weekend bus schedule!
(war memorial)
(faces of those killed in death march)
SOOO three weekends ago was the start of our 2 week break. First stop was Melbourne, the most "European" city of Australia, known for its cafes, shopping, and black being in fashion.
We were going with a tour group called Extreme Adventures, who specialize in trips for international students. The bus picked us up in the city at 1am, and then we drove down the block... and they told us to get off the bus for our 20 minute break. The Macquarie and University of New South Wales had already been on the bus for 3 hours, but why did they pick us up before the rest stop?! Back on the bus, every seat was filled. I was next to a Mexican girl named Joselina. We were in front of the bathrooms and our seats didn’t recline. Plus the bus was freezing. I was MISERABLE on the 8 HOUR ride.
When we arrived the next morning, we checked into our hostel, Nomad, which was quite nice, and had a nice big breakfast at the café a few doors down. I roamed with Liz and Nell to our first destination, the Rialto Tower, the tallest building in the city. We saw a movie and went to the lookout for 360 degree views.
Then we were on our own, despite the fact that the itinerary said our guides were supposed to show us around. Girls and guys headed together to Federation Square. It’s an architectural landmark… unfortunately it’s kind of ugly and the establishments in the square aren’t too impressive, mostly food and drinks it seemed. The girls lost the guys though when we found the Pixar exhibit, so we took pictures with the Monsters Inc monsters and the Cars car.
After that, we walked towards the arts center and found an awesome interactive art exhibit called Playground Experimentia. After being amused by our morphing shadows and fishtank music skills, we hopped on the free tram that goes in a circle around the city (I wish every city had free transport!). We rode it most of the way around and listened to the narration about the sites. I would have loved to go check out the gaol (Australian for jail, weirdos) where Ned Kelly was hanged. We past lots of interesting buildings and statues (one of a cow in a tree?).
We got off at the Melbourne Museum. It was great! One of those museums I would have loved when I was little cause it was filled with stuffed animals and skeletons... including dinosaurs! We spent a good time there, so we didn’t make it to the famous Queen Victoria Markets, which is too bad considering they were so close to our hostel.
The funny thing is that they say Melbourne can experience 4 seasons in one day, or “If you don’t like the weather in Melbourne, just wait a minute.” It was so true on this day! We’d walk around and it would be sunny, cloudy, chilly, warm, cloudy, raining, sunny, cold, hot.
We were rushed to have dinner (at the hostel bar) and get ready to go because when our itinerary said “hottest night spots,” it actually meant wherever our tourguide Mick has a buddy who will let us in free, so we had to go early with 75 people going. We walked to a place that I forget the name of, but the crowd was too old for us (businessmen after work) and the music too quiet (I even heard a girl say, “I’ve been here before. It’s shit.”) Joselina, Steph, and I left early, intending to go back to the hostel, but instead we ended up in CQ, a club that didn't play bad techno and which no one else managed to get into. A group of Australians needed 3 more girls to even out their guy-to-girl ratio before being let in, so we got in for free and on the guest list. Good times!
We had to be on the bus the next day at 7am to start our Great Ocean Road tour. A beautiful scenic road but a LONG day. We didn’t make as many stops as we all expected. We stopped at Bells Beach to see the beautiful cliffs and watch surfers and apparently this location means something if you’ve seen the movie Point Break. We stopped at a little town called Lorne and at another called Apollo’s Bay for lunch. The bus driver wouldn’t stop, but we got to see WILD KOALAS! That was one thing I didn’t actually expect to see in Oz, but there they were, about 20 of them hanging out in the trees where a river comes out to the sea. One was even hanging upside-down. Jess got the only successful picture of one… of course, she took it through the bus windshield, so there is a nice squashed fly right where the koala’s head should be.
(hahaha)
One thing that ruined the scenic quality of the trip was one of the Macquarie girls. She must have never seen the ocean before or something because she kept screaming about waves and how big they were. She also screamed her lungs out at the koalas, running back and forth to both sides of the bus. She also asked Mick and the bus driver a lot of very dumb questions, such as “Is that wave big?” and other equally irrelevant or obvious questions. Needless to say, the next day I was happy to hear that a bird pooped on her shoulder.
Our last stop was the 12 Apostles. Only like 8-1/2 are still standing. They’re rocks… sand really… the remnants of cliff that once stood, but the ocean has caused the coast line to collapse so that these parts stand alone. It’s a really beautiful view and such a shame that it wasn’t a sunny day. Some people did a helicopter ride, but it was $80 for 10 minutes, so I passed.
By the time we got back to the hostel, it was after 7:00. We were supposed to have time to explore and get dinner on our own, but Mick encouraged us to get pizza at the bar. It was something like $7 for 3 slices and a drink, so we did that, but it was disappointing that once again, we didn’t get to do what the itinerary said and we were pressed for time. We got ready to go out to another of Mick’s buddy’s clubs. It was an improvement on the last one, but we ended up at another place in some old building in the city.
The next morning we headed out to the St Kilda area to check out the markets and shops. Some people made the mistake of spending their 2 hours being treated with slow, rude service at a café, but the rest of us went shopping! Had a delish Danish from a bakery and bought an amazing pair of boots that were only $30 at a European shop. My most fashionable purchase ever. The market was another great selection of crafts, jewelry, and most anything you’d want. We walked on the beach as well- we wanted to stay here all day!
(Some people I know and some I don't in St Kilda)
But we were off to the AFL game. Melbourne Kangaroos vs Western Bulldogs. Kangaroos won – good, cause I was cheering for them! I tried to learn their team song and sang along when they played it twice at the end. It was a sweet game, with its nonstop action, a few injuries, and guys running up other guys’ backs to catch the ball. It was also good to see a game in a big stadium… I think there were 30,000 people at the game (about 3x more people than the AFL game in Canberra).
After the game, it was back on the bus. Unfortunately, there were fights over seats, so Mick made everyone get back in their original seats, which for Joselina and me meant the ones in front of the bathroom which didn’t recline. Another cold, sleepless 8 hours. I did manage to finish a book (Life of Pi), so that was good. And props to the McDonald’s employees who handled 60 of us in an incredibly short amount of time.
Overall, I liked Melbourne, but I wish I could have had more time to see things in the city - I feel like I would like it more if I really got to experience more of what it had to offer. And I wouldn't do a tour with Extreme Adventures again.
Thankfully, Nell convinced Mick and the driver that we should be dropped off on campus instead of in the city. I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY TO RETURN TO CANBERRA. I hopped off the bus and wanted to kiss the ground! I WAS FREE FROM THE BUS!!!! The funny part was, we were dropped off at a point on campus none of us had never been to. It was 1 or 2am and we just started walking. It was dark, unfamiliar territory. Kangaroos bounded around us (take that obnoxious Macquarie “I’m never going to see a wild kangaroo” girl!). After probably 20 minutes, we were finally at home sweet Arscott. I was super pleased to see my bed. I had a glorious 4 hours of sleep before getting up to start the first leg of my journey to Cairns in Tropical North Queensland…
More photos from Melbourne here:
http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2097751&l=f295f&id=15600311
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Don't worry, I'm still alive
I didn't get eaten by a crocodile, attacked by a shark, stabbed by a cassowary, or bitten by a spider. Yay!
So the 2 week break is over and it's back to classes tomorrow. That makes me sad.
I have two essays to turn in tomorrow. I've proofread them to make sure I remembered to put my U's in "rumour" and "behaviour" and to spell "organise" with an S, not a Z.
Lots of adventures and pictures to share from Melbourne, Cairns, & beyond. That'll come throughout the week after I buy more internet credit. Yes, that's right. You pay $70 in the beginning of the semester, but that only gives you $10 of credit, which lasts about half the semester. Even if you use the library computers to go online, you have to sign in so they can deduct from your account. Use YouTube much and you can lose it all in just a few hours. I'm down to less than 15 cents. How I miss Mason's unlimited internet use! And nearly unlimited laundry!
Talk to you all soon!
So the 2 week break is over and it's back to classes tomorrow. That makes me sad.
I have two essays to turn in tomorrow. I've proofread them to make sure I remembered to put my U's in "rumour" and "behaviour" and to spell "organise" with an S, not a Z.
Lots of adventures and pictures to share from Melbourne, Cairns, & beyond. That'll come throughout the week after I buy more internet credit. Yes, that's right. You pay $70 in the beginning of the semester, but that only gives you $10 of credit, which lasts about half the semester. Even if you use the library computers to go online, you have to sign in so they can deduct from your account. Use YouTube much and you can lose it all in just a few hours. I'm down to less than 15 cents. How I miss Mason's unlimited internet use! And nearly unlimited laundry!
Talk to you all soon!
Monday, August 27, 2007
Last week was EXTREME!!
EXTREME!! That was the theme for our trip to Byron, Surfers, and Brisbane. We headed north looking for warmth and sunshine and instead got wind and rain. We had transportation issues. But I was with a pretty great group of people (trip planned by Jeremy for his birthday. Me, Josh, Alex, Juan, Madeleine & Steph were the others), and somehow all the setbacks didn't matter. We had a great week, and it was once again very difficult to return to Canberra.
Day 1: McDonald's breakfast. Sleep on bus to Sydney. 1 hour flight on Jetstar (budget airline) from Sydney to Ballina. It had just rained for the first time in 3 months. Supposed to have a free shuttle to our hostel in Byron Bay. The number we called claimed they didn't do that. The guy who ended up driving us told us the train hasn't run out of Byron for 3 years. Hmm, never trust countrylink.com.au.
We drove through the little town on our way to the hostel. We loved Byron instantly. The hostel let us all together in one room. It was just a hop skip and a jump from the beach. By that I mean, through some bushes, over the train tracks, through some more bushes, and VOILA! The beach! Of course I raced for the water - I expected it to be freezing but it was actually pretty warm!
We took it easy that first night. Wandered around the town a little, even though most things were closed. It's a little hippie place. Just a few blocks make up the main part of the town. Lots of people with dreadlocks. Lots of shops with hippie clothes. It's about 40 minutes from a place called Nimbin, the "Amsterdam of Australia." It really only took us about 10 minutes to decide we love the place.
We ate dinner at the "universally famous" Earth'n'Sea pizza. $35 dollar for a large pizza but delicious. Lots of weird topping combinations. Josh and Juan got their beer - called B.K. I think - and deemed it the best beer in the world. They were being serious. Tasted pretty good from the sip I had. They were pretty upset to find out there's nowhere else to get it. If you're ever in Byron, make sure you eat there!
(click on pictures for bigger image)
There was a fire twirling show by a hippie couple with dreadlocks at the hostel that night. It was cool, but they performed to their own bad music. They also own a shop called Fairy Floss in town. It sells fairy and hippie clothes and fire twirling gear.
We went out to the beach aftewards and had the whole thing to ourselves, lit only by the lighthouse on the hill. We stopped at a bar in town, but headed home pretty early.
Day 2: Woke to sunshine, but clouds rolled in. We were supposed to do sea kayaking but they cancelled on us because of the wind. We got breakfast at a bakery and decided to do the hike to the lighthouse. Over beach, over rocks, through "rainforest", it took us a few hours. Absoutely gorgeous views. The sun came out for a lot of our walk.
That afternoon, the guys decided to do kite boarding to make up for no kayaking. I wanted to dry it, but opted for swimming instead. The water was warmer than the air (and was much more pleasant than getting covered by wind blown sand on the beach) and there was a sandbar that broke up the waves and created a nice shallow pool. I just wished I had a boogie board! The kite boarding guy was originally from Spain. His name was Crazy Alex. And his wife was originally from New Zealand. And they were a crazy little "EXTREME!!" family. After the kiteboarding (only Jeremy and Alex actually got to do it on the water - they learned on the sand), Alex took us to his van to show us his other toys. Free line... like skateboarding, except that each of your feet is on a pair of wheels that isn't connected to the other pair. Snake board... a 2 wheeled skateboard with a joint in the middle. Stilts on springs. He made us all try something, and then his extreme wife, 3 year old daughter and 8 year old son all showed us up. Alex told Jeremy that what he does for a living is "teach people how to have fun." Now that's the life!
This night we got cheap food at a place called Cheeky Monkeys... fun for one night, but a total tourist bar. We did end up back there to celebrate Jeremy's birthday. The girl who drove us over was from Canada. She was supposed to stay in Byron for 2 days, but has now been there 2 months. It's just that kind of place.
Day 3: The guys wanted to do more kiteboarding and I had wanted to try surfing lessons, but it was a cloudy day, we were tired, and the wind was worse. We bumped up our shuttle time to leave Byron by a few hours. We had Mexican food for brunch and everyone else got gelato (we ate a lot of gelato on this trip) while Madeleine and I explored the shops. Popped into a few hippie stores, some aboriginal stores, and we all took one last stroll on the beach.
Next stop: Surfers Paradise. Queensland! The Sunshine State! The woman who drove us there (about an hour's drive) asked us, "Is Canberra really the most boring place in the universe?" She knew someone who had lived there and had to move away because they didn't like it. We told her uni life is great.
Once again, our YHA hostel was nearly a stone's throw from the beach. Ok, so across the street and around the back of the fancy hotel. Man, Jeremy knows how to pick the prime accomodation! Another night of relaxing. We had a $5 bbq at the hostel. Sausage AND steak, salad, potato salad... ohh it was good.
Everyone else relaxed at the hostel, but we were right on Mariner's Cove, which had a little pier with bars and restaurants. The band playing at Fisho's sounded great so I went down to listen. The band was called Grassroots Street Band. When their set was over, the guy next to me asked me how I liked them. He knew the lead singer and was there with a few other friends (all locals). His name was Sonny. I knew he was a little... off when in response to finding out I was a psyc major he said, "Oh, I just saw a psychologist today." (Which is perfectly fine, but normally that's not the information you share in the first 5 minutes of conversation!) The girl he was with was really cool, and his other friends asked me how I was liking Australia, but Sonny decided that we should talk about... hippie things. He told me he has a condition related to methylation(??) where too many neurotransmitters fire - but he's on a vitamin treatment instead of drugs. And medication is bad and evil (ok, he didn't actually use the word "evil" but I know he was thinking it!). And since he was so glad to be talking to someone "who's studying at uni and going to be a professional," he decided to give me his thoughts on fluoride in water: it's evil. "They don't put fluoride in the water in Queensland. You can see the difference in the people - they have wider heads, they're more happy and free. It's the holiday spots that don't have fluoride in their water. Like California. California doesn't." I didn't question the wide head comment or bother point out to him that maybe people are happier in those places because of the climate or lifestyle. When he told me that there's 4 times the lethal limit in a liter of DC's water, I asked him why people aren't dying from it. I don't know what his answer was. You know, I had hoped I might meet some locals down at the bar, but this wasn't what I was going for...
Day 4: Farmers market for breakfast and a day on the beach! Surfers is really the opposite of Byron. I know Byron is probably hectic when it's not winter, but Surfers has to be worse. It has high rises. It has Sea World, Movie World, and other theme parks. Frommers calls it the vacation spot for the "rich and tasteless."
It was cloudy. Josh asked me if I wanted to build a sandcastle. Heck, yes! He, Juan, Alex, and I got to work, and Jeremy joined in when he thought we weren't thinking "big enough." The result: the most EXTREME sand castle ever! Built totally by hand. No shovels or buckets for us! It took about 2 hours. We had people stopping to take pictures with it.
And of course we destroyed it by doing flips into it.
(Yes, I know I'm short.)
We played EXTREME frisbee (our modified version of ultimate) then went for a swim. This time we remembered to grab some boogie boards! Water temp was once again good, but man those were some rough waves! Why going to the beach in winter is good: Summer in Australia is stinger (jellyfish) season - NO THANK YOU.
Night of seafood dinner and then to downtown Surfers (not that they say "downtown" here. Sam laughed at me the other day when I said it in reference to Sydney) to check out the nightlife - definitely a high point of Surfers. We were dropped off at Cavill Ave - it was only 10:00 and the place was swarming with people! We ended up at the Beer Garden (my kind of place with a diverse crowd and a live cover band), a dance club called Drink, and a New York syle pizza shop.
Day 4: Everyone else went jet skiing while I sat on the shore and talked to the woman who ran it (we had an odd number and wanted someone to sit out). She and her husband do the jet skiing and own some machine that cools soup quickly. Or something. They wanted to retire and drive around the country in an RV for a few years, but they only made it 3 months, got a job offer, and decided they weren't old enough yet. I was glad I didn't jet ski. Everyone else came back with chattering teeth and purple bodies. We had lunch, watched some dude feed the pelicans, and headed out to Brisbane.
Once again, don't trust the Country Link website. It told us there's one train a day our of Surfers. Liars. There's one every half hour. Although the train station was closed on this particular day, so we had to take a bus to another station. Never trust public transporation.
It was raining. It was still raining when we got to Brisbane. Showered and crashed in at City Backpackers. This was our first real "backpacker hostel" experience. We were split up into three different rooms, and we all shared rooms with strangers, male and female. I could see how this would be cool if the people in your room are talkative, like the one Canadian chick in our room. Or in Juan's room where so many languages were known that the group of them had a crazy English-Spanish-Italian-etc conversation. But I didn't like worrying about my possessions or wondering why the guy in the corner always seems to stare and never sleep...
Day 5: Awake before 6am for our tour to the sand island of Moreton Island (http://www.qldtravel.com.au/brisbane/sunrover-moreton-island-1-day-tour.html). Our guide, Brandon, picked us up at the train station and drove us to the ferry, where we had a 2 hour ride to the 20-sq-km island. Brendon had dreadlocks and is a Byron Bay native (which means he has a 2 hour commute to work in Brisbane). He told us about how he and his friends like to harass tourists who have just returned stoned on their "Alternative Bus Tours" from Nimbin. He said he'd been driving on Moreton since he was 12 and doing tours for 4 years. There was only one other person on the tour, besides our group: Duncan, originally from England but traveling the world spending inheritance money/teaching English for the past 7 years.
It was a 4 wheel drive tour of the island. 7 people bouncing around in the back of a jeep = fun! There are no real roads on the island... it's all sand. There are 300 residents, but that includes people who have vacation homes there. We saw dolphins when we got off the ferry and I saw a sea turtle from a lookout. We saw a dead turtle on the beach - they die from eating plastic bags they mistake for jellyfish. We swam in a cold freshwater lagoon. We had a delicious lunch under a tarp while it rained. Luckily the weather cleared up after that. We drove down the beach. Brandon told us there was a freshwater spring and that it was the water source for the aborigines that used to live here. A pile of shells that they kept was dated to be over 5000 years old, which is relatively young in the history of aborigines. He said supposedly they worked with the dolphins to catch fish - the dolphins would chase the fish towards the shore and the people would reward the dolphins by throwing back the leftover fish parts.
We stopped at the lighthouse, at some sections of beach, at some places where we could hike around. We were supposed to do sandboarding, but weren't able to because the sand was too wet. Before we left the island, we stopped in "town" to buy snacks and check out the photo board - pictures of people with huge fish and giant sharks caught on the island. Brandon told us that just that week he had been surfing and when he got back on shore a guy told him that two sharks had swam just underneath his board, chasing a school of fish; fins at least a foot out of the water and Brandon hadn't even seen them.
Overall, a really fun tour! Everyone else slept on the 2 hour ferry ride back. I read Life of Pi, which if you don't know, is about a boy who was on a boat that sank. How appropriate.
That night, back in Brisbane (capital city of Queensland), we got dinner on Queen St - a line of shops and restaurants. Brisbane seems like a nice city - clean, full of cool bridges, buildings, and artwork, like most places in Australia I've been so far. After dinner I suggested we head to the Botanic Gardens, which are open 24 hours. We walked through there and along the river. Climbed some trees and scared some possums. Took rediculous pictures. Crossed a bridge to stroll on the other side of the river. Walked by Griffith University and the Maritime Museum. Found a cool walkway with fancy arches which led to their manmade beach - pools filled with sand and animal fountains and it was all lit up at night. Seemed like a fun place. Would have loved to spend a whole day in the city. We walked by a theatre, library, and museum, and crossed another bridge to take us back to the hostel.
Day 6: Of course, it was clear blue skies on the day we left. And it was amazing we all left, because only 5 of the 7 of us made it to the train on time that morning. Alex, who had been sleeping, magically showed up on our next train, and Juan, who had been missing, somehow made it to the airport (we fly Virgin Blue, another budget airline). Let's just say that morning was... EXTREME!
Did anyone really want to be back in Canberra? No. But we assured ourselves we'd be fine. Afterall, it was 10 days till our next vacation!
Wanna see more pictures? I have lots...
Byron Bay: http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2093360&l=d9c9d&id=15600311
Surfers, Moreton, & Brisbane: http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2093368&l=137c0&id=15600311
And these aren't from this trip, but I updated the 3rd page of my Canberra album:
http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2084725&l=abbea&id=15600311
Day 1: McDonald's breakfast. Sleep on bus to Sydney. 1 hour flight on Jetstar (budget airline) from Sydney to Ballina. It had just rained for the first time in 3 months. Supposed to have a free shuttle to our hostel in Byron Bay. The number we called claimed they didn't do that. The guy who ended up driving us told us the train hasn't run out of Byron for 3 years. Hmm, never trust countrylink.com.au.
We drove through the little town on our way to the hostel. We loved Byron instantly. The hostel let us all together in one room. It was just a hop skip and a jump from the beach. By that I mean, through some bushes, over the train tracks, through some more bushes, and VOILA! The beach! Of course I raced for the water - I expected it to be freezing but it was actually pretty warm!
We took it easy that first night. Wandered around the town a little, even though most things were closed. It's a little hippie place. Just a few blocks make up the main part of the town. Lots of people with dreadlocks. Lots of shops with hippie clothes. It's about 40 minutes from a place called Nimbin, the "Amsterdam of Australia." It really only took us about 10 minutes to decide we love the place.
We ate dinner at the "universally famous" Earth'n'Sea pizza. $35 dollar for a large pizza but delicious. Lots of weird topping combinations. Josh and Juan got their beer - called B.K. I think - and deemed it the best beer in the world. They were being serious. Tasted pretty good from the sip I had. They were pretty upset to find out there's nowhere else to get it. If you're ever in Byron, make sure you eat there!
(click on pictures for bigger image)
There was a fire twirling show by a hippie couple with dreadlocks at the hostel that night. It was cool, but they performed to their own bad music. They also own a shop called Fairy Floss in town. It sells fairy and hippie clothes and fire twirling gear.
We went out to the beach aftewards and had the whole thing to ourselves, lit only by the lighthouse on the hill. We stopped at a bar in town, but headed home pretty early.
Day 2: Woke to sunshine, but clouds rolled in. We were supposed to do sea kayaking but they cancelled on us because of the wind. We got breakfast at a bakery and decided to do the hike to the lighthouse. Over beach, over rocks, through "rainforest", it took us a few hours. Absoutely gorgeous views. The sun came out for a lot of our walk.
That afternoon, the guys decided to do kite boarding to make up for no kayaking. I wanted to dry it, but opted for swimming instead. The water was warmer than the air (and was much more pleasant than getting covered by wind blown sand on the beach) and there was a sandbar that broke up the waves and created a nice shallow pool. I just wished I had a boogie board! The kite boarding guy was originally from Spain. His name was Crazy Alex. And his wife was originally from New Zealand. And they were a crazy little "EXTREME!!" family. After the kiteboarding (only Jeremy and Alex actually got to do it on the water - they learned on the sand), Alex took us to his van to show us his other toys. Free line... like skateboarding, except that each of your feet is on a pair of wheels that isn't connected to the other pair. Snake board... a 2 wheeled skateboard with a joint in the middle. Stilts on springs. He made us all try something, and then his extreme wife, 3 year old daughter and 8 year old son all showed us up. Alex told Jeremy that what he does for a living is "teach people how to have fun." Now that's the life!
This night we got cheap food at a place called Cheeky Monkeys... fun for one night, but a total tourist bar. We did end up back there to celebrate Jeremy's birthday. The girl who drove us over was from Canada. She was supposed to stay in Byron for 2 days, but has now been there 2 months. It's just that kind of place.
Day 3: The guys wanted to do more kiteboarding and I had wanted to try surfing lessons, but it was a cloudy day, we were tired, and the wind was worse. We bumped up our shuttle time to leave Byron by a few hours. We had Mexican food for brunch and everyone else got gelato (we ate a lot of gelato on this trip) while Madeleine and I explored the shops. Popped into a few hippie stores, some aboriginal stores, and we all took one last stroll on the beach.
Next stop: Surfers Paradise. Queensland! The Sunshine State! The woman who drove us there (about an hour's drive) asked us, "Is Canberra really the most boring place in the universe?" She knew someone who had lived there and had to move away because they didn't like it. We told her uni life is great.
Once again, our YHA hostel was nearly a stone's throw from the beach. Ok, so across the street and around the back of the fancy hotel. Man, Jeremy knows how to pick the prime accomodation! Another night of relaxing. We had a $5 bbq at the hostel. Sausage AND steak, salad, potato salad... ohh it was good.
Everyone else relaxed at the hostel, but we were right on Mariner's Cove, which had a little pier with bars and restaurants. The band playing at Fisho's sounded great so I went down to listen. The band was called Grassroots Street Band. When their set was over, the guy next to me asked me how I liked them. He knew the lead singer and was there with a few other friends (all locals). His name was Sonny. I knew he was a little... off when in response to finding out I was a psyc major he said, "Oh, I just saw a psychologist today." (Which is perfectly fine, but normally that's not the information you share in the first 5 minutes of conversation!) The girl he was with was really cool, and his other friends asked me how I was liking Australia, but Sonny decided that we should talk about... hippie things. He told me he has a condition related to methylation(??) where too many neurotransmitters fire - but he's on a vitamin treatment instead of drugs. And medication is bad and evil (ok, he didn't actually use the word "evil" but I know he was thinking it!). And since he was so glad to be talking to someone "who's studying at uni and going to be a professional," he decided to give me his thoughts on fluoride in water: it's evil. "They don't put fluoride in the water in Queensland. You can see the difference in the people - they have wider heads, they're more happy and free. It's the holiday spots that don't have fluoride in their water. Like California. California doesn't." I didn't question the wide head comment or bother point out to him that maybe people are happier in those places because of the climate or lifestyle. When he told me that there's 4 times the lethal limit in a liter of DC's water, I asked him why people aren't dying from it. I don't know what his answer was. You know, I had hoped I might meet some locals down at the bar, but this wasn't what I was going for...
Day 4: Farmers market for breakfast and a day on the beach! Surfers is really the opposite of Byron. I know Byron is probably hectic when it's not winter, but Surfers has to be worse. It has high rises. It has Sea World, Movie World, and other theme parks. Frommers calls it the vacation spot for the "rich and tasteless."
It was cloudy. Josh asked me if I wanted to build a sandcastle. Heck, yes! He, Juan, Alex, and I got to work, and Jeremy joined in when he thought we weren't thinking "big enough." The result: the most EXTREME sand castle ever! Built totally by hand. No shovels or buckets for us! It took about 2 hours. We had people stopping to take pictures with it.
And of course we destroyed it by doing flips into it.
(Yes, I know I'm short.)
We played EXTREME frisbee (our modified version of ultimate) then went for a swim. This time we remembered to grab some boogie boards! Water temp was once again good, but man those were some rough waves! Why going to the beach in winter is good: Summer in Australia is stinger (jellyfish) season - NO THANK YOU.
Night of seafood dinner and then to downtown Surfers (not that they say "downtown" here. Sam laughed at me the other day when I said it in reference to Sydney) to check out the nightlife - definitely a high point of Surfers. We were dropped off at Cavill Ave - it was only 10:00 and the place was swarming with people! We ended up at the Beer Garden (my kind of place with a diverse crowd and a live cover band), a dance club called Drink, and a New York syle pizza shop.
Day 4: Everyone else went jet skiing while I sat on the shore and talked to the woman who ran it (we had an odd number and wanted someone to sit out). She and her husband do the jet skiing and own some machine that cools soup quickly. Or something. They wanted to retire and drive around the country in an RV for a few years, but they only made it 3 months, got a job offer, and decided they weren't old enough yet. I was glad I didn't jet ski. Everyone else came back with chattering teeth and purple bodies. We had lunch, watched some dude feed the pelicans, and headed out to Brisbane.
Once again, don't trust the Country Link website. It told us there's one train a day our of Surfers. Liars. There's one every half hour. Although the train station was closed on this particular day, so we had to take a bus to another station. Never trust public transporation.
It was raining. It was still raining when we got to Brisbane. Showered and crashed in at City Backpackers. This was our first real "backpacker hostel" experience. We were split up into three different rooms, and we all shared rooms with strangers, male and female. I could see how this would be cool if the people in your room are talkative, like the one Canadian chick in our room. Or in Juan's room where so many languages were known that the group of them had a crazy English-Spanish-Italian-etc conversation. But I didn't like worrying about my possessions or wondering why the guy in the corner always seems to stare and never sleep...
Day 5: Awake before 6am for our tour to the sand island of Moreton Island (http://www.qldtravel.com.au/brisbane/sunrover-moreton-island-1-day-tour.html). Our guide, Brandon, picked us up at the train station and drove us to the ferry, where we had a 2 hour ride to the 20-sq-km island. Brendon had dreadlocks and is a Byron Bay native (which means he has a 2 hour commute to work in Brisbane). He told us about how he and his friends like to harass tourists who have just returned stoned on their "Alternative Bus Tours" from Nimbin. He said he'd been driving on Moreton since he was 12 and doing tours for 4 years. There was only one other person on the tour, besides our group: Duncan, originally from England but traveling the world spending inheritance money/teaching English for the past 7 years.
It was a 4 wheel drive tour of the island. 7 people bouncing around in the back of a jeep = fun! There are no real roads on the island... it's all sand. There are 300 residents, but that includes people who have vacation homes there. We saw dolphins when we got off the ferry and I saw a sea turtle from a lookout. We saw a dead turtle on the beach - they die from eating plastic bags they mistake for jellyfish. We swam in a cold freshwater lagoon. We had a delicious lunch under a tarp while it rained. Luckily the weather cleared up after that. We drove down the beach. Brandon told us there was a freshwater spring and that it was the water source for the aborigines that used to live here. A pile of shells that they kept was dated to be over 5000 years old, which is relatively young in the history of aborigines. He said supposedly they worked with the dolphins to catch fish - the dolphins would chase the fish towards the shore and the people would reward the dolphins by throwing back the leftover fish parts.
We stopped at the lighthouse, at some sections of beach, at some places where we could hike around. We were supposed to do sandboarding, but weren't able to because the sand was too wet. Before we left the island, we stopped in "town" to buy snacks and check out the photo board - pictures of people with huge fish and giant sharks caught on the island. Brandon told us that just that week he had been surfing and when he got back on shore a guy told him that two sharks had swam just underneath his board, chasing a school of fish; fins at least a foot out of the water and Brandon hadn't even seen them.
Overall, a really fun tour! Everyone else slept on the 2 hour ferry ride back. I read Life of Pi, which if you don't know, is about a boy who was on a boat that sank. How appropriate.
That night, back in Brisbane (capital city of Queensland), we got dinner on Queen St - a line of shops and restaurants. Brisbane seems like a nice city - clean, full of cool bridges, buildings, and artwork, like most places in Australia I've been so far. After dinner I suggested we head to the Botanic Gardens, which are open 24 hours. We walked through there and along the river. Climbed some trees and scared some possums. Took rediculous pictures. Crossed a bridge to stroll on the other side of the river. Walked by Griffith University and the Maritime Museum. Found a cool walkway with fancy arches which led to their manmade beach - pools filled with sand and animal fountains and it was all lit up at night. Seemed like a fun place. Would have loved to spend a whole day in the city. We walked by a theatre, library, and museum, and crossed another bridge to take us back to the hostel.
Day 6: Of course, it was clear blue skies on the day we left. And it was amazing we all left, because only 5 of the 7 of us made it to the train on time that morning. Alex, who had been sleeping, magically showed up on our next train, and Juan, who had been missing, somehow made it to the airport (we fly Virgin Blue, another budget airline). Let's just say that morning was... EXTREME!
Did anyone really want to be back in Canberra? No. But we assured ourselves we'd be fine. Afterall, it was 10 days till our next vacation!
Wanna see more pictures? I have lots...
Byron Bay: http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2093360&l=d9c9d&id=15600311
Surfers, Moreton, & Brisbane: http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2093368&l=137c0&id=15600311
And these aren't from this trip, but I updated the 3rd page of my Canberra album:
http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2084725&l=abbea&id=15600311
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