sunday april 18
we got up early and went to the airport. it was a 3 hour flight to cairns.
from cairns we rented a car and drove about an hour to port douglas. geoff grew up there so we went to look at his old house and then checked into our resort, the mandalay. we explored the beach and swam in the pool. it is stinger season there, which means that there are a ton of deadly jellyfish in the water, so we couldn't really swim in the ocean except for inside the stinger nets, giant nets in the water that keep the jellyfish out. i couldn't believe how beautiful it is in queensland (even though it was pretty cloudy and rainy). it's incredibly green and looks like hawaii. there's sugarcane and coconuts everywhere. it was really warm and humid.
monday
on monday we got up fairly early again and drove to the daintree rainforest national park. here we walked around the rainforest and saw some gigantic, disgusting spiders. we ate lunch near a beach and then went jungle surfing!! jungle surfing is just ziplining over the rainforest. i went first. i am usually incredibly afraid of heights but i actually felt really safe and i wasn't scared at all! i loved looking down over the rainforest. towards the end i even ziplined upside down.
after ziplining, we stopped at an ice cream store on the way back to the resort. the ice cream wasn't especially memorable but we looked across a field and saw a cassowary! cassowaries are big, ugly birds that are very rare to see in the wild.
to get to the rainforest, we had to cross a big river full of crocodiles on a ferry. we took a picture of a funny sign that warned about crocodiles.
tuesday
on tuesday morning emily and i walked along the beach and then into port douglas and shopped on the main street. we ate some really good ice cream and i bought a dress. then we all drove to the nearby marina and rented a boat for the afternoon. we took the boat down a big river for two hours and took turns driving. i drove for about sixty seconds because as soon as i took the wheel, geoff stepped to the front of the boat and it nosedived. it was scary so i didn't want to drive anymore... lachy drove most of it and we only got stuck in the mangroves on the shore once. the river was full of crocodiles although i didn't see any. funny story: geoff at one point spotted two eyes in the mangroves and swore it must be a crocodile. we turned the boat around and drove by again. this time i saw them too! drove by again, someone else saw them... drove by again, and we realized that we had just wasted about 20 minutes driving by a coke can in the trees.
that night we walked into port douglas again and stopped at a bar called the iron bar. it is famous for its nightly cane toad races. cane toads are poisonous but that doesn't stop aussies from racing them. at the bar six cane toads are put in a bucket and then released on a table. each toad is assigned a jockey. the jockey must kiss the toad for good luck before dropping it back in the bucket and once the race starts, scare the living hell out of the toad with a party whistle so it will jump off the table and the jockey can carry it into another bucket. the first toad in the bucket wins. "well how do they pick jockeys?" you might ask. another funny story: as you enter the racing area you are given a raffle ticket with a number on it. they pick six numbers from a hat and those six people are the jockeys. my number was five. guess what number they called out. here's a video of me kissing my toad before the race. i lost miserably, coming 5th out of 6.
wednesday
wednesday was the highlight of the trip for me. we went back to the marina and got on a big cruise boat called the quicksilver. it took us along with about 200 other people on a two hour ride into the middle of the ocean to a huge floating building on some pontoons in the great barrier reef. the part of the reef we went to is called agincourt reef. we took a 45 minute snorkeling tour with a marine biologist. he showed us how to dive while snorkeling and taught us more about some of the things we saw. we got to pick up some weird sea cucumbers and starfish. then we ate a quick lunch on the pontoon and took a quick tour in the quicksilver’s semisubmersible. it was similar to a submarine but it doesn’t go all the way underwater and there were tons of windows so you can see into the reef. we snorkeled for the remaining hour. i wish i could describe how amazing it was and i wish the pictures i took with my underwater camera could show how beautiful it was. i saw so many different kinds of fish. my favorite was the parrotfish because they were neon blue and purple and green. i also liked the fox-faced rabbitfish. rabbitfish live to be around twenty years old and after they are about one year old find a mate and stay with them until they die. it is said (although not proven) that when one dies, the partner will die within a few days of a broken heart. the giant clam was cool too. we didn’t get to see any turtles or sharks unfortunately. since it was still jellyfish season, we had to wear stinger suits under our wetsuits. stinger suits are hilarious bright blue full body (and by full body I mean including hands, feet, and head) suits made of bathing suit material and protect from jellyfish stings. i was sad to get back on the quicksilver and leave the reef but hopefully someday i will be able to go back. the ride back was pretty terrible because the water was really rough and a very large amount o f the 200 people on the boat got very seasick. none of us did but a lot of people around us were handed barf bags.
when we got back to shore 2 hours later, we packed up our things and drove another half hour to cairns and checked into our second resort, the sea temple resort.
thursday
thursday was a very relaxing day. emily and i spent the whole day tanning by the pool and walking along the beach. we stopped for ice cream and as we were eating it, six boys on motor scooters drove by and honked at us. we waved. the day was uneventful other than that, but that evening we went out to dinner at an italian restaurant nearby. it was a lot of fun. connor ordered salt and pepper calamari. i tried it and loved it! i still can’t believe that I tried it. we got dessert too. I ordered pavlova again. It is just so good. I am going to have to learn how to make it. that night we rented monty python and the holy grail. connor and lachy had never seen it before and hated it but emily, geoff, karen, and i were cracking up.
friday
friday was spent white water rafting, which i had never done before. it was so fun! we had a boat to ourselves. our guide, stephan, was from wales and was really funny. the river had rapids of class III out of six classes, meaning that it was pretty difficult. the hardest rapid in the river was called the rooster tail and karen and connor fell out. i didn’t fall out at all and neither did lachy, but everyone else did at some point. the water was very warm though and we all went for a swim at the end despite having seen an eel earlier in the day while we were eating our lunch. we all really enjoyed it although it did get a little scary at some points. it was a great adrenaline rush.
saturday
saturday was our last day in queensland. we drove into cairns and shopped at a mall. all i bought were tim tams and flake bars, my favorite candy bar that you can only get in england and australia. geoff and karen went out to dinner that night, so emily and i made dinner for us and connor and lachy. we had french fries, chicken fingers, ice cream, and toast. then we ran to the pool and jumped in the hot tub one last time.
sunday
on sunday morning, we woke up at 4:30 am to catch our flight back to adelaide. i was sad to go but it is also nice to be back in brighton. it's not rainy here, but it's also not as warm. i had so much fun in queensland and i am really glad that i got to go.
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