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Bethany in Australia 2006
About a week ago I took an extended weekend (Wed.-Sunday) and flew up to northern queensland for a little vacation with some friends. i traveled with 5 other Americans and two guys from spain. the two others girls and i had book a pakage previously, so we already had our days all planned out and paid for. we stayed at a pretty nice hostel in the middle of dowtown cairns, a tropical city of about 100,000 people. we barely spent any time at the hostel, although it had amazing fish and chips one night! We decided we had plenty of time to sleep when we're old so we stayed out late every night and got up very early every morning...and no naps allowed.
the first morning we walked down to the docks and boarded a boat heading out to the great barrier reef. after a long ride (don't worry, no one was sea-sick) the boat stopped, we put on our flippers and jumped in. it was so cool. we had to stay relatively close to the boat, but really we could just snorkel around wherever for as long as we wanted. i saw so many sweet fish. i still can't believe how colorful it really is- blue, pink, orange, yellow, green, purple....so cool. some of the fish were pretty big too. i didn't see any turtles or reef sharks (they're harmless) so i was a bit dissapointed about that, but only a little. later on, we also got a introductory scuba dive. i was a little nervous about this, and it was kinda scary, just with the oxygen tank and the mask and everything, but it was still really cool. they put the tank on when you're out of the water and all these weights around the waist, and its super heavy and then you have to flop into the water and trust that you won't sink. along with the tank comes a vest that makes you float untill the guy comes along and pushes a button that deflates it and you sink. so i sank and showed the guy underwater that i knew all the sign-language and what to do if i got water in my mask and what-not. 5 of us linked arms and started exploring the reef underwater. we were roughly 10 meters deep. after a while we got to go off on our own. i was sinking a little more that i wanted and ended up cutting my hand and leg on some coral. my suvenier of scratches and a scar will have to be good enough. we got to touch a sea cucumber and some other weird clam-like thing. the sea cucumber looked and felt like a big turd, but everything else was really interesting and pretty. we were down there for about 15 minutes walking around on the ocean floor and swimming around to different section of the reef then the guy pushed some button on my and i floated back up to the surface.
afterwards, we got back on the boat, ate a free lunch and drank some milo (Milo is like hot chocolate but about a dozen times better, i could go on and on about it, trust me, its good). in the meantime my skin is baking under the hot queensland sun. there's a hole in the ozone layer here and i had a fryed back to show for it. i was dumb and didn't wear sunscrean, and i paid for it. i also talked a lot throughout the day with some other backpackers from ireland and spain.
the second place we went to was even better. it was a smaller area, but the coral was much better. every one was different- so many shapes/sizes/textures/colors. the water was also more shallow so we were really close to the action. hopefully i'll be putting up some underwater pics before too long, but i don't know if they turned out yet. the milo gave my tons of energy so i was just a-cruisin around everywhere. anyways, that was the great barrier reef. we got complementary wine on the way back to shore, went back to the hostel and lathered on the aloe vera.
the second day was a bus trip to a bunch of different places farther up north on the coast. i cannot stress enough how beautiful northern queensland it. it is so tropical. the drives were spectacular. it looks like the land before time and i kept expecting to see a dinasour around every corner. we saw some crocodiles, if that counts, and walked through a bit of the rainforest. the highlight was cape tribulation, which is called that becuase tons of shipwrecks have happend around there where they ran into the reef. it's a huge beautiful beach that we didn't get to spend much time on so i can't say much more about it. another place we went to but didn't have enough time at was mossman gorge. a creek/river ran through it and it would have been a great place to swim and play around on the big rocks. on the way back the cairns we stopped at a town, port douglas, for a look around. it's just a small touristy port town, but also very tropical and beautiful, full of huge strange trees. i made friends with a german guy who was my bus buddy and talked a lot with him in between sleeping on all the long drives from one place to another.
the last day was white-water-rafting. i'd been wanting to do it for a long time, and was so exited to finally do it in australia. we were on the daintree river with a big group. 7 or 8 people per raft and 8 rafts in our group which stuck together for the most part. camie, val and i were in a raft with 2 men from brisbane and another backpacker from wales- we had a guide too. it was a long trip- well worth the money. some of the rapids were class 4. unfortunately none in our raft fell out- i think that would have been fun. it wasn't too hard, but we did get some big thrills. at one point we had to go down this 10 foot drop waterfall. this was a blast because we were the first to go down and our guide made us dog-pile on top of each other in the way front of the boat. imagine 7 fully grown people laying on top of each other and falling head first down a waterfall- that was us. apparently that was the way to go though- we were the only boat that didn't loose all the pasangers. all the others just flew out of the boat when they attempted going with linked arms in the back. the instructors call it the dump-truck. the next best thing was jumping off a huge rock from 4 meters into the water. we turned the corner and the guide said, "okay, who wants to jump off a rock?" i was practically in the water swimming to it before he could finish the sentance.
anyways, it was a superb day and even better because i wore sunscreen this time.
that night the 8 of us stayed up the whole night. we figured it pointless to sleep when the taxi to the airport was picking us up at 5am anyways. the nightlife in cairns is fun- even more so because there are so many young travelers from all over the world out too. i fell asleep immediately upon sitting down on the plane and also for the bus ride back to lismore.
now i'm back at school working dilligently on a paper due in two days. luckily for me, it's been raining for days now, so i've had the motivation to spend some time at the library.
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